by Hector Cook
In addition to the commercials however, “we started handling a few actors in series on television like Emergency Ward Ten,” Stigwood said. “From that, I first got involved in music – through John Leyton.”
Robert Stigwood’s first musical client was born in 1939 in Frinton-on-Sea. Leyton had Komlosy’s heart-throb good looks, but more importantly to Robert, he had the voice as well. Even Stephen Komlosy agreed that John could become what he himself could not. “He looked exactly right,” conceded Stephen. “He was an actor, and he could sing well enough. It was the formula we’d talked about.”
The John Leyton recordings were made by the legendary engineer and producer, Joe Meek. Leyton’s first record, ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ was released in August 1960 but it was his next release a year later which really brought him to prominence. By then Robert Stigwood Associates had quite a few mainly serious actors who worked in the legitimate theatre. John Leyton was still there too, and RSA had landed him the lead in a prime-time show called Harpers West One, a latter-day soap set in a London department store with a striking resemblance to Harrods. Stigwood’s influence would even extend onto the set itself.
“The first episode was about a pop singer opening the record department. I had lunch with the director, played him the song we had just recorded, which was ‘Johnny Remember Me’. He loved it, and it became the theme music. We rather changed the show around – built John a more lavish staircase to walk down and sing.” Leyton appeared on the show playing the role of Johnny St Cyr (pronounced “sincere”) and by the very next morning, record shops up and down the country were being deluged with requests for the record.
The song was written by Geoff Goddard, a young man from one of the instrumental groups Joe Meek had worked with, the Flee-rekkers, and whose publishing just happened to be handled by RSA, so RSA got a share of that too. The lyrics were toned down though, so that “the girl who died” became “the girl I lost”.
Stigwood finally had both feet firmly planted in the music business, but his agency remained the heart of the operation.
“We conceived the idea,” Komlosy boasted, “that in show business, you can monopolise all areas of income by controlling and managing the artist. If you start with the star, you can control when and where he appears, so if you promote him yourself, you get the promoter’s share. If you record him yourself, you become the record company. If you publish his music, you get the publisher’s cut. And we always had the B-side of records. In terms of mechanical royalties, they make just as much money as the A-sides. The idea was not to let anyone in from the outside.”
Leyton’s follow-up release, ‘Wild Wind’ was almost as successful, reaching the number two spot in November, but December’s offering, ‘Son This Is She’, another Goddard composition, peaked at number 15.
Another Stigwood discovery, Mike Berry, also tasted chart success, his ‘Tribute To Buddy Holly’ climbing to number 24 in November 1961. In January 1963, ‘Don’t You Think It’s Time’ would reach number six but ‘My Little Baby’, a number 34 three months later, would be his last chart visit until the Eighties.
Robert and Joe Meek had a falling out in the middle of 1962. The credit on John Leyton’s records changed from ‘Lonely Johnny’ in October 1962 to read “A Robert Stigwood Production for RGM Sound”. RGM Sound was Meek’s independent production company, named from his initials Robert George Meek, but the credit seems to have been purely contractual, as was perhaps their relationship, from this point forward. Robert was now an independent producer like Joe Meek, but he was neither an engineer like Meek nor a musician. He simply had an ear for what the public would like.
The next RSA artist to hit the charts was Michael Scheur, a German who was instrumental in providing phonetic transcriptions to enable British pop singers like Adam Faith and Johnny Leyton to sing in German. Renaming him Mike Sarne, Robert teamed him up with his secretary, 15-year-old Wendy Richards who, like Mike Berry, would go on to have an extremely successful career in Are You Being Served.
The money enabled Stigwood to move his operations to plush new offices in Edgware Road, from where he embarked on an aggressive expansion campaign. A talented girl singer with a distinctive voice, 16-year-old Carol Hedges, was his initial target, but first he had to steal her away from Meek.
Hedges had won a talent contest early in 1962 and had been referred to Joe Meek by Cliff Bennett whose Rebel Rousers had been the backing band for all the contestants. Meek worked with Carol on and off over the next 6 months, but Joe appeared more interested in testing her voice with different effects than actually recording her, a prime example being his apparent infatuation with “fiddling around with microphones in the bathroom,” as she described it.
Eventually Meek did get round to recording a couple of songs where Carol was backed by The Tornados but, by this time, she had already come to the attention of Robert Stigwood, a frequent visitor to Meek’s studio at 304 Holloway Road. Never one to pass up an opportunity, Robert offered to sign her up. The volatile Meek was less than impressed. “There were huge arguments going on in the back room,” Carol confirmed. “Although I hadn’t signed a contract with Joe, Stiggy poached me, if you want to put it that way.”
Perhaps it was this argument that was the cause of the cold war between Joe and Robert. Whatever, Stigwood’s determination prevailed and Carol became the newest addition to his growing roster. As the pair got to know each other better, Robert learned that two of her musical inspirations were Billie Holiday and Sammy Davis. Thus, his latest creation, Billie Davis was born. At this stage though, Billie was still lacking the polish that Stigwood felt was necessary to allow her to become the star that her potential deserved. He arranged for her to attend two elocution classes with a drama teacher each week and encouraged her to enrol in a fashion school in Leicester Square where, to her considerable embarrassment, she had to put on bright pink indelible lipstick. Robert did nothing to lessen her self-consciousness, teasing her with remarks like, “Have you been eating jam again?”
One day in the winter of 1962, Robert returned from America clutching a copy of the latest hit by The Exciters. In January 1963, Decca released her début single, ‘Tell Him’, which gained her a top 10 hit. Not bad, but actually quite remarkable when taking into account that it was promoted in direct competition to The Exciters’ original, which became a UK number one at the same time.
Either side of this, Mike Sarne had two more visits to the Top 30 and then Billie’s follow-up achieved the Top 40 in May. By August, when John Leyton’s latest release reached number 36, Robert Stigwood’s four discoveries had provided him with 17 Top 40 entries in just two years; an incredible tally for a novice to the recording industry.
In September 1963, the Glasgow Daily Record attempted to discover the secret of his amazing success. “The business calls them kids because mostly teenagers buy and dictate the record market,” he explained to reporter Donald Bruce. “But don’t kid yourself about the kids. They are the most discerning of all buyers. The kids are no fools. They buy a sound and, unless the sound is individual and live, you are wasting your time flogging it to anyone … Hits, anyway, are a lottery. No one really knows what the public wants. You can guess a trend, but at the end of the day the kids can make a mug of you. They know. You don’t. That’s what makes this business so exciting.”
One of the least known of the RSA recordings is of interest even though it was not released. In late 1963, US rocker Gene Vincent went to Joe Meek’s studio to record two versions of a song called ‘Temptation Baby’. One was for inclusion on an album, the other to be used in a movie, which went by the name of Live It Up in the UK and Sing And Swing in the States.
But Stigwood paid Vincent to record a third version which was taped at Olympic Studios on November 14 with backing provided by The Bill Shepherd Orchestra. Bill Shepherd had first come to prominence in 1959 on the soundtrack of a film titled Idle On Parade and also with his own orchestral album Shepherd And His Flock. In 1964 or early
1965, Shepherd left for Australia where he went to work for Festival Records and, of course, produced The Bee Gees.
In 1962, record production and RSA Publishing were just two aspects of Robert Stigwood’s rapidly expanding empire. He had been very active on other fronts too, as Stephen Komlosy confirms. “By then we really had the embryo Robert Stigwood Organisation – everything under one roof.”
* * *
Robert Stigwood Associates lasted till the end of 1964. The company was short of cash because they kept using the profits to finance the next step in its rapid growth. The commercials operation took a fatal loss when the film technicians’ union ACTT took job actions to stop the use of videotaped commercials. Meanwhile the recordings side was not doing well either because the company misjudged the popular interest in the beat groups that had followed The Beatles in a procession from Liverpool to London, a phenomenon noticed even thousands of miles away by three Gibb brothers.
Stephen Komlosy recalled that, “Suddenly, we weren’t successful any more. It took us a while to understand what had happened in the music business – that it had really changed. The single hip-swivelling artist was no longer what was wanted. It was all groups – and they really flooded in. Our cash flow from that area had gone because we were a year behind.”
Robert had fancied himself as a concert promoter and had invested heavily in that area. A Rolling Stones tour did well, a Chuck Berry one didn’t, but the unreliability of trouser-splitting P.J. Proby on an expensive one caused a loss on tour promotions as well.
The company had been used to dealing in hundreds of thousands of pounds. With the benefit of hindsight, the manner of its demise appears to have been completely avoidable. “When you think what our turnover and our profits had been,” Komlosy protested, “to go under for a measly £50,000 was unbelievable.”
The winding-up of a company’s affairs is a strange business. While the appointed liquidator would spend 10 years unravelling the mess, within days, Stigwood and Komlosy were back in business, working from the offices of Starlite Artists, owned by Tremeloes manager Peter Walsh, who wanted them to develop and promote his younger talent. This was a somewhat ironic set of circumstances when Stigwood’s later association with NEMS is considered. In January 1962, Brian Poole and The Tremeloes were one of two groups who had auditioned for Decca. They were chosen over The Beatles, much to the disappointment of their new manager, Brian Epstein.
The pair promptly discovered The Graham Bond Organisation – according to Robert, the first group to use a mellotron on record – and with them, bass player Jack Bruce and drummer Peter “Ginger” Baker.
It looked as if they were back on track until, one Friday morning, Robert failed to appear. The previous night he had collected £400 in commission from Graham Bond, which was needed by the Friday afternoon to pay staff wages. Stigwood eventually turned up at two in the afternoon and said he was terribly sorry, but that he had lost the money at The Twenty-One Room, a gambling establishment.
It was the final straw for Komlosy. “I left,” he said simply.
It would be easy for him to harbour a grudge against his former colleague and friend, but the opposite is nearer the truth. “He has an uncanny political judgement, this ability to judge very quickly how people will react in any given situation. It is a vital ability. He’s a genius, and he is immensely charming and funny and nice. And I like him, immensely.”
But Stephen’s obvious affection does not allow his judgement to be clouded into failing to recognise Robert’s modus operandi. “He is a Svengali. He dominates you. He dominates your mind. He imposes his will. He is like a father, and the children are all jealous of the father’s attention. That’s how RSO works – they all respect and admire him.”
* * *
Another who respected and admired Robert Stigwood, for all his recent failings, was David Shaw, one of London’s brightest moneymen.
When RSA folded, Shaw saw an opportunity and Stigwood became a frequent topic of discussion between Shaw and his friend Andrew Gordon. Between them, they decided that Robert might be worth backing, and wrote him cheques for £25,000. Stigwood took offices in Walden Court just off Oxford Street and The Robert Stigwood Organisation was up and running (again?). The remainder of 1965 was discouraging but Shaw still had faith in Stigwood’s ability to turn things around and, early in 1966, David put in another £15,000.
Slowly, things began to happen. Learning from his previous mistake, Robert launched his own record label, Reaction Records, with distribution by the German company Polydor, which may have been backing him as early as this date. Reaction’s emphasis was firmly on groups with The Who as one of its first acts. Co-managed by his friend Kit Lambert, The Who were signed to a production deal with the US producer Shel Talmy, but the deal was heavily weighted in Talmy’s favour. Lambert – and The Who – wanted out but Talmy refused to budge, so in early 1966 Lambert simply breached the contract and took The Who’s next single, ‘Substitute’, to Stigwood who released it on Reaction. For The Who, the move was financially catastrophic, triggering a lawsuit from Talmy, who in return for bowing out obtained a 5 per cent royalty on the group’s recordings for the next five years. Although North American rights reverted to Decca after the one single on Atco, in Britain The Who were now on Reaction Records. For Stigwood, his label was up and running.
An attempt to do something similar with The Small Faces met with an entirely different kind of “reaction”. The group’s fearsome manager Don Arden was not the kind of man who took kindly to poaching, nor was he interested in courtroom battles. By his own account Arden assembled a team of “persuaders” to accompany him to Stigwood’s office. “We arranged that first thing we would do … was ask the girl to move away from the switchboard because nobody must be able to make phone calls. We formed this triangle. I was at the point of the triangle, and I said, ‘Each step I take, you follow. I’ll do the talking and I’m gonna say if it ever happens again, we’re gonna throw him through the window.’ And you must say, ‘Fuck him, let’s give it to him now!’ ”
But even Arden had underestimated his henchmen’s enthusiasm for their work. “They decided amongst themselves for laughs to go one further, and let me think that they were gonna throw him over, and I must admit at one time I thought, ‘Fucking hell, these guys have gone nutty or something!’ ” Poor Stigwood must genuinely have heard his maker’s voice calling him whilst being dangled out of his office window.
Eventually, the police were called, but by this time Robert had been convinced to see Arden’s point of view. As Arden himself has since confirmed, Stigwood informed the police, “Mr Arden did come here, but he was a perfect gentleman.”
Robert’s next move was his most propitious thus far. In response to the trend for more musically sophisticated groups, he created Cream, the world’s first supergroup. The combined talents of Jack Bruce, by then with Manfred Mann, Ginger Baker, and former Yardbirds lead guitarist Eric Clapton, who had just quit John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, would prove immensely successful, even if their personalities were at loggerheads.
Stigwood also had Crispian St Peters, Oscar, and Screaming Lord Sutch on his books too. Sutch had also been a Meek act before succumbing to Robert’s charms.
In the later part of 1966, Robert became involved in a remarkable business deal with Brian Epstein, who as The Beatles’ manager was unquestionably the most successful impresario of the beat boom. Epstein’s company NEMS Enterprises – named after the Epstein family’s North End Music Stores in Liverpool – also looked after the affairs of many other acts, and he had branched out into promotion and even theatre management with the Saville in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue. Thanks to the success of The Beatles, Epstein had the world at his fingertips … but he didn’t want it. The Beatles were giving up touring after August 1966, greatly diminishing his role with them, and while he took a personal interest in two other artists, Cilla Black and Gerry Marsden, he was far less interested in running a company. The sheer scal
e of his business had outgrown him and he dreamt of an early retirement, browsing around picture galleries and passing his time with bullfighters in Spain.
Brian, Robert, and David Shaw arranged to go off to Paris for what Shaw openly described as “a dirty weekend”. The pair put it to Brian that RSO could provide NEMS with representation in Europe, but Brian surprised them with a much bigger offer – he wanted out! Clearly concerned for his friend’s well-being, Stigwood said, “He was responding to pressures the wrong way. He was taking uppers to keep himself going, to sustain himself through all the travel and pressures, and he was taking sleeping pills to counterbalance that at night. It had become a vicious circle.”
On their return from Paris, Shaw and his high-powered finance friends in the City put NEMS under the microscope. It didn’t make for pleasant examination, what with the plethora of unresolved lawsuits stemming from Epstein’s naïve mishandling of Beatles merchandising, including the American Seltaeb suit, by then in its third year.
No bank would fund the purchase of NEMS so a compromise deal was negotiated. Conversely, NEMS would buy RSO but Stigwood and Shaw would be given a legal option to buy 51 per cent of NEMS a year later if they could help to clean the company up. Epstein willingly agreed and on September 30, 1966, papers were signed, though kept a secret for a time.
It is doubtful whether two music industry entrepreneurs had ever been handed a greater incentive. Work your butts off for 12 months and then own the company that managed The Beatles. All seemed well again, but there was one little problem on the horizon. “The trouble was,” Robert confided, “that [Brian] hadn’t told The Beatles. He said that he wanted to do that at the right time.”
