Perceptric Forum

The Golden Stave Hall Of Fame Awards

Chris Gilbey — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:59:19 +1000

Last night I went to the inaugural Golden Stave Hall of Fame Dinner.

I was honoured with being the first person to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.This was recognition for having had the idea of the event and putting together a committee to establish the first music industry charity in Australia.

Here is a bit of history.

The first Golden Stave Luncheon was thirty years ago. In the time since then that the lunch has morphed into a quite substantial charity that has raised somewhere in the region of $11 Million, and has spawned a number of other charities.

Here is how it happened.

I was in the UK, managing The Saints. Neil Warnock was the Chairman of The Agency. He invited me to attend a UK charity event called the Silver Clef luncheon. It was an amazing event with a lot of very high profile people from the music industry, including a lot of the pop stars of the day, who spent huge amounts of money on trivia, along with the not so wealthy also spending up big. The money went to the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Charity.

Shortly afterward the lunch in the UK The Saints and I parted our ways. I had decided that the band was intent on self destruction and I didn’t want to be run over in the rush. There were other acts that I had been offered, but I felt lucky in Australia. I had also been offered the job of running The Beatles publishing company, ATV Northern Songs, in Australia, and I jumped at it.

When I got back to Australia I had in the back of my mind this niggling feeling that everyone in the music business, me included, lived a charmed existence. We had very generous expense accounts, if relatively modest salaries, and we all loved what we did – basically trying to scout talent and deliver hit records. It was a great life. But there were plenty of people who were less fortunate than us.

One of my close friends was in advertising and was on the board of a charity – Paraquad. I talked to him – Kent Atkinson – and asked him what he thought about the idea of setting up a music industry lunch for charity. He thought it was a great idea.

I then talked to a few of the music business executives that I knew. Back then the people in the record companies were virtually at war with the people in the music publishing business. The only executive who would even discuss the concept of a charity lunch at that time was Ross Barlow, who was the managing director of Polygram Records. Ross thought that the idea was great and agreed to be on a committee. So did the late Jack Argent, who was MD of Leeds Music. Peter Hebbes was head of Festival Music, and I figured that he really reported to Alan Hely, the head of the Festival Records, so he would be able to get support from the record company which would be good. It turned out that Peter was familiar with the Silver Clef lunch too. Kent Atkinson agreed to be an observer on the committee too.

I asked Kent Atkinson if he could talk to the people at Paraquad and see if they would like to be the recipients of the funds that we raised. He told me that he was conflicted out as he was already on their board and that I would have to talk to the Paraquad board myself. That I did.

I went to their board meeting and asked whether they would like to have the benefit of a fund raising lunch.

The Paraquad Board was chaired by Ashley Coopes. He asked me what we expected in return for the effort. I didn’t realize at the time that most fund raising work that is done involves a commission of between 20 and 50% for the fund raisers!

I told him that we didn’t want anything. We just wanted to have a willing recipient whose name we could put on the program. He was dumbfounded but told me he would be happy for Paraquad to take the money.

There were other people involved in that first event who were part of the network too. Belle Deverich was the wife of Burt Deverich. Belle agreed to help the committee too. Burt ran the gift shop at the Sebel Town House where the first lunch was held, and Belle had gone to school with my ex-mother in law. Burt and Belle were well connected with money in the Eastern Suburbs and I asked Burt and Belle to help me find gifts and prizes for the auction and raffle, which they did. Not many people know about their role. Burt died a few years ago, but he was a great guy and was a big supporter of the whole event. So was Belle.

One of Kent’s colleagues, Ian MacPherson was an art director. He did the logo for the event for no pay. It is a logo that has incredibly been around for thirty years! Must be good.

There were a lot of unsung heroes. They were some that are not generally remembered when people talk about the beginnings.

Over the years other people joined the committee and helped really put muscle into the event – people like Brian Harris, Grahame Fear, Michael Chugg and a whole lot of others.

But that first event was about something else other than just raising money for charity. It was also about motivating people from opposing sides of an industry to actually sit in the same room together.

Back then the executives from the record industry and the executives from the publishing industry in Australia couldn’t stand a bar of each other. Remarkably these people who were all at the trough eating at the best restaurants and drinking the finest wine funded by the consumers great appetite for music, would not talk to each other.

So my real stealth idea was actually to get the industry to talk to itself. My rationale was that if people could stand to sit in the same room to raise money for charity, they should also be prepared to sit in the same room and sort out the real challenges to the industry that kept all of us living high off the hog.

It worked.

But after last night I was reflecting on the whole thing and wondering whether it has legs any more….

I was deeply touched to hear Michael Chugg say some truly generous things about me (so thanks, Chuggie!). So did a few other people. (Thanks Barry Chapman and Ross Barlow). And I had a remarkably friendly conversation with Brian Harris, who for years was my nemesis at EMI, and that was great too.

I got talking to Brian’s date who I was sitting next to. She asked me some questions about the lunch and the music business that I had no idea about – I have been away from the business for ten years after all. But I started to think about why I am happy to not be in the music business any more.

When I started in the business at Alberts in 1973, I wanted to get a number one record. I got a bunch starting with Stevie Wright and continuing with William Shakespear and John Paul Young and of course there was AC/DC. When I left Alberts to manage The Saints, it was to get hit records. And when I ran ATV Northern Songs it was to get hits. And when I went into the venture with MCA it was to get hits. It was never about the money.

But somewhere along the line it changed.

It stopped being about the hits and started being about money, money, money. By the way I should mention here that I remain a capitalist. But I believe firmly that you have to have a stronger vision for what you do than just making a buck.

The people who I see in the business now working for corporations that run the music industry are all in it to be bankers, just counting the shekels. Its no wonder that the music business has gone down the drain.

The good people who are rebels to the core aren’t in the corporate industry. They are outside and run their own businesses – small labels, management companies, touring companies, sound production companies…

At the heart of the record companies and publishing companies, the places where the music industry should have passion, there are now just a bunch of MBA’s who maybe failed to get jobs at MacQuarrie Bank, and who are counting beans and trying to figure out how to make money from the ultimate disruptor of businesses, the Internet. Unfortunately they don’t appear to have an ounce of passion between them even though they are pretty smart people – particularly when it comes to massaging a spread sheet. And that is why I am happy to be out of the music business.

I continue to love music and I love the people who create it but I see the problems of the music business being similar to the whole question of integrity that I used to explore with the artists that I signed over the years.

I used to ask all the acts that I signed – from InXS to The Church, to the Saints, to Noiseworks, to Tommy Emmanuel, to Peter Blakely, to WaWaNee, Keith urban and a lot more… one question – “do you want to create art or make money”. Most of them told me that they wanted to do both. I asked them what they would do if they only had one option.

Most of them looked uncomfortable and asked me, “Why?”.

I told them, “Either is fine. But this is really about establishing your integrity. If you want to make money first, you are a hooker first and you had better get used to it. You have to understand that you will have to do whatever the John wants when you turn a trick. You will be a slave to the market. And that is totally acceptable as long as you admit it to yourself. If you want to be an artist first you should remain steadfast in your principles and not be unhappy if you don’t make a lot of money.”

Over the years the ones that wanted to be true to their art have, ironically, survived and thrived better than any of the others.

Look at The Church and The Saints – two of the most perennial and iconic of Australian music acts. Artists to the core. It is acts like that who deserve to be around for years to come. And AC/DC too by the way…

It would be hard to imagine acts like The Saints and The Church getting signed these days. The only ones that get signed by the record companies and their stooges in the publishing industry are the whores to the market. Some great talent, without any doubt, but by and large they are all hookers performing the same task that the investment bankers performed that caused the meltdown of the capitalist system over the last couple of weeks.

So is it any wonder that the music industry is in meltdown too?

Seeking the best in music is really what turned me on when I was in the music business. That is why people like Ahmet Ertegun and Leeds Levy and Sam Trust and Peter Phillips and Simon Napier Bell and Ted Albert to name a few that I knew and worked with over the years were so great…

Got to have genuine passion to make a business fun.

The people who were involved in the Stave at the beginning had that passion! Larry Warren is the new General Manager of The Golden Stave. I hope he does well with the lunch and is able to help the music industry rediscover passion for their industry.

Nelson Mandela

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:59:06 +1000

Saw the last couple of hours of the Nelson Mandela birthday concert last night. Wow. And if you missed it, here is the absolutely fantastic Amy Winehouse!

Golden Stave Lunch

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:01:14 +1000

The Golden Stave lunch was tremendous this year. They raised a huge amount of money for a variety of charities that focus very specifically on children and young people - as usual. There were the predictable auctions, raffles, and Chuggie berating the crowd as is his wont. And there was some super entertainment.

One piece of entertainment that was very special was to see Jack Thompson, the actor, playing harmonica. Here is is with John Lyons (I think that is his name) playing fiddle.

Music 2.0

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:58:51 +1000

A tip of the hat to Steven Noble for sending me the link to a video by Gerd Leonhard about Music 2.0.

Gerd has a really interesting take on how the music industry needs to focus on what the consumer wants to buy and how and where she wants to engage, rather than the music industry focusing on how they want to sell their products to the consumer...

The problem that remains of course is that the ecosystem in the music business is much more complex than people generally realize. And the key area which is not easily understood is the role of the songwriter. The songwriter assigns his or her rights to a publisher and often the publisher assigns some limited set of rights to a collecting society. Somewhere in there one of these organizations license the record producer to enable the production and replication of the master recording. Its at this point that it becomes seriously difficult, and nowadays more than ever.

The reason for this is that when the music business was young and pre-digital, there was a significant cost associated with manufacturing, warehousing, printing, distributing product. With the advent of digital that cost goes virtually to zero. But the regulatory structure that is in place means that publishers (and through them, songwriters) are still being paid as if the record company had all that overhead.

The result is that the margins going to the record companies have increased massively. The publishers - I imagine - want a bigger slice of the cake....

The reality of course is that they should all move their focus onto how to make a transaction easier for the consumer. And that is the focus of the video and book by Gerd. Definitely worth looking at.

Free Documentaries

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:41:07 +1000

Here is an interesting and great resource for when there is nothing to watch on cable!

FreeDocumentaries.Org has an enormous library of material that is riveting viewing!

They say that they honour all copyright laws, although I think that they may be pushing the whole idea of "its better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" line.

Here is the trailer for one movie that they have in the library...

Naive New Beaters

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:48:33 +1100

Those guys at Home Page Daily get on to some great video material!

Check out this new band. One of the best videos I have seen in a long while!

NAIVE NEW BEATERS "LIVE GOOD"
Uploaded by djtoncar

American Democracy Explained!

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:02:08 +1100

Voting and YOU!
Uploaded by declareyourself

Shooting War

Chris Gilbey — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:51:53 +1100

I discovered a fantastic new online comic called Shooting War. Click here for the online version of the comic.

Here is the trailer for the book:

Fogerty On Fantasy

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:55:28 +1100

After I heard the song (earlier post) I thought I would try to find out about the album...

Interesting to see that John Fogerty has re-signed with Fantasy Records.

I represented Fogerty's publishing in the late 80's during the period of Eye of the Zombie. And I also ironically knew a bit about his past, when he had been signed to Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Records... Met Saul along the way through Steve Shurtz who used to run the recording facility.

And of course, everyone in the business knew that John Fogerty and Saul Zaentz had a long lasting legal action and were bitterly opposed to each other.

Then a couple of years ago Zaentz sold Fantasy to Concorde as part of his estate planning. So presumably Fantasy under its new ownership has worked out a deal with Fogerty that gives him what he wanted all along and gives Concorde a new album that is going to set the back catalogue on fire.

And by the way.... in this world of continuing complaint by the people in the record business about how bad things are because of downloads, isn't it great to see so many John Fogerty tracks on YouTube so that people like you and I can listen to them and make up our own minds about what to buy. I am going out today to buy the Revival CD. Has to be the best thing that I have heard in the last year. Oh and by the way there is a track on it called Long Shot that has to be the closest thing to AC/DC that I have heard since Angus stopped wearing short pants.

What is the value of content?

Chris Gilbey — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:23:27 +1100

This is the question that the LA Times posed in a story about the writers strike.

First the music industry was disintermediated by the internet, and now the movie and TV industries are waking up, courtesy of the writers, to the fact that the only game in town is Google.... and perhaps Microsoft.... or Apple.

These are the companies that make money out of free content, where of course 'free' is a proxy for ad supported.

I was in the music business for 30 years give or take a year. And I left the business partly because there was no sense of magic anymore. Back when I first was signed to CBS Records in the UK in 1967 and then when I came to Australia and joined the business side of the deal there was a fine sense of madness about what we did. The people who had the zany ideas for the promotion, for the song, for the record, for the gig... these people came to the fore.

Then as adult supervision took hold, the business was dominated by marketing metrics. And out of marketing metrics you get a monoculture of profit now at any cost.

I remember saying here in the early 90's when the record companies were resisting the government's efforts to have them drop prices, that the internet would do for the record business what the ACC failed to do. The fact that the record industry thought that they could hold back the tide was an act of supreme arrogance. The same thing is happening to the other parts of the content industry in Hollywood now. It is a sad indictment on the intelligence of man that some people think that they can control price points in a world that wants content to be free, and now is able to make it so.

That is the legacy of digitization.

Google is in control. Essentially by saying, "we don't want to be in control of anything... except the ad insertion".