Tag: Newcastle

Stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song : 1980 : Kate Bush, EMI Records & Metro Radio

 “I’m SO sorry,” I grovelled to the petite musician on whose foot I had just accidentally trodden. We were stood side-by-side in the record library – my ‘office’ – of local commercial station ‘Metro Radio’ in Newcastle. Kate Bush was kindly autographing several copies of the new album she was visiting to promote, which were about to be awarded as competition prizes to listeners. She had just been interviewed live on-air by one of the station’s daytime presenters and was soon to be whisked away by car to visit yet another local station somewhere across the country.

I had been basking in a brief moment of hit-picking glory, feted by Bush’s record company ‘EMI Records’ for having simultaneously added two singles by singer Sheena Easton (‘Modern Girl’ and ‘9 to 5’) to the station’s ‘current hits’ playlist, the shortest list of any UK station following my radical overhaul of its music policy, guaranteeing substantial airplay for the label’s newest rising star. Relationships with record companies were always a rollercoaster ride. Months later, after I had refused to add Queen’s ‘Flash’ single to the playlist, on the grounds that it sounded more an advertising jingle than a proper song, EMI declined to offer further artist interviews and stopped supplying the station with its new releases altogether (requiring me to drive to the nearest record shop with a weekly shopping list). Bribery, blackmail and boycotts were widespread music industry practices.

After having first heard Bush’s debut single ‘Wuthering Heights’ on John Peel’s evening ‘BBC Radio One’ show two years previously, I had loved her 1978 debut album ‘The Kick Inside’ for its clever arrangements of smart songs with unexpectedly frank subject matter. I had considered the same year’s follow-up ‘Lionheart’ rather insubstantial comparatively and over-theatrical. After a two-year wait, the next album ‘Never For Ever’ was a return to form with a more diverse song list and extensive use of brand-new Fairlight sampler technology invented in 1979. Bush had visited ‘Metro Radio’ to promote this album’s release in September, after three singles extracted from it (‘Breathing’, ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Army Dreamers’) had already reached 16, 5 and 16 respectively in the UK charts.

After a further two-year wait, fourth album ‘The Dreaming’ was a revelation with songs referencing even more startling subject matter, produced in a dense soundscape that was the aural equivalent of Brion Gysin’s and William S Burroughs’ ‘cut-up’ techniques, interlacing samples, sound effects and dialogue from the Fairlight (think 1973’s analogue ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ on digital steroids). I have always been intrigued by its track ‘Suspended in Gaffa’ as an incredibly outspoken criticism of EMI Records on an album released by … EMI.

This was by no means the first occasion that musicians had criticised their record company within their recordings. During the 1970’s, I recall several reggae artists obliquely criticising Jamaican producer Joe Gibbs for his sharp ‘business practices’ (eventually Gibbs’ business was bankrupted after prosecution in the US for stealing songwriter royalties). Closer to home, reggae DJ ‘Prince Far I’ criticised British company ‘Charisma Records’ explicitly in his track ‘Charisma’ (credited to collective ‘Singers & Players’) after his 1981 deal to release three albums (‘Showcase In A Suitcase’, ‘Sign Of The Star’ and ‘Livity’) on its ‘PRE’ label had been soured by negligible sales. Part of its lyrics were:

“I see no idea in your place, Charisma. […] Wipe them out, Jah!”

Prince Far I also made a recording to criticise Britain’s ‘Virgin Records’ which had released three of his albums (‘Message From The King’, ‘Long Life’ and ‘Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Part 2’ in 1978-1979 on its ‘Frontline’ label), but which had then rejected a further finished album he had delivered. In a track inevitably entitled ‘Virgin’, he rapped:

“You call yourself [Richard, Virgin co-founder] Branson but I know that Branson is a pickle with no place on my plate. You call yourself [Simon, co-founder] Draper but I know draper is known to cover human bodies. You see ‘Frontline’, I see barbed wire. Opportunity to make big money. Irie, Jumbo [Vanreren, Frontline A&R manager]. I won’t forget you take the master tape and hang it up on your shelf. Music has no place in a gallery.”

This ‘lost’ album was finally released in 1998 [Pressure Sounds PSLP18], long after Prince Far I (and his wife) had been tragically murdered in Jamaica in a 1983 house break-in. In 1992, Virgin Records was acquired for a reported £560m by EMI Records which, returning to our story, had signed sixteen-year-old Kate Bush in 1975 to a four-year contract after hearing her three-song demo tape, paying a £3,000 advance. In 1976, Bush created her own company, Novercia Limited (Latin for ‘she who is new’), that she and her family alone controlled in order to manage her career and maintain the copyrights in her recordings and songs.

From the initial contract’s expiry in July 1979, Bush could finally renegotiate a replacement EMI contract which would allow Novercia to retain the copyright (instead of EMI) and henceforth lease her recordings to EMI for release. At that time, it was unusual for such a young artist to insist upon taking control of their career from their record company, particularly when it was as globally huge as EMI. Bush no longer wanted to be contractually required to do promotional tours, such as her visit to Metro Radio, and she was insisting upon complete artistic control. I imagine that these negotiations between opposing lawyers sat around expansive tables in bare conference rooms on an upper floor of EMI headquarters in Manchester Square (immortalised on The Beatles’ 1963 debut album cover photo) must have been tense and lengthy, particularly for twenty-one-year-old Bush.

Not only would these contractual back-and-forth’s have delayed the release of new recordings, but the inordinate time they must have consumed would have eaten into Bush’s ability to compose and record. During this period, Bush’s musical creativity would frustratingly have been put on hold by the ‘red tape’ of legal negotiations, alluded to in the song’s title (‘gaffa’ being a reference to ‘gaffer tape’, the all-important ‘WD40’-like fix-all of musicians in studios and on tour). At the same time, EMI was demanding to hear proof of Bush’s new material to ensure it was sufficiently commercially marketable to guarantee another ‘hit’ single. Her song ‘Suspended in Gaffa’ starts:

“They’ve told us that, unless we can prove that we’re doing it, we can’t have it all. EMI want it all.”

Except that the ‘E’ from ‘EMI’ must have been removed from the mix, either upon EMI lawyers’ insistence or upon the recommendation of Bush’s legal team. Only once you re-imagine that ‘E’ does the song make perfect sense in terms of record label/artist contractual disputes. The role of Bush’s lawyer in the negotiations is referred to:

“He’s gonna wrangle a way to get out of it [the initial EMI contract that had included renewal options].”

The impact of the tedious negotiations upon Bush’s creativity and the impatient EMI’s demands to hear her new songs are referenced in the chorus:

“Suddenly my feet are feet of mud. It all goes slo-mo [slow motion]. I don’t know why I’m crying. Am I suspended in gaffa [caught up in ‘red tape’]? Not ‘til I’m ready for you [EMI] can you have it all [my new recordings].”

EMI (then) managing director Bob Mercer later confirmed that Bush had burst into tears during their business meetings. The record company’s patronising response to her demands is referred to in the lines:

“… that girl in the mirror. Between you and me, she don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere at all. Not anywhere. No, not a thing. She can’t have it all.”

If Bush had not successfully agreed a new contract with EMI, it might have been threatening that she would be jeopardising her future success. I had witnessed the blackmail tactics of EMI in my job at Metro Radio. The significance of concluding these negotiations successfully was imperative for Bush, and she noted the impact it would have on her finally taking total control of her destiny:

“Mother, where are the angels? I’m scared of the changes.” (Bush’s mother appears briefly in the video, comforting her.)

The key to understanding the song’s theme is to recognise that the most telltale line “EMI want it all” was sung eleven times. Record companies almost inevitably want to have their cake and eat it simultaneously, regardless of the fallout for their own artists. Why else would EMI have refused to send its new record releases to Metro Radio if it was not prepared to cut off its nose to spite its face?

If all this speculation sounds farfetched, you have to ask why EMI was happy to license ‘Suspended in Gaffa’ to its partners for release as a single in European countries, but did not similarly release the song as a single in the UK? Would its London executives want to hear a track played on the radio every day that they knew obliquely criticised their own business strategies? As a result, this excellent song languished as a little played album track in Bush’s homeland. Perhaps that was the company men’s notion of ‘revenge’.

At the time of its release in 1982, I was barely watching television so had missed the video for this song, written and directed by Bush herself. Viewing it more than forty years later, I hoped to find hidden references to ‘EMI’ in the visuals. It looks as if Bush (“wearing a designer straightjacket,” interjected my wife) has been kidnapped and locked in a boarded-up wooden shed alongside huge chains and large wheels of (the music?) industry. Outside a huge (legal?) storm is blowing, from which she cannot escape, despite kicking up dust but running nowhere. Is that what it felt like to be under contract to EMI?  Bush was always far too subtle to provide explicit messaging that would explain her songs. Perhaps I am missing something she communicates via her animated hand movements? In one brief section of the video, wrists apparently bound in gaffer tape, Bush tumbles head-over-heals through the vacuum of galactic space, maybe a visualisation of her feelings in the midst of lengthy legal wranglings. Prior to that, the video portrays her ‘head in the clouds’, perhaps how she had sensed her initial teenage success with EMI.

As I discovered from my own job at Metro Radio, EMI want it all. Perhaps that is why I felt I understood Bush’s message within ‘Suspended in Gaffa’ from my first listen. It remains a truly remarkable song.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/04/stoking-star-maker-machinery-behind.html ]

Around the British Rail network in eight hundred minutes : 1976 : Durham University challenge

 “Which bus goes to the University, please?” I asked. The man replied helpfully, but I could not understand a word he had said. He spoke English, though not an English I had heard before. I was confused by all the bus stops, having just exited Lancaster railway station. At which one did I need to wait? There was no bus map. There were no obvious students to ask. I had never been north of Luton until then. I had never watched ‘Coronation Street’. I was a southerner who barely understood a word that was being said to me there, hundreds of miles from home.

I had left the house that morning at the crack of dawn to make a day trip to check out Lancaster University. It was one of five universities I had selected on my UCCA form, all of which had offered me a place, conditional upon A-level results, without requesting an interview. However, if I was going to spend three years far away from home, I wanted to go see each one to help me choose. I had never visited a university before. Aside from my teachers, I had never met anyone who had attended university. That year, I hoped to be one of the 6% of school leavers who would go on to university, a proportion that had multiplied from 2% the year I had been born.

My state school had provided no useful advice how to choose a university or course. Our designated ‘careers counsellor’ was actually a moonlighting English teacher who would merely direct us to a row of dogeared university prospectuses on his office shelf. Some were out-of-date, many were missing. We were offered no ‘careers’ seminars. Surrey County Council had compelled each sixth-former to complete a multiple-choice questionnaire and then informed us for which career we were supposedly suited. Further studies were never suggested. You were on your own when it came to an academic future.

I understood that my choice of university could be a life-changing decision, one that required me to review the maximum amount of available information. If neither my family nor my school could provide useful advice, I would research all the options myself. I wrote a letter to every UK university outside London (where I realised accommodation was unaffordable), requesting their current prospectus and details of their economics courses. I chose that subject simply because it had provided my best academic results at school. I had known for a decade that I desired a career in ‘radio’, though university courses in media or broadcasting did not exist. If I had known then that Britain’s first ‘media studies’ degree had been launched at the Polytechnic of Central London (later renamed the University of Westminster) in 1975, I might have rethought my plans.

Seven years earlier, at my council estate junior school, I had been one of three children out of my class of thirty (10%) to have passed the ’11-Plus’ examination, necessary to progress to ‘grammar school’. However, at that time, around 20% of UK pupils attended these ‘selective’ secondary schools, the difference attributable to the substantial numbers of privately educated children who were crammed intensively at fee-paying ‘preparatory schools’ to pass the exam and who then dominated grammar schools’ intakes. From my ‘year’ of sixty students at Strode’s School, only around ten of us progressed to university, an indication that the ’11-Plus’ was less a successful method of identifying Britain’s brightest children, and more a route for middle-class parents to secure their offsprings an elitist secondary education paid for by the state. Has this situation since improved? In 2008, the Sutton Trust reported that grammar schools were enrolling “…half as many academically able children from disadvantaged backgrounds as they could do”.

I was fortunate that Surrey County Council would pay my train fares for visits to five universities, whether an interview was required or not. I had to determine when each institution offered ‘open days’, book my place, arrange train tickets and inform the school of my impending absence. It required considerable organisation, particularly as these visits necessitated train connections in London. These were days when I would not return home until almost midnight and would have to go to school the following day. I had never travelled so many miles on public transport or seen so much of England from a train window.

I must have been the only student at my school to own a copy at home of almost every UK university’s current prospectus. My request for economics course information proved less successful. Many sent me nothing, the remainder provided a single sheet outlining a course that merely encompassed all aspects of the subject. I read absolutely everything I was sent and concluded that every university claimed to be absolutely perfect and their courses the best. I had merely filled my bedroom bookshelf with marketing propaganda. Instead, I decided to select four universities that already operated student radio stations as this was my long-term career objective … plus Durham.

Although Durham University had no radio station, I learned it was apparently thought of highly. If I were rejected by Cambridge, I considered it might be a reputational substitute. Due to the 300-mile distance, my trip to Durham required an overnight stay in Collingwood College which was offered free to those attending ‘open days’. After a long train journey followed by an uphill walk, I was given an undergraduate bedroom within the college and met several other visitors who were there for the same reason. We took the university’s guided tours together the next day and ate as a group in the college’s dining room, offering us a first taste of undergraduate life.

The following morning, we packed our bags and met together for the thirty-minute walk to Durham railway station on the opposite side of town to catch our trains back to ‘the south’. However, we found the platforms deserted and, eventually locating a member of staff, we were told that a strike had started that morning and there were no trains departing in any direction. Returning to the college with our tails between our legs, we explained our problem and it kindly offered to extend its hospitality until we could depart. Each of us changed our banknotes into piles of ten-pence coins and queued at the college’s one public phone in the basement to contact our parents and schools to explain that we did not yet know when we could return. A quick visit had unexpectedly transformed into something longer.

I took the opportunity to wander around Durham’s compact town centre and explore more places, particularly the ‘Musicore’ record shop. The university library and the cathedral were both impressive, as was the brutalist concrete student union building ‘Dunelm House’ and adjoining ‘Kingsgate Bridge’ constructed by architect Ove Arup in 1963. The other universities I had visited were campus-based, requiring a bus journey to the nearest town. I quite liked Durham’s integration into the city and the ability to walk from one end to the other without need of transport.

The next morning, before breakfast in the college dining room, I phoned Durham railway station, to be informed that no trains would be running for the second consecutive day. This was the only method to obtain information in those days. I met the others and we phoned our families with our disappointing update. We spent most of that day sat together in the Junior Common Room chatting, sharing our university visit experiences and our hopes for the future. For me, it was particularly interesting to meet young people for the first time who shared my situation.

I made another call to the railway station the next morning, anticipating more bad news, but was told a single train was expected that day. It would be heading north, the opposite direction to what we required. I asked if there was any alternative route to London and it was explained that, although the east coast route was still on strike, we could try travelling via the west coast on the opposite side of the country. When was this one train expected? In an hour, I was told. Action stations!

I located my fellow visitors and, without taking breakfast, we all signed out of college and rushed off to the station. There was no information available there about the time of the train, on which platform it would arrive or where it would be heading. While we waited, we examined a British Rail route map in the ticket office which showed a cross-country route from east to west coast that started in Newcastle, the next major stop north of Durham. We were the only people awaiting a train and did wonder whether we had been sent on a wild goose chase, only to have to return to the college for yet another night.

Then the day’s promised one train appeared and pulled into the station. Unsurprisingly, it was almost empty. Who would have known it would be running in the midst of a crippling strike? We boarded and waved farewell to Durham, not knowing if any of us would ever return. Within a quarter-hour, we alighted in Newcastle. It was the first of many times that day that we were required to explain to confused railway staff that, although our tickets to London were dated days earlier, the unanticipated strike had forced us to take the only train available … in the opposite direction.

Next, to cross England to the west coast, we discovered we had to take a less regular, slower train that would depart in an hour. The wait gave us an opportunity to walk out of Newcastle railway station, buy some breakfast and wander around the city. Compared to Durham, it appeared a huge, busy scruffy city centre with huge Victorian stores and old-fashioned shopping arcades. Even the clothes people wore seemed dated and dowdy, particularly seeing many men wearing flat caps. It was an industrial city where time seemed to have stood still fifty years earlier.

Our ninety-minute journey in a local train from Newcastle to Carlisle took us across the bleak terrain of the North Pennine hills, stopping only at tiny towns with strange, unfamiliar names like Prudhoe, Corbridge, Hexham and Haltwhistle. Once again, we were required to explain to the train’s on-board ticket inspector why we were travelling in the wrong direction with out-of-date tickets. He knew about the strike and laughed heartily at our story, wishing us well on our journey home. It began to feel like a kind of ‘expedition’ where, at every step, it proved necessary to explain why our little group of seventeen-year-olds were taking a route no sane person would choose to follow.

The train terminated at Carlisle, a two-thousand-year-old city on the border between England and Scotland, fifty-five miles west and north of Durham. It was midday by now and, from there, we could now take a west coast ‘Intercity’ train southbound. We did not venture outside the station as this would have entailed having to explain our tickets once more and we feared not being allowed entry back into the station. This region was unaffected by the strike and trains seemed thankfully to be running as scheduled.

Our four-hour journey to London was comfortable until a ticket inspector arrived. We explained our story but he seemed unaware of the rail strike on the east coast and disbelieved our narrative. Initially, he demanded we pay for new tickets. We refused because we each held a valid, paid-for British Rail ticket that we had been prevented from using by the strike. The argument continued and he demanded we write down our names and addresses in order that the police could be contacted so that we would be fined for travelling without valid tickets. He was a ridiculous ‘jobsworthy’ who showed no sympathy for our plight. His attitude ruined the longest, most gruelling part of that day’s journey.

Reaching London’s Euston station, our small group split up to head different directions home. It was a sad parting of ways as we had no idea if we would ever see each other again or even which university each of us might attend (no social media or mobile phones then!). The last few days had required us to bond in the face of adversity, forcing us to make a round-Britain trip we had never imagined. It would be quite a story to tell our classmates.

I crossed London by Tube, caught a train from Waterloo station to Camberley and then a bus, reaching home more than twelve hours after having left Collingwood College in Durham. My school might not have been happy about my extended absence but, later that year, those awaydays would play a major role in my decision to study in Durham. I felt as if I was already sufficiently familiar with the college and the town as a result of that elongated visit. I imagined that my fellow Durham students would be similar to those with whom I had travelled the length and breadth of England.

Did I receive correspondence from British Rail or the police as a result of the unfriendly ticket inspector we had encountered? Thankfully, no. Did I ever see my newfound friends again? Sadly, no.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/03/around-british-rail-network-in-eight.html ]

One little indie music show : 1980-1981 : Saturday night 10 to midnight, Metro Radio

“You will present a weekly two-hour rock music show on Saturday night,” my manager informed me.

No if’s or but’s. No offer over which to mull. No demo tape to produce. No question asked about previous experience. Without warning, I was appointed as presenter on one of Britain’s largest commercial radio stations. I had just started a full-time backroom job at ‘Metro Radio’ but had never asked to present a show. This was my first paying job in radio and suddenly I was also to be put on-air. The start of my radio career seemed to be heading in a positive direction.

Some aspiring DJs spend their whole life trying to secure a presenting job on radio, often without success. I felt slightly guilty that this opportunity had fallen into my lap without effort. My employer did not even realise that I had started presenting for various London pirate stations seven years earlier, as such lawbreaking activities were not productive additions to a CV then. A decade into the future, employed as programme director of London’s ‘KISS FM’, one young hopeful desiring a DJ job would sit in the station’s reception area day after day, awaiting his opportunity to buttonhole me on my way to lunch at the ‘greasy spoon’ on Highbury Corner. Little did he know that we already had the largest DJ roster of any British radio station, or that management had just cut payments per show by half, or that several loyal presenters had been made redundant within months of launch. Oblivious, he was not so much ‘networking’ as ‘stalking’.

Management at Metro Radio seemed not to care one jot what was broadcast evenings and overnight because commercial stations then believed their advertisers were only interested in daytime shows and that their most significant audience was housewives. My small additional payment for the rock show was eaten into by the cost of driving twenty miles to the studio on Saturday night and then back again in the early hours of Sunday. Nevertheless, the station would jump at any chance to cut its minor expenses, such as the occasion excellent overnight presenter Tony Crosby was replaced in 1981 by a new DJ who offered to do the same show for free. Never mind the quality, feel the penny-pinching! (Tony went on to train as a solicitor.)

No direction was offered me as to what to do in my show. Whereas daytime presenters were required to wait outside programme controller Mic Johnson’s office for individual appointments to hear his critique whenever a JICRAR ratings book was published, management expressed zero interest in what I was doing on-air. There were already two other rock shows on the station. My line manager Malcolm Herdman played two hours of heavy metal and hard rock. Full-time producer John Coulson used his two hours to play an esoteric mix of mainstream rock and read passages from ‘beat generation’/‘new journalism’ authors. I decided to fill the evident gap for the ‘indie’ music that had emerged after several years of punk.

Music trade weekly ‘Record Business’ had published its first weekly ‘indie’ chart in January 1980, following a suggestion by Iain McNay, founder of London’s ‘Cherry Red Records’. I decided to use one hour of my show to run down this chart, playing the new entries and highest climbing singles. As far as I know, mine was the first ever British radio ‘indie’ chart show and was soon mentioned in the ‘indie’ columns of the music trade press. Most ‘indie’ releases were not supplied to commercial radio stations because there was zero possibility of them being playlisted, necessitating me to establish contact with the main ‘indie’ distributor, ‘Rough Trade’ in London, to receive copies. Each week, I would phone its very helpful director and head of promotions Scott Piering to request records that he would then mail to me (later that decade I worked in Scott’s office).

In the other hour of my show, I would play a selection of newly released album tracks, both indie and mainstream. Working full-time in the station’s record library, I had access to all major label releases that arrived either by post or from weekly visits by record company promotion staff. I would place interesting new albums in a holdall I carried back and forward to the show although, with only time to play around fifteen tracks within an hour, my hoard of unplayed recent releases grew heavier by the week. My running order ranged from ‘Steely Dan’ to ‘Joy Division’ to ‘Crass’, none of which were exposed elsewhere within the station’s output.

Although the Tyneside local band scene then was dominated by heavy metal bands and record labels such as ‘Neat’ and ‘Guardian’, there were a few ‘indie’ bands that were recording good quality demo’s or releasing their records independently. I received a nice letter from Paddy McAloon asking me to play his group ‘Prefab Sprout’s first self-published single. I had already been the lone person not walking straight past the stage when the band had performed at the Durham Miners’ Gala, so I was happy to oblige. There were some excellent local bands, including ‘Dire Straits’ and ‘The Police’ who were quickly signed by major labels, but also many that went largely unnoticed until ‘Kitchenware Records’ launch in Newcastle in 1982. I tried to play any local band recordings I found or received.

Because my two hours on-air were so precious, I talked minimally between records and rarely featured interviews. I recall receiving a telegram at home from the station one day asking me to phone it urgently. Our house had no phone so I had to walk to the one phone box in Sherburn Village and call in. Was I interested in recording an interview for my show with ‘Duran Duran’ who were promoting their first single release ‘Planet Earth’? I turned down this opportunity because the group was not local, were not ‘indie’ (having already signed to ‘EMI’) and their music was audibly more ‘pop’ than ‘rock’. However, I did interview local artists such as Pauline Murray from Ferryhill whose first solo album (after the punk group ‘Penetration’) sounded remarkably innovative and remains one of my favourite recordings.

I spent quite a lot of time each week compiling a local ‘gig guide’ from adverts in local newspapers (pre-internet newsprint) and flyers. I would update it each week, type it out myself, pin it on the radio station’s noticeboard and mail copies to all the local record shops. In my show, I would read out the following week’s concerts though I never heard any other presenter refer to my list because, beyond Malcolm and myself, the station seemed to be disconnected from the local music scene. On occasional visits to ‘Volume Records’, the only ‘indie’ record shop in Newcastle, I would secretly feel proud to see the latest A4 sheet of gigs I had mailed out pinned to its noticeboard. Like my show’s content, the reason for undertaking this research-intensive work was because nobody else seemed to be exposing this information at the time. There was no ‘what’s on’ publication for the region.

Although I had competently operated radio studio equipment myself since my days at school recording pirate radio shows, management at Metro Radio insisted I sat in a soundproofed studio in front of the microphone while a ‘technical operator’ facing me from an adjoining control room played the records, advertisements and mixed the audio. I was unfamiliar with this arrangement, which the station’s managers had brought with them from overstaffed BBC local radio stations at which they had worked previously. I was extremely lucky to have had John Oley assigned as my ‘T.O.’, one of the most professional and enthusiastic people I have had the pleasure to work with in radio. His contribution to my show was enormous and freed me to talk my rubbish on-air and answer the phone line when I occasionally held competitions.

Metro Radio showed no interest in promoting my show so it seemed a miracle when I started receiving letters from listeners who had discovered it. In the days before internet or community stations, each region of Britain was served by only one local BBC station and one commercial music station. Although my show was tucked away in the weekend schedule, it still felt groundbreaking to play music little heard outside of John Peel’s weeknight show on national ‘BBC Radio One’. There were quite a few records lasting only two or three minutes that each required several hours’ work transferring them to quarter-inch tape in order to edit out swear words with a razor blade and white editing tape on a metal block. If only those bands knew how much extra effort was necessary just for them to receive one radio play!

Living in a rural village, there were Saturday nights during winter snows when I was unable to drive to the station. Snowploughs would habitually clear the roads eastward from Durham City as far as the junction with the A1(M) motorway but, frustratingly, not the further one mile beyond to my home. I would have to trudge out in icy temperatures to the public phone box and call either Malcolm Herdman or John Coulson at home, asking if they could reach the studio to fill in for me on those days. Because they lived in Newcastle city, I think they found it hard to believe that I was literally ‘snowed in’. Unfortunately, my salary was insufficient to contemplate a relocation nearer my workplace, meaning I missed out on concerts and the city nightlife which I would have loved to explore.

All good things come to an end. Quickly in my case. Metro Radio made me redundant from my full-time job. I continued to present my Saturday night show for a while through 1981 but the expense of maintaining a car to drive to Newcastle was proving greater than my payments from the station, which had to be subtracted from my Unemployment Benefit. I was applying for any relevant vacancy in the radio and music industries but getting nowhere. In the end, I had to follow Tebbit’s advice and get on my bike (well, in my car to be accurate), leaving the region where I had lived the last five years in order to take a totally different job 218 miles down south. It was disappointing because I had acquired so much knowledge of indie music, the regional music scene and had built an audience for my unique radio show.

The start of my radio career now seemed to be heading in a negative direction. I was unable to secure work in the broadcast industry for a further four years and, only then, by taking a contract in Israel on a pirate radio ship that paid little more than expenses. However, I have always treasured the memories of my time working alongside John Oley and Tony Crosby late on Saturday nights when the only other person in the darkened Metro Radio building on a bleak industrial estate was the security guard downstairs. This was when innovative radio programmes were made … even though Metro Radio probably never realised it.

Postscript: Forty years later, I received a polite email from a member of a former local band enquiring if I still had their demo tape I had been sent and played on my Metro Radio show. Sadly, no.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/11/one-little-indie-music-show-1980-1981.html]

Watch out! Watch out! There’s a Houdini about : 1980 : Metro Radio record library

[presenter Stephen Ayres in Metro Radio record library, 1980]

 Do you believe in destiny? Not the Bardot-like Angels squadron leader Destiny who battled evil-ised Captain Black and the mysterious Mysterons. No, destiny as in fate. The notion that our futures are determined long before we realise it ourselves.

My earliest job, having just learned to write, was to take it upon myself to sort my parents’ two-dozen albums and two-score singles into some kind of order and to biro sequential numbers on their covers and labels. Nobody had told me to. Then I instructed my parents to always put their vinyl records back in the correct sleeves and return them to the shelf in the correct order.

Almost two decades later, my first full-time job required me to instruct my colleagues to always put the vinyl records back in the correct sleeves and return them to the shelves in the correct order. Destiny? Or was it fate? My office desk was located in the first-floor record library of local commercial station ‘Metro Radio’ in Newcastle. It was not strictly MY desk. It belonged to my line manager, Malcolm Herdman, who had just been seconded to record a jingle package in the station’s ground-floor studio. I had been appointed to perform Malcolm’s tasks as head of music, albeit as his deputy, and to create a new daytime playlist system that could reverse the station’s ratings decline.

Two other staff worked in the same room: at one end, young librarian Liz Elliott who was enthusiastic, helpful, chatty and a music fan; and, at the other, middle-aged Ann who was not. They faced each other with my desk positioned midway like a tennis referee. Liz catalogued newly arrived records, returned items to their shelves and maintained the card catalogue index. Ann was busy doing, er … mostly chatting with the station’s presenters or on the office phone to her friends. Colleagues alleged that she enjoyed a close personal relationship with the station’s managing director, Neil Robinson, who just happened to be paying her husband to write a computerised library programme … that never made an appearance while I was working there. I attempted small-talk with Ann but her preferred communication was to glare at me in silence.

Just inside the record library was a grey metal, two-door, six-foot tall stationery cupboard. It held spare copies of currently playlisted singles and valuable albums autographed by visiting pop and rock musicians that awaited mail-out to listeners as competition prizes. Soon after starting work, I found that records I had locked in this cupboard seemed to disappear overnight. The first occasion, I thought I must have been mistaken. However, on the second occasion, I was convinced that items I had secured had somehow been stolen. To replace them, I had to drive to the nearest record shop and buy multiple copies of our playlisted singles. The problem started to reoccur regularly. I was somewhat baffled.

When I told my colleagues about the suspected thefts, they described an event that had happened before I joined the station. The lone key to this stationery cupboard had disappeared (I cannot recall how), then was allegedly found several days later by helpful daytime DJ Giles Squire on the carpet immediately in front of the cupboard. This surprised my colleagues who had hunted high and low throughout the library for the key over several days, without success. How could it have suddenly appeared days later exactly where it had been lost? It was as if the key had been temporarily hidden by some kind of ‘Star Trek’ cloaking device. I was told that, after the key reappeared, things had started to go missing from inside the cupboard.

Theft from the library was a wider problem. Some library shelves of catalogued albums had visible gaps where items had not been returned. Behind Liz’s desk was a pigeonhole A-to-Z system where newly released seven-inch vinyl singles were filed by artist name. The station received multiple copies of around sixty newly released singles each week, most of which were stored there openly. So how come the pigeonholes rarely became overcrowded? It seemed that hundreds of new records were disappearing. I had the embarrassing task of having to phone record companies and ask for further copies of records that had already been delivered to us by post or by visiting reps. There were only so many occasions you could blame the Post Office.

The library had to be left open at night and over weekends because presenters were required to select records to play within their programmes. A security person was present twenty-four hours a day inside the station’s front door but their responsibility was apparently only to stop unwanted persons entering the building, not to frisk those leaving. Thus, theoretically it would have been easy for a presenter to exit to their truck in the car park carrying boxes of the radio station’s vinyl records that could then be exchanged for animal feed to use on their farm in Northumberland.

I embarked upon a ‘good cop’ strategy, sticking post-it notes on the most valuable items inside the cupboard with a handwritten message: ‘Dear Thief. Please leave this record which is essential to the running of the station and is needed for […]. Thank you, Grant.’ It made no difference. These items would still disappear overnight and the post-it notes would be left behind without any kind of riposte from the thief. Back to the drawing board.

I went to my manager, programme controller Mic Johnson, and informed him what had been happening. I always wondered if he was stuck with Velcro to his office chair as he was so rarely seen on the station’s ‘shop floor’. If he wanted to meet someone, rather than simply approaching them for a chat, his secretary would place a typed ‘docket’ in their pigeonhole. Sometimes I would see several presenters waiting in the corridor outside his office door, as if he were headmaster of Xavier’s School for Gifted Wafflers, where DJ’s whose latest ratings were sub-par should expect a good spanking to improve their superpowers. Did Mic wish to do anything about the thefts? No.

I switched to a ‘bad cop’ strategy. I visited a hardware shop and bought a thick metal chain that I wrapped tightly around the door handles of the stationery cardboard and secured with a large padlock. I was the only person with the key. For a few weeks, nothing disappeared from the cupboard. I no longer wrote post-it notes for the thief. Some staff laughed at my chain which admittedly looked hideous but, for a while, it worked until … records started disappearing once again. I was angry and frustrated. How could that happen? There were no signs that the chain had been cut or that the padlock had been replaced. Could the thief have tracked down the padlock I had purchased and found one that used exactly the same key? Had the culprit recently attended a GCSE evening class in lockpicking at a local den of thieves?

It was hard to accept that I had failed. However, the atmosphere within the station had recently turned icy as the result of a strike for increased pay by staff who were union members. Management had bigger fish to fry than my problem of vinyl records being pilfered by some Houdini. Presenters began to keep discs they wanted to use (or had used) inside the security of their personal lockers. Producer John Coulson stashed records he wanted to play on his weekend rock show behind the snack machine in the station canteen. If I needed Van Morrison’s latest album, he showed me, this is where I could find it.

Six months into my job, Malcolm Herdman was excited to play me the station identification jingles he had just finished producing. I went downstairs to the station’s recording studio for the first time and listened. Oh dear! Whereas ‘jingles’ are meant to be of only a few seconds’ duration to be used between records and adverts, Malcolm’s efforts were short ‘songs’ that lasted a minute, sometimes longer. How do I tell my boss, particularly when he has been so generous to me, that his last six months’ work was wasted? I tried to offer constructive criticism but had to point out that, if these longform jingles were played regularly, then fewer playlisted songs would be heard each hour … the very content for which listeners tuned in to the station.

This jingle project had been the outcome of an agreement with the Musicians’ Union, made seven years earlier upon the launch of commercial radio in Britain, requiring each local station to spend 3% annually of its net advertising revenues on Union members’ performances. For most stations, this translated into them paying local music acts to either perform at events or record songs for airplay. However, Metro Radio decided to blow the whole of that year’s budget on recording identification jingles by local band Lindisfarne who were already signed to a major label and since 1972 had achieved four Top Forty singles, including two in the Top Five. Hardly a struggling local band! The outcome was that, as long as Metro Radio paid its 3% to Union members, it mattered not a jot whether the results were ever broadcast.

If I had been asked earlier, I could have offered some advice. As a teenager, I had recorded jingles on my two-track tape machine initially for one London pirate radio station, only to be asked by other stations to produce similar work. Had the ill-fated Metro Radio jingles been some kind of reverse destiny where, sat only one floor away from this impending disaster, I might have rescued the project if only I had known?

Destiny quickly transformed into fate when I was called into managing director Neil Robinson’s office. It was the first occasion we had met because he and his fellow managers kept their distance from the rest of the staff and took lunches from the station canteen to their separate dining room. He told me I was being made redundant. So long and no thanks for all the fish.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/06/watch-out-watch-out-theres-houdini.html]