Here is another short excerpt from my forthcoming book ‘A Hero’s Journey Through the Music Industry’. Out soonish……

It’s early spring 2006 and I’m in London at the PRS building (Performing Rights Society) standing before a room full of music industry people who have assembled to hear ‘How we did it?’ They are here to listen to our ‘giant-killing‘ fairy tale of how the little guy took on the big guy (in this case the biggest guy on the block, X-Factor) and triumphed. I am describing our journey from a provincial indie label to Number One record and (eventually) 1 million sales and sharing some of the experiences and the odd funny story with the assembled throng and it all seems to be going quite well. I have done a few of these events now, (I’m starting to feel like a game show host). 

Success attracts! 

They all want to know “how we did it”, and they are here because they want to know how or what  they can learn  from what we did, and, secretly, they want to know if  they can “do it themselves?” Strange now how it feels to be ‘the other side of the looking glass’ when just a short time ago I was sat out there with them in this very same room, attending seminars and industry sessions and asking the same kind of questions that they were now asking me, and now, for some strange reason, I  seem to know the answers, or some of them anyway.

After I have outlined our origins story and detailed our journey from spare bedroom to Number 1 selling status we enter the Q&A session and the questions come thick and fast. It worries me how some of my answers now might seem rehearsed or automatic or by rote but that is only because I have given them so often recently, and of course, I am always keen to preach from the Gospel of Indie (the holiest of pops texts.) And they want me to impart to them the magic words to our particular kind of spell – forget game show host, I’m starting to feel like Harry-fucking-Potter! I repeat the indie mantra over and over again, “we did it ourselves…we did it our way…no help from the majors….” when slowly it begins to dawn on me, a bit like those energy-saving light bulbs that take eons to come to full illumination, slowly but certainly…over time…

      …THEY DONT BELIEVE ME! 

They don’t believe me when I say we did it “ourselves”, and without the aid of a Major player or Major record label in the background pulling the strings. I am staggered momentarily by this eco-lightbulb epiphany. I realise my indie ethics are being tolerated even humoured, just as long as I give them the inside line on how we achieved a number 1 record, at Christmas time (as if it were that easy!). As if I am just keeping up the pretence that we are what we say we are – Independent and will live or die by what we believe in.  That there is only Dorothy, Toto, and her trio of incomplete misfits and no omnipotent Wizard of Oz (or should that be Wizard of X?)  behind the screen controlling it all?

Stick ‘em Up Punks!

At this point, I decide to stop and to ask for a show of hands as I ask them a direct question; “How many people in the room believe we achieved this level of success only by doing some kind of  deal with a Major record label even though I have just told you we did it ourselves?” Somewhere in the order of  90% of the hands in that room simultaneously (and in what appeared to me to be in a Pekinpah-esque ultra-slow-motion) reached for the ceiling…! I was stunned!  (F*****g appalled actually).

So with my next question, I asked why that belief should prevail amongst so many seasoned “industry professionals” despite my protestations to the contrary? That we are and always have been independent. “Why would I stand here for the best part of an hour and state categorically that we received no assistance from a Major record label?  Why?”

After a short (even dramatic) pause, the answer came back something like this, as one man purposely rose to his feet, looked me in the eye, and spoke these words slowly and deliberately in answer to my protestations, and in what felt like  a somewhat accusatory tone;

   “because it’s impossible for you to do what you say did, without the help of a major record label…”.

There are none so deaf as the music industry.

In a strange way (eventually) I guess I took some kind of satisfaction from this as, in an ironic way, it actually elevates the level of our achievement because of the general consensus within the industry that …” it was impossible to do what we had done”. Using their metric that must mean that we had actually…

DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE?

In the music industry, perception is everything. This perception  – that our achievement was due in the most part to the support or assistance of a major player in the industry – would prevail amongst seasoned industry professionals no matter how many times I tried to tell them to the contrary. For me, that was reason enough to pick up my pen and start telling our story and to put the record straight,

so…once upon a time,

in a Galaxy far,

far away…….