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At Robbins, then, you were allowed to write!
Yes, whereas with Dave Toff! ...I think what wrecked it with Dave was when I heard one of his more famous composers playing a tune one day, and a title hit me immediately. So I walked into his office and said, "Oh, I've got a title for that!" And was greeted with frozen silence!
And the writer said to me, "What is it?" And I told him, and he said, "That's not bad! Bring the lyric in tomorrow!" So I did, and that was 1958, and that was the first Ivor Novello Award I won, for 'Best Song of The Year, Musically and Lyrically'. It was "There Goes My Lover" which is not a song that's lasted, but it was very nice at the time. There was no stopping me after that!
Robbins was the English wing of an American Company?
Yes, and I believe it was acquired by EMI eventually. But when I was there with Joy and Alan, what a work factory it was! We never stopped working and we never stopped having fun. It was seven years of the best apprenticeship anyone could have in the music industry.
Did you have to promote the songs you'd helped write?
Yes, but I was obliged to put my name down as John Harris, which was my father's first name and my mother's maiden name - but I was very happy to do that. I had no instinct towards fame or fortune; I really liked doing it. I always used to wake up thinking, "I can't imagine why everyone in the world doesn't write songs for a living!"
In the 50's, publishing was one world and records was another - unlike today, where they co-exist almost everywhere. Did you see the change begin?
Yes. The record companies ruined it for themselves. In the old days, there was an unwritten law: they had A & R men and you went to see them with the best of your songs. Now you knew that provided your song was recordable, it would go on the session, and there were usually 2, 3 and 4 songs done on a particular session. But suddenly, the record companies started to take the 'B'-sides. And the moment they went into the publishing business, we went into the recording business. They went into competition with us and it created enormous tensions. It doesn't seem possible to believe now, the outcry there was at the time. And the truth is, we were better producers of records than they were publishers.
When did this start?
It must have been the late 50's. The tragedy was that the A & R men then were real music people with a real love for songs - people like Wally Ridley, Norman Newell and George Martin at EMI, and Johnny Franz at Philips. There was no greater pleasure than to take good songs into good music people -they loved them, it transcended their job. To find a great song for whoever the artist was, was an art in itself, and they never used to toy with it.
But sooner or later -and I'm not talking about those people particularly - the concept of 'You are working for the record company, so use your talent to provide songs for the record company's own publishing company evolved. It evolved subtly but very quickly.
The moment that happened, publishers got a bit reluctant to bring their songs to the record companies. Tim Rice, I've often heard ask, "What on earth has a publisher ever done for songs?" As a songwriter who went through those times, I say that unless you understand what the publisher's role was in those days, it's impossible for you to understand the respect I still feel for the people who amassed those old catalogues. They really did a job.
Let's move on to the start of Sparta Music. Was the idea just to publish your own work?
No, not at all. Over the years, working within the milieu we're talking about, one kept discovering marvellous talents - they were everywhere. I didn't realise that we were into what I call a 'breakaway' era - all I knew was that in 1963, the money started flooding in from the songs I'd written, the hits from 1959 onwards. And in 1962, the money from "Softly As I Leave You" started to persuade me that I had enough money, I thought, to survive for at least five years. So I made a conscious decision to start my own company, find my own talent, and create a publishing company that would be the sort of company I, as a writer, would like to work with.
Before we carry on, could you just say something about the Frank Sinatra recording of "Softly As I Leave You"? Do you know how he came to do it?
I know exactly how he came to record it. Jimmy Bowen was Dean Martin's producer, and because he was having success with Dean, he hoped that the phone might just ring with the then retired Mr. Sinatra on the line saying, "Hey kid! What have you got for me?" So he got a shoebox and marked it up 'Songs for Sinatra', and the first thing he put into it was the Matt Monro record of Softly As I Leave You". And Jimmy said to me that as time went by, "it moved further and further away and I forgot about it." He said, "Then one day the phone rang and it was the great man himself", and he heard the famous voice say, "Hey kid! Have you got a song for me?" And he said, "As a matter of fact, I do." And he walked over to the shoebox, forgetting how few items he'd put in it. When he opened it, the only record in it was Matt's! So he took it over to Mr. Sinatra, who said, "Let's Do It." What a break! The first English person who knew of its release was Don Black and he phoned me from America to say, "Hal - you've achieved every songwriter's dream. You're the next Sinatra single!"
Did you start Sparta with nothing?
Yes. My idea, essentially, was to put someone else in charge of it so that I could find the talent, write the songs, put everyone together and just go on with life. But of course it doesn't always work like that, and I found myself in charge of it and then running it. But I've always had very good help.
Your company was immediately successful, noticeably with a couple of U.K. acts that were far more successful in the U.S. than here, like Ian Whitcomb.
Yes. In fact we recorded the three hits Ian had - "Nervous", "You Turn Me On" and "This Sporting Life" - in the studios in Dublin in just one session. The studio was so small, we had to dub the tambourine on! Ian is one of the most wonderful people in the music business. He's probably the leading exponent of ragtime in the world, both as a player and an authority, and his day will come!
In 1965, a Mr. Ralph Horton came to you with an artist he was then managing - a certain Mr. David Bowie.
Yes, he did. And insisted that I take him on! Which I did, because Ralph was a very persuasive fellow and because I liked David the moment we got talking. The first time I ever saw him, David rolled up in a soldier's uniform, which doesn't sound like anything now, but then, it was spectacular. It was like having a peacock in the office and I loved it. I also had enormous affection for him as a songwriter.
His ideas were not only bright and really off-centre but he had visions which really did come from within. Over and above merely producing songs which were commercially popular, David was one of the people who really wrote what he was thinking about.
You lost him to Essex Music later on, I think?
Well I didn't lose him to Essex Music, but after David had been with me for two years, he personally asked me if we would let him go and I personally agreed to it and gave him his contract back marked 'cancelled'. And I'm very glad I did because several years later, at the height of his fame, I got a call from him, asking if I would look after his publishing again, and I did, for another three years. "Rebel Rebel" came from that, and "Heroes" and other absolutely great songs from his multi-platinum albums. And again, at the end of about two and a half years, he asked me if I'd let him go and I said yes.
I've never held him to a contract and we've never been a publishing company that has held onto songs beyond the point of either courtesy or usefulness.
Unfortunately, people don't always ask you for those reasons. They sometimes ask you for songs back because they're simply bloody-minded or disappointed, and they don't realise that in a world where contracts are far flung - in the sense that you make deals all over the world - you can't start extracting songs from your catalogue without the people you do business with feeling that you're pulling bricks out of the foundations of your relationship.
Did your earlier link with Sinatra help Sparta get the rights to the very valuable Barton catalogue?
I think it helped me in ways that are more understated than said. Because when those catalogues came up, shall we say, for grabs, every major publisher wanted them and I was one of the younger publishers who went across to California to see if I could secure them.
And what happened was that I spent my nights with the owner of the company, Hank Sanicola - Mr. Sinatra's manager for 25 years - whereas everyone else took him out for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
He was used to night-club hours and I hung around with him every evening until about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, when we would wind up either in his office or in a club somewhere, playing songs. He was a night time cat! And I think he was surprised to know how well I knew the songs and how much I loved them. I must say, in the face of all the competition, I was very glad that the catalogue came to us.
Tell me a little about Mike Berry (not the singer/actor), who has contributed so much to helping Sparta over the years.
He was in the office when I arrived back from a trip, once - he was hired in my absence. I liked him and I have to say that he was great fun, hardworking, with a very, very good 'street ear'. He was very good with the bands that we discovered. During the punk era, for example, he brought in the UK Subs, with whom every single was a hit and every album a charter.
The thing I liked best about him was that he had great resilience in the face of the fact that the business was changing and the conglomerates were now scoring and the smaller publishers like ourselves were finding that the rest of the smaller fish had disappeared. Suddenly there were six minnows and everywhere else you looked, there was the Great White! It was a very uncomfortable feeling.
How do you feel about that today - because you're even more on your own now?
I think there are about three publishers of our size left who are truly independent. I feel very safe now because our base has extended so broadly. I mean, we're on five chart albums at the moment. We've got cuts on Foster & Allen, on Nana Mouskouri, on "Party For The World" with Steve Walsh, on the Mirage album, on Rose Marie's album, on the "Instrumental Greats" album. We've also managed to keep the flow of recordings going - we've had very important covers in the last few years, including groups like UB40, people like Kenny Rogers, fantastic cuts.
We have also built a base of something like 10,000 hours of recorded music in our background libraries. And our latest move is the establishment of our own label, which is Prestige. We've already amassed something like 50 masters for release within the first six months. We have the new Jack Jones album, the new Julie Andrews album, the Bob Florence jazz album which is currently on the Billboard chart in America, we have the new Marion Montgomery album, and we have them for nearly all the territories in the world. We've also become much more international as well. We have an office in New York and an office in Holland.
And is it sub-publishing or administration deals in the rest of the world?
We mostly have administration deals in other territories, but in every territory we work with majors - SBK, Chappell, EMI - the very best.
Who handles your administration in the UK?
Margaret Brace runs it out of Leosong. And we have our own in-house accountants and a computer base which looks after the 15,000 works that we control.
Continued
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