Magical Mystery Tours

by Tony Bramwell

  This time, it wasn’t as spectacular as the huge loss through Hilary Music, because when you’re building a company with the likes of Harry Saltzman, the producer of the Bond films, and Ron Kass, the sky’s the limit. The second time round happened like this: I got involved with IDS (Independent Distribution Services), a company put together by ex-members of various record labels and financed by a merchant bank. I agreed to do promotion for them for royalty points of 3 percent plus a reasonable lump sum of five hundred pounds for each record I promoted. At the time, being given points for exploiting a record through your promotion work was quite innovative.

  The first record was a break-dance single, put together by the team who brought us the Village People. It was the first break-dance hit record in the States, where it made the top five. In the U.K. it sold about half a million units. The follow-up sold about the same and the album sold about a quarter of a million. I was very happy with 3 percent of that. Next up was Evelyn Thomas with “High Energy,” which went to number one. We had a smaller hit with “So Many Men, So Little Time,” with Miquel Brown (who happened to be the mother of the American dance music queen, Sinitta). Then a couple of reggae versions of Lionel Richie songs which made the top five. So money was building up. I felt it had been a year or so of quite remarkable success from a standing start.

  I promoted “Gloria,” a big hit with Laura Brannigan, on Warner the summer my son, Simon, was born in 1984. It was followed by a letter with my usual five-hundred-pound check and a summary of what had accrued to date. The statement ended with the words, “Royalties are being computed de da de da de da . . .” Within days, another letter came with the information that IDS had gone into receivership. “If you have any claim against it, send it to Henry Ansbacher Bank at—” I lost about one hundred thousand pounds, which twenty or so years ago was a lot of money.

  They say once bitten, twice shy. There’s also the phrase, “Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.” So maybe the gods decided to play a long running joke on me, because I lost all my money three times.

  The first time was when Kenneth J. Richards, may he rot in hell, ran off with untold millions—some of it mine. The second time was when IDS went down; and the third time was in 1988, when my dear friend, Marty Machat died. He was Allen Klein’s lawyer in the U.S. That’s how initially I got to know him. He was also Leonard Cohen’s lawyer. Leonard was someone else who was very difficult to deal with, though not as hard as Klein. Nobody was as hard as Klein, except maybe Phil Spector, and I’ve already been there. However, whether by accident or design, Marty got the last laugh on Leonard.

  There has always been a running joke in the industry about Leonard Cohen. It is said that his records are music to commit suicide by. But, as Elton John pointed out, sad songs say so much. And it’s true. Leonard can write sad songs with the best, and if there was ever a sad song to write it’s the one about all of Leonard’s money going missing somewhere in numbered accounts in the Caymans. In fact, Marty looked after clients’ money, including mine, and Leonard’s, like it was his own. But, when you hide money, you create mysteries, like pirates with buried treasure. X might mark the spot, but only if you have the map and can find the X.

  Marty often called me, sometimes for business, often just to chat about this and that. I always felt he was a kindly and benign father figure, so I had given him some of my American money to keep in an offshore account, as a sort of pension for the future. Marty took a shine to me and we became good friends. He was an Anglophile, who loved going to English pubs and doing English things while all the time being like my American godfather. There’s no denying that while he was alive, he did look after me. He’d line up projects, tell people to call me, and make sure my name and ability were put about. If I needed a thousand pounds to pay for something, the next day it would be there.

  Once I’d gone entirely freelance, my payment usually came partly in a fee, plus expenses and on top of that, royalties. Through Marty, I promoted the music for Dirty Dancing which I had some points in, which was nice, because the album was massive, something nobody expected. The story of how this came about is a little contorted. Originally, Jennifer Warnes had done an album of Leonard Cohen songs for a little label called Cypress Records who were distributed by RCA. It was called The Famous Blue Raincoat, and it was a lovely album, dedicated to Leonard, who dueted on one track. Stevie Ray Vaughn played some guitar. It really turned Cohen’s music into something special and I fell in love with it.

  I’d already worked with Laura Brannigan; she and Jennifer had been Leonard’s backup singers. One day, Marty called to say, “If you promote Blue Raincoat, Tony, I’ll see that you get five pence per record.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Is that for the world?”

  Yes, he said, because like a lot of things, he believed that if it broke first in the U.K. then America would follow. I got immediate airplay from everywhere. People who’d never ever thought about playing a Leonard Cohen record—probably because a large percentage of their listeners would do themselves harm or commit hari kiri, and they’d get sued—played Jennifer’s Cohen album. As it took off, she was sent over to London. I found her difficult. She suffered from a lot of anxieties, but we threw her into television so that she didn’t have time to think, and suddenly I got the feeling that it was all about to happen. You know it! You can feel it when the audience is just about to catch onto what it’s all about and rush out to the shops. It was a combination of many things: Jennifer’s great voice, a perfect choice of songs and promotion, all coming together and working.

  Then Marty called up and out of the blue said, “Can you stop it?”

  I didn’t get it. “Stop what?”

  He said, “Stop promoting Blue Raincoat.”

  I was stunned. Marty explained. It seemed that RCA in the States were about to release a strange little soundtrack to a movie called Dirty Dancing. It featured Jennifer and the Righteous Brothers, as well as all kinds of every star you can imagine. “They want to give it first shot, before Raincoat takes off. And would you promote it?”

  “But Marty,” I said, “I’ve been working my socks off. Blue Raincoat is just about to fly.”

  “Yes, but not in America,” he said. I was speechless. Marty said he’d organize some percentages for me. Feebly, since RCA was picking up the tab, I agreed. I can’t take all the credit for Dirty Dancing going so massive because it was also being promoted in-house by RCA as well, but it took off like a jet fighter. Then came Dirty Dancing 2 and so on. By the time all the hoo-hah had died down, I couldn’t get Jennifer’s old Blue Raincoat album going again for love or money. It was dead as a dodo, gone. Good-bye. Farewell.

  I called Marty to tell him and he called me back from somewhere in the Caymans where he was playing tennis. Marty played a lot of tennis despite the fact that he was in his late sixties. We discussed it and Marty said he’d have a think, talk to some people and get back to me. I didn’t think he sounded all that bright, and said, “How are you, Marty?”

  “To be honest, Tony, I don’t feel all that good,” he said. He sounded worried. “I have an appointment with a doctor in New York in a couple of days. I’m here in the Caymans, sorting things out. I’ve been making notes on my affairs, listing all the numbered accounts and the various holdings I have for my clients.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be all right, Marty,” I reassured him.

  “Well, a man in my position has to put things in order, Tony,” he said. “Everyone will get their numbers if anything happens to me.” I thought it was all a bit doom-laden and laughed it off. We finished our chat and I wished him good luck.

  The next day I was having dinner and I got a phone call. Marty was dead. I called his family. He’d collapsed. They’d flown him back to New York where the doctors opened him up for a look and he was riddled with cancer. There was nothing to be done, and he died in the hospital.

  I thought to myself, Oh well! Somebody will sort out t
he money in the end. Then I shook myself and said, Don’t be silly, Tony. Nobody will sort it out in the end. Move on. But nevertheless after a few days I spoke to one of his sons. He said there were problems. Someone had intimated that Marty had possibly been poisoned. Should he be interred? Should he be put on ice? It quickly became like an episode of Law and Order.

  The big question was “Where’s the money?” It was a difficult subject to broach, so close to Marty’s death, but the son, who was also in the music business like Marty’s other children, knew that Marty was looking after a great deal of money for many people. I called him and repeated the last conversation I had with Marty, and asked if his father had indeed left any instructions for me, or for anyone. I asked, “Did he leave a list of numbers?”

  He sounded quite concerned. “We’ve been through Dad’s papers with a fine-tooth comb, Tony,” he said, “and we can’t find anything. Leonard’s having a fit because he stands to lose the most. For the most, read everything.”

  “What do you mean, everything?” I asked cautiously, hoping it didn’t sound like it did.

  I can only assume that the money is probably still out there, out of reach, and earning interest to eternity. I went into the pub. Phil Spector went into a rage. Leonard Cohen went into a monastery, and the New York lawyers went into a huddle until one of them said, “Did you eat yet?” and then that was the end of that. As Leonard said when he heard the bad news: “What else is there to do?”

  Over the years, the Beatles continued to keep in touch with me. I considered Paul a friend and saw the most of him. I promoted all Wings’ records and tours, and did the same for the NEMS roster and for Apple. The other three would call me from time to time if they were around, if they wanted me to promote a record for them, or to ask me to some event. I had also kept in touch with our little inner circle at Apple. Sometimes months or even years would pass and I’d bump into one of them somewhere.

  The last time I talked to John was when I was with Polydor and he was recording again after a long hiatus while he played househusband. I went to New York and I kept just missing him. This was hardly surprising. He had stopped seeing his oldest friends, like Pete Shotton and even Paul. Pete had called him once and he and Yoko met him for a Japanese meal of raw fish and macrobiotic rice. “Call me tomorrow,” John said. But Yoko glowered. The next day, when Pete called, he heard Yoko screech down the phone, “Tell him to get lost!” John told him it wasn’t a good time and they never met again.

  It was the same when Paul spontaneously dropped by the Dakota with his guitar, hoping that he and John could jam a little. He called John from the reception downstairs. Distantly, John had said, “Look Paul, it’s not like it used to be when we were kids, going round each other’s houses. We’ve grown up since then.” Well, Aunt Mimi didn’t like him playing and jamming, either. There was always a reason back then, too. The wrong haircut, the wrong clothes, leading John astray. I don’t know what Yoko’s reasons were.

  Little wonder, then, that I couldn’t get through to him. I knew he was looking for a new deal, a new label for the album he was working on. I wrote to him from London and asked him if he wanted to sign with Polydor, who were as big as anybody. I heard nothing and forgot it. I was working late at the office—it was seven or eight in the evening, when the worst janitor in the world—I’ll call him Bloggs—came looking for me. Remember this was before the days of proper phone systems. I had given John my direct number but he had probably lost it.

  When Bloggs found me he said, “There’s a guy called John Lennon on the phone for you.” Now Bloggs was a man who just lately had refused entry to a “fat unshaven foreign geezer who calls hisself Frank Ellis.” This was Vangelis, whom I was expecting. But Bloggs was Bloggs and he continued to be a pain. He once insisted on keeping “some poncey-looking guy” outside in the rain while he found out who he was. It was Brian Ferry of Roxy Music. So when Bloggs put John Lennon on hold, I shouldn’t have been surprised or even annoyed.

  Back in his lair, Bloggs put John through and we just had time to say hello to each other before there was a “blip” and Bloggs said, “Sorry, I think I just cut you off.”

  I tried to call John back but I couldn’t reach him. The switchboard security at Stalag Dakota wouldn’t let me through. Two weeks later, on December 8, 1980, my phone rang. It was five A.M. I answered it, still half-asleep. It was a deejay calling from a radio station in New York. “John Lennon is dead,” he told me. “How do you feel about it? We’re on the air right now, live.”

  I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  On-air, very excited, he told me what had happened, how some nut had shot John as he was going into the Dakota apartment building with Yoko. I choked up, trying my best to say the right things.

  “He was a great singer and a great person,” I said. “He’ll be badly missed.” It was all so trite. How can anyone explain? None of the Beatles could; none of them had the right words either. And then I hung up and sat there, in the early dawn, thinking back on my years with John, the boy who set fire to our village hall. It was the end of an era, no doubt about it. And then my phone began to ring, and continued to ring for days, hundreds of calls. So it was true, then. John really was dead.

  But that morning, I had to pull myself together, get dressed, get on the train to the Water Mill Theater at Newbury in Berkshire where Marti Webb was taping a big special on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tell Me on a Sunday. I was committed to the show but I didn’t want to do anything except stay at home and be private. It was a case of “the show must go on.” While I was there, I was grabbed to talk about John on the midday news on the radio. TV and radio shows kept up their demands for comment on John. Like a lot of people all over the world, I was in shock, and I have no idea what I said.

  Apart from the long wealth of memories, I dwelt on how our conversation on the telephone had been cut short. I wondered what John had wanted. Was he responding to my letter, to say he wanted to sign up to Polydor—or was it deeper than that? I had heard on the grapevine that John wanted to leave Yoko and come back home. He had even telephoned Mimi just three days before his death and his half sisters and cousins in Liverpool to say just that. “I’m homesick, I’m coming home,” he had said.

  It was hard to explain to myself how I felt that our conversation was cut short. It seemed to develop some mystical significance. Maybe John just wanted to say hello. The sad part is, I’ll never know—but “hello” would have been just fine.

  At some time in his tenure, probably when he first started working there, someone had said to Bloggs: “Now, a word to the wise. Be very careful who you let in,” and he’d taken it too much heart. It was either that, or he really was stupid. Case in point: Ringo, who actually was signed to Polydor, came to see me once. Downstairs in the lobby, Bloggs said to him, “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to see Tony Bramwell.”

  “Are you now? And who are you?”

  “Ringo Starr.”

  My phone went Ring-ring. Ring-ring. I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Someone to see you called . . . what was your name again?”

  “Ringo Starr.”

  “Says he’s Ringo Starr.”

  “Send him up.”

  As Ringo got in the lift, Bloggs shouted after him: “I thought it was you!” Ringo got out of the lift, still laughing. He said to me, “Where did you find him?” We both remembered at Apple when the girl on the front desk, who was surrounded daily by all kinds of nutters, buzzed Derek Taylor one morning and said, “Derek? There’s a Mr. Hitler in reception for you.”

  “Send him up!” Ringo and I both had chorused.

  Derek had even said to me, “Tony, I’m serious. Even if it had been Hitler I was so out of it, I would have given him a job. But just imagine the hissy fit with him being there the next time Keith Moon comes in dressed up as the Fuhrer. Oh! Clash! Clash!”

  Ringo’s eponymous record label was signe
d to Polydor and I was promoting Rotogravure, his first album for us. To give it its initial push, I organized a big international press conference and dinner in Paris and flew everyone in from all around the world. We stayed at the George V, scene of that euphoric night so many years ago when Brian and the Beatles had heard they had gone to number one in the U.S. So much water had flowed under the bridge since then. When Ringo walked into the hotel, I did a double-take. He had shaved his head! Ringo caught my expression and smiled. He rubbed his head, a little ruefully. “I wanted to see what I looked like bald,” he said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I look bald,” he said.

  Down the years, working from my home in Devon, I continued to promote records, often for Ringo, Paul or George. One of my biggest successes was launching Eva Cassidy’s career on an international level with Songbird. The tragedy was Eva wasn’t around anymore to receive the awards and plaudits. Her album went straight to the top of the charts in the U.K. as well as Europe, Japan and Australia. Eva had already recorded some albums before her untimely death from cancer at her Washington home, but they largely passed unnoticed. How it came about was I heard a track one day and I loved it. Her voice just captivated me but I wasn’t sure how I could be involved.

  I was thinking about it in the next day in the car while I was listening for the first time in ages to the new revamped Radio 2. It had been so awful the year before, I had stopped listening to it. Now it was completely new and improved and I sat up. I made a few calls, talked to some people to get some background and it transpired that a producer called Jim Moir had performed wonders. The old audience was flocking back in droves. It occurred to me very quickly that this new Radio 2 would be the perfect medium to promote Eva. She just sounded right for what the station was doing. I thought, well, although she’s not with us anymore, her magical voice could live on. She could be as big as a James Taylor or a Carole King. The quality of her voice with the songs she had liked to do was a perfect match.