INTERVIEW
‘I WAS SEEING TOO MANY TALENTED ARTISTS NOT GETTING ANYWHERE BECAUSE THEIR CAREERS WERE BEING COMPLETELY STIFLED’ MBUK’s partnership with the Did Ya Know? podcast series continues with Decisive Management co-founder Adrian Sykes talking to one of the most experienced and respected black British execs in the business, Keith Harris…
K
eith Harris was raised in Whitehaven – a town which, he reflects, was “very appropriately
named”. To prove the point he tells the story of paying a nostalgic visit to his old school a few years ago. He was peering over the wall when an elderly lady started talking to him. He explained that he used to go there. Ah, she said, you must be one of Dr Harris’ children… Indeed he is. And he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Unfortunately, explains Harris, he wasn’t quite up to medicine, and the best/closest he could do was a degree in Zoology at Dundee University. His parents must have thought it was quite the diversion. They hadn’t seen the half of it. Whilst at Dundee he became Entertainments Convenor, booking bands including Thin Lizzy, Yes, Wishbone Ash and Supertramp. He also started managing a band called Peaches, eventually dropping out of university, moving to London and taking various casual jobs to pay the bills whilst waiting for his clients to hit the big time (his temp jobs included putting up shelves at C&A in Marble Arch – “you could see my ones for years afterwards; all the clothes were bunched up at one end”). After two Peel sessions and a lifetime’s worth of in-fighting, Peaches split – “and I realised I might have to get a proper job”. Happily, for literally generations of artists and colleagues, and for the good of the UK and global music industry, in some ways he never did…
How did you break into the business? In 1975 I answered an ad for a Promotions Manager for Transatlantic Records. I got an interview and got the job. Pretty soon my patch was the whole country. Transatlantic was a very small company, and my expenses couldn’t cover a hotel, so I had to try and get bed and breakfasts. Now, you can imagine what it was like for a black guy, on his own, trying to get into a bed and breakfast in the far flung reaches of the UK in 1975. After two weeks I used to drive home from Newcastle, Manchester or wherever rather than have the humiliation of going to people’s houses, asking them if I can get a bed for the night and them slamming the door in my face. Somewhere I’ve got my passport photograph from that time and I look older then than I do now. That’s how things were then; you got bitter or you got on with it. I did that job for about 18 months, and then I had a disagreement with the General Manager and we mutually decided it was probably best if I didn’t work there anymore. So, I walked to the nearest record company, which was EMI’s Licensed Label Division, it was literally 100 yards down the road. They said the guy that’s doing promotions for Motown, which was one of their licensed labels, was about to leave, would I be interested in taking over? So I said [laughs], well, you’re obviously gonna have to force me...
You didn’t ask about the salary at that point? I did not ask about the salary. And that started you on this journey, working at Motown, which morphs into something very special, doesn’t it? Well, what actually happened first was that the General Manager of the Motown label inside of EMI, a guy called Julian Moore, said it’s probably best if I go down and see
XX
