by Paul Charles
Peter O’Browne was so confident in the success of the show that he agreed to split the door takings equally with Aiken. An astonishing 1,368 people turned up, each paying seven shillings and six pence and Gentleman Jim rounded-up the Blues by Five’s share of the door receipts to £500, with brave talk of their returning for two nights over the Christmas period.
The group arrived in London on a high but the high disappeared as quickly as a bank manager’s smile when they saw the size of the stage of their first gig in London: the Dublin Castle in Parkway, Camden Town. Kennedy was amused that O’Browne’s first venture in London nearly thirty years before should have been so close to the hub of his current empire. ‘Dublin Castle my foot, more like Dublin Cassy,’ Peter laughed on the tape reporting the Blues by Five’s drummer’s first impression of their debut London venue.
About midway through the month of gigs, Peter started to bring record company A&R people down to see ‘my boys’; thanks to Eppy (Brian Epstein) all managers were then referring to their charges in this manner.
Decca Records passed (but then they passed on the Beatles), EMI (who signed the Beatles) passed, RCA passed (walked out of the Greyhound, Fulham Palace Road after only three songs) but Pye Records (who had The Kinks) liked the group and offered them a deal.
Peter’s ‘boys’ received an advance of £5,000 against a three per cent royalty on ninety per cent of the wholesale price of each record.
What that meant in reality was that they received two point seven per cent of the price their records were sold to (not from) the shops. The record company legal speak was just a way of making it appear that they were getting more than they were. The reality being that it really didn’t matter anyway, as very few groups ever received anything over their advance.
Martyn, as the group’s main songwriter, was encouraged – obliged, really – to sign a publishing deal with an associate company, BPE Music. This way the Company was looking after the Company all down the line. This part of the deal would later return to haunt Peter, as all of Martyn’s early songs were locked into a terrible fifty-five/forty-five per cent deal, with there being no doubt as to who was receiving the smaller share.
For now all was well and the group tore into the advance like advertisers into the break in Coronation Street, buying new equipment and paying a deposit on a large flat where all five members of the band and Touche would stay. Peter continued lodging with his uncle, preferring to avoid the late night cannabis aroma when possible.
The Blues by Five made their first record which was greeted with a multitude of indifference and sold 3,873 copies, 890 of them in Ireland. They slogged around for the next four years, releasing three more albums and selling a total of 16,587 copies across the four titles. Peter O’Browne laboured around with them building up a healthy reputation and an incredible network of contacts. They weren’t a bad band really, neither were they great and Martyn Farrelly’s priority was music and songwriting and not show business.
Kennedy picked his way through O’Browne’s career up to the time of ann rea’s article, which was the main point of the article. Following Blues by Five, Peter had, with a partner named Paddy George, opened a record shop, Camden Records. The shop became very successful, and from it Peter had formed his own record label.
The interesting thing, was the fact that Peter O’Browne, whereabouts currently unknown, had sold fifty-one per cent of his independent record company, Camden Town Records, to Grabaphone, one of the major companies, for a staggering six million pounds.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
You had been saying that
Smoking was my only vice
- ABBA (Andersson and Ulvaeus)
‘Six million bleeding quid,’ Kennedy announced with great restraint the following morning in his office. Peter O’Browne certainly had made the most of a relatively short life, thought Kennedy. Like all great entrepreneurs he had stumbled on an opportunity, grabbed it and milked it.
Although nippy, the sun was shining and the ice blue sky was peppered with small fluffy clouds – the kind of day Kennedy preferred to be outside. He had given the DS and WPC Coles copies of ann rea’s article and cassette. In theory everyone was up to speed.
‘We’ve also learned from Mary Jones that there is a chance that Peter O’Browne was being blackmailed.’ This raised a couple of Scottish eyebrows whose owner had still been treating this case as a missing persons job and had been wondering why the boss was spending so much time on it.
‘The blackmail apparently has to do with something known as hyping,’ Kennedy continued, right hand twitching. ‘Mary explained it to me yesterday. Here are copies of the two letters she passed on to us.’ Kennedy was now conscious that he was someone on an ‘and here’s one we prepared earlier’ demonstration. ‘I’m still not sure about all of this. Perhaps our Mr. O’Browne is shacked up with one of his pop stars somewhere, but with the fire and these notes and his assistant’s concern we’d best see what we can dig up.’ He gave them a couple of minutes to read and re-read the two notes.
‘The shorthand in the letter – we think – means: On the sixteenth of October nineteen ninety-three, a single “O Vulgar Abbeys,” serial number NW14, by a group called The Babtirs, dropped in the singles charts from thirty-eight to forty-three. The following week, the twenty-third of October, the same single rose from forty-three to twenty-nine.
‘Obviously the implication is that this was strange, and in the final line the author is claiming that he knows how it happened.’
‘What’s the big deal about a single rising and falling in the charts? Surely that’s not a reason for blackmail?’ a genuinely surprised Anne Coles inquired.
‘Well, apparently the Top Forty is the yardstick by which the whole music business works. But if you have a hit single – that is, an entry in the Top Forty – it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make any money from the release itself,’ Kennedy offered, repeating Mary’s information.
‘Why release a single at all if you’ll not make any money out of it,’ muttered DS Irvine.
‘Well, each single will be on an album, and album sales do make large sums of money for the record companies. But the record companies seem to have lost the knack of promoting albums. Now they rely on the hit single, sometimes several from the one album, to sell the album. Apparently when you enter the Top Forty all the main record shop chains will automatically stock your record: shops like Boots, WHSmith, Our Price, HMV and Virgin.
‘If these major stores don’t stock your single until it gets in the Top Forty, then how on earth does your single get into the charts in the first place?’ asked WPC Coles.
‘I asked the same question and basically you have to do it through all the independent stores. It’s also worth noting that all the major record companies like WEA, EMI, GMG–’
‘And the FBI, CIA, CID,’ Irvine wisecracked.
‘Not at this time, but with the drug connections it’s something they may wish to look at taking up in the future.’ Kennedy gave him a stern look for interrupting.
‘As I was saying, the major record companies can usually force the record shop chains to take their priority releases, usually big acts and new important acts from week one. Once you get your single in the Top Forty, as well as getting stocked in the chains, you are also racked in all the stores’ Top Forty boxes, mentioned in the weekly Top Forty radio shows and in a position to take advantage of all the weekly radio/TV/press promotional activities.
‘If and when you enter the Top Thirty, you become eligible for inclusion on Top of The Pops, the tired TV show for kids run by grandads.
‘The Babtirs were off to a good start with “O Vulgar Abbeys”. I have been advised that the single entered the charts on the second of October at number fifty-four. Then, as you have seen, it moved up to thirty-eight on the ninth and dropped to forty-three on the sixteenth,’ Kennedy said consulting his notebook.
‘The significance of this is that in the British chart, unlike the German
and American equivalents, once a single drops that’s it. It’s history. Maybe one in a thousand will move back up again, but that is very, very rare. It usually just happens in the Top Twenty around Christmas time.
‘Camden Town Records were faced with the prospect of losing a very important first single from an important album by an important group, and, as was explained to me, at a very important time for the company. The only solution was to hype the single back up the charts.
‘Chart hyping goes back a long long way. I believe it is even alleged that Brian Epstein’s family-owned shops, NEMs, had more than a few thousand spare copies of ‘his boys’ first single, “Love Me Do”. Certainly the practice was very common in the seventies, when some groups had what were called “granny squads” who went around the chart return shops buying up particular records.
‘Chart return shops are supposedly a cross-section of shops up and down the country used by the chart compilers as a sample to calculate what is selling and what is not. It’s all done by computer now, which is supposed to make it impossible to buy your way into the charts, but there are people you can go to who have teams of people in the field, willing to spend the week criss-crossing the country, buying up singles in the important chart return shops.
‘The number of singles you would need to sell to take you, for instance, from forty-three in the charts to two hundred and ninety might be as few as five thousand copies. So, including paying the “marketing teams”, as the hypers are euphemistically known, the whole exercise might only cost eight to twelve and a half thousand pounds: peanuts when you consider the money you can turn over with a hit album. ’
Kennedy again consulted his notes before continuing. ‘It’s not difficult to work out. An album which sells three hundred thousand copies grosses over three million pounds. An album which sells three hundred thousand is called a platinum album. If you can sell three hundred thousand copies you can, with a little effort, and even less money, sell six hundred thousand, and if you can sell six hundred thousand you can sell nine hundred thousand, triple platinum. The gross on nine hundred thousand is just over ten million quid. So you can see that twelve and a half thousand pounds is a small price to pay.’
‘So you think that the week, “O Vulgar Abbeys” rose from forty-three to twenty-nine in the charts, Camden Town Records would have had these teams out buying the single?’ the WPC asked.
‘Yes. Mind you, the teams have to be clever because the computer will throw up irregular sales and if the chart compilers smell anything untoward, they check and recheck and report all suspicious releases to the industry watchdog, the BPI. The BPI will penalise a single if they are convinced something funny is going on. They can either remove the offending record from the chart altogether or freeze it for a week.’
‘What will happen to the record company?’ asked Irvine, his notion of the Top Twenty Popular Music Chart spoilt forever.
‘Well, what we have to realise is that the BPI’s members are exclusively record company seniors.’
‘So they are hardly going to give themselves a hard time,’ supplied DS Irvine.
‘Quite. ann rea said it reminded her of another high-powered organisation, not a million miles from home, who do the same thing. The BPI might impose a token fine if a hype has had some publicity, but generally it’s just, “Now, we mustn’t do this again, must we, chaps?” and that will be the end of it.
‘They’ll issue a statement saying that the irregularity was caused by a “well-orchestrated fan club” or that they’ve found “a slight discrepancy in the sales pattern”, but nothing that could be linked to the record company.
‘I believe that our Fraud Squad people have looked at it a few times, but nothing has ever come of it. It just makes it all so much harder for real music and for the smaller record companies to compete, companies who can’t afford to spend the extra twelve and a half thousand pounds on a single.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Eventually they came for me
And there was no one left to speak
- Christy Moore
Kennedy took the break as an excuse for a cup of tea. The WPC and DS Irvine eager to enjoy that treat, helped with cups, saucers, sugar, milk and spoons.
‘You know the other important thing here was the timing of the whole affair. All this hyping was going down with the Grabaphone negotiations as a backdrop. Perhaps Peter O’Browne might normally have told the blackmailer to eff-off. He could have argued, successfully, that all he was doing was following standard record company practice. But at that point, he could not afford an investigation. Without a major to protect Camden Town Records, the BPI might have made an example of them. The adverse publicity could have cost him dearly, if not the entire deal.’
‘That surprises me. From what you have said, I would have thought Peter’s aggressive action would have endeared him to the majors,’ WPC Coles offered as she took Kennedy’s empty cup and started to refill it.
Irvine and Coles took the interruption of a phone call from ann rea to leave Kennedy and go about their other business.
‘This is funny, you know. Here we are, not even sure yet that a crime has actually been committed, but I’m already thinking up a list of suspects. You know, who would have most to gain from the disappearance, temporary or otherwise, of Peter O’Browne.’ Kennedy was responding to ann rea’s, ‘Any news on Peter?’
‘Okay, who is on your list for the crime that, as yet, doesn’t exist?’ she inquired.
‘Let’s see now,’ Kennedy began putting pen to paper. ‘One, Martyn Farrelly. They were close in the early days.’ Kennedy jotted the name down at the top of his list. ‘Two,’ he continued, ‘Tom Best. I see from your article he was involved in both the shop and the record company. Three, Paddy George, O’Browne’s partner in the record shop. Four, Jason Carter-Cash.’
‘Actually his name is Jason Carter-Houston,’ ann rea corrected.
‘Yes, sorry, Jason Carter-Houston. What was the name of the group he managed?’ Kennedy checked his notebook. ‘Yes, Radio Cars. I supposed he could feel aggrieved at the way Peter handled his group. It would seem that they disappeared into obscurity after their initial success with Camden Town Records.
‘Five, the blackmailer, if none of the above. Whoever he or she may be, we can’t rule them out until we know more about them. Six, the chart hypers. Another set of mystery people we need to check out. Well,’ Kennedy surmised, ‘for a case that is not yet really a case, we have a healthy list of suspects. That’s before we look at the aspect of Peter’s life that, statistically speaking, is most likely to end in foul play.’
‘His private life?’ ann rea prodded.
‘Specifically, his love life. Either a jealous lover or a lover’s jealous husband. Are there any jealous husbands, any shunned “exes” who wish they weren’t “ex”?’
Kennedy let his question hang for a few moments to see if ann rea could offer any information. He knew she hated gossip, but if there were any rumours out there, she might well be aware of them.
‘Oh I see,’ ann rea began smiling down the phone. ‘You’re asking me if I know of any skeletons, huh?’
‘Well, it would help,’ Kennedy pleaded, not sure how much he was pushing his luck.
‘I know this may surprise you, but I don’t know a lot about his love life. Okay, so a short time after our first interview he did ring me to invite me out to dinner and I felt that there was more than dinner involved, so I declined. Now, I don’t know if you’re relieved or disappointed,’ ann rea teased.
‘Oh, it was probably just a dinner kinda thing,’ answered a relieved Kennedy, now trying to be cool about it.
‘Kennedy, you’re such an innocent. You’ll never know the lengths that men – well, most men – will go to just to get intimate with a woman. They’ll say anything, they’ll promise anything. The sad thing is, most of them don’t even realise themselves how much of a line they are giving. But you should see how quickly some of them change their tune
once, once–’
‘Once the tune has been played,’ Kennedy added, offering an easy way out.
‘Yeah.’ ann rea, outwardly smiling, inwardly fighting back a pain, distracted herself by asking another question. ‘So are you disappointed? You know, disappointed that I didn’t date him, thereby closing down one avenue of information for you? Or, are you relieved that I didn’t, shall we say, for more personal reasons?’
‘Well, maybe we could discuss that later. Perhaps in the dark?’ laughed Kennedy, happy they were sailing out of troubled waters. ‘In the meantime,’ he continued, returning to the matter in hand, ‘how do we go about finding out more information on the people behind the chart hyping? I’m assuming Mary Jones can put us in touch with everyone else on the list if necessary?’ Kennedy asked, rising from his chair and walking around his office, extending the cable on his handset to its limit. He wished ann rea were there in the room with him, so that he could touch her, even briefly, but gently, on her cheek.
‘Let me make a few calls when I get you off my line and I’ll see what I can dig up for you. If I’m finished with my police work for now, I’m off. See you later?’
‘Brilliant, yes. But let’s do something, let’s go somewhere,’ Kennedy suggested. He was happy to dine out or dine in and just hang out with her, but he desperately wanted ann rea not to be bored and he was always searching for things for them to do together.
‘Kennedy,’ was all ann rea would allow herself to say; but in her mind she kissed him and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘Bye.’
