The executive who learned Amy Winehouse on investing in A&R, handling second albums and the dangers of social mediaHe is the tea boy who became the boss. Darcus Beese, co-president of one of the UK’s most successful record marks, Island Records, was turning 18 when he first met its founder Chris Blackwell. “I remember everyone whispering ‘Chris Blackwell is on the floor,’” he says. “This guy walked in with a red, gold and green scarf encircling his neck, walking through the war room, as we called it, and everyone place their head down pretending to employment.”However the teenager tried his luck, reasoning “this was my opportunity to introduce myself”. “He questioned me what I did and I told him I was a tea boy. He questioned ‘at what department?’, I pointed at promotions. He said: ‘That’s the promotions department? That used to be Stiff Records.’” It was the first, however not the at the end, history lesson Beese got from Blackwell. Immediately 42, he has been at Island ever since. “Did I reckon I’d ever be running the corporation? Not in the slightest.”Cutting edgeGrowing up in a West Indian family in Fulham, London, Beese was a music fan from an early age, with 2 Tone bands such as the Specials among his favourites then. Working in the music industry wasn’t on the cards, though. “The career officer was all about me being a PE teacher or doing menial employment,” he says.A self-professed non-academic, he finished college early and chose to become a hairdresser. He finished up working in a salon encircling the corner from CBS Records. Hairdressing had taught him to converse with human beings outside his social circle, he clarifies, and he started chatting with the A&R human beings as he divide their hair, to find outside more about what went into producing his treasured pieces of vinyl.One of his clients was Lincoln Elias, who had signed one of Beese’s favourite artists, Terence Trent D’Arby. “It was the first age I’d met someone black who worked in the music industry and I thought ‘OK, I can join the dots here.’”Soon he was invited to come into CBS to pick up so-called “blag [autonomous of charge] records” on a regular basis. “I remember being invited to a hardly any showbiz parties … George Michael and Pet Shop Boys album launches. At that age in the 80s it was all extravagant – fairground rides, burnt-outside cars, vodka fountains – and I said to myself: ‘This is nuts! I demand to be working in the music industry.’”Eventually a job as a tea boy became vacant at Island Records, then an independent mark. “They call it employment familiarity and internship immediately however back then it was a tea boy. You made tea, you collected human beings’s dry cleaning. Automobile clamping had just been introduced, so I used to have to go and sit in their cars, wait for the automobile to be de-clamped and then propel back to the office.”Beese soon went up the ranks and landed a job in A&R, and in the 90s and noughties signed some of the mark’s most successful artists, including Sugababes and Taio Cruz – and Amy Winehouse. Beese keeps referring to Winehouse throughout our conversation, sometimes talking about her in the present tense before catching himself. Receiving the telephone call telling him that she had died was “earth-shattering”, and he immediately finds it dense to listen to her records. “I can still hear her speak,” he says, pensively, pausing for a moment. “I feel proud to have known her.”When he eventually took over as co-president along with marketing male Ted Cockle, Island, immediately part of the Universal Music empire, was celebrating its 50th anniversary, and he attributes its survival to Blackwell’s A&R-centred legacy. It was vital to them to continue Blackwell’s commitment to learning fresh, left-field performers; two of their first signings were Florence + the Machine and Mumford & Sons; more recent signings in a alike just off-mainstream vein comprehend Ben Howard, Gotye, Josh Osho, Alex Clare and Nina Nesbitt (a sort of female Ed Sheeran).Beese says he would never have thought either Florence Welch or Marcus Mumford would sell millions of records. However then, neither did he imagine Winehouse would win five Grammys and sell 11m albums when he signed her up a decade ago. “You sign what makes you excited, what’s different – not what’s in the marketplace immediately,” he says. “Signing Amy, a jazz singer, as she was at that mark, was a courageous, exciting go. When we signed Florence, I remember Ben Mortimer, who took me to see her, asking me what I thought.” In fair music industry style, Beese’s analysis may not have been articulate, however it was upbeat. “I said: ‘I ain’t got a fucking clue, however she’s a star.’”Social consciousnessMuch has changed in the music industry since Beese’s tea-boy days. A abundance of the initial promotion is done by bands themselves before they get signed, often via social media, and many acts choose to go for smaller advances in giveback for greater autonomy. Beese points to Mumford & Sons as an example.”I always affirm there are two types of deals – deals where you’re going to have me come looking for you if you don’t deliver sooner rather than later, or those where I don’t come looking for you at all. Mumford did the latter. Human beings who do expensive deals aren’t confident in what they have; with a smaller deal you know the payday will happen quicker.”Sometimes you get that investment fair, and the majority of times you get it incorrect, since those are the laws of averages that we’re dealing with. I don’t know how scientific I am about this, however if you sign three things one has to employment, one might not employment and the third one might capture a bit of age … [pause] … or it might not happen.”However social media also has its downsides. Today artists constitute their mistakes in a global arena, something the mark’s more recent signing Lana Del Rey experienced when her less than perfect performance on Saturday Night Live went viral at the end year, provoking a Twitter storm of criticism. “If you’d have seen Amy’s first Later… with Jools performance, it wasn’t fantastic. You’d have gone ‘I thought everyone said she was a fantastic jazz singer?’ She was nervous. She chose to play guitar, which she could play, however a bit clumsily. If the internet was then the path it is immediately, I’m certain that would have travelled and human beings would’ve place bullets in Amy.”Beese worries that the loss of revenue due to piracy method he’s finding it increasingly dense to invest in fresh artists, frustrating for a mark that runs a roster with 90% British acts. Its rival Sony, he estimates, is probably 90% to 95% American. Investment is particularly vital for artist longevity, and most signings don’t constitute their definitive album with their first record.”Unless it’s an anomaly, you have to be making a second album with the artists you sign, whether you were successful with the first album or not,” he says. “Since there are also many things that go against you in the very first instance.”There are plenty of examples of this on the mark, including Cruz who, when his R&B-flavoured debut album failed to locate the charts alight, went back to the drawing board and resurfaced with a dance/pop album that broke the US, topping charts all encircling the earth.”With Duffy, her first album was so huge that there was nowhere to grow to. The only path after something that huge is down. The cause I reckon Adele and Amy were so successful on their second albums was since they locate the scene and there was expectation of what they could come back with. It’s called artist development. I’ll tell you, if Amy would’ve had a huge first album I don’t know if we’d be sitting here talking about Back to Black. If you don’t get it fair on the first album – just go again.”Media businessMusic industryHelienne Lindvallguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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