Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry (28 page)

The ink was barely dry, in late 1967, when Jerry Wexler confessed to his partners that “we made a big mistake. We undersold. I regret it, and always will.” To prove the point, the following year, Atlantic’s turnover jumped to $45 million. Wexler and Ertegun tried to buy back Atlantic for $40 million, but Eliot Hyman flatly turned them down. The situation deteriorated to such a low point that all of Atlantic’s top staff threatened to resign unless the deal was renegotiated. Because, as Ertegun reasoned, “the company did not have very much value without the management … they had to sweeten the deal, so to speak … We almost sold it a second time.” Scared his new cash cow might keel over and die, the alcoholic Eliot Hyman kept shutting up Ertegun and Wexler with additional handouts and wisely chose to resell the company before they really did leave.

Fortunately, the messy arrangement was never intended to last. “If Eliot Hyman had continued as head of the company, I probably wouldn’t have stayed on,” admitted Ahmet Ertegun. Within a year, though, Hyman “made his bunch,” then “ran off into the night.” In the corporate marketplace, three hot independent labels, Warner, Reprise, and Atlantic, were up for auction in a single lot. Fortunately, a potential buyer was hovering in the shadows—and he was of a much higher order.

Whatever the effect of psychedelic music on popular culture, in purely industrial terms, the global surge of counterculture was provoking a process of concentration in which just a few giants would emerge as market leaders. It all came back to the contradiction of Britain’s musical dominance and America’s market size. As independent producer Bob Krasnow observed, “In England, there was a revolution taking place … There were all these English labels whose releases could be licensed … The smaller labels in the States didn’t have access to that, and therefore the independent record distributors often missed out. It was the rise of the majors in many respects.”

17. FORBIDDEN FRUIT

A quiet rot was spreading out from the artistic epicenter in London. In early 1967, a media debate erupted courtesy of a three-part investigation in the
News of the World
given the eye-catching title “Pop Stars and Drugs: Facts That Will Shock You.”

English folk singer Donovan was named in the piece and promptly busted. Then one dawn in February 1967, during an all-night party in which Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and some friends had taken their first acid trip, police arrived and began searching the house. Alas, while Jagger and Richards laughed hysterically, the police found amphetamines and marijuana in their pockets. One other guest, artist Robert Fraser, was even found in possession of heroin. Foolishly, as the police were leaving, Keith Richards decided to play a record loudly. It was that opening track on Bob Dylan’s
Blonde on Blonde
with its woozy cacophony of brass and laughter, “Everybody must get stoned!” The already notorious Stones couldn’t have handled the situation worse. As if by coincidence, the very day Jagger and Richards appeared in court, Brian Jones was busted for hashish possession. A concerted judicial and media campaign against drugs was in motion.

It seemed to be a poignant symbol, later that spring, when Paul McCartney took test copies of
Sgt. Pepper
out to California, he found a noticeably strung-out Brian Wilson in a studio littered with produce, recording a novelty song about vegetables. The creative force behind the Beach Boys was another pacesetter speeding into a brick wall. His daily medicine was Desbutal, a potent combination of amphetamine and barbiturate, known for its God-like highs and dark, paranoid lows. Feeling musically invincible following the knockout success of “Good Vibrations,” Brian Wilson was collaborating with another speed-freak poet, Van Dyke Parks, on a new album,
Smile.
Billed as a “teenage symphony to God,” its first recordings, “Surf’s Up” and “Heroes and Villains,” suggested something truly grandiose. Alas, Wilson drove himself and his collaborators crazy with a never-ending pattern of creating and reworking his mixes until he got confused. Capitol eventually lost patience and canceled the release. In fact, as well as suffering from drug addiction, Brian Wilson was descending into schizophrenia.

Throughout that turbulent spring, Andrew Loog Oldham was in California, officially helping out with Monterey but actually avoiding the Stones’ criminal saga in England. Suddenly, his business associate Allen Klein flew into London and announced to the
Daily Mirror,
“Their problems are mine. I’m working my ass off to get them the best lawyers and will be in the front row of the trial every day.” It was a striking PR move, especially considering Oldham hadn’t been consulted. Oldham later joked, “better he’d said ‘their copyrights are mine.’” The shrewder and older New York accountant, who was technically Oldham’s business affairs adviser, had his eyes on the prize. Knowing that Mick Jagger was beginning to reject Oldham’s artistic control, Klein spotted a fissure and forced in a crowbar.

As the astute Mick Jagger knew, the fastest way to oust Oldham was to waste his money and humiliate him into resigning. When Oldham convened the band at Olympic Studios to make their next album, Jagger would arrive hours late followed by the band and an entourage of stoned hangers-on. Ignoring Oldham’s directions and usually tripping on acid, the Stones jammed shabby improvisations of finger-fumbling sludge—Mellotrons, sitars, bongos. The invisible sixth Stone, Ian Stewart, who still occasionally played piano, relished Oldham’s alienation, later admitting the sessions were “the worst blues we could possibly play.” After three weeks, Oldham’s bill at Olympic Studios stood at £18,000.

Pacing around the control room, Oldham knew that Jagger was “stoned as a matter of convenience.” While playing the part of a pouting bohemian in search of artistic freedom, the rapidly maturing pop icon was taking control of the band. The only two notable highlights of an otherwise messy album eventually titled
Their Satanic Majesties Request
were “2000 Light Years from Home” and “She’s a Rainbow,” whose track-saving arranger, John Paul Jones, remembered “waiting forever. I just thought [the Stones] were unprofessional and boring.”

It was time for Andrew Loog Oldham to walk away. “You can’t fight a witch hunt,” warned his worldly-wise film star friend Laurence Harvey. “It’s the nature of the beast. The artist has to rise and shine and dismiss his maker—it’s as true as Adam and Eve.” In the high times of 1967, ideas of revolution, self-discovery, and corporate independence were on every pop star’s tongue. Of course, with habitual drug use came delusions of grandeur. Seeing how the Rolling Stones were breaking free from their former master, that other Adam and Eve combination, Lennon and McCartney, wanted their own taste of the tree of knowledge.

The Beatles’ will to break free coincided with the official release of
Sgt. Pepper,
their most critically acclaimed record to date, which sold 2.5 million copies in the first three months. Although a flood of reviews hailed it as their masterpiece
,
many raised the issue of George Martin’s giant contribution. When Martin was questioned by journalists, he aroused the seething resentment of Lennon and McCartney by admitting, “It’s true to say they must depend on me a lot. They know many things—but they don’t know detail.”

Their other worry was Brian Epstein’s management. Between 1963 and 1966, EMI, its Capitol subsidiary, and its overseas licensees had sold an incredible 200 million Beatles records worldwide. Brian Epstein, enjoying a 25 percent commission on all Beatles revenue, was also the proud owner of the Saville Theatre, one of London’s trendiest venues, where he had his own royal box and side-stage bar to entertain friends and business contacts. Paul McCartney and John Lennon, however, knew they were on a shit deal with EMI—an embarrassing fact further emphasized when Allen Klein renegotiated a fantastic deal for the Stones with Decca. There was also the serious problem of Britain’s tax laws in a period dominated by Labour governments. In early 1967, the Beatles’ accountant warned that if they didn’t invest profits in business ventures, the tax man would skim off a shocking 86 percent of their personal earnings.

Feeling the Beatles pushing him aside—in particular Paul McCartney, who appeared to be the chief instigator of the revolt—Brian Epstein had spent his last months wrestling with demons. While he was undergoing professional treatment for his pill addiction, his father passed away. Spending time with his bereaved mother kept him out of trouble, but despite his best efforts, Epstein kept lapsing back to his bad old ways, popping too many pills and prowling the streets of London for young men. Friends noticed his sweating and incessant jaw grinding as tensions with business partner Robert Stigwood were poised to end in litigation. That August, in a moment of insomniac carelessness, Epstein topped up on too many sleeping pills and expired in his sleep.

The Beatles were in Wales on a mediation retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when news of Epstein’s death arrived. “We’ve fuckin’ had it,” Lennon thought to himself. Publicly, after spiritual counsel with the Maharishi, he repeated the guru’s convoluted mumbo jumbo to a posse of journalists. “Brian is just passing into the next phase. His spirit is still around and always will be. It’s a physical memory we have of him, and as men we will build on that memory.”

A band meeting was convened in McCartney’s house that Friday afternoon. The news was daunting: Epstein hadn’t left a will; so ownership of his management agency, NEMS, would probably pass over to his brother, Clive Epstein, who had no experience of the music business. The Beatles had no paperwork of their own; all their record and film contracts were filed away somewhere in Epstein’s office. They didn’t even know where their money was banked. As their assistant Neil Aspinal explained, “It didn’t make them vulnerable, but it did make them realize that they had to get it together … They needed an office and an organization of their own.”

So they formed Apple—a multimedia corporation containing seven alphabetically progressive botanical subsidiaries: Apricot, Blackberry, Cornflower, Daffodil, Edelweiss, Foxglove, and Greengage. With a £1 million treasure chest of accumulated royalties, Lennon enthusiastically announced to his friends, “We’re just going to do—
everything
!… We’ll have electronics, we’ll have clothes, we’ll have publishing, we’ll have music. We’re going to be talent spotters.”

At exactly the same time, the BBC launched Radio 1, whose first broadcast, on September 30, 1967, was “Theme One,
”
a baroque-pop jingle composed by George Martin. The North Sea pirate-radio ships, active from 1964 to 1967, had proved instrumental in making Britain arguably the world’s most fertile habitat for cutting-edge pop. Radio Caroline came first in early 1964, quickly followed by Radio Atlanta and then the most successful offshore station, Radio London, a former U.S. minesweeper anchored off the southeast coast. As the total number of pirate-radio ships rose to twenty-one, some 15 million listeners were tuning in every day.

When Parliament began legislating to ban pirate-radio ships, with admirable pragmatism, the BBC began studying the hugely popular Radio London, whose Top 40 format copied American radio. By hiring the best deejays from the ships, the psychedelic underground was given a giant vent into national broadcasting service—which in England’s tax-funded system was intended to both entertain and spread culture.

Feeding these young, daring deejays was a new generation of independent labels. The Who’s managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, had launched the Jimi Hendrix Experience on their own Track label. Robert Stigwood released Cream’s debut on his own indie, Reaction Records. Denny Cordell had his Deram label, which produced Procol Harum. In 1968, Fleetwood Mac, then fronted by the brilliant blues guitarist Peter Green, released their debut album on Mike Vernon’s blues label, Blue Horizon. Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records broke the Small Faces, whose landmark 1968 album
Ogdens’ Nutgone Flake
stands as a monument to the London spirit.

Of all the new independents, there was one record man with a unique past and future: Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. In addition to breaking acts such as Traffic, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Free, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens, Roxy Music, Bob Marley, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer Island incubated two world-conquering labels, Chrysalis and Virgin. In the geology of British rock, Island Records formed around the psychedelic volcano and changed the British musical landscape forever after. Accordingly, Chris Blackwell stands as probably the most important record man in the history of British music.

Having started out importing Caribbean records into England, he had taken an unorthodox route into the rock ’n’ roll business. He was a white Jamaican, athletic, handsome, and well spoken, who despite being somewhat reserved stood out among his contemporaries. His unusual accent, speckled with colonial nuances, echoed a distant world that few Londoners even knew of.

Born in 1937, Chris Blackwell was a few years older than the majority of characters who made the sixties swing. He was also a rare kind of ethnic mixture, even by Caribbean standards. His father, Middleton Joseph Blackwell, was a Protestant Irishman of military stock who hailed from Westport in County Mayo. His mother, Blanche Lindo, was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Jamaican merchant dynasty whose Sephardic Jewish origins stretched back to Portugal in the seventeenth century.

As with so many great record men, it was a bittersweet childhood that forged Chris Blackwell’s personality and career. Despite his privileged, sunny, multicultural horizons, he was an only child who was dealt some unlucky cards. As a result of severe bronchial asthma, he was kept at home with the house servants, meaning he could not read or write at the age of eight. He also witnessed more than his fair share of domestic drama; both of his parents were socialites who entertained the likes of Errol Flynn, Noël Coward, and James Bond author Ian Fleming, in what Blackwell described as “great dinner parties where [my father] used to play Wagner and Strauss very loud.”