The Really Useful Group
When I started with Deke, one of the other directors there was a chap called Derek Everett, who I'd known for many, many years and built up a good working relationship with. But Derek left the Arlon Group to set up Really Useful Records (the record wing of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful organisation) and he approached me a couple of times, saying, "I would love you to come and join me". At first, I took it more as a piece of flattery but he became very insistent, saying, "It really could be a great move for you". Well I had to think long and hard about leaving, but in the end, Derek and Brian Brolly (MD of the whole RU group) made me an offer which it would have been silly to refuse. My only reluctance about it was going away from publishing and just getting into the recording side, because Really Useful already had a publishing company and I wasn't going to be involved in that at all. But I decided to go and that was at the beginning of 1989.

I didn't meet him until I'd been there about five months actually. He came over at the end of a board meeting and had a few words with me - he was very, very nice. I should point out that the time I was there, he was mainly in America and France, and anyway, I used to report to Brian Brolly - my main involvement was with him. I met Prince Edward, too!  He started on the same day as me and I met him in a corridor! He said, "Hello, I'm Edward!"

Then, we had a memo saying that during office hours we could call him Edward but on any engagements outside office hours, we had to address him according to protocol. He was very, very pleasant and very keen to learn about the theatre.

Leaving Really Useful
The reason I only stayed for twelve months was that when Brian Brolly resigned, it was made very clear to me that I could only become involved with product directly associated with Andrew - they didn't want anything from the outside.

And that's not what I was told I was going to be doing and not what Derek Everett thought we would be doing when we started.

I thought it would be a straightforward record label, mainly going for product that you could associate with the Group - we wouldn't be signing any heavy rock bands - but we would be doing albums with well known singers, things like that, keeping it slightly MOR, I would say, but very high quality, maybe doing some of Andrew's songs, maybe not.

Derek and I put together "The Premier Collection" album (a compilation of the best recordings of Webber, songs) which got to Number 2 in the charts, and that wasn't as easy as it sounds.

There were quite a few masters (tapes) with different labels who weren't that keen to lease the rights to us, so we had to work very hard on that. We also launched Michael Ball's career with "Love Changes Everything".  I signed Simon May and we did an album with the Simon May Orchestra. He also did the ITV theme for the Olympic Games, which we put out as a single.

Unfortunately, none of us realised at the time that the transmission from Tokyo would be going out from around two o'clock to six o'clock in the morning! So we didn't get a very big TV audience!

We also put out a single with Simon that I thought was going to do much more than it did. It was called "Glory Be" and it was the "Eastenders" theme (co-composed by May) with special lyrics by Simon and done with a school choir.

We put it out just before Christmas, it got a lot of air-play and a lot of people tipped it to be the Christmas hit. But Cliff came in with ... I think it was "Mistletoe And Wine" that year ... and ours just didn't take off.

But my time at Really Useful was not a happy one. You know, during the whole of that time we were putting a new label on the map, as it were, I never once got a note saying, "Well done!". I felt that Derek and I were working very hard and I just felt there was no recognition there. I just didn't feel at home and I left in January 1990.

Return To Noon Music
I took a few months to decide what I was going to do and my decision was to carry on with Noon Music and sign some new talent.

Within a couple of months, I was introduced to a singer-songwriter who I thought was absolutely amazing.

I'm not going to mention names but I had so much faith in this person becoming a major recording artist, I said, "I would like to sign you but to show you just how strong I feel about you, I'll work with you now for the next few weeks, produce some demos and I'll guarantee you a recording contract.

Anyway, we did some demos, I played them to a couple of record companies and the response was as good as I expected.

Lawyers And The Industry
So I rang the writer and said, "I'm sending you a publishing contract and in it, I will say that within three months of signing you, I will get you a recording deal - terms acceptable to you". So I sent off the contract and I then get a phone call from a lawyer, saying to me, "I now represent this songwriter and I want to make a few changes to your contract, one of them being the advance".  He said, "If this writer's got a recording contract, I can get a much bigger deal from a major publisher!"

I said, "I don't think you quite understand - it's been my hard work, my enthusiasm that has got this deal". He said, "That doesn't matter - I'm thinking of my client. All I know is, this artist has got a recording deal, you're offering 'x' amount and I can get five times that".  So I said, "Well you will have to get it from somebody else". I was really choked about that because I'd worked quite hard and I honestly believed this person was ready for international stardom.

Shortly afterwards, I met a manager who had a band and again, I was very impressed with a couple of the songs. So I met the band, met the songwriters, got on very well with them, gave them a lot of time and advice, and they seemed very enthused.

Then I get the same thing from the manager - "How much will you offer? I've been to so-and-so and they've said 'If you can get a recording deal, we'll offer you this amount'." And I thought, "Either I'm getting very naive or the business is becoming very hard". It's no longer "What can you do? Your experience is valuable" - it's, "How much will you give us?" So again I backed off.

I thought the best thing for me to do was go back into the catalogue, see what I could do with my existing copyrights.  I owned the Honeybus masters and also quite a bit of the publishing of old Honeybus material and during the next few months I got "Maggie" released on the continent on four different compilation albums, one of them TV-advertised. Then back here, Colin Miles of See For Miles Records (a leading independent reissue label) released a Honeybus album, a Pete Dello (leader of Honeybus) album and a Colin Hare  (member of Honeybus) album, and it was wonderful, dealing with all these professional people again!

So that's the sort of thing I've been doing, just ticking over. I wish I could say to you that I've found the new Beatles, though I'm sure that they're out there. I'm sure a band with two or three talented writers, who aren't using computerised machinery are going to come through and really shake the business. I think the industry is waiting for something like that.

I do know what they're not going to sound like! Watching "Top Of The Pops", I see one guy screaming six words into a mike that constitutes a lyric, two guys thumping away at keyboards, a track that's obviously been made in a sitting room somewhere, and five people dancing! I'm not knocking dance music but those acts don't go out on tour, don't learn their craft, don't build a following and I might be wrong in saying this, but I don't think they happen overseas.

The Importance Of The Song
So you're getting something that may clear your initial investment but you're not building an artist, you're not building a future. I do worry about the future because if there aren't guys out there learning the piano, learning the guitar, learning to play the clubs, there's going to be a gap in the next generation where good music won't come through because nobody knows how to play.  But having said that, I'm sure there must be some young guys out there who are going the route that Lennon & McCartney took. that Gordon Sumner (Sting) took, and that quality is going to come through. We as an industry have got to make sure we don't neglect that side and that we realise there's a much bigger record-buying public out there than this dance thing.

There's a lot of people out there will buy that type of music if they're given it. A lot of people still like to whistle or hum the tune and hear a lyric they can relate to. If that's MOR, I don't care and if people in A & R Departments think that's old hat, I'm sorry. The whole foundation of what we're talking about is a good song. It really is down to the songwriter and it's down to the industry to maybe set the new trend, which is quality, and I would love to be part of it if I could find the act.



On Paying Advances
That's a major problem. I go back to the 70s and 80s when there were a lot of publishers like me around, looking for talent, looking for songwriters - maybe twenty or thirty of us with our own companies, taking talent to record companies.  What's happened now is, because people come in and say, "We want 'x' amount", we small entrepreneurs have started disappearing - perhaps giving up, perhaps joining other companies - so there's far less guys out there hustling, looking for talent. There's nothing wrong with signing to a major but they can only handle so much. The only thing I can do, I think, is go on trying to convince people that experience and enthusiasm can make up for paying somebody.

On The Non Performing Songwriter
I think at the moment that that is a very difficult area, although I still believe that a good song will come through. The thing is that although there are lots of artists that do rely on other people's material, it's becoming more difficult to get to them - you have to go through so many people who think they know what's best for their artist.  Of course the old days of going to an A & R Man's office and playing him five or six songs are long gone. But don't let me appear negative; if the song is good enough, a good publisher should be able to place it.

Copyright Gerald Mahlowe & Songwriter Magazine: All Rights Reserved

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