EP13: Rob Challice - From Anarcho-Punk To A Consolidated World

Your host, Paul Cheetham, is joined by one of the UK's most highly respected booking agents, Rob Challice, Senior Vice-President of the Wasserman Music Group.

Rob has over 40 years of experience in the live music industry as an agent, promoter and festival organiser. Starting in the early 1980s, Rob co-founded a series of music companies one after the other - from FAB to Concert Clinic to CODA - and evolved from gigging, wide-eyed, around the country with anarcho-punk outfits, to overseeing sold out world tours for a roster of artists that includes Beirut, Billy Bragg, Bon Iver, Charlotte Cardin, Christopher, Cory Wong, HAEVN, Kings of Convenience, Novo Amor, Sturgill Simpson, Toro Y Moi and Warpaint.

Our conversation with Rob is like a who's who of the live music industry and takes us on his inspirational and remarkable journey from creating fanzines and promoting shows in London's gritty 80s scene to booking legendary bands like Nirvana and going on to help operate mammoth global enterprises.

We talk about the hiring and firing, the network building, the need for innovation, the challenges and concerns of a post-pandemic world, and the inevitable need for consolidation and change in order to stay alive and competitive.

The episode also highlights the critical role of grassroots music venues in the UK, the efforts to sustain them, and how the pandemic has shifted the dynamics of the music ecosystem.

There's also time to remember colleagues who have sadly been lost - but not forgotten - and the growing need to reflect on his own legacy.

We recorded this episode during the Tallinn Music Week conference on Friday 5th April, 2024.

Thank you for listening. Here is the episode.
We made it just.....for......you!

Links:
Wasserman Music: https://www.teamwass.com/
Paradigm acquires CODA: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/paradigm-acquires-50-stake-in-coda-music-agency-5877120/#!
The Subhumans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhumans_(British_band)
Warchild RideLondon: https://www.warchild.org.uk/get-involved/fundraise/find-an-event/ride-london


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Transcript

Not Every Child's Dream

Paul 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Super Swell podcast. Each time you join us, you'll be hearing from an esteemed guest who'll tell us about their life, their work and whatever else they want to talk about. And boy do we have a great guest for you. So let's get on with listening to this episode of the Super Swell. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening and remember we made it just for you for listening, and remember we made it just for you. I guess being an agent or a promoter or artist manager it's not really every child's dream, when they're growing up, of what they'll become one day. Either it's a member of a band who's just a bit better organized than the rest of the guys and takes care of logistics, or someone who's events manager at a university, but either way, I think these people tend to fall into this kind of work by accident. What's your story?

Rob 0:50

Rob, I wanted to be in a band from, I think, 13 or 14 when punk hit. I wanted to be on stage. I mean that was the time of anarcho-punk. So bands like Crass yeah, I was listening to crass flocks of pink Indians, poison Girls and my old schoolmates from Warminster had formed a band called the Subhumans. Subhumans are still going strong and just having mates like that, who I'd grown up with because one of my best mates, bruce and the Subhumans I thought I want to do what he does stand on stage. And I formed a band. I did a few gigs with them, ended up moving to London and I went on to be part of another band.

Paul 1:30

So you were very much a music fan.

Rob 1:33

What I actually did at 15 was start a fanzine called Enigma and from that we were interviewing those narco bands. We were writing up politics I was printing on my dad's printing machine and would sell them at shows around North Kent and in London. That kind of introduced me to a scene that was. I mean, everything was DIY. Then you know, it didn't matter if it was punk or the Smiths being on rough trade or whatever. It was an independent era. But I learned very quickly. There was a scene throughout the uk and from that I'd know bands or promoters in every city and probably around about 18 or 19 I started piecing together tours that my band faction that was the name of the band could go on tour with, say, subhumans and just do six or seven cities around UK, you know, probably getting paid next to nothing, sleeping on floors. But it was just so exciting. This was early 80s Faction's Britain, dark and depressing. I lived in a squat in Hackney and it just seemed really exciting just going out to all these cities, meeting like-minded people and so on.

Paul 2:48

I was slightly too young for the punk scene at the end of the 70s, but what we had a couple of years later in Sheffield, where I grew up, was an art scene around bands like Cabaret Voltaire. So more on the electronic side post-punk.

Rob 3:00

That would have been into the 80s 82, 84.

Paul 3:07

I mean, that was around the time I was doing those gigs right.

Paul 3:08

I mean I was aware of acts like crass, but they weren't acts that I ever heard or had access to because I knew what was in the charts. But so I loved bands like the clash and the jam and stranglers, acts like this. But I remember the crass logo being everywhere and it looked like something really exciting. So a similar kind of grounding where I got into the music first and all the business aspects became interesting later. I was only interested in the artists at that point. Yeah, so for you, you were unconsciously doing the work of an agent in a basic level by organizing vans and places to stay and things like that. Right I.

Rob 3:46

I didn't realize that there was a job involved with it but at the same time I was promoting quite a few london shows and I promoted shows in places like the george robey, some place called the central iberico in west london on the harrow road, the anarchy center as we call it. It was a squatted building. I actually got to know more about promoting a show and throughout the 80s I promoted shows but generally I wasn't dealing with what I call an agent. I suppose when I put Fugazi off there, agent Johnny in Nottingham, it was just he was stringing together some shows. When I booked Subhumans I rang Dick from the Subhumans and I suppose right up to ringing this guy called Russell in an agency called Nomad in Nottingham, russell Warby and booking Tad and Nirvana and promoting their first London show.

Rob 4:37

Yeah, this was yeah 89, when I was in the right place at the right time to be promoting bands like that and Naked Reagan and Babes in Toyland and Young Gods, godflesh and some of these bands were playing two to two and a half thousand capacity venues On the side. Actually my day job was running a mail order company called WOT W-O-T. That essentially was selling vinyl cassettes and fanzines up and down the country and at the time you had Small Wonder, another mail order company and then maybe there was a couple of others, but I had an office by that time this is mid eighties in King's Cross and it was just around the corner from Rough Trade Distribution. So my cashflow was based on I'd advertise a whole set of new releases and as the orders came in I went and got them wholesale from Rough Trade and they just used to allow me to come in and pick them off the warehouse shelves. So I was running that and you know it was all very hand to mouth, promoting these gigs, which was cash in hand.

Rob 5:43

And then around about 88, one of my mates, pete Holden and his colleague Martin Goldsmith, ran me up from Allied Agency and said do you want to come in and work as an agent? Actually, martin was setting up Cooking Vinyl with Pete Lawrence and as I joined them I sort of took on some of the clients that Martin was working with and some of my anarcho or more punk stuff. And over the coming months I kind of cut my teeth as a proper agent from late 88 into 89 and I booked everything like Desmond Decker to Gino Washington, you know Davy Spillane and some real good Irish folk and a bit of world music and just sort of kind of learned what an agent did and I was all right with it. You know I liked piecing together tours. But after about six months Martin and I just wanted to get out of that office, allied Agency in Tottenham Court Road.

Rob 6:45

I mean to go back a step between 16 and 17,. I did an apprenticeship. I was a toolmaker. In the end the factory got closed down, as did several other factories, and I was given a £1,500 redundancy check. I'd never seen that amount of money. And I went home and said to my mum I'm turning vegetarian. And she said well, what am I going to cook you? And I went I don't know, I'm leaving home, I'm going to London to live in a squat. And that seemed like what I wanted to do at that point With that £1,500, there's something called the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Rather than getting dull, I got £40 a week and I could run my own business. So I spent most of the 80s working for myself and enjoying it. So, other than actually me doing an apprenticeship when I was 16, I'd never worked for somebody else. So here I was working for somebody for six months and it was just a little bit unusual.

Professionalising a Passion: Founding of FAB

Paul 7:41

Everything you said so far it's entrepreneurship, without you setting out to be an entrepreneur. You're just doing things that you love and think like-minded people will also love it, and that's led to work. Where are we at this point, then, in your career path?

Rob 7:55

so we had our own little management office. Martin and I'd set up an agency come management office in west london and we were going to manage Michelle Schott. That was the first release on Cooking Vinyl, but we were also working on an ABS agency. An ABS agency at that time was Nigel Kerr and Barry Campbell. Nigel was booking everything from Dr Feelgood to Nine Below Zero and ended up signing the Stone Roses. And Barry was booking a lot of reggae. He might have booked other stuff, but I just remember him booking a lot of reggae and a lot of cash exchanging hands on settlements and that gave me more of a grounding and an understanding of agency. We were using their facilities, although technically we were a separate office. Paul Buck worked there briefly. Charlie Mayatt started off there. I remember him handing me a CD and go have a listen to this and it was Creep by Radiohead and his career and roster took off and he went off to ITB.

Paul 8:56

It's like a who's who of names in the business. What was the company called your first one? FAB? FAB.

Rob 9:03

Yeah, that's when I first became aware of you, and well the management side was called Forward Management, which is the most boring name ever. So I went oh, we'll call ourselves Forward Agency Booking and then I quickly abbreviated to FAB and people were great Thunderbirds and so on. So FAB was the name that stuck through to 1999. And we then moved from ABS office to just up the road to Queen's Park Road and we shared an office for cooking vinyl.

Rob 9:38

Nigel Morton joined, Steve Strange joined, FAB was Steve, Nigel and I, and a longstanding friend of mine still is called Beej, who set up our contracting system, and this amazing assistant, H elen Neal, who basically managed to not only look after Nigel, Steve and my admin but actually keep us three mavericks under control. You know I can still picture her telling Steve off, and Steve was just from the moment he started working as an agent. For me it was just amazing watching the way that he could put passion into what he was booking, how he could just talk people around. You know it gave me personal confidence working in office now with with you know, nigel's experience, a bit of his grumpiness, steve's enthusiasm, and you know they were a great two years and it's just sad that we lost Nigel recently as well. So you know I look at that off ice and I go Steve gone, nigel gone- and you know I was sorry to hear that.

Paul 10:43

I knew Nigel from New Model Army

Rob 10:49

He came to me saying have I got office space to be an agent in the kind of six months after he broke up with them managing? But I'd already hung out with him when the other actors managing Oyster Band supported New Model Army through Germany, right, and I went on an arena tour and saw yeah, my first proper arena shows were Oyster Band supporting New Model Army through Germany and that's another sort of eye-opener and you know you learn.

Paul 11:15

You're mentioning two people that we sadly lost. Yeah, my first proper boss, vince Power, also just passed away recently, and Mike Hink. Yeah, I will ask you this what does this do to you in terms of thinking about your own legacy, even?

Hiring & Firing. Learning to Lose an Act

Rob 11:30

I suppose it's complex on many levels. It's that I'm often surprised when somebody comes up to me and says, oh, you're Rob Chalice, like I'm some kind of person from a legendary era or something. Now my mind is usually thinking about tomorrow rather than looking back. But I've definitely had moments recently where I thought, oh, I'm approaching 60 and there's a generation that I was part of that are disappearing. I worked with Mike Hink, and the other band I managed was Kitchens of Distinction. We had Mike and Jeff Croft booking them. You know we sacked, sacked them, but and Jeff still reminds me that that's one of the first things I did was sack him. Now I share an office with Jeff and you know when I look at his career, they're incredible talk about the question of hiring and firing, then how did you take to that?

Rob 12:19

I mean one thing is firing an agent that is working on your act, and I've since learned that managers don't have a huge issue firing agents. Because I've been fired, I wouldn't have lasted so long without being fired on some things, and sometimes you're lucky to get the call and sometimes you're lucky to get a decent excuse or reason. Are there any of those that still hurt? Some of them have hurt, but sometimes you just could go fuck them.

Rob 12:47

Now, that's not meant merely I wish them any ill will. It is like you have to accept that. You have to move on. It's part and parcel. Yeah, it is, and I'd say of the acts that I've been fired on and I don't think I have a huge track record of losing acts, but I would say that at least three quarters of them, I'd say maybe the writing was on the wall, maybe it was mutual, maybe, you know, it was obvious that I couldn't necessarily deliver what they were asking for and whether what they were asking for was realistic or not. The relationship was breaking down because the expectations were not being met and sometimes those expectations were to do with frustrations that were not directly involved with what I was doing booking shows.

Paul 13:34

I could believe that, because you definitely have a reputation of someone who puts a lot of work into building platforms for artists. It's genuinely looking to build audiences, with or without the traditional airplay record sales marketing. You've got lots of examples of you doing that, so anyone who would conflict with you on that probably got you wrong in the first place anyway.

Rob 13:56

Possibly. Yeah, the relationships becomes more than just you and the artist. It's you, the artist and the manager. And some of those acts have been sacked on, have been. Maybe the manager has come in and the artist's expectations have grown. And you know, somewhere things were getting lost in translation between what I was delivering or said I could deliver and I think I certainly know how to sometimes tell an artist what they want to hear, but I'm also known for telling an artist or a promoter what they don't want to hear. I believe what I'm saying at the time is what I see as the situation that can do you favors and can do you not. That I was honest to the point of being very direct for an end of relationship, knowing that I couldn't sustain telling a bunch of bullshit, really, because it just doesn't do me good, because I still worry about things going wrong on 300 capacity gigs, as I do arena shows and so on, and that's my conscientious side at work. I just have to solve those issues.

Concert Clinic

Paul 15:04

Okay, so FAB that became a different entity or a new company? Was it Concert Clinic?

Rob 15:11

What happened was in 98, Clive Underhill Smith. He'd left Dan Silva and he wanted to come down the road, which was literally down the road in Islington and I subletted him part of my office at Britannia Row this is the Britannia Row studios Nick Mason was our landlord, and so on. This was around 19,. Yeah, up to 99., Right. And then after about a year of that, we decided to join up and he came up with the name Concert Clinic.

Paul 15:39

He's a very hot agent at the time as well, wasn't he? Clive Cadd Eyre Royxop.

Rob 15:43

Hortish Head Hoover Phonic agent at the time as well, wasn't he? Clive cad air roik sop hawk, his head hoover phonic really huge in europe. But if you look at those acts at the turn of the century.

Paul 15:51

He, just he had it. I was at mean fiddler then. I mean it created a real stir that clive had left and set upon his own. So that was before he joined concert clinic yeah, and what year did you work? The mean fiddler to 96 to 99 okay, that would have been.

Rob 16:07

Yeah, in the middle of that period he left. Yeah, I mean just to go back a step. Yeah, vince power's part of my 90s as well, because I lived in harlem. So I spent a lot of time at the mean fiddler. If you know neil pingeli, neil o'brien, maybe jim benner was that, jim Benner was there. Yeah, did you know that Clive nearly went to work at the Mean Fiddler? No, I didn't.

The Move to CODA. Reinvigorated & Learning to Love Booking Again

Rob 16:27

In the year 2000 or 2001,. He'd been hanging out with Rob Pallett and Rob Pallett. Rob was at the Fiddler, then At the Mean Fiddler and I think at some awards Clive got the invite to come over and talk to Vince and Rob about maybe joining up with them. So Clive left one afternoon to go and work for Vince Power and I had to call him up and remind him that you couldn't just do a Moonlight Flit as a director of a company to go there. He came back and we patched it up. But when a few months later Alex Hardy called from MPI and said Phil and I have been thinking how can we expand our office and do you want to come over and have a conversation? I nearly bit their hand off. I realized that I could not manage an office and be you know, but Clive and I went to join Phil and Alex at what was MPI then and we formed a and it was called Coda Credit to Clive. He came up with the name Coda.

Paul 17:27

Yeah, I remember this happening, Coda forming. It was like a real breath of fresh air. The guys Alex and Tom they were bringing more like electronic and dance music and DJs. It certainly felt very modern and fresh. Is that how it felt to you?

Rob 17:43

Well, what was fresh to me was actually having an accounts department which meant that we could get on with being agents. Yeah, and I'd always kept a handle on the accounts at concert clinic, which taxes your time and everything. So here we were, arriving in this company with alex hardy, who just amazed me by his just fearlessness, and, yeah, tom Schroeder was working in the corner, always had his baseball cap on, just you know, beaving away and learning incredibly quickly. And it was a limited company with Miles Copeland one of the major shareholders.

Paul 18:21

Yeah, because he was the owner of MPI was he of the major shareholders?

Rob 18:24

Yeah, because he was the owner of MPI, was he? Phil Boundfield, I think, had the majority share and Miles had a chunk of it. Of course, miles and Phil had worked for ages together as MPI. Phil represented Sting and Police and so on, so it was all heavily entwined with Miles. So yeah, between about 2001 and 2007, it just started growing really quickly and it was really exciting. You know, tom's roster took off. Alex was smashing it with the Scissor Sisters, james Whitting then joined. You know it was exciting.

Paul 19:02

It sounds like he reinvigorated you personally after concert clinic.

Rob 19:06

I was now working in an environment that I kind of understood that I was learning that actually my job was best served being on the phone booking, being on the email booking. It was liberating to think I can focus on my roster, this oh, I'll sign another act and you're right. It kind of did reinvigorate me because I realized that actually you can feel quite isolated when you're running your own small company and then when you're in an agency and you're seeing that other people are smashing it and you're getting the there's a shared kudos of what you're achieving. It did feel really, really strong and we properly grew the company between there and 2007 when we cut a deal with Miles Copeland to buy him out of the limited company and we formed a limited liability partnership five of us Thor Banfield, tom, james, me and Alex and then the real golden years, I think, of Coda, steyr, papany were like 2007 onwards.

Paul 20:10

Yeah, it's a remarkable success story. It seemed like you're all happy to work for each other and support each other.

Rob 20:16

I think the strength was and I credit Phil a lot for this is that he always encouraged us to run the company and take responsibility, and it didn't feel like decisions were being made in another room. It felt like we were making decisions collectively. And somewhere 2007 or 2008, it was very obvious that a company was targeting us and our rosters and trying to decimate those rosters and picking on agents' rosters to steal acts, and WME didn't succeed Okay.

Paul 20:51

Subsequently, years later, two of their agents came to work with us Right Is this when they were moving into the market?

Rob 20:59

WME and CAA established themselves around 2004, 2005. So yeah, certainly in the years after that we were finding that we were being targeted.

Paul 21:11

You took it as a compliment, I'm sure.

Rob 21:13

It kind of hardened us. You know our pitch was to artists we are the coolest agency out there, we're the most fun agency, we fight hard for our acts, we understand our acts and we're all relatively young running a significant company in a way maybe with the exception of Phil, but Phil was letting us get on with it but we were doing it in a way that actually anybody walking in the Coda building goes. This is great. And not only did the artists get it, but the promoters that we were working with got it and I think if you look at a lot of the promoters that we work with now, they will go.

Rob 21:49

I remember coming to your office in 2004 or five or six. I remember Alex helping me out with a headliner here or some acts here or taking a punt on me being a promoter, and we helped them, they helped us. That was how we grew. I think for me the limited partnership was just so clever and right at the time because we did sit there and like every decision from like taking on a new agent to moving office so on we were looking at the collective bottom line. I suppose we always just sort of remark how other agencies, the agents within the office would be competing with each other and there'd be this real patronizing attitude from some of the older ones towards the younger ones, and I just think there's certain things that when I look at the ethos of what, what was created, then a lot of that still stayed there. Alex and tom always had this idea that we should be open on everything you know. We should be open with the figures we're owing, open with the shit that happens, mistakes.

Rob 22:52

We used to have an award called the fame up award and occasionally we'd give it to somebody for achieving something special.

Keeping An Eye Out For New Agents in a Competitive Field

Rob 22:58

But the most coveted award was called the Shame Up Award and basically we've always had a weekly agents meeting. So if you fucked up, if you lost an act, if you had a show that bonged, if you had a situation that had just gone a bit pear-shaped, rather than keep it secret and try and hide it, you owned it and then you shared that experience in an agency meeting and you were given a shame-up award and you got a round of applause and it was just such a cathartic thing because it's just like everybody's now shared in this fuck-up and you move on, that kind of learning process of actually oh, even Alex or Rob or whoever can book two of his big acts in one city on the same night. They were great years, but I don't think any of us could have really kept up with the pace of what we were doing then. And that's not just the work we were doing in the office, it was the fun we were having outside as well, right so I guess that brings in the question of renewal.

Paul 24:01

You know fresh blood in the company, not just on your artist roster, but new agents. Were you constantly looking out for new people to come in as bookers and and if so, where were you finding them? How were you finding them? What were you looking for? Is that something you were involved in yourself?

Rob 24:17

Yes, I mean, I can remember Paul Buck coming in. He'd returned from the US and he wanted to join the London agent. Nick Matthews had been running his own set up and he wanted to join us. And you know two or three agents. I can remember the conversation of them being unhappy where they were and having that conversation. I can remember talking to Adele at Iceland Airwaves. It might have been a few weeks or months later that Adele joined us. That was a great addition to the company. Natasha Bent joined us, sol Parker of course. Chris Hearn came back to work with alex. You know they obviously bolstered our confidence and feeling that we're doing the right thing. We subsequently learned that wme did used to have a file on us that's used to be openly discussed the coder files. Yeah, and it was almost like I think one page was the A acts they were after, b was the X and C were the eight managers. They haven't tapped up yet, but might.

Paul 25:21

It's understandable, isn't it? It's obviously not a pleasant thing, but it goes on in the industry. I mean, you were not targeting other agents or rosters yourself, but you were attracting them.

Rob 25:32

Yeah, I'd say it was probably more true that we weren't targeting other acts, because if I went after somebody else's, you know it's just going to come back on you, did you have?

Paul 25:43

any policies in place about that?

Rob 25:45

I just don't believe it was part of our culture. Certainly I've seen more of that culture now. Some managers invite that conversation more in these times than then. But I will say that we did look at other agents and go I wonder how happy they are. Okay, you know, I'm I'm often impressed by agents that have managed to keep up that kind of good, respectful relationship with other agents and not feel that they're going to be necessarily predatory with you. Maybe that's a good business model, but we certainly would have our ears open to unhappy agents.

Paul 26:22

Around the time that Coda started, I think was this 2001? 2001,. Yeah, around that time. This is roughly when Live Nation were coming into the European market. It was SFX, yes, then Clear Channel, then Live Nation, I think and there was a very loud conversation around then that booking agents were going to become obsolete. They were not going to be needed. Yeah, I do remember for a few months after that you guys were a lot nicer on the phone than usual to the promoters. I remember that. But what was your feeling? Because the story was that the live nation entity let's call it live nation, it wasn't yet but that was going to cut out the booking agent and show it was a middleman and they just do the deals directly, which they kind of have in some cases, but especially in Europe. This was a concern. Is that something that was a real thing? I don't.

Rob 27:12

I don't think people felt threatened to stay away. It was more of a conceptual conversational thing that the media put out there, but I suppose a lot of those promoters that we were being nice to were being nice to us as well, especially if they were independent, because they wanted us to remain loyal to them. You know, life Nation around Europe did take on some really great promoters and people that we've been working with for years so I was wrapped up in that I was working in Finland with Risto Juvenen and yeah he sold to Thomas Johansson, emma Telstar, who swept up, you know, mad Sorensen and Tobi, and DKB and Gunnar Eider, and then that whole thing was sold to Live Nation.

Paul 27:54

There was a lot of turmoil around that time and not knowing if we were going to be booking anymore or being told what to book from central office in London or LA or something like that.

Rob 28:05

I mean it is amazing really that things didn't actually move that fast to that model.

Paul 28:10

I think maybe they underestimated how concrete or how established the people were who they were taking over. When you talk about, they tried Marek Lieberberg, thomas Johansson, leon Ramakas yeah, mojo Mojo, these are empresarios, these are entrepreneurs. They invented it in Europe. Maybe Live Nation thought they could steamroller this, maybe, and set up their systems, and I guess they must have got pushback from these guys. So maybe they're playing the long game and waiting for these guys to call it a day before they. Well, I think.

Consolidation - CODA becomes Paradigm

Rob 28:43

It's a theory. I mean, then we thought it was a global company or two trying to run the business everywhere. Now we call it consolidation. And you know, we in the end joined up with an american company 2014, right, and we did it through necessity as well, and the necessity was to sign an act globally, yeah, and that there was the relationship with paradigm. Yes, we we kept the name coda, yes, for two or three years or more, but we realized that if we were talking to American management to compete with the WMEs and the CAAs and, of course, the other big indies at the time, like the agency group and ITB and X-Ray, we needed to be able to offer something like that. And I say we did the deal out of necessity. But there were other attractive reasons for doing it, like you know knowing the people like Marty Diamond, Tom Windisch, paul Morris, lee Anderson and Jonathan Levine, and then getting to know other legendary agents like Dan Viner and so on.

Paul 29:48

It made sense, didn't it? Artistically, aesthetically, you shared artists on the roster as well already.

Rob 29:54

Yeah, alex used to say we found a bunch of Americans we can trust. You know, yeah, they did and and I went on a road trip myself then and met up with some of the West Coast guys. I did Nashville and kind of like learned that it was confirmed that a lot of these really good agents they'd run their own office and they'd been mavericks themselves and now they were working under this umbrella. Kevin french was working there as well at the time and he ran his own office. It just definitely made sense on that. Where it didn't make sense and we only learned later was we were kind of back to a bit of a pyramid structure with the talent side leading the rule. You know, if sam doris ran the company, he was a talent agent, not a music agent. In hindsight I think I'm able to say that maybe more power should have been given to the, the music side, the exec level. It did seem to be working on some levels, but COVID exposed the flaws.

Paul 30:56

Yeah, because I was going to ask you before we hit the COVID period. You know how you found the differences. I've worked for American companies on the promoter side and on the venue side and there does seem to be a real emphasis on more forecasting and reporting and budgeting and a lot of talking about the doing rather than just doing the doing. Yeah, did you find that that was a case even in a company this like-minded?

Rob 31:24

You know I'm going to say that actually there was less of that than I expected, but there's more of it now and to Wasserman's credit. Now you feel like, with the information that's gathered, it's acted on.

Paul 31:35

Right as Wasserman as.

Rob 31:37

Wasserman Okay.

Paul 31:38

Because we missed out the bit that Paradigm UK entity was bought by Wasserman a couple of years ago.

Rob 31:44

Well, the whole story of Wasserman Paradigm. You have to go back to March 2020, and we might have to just discuss COVID to get there. Paradigm US, the talent agency and the music agency were the first company to offload people. Within about a week of it breaking the news and there being some kind of lockdown, 250 people were made redundant. That was the lead story. Every story that happened in the three or four months after that about layoffs always referenced the paradigm laying off 250 people and most of those layoffs were from the US offices and I thought we were cut adrift. I think we were pretty much like you know, you guys got to sort it out yourselves and get by, and when you've got a burn rate of several hundred thousand a month and over a hundred members of staff, it was bearing down a barrel of gum to the credit, the shareholders and the UK company and being able to pull in some funding, which I was partly responsible for. We were able to somehow survive. To pull in some funding which I was partly responsible for. We were able to somehow survive.

Rob 32:55

But that whole experience for us in Europe and the experience the Americans were going through over there, where they basically dropped some of their best agents in the, I say, the indie world, some real kind of stars.

Rob 33:06

They went on to form two or three really good companies. It cut a lot of heart out of the company. Kind of stars. They went on to form two or three really good companies. It cut a lot of heart out of the company.

Rob 33:16

And when Casey Wasserman made an approach or he kept making that approach to Sam Gores to take the music department off, he was successful in that and basically the US company did their deal with Wasserman and then, because we were a separate entity, it took another year for us to do ours and in that meantime we learned that the American agents felt the structure was put in place that just seemed to give, you know, those agents a new lease of life and like the doldrums and not only COVID, but actually losing so many colleagues and stuff we were down to two thirds of our workforce as well. So, yeah, it picked up and Wasserman on the back office stuff and the support they gave us in that area and the fact that they already had a London office for the sports agency just supported us in the transition out of COVID.

Paul 34:02

So really aided a recovery that you probably would have struggled or not survived without. I think probably would have struggled or not survived without.

Grassroots Venues & Small Festivals - the fight to survive

Rob 34:09

I think we would have survived. I don't know just how strong the ties and everything were with Paradigm that. Was there a third option? It was just a relief when this one, you know, was going to happen. It just felt like, well, the Americans are going to find a home, and we're going to find a home and it's going to be all right and our business is going to return. You have to have a lot of optimism home and it's going to be all right, and our business is going to return.

Paul 34:35

You have to have a lot of optimism, even if it's foolish optimism, to actually believe you can get out of covid and we did. One thing I wanted to ask you about was this thing that's going on at the moment with grassroots venues in the uk. I'm asking you this because you appear to come from a grassroots background yourself and the venue side you have companies now building more and more arenas, maybe not at the expense of small venues, but we're certainly losing a lot of small venues and the music venue trust really going hard with this campaign for getting a ticketing levy from the arena level shows to filter down to grassroots, and that's reached parliament, where they're discussing this. Do you have a take on this you could talk about?

Rob 35:11

another development that happened pre-covid was uk music had what was called uk live at the time. It was a group of people that paul latham and greg palmy had pulled together who could be bothered to turn up once a month to discuss the state of the live business. Now people in my office probably thought at the time why is he buggering off to talk about work permits or really dry stuff? Well, when COVID happened they were saying what's UK Live going to do for us? Now? You know, what can the industry do? Suddenly? Everybody wants to know what a representative organisation can do, and one important person in that group was Mark David can do, and one important person in that group was Mark David. I and Joe Dippel invited Mark David and MVT to join that UK Light Board. So you know, you have Mark on there, greg Paul Fenn, myself and a few others, and we soon learned with the UK music that they weren't going to help us through COVID. So with some key players like Phil Boudry, stuart Galbraith, we formed live, greg Palmy with his chair, and we went out. We employed our own lobbying company and we got results and I think I learned within that just what a powerhouse Mark and his team are Incredible really what they do and how they go out and get it. And I've also learned one thing that Mark often says unless you can make it happen, get out of the way and let us make it happen. And I kind of go.

Rob 36:39

Yeah, I'm envious that the venues have got such a strong leadership and representation, because sometimes I think agents should have it as well and maybe we should speak up a little bit for things. But I do have some questions about that levy and how it's going to be divvied up and who's going to control how it's divvied up. And you know, I'm sure this will come out in the wash. I think the question is do we need that whole circuit of all those venues? And I suppose the response is well. Well, if you're going to let 10 venues close, when are you going to say something before another 100 venues close, or another 100? And can we afford to lose small festivals? And part of me feels there's an inevitability about losing some of these because this is part of the reset post-covid. But if you take any large town, large city, then there should be a selection of venues from 200 to 500 to 1500 to possibly an arena in the region, if you actually start seeing real holes in those different sides of venues, then, yeah, that would be a huge loss.

Rob 37:51

Unless you have a really strong model as a festival and I'm thinking of the Green Man's End of the Road and a handful of others then if in 2024 you're relying on the family of four coming along and camping for a weekend, spending £1,000 on tickets and maybe £400 or £500 on site, then that's a declining audience. And if you're also expecting 16 to 22-year-olds to camp now, well, great, they might do a Glastonbury, they might do a Reading, but are they going to do two or three festivals a summer? You know that audience has dropped off a cliff, that age of audience. You know we kind of lost a generation of festival goers through COVID and now they might be up for the one-day city event or one Glastonbury. But it must be incredibly tough out there for those other 5,000 to 10,000 capacity festivals.

Rob 38:38

When I think of how to sustain those, maybe the levy is a good thing and if it goes through, great.

Rob 38:44

Maybe people won't notice the one pound on it.

Rob 38:47

But I did have a conversation with mark going why aren't we going more for the cultural vat rate?

Rob 38:53

Because the cultural vat rate, I thought got a lot of us out of covid where it was five percent for period rather than 20. Then it went up to 12 and a half in that period. It really did make. It made a huge difference and I wish we could get that back and if that, if that was in place, up into a 1500 or 2000 capacity venue, then that would actually commercially put money back into the venues again. I think that possibly needs to be part of the conversation as well. Yeah, I know a few agents that over the last two or three years post-COVID have been going as costs get higher and as artists and managers and business managers look at the pot of money that's going out going, why is all this money disappearing on booking fees and why are we paying 25% merchandise fee? So you know, from an agent's perspective and I certainly think from a manager's perspective and an artist, merchandise fees and I certainly think from a manager's perspective and an artist, merchandise fees and booking fees should be a bigger issue.

Creating a Network of Reliable Promoters & Partners

Paul 39:53

There's no question it's a complicated issue. It is, but it can be clarified and I trust people like Mark, and I know some really great people who work for the arena companies. I can imagine them sitting around a table and hammering something out that works and I hope that they find a way to follow that. I wanted to get back a little bit about you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, about building your network, a reliable network of venue managers, local promoters, national promoters in the UK and then outside the UK. How did that start for you and what were you focused on? What did you think was important when you were finding partners to work as promoters in different markets?

Rob 40:33

In the late 90s, I guess, because I was promoting shows as well. You actually look at a six-week Nirvana tour or Babes in Toyland or any of these bands, you'd probably see that you know it'd be Carlos or whoever. In holland, it might be peter verstalen, in belgium, gunter linnertz in germany, and as time went on there was thomas costas and in copenhagen it would be mad mad sorensen.

Rob 41:01

Yeah, so there was kind of like a group of promoters that were indie I felt part of, even though I was also the agent side and I just personally I always took a real interest in going to events like Eurosonic, the whole ETEP thing, which I think was incredible yes great, you know, for developing artists through Europe and a network just formed really and you know I always made a point of trying to travel around europe meeting these people and don't know if it's sort of advice I formed in my own head or I was taught at some point was actually you know, you can discuss contracts all day and contract clauses all night, but if you got an issue on the day of a show, if you can ring your promoter and you can hammer it out so you can go back to your artists and go, we've resolved it, whether it's been a little bit of a compromise and a bit painful on both sides, or actually you've got what the artist has wanted and the promoter is taking it on the chin that they have to deal with it.

Away From The Office, Getting On Your Bike

Rob 42:08

Knowing the other person on the other end of the phone makes it easier and what you're asking is actually reasonable and justified and that promoter believes you're going to be loyal for them, then that's the relationship and you know every agent and promoter who've had long-standing relationships will understand that principle. You know. Know your promoter very important.

Paul 42:28

We've taken more of your time than planned, but I have to ask you one more thing, because I promised I'd ask you what you enjoy doing away from work, away from the office. You're known for getting on your bike.

Rob 42:39

Yeah, I picked up this hobby about 11 years ago and I got my health back in a way I didn't realize I could and it got me through a lot. You know good times and bad times and going into COVID, it's what I had. I could get on my bike and you know I often lament was the worst thing about COVID ending was that I had to go back to my day job and couldn't get on my bike. So often Everybody needs to have something outside work and to me that's been my thing, and the fact that I can plan it, the fact that I can travel with it and the fact that I'm with some like-minded people and I can meet like-minded people all over the globe and get on a bike and go up a mountain, that keeps me going. In a way, it's not a bad idea.

Rob 43:26

No, and I'm approaching 60 soon this year and I've still got to nail 20 climbs in the uk before I can say I've done the top 100 climbs in the uk, but I don't think I'm gonna do it before I'm 60. So I'm gonna give it to my end of my 60th year, which will be next year, and, yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know. I'm looking forward to planning other trips. My wife will get on bike if it's flat, so there might be a bit of more casual touring in phases, are there?

Paul 43:53

other people from the business. I know that Steve Sayer from the O2 is an avid cyclist. He's always climbing a mountain somewhere. Lloyd Cole, yeah, paul Scaife.

Rob 44:03

Yes, record of the day. Mark Mitchell, there are several people I mean Jeff Neil in my office has done a bit of riding and so on, and I will ride for Warchild again on the ride London. That's probably the other thing I want to do is do long distances as well. Now take up a whole day and you can do a bit more casual pace that definitely gets you out of the office.

Paul 44:24

Yeah, you out of the office. Yeah, well, good luck with that. Thank you, keep that up, rob. Thanks ever so much. I mean I could talk for another hour.

Paul 44:30

I'll just warn you, but I I probably could, but I think I've done it yeah, you've had a busy day yeah, I hope you enjoyed your day and thanks, thanks very much, and this meant more to me than probably you know. I like talking to people in the business, but your roster there's a lot on there. That's my personal listening preference as well Some amazing bands. I like listening to outside work as well, so you know great to have agents like you that put so much effort into building artists that others would probably give up on at an earlier stage and getting great success for them as well.

Rob 45:02

Well, thank you. I feel honoured to work with a number of these artists and, yeah, I've often put the effort into that act that I just absolutely believe in, even if it's not selling out arenas or whatever. You know that's what I do. Yeah, brilliant, thank you, rob.

Speaker 2 45:17

Okay, thank you so there you go. A very big thank you to our guest for taking the time to talk to us in such an open and interesting way. It was a real pleasure having this conversation with them, and another big thanks to you for listening. We really appreciate it. We want to keep bringing you these top quality interviews, so if you have questions, comments, ideas or requests, do let us know. Write to us at podcasts at the superswellcom. That's it for now. Until next time, ciao.