Losing My Virginity
Throughout my life, I’ve always needed somebody as a counterbalance, to compensate for my weaknesses, and work off my strengths (View Highlight)
I certainly didn’t regard myself as a businessman. Businessmen were middle-aged men in the City obsessed with making money (View Highlight)
Above all, you want to create something you are proud of. That has always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive then I believe you are better off not doing it. A business has to be involving; it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts. (View Highlight)
I didn’t just see Student as an end in itself, a noun. I saw it as the beginning of a whole range of services, an adjective, a word that people would recognise as having certain key values (View Highlight)
One day in 1970 I came back to my desk and found that Nik had been sitting at it. By mistake he had left a draft of a memo which he was writing to the staff. It was a plan to get rid of me as publisher and editor, take editorial and financial control of Student and turn it into a cooperative. I would become just part of the team, and everyone would share equally in the editorial direction of the magazine. I was shocked. I felt that Nik – my closest friend – was betraying me. After all, Student had been my and Jonny’s idea. We had started it at Stowe and against all odds we had managed to publish it. I knew what I wanted to do with Student, and it seemed to me that everyone was happy working there. We all drew equal salaries, but ultimately I was the editor and publisher and it was up to me to make the decisions.
People take music far more seriously than many other things in life. It is part of the way they define themselves, like the cars they drive, the films they watch, and the clothes they wear. Teenagers spend more time listening to music, talking about their favourite bands and choosing records than almost anything else. (View Highlight)
I know that I’ve got to get up early the next morning and so I’ve rarely been able to get smashed the night before (View Highlight)
I have always enjoyed breaking the rules, whether they were school rules or accepted conventions, such as that no seventeen-year-old can edit a national magazine. As a twenty-year-old I had lived life entirely on my own terms, following my own instincts. But to be in prison meant that all that freedom was taken away (View Highlight)
avoiding prison was the most persuasive incentive I’ve ever had. (View Highlight)
it is only by being bold that you get anywhere (View Highlight)
In the end EMI won the auction with a bid of 4 million. Although I was disappointed to have failed, I knew that I had done The Stones a good turn by increasing the asking price from the $3 million Prince Rupert would have been happy to accept. (View Highlight)
On top of that, Mike Oldfield wanted to renegotiate his contract. We were happy to renegotiate but, after we agreed a second version with an increased royalty to him, he instructed another lawyer who began to push for an even higher royalty. Simon and I decided that Virgin couldn’t go any higher. We pointed out that Virgin Music as a company was making less money than he was personally. When he asked how this was possible, I made the mistake of being completely honest with him. I told him that we needed successful artists like him to pay for our unsuccessful ones. His sympathy evaporated.
Ultimately, we had two options: either tuck away a little money and eke out a living without taking any more risks, or use our last few pounds to try to sign up another band that could break us back into the big time. If we chose the first option, we could get by: we would be running a tiny company, but we could survive and make a living without any risks attached. If we chose the second, Virgin could be bust within a few months, but at least we would have one last chance to break out.
One of the artists we reluctantly dropped was Dave Bedford, who was a brilliantly gifted classical composer. Dave reacted very well to the bad news: he wrote a long letter to me saying how much he understood the decision, that he appreciated his records had not sold, that he would have done the same if he had been in my shoes, that he bore Virgin no grudges and wished us all the best for the future. At the same time he wrote a letter to Mike Oldfield in which he described me as a complete shit, an utter bastard, and a vile, tone-deaf, money-grabbing parasite on musical talent. Unfortunately for Dave, he then put the letters in the wrong envelopes. (View Highlight)
I normally make up my mind about whether I can trust somebody within sixty seconds of meeting them. As I watched Malcolm McLaren, with his tight black trousers and pointed boots, I wondered how easy it would be to do business with him. He never showed up at Vernon Yard that afternoon, and never returned my phone calls the next day. I stopped ringing him after four attempts. He knew how to get hold of me, but he didn’t call. (View Highlight)
The Sex Pistols were a national event: every shopper up and down the high street, every farmer, everyone on every bus, every grandmother, had heard of The Sex Pistols. And living close to that kind of public outcry was fascinating. As Oscar Wilde pointed out, ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’ The Sex Pistols generated more newspaper cuttings than anything else in 1977 apart from the Silver Jubilee itself (View Highlight)
ONE WEEKEND IN EARLY 1976 I met my future wife, Joan Templeman, at the Manor. I make up my mind about someone within thirty seconds of meeting them, and I fell for Joan almost from the moment I saw her. The problem was that she was already married to someone else, a record producer and keyboard player who was producing a Virgin band called Wigwam. (View Highlight)
Joan was a down-to-earth Scots lady, and I immediately saw that she did not suffer fools gladly. I knew that I couldn’t attract her attention in the same way as I had attracted Kristen. Most of my past relationships with women had been based on great public showmanship, but for the first time I felt that here was a woman who didn’t want me to get up to my usual antics. (View Highlight)
There was a world of difference between Mike Oldfield and The Sex Pistols. But both of them had found that they could not cope with the pressures of fame (View Highlight)
Mike and Sarah were married and we gave them the two African stools. We had dinner together that night, but the evening ended early since Mike was so clearly intent on getting Sarah into bed. The next morning the phone rang.
With Ken in New York, Patrick in Paris, Udo in Germany and our own operation in London, we could properly market Virgin as an international record label. Our trouble was that we had no cash reserves, and so any setback could prove fatal (View Highlight)
Success can take off without warning (View Highlight)
But when I sat in the houseboat holding Joan’s scribbled note and thinking about our unborn baby, I realised that I really loved her. Until that moment I had been guilty of wanting to have my cake and eat it: having a great relationship without making a commitment to it (View Highlight)
Every successful businessman has failed at some ventures, and most entrepreneurs who run their own companies have been declared bankrupt at least once (View Highlight)
The extraordinary thing about the record industry is how success can take off without warning. (View Highlight)
In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics. This might be because, due to my dyslexia, I distrust numbers, which I feel can be twisted to prove anything. (View Highlight)
Simon and Ken both winced when I said ‘fun’, which is a particularly loaded word for me – it’s one of my prime business criteria (View Highlight)
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable, challenges and trying to rise above them (View Highlight)