LEAVING ISLAND RECORDS IN 1966, AND RETURNING IN 1968

PART 4: DEPARTURE AND RETURN

Lack of money meant little time was spent clubbing in those early days, although I’d occasionally go to the Cue Club in Paddington (run by Count Suckle) and on a few occasions the Scotch of St James (which was hideously expensive). I was willingly dragged to the latter by Aaron Williams of the Merseybeats whom I had befriended, and I’d nurse a beer for hours in his company, and the likes of Viv Prince, the Pretty Things drummer and a few others. Those days hashish was the currency of the ‘hip,’ and that was really the pull of going to those clubs, to get a little high. However on most weekends in late 1965, I went back to Winchester to play with the little blues band three friends and I had formed. Called The Blues Convention, we played at pubs, parties and high schools around Hampshire. Not very many gigs in all, and fortunately, no recordings were made, but we had a lot of fun.

Life at Island went on at its usual frenetic pace until one day in May, when a serious looking DB called Tim and I into his office. He sat us down and said he had some bad news, and that Island was in a bad situation financially, and that he was going to have to let us go. I had seen David in all manner of emotional phases, but I had never before seen him with tears in his eyes. I think I felt worse for him than I did for myself.

So that was it then.

Tim and I worked out the week, or two weeks, whatever it was, and left. I was 19 and the world lay before me in all its enticing glory. Within a few days, I had a gig with Transatlantic Records as a sales rep, and Tim joined Saga Records, the budget label run by Marcel Rodd, the company that eventually bought out Trojan in the seventies.

Transatlantic was owned and run by Nat Joseph, a gent who was atrociously tight with a buck. I was offered a weekly wage of 14 pounds, plus 1 pound in luncheon vouchers, or 15 pounds. (I took the luncheon voucher deal). Plus, I had to use my car, a 1958 Hillman. My mandate was to open a new sales territory in north London, establishing a weekly sales route. My knowledge of London had not improved much over the last few months, and I spent the first week or so getting hopelessly lost.  I recall walking into one shop and introducing myself, saying I would be there every Wednesday, ‘Really?’, said the guy behind the counter, ‘ Two days ago you said every Monday”.  Hmmm, I thought to myself, this place does seem kind of familiar.

So the Transatlantic thing was a disaster. Their product, which was 90% folk, was emphatically un-commercial, and no one wanted it. Plus, using my car with no mileage allowance (!), meant that some weeks it cost me more to keep the damned thing mechanically sound than I earned in salary, as it had an overheating problem. I used my luncheon vouchers in one go each week, splurging them all on one great meal. At least, that was my plan. The first week I stopped at an Indian joint, and ordered something off the menu. I had no idea what it was, but knew I loved Indian food, and that I was sure to dig it. It was the hottest thing I had ever eaten, EVER, with a peculiar, greasy aftertaste that became magnified as the afternoon wore on. Undeterred, I repeated the episode the following week, this time choosing a different item from the menu. Different item, same effect. 

After six weeks Nat and I had had enough, and I split. Now all I recall of Transatlantic is a hot car, hot food and cold product.

By then it was July, the summer was exerting its pull on me, and I cut out for West Somerset, where I had spent three previous summers in glorious Exmoor, and had many great friends, including a gorgeous girl called Wendy. After a variety of jobs I ended up working at Butlin’s Minehead Holiday Camp, a peculiarly English enterprise which proved to be a microcosm of manic capitalism. While there, I followed Islands' progress with interest, and happily noted their top twenty successes with Roy C’s ‘Shotgun Wedding’ (WI 273) and Robert Parker’s ‘Barefootin’ (WI 286).  I stayed in touch with Island, and DB came to my wedding to Wendy in early 1967. Some months later, I called DB to see if there was any chance of a job back at Island. He laughed, and said I was twenty minutes too late, as Tim Clark had just called and had been given the one job available.

By the summer of 1968 I was 21 years old, was Chief Cashier at Butlins and handled huge amounts of cash every day, In the summer months I had a staff of around twenty cashiers. I was on call 24 hours day – if the alarm went off in the middle of the night, the cops would come to my place, and take me to the camp to reset it.

By the middle of that summer I was heartily sick of the entire business, and handed in my notice, determined to seek my fortune elsewhere. Taking a couple of friends with me, I set off in my ex-army Austin Champ – the British army’s answer to the jeep – and spent a few days exploring the south coast, and then ended up in London. Island had, by then, moved out of the Kilburn space, and moved into Music House in Neasden Lane in Willesden. We pulled the Champ into the parking lot in front of the building, and I wandered inside. I hadn’t seen DB since the wedding, so there was a lot to catch up on. There was also a lot of ribbing to be endured as well, as I had spent the past week in an open air vehicle during the days and a sleeping bag during the night. Unkempt and unmanicured was the least of it. Unwashed was probably the most of it.

Neasden was a different world from Kilburn. For starters there was a parking area in front of the long rectangular building that held at least eight cars. One walked in through the front door into a reception area which was to the right.  A receptionist, whose name I later learnt was Doreen, sat next to a manual switchboard – one of those intriguing artifacts of telephonic days gone by – dexterously switching jack-ended cables. To the left of the reception area, but to the centre of the building, a corridor ran up the length of the structure, with offices on each side. The first offices were used by Lee Gopthal and his Beat and Commercial crew, Jim Flynn, Barry Creasy, Allan Firth and Fred Parsons. The largest space on the left was a storeroom/warehouse for the Musicland operation, and the last door on the right led into the first Island office which was DB’s. He had a large table around which sat Jill Grant, and who ever of the three van reps might be in the building. Tom Hayes, Tim Clark and Paul Johnson were the three London reps. Dave Bloxham ran the midlands, and was rarely in London.

The door at the top of the corridor led into the general Island office, with telephone sales, accountancy etc. John Leftly, the accountant who was also a board member, had an office to the right of the main office, and then another door led past two more accounting offices into the warehouse area behind.

And it was the warehouse area that DB was particularly interested in showing me. The one guy they had in there had just quit, and he needed someone pronto.

And so I returned to London and the ever intriguing record business. I stayed in Tottenham for a week or two with my grandmother until I was able to rent a flat for Wendy, myself and our two children in Hemel Hempstead, and then thoroughly immersed myself in Island. The time was late August 1968 and things were jumping.

The first week in the stores was an eye opener. An alley ran up the side of Music House, so retailers and deliveries could access the warehouse without having to walk up through the offices. Within hours of being on the job, I was attending to customers from London's retail outlets, folk like Nat Cole who had a hair dressing business in Brixton, and sold reggae records to his customers, or hustling carts of 45s and LPs up the alley from the truck that delivered product from the Orlake, the pressing plant in Dagenham that we used.

The big difference from the Kilburn days was the emergence of reggae – tho’ rock steady was still selling in big quantities – and the growing Island pop catalogue. Indeed, it was the latter that had necessitated the formation of Trojan Records just a couple of months previously. B & C had the record distribution outlets – the record stores, and some labels. They had Coxsone, Amalgamated, Blue Cat, High Note, and perhaps one or two more. Island had Island, Sue, Studio One and Trojan (which had been discontinued and then restarted with the TR 600 series under the new Trojan Records setup). The Island WI (West Indies) series was now diverted to Trojan, and the WIP (West Indies POP) devoted to the music of Traffic, Jethro Tull et al. Island had the mechanical means of distribution – the van sales, plus years of contacts and contracts with producers in Jamaica. The Caribbean marriage of Island and B & C was a relationship of obvious benefit and convenience to both parties. Trojan could concentrate on promoting reggae, while Island could now single-mindedly promote and market the pop catalogue.

The current releases on Trojan when I rejoined were around TR 616 – ‘A Place in The Sun’, TR 611, ‘Spanish Harlem’  by Roy Shirley, TR 613, ‘Tighten Up’ by The Untouchables, TR 620 ‘Kansas City’ by Joya Landis and TR 622 ‘Angel of the Morning’ by Joya Landis.. These records simply sold and sold, both then and for years after. “Ride Your Donkey’ by the Tennors (WI 3133) was still a big seller, and had produced a few Donkey spin offs.

The volume of work was such that after just one week in the warehouse, I went to David and told him I needed help, and within a few days had hired a young kid by the name of Brian Lee, a hip little Londoner with a good ear for reggae. Such was the skyrocketing popularity of both reggae and Island’s rock catalogue that within six months, I had twenty people working in the stores. It was a manic time indeed… We’d often work until 8 or 9 pm pulling orders, loading vans or unloading late deliveries, or dropping orders at the railway stations for delivery to Dave Bloxham or the northern distributors.

PART 5: MUSIC HOUSE MADNESS

Island also distributed a handful of labels. A couple of years previously, Graeme Goodall, one of Chris Blackwell’s earlier partners, had left Island and started Doctor Bird Records. Graeme had a background in radio and audio engineering, and had produced many sessions in Jamaica earlier in the decade. I’m pretty sure he recorded Prince Buster, amongst others. I also remember Graeme, back in the Cambridge Road days, urging Tim Clark to get into radio. He had recognized the baritone quality of Tim’s voice, which would have worked well over the air. I don’t think Tim ever really took him that seriously though. Anyway, by 1968 Graeme had Doctor Bird, Pyramid, Treasure Isle and I think Rio, which had been owned by Bill Rickard, the gent whom DB was always trying to chase down during my previous stint at Island. Rickard then had owed Island a fair bit of dough, as I remember. Pyramid had a big pop hit with Desmond Dekker’s ‘007 (Shanty Town)’ in 1967.

When I started at Music House, Graeme’s big sellers were things like ‘People Funny Boy’ (DB 1146) by Lee Perry, and a little later, ‘Feel The Rhythm’ (DB 1156) by Clancy Eccles. Both were huge sellers and went out the warehouse doors as fast as we could bring them in from Orlake.

The other label Island was distributing when I returned was President Records. They had a 45 line, and an LP line. The Equals were their main act. Eddie Grant was the band’s leader. President had just licensed the Vee-Jay label, so there was a smattering of Vee-Jay product, John Lee Hooker etc, plus some nice gospel albums from Nashboro, folk like Professor Harold Boggs, the Consolers … some cool stuff. Didn’t really sell much, as I remember.

Every office in Music House had its own record player, and as one walked about the building one seemed to be in a kaleidoscope of sound. Ninety percent of what was played in most of the building was reggae – the old edifice pulsated with bass rhythms and cries of ‘Irie! Irie!’. The other ten percent was from Island’s main office, playing Jethro Tull, Traffic, Fairport Convention or Blodwyn Pig. These acts were selling albums, as opposed to 45s, and that, of course, was where the real dough was.

We had a driver in the stores, fellow named Steve, from Evesham in Wiltshire. A quiet country lad, just arrived in London. He spent most of each day driving a Ford Transit van from Neasden to Philips Records factory and distribution centre in Croydon, Surrey. Phillips distributed the Island pop stuff, and also pressed it, so Steve was making that run at least once a day. In an orderly world, Philips Distribution would get all the product it needed from the pressing plant next door, but given the vagaries and stormy nature of the record business, it often seemed that Phillips initial order on a hot number had sold out so quickly that it was imperative to get new supplies to them immediately. Those supplies would be drawn from the stock sitting in the warehouse in Neasden, which possibly had only been delivered from Philips a few days ago. So young Steve would fill his groaning Transit and aim south, drop off the order, bring back quantities of a different title from the pressing plant, and return to Neasden, only to find he had to load the Transit with a different order, and make the trip all over again. One day he did that round trip three times. Now I cannot remember just what the mileage is between Croydon and Neasden, but it is certainly not a quick and straight shot! And of course while he was driving back and forth across London, other trucks would be delivering product from Orlake, orders would be pulled for the Island reps, for the Musicland stores who ordered very large amounts, and there would be a constant stream of retailers, some easy to deal with, and others beset by endless credit hassles who seemed to be constantly wading through swamps of poverty and adversity in general.

‘Wha’ ya mean, me no ‘ave any credit? Me pay David himself just now’, and so I’d go see DB who’d say, ‘Sure he paid me – that was a part of what he has owed us for three months. He’s got to pay cash for whatever he wants today’ and so back to the counter and deal with the indignant gentleman.

As soon as he was gone, Lee Gopthal would come in with a huge order for five or six Music City accounts, and say he needed them to be ready by 6 o’clock that evening – in 45 minutes time. In the background would be the whirring of the Pitney Bowes postage machine as orders were being franked for a run to the post office in twenty minutes, just in time to catch the mail. These would have been orders that had come in after the Post Office mail van had already called for and collected the bulk of that day’s mail orders. Piles of albums and forty-fives were stacked on rolling carts, or sat in piles between the shelves. Deliveries that had come in during the day, but had not yet been put away. New releases often came in and went out so fast it was pointless to shelve them in the appropriate area. Right then, right where they were was the appropriate area.

And over all this mayhem boomed the sound of reggae – there was always time to keep the turntables turning. After the big orders had been pulled and collected or delivered, the mail had gone, and Steve or someone took a last trip to one of the big railway stations to ship by Red Star orders to Dave Bloxham or HR Taylor, the Midlands distributor, a relative calm descended upon Music House.

 People spoke a little slower and a great deal more quietly, jokes were bandied around, and tongues started to run about the lips. ‘Feel like a pint’? Someone would say, and one by one the workforce would walk out of Music House, turn left down the last few feet of Neasden Lane, and then cross the road to the White Hart. Once there, the day’s madnesses would be relived, the company’s affairs discussed in manic detail – the more beers consumed, the more manic and intense the discussions. We were young, passionate about life, passionate about our jobs, and passionate about music.

We just couldn’t get enough of it – it gnawed at us, consumed us, filled our every waking moment.