WEDNESDAY AUG 13, 2008
From: Joss Acock, London, UK
Dear Simon,
I’ve just begun my dive in to the music industry and have only just stumbled across Black Vinyl White Powder!
The book is absolutely brilliant and has fuelled my passion for the career and I’d like to thank you for the insight you’ve passed on to me!
Ironically, you have also worked with my father, John Acock, whilst recording one of Junior’s albums. He was engineering on the album and vividly remembers having drinks at your flat after a session!
Hi Joss, glad you liked the book. Re that session with your dad, I remember one moment from it concerning my lovely friend Larry Ashmore, the arranger. I was producing and your dad was the engineer and he'd been mixing a track for hours without getting it right - in those days there were no automatic faders, no recall, everything had to be done by hand each time - if a mistake was made you had to start again. Round midnight the tape op said he had to leave and it was decided the next mix would be the last attempt. It was a long piece and in the middle of it there was a dramatic string entry. All the faders were left up so that when the orchestra wasn't playing the studio ambience would sound the same. This time the mix went perfectly but as it approached the place where the strings came in Larry jumped from the settee where he was sitting and rushed to the front of the mixing desk to face your dad. As the string entry arrived he flung down his arms as if he was bringing in the London Philharmonic and bellowed 'Strings!' at the top of his voice. Since the fader was up, the strings came in on cue, as they would. Larry mopped his brow and the mix continued to the end and was perfect. Your dad - the perfect gentleman - without a hint of sarcasm, said, "Thanks for that Larry."
TUESDAY AUG 12, 2008
From: Freeki Leaky, Syracuse, NY, USA
Darling - whatever got into you? What a tirade, and about sport of all things! I never knew you were interested in such things. Still it's always good to see you have a good rant - bad temper brings out the best in you. Now then, what happened to the Quentin Crisp song. You promised I'd be able to download it this week.
You can! It's on the home page of Cherry Red records. Or listen to an excerpt here. As for my sports rant I've no idea what caused it - boredom with endless Olympics on the tele and a hankering for the druggy days of rock management. Plus yesterday I had throbbing toothache. Put them all together and there you have it. The tooth is dealt with now so I shall bury myself in good eating for a few days - that'll soon put me back in good humour.
MONDAY AUG 11, 2008
From: Pete McGuire, Glasgow, UK
Your postings yesterday and the day before were about China, yet the article you commented on, and just about every other article in the British dailies for the last three days, has not really been about China but about China's use of the Olympics for political ends. What do you think about that? Do you think, as I do that China might be in the forefront of countries who are using undetectable drugs to enhance the performances of their athletes?
Wonderful if they are! Because the drug-free Olympics is a miserable parade of boring mediocrity.
When astronauts are sent into space, d'you think they're not given drugs? To keep themselves awake, to avoid eating excessively, to extend their endurance. Should space exploration be drugs free?
And the armed forces... do you think soldiers go to war without drugs? To keep them alert, to engender hatred, to calm them afterwards, to cover their pychological trauma. Should the army be kept drugs free?
Then there are artists - people who paint and write and perform - when were they ever drugs free? Where would rock music be without drugs to dream and compose to? Would we have had rock'n'roll, flower power, punk rock, acid jazz, Ibiza or Pete Doherty without drugs?
Jazz too? What a miserable concert of nothingness we would have suffered if the likes of Billy Holliday, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker and Stan Getz hadn't shot themselves high as kites to give us all that wonderful music.
So why not athletics? I want to see the Drug Olympics - science and physical endeavour combined - not this pathetic array of supressed athletes cavorting round the track barely a millionth of a second better than last time. These athletes should be seen for what they are - the amateurs - the second leaguers. The pros should be the athletes who want to break real barriers - scientific as well as physical. I want to see a great leap forward. I want to see the pills that makes us jump and run and charge at twice the speed of ever before - the 100 metres in 5 seconds - pole vaulters soaring one hundred feet - long jumpers leaping the Grand Canyon. What's the difference between putting an athlete on a special diet or a special pill? What's the point of science if we can't invent drugs that improve our performance? I hereby salute all those athletes who take performance-enhancing drugs, risking their bodies and careers in the name of science and better performance, maligned and outcast and banned from competition by the mean-spirited tiny-minded elite. And I spit on the miserable, conservative, self-interested organisers of world sport who through their lack of vision keep us from seeing faster, finer, more thrilling chemically-induced performances.
SUNDAY AUG 10, 2008
From: Paul Britten, London, UK
There you go again Simon, being totally perverse. You've often told me I should read Charles Moore's pieces because he's one of our best and insightful writers, now you slag him off.
Like Simon Jenkins, Charles Moore is someone I normally read first on any subject I'm too lazy to find out about any other way. Actually, he's better than Simon Jenkins because mostly he's not only right, he's funny too. But yesterday he was twittering.
Like me, Moore went to a public school, a minaturised version of a totalitarian state. Because of that he knows full well that with a little resourcefulness it's possible to find your own space within the rules and regulations in which to live, think and enjoy yourself. Most of the rules are unnecessary, some are totally barmy, but the pupils have to obey them or get slung in the school Gulag (or whatever the equivalent of that might be in each respective school). If, by imposing the rules of a public school on an entire nation, 99% of the people in that nation become better off, why should the people who run it worry too much about the other 1%? That may not be everyone's point of view but it's certainly what public schools imbue in their pupils - not democracy, nor freedom. Strange that an ex-Etonian who approves of public schools objects to a nation being turned into one.
SATURDAY AUG 9, 2008
From: Pat Downes, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Hi Si - In today's Telegraph there's a piece by Charles Moore that takes a far more cynical and doubtful view of China's policies than you seem to, especially in relation to its one child families. Did you read it?
Charles Moore is a twittering old fart. Especially when he calls the China one child policy "one of the great evils of Chinese communism".
Deng came to power following the idiot Mao's cultural revolution to find the intelligentsia eliminated and a billion impoverished people who believed the only way to protect themselves in old age was to have half a dozen children, which in turn impoverished the country further. He declared war on poverty, OK'd a market economy, put in hand a method of keeping the population from growing further and booked Wham! to play at the Workers Stadium. This was far more sensible than anything Charles Moore has done in his life. The country has prospered and the population (and pollution) are down 23% from where they might otherwise have been. Moore goes on to complain that one of the results of the one child policy has been 117 boys to every 100 girls instead of 105 to 100 as in most other countries. Only a rampant old heterosexual would complain about such a thing. Personally I think it's marvellous.
FRIDAY AUG 8, 2008
From: Paul Rymer, Middlesborough, UK
Richard Barbieri's success as a member of
Porcupine Tree is partly responsible for Japan starting to gain the
kind of cult/legendary status of the
Velvet Underground or New York Dolls. Some Japan collectors have been comparing records and noticed a mistake. When "All Tomorrow's Parties" was released an
error stated that Giorgio Moroder produced it,
when I know you did. Hansa tried to fix the mistake but
managed to cock it up again, crediting
John Punter. Various sites on Giorgio Moroder are starting to state he
produced the single. (All the tragic detail is here.) On top of that, what would have happened to any
money you might have earned?
Money? Unlikely to see any of that from Hansa, I've never been paid a penny for any production I did with Japan. But the effort involved in getting mimimal back payments like these is too much to bother with. Of course, if you add up all the little payments that people can't be bothered to fight for it makes millions a year extra for BMG Sony, but I don't really resent it - it's the way the music business works. As is making pots of the stuff when things are going well. So no worries!!
THURSDAY AUG 7, 2008
From: Paul Granville, Shanghai, China
Hi Simon,
I take it you were so busy in Beijing that you didn't have time for us "Joe Public" down here in hot-as-hell Shag-hai.
Seeing the picture on the top of your site today having a little kiss'n'cuddle with the buxom and voluptuous Passionata begs me to ask you this question,
Did you not feel the slightest little "twinge of joy" in the old purple headed ferret?
Come on Simon, Man-Up, Honest answer?
Anyway, nonsense aside, hope the trip is going well; more importantly hope you're getting over the nasty old gall bladder removal ok and that your back on the red meats, foie gras, fruity reds by the bottle and the occasional creme brulée. Judging by the pic it looks like a button is about to self implode at any second.
Hurry up and bring Yo to Shanghai! Soon, OK? We want more stories and a meal at M On The Bund awaits (plus a trip to your favourite dumpling shop around the corner).
Ah yes, that dumpling shop - probably the finest meal I ever had in China. But rather than try and find it again another feast at M On The Bund would do.
As to whether the ferret twinged? Not really - these days its twinges come less often and are usually reserved for members of the same sex, as befits an elderly poofter like me. However it certainly did twinge a few days earlier when 20 or so shots of tequila were downed in the presence of a particularly fine specimen of Beijing waiter (just as it did, I seem to remember, for the waiter who served us the last time we ate at M On The Bund). Anyway, from the pictures below you can see that a good time was had by all.
WEDNESDAY AUG 6, 2008
From: Brian Sanderton, Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK
Simon, I wrote to you last year about your lamentable views on global warming. Several times since then you have again been flippant about the subject. I noticed last week that you were in China, a country you have defended several times despite all the information pointing to it being one of the world's worst polluters. Did being there and seeing the terrible smog in Beijing not change your mind at all?
Sanderton, you pompous windbag, you know nothing. The Beijing smog was pathetic - absolutely not world standard. Anyone who remembers the superb pea-soupers of 1950s London would be totally unimpressed. But although China seems unable to produce world-class smog, it can certainly produce a world-class city. Beijing has become an incredible modern capital - clean, orderly, full of stunning buildings yet with space for gardens and greenery all around. More than that, China is still the only country to have made any sort of serious attempt to cut back on the thing that most causes global warming - people! On Monday evening a few of us had dinner with the Deputy Minister for Health. I asked him about China's 'one family one child' policy. He told me the current population is 1.3 billion. Without the 'one family one child' policy it's estimated the population would have been 1.7 billion. So in 25 years China has effectively reduced its population from what it would have been by 23.5%. None of the solutions proposed by anyone else for reducing global warming in a 25-year period come anywhere near that.
TUESDAY AUG 5, 2008
From: Edward Holland, Bangkok, Thailand
Dear Simon, Not wishing to drag out this debate until the heat-death of the universe: but, if Mr Andrew Datchley actually did some basic research, he would soon discover at least one observed and documented event of Stephen Hawking enjoying a night out in a strip club.
Furthermore, if talking affectionately about eminent physicists with terminal illnesses who also like to go to strip clubs is disrespectful, then Richard Feynman must be the most disrespected character of the 20th century. QED.
I'm sure no-one really cares that Stephen Hawking occasionally goes to a strip club, what upsets them is having to think of him in a sexual way. Not only is his mouth profoundly unkissable but to hear sweet nothings whispered in dalek-speak would be most unnerving. Moreover, I presume he can't easily dance from his wheelchair to the proposed site of sexual activity and has to be lifted and placed by two pairs of strong arms, which suggests, other than receiving a blow-job in situ, a group of four people would be required each time he wished to perform. It's probably because neither of these scenarios presents a pretty picture that people prefer not to think of them, which the sight of the the good professor heading into a Soho strip joint might make them do.
MONDAY AUG 4, 2008
From: Andrew Datchley, London, UK
Dear Mr Napier-Bell, I have had pointed out to me that earlier this week your website ran an email in which a correspondent wrote spurious and fanciful obscenities about the eminent phycisist Stephen Hawking. I do not expect Professor Hawking to have seen this and I am hoping he will not. You should be ashamed of yourself showing such disrespect for someone who has overcome enormous physical disabilty to obtain such stature.
My correspondent, the eminent gossipologist Gregory Gray, simply pointed out that young Stephen's push cart was occasionally seen being trundled through Soho with Stephen atop of it, and that rumour has it the cart is sometimes turned at right angles and pushed through the doors of a strip club or two. While it's possible that this may not in fact be true, it's equally possible that it is. Either way, the point my correspondent was making was, 'Why shouldn't he?' Just because he's good with galaxies and even better with big bang theories, there's no reason why Professor Hawking shouldn't also enjoy a little sexual entertainment now and again. In my opinion, someone as up your own arse as you are might benefit greatly by joining him.
SUNDAY AUG 3, 2008
From: Eric Short, New York, NY, US
Hi Simon. I just finished reading "I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch". Then I went to your website and found you were in Beijing again right now. The thing that interested me most in the book was the bit about the CIA trying to put their nose into it all. Do you think that used to happen with everyone who set things up in China? Does it still?
Then, I'm sure it did. Now, I think less so. As soon as the CIA saw the Wham! concert was definitely going to happen they started pressuring me to let them have access to it for political reasons. They wanted to put one of their operatives into my road crew, that sort of thing. Basically, I told them to bugger off - I'm not American so I didn't see why I should talk to them. But many of my American friends abroad have succumbed to similar approaches. Anyone American in a solid position in a foreign country is likely to be approached - regional heads of Coca Cola or MacDonalds, that sort of thing. The CIA play on their nationalistic feelings and if that doesn't work they just plain sit on them. The interesting thing is how, in contrast, the Chinese secret service goes about it; they never use amateurs, they use their own trainees - decide on the position they should have in a 'cover' industry and then train them. I have friends in Shanghai who since the early 90s have run a radio station specialising in punk rock. They felt they might have a spy in their midst but couldn't figure out who. Eventually they realised it had to be the guy who was most knowledgeable about punk, had the biggest record collection, spent the most time in punk clubs and did the most drugs. Only someone trained by the secret service could have been so perfect. But they couldn't fire him because they needed his record collection to keep the station running.
SATURDAY AUG 2, 2008
From: Steve Holmes, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Hey Simon, a week or so ago you told us you were going to China for some sort of posh concert. I gather you’re there now.Can you tell us what it’s about.?
Two concerts were organised for the earthquake appeal. The first was in Xi’an, the old capital in the north, and the second is tomorrow in Beijing in the Chinese parliament. It’ll be the first concert ever played there so it’s quite an event to have pulled off and the people did it are five fun-loving, super bright Dutch men. A great deal of eating has taken place and even more drinking but tomorrow is a day for putting on suits and meeting deputy Prime Ministers. The concert will be watched live by 6,000 VIPs and is a bizarre mix of many things – an Argentinian concertina, a semi-classical pop singer, a John Lennon lookalike, a jazz singer, and five sexy girls singing opera. Beijing has never looked cleaner; half the cars are off the road (odd numbers one day even the next) and there are no traffic jams. Today the smog cleared away and the sun came out but the piano player had four thumbs. Worse still, the orchestra wasn't up to scratch because Princess Asoupa stole the Beijing Symphony and took it to Tonga for a coronation. Tomorrow I'm taking over as lead roadsign player.
FRIDAY AUG 1, 2008
From: Georgia Bart, London, UK
hi simon... i've got a food question for you... best wine with donkey's knob?
Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee da Capo, 2000, one the best Chaeauneuf du Papes ever. It has a deep ruby colour (almost the same as the penis itself) and enormous aromas of kirsch, leather, herbs, spice and licorice. Sniffing it continuously will mask the smell of the meat and when you sip it you'll find its flavour enormous - thick, full and tanniny. Take a good full mouthful, pop a little meat in and you'll hardly know it's there. Swallow the whole lot down et voilà, lunching on donkey's knob becomes painless. What's more, the wine has a 16% alcohol content so after a couple of glasses you couldn't care less what you're eating anyway.
THURSDAY JULY 31, 2008
From: Danny Wong, London, UK
Hi Simon… I noticed your Dining Out reviews for last year are still not on the website and I wondered when they were coming, especially as you told me our lunch together at Bibendum was going to be one of them. I went back there a couple of weeks ago and had a starter I'd never eaten before - pig's snout! Have you ever tried it?
Yes, just once - and only once - because pig’s snout is no more worth eating than penis, which I remember you forced me to eat when we were in Beijing last year. I'm there again right now, and since last night's dinner included jelly fish and chicken's feet, this evening I might go in search of foie gras and oysters. But definitely no more donkey's knob.
WEDNESDAY JULY 30, 2008
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi simon...
i actually met stephen hawking once... on old compton street...
flankedby two wheelchair bitches... he was cool... a real glint in his
eye...
word on the street is he likes to go and watch the pole dancers in
soho rub their shaven girly meat curtains up and down the old shiny
chrome... and i'm all for it!
as for this jonathan fella... what a cunt?!.. fancy him wanting privacy
agreements signed before you get to hear his trinkets?!.. i fancy the
extreme irony of his lofty ways being matched with deeply crap
recordings... anyway... surely if he sees the 'universe as
music' he'd be happy to just open his legs and send his song out into
the cosmos unconditionally.
TUESDAY JULY 29, 2008
From: Jonathan Sedley, Southampton, UK
Dear Mr Napier-Bell, I am a singer-composer of the old-fashioned type. I do not have a Myspace and prefer not to use computers in the process of composition. My creations are a mystique of poetry and richly harmonic melody; my recordings are made in full-spectrum audio and copied to CD without compression. I am not looking for a record deal or a publishing contract but simply to share with people of discernment my vision of 'the universe as music’. If you are interested in listening to four exquisite compostions I will send you a CD, though I would first ask you to sign and return the attached privacy agreement confirming that this will be for your ears only.
Sorrry Jonno, my discernment level isn't too high at the moment - I'm busy in China getting drunk every night with a bunch of Dutch crazies. As for privacy - never trust a man with a website. But your theory on the universe sounds good. Maybe Stephen Hawking would give your tunes a listen.
MONDAY JULY 28, 2008
From: Danny Levy, Singapore
Hi Simon, I saw you yesterday at Beijing airport, getting into a car as I was getting out of one. I shouted hello but you didn't hear. What were you up to? I'll be back in LA next week. Give me a call sometime?
Hi Danny. We'd just been greeted by two strangely-dressed Dutchmen and werebeing whisked off to have dinner with the Chairman of the Society for Chinese Alternative Medicine - don't ask me why! - then to a weird bar with pictures on the ceiling, more Dutch people, a LOT of alcohol, exceptional jollility, manic chatter and a waiter who became prettier with each of the twenty tequilas I drank. This is going to be a hard-working week for my liver.
SUNDAY JULY 27, 2008
From: Maggie Jarrold, London, UK
Hi Simon - from reading your books I can't really make out what you think of artists. They seem to entertain you but you're often scornful of them, though not as scornful as you are these days of record companies. What do you really think about the artists you managed? Were there any you actually liked?
At an early age - about 15 - I found I didn't really know what I wanted to do with myself, I had no ambition, no specific thing I wanted to do, but was perfectly happy waking up every morning and watching the world go by. The adults around me - parents, schoolteachers, etc - said this was wrong - I was meant to have an ambition which I should work hard to acheive. Since I played the trumpet and enjoyed jazz I kept them quiet by saying I'd become the world's greatest trumpet player. I knew I wouldn't, I just wasn't good enough. But anyway, I went off to North America and started earning my living that way. When I got bored of being a musician I decided I'd one day earn my living as a writer but meanwhile needed more experience of life. The best way to get it, I thought, would be to follow my dick, which I proceeded to do. It led me all round the world, jumping up and pointing the way, sometimes most unexpectedly. Then I discovered pop management. The artist had the desire, the ambition, the talent and pointed the way - just as my dick had done previously. All I had to do was to enable him to get what he wanted - again, not much different. So you see, that's how I've always thought of my artists - big surrogate dicks - leading me round the world and introducing me to pleasurable situations. As for liking them... Well who doesn't like their own dick?
SATURDAY JULY 26, 2008
From: Mary Clemente, New York, NY, USA
My Dearest Simon:
As I mentioned to you in my recent emails we had a serious salmonella outbreak that was focused on tomatos, hence I planted a container in my beach house in New York. Lo and behold the very first tomato was a boy with a penis. My first reaction was it looks like Simon Napier-Bell's New Year's picture of him doing his baby Beluga Whale underwater synchronized ballet!
Needless to say... I have officially named my new source of food "Simon Napier-Bell Tomato"! I have taken these pictures and sent them to the Associated Press and UK tabloids.
I'm Coming to Eat You For Lunch! I will await its ripeness and sprinkle with olive oil and garnish with fresh basil and enjoy with a Shot of Jurado Tequila!
Love Ya!
My dear Mary, from the first sentence of the first email you ever sent me it was clear you were as delightfully mad as a March mongoose (which was the attraction and continues to be). While I'm not particularly flattered by having a deformed tomato named after me, nor hugely thrilled at having the news spread round the world's media, I'm not the slightest bit upset either. C'est la vie! If I mix with potty people I must expect sometimes to have the potty thrown over me. Take another look at the strange object you grew at at your beach house. There's no 'boy with a penis' that I can see. Nor any sign of me swimming in my pool. But could there be something of you about it?
FRIDAY JULY 25, 2008
From: Bruce Emond, Weekender Magazine, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Indonesia
Hey Simon,
I saw your note on your website - bit taken aback, as I didn't realize you were yelling at me, which must have been a bit clueless of me. And I do apologize for sending you so many questions.
At any rate, good luck,
There you are then, you see how gently I can scream - nothing to be afraid
of, not if you're a newspaper editor anyway, though I did once let loose with at Caspar Llewelyn-Smith at the Observer, but nothing like Giles Coren's tirade yesterday directed at the Times' sub-editors about which I totally agree with him.
In your case, the trouble was your questions all seemed to be things that were fully
answered in my books. Even so, after grumpily telling you I wouldn't do them I still left
them on my 'to do' list meaning to answer them later. But eventually my computer crashed and I bought a new laptop, so
they were forgotten. If you send me a new lot I'll answer them. Promise!
THURSDAY JULY 24, 2008
From: John Dang, Manchester, UK
I loved yesterday's email. It made me smile... I can't believe he called them partyheads. I assume he meant the organisers of the party.
What party is this then? An Olympic thing?
I believe it's called the Communist Party. But Bas has a great way with words, doesn't he! 'Partyheads' makes them sound so skunk-smokingly cool.
Actually, Bas and I haven't yet met although we've been corresponding for some weeks now. He works with the Europe China Foundation, a non-govermental organisation based in Holland that aids business and research by connecting top Europeans with top Chinese, both people and companies. They've arranged a concert in the Great Hall of the People - China's vast parliament building - in aid of earthquake vicitms, mainly classical music but with a pop tinge and some jazz. Anyway - in response to my asking how I'd recognise him at the airport, Bas sent me a picture of what he intends to wear.
WEDNESDAY JULY 23, 2008
From: Bas van Gent, Beijing, China
There will be a ceremony in Xi'an with the governor and partyheads and dancers who are opening the palace doors. The artists get the key of the City. President Clinton got this honour in 1998 and Chirac in 2005 and now you guys. By the way I asked for a bigger place in Xi'an than the small theatre for 1100 people, so this will now be a stadium with 8,000 people. More income for the charity. After the concert in Beijing you get a glass of champagne with the Vice Prime Ministers and probably higher. I will pick you up. The new train is perfect by the way but there will be less traffic now because of State regulations.
OK Bas! Always great to be picked up. Thanks! With all these Prime Ministers around it sounds like I'll need to bring a suit - in 40 degree heat too - ugh!!! By the way, how will I recognise you at the airport? Should we meet somewhere special? Or shall I wear a yellow hat and pink shoes?
TUESDAY JULY 22, 2008
From: Dave Lubbock, London, UK
Hi Simon - are you really not prepared to answer questions anymore - you’ve answered mine a few times - some other people I know too - I ’d be disappointed if you stopped - what did the lady from Chicago ask that made you so sour?
As you know, I’m normally charm itself when it comes to answering student’s questions. Please note I said nothing in my answer to Ms Danziger about not answering sensible questions for sensible people, it’s just that I haven’t got time to work out the answers to questions like this (1 of 7 she sent me).
“You once said on your website that you consider the aspirational functionality of an artist’s predisposition to success as being the most essential aspect to be considered in assessing his or her potential. On the supposition that this is not the sole quality on which you base a decision to enter into a professional relationship with an artist but is normally balanced with a certain degree of singing or performing ability, could you tell me what percentage of importance you apportion to each of these two qualities in arriving at your decision.”
How can someone do Media Studies and write a question like that? It's meant to be the study of communicating clearly. And the daft thing is, the first part of her email looked like an illiterate SMS message.
MONDAY JULY 21, 2008
From: Julie Danziger, Chicago, Illinois, USA
hi simon... i'm writing a piece for my media studies course... do you mind me asking...
Yes, yes, yes, I mind very much. I'm busy. And I'm bored of answering damned silly questions from half-witted students about stupid subjects that aren't worth studying in the first place.
SUNDAY JULY 20, 2008
From: Shane Shelley, London, UK
Hi Simon - I was thinking the other day about the fantastic rehearsal studios you used to have in Hammersmith, just behind Olympia - Nomis Studios. I was in two different groups which used them at different times and everyone thought they were the best rehearsal facilities they'd ever seen. Why did you ever sell them?
It was a grandiose idea turned into grandiose reality. The idea had been to build a huge rehearsal complex for the world’s top groups and artists. The reality was a vast disused building in west London, built as a dairy in the nineteenth century and therefore with two foot thick concrete walls to keep it cool inside. Two foot thick concrete was perfect soundproofing, so this building that no-one else could see a use for suddenly turned out to be just perfect for what I wanted. In 1976 I raised the money and got the architect to work. But it took three years to build and between the time it was started and the time it was finished interest rates had risen from 5% to 18%. When it was finished it was indeed magnificent – thirty rehearsal rooms running from small to breathtaking (well - rather good, anyway). It had extensive facilitites for storing and hiring equipment, a custom made loading bay for groups to fetch and carry their equipment and a canteen that daily housed the greats of rock and roll, there to rehearse for their next tour or record – Queen mixing with the Rolling Stones mixing with Aerosmith mixing with Led Zeppelin - and pop stars too – Blondie, Adam Ant, Tom Robinson, even Shirley Bassey. It was like owning the trendiest night club in town without ever having to stay up past bedtime. But because the loans had been taken at 5% and were having to be repaid at 18% it was losing money like a cullender leaks water. It was too big, had cost too much to build and cost too much to run. Eveyone who went there was impressed to the gills. "Gosh, that Simon Napier-Bell’s a clever bugger investing in these studios. He must be making a packet."
But a packet was what I was losing; not making. So it had to be sold. And was.
SATURDAY JULY 19, 2008
From: Ed Lawson, Seattle, Washington, USA
Hi Simon, I was reading back on your old emails and I found something you wrote about Live Nation. They announce themselves as the future of the music business but you seem a bit demeaning of them. I'd been thinking of investing in a few shares. Do you really not think they're a good bet?
They have the smell of a company that expands too big and too fast and spends too much in doing so. Look at their company accounts for last year - a total of 4 billion dollars income yet there was a net loss of 11 million (but the company's corporate expenditure was 45 million, so the executives are living well). In my time in the music business I've seen so many of these companies come and go - too much start-up money, not enough time spent building a solid base. The first time I saw it was back in the 60s with a company called Tetragrammafon. Some poor sucker coughed up a stack of cash - a hundred million, perhaps, or maybe in those days all it took was twenty - and off they went. They found premises in New York – three floors of something prime round 52nd street - then in LA, then in London. They hired staff to fill the offices - put lawyers in the business affairs department and press agents in the publicity department; poached the best A&R and marketing men from other companies; hired sales people and promotion people and specialists in bribing radio-stations. Then they gave them all secretaries. Now they had three large buildings in three cities filled with highly-paid staff but with absolutely nothing for anyone to do because so far they hadn’t signed a single artist. So what was the obvious next step… you’ve guessed it. Yes! An executive jet. Now the chief executives of each branch could fly off to meet the chief executives of each of the other branches to discuss matters of importance. They finally hired some talent scouts but by then the talent scouts were under huge pressure, not so much to find talent, more to find something for everyone else to do. So in it rolled, the most second-rate stuff imaginable - all those artists who’d been auditioned and turned down by every other company and all those music-biz con-men with their tapes and songs and production deals - and very soon the money was down to not very much. In the end they got lucky and signed Deep Purple and for a while things looked good - they had nice buildings, lots of staff, the executive jet was comfortable and Deep Purple gave them a hit or two. But too much money had gone out at the beginning and two years after they started they went bust.
Are Live Nation really like that? Well to be honest, I haven't a clue - but something tells me 'yes'. Just an instinct!
FRIDAY JULY 18, 2008
From: Susie Lemmons, New York, NY, USA
Dear Simon, the company I work for is looking for a United Kingdom distributor for an exclusive brand of vodka it produces. Do you know anybody that can help us?
Sorry love - I'm just a consumer. Though perhaps if you left it with me I could consume the lot and you wouldn't have to waste time finding someone to distribute it.
THURSDAY JULY 17, 2008
From: Blake Joliffe, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Hey Simon, I just read "I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch" and loved it. Seems from reading it that the 80s was the best British music-business decade ever - even better than the 60s. From your CV page I you see you were in your 40s then. Was that YOUR best decade too? (I'm 38 so I want to know before I get there.)
Me and decades don’t quite coincide. My first decade started in April 1939, whereas the rest of the world's new decade started eight months later in January 1940. I've now realised what a benefit it is having an eight-month gap between the start of my decades and the start of the world-at-large's decades. It gives me time to snug-in and get used to it, like getting to like a new pair of shoes. At the end of the year, when everyone else gets to their new decade, I’m already eight months into mine and going strong. When 1980 hit I was 40 plus nine months. Perfect! Everyone says life begins at forty and by the time January 1st 1980 rolled up I’d discovered what they meant. It was a breeze. Still had a few good looks but also a bit of experience and wisdom. After thirty-nine years of not always being perfectly aligned in all things, suddenly everything clicked into place and I was running like a Swiss clock. Still am!!!
WEDNESDAY JULY 16, 2008
From: Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
One day in the near future, I will come to visit and bring the proper ingredients and make you the best fucking guaca and home made tortillas... we will grill some filet and and onions and chop fresh cilantro and I will refry some frijoles and have a feast! But not right now, I'm on a diet for the Casa de Campo party in two weeks and will be wearing a bikini and do not want to get sand kicked in my face for not having a body! Or even better, the next time your in Gotham, I will take you to the Esquina in the east village for the best maritas and taquitos al pastor!
So Bibi, threats and promises! The promise of a visit to Thailand to teach me to cook decent Mexican food is good. Not so good is the threat of Esquina. Isn't it that scruffy cafe where they serve tacos and tortas on baguettes? Not much authenticity there. As for al pastor - in the UK we call it doner kebab, to be grabbed late at night after the pub - and never let them give you the meat from the bottom which has been there a month and gives you the... well, I suppose... the Mexican runs. Ah, so there's the connection! Nevertheless next time I'm in New York we WILL eat together. But cafes are out! Decent wine and comfortable chairs please.
TUESDAY JULY 15, 2008
From: John Aspen, New York, NY, USA
Re your reference to the word 'naco', recently it's started to be used to define a certain style of art - Naco Art - and here's an example.....
Thanks John. I had quite a few emails about the word, everyone saying I'd got the meaning wrong. So what do I know about Mexican slang? A little bit, maybe - chichifo, I've always thought, is one of the nicest words for rent-boy. But as far as 'naco' is concerned, until I saw the word in that email yesterday I thought of Naco as a drummer - the best there ever was in Italian popular music (until he died a few years ago). His full name was Giuseppe Bonaccorso - brilliant at pop but also a great jazz musician. And he played with several Italian rock groups too.
MONDAY JULY 14, 2008
From: Ellie Deutz, Mexico City, Mexico
You know Simon, you just don't seem like a 'flaming fajitas' person. Living in Thailand too! What would prompt you to come up with that idea for Sunday lunch? A visiting naco?
A visiting naco? I had to check it out - I thought it was a rude word for a Mexican but it seems these days it's less so - more of a vulgar fashionista. Anyway Ellie, you're wrong! I've spent a lot of time in Mexico - one of my favourite places - and eaten a lot of flaming fajitas. In 1983/84 when I was buzzing off to China every month to get Wham! permission to play there, I always flew on round-the-world tickets which meant I spent a few days in Thailand before Beijing, and a few days in Mexico afterwards (PanAm used to fly down there as a side-trip on its rtw ticket.) So it was Acapulco once a month for a couple of years. But back to my Sunday fajitas - they were very compromised ones - the tortillas were actually Indian chapati from the local supermarket, the steak was Thai, and instead of real guacamole I mashed the avocados up with Thai chilis, a touch of creamed coconut and a squeeze of local lime. Mexicans, read and learn - these were way better than traditional fajitas.
SUNDAY JULY 13, 2008
From: Dominic Sio, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Hi Simon,
how are you?
I read your story from your website and really interested to do an interview with you if you're up for it.
It's for the little magazine I started, Stimuli .
Just read your interview in Butt...really like it.
Perhaps we can do an email questionnaire thing?
The magazine is bi-annual so we have a month to do it.
By the way, I'm also a friend of Alec Ewe but have not heard from him
since !?!?.
Hi Dominic - your magazine looks pretty stylish, I like it, so let's say yes (particularly as you're a friend of Alec). But be warned, there's nothing as annoying as getting a stack of questions by email every one of which is already answered in one of my books. The last person who landed that on me was the editor of the Jakarta Post's Weekender Magazine. I yelled at him (via email). He seemed to think I was being unreasonable; said, living in Jakarta how's he going to get hold of them? I figured he might just have heard of Amazon. But apparently not. Still, with that proviso in place, I'm all yours.
SATURDAY JULY 12, 2008
From: Princess Asupa Motuapuaka, Beijing, China
Hi Simon, great to hear from you!! Its a terrible pity that you're coming to Beij and I am not there to see you. I am leaving to Tonga on the 21st for the coronation of our king and will be back in Beij August 5th...
If it was not a coronation, I would postpone my trip but we are also taking the Chinese symphony (90 people) from Beijing so I am stuck... sometimes life is not fair!
hugs
Asupa, darling, so cruel of you..... I arrive on the 28th and leave on the 4th. Any chance you could use your influence within the royal family and get the coronation delayed a week?
Well no, I suppose not! But Beijing without Asupa? Like cappuccino without the chocolate sprinkles. I can't imagine clubbing without you there to provide the sparkle. But I understand - for one of the family a coronation is pretty unmissable. Bit much though stealing the Chinese symphony too. Never mind - I'll be arriving complete with musical group, so no problem - the beautiful Passionata.
FRIDAY JULY 11, 2008
From: Andrew Shorter, London, UK
Hi Simon - I'm holidaying in Thailand in December, will you be around? And how is TV news coverage in English? Is it possible to stay relatively in touch with what's going on in the world?
CNN and BBC deluge us each day with the world's goings-on, and Fox with American politics. And there's also ABC from Australia. So you won't have to worry about being uninformed. For instance, yesterday morning the Australian channel had told us what Jesse Jackson said about Obama's nuts while CNN was still saying it was an unmentionable word. But the best moment yesterday was when I had a sudden insight while watching President Sarkozy talk at the G8 summit. He began getting animated in that mouth-pursing, eye-popping, over-animated way that French politicians use when talking to the plebs. And it suddenly occured to me that's exactly why the British call the French frogs. It's not, as I'd always thought, because they eat the little buggers, but because of the way their politicians talk (President Chirac in full harangue used to look exactly the same, as did President Pompidou). When Sarkozy got heated his eyes suddenly popped foward a centimetre. Then his lips self-collagenised and his head started jerking from side to side. He looked for all the world like a fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) with something large and uncomfortable making its way up his bottom.
THURSDAY JULY 10, 2008
From: Stevie D, New York, NY, USA
Simon, sorry to bother you about this again but about a month ago you said you were working on some remixes of a Quentin Crisp song and you'd let me know when they were avaiblable. Are they finished yet?
Sort of! The person doing them was Simon Henderson, a British producer based in Bangkok. But he encountered a few problems. What he had to work from was a tape I threw in a drawer thirty years ago. The BBC had just shown The Naked Civil Servant and I'd had the idea of asking Quentin Crisp to make a record. The song that seemed right for him was the Peggy Lee hit, Where Did They Go. ("Where did they go all the good times, the flowers and the wine, the young men who held me, all the lovers who were mine.)
Having warned me first that he couldn't sing a note, Quentin then threw himself into it wholeheartedly, speaking the lyrics in a superbly fruity camp voice. The end result sounded pretty good, if a little old-fashioned (and why not - he was already in his early seventies), but every record company I took it to said no - too camp by half. So I slung it in a drawer.
I mentioned this to Simon Henderson who suggested I fish it out and give it to him to work on. The problem was, I didn't have the multi-track, just a stereo master. The voice was virtually inseparable from the track so the best he could do was make a new version of the original song much as it was originally recorded. But he did manage to extract a dozen or so words from the verses that were relatively clean of the original backing track and he used these to make three different dance remixes. I played the whole lot to a few people in the dance side of the business and they all agreed it was best thrown back in the drawer.
Simon H and I aren't sure we agree with them. These dance people are too trendy by half - afraid of being laughed at by their contemporaries for using a sound that's three weeks out of date. But we haven't progressed any further apart from Simon H editing a few pictures to one of the dance versions and putting it on Youtube. Judge for yourself.
WEDNESDAY JULY 9, 2008
From: Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
My Dear Simone,
firstly, the idea of luncheon together this week is hugely appealing and I would be available on Friday. How about The Bay at 1pm? Secondly, my wonderful chef Aek recently served me a fish he buys from the local market called Tuptim. I've never had it before and it is truly delicious. You must try it, perhaps here, cooked by Aek next time you visit.
Hi Francis, Friday's fine, see you there. And re Tuptim, I'm surprised you've lived in Thailand so long and never had it before (your life is too sheltered - all those chefs and servants). Tuptim is easily the most common fish in rural Thailand. It's actually a Tilapia, originally from Egypt and for 2000 years the principal fish of the Nile. Now it's being bred anywhere vaguely tropical, from Jamaica to Japan, particularly in Southern China. In Thailand the King proposed a further development of the fish to make it more fleshy and raise its nutritional value. Ten years of cross-breeding produced the Tuptim. In the countryside they usually lay it in bright sunlight for 12 hours to 'bind' the meat before frying it in a shallow pan and serving it with Thai salad. I had it this way at Bangkok airport just last week for a mere 110 baht (£1.80). Delicious! The fish's name is said to mean 'pink ruby' though the dictionary offers other translations too - 'permangranate', for instance, which is a salty bleaching agent, and pomegranate (the fruit). At a pinch it could also be translated as 'shagging Tim' since the word 'tup' by itself can mean copulate.
TUESDAY JULY 8, 2008
From: Simon White, London, UK
Had a very good day at Henley and Ian Morton was charming, though a little worried about Allan rushing in and out of the changing rooms with his camera and handing personal cards to all pretty oarsmen. I've booked the knife for 16th August.
This is a fortnight later than I'd hoped because I'm due to driving down to Figeac, near Cahors, by the 5th September and then on to Carcassone and Cannes. (This whilst the decorators are here). Then in November to Thailand.
Great! So we're finally going to see you here. I'm sure you'll have no problem leaving for France on the 5th - keyhole surgery is amazing, I was on the plane to London just three weeks after my op. Figeac and Cahors are great wine places. Pre-phylloxera, Cahors made wine by boiling the grapes before pressing to make the juice stronger. They made a wine so dark it was known as 'black' rather than red and it could take up to a hundred years in the bottle to reach its best. Nowadays they make it softer and quicker maturing but back in the 70s I managed to get hold of a couple of bottles of the pre-pylloxera stuff - not particularly soft even after a hundred years but remarkable tasting, and as black as night. In the 15th Century the Russian Orthodox Church adopted Cahors 'black' as their communion wine. Very canny! Even I would have mumbled an occasional amen in return for a good slug of it.
MONDAY JULY 7, 2008
From: Andy Sharpe, Trenton, New Jersey, USA
Hey Simon - a month or so ago when you had your gall bladder out you told us you wouldn't be able to eat anything fatty ever again. How are you finding it? I'm interested because I had my gall bladder out a year ago and they told me the same thing but I've not changed my diet at all and I feel just fine.
Thank-you Andy for enquiring about my health. I'm now totally recovered, though there was a bad period just after the operation. When he let me go home the surgeon warned me not to drink any alcohol for a couple of weeks. So I didn't. And I didn't feel good. I went for a check-up from my regular doctor who took some blood and sent it for testing. The long and the short of it was that my blood alcohol level was dangerously low. He wanted to keep me in hospital for a day or two and put me on a whiskey drip but when I promised to up my intake of wine and calvados he agreed to let me go home. Since then things have been fine. Like you I haven't found the need to change my diet at all, though to be honest I haven't yet dived into a kilo of foie gras. Maybe I'll do that tonight.
SUNDAY JULY 6, 2008
From: Muir Vidler, London, UK
It was very nice to see you... good to bat a couple of ideas around for 'the book'... we could be a good partnership... as you pointed out, because we are not such an obvious
pairing... part travel, part reportage, part diary sounds like a good
cocktail to me...
Hi Muir - after we spoke I talked with my literary agent who was absolutely, utterly, supremely negative in that extraordinary English way I've spent forty years having to put up with in the music business: "Won't work - can't be done - won't sell - totally not worth doing". He had an explanation of course - it's because there are already so many travel books that bookstores HAVE to put on their shelves that there's no room for more. Every bookstore MUST stock the "Lonely Planet" books, MUST stock the "Rough Guides", MUST stock the "Eyewitness Travel Guides" etc. And when they've put all these books about all the different countries onto the shelves there's no room to squeeze any more books between them. "So forget it", was his message and I left feeling a touch depressed. But really, what he'd told me (though he didn't realise it) was that travel books have become the pop records of the book industry. It was always like that in the music business. Every shop had to stock the Top 40 so how could they find room for new artists? And of course we - the managers - solved that problem week after week and got new artists into the charts despite the dreary pessisim of all those miserable people at record companies. From what my agent told me it seems travel books have never before been so popular - nor more boringly formularised. There's obviously a need for something fresh and different and what we're planning could be perfect. A bit more focussing perhaps, then we should get on with it. And with photos like yours how can it fail.
Sharon Osbourne by Muir Vidler
SATURDAY JULY 5, 2008
From: Danny Jamieson, Vancouver, BC, Canada
A long time back I remember you talking about what books you'd been reading - a strange bunch if I recall correctly - and I thought it was time for another update. Myself I've just finished Barrack Obama's book about his father which I found dull rather than inspiring. I thought back to that wonderful play John Mortimer wrote - "A Voyage Round Father" - more insightful, more amusing, more revelatory. If only America could import its presidents from Britain. Anyway Simon... read any good books lately?
Not many! I don't much like fiction, just factual stuff, memoirs, autobiography. Though that's not altogether true because I enjoy reading fiction in Thai. Not sure why. Perhaps because I read slower in Thai and the story helps pull me through the book whereas if I want facts I prefer to gobble them up fast in English. Currently I have two books by my bed. In Thai, The Remains of The Day by that strange Japanese man who writes in English, Kazuo Ishi Wotsit. Since what he produces is already the fruit of two cultures it seems reasonable enough to read it in a third, and in Thai it works rather well - I can't imagine it would be as good in English. Next to that is "Quicksands", a book by my favourite writer of English, Sybille Bedford. Second time of reading and still stunning. Written when she was almost blind at 93 and as witty and youthful and sharp (though not hopeful) as something written by a thirty-year-old.
FRIDAY JULY 4, 2008
From: Anthony Anderman, Singapore
Thanks for coming down to see us last night. If the meal was a bit casual I trust at least the wine made up for it. Sorry about the karaoke. Hope you made your flight.
Anthony - the meal was ridiculous, probably the biggest collection of seafood I've ever had put in front of me, but the karaoke, as always, was the worst possible way to end an evening. Since other people had to be considered, you're forgiven. I shouldn't really be so snooty about it, the last time I was in Singapore I was in a karaoke bar too, though not on purpose - I was looking for somewhere else and wandered into the karaoke bar by mistake and there singing his balls off was Jerome Walton who used to be the Pink Floyd's tour accountant. The end result was an all night bar crawl during which we somehow got emeshed with an exceedingly posh Thai girl (the daughter of a Thai general) who ran all the Thai hookers in Singapore. They're given official licences by the Singapore government to come and 'hook' within the law for a three year period on the condition they'll never enter Singapore again afterwards. Odd place isn't it - Puritan yet pragmatic - which is one more reason why I think your project will do well.
THURSDAY JULY 3, 2008
From: Gordon Torrance, Jakarta, Indonesia
Yesterday, reading your website and pondering on the delights of a kiss with Mr Soonsiri, I realised it's been a long time since we've been in touch. So how are you? Last time we met you looked very different. A lifetime of eating and drinking, I suppose. Anyway, just to remind you of what was, here's a picture I took of you in my flat in 1976.
Hi Gordon, I remember your flat well - in Manchester Square - grand but ragged round the edges, untidy, with lots of things lying around, most of them applicants for that pop group you endlessly planned to launch but never quite did. (I always presumed it wasn't really meant for launching, just for auditioning.) Anyway, good to hear from you. Actually I was in Jakarta recently but had no idea you were there. Never mind! We've done quite well not seeing each other for thirty years - should manage another thirty OK, don't you think?
WEDNESDAY JULY 2, 2008
From: Charles Arnold, London, UK
Dear Simon Napier-Bell, my wife and I have enjoyed two wonderful holidays in Phuket. We considered buying a small holiday home there but my wife began reading about Thai politics and is now worried that our investment might not be secure. A few days ago I chanced on your website and read a piece by you in which you were extraordinarily sanguine about the political situation in Thailand, saying the country was a secure place in which to invest and that there was nothing to worry about. Excuse me asking this but is what you wrote really your considered opinion or were you writing that way simply to be amusing?
What a tedious question! Of course I meant what I wrote. I reckon you and your boring wife should stick to package holidays in Phuket. And if you really want to know about Thai politics take a look at the picture below. Mr Prasong Soonsiri has been a leading political figure and a deft operator for the last twenty-five years; when he speaks other politicians listen, yet his mouth perfectly sums up Thai politics - a dirty place to be. To form a government, many a Prime Minister has had to get into bed with him. Would you like to? Or your wife, maybe?
I'm told he gives a mean kiss.
TUESDAY JULY 1, 2008
From: Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
Morning Simon: read the story and give me your thoughts?
(MTV are about to do digital downloads.) Biggest Kiss.
Hi Bibi,
it's a natural thing to happen. I've thought for a long time - the future of popular music is for every radio and TV station to offer downloads of their currently playing song. The real potential being with car radio.
When you tune your car radio, you set up a credit card account with with each station. When you're driving and they play a song you like you tap a button on the radio and the song goes straight on to your in-car recordable hard-disk, charged to your credit card. The result? Billions of downloads - though cheap-cheap prices need to be a part of it too. Radios and TVs at home will have the same facility. But it's cars that offer the big future for downloading.
MONDAY JUNE 30, 2008
From: Philip Adey, London, UK
Hi Simon,
How are you? I hope this finds you and Yo well and enjoying life.
I pass on the message below as I notice that you are a 'lost' Old Boy. How careless of them. No doubt if you have any desire at all for them to be able to contact you, you are quite capable of letting them know.
Hi Philip, thanks for passing on the letter from Bryanston. I have no objection to putting myself in touch with the place but I'm surprised they don't tell a secretary to key their 'missing' old boys into a search engine. I'm sure a quick Google would find half of them at least. In my case the first page would bring up at least twenty sites with links to my email address. But maybe they don't use emails. When we were there it was considered one of the more progressive public schools. Now I'm wondering if they even have a computer?
SUNDAY JUNE 29, 2008
From: Archie Hart, Brighton, UK
Hi Simon
I was surprised yesterday to see you singing the praises of one of those miserable ‘neither one thing nor another’ musical groups. All that pappy middle-of-the-road ‘pop meets classics’ stuff has been done to death - it couldn’t be more old-hat. What's happened to the man who used to boast he'd given us The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan, and Wham! (who at least were uncompromisingly good pop)? Nowadays, it seems, you’ve sunk to doing anything for a good dinner.
Archie, you miserable codger, I wish you’d hurry up and die. Since a good dinner involves good conversation I’d be surprised if you’ve ever had one. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever enjoyed talking to you.
Re the groups I mentioned, there’s no way could any of them be called middle-of-the-road – they’re the very opposite. Passionata, for example, are the extreme outsides of two different roads – uncompromising opera with uncompromising rock. I can’t think of anything more powerful in sound and attack than a great rock group pounding along in full heat other than a great operatic chrous. Replace the orchestra with the rock group and you have a musical powerhouse that carries both genres to new heights.
I’ll make a deal with you. Do everyone a favour and pop off during the next twelve months. In return I’ll book Passionata for your funeral and we’ll all celebrate with a cheerful rock-driven Hallelujah Chorus.
SATURDAY JUNE 28, 2008
From: Casey Dale, Santa Monica, California, USA
Hi Simon, you said you'd be in London this week but I've seen nothing on your website about it. What you up to?
What I'm up to is 'being in London', which this week has been a full-time occupation. I came here to meet Dominic and Al Lyon who run the music-biz's most interesting new company, Young Guns UK.
Al and Dom were both violinists but decided to form a company to package music for corporate events. The results have been spectacular. One of their groups, Escala, just came 2nd on 'Britain Has Talent' - four girls, two violins, a viola, a cello, short skirts, long legs, flashy hair and lots of strutting. Even more eye-catching are Passionata, five striking blondes who sing opera to a heavy rock backing. And Eclipse, four guys who play classical strings with a rock presentation. Dom and Al are looking towards the Far East and thought I might give them some advice. I'm not sure I've done so - mostly what I remember is a dinner at which we consumed eight bottles of wine before moving on to even more serious drinking elsewhere. Last night I was excused a repeat because Dom went with Passionata to entertain the Prime Minister and his dinner guests at Chequers. This afternoon Escala are playing at the O2 arena in Grenwich. Tonight there'll be more food and wine. Tomorrow I'll cure my hangover with champagne on the flight home to Thailand. Next week I'll do this all over again with some folks in Singapore. Strange business, consultancy!
FRIDAY JUNE 27, 2008
From: Simon Shukat, London, UK
Simon Napier-Bell - why on earth are there so many of us these days? I mean - so many Simons - especially in the music business. There's you, and there's Simon Cowell, and his producer Simon Fuller, and I looked up Simon Cowell's company and his partner is called Simon Jones, and then there's the record producer who sends silly pictures to your website, Simon Henderson, there's a journalist with the Guardian, Simon Heffer. When I was at school (thirty years ago) I can't remember there being a single other Simon in the school. Nowadays I feel I've lost my exclusivity.
Me too - I was the only Simon in a school of 400, but today I bet there'd be a dozen. But the name still isn't in the top twenty, which is surprising when you realise that Joshua is number 4 and Ethan is number fifteen. (Who's ever met someone called Ethan, for God's sake?)
As to why it's become such a popular name, it started with a UK TV series in the early 60s called 'The Saint' in which the lead character (played by Roger Moore) was called Simon Templar. By the 70s this had caused the Simon population to increase tenfold, and with ten times the number around a few more famous ones emerged, which caused it to increase again. Now the blighters are all over the place. But being Simon is still a lot better than being Bruce or Jack or Mick. Don't you think?
THURSDAY JUNE 26, 2008
From: Colonel Jim, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK
Dear Simon,
I see that you claim never to have had anonymous sex in a dark place!
During National Service in the fifties I read
Compton Mackenxie's then new novel "Thin Ice" which led me on an
adventure to Jack Straw's Castle in Hampstead, and then to the Heath. I didn't wear
uniform but it didn't take long to "click" and it was an amazing anodyne
for the frustrations of the times in which we then lived.
Sorry Colonel, what I said wasn't clear. One of the great things about being gay is the way easy sexual encounters turn up from nowhere. I've had hundreds of them, often with people I'd never met till that moment and never saw again afterwards. But - by 'anonymous sex in dark places' - I meant sex in blacked-out rooms in gay clubs, or at 2am in the bushes on Hampstead Heath. For me the most sexually arousing thing about a person is the way they look. It puzzles me that someone should want to have sex with a stranger they can't see. Though with an ugly old bugger like you it might have its advantages.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 25, 2008
From: Gerald Dance, Bristol, UK
Simon, you've often described yourself as a bit of an outsider, a loner even, not wanting to join in, not good with teams, yet yesterday you described yourself travelling across London as a teenager to do exactly that, to play with a jazz orchestra, which I would have thought was quite a 'teamy' thing to do. Isn't that something of an anomaly?
Yes, it probably is. But even so, playing trumpet in the brass section of a big band is probably the most exhilarating thing I ever did in my life - the rhythm section belting away underneath and the brass section roaring along on top, ten or so instruments playing as one. Despite this astonishing precision and unity not one of those people need ever to have met before yet they can still sit together in a brass section sight-reading the music and swinging orgasmically without even having a rehearsal. (Though sometimes it absolutely does NOT work that way.) Only one other thing in my life has given me the same experience - rowing in an eight. At the moment the eight oarsmen hit a perfectly synchronised stroke and surge forward at maximum pace, it's exactly the same feeling. Yet I never liked anyone else I rowed with and spent absolutley no time with them whatsoever other than when we rowing. The same, perhaps, as having wonderful anonymous sex with a stranger in a dark place - something I've never done, nor ever wanted to - but which an awful lot of people speak highly of.
TUESDAY JUNE 24, 2008
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi simon... here's an mp3 of
shorty rogers and stan kenton doing one of billy strayhorns most popular songs - 'Take the A Train'
[i hope the trumpet isn't too shrill for your morning as you open this.]
maybe save it for later in the day.
This 'Take the A-train' the arrangement is exactly the one I used to play with pick up swing bands in the school holidays (circa the mid 50s), amateur musicians who got together through ads in the Melody Maker. My own 'A-train' was the disgustingly dirty Southern Railway one I took from Clapham Junction to somewhere south of Lewsiham. (In those days London was filthy. Most buildings hadn't been cleaned since before the war, and industrial smoke belched everywhere. I grew up thinking all those white buildings along the embankment at Westminster, like the Shell building, were made of black stone.)
Anyway, 15-years old-ish, I'd set off with my trumpet to end up at a depressing Victorian school building in south London, used during the holidays for amateur band rehearsals. Then the dreariness of 50s London disappeared. I'd find myself in a twenty-five piece band playing arrangements by Duke Ellington, or Basie, or Kenton - learning to play the choruses tight, swinging on all those brass riffs I'd been listening to on the gramophone in my bedroom since I was 10.
The people in those rehearsal bands were amazing - kids like me, men of 70 who were retired musicians from the army, taxi drivers, doormen - there was even a hooker who played a mean alto sax. And there was no point giving up our free day and going all the way there if we didn't do it brilliantly, so everyone gave their best. It was great training for later becoming a professional musician where you turned up at gigs and had parts shoved in front of you you'd never seen before, sight-reading them straight off with all those 'be-bop, da-wop-dop, da-ditty-bop' phrases to be played spot-on first time.
MONDAY JUNE 23, 2008
From: June Shorter, London, UK
hi simon... i'm a media student writing a piece on business achievers... i want to ask you... of all the things you've done in the music biz what are you most proud of?
Pride and working in he music industry don’t really go together. I’ve learnt the art of management - of getting the best out of people - that sort of thing. But to have used that to turn reasonably pleasant teenagers into ego-maniacs doesn’t seem particularly pride-worthy. Anyway, 'pride' is a such a grand word. And 'being proud' sounds so pompous. In my teens and early twenties I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. The fact that I've got through it without creating a major disaster for myself or anyone else is enough to give me some quiet satisfaction.
SUNDAY JUNE 22, 2008
From: Daniel Anstee, Richmond, Virginia, USA
Hey Simon. I just finished reading "I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch". A wonderful read, and so like a novel it made me think that that's what you should be writing - fiction.
I’ve never been interested in writing fiction. It seems a cheat. You sit down to write from your experience, then when it doesn’t flow quite right you say, 'Oh never mind, I’ll make something up'. Much more fun to take fact and re-balance it; to filter it; to adjust the balance of the charcters in the story until it becomes interesting. With ‘I’m Coming To Take You To Lunch’ I tried to make it read like a novel. To do this everything had to be put into a new balance. The character Rolf was made much more present in the book than he had been in real life – every last one of my experiences with him was included - whereas Wham! were made much less present. The end result was that in reading the book Rolf felt like half the story. Which in my mind, thinking back on it, was the truth.
Wham! were just two annoying teenagers I had to deal with on a business level, but Rolf was a fascinating and intriguing man whose company I enjoyed enormously. Most of the time I spent with Wham! was easily forgetable, but the time I passed with Rolf was always memorable. The book accurately conveys the balance in which I remember events – so it's the truth, at least in regard to how my mind works. Some people might say 'truth' would be better represented by a journalistic approach, describing every last thing that happened during the period. But that would be a lie to my memory of it.
So which is the more truthful account - the one I spontaneously recall, or the one I would have to go back to and research?
SATURDAY JUNE 21, 2008
From: Eloïse Hendl, Stuttgart, Germany
I can tell you, Mr. Simon Napier-Bell, that you look a whole lot better when you push your head through a cardboard cutout and take over the body of well-shaped Thai gentleman. Anyway... greetings from an old friend. Hope you are well.
Eloise, my dear, taking over the body of a well-shaped Thai gentleman sounds a lot more exciting than having my photo taken with a passing tourist, and infinitely nicer than hearing from you. Actually, I'm surprised to hear you're still alive - you must be ancient by now, completely unphotographable I would have thought, even with the help of a cardboard cutout. Anyway, since you've decided to make contact after all this time (more than twenty years, isn't it) - please remember you still owe me a case of Dom Perignom for saying something nice about your horrible little pop singer on New Faces.
FRIDAY JUNE 20, 2008
From: Jamie Dorsett, Boston, Mass, USA
Hey Simon! You used to be so delightfully grumpy but lately you've been getting too nice. Where have all those cutting replies to readers emails gone? D'you think they might have cut your spleen out along with your gall bladder?
Perhaps they did. My endless good humour surprises even me. I mean, just look at the picture above. Three young Thai girls, out-of-towners, needed someone vaguely male to stick their head through the hole in a cardboard cutout in a shopping mall, and I was persuaded. Not just once, but three times, once for each girl. But it won't last, I promise you. I'm working hard at getting back to normal and it shouldn't take much - an evangelising email should do the trick, or a trip to a record company to meet an A&R man.
THURSDAY JUNE 19, 2008
From: Jack Addy, London, UK
hi si... i was amused at your story about boney m yesterday... i seem to remember you telling me at the time what a nightmare they were to deal with... now you make it all sound like fun... in fact i recall you saying they were the dumbest bunch you'd ever met...
Those things aren't necessarily incompatible. The group were certainly difficult to deal with - they argued incessantly - but they'd been together long enough that they knew each other intimately. Take sides with anyone of them and you'd be squashed by all the others. All in all though, it was fun, much more so than managing Wham! which is what had preceeded it. It was 'little business', not big. They were paid in thousands, not hundreds of thousands - and they played to only thousands of people too, not tens of thousands - which meant less pressure. But it's true they weren't the brightest bunch. Marcia and her husband, when they had their first baby, wanted it to grow up classy, intelligent and with good taste. So they mixed caviar with its baby food.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 18, 2008
From: Liz Heriard, Paris, France
Simon, a while back you said you managed Boney M when they had their big success in France in the mid-80s. If I remember right, that would have been at the same time as when Wham! were big. How did you manage to do both things at the same time. How many acts do you think one manager can manage on his own?
I managed Wham! jointly with Jazz Summers. I didn't start managing Boney M until after Wham! had disbanded. I managed them jointly with Donavon (one of my exes, much featured in "I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch").
The summer in which Boney M's single and album stayed for three months at number one in the French charts was one of the most enjoyable ever. The group worked in France four days a week, Thursday to Sunday. Since Donavon and I managed them jointly we would go with them alternate weekends. They lived all over the place and flew into Paris each Thursday morning, Bobby from Amsterdam, Marcia from Florida, etc. We'd always start with a cheerful late breakfast at Charles de Gaulle.
Although Boney M were at number one, working them round France wasn't quite in the same league as stadium tours of America, but it was much more fun. France on its summer holidays is one of the nicest place in the world and we were mostly by the seaside.
Halfway through the summer we changed to a new booking agent. He'd been well recommended, but the real reason we changed is because he paid us in advance for a hundred performances, which was no small chunk of money. But it began to go wrong from the first gig.
He met us at the airport in a large comfortable coach but after three hours driving I began to get concerned. If any venue was more than two hours from Paris it was in our contract we would fly. "How much further?" I asked.
"Just a couple more hours," he reassured me.
I settled for making a face. But six hours later with the group near rebellion I was standing over him yelling as the bus bumped furiously along at ninety kilometres an hour heading South West. “You lying bastard - where the hell are you taking us?"
Finally he owned up. “It’s just north of Bordeaux but it was impossible to get air tickets because of the holiday season.”
All lies. He’d probably saved himself £300 doing it this way. The problem was, these gigs always had the name of the local small town on the contract and when this one had arrived and I looked it up on the map and found a small town with the same name on the coast about two hundred kilometres miles from Paris. Perhaps he knew I would – maybe he’d planned to get round me by using that name.
There was little we could do. Refuse to carry on. Insist on turning back to Paris. Stop and get out on the highway in the middle of nowhere. Or soldier on like the good pros we all were.
Nine hours after leaving Charles de Gaulle, the bus arrived.
It was a seaside town with the usual super atmosphere of the South of France in August - holiday time, colourful, good humoured and impossible to continue in a bad mood. The dressing room was clean, with good local wine and decent French bread and fillings. So everyone calmed down. The performance would be at 9pm in a large marquee, big enough to hold a thousand people. Not exactly Madison Square Gardens, but I told myself that that was the beauty of the music business, one month in America doing stadiums, the next in France playing holiday resorts. And when it comes to eating and drinking and enjoying life, French holiday resorts win hands down. But the group got difficult again at the soundcheck
“This mike stand's too short.”
“Bobby's doesn’t have a switch.”
“There’s no tea in the dressing-room. You know I can’t drink coffee.”
“Have you told them no photographs?”
The last, from Marcia. She was obsessed with there being no photographs at gigs. Why, I had no idea. I think she’d read somewhere about super-groups taking hold of their own careers and earning money from every last detail. But how on earth she thought she could make a thousand French holiday-makers leave their cameras outside the marquee, I couldn’t think. When the performance started and flashes started going off all round her she would come to the front of the stage and glare at the audience - she did it at all these small gigs - harangue the crowd until they started booing, after which she'd get on with the gig as usual. It had become a standard part of the group’s performance throughout the summer. But tonight was a little different.
About ten minutes into it the sound system failed. Without the music blaring we became aware of an alternative sound, a howling wind and noisly flapping bits of tent. Then the tent simply disappeared from above our heads and in poured the rain - it had only been a couple of major gusts but it was enough to uproot the canvas and leave us standing in the middle of a thunderstorm. The rain came down in slashing waves, the group ran back to the dressing-room and I ran from the front of stage to the back of where the tent had been trying to reach them. But someone accidentally set off the firework display intended for later and I ran right into the middle of it - screaming rockets, giant roman candles, cascading flares and ear-splitting planet-shakers.
When I finally reached the dressing-room I found our agent under a settee crying his eyes out. The local promoter was a busty blonde and she was sitting on top of the sofa swigging from a bottle of red wine. "He's afraid of thunder," she explained.
I wrenched him out from under the settee and demanded, "Fetch the bus. Take us to the the hotel."
"The hotel's at the town where you're playing tomorrow," the busty blonde explained. "Lapin-Les-Bains."
"Are you the promoter of that one too," I asked. "It's not another tent is it?"
"No! We've built the stage right on the sand."
“Have you checked what time the tide comes in?"
She shrugged and took another swig. But actually, the next night's gig was rather good. The weather was marvellous and the mayor treated us to a late night banquet in the town square afterwards.
TUESDAY JUNE 17, 2008
From: Archie Shwartz, Douglas, Isle of Man, UK
hey Simon - having followed your emails earlier in the year about Guy Hands, I thought you'd enjoy reading this piece in the New York Times showing how totally wrong he's been about everything - pretty much what you forecast. Seems that now he's been through all the accounts he's found out that while he'd previously thought EMI Records had been running at profit, albeit a small one, it has only been doing so because of back catalogue - Beatles, Sinatra, Queen, etc.
Anyone in the industry with half a brain new that ages ago, long before Guy Hands rushed in and bought the company. But then Hands is not from the industry and doesn't have half a brain - certainly not the half that's needed in the music business. Now everyone at EMI is sitting around on tenterhooks waiting to see how the new Coldplay album is going to do - will they still be in a job or out of one - which is exactly what was happening previously with each new Radiohead album, until they walked out. And it's exactly what Guy Hands - brash, blond and boot-headed - said would never happen again once he took over. When he first bought the company he was shocked to discover artists took drugs and stayed up late. Previously he was famous for turning round failed service stations on German motorways by putting in new toilets. I wonder, when he took over that company, if he was surprised to learn that the people who used those toilets ate sauerkraut and drove on the right. He's not strong on research, nor on taking advice, and he has a very nasty hairstyle. All good reasons for failing in the music industry.
MONDAY JUNE 16, 2008
From: Samnang, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Dear Mr Simon... I enjoy I know you from your website. I like comment on music and its business... also on other thing, like food which I have special interest cos I am chef. But chef who love music too... George Michael very much, Westlife too. I am 40 now and still singer in a band... but difficult cos chef and singer is both work in the evening. Anyway I want to ask you.... I know you like to cook... do you like to try new dish? I am send you Cambodia recipe for try.
Thank-you, Samnang. And in due course I'll try it. As you've probably realised if you read here often, I quite like cooking - open the white wine, have some nibbles and get on with a delicious main course to be eaten outside in the tropical night accompanied by some good red and a few sups of calvados to follow. Last time I wrote about cooking on the website I was struggling with a supermarket pack of ox penis bought to me by friends from China. To be honest, I couldn't turn it into a dish I would bother to repeat. But last night I was reminded of my struggles with the bull's knob when I tried a dish suggested by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his column in the Guardian. It included chorizo, which once cut in half from the u-shape it comes in, looks suspicioulsy like a pig's dick. Which it isn't.
It is however a very coarse Spanish sausage, made from chopped fatty pork, or anything else from the pig that's left over, with a substantial addition of smoked paprika to make sure that anything evil tasting is covered by a peppery tang on the tongue. Actually, I rather like chorizo, and have done since I first went to Spain, nearly fifty years ago. That was years before it was a prime tourist resort. Then, a Spanish baguette about a foot and a half long, cut in half and filled with chorizo cut crossways in chunks, plus a full tumbler of Spanish brandy (like Fundador or Soberano, both pretty rough back then), cost a total of only 80 centavos (one three hundredth of an English pound in those days). A very cheap lunch indeed.
OK! Back to Hugh Fearsomely-Witless. He wrote a piece in the Guardian the other day about how all the greatest quickly-prepared dishes were perfect balances of three ingredients. The whole point of these three-ingedient dishes is the way each of the three ingredients are in balance with each other, like tricolore salad - three bland flavours - mozarella, avocado and tomato - which balance perfectly and make a combined flavour better, and less bland, than any of the individual ingredients. Anyway, one of the dishes Fearsomely-Witless was proposing (and which the equally witless Napier-Bell fell for trying to cook) was a sauté of broad beans, chorizo and fresh scallops. It struck me as unlikely they would balance well, scallops being amongst the most subtly flavoured shellfish and chorizo amongst the most coarsely flavoured sausages. But I tried it anyway. And it was exactly as you would expect - the chorizo totally dominating, the scallops totally crushed, the beans struggling somewhere in the middle.
Which just goes to prove, when you have a weekly food column in a daily paper, the pressure to find something new to write about will cause you to think up all sorts of rubbishy dishes that aren't worth a toss. Like having to write this email everyday for my website. Somedays it ends up almost as second-rate as a Fearsomely-Witless recipe.
SUNDAY JUNE 15, 2008
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK.
hey baby... i know you find this bleeder (Bob Lefsetz) a bit dreary sometimes, but this is a fair read.
Hi Gregory, I never said I didn't like Bob Lefsetz - he's one of the more clear-sighted commentators on the US music scene - but even so, when you read something like this (which isn't bad) you have to think - this guy is around 40 and it seems like this is the first time he's ever been to Asia. I mean most Americans still think the world is the USA plus a bit of backyard space for all the others. Then when they go there they're amazed - well, some of them are - and they're the good ones, like Lefsetz. The others just close their eyes and behave as Americans travelling overseas have always had the reputation of behaving. Like yesterday morning - Yo and I went to one of the five-star hotels in town to have a buffet breakfast. Two Americans sat eight tables apart and had a shouted conversation over the heads of everyone else. If they couldn't see how much the people sitting in that restaurant loathed the sound of their voices how could they possibly see all the really worthwhile things that surround them when they travel?
Cheers from grumpy Simon.
SATURDAY JUNE 14, 2008
From: Lillie Shuyo, Los Angeles, California, USA
Hi Simon, back in the 70s I was a mad Japan fan - a teenager in Tokyo - and I screamed till I cried from the back row when they played at the Budokan. I gather from some of the things you've said on your website that you speak Thai but I also noticed from reading Black Vinyl White Powder that in the Japan days, you studied Japanese too. Did you learn to speak it properly?
No! My Thai's pretty good but I never got far with Japanese. But you're right, I studied it for a while while I was managing Japan in the 70s.
I'd completely failed to break the band in the UK but when I went to Tokyo and met the Japanese record company I found people so committed to breaking the band that I thought it worthwhile learning a bit of Japanese. So when I got back to London I enrolled at the Anglo-Japanese Foundation in Beaconsfield and drove there every morning at 6am throughout the winter to spend three hours studying.
Next time I was in Japan I was amazed to find I'd mastered enough to be understood, but frustrated to find how little. Unlike every other country I'd ever been to, the Japanese didn't seem to much like foreigners speaking their language. It was as if they felt you'd learnt it to spy on them. And in the end that's exactly what I used it for.
We'd given permission to one of the Japanese music magazines to publish a 'special' on Japan - a hundred page glossy one-off edition for a royalty of 8 per cent paid in advance for the number of copies they intended to produce, which was 20,000. I got a tip-off from our promoter that they'd printed way over that figure so I asked for a meeting with the publisher. The editor and his boss came to the meeting and I had no idea how to pursue the matter because everyone had told me I absolutely must not be confrontational. So I congratulated them on the quality of the 'special' they'd produced, then said I'd heard they were going into a reprint over and above the 20,000 we'd agreed.
"Of course," I told them, "I know you'll be accounting to me shortly for the extra copies but since our agreement was only for 20,000 shouldn't we just add a note to our original agreement refering to this reprint."
I was so off-hand and polite they were completely thrown. They confered urgently and from the tiny amount of Japanese I'd learnt I thought I picked out the figures 20,000 and 42,000 thousand.
I could only surmise that the editor was telling his boss that they'd agreed to print just 20,000 but had actually printed 42,000.
The magazine boss turned politely to me and said: "My editor says perhaps we will print another five thousand but we have not done so yet.
You are right, we could make a letter to agree that."
I took a chance that what I'd heard was right. "I've been talking with the the fan club and from what I've learnt I think it would be possible to sell more than that. I think we should be able to sell forty-two thousand altogether. And I'd really like you to try to sell that many. If you could sell torty-two thousand I'd consider it a great success."
