Murky goings on in the music world.......to the sublime music of Fernando Carulli and Georg Frederic Handel...
Murky goings on in the music world.......to the sublime music of Fernando Carulli and Georg Frederic Handel...
Robin Hill’s ‘Eclectic City’ - Episode 35
Music: ‘Paperback Writer’ performed by Robin Hill & Peter Wiltschinsky
Hello, this is Robin Hill, and welcome to Episode 35 of ‘Eclectic City’. The music you just heard was Peter Wiltschinsky’s arrangement of ‘Paperback Writer’ from our Classic Beatles Double album.
It was performed there by myself and Peter Wiltschinsky.
So far the preceding 34 episodes have focused on the more positive aspects of a long career in the music business.
This week I’d like to speak of a few ‘interesting’ experiences I’ve had along the way.
We go back to a 17 year old Robin playing with a great band of musicians called Spring.
We were getting some good work on the university circuit playing mainly original jazz/rock material. We had supported bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Hawkwind, Canned Heat, the Keef Hartley Band and Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum.
We had work but not enough…we needed an agent who would represent us and get us more gigs on the college/university circuit.
We managed to find an agent, lets call him Ron Deed
Ron Deed was an agent based in Salford. He came to one of our rehearsals in the crypt of Bedford Church in Leigh where we rehearsed twice a week.
We played a couple of numbers for him.
‘That’s great, lads, but where can I sell it?’
We told him we were going down very well on the college circuit and that that was the kind of work we were after.
He suggested we paid him a weekly fee of £10 to work on our behalf and that he would see what he could do.
Well, in 1970 £10 was a large sum of money but, nevertheless, we decided to give him a try…
Amazingly, after only a week, he came up with a great booking at Sheffield University….it was about 9 months in the future but it was there…
This was quickly followed by a few more…Manchester University, Nottingham University, Lancaster University….this was all looking promising…
The weeks went by and every week Mr Dead turned up for his money…..and every week he came up with another engagement.
One day, I don’t really know why just intuition I suppose, I thought…it wouldn’t do any harm just to check with the universities that these gigs are bona fide….so I called Sheffield University and spoke to the Student Union’s Social Secretary….you guessed it…they had no knowledge of the gig….it was exactly the same story for all of them…I tried to contact Ron Dead to no avail….the next time I saw him, Mr Deed was a bald man, he was advertising toupees in the News of the World! Before and after!
Pictured before a most disconsolate Mr Deed and afterwards, crowned by a most outrageous wig, he was wreathed in smiles and in the company of a very glamorous blonde. We, however, were definitely not wreathed in smiles.
Luckily for Mr Deed we never saw him again and, unluckily for us, we lost quite a lot of money and quite a lot of faith in the human race!
Well that kind of story is quite common in the world of popular and rock music but surely not in ‘classical’ music? Wrong!
Here is a track from my debut album with Peter Wiltschinsky.
This is the ‘Largo and Rondo’ from Fernando Carulli’s, ’Nocturne de Salon’ and this album was sponsored by a Lancashire con man and fraudster based in Canada….more about his story after this…
MUSIC: Allegro (from Nocturne de Salon’ Fernando Carulli) played by Robin Hill & Peter Wiltschinsky
That was the Largo and Rondo from Fernando Carulli’s ‘Nocturne de Salon performed there by myself and PW. Incidentally that recording was featured regularly in TV series ‘Lovejoy’.
Well as I said in the introduction to that piece the recording of that album was sponsored by a Lancashire, con man and fraudster who we later discovered was wanted by the Canadian police!
Our first brush with him was when he was recruited by our then agent and management to try to get get us a record deal. Let’s call him ‘Kill Bill’ he spoke with a weird mid-atlantic accent and he told us,
’You guys have got to get your asses to the Midem Festival in Cannes…all the goddam record industry will be there.’
So our management company arranged to fly us to the South of France and booked a stand at the Midem Festival where we could play live.
This was the year when Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video had just been released and it could be seen everywhere at the festival.
Kill Bill said we also had to get our asses down to the Hotel Martinez for the ‘Martinez Experience’.
Again this was where big deals were made and where a half of lager cost the equivalent of 50 quid!
We went down to the Martinez one night where Kill Bill informed us he was ‘selling goddam dreams for chrissake.’
However this whole trip was turning into something of a nightmare…we were largely ignored on our stand…playing unamplified classical music when, all around us, was Michael Jackson and loud amplified pop music! We were developing an increasing dislike of Kill Bill…and completely mystified to why he would take an interest in a classical guitar duo!!
Long story short, after Peter and I shared a very expensive half of lager in the Martinez, we were very pleased to be flying home the next day!
However, we had not seen the last of Kill Bill…
He decided to put up the money to record an album in Manchester’s Pluto Studios. A studio owned by Keith Hopwood, former guitarist with Herman’s Hermits! The Smiths had recorded their first album there and The Clash had recorded their single appropriately titled, ‘Bank Robber’ there.
We finished the album in around 3 days and it had only one edit in it as editing then involved a razor blade and a huge amount of time and money….which we didn’t have!
A few days later a management contract from Kill Bill arrived through the post. It was entirely unfair and Kill Bill was claiming 50% of each of our earnings not just from the record but from everything we earned individually and as a duo!
Not only that one clause stated that Peter and I had to pay Kill Bill’s travel expenses wherever he went in the world! The agreement was obviously a joke…but on us!
The fraudster called a meeting at a town centre pub for the following week.
Basically we told him there was no way we would sign the contract as it stood. Kill Bill was not prepared to change so much as a letter of the contract…he started to get agitated…
‘Robin…I’m gonna sit on your goddam album and it will never see the light of day!’ Those were his final words to us.
What could I do to sALVAGE OUR RECORDING?
I IMMEDIATELY drove to Manchester to Pluto Studios and asked them if they had the master recording we had just completed. Yes, they did!
I bought the tapes from the studio, the recording time had already been paid for, and left….
The next day, apparently, Kill Bill arrived at the studio to collect the tapes and was not very happy when told they no longer had them!
The next day, our would be benefactor, was arrested by Interpol and extradited to Canada to serve a very lengthy jail sentence…we breathed a sigh of relief.
We managed to secure a deal with Hyperion Records and our album, ‘Virtuoso Music for Two guitars’ was released a few months later.
Here is a track from our album which very nearly never was..
This is ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ by G.F. Handel
Thanks for listening etc