DAVID WHITEHEAD, NEW YORK

YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND

I grew up in the North of England, in a family of coal miners. I left school without going to University, and chose Local Government for a career that seemed like a better option than the other two presented, ie the coal and steel industries. First band I ever saw was The Faces at Sheffield City Hall who are still my favourite band to this day. I stuck Local Government out for 3 years before seeing The Clash at The Top Rank in Sheffield and thinking, I want to be involved in this, somehow. I wrote letters to small music companies in Manchester and Birmingham. I was offered a job as a booker at Scunthorpe Top Rank which I didn’t respond to. I worked as a booker for Big Bear Records in Birmingham for a very short time, £25 per week cash in hand, sleeping in my car in an NCP car park till I found a bedsit in Edgbaston. Realising at that time the music business was primarily in London I drove down and left my car parked on a street in Swiss Cottage. I spent days wandering around London walking into Record Company receptions asking if there were any jobs. At night I slept on my friends dorm room floor at Uxbridge University.

I remember the imposing Sony building (or CBS, as it was then) on the northeast side of Soho Square, the smaller white mansion of A & M Records down Kings Road, and the exclusive offices of Polygram near Lancaster Gate, bordering Hyde Park.

In the back streets of Bayswater on a small residential street bordering Royal Oak, was Stiff Records. I walked in and said I was a huge fan of the label (true) and asked if they had any jobs. An affable fellow sitting with his back to the door told me there were none right then, but I should call him the following week. After a very informal ‘interview’, I started in 1978 as a motorcycle messenger at Stiff Records on £40 per week. I’d never ridden a bike in my life but I wanted the job so bad. Just three days in I went under a lorry and wrote the bike off. After returning from the hospital Dave Robinson called me into his office and fearing the sack, asked me in his gruff Irish brogue what happened. I explained…busy road, lorries, distractions….He looked at me and said “That’s what I like, people who are prepared to die for me”, and proceeded to instruct a senior Stiff director to give me his car to use.

The fellow who gave me the job and who subsequently gave me a room in his apartment was Nigel Dick, who’s since enjoyed a successful career as a film-maker/video director. I learned many lessons in the four years at Stiff. Mostly how not to treat people, but the sheer bravado, culture, and creative approach at Stiff was a priceless education.

After a couple of months I began to take on a different range of duties. There was no job description per se, it was really whatever needed doing. Picking up Dave’s son from daycare, driving Dave and Paul Conroy after work to Stoke on Trent (130 miles from London) to see the band Any Trouble, sending Graham Parker posters to the Phonogram sales reps, anything asked, reasonable or not. When the time came to move the offices out of Alexander St and into the old Caroline offices on Woodfield Rd, someone (likely Dave or Paul) deemed a moving service was not necessary because myself and Mark Chatterton could handle it with just a mini van and our own hands and backs. It took us all week including the weekend to load everything out and get it over to Woodfield Rd. A week of hard manual labor, and on receipt of £25 each Paul being in disbelief at our disappointment. The unpredictable nature of the job and the mercurial behavior of Dave especially was unsettling, but it gave me my first lesson in what it meant to be truly alternative and independent, operating with few borders. Though what happened to Stiff in later years surely merits the need for some borders.

I graduated to selling merchandise on Stiff tours, working in mail order and continued in doing anything asked. Even being tasked with buying Dave a wedding ring and taking a cake and champagne to Ian Dury at The Montcalm Hotel in London after “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” went to #1. Ian then himself asked me to pop around to Boots Chemist to buy a couple of toothbrushes for him. Wallpapering over the windows of Melody Maker with Kosmo Vinyl at 5.30am was another task, in the name of promoting Ian’s album “Do it yourself”.

Decades later I was talking with Jemima who is Ian’s daughter, and told her the story. She went on to recall how difficult it was living in hotels with her dad when she and her brother Baxter were with him. But how Kosmo was charged with looking after them and how he would take them down to Hanley’s Toys on Regent St and generally act as a guardian angel when Ian was busy on tour or working.

I have many Stiff Record stories, the audacity of them makes it hard to forget, and they don’t beg embellishment. It genuinely felt like a time and culture who’s only rule was, whatever is traditional is not what we are going to do. Amazingly, after 40 years that opportunity has arrived again.

After Stiff I worked at Pinnacle Distribution as a Sales Rep, driving around London with a car boot full of vinyl calling on all the record stores selling the latest releases, including Modern English, The The, Joy Division, New Order’s first releases, etc. Then stints as Sales Manager and GM at Pinnacle, before the second career changing moment came about and I joined Rough Trade Distribution. Initially as a Label manager then subsequently MD of Distribution. What a wild time, Marxist politics and all. Great music….4AD, Mute, Rough Trade, Sleeping Bag, and many others who walked in as kids and went on to become indie giants, Creation, Domino and Cooking Vinyl being three. But 4 years in politics felt like a long time, so I left in 1990 to start Real Time Inc with Richard Powell and Simon Edwards, two other Rough Trade refugees. I moved to NY to open a Real Time NY office and fell into management. My first client was Helmet who I’m lucky to still work with. I left Real Time in 2000 and started Maine Rd Management. I’ve had the the privilege of working with artists like David Bowie, David Byrne, Luna, Natalie Merchant and Jimmie Dale Gilmore for many years.

And so onto a new decade. Excited amongst others by Keeley Forsyth, the consistency and artistic durability of Joe Jackson, Lloyd Cole, Helmet, Joe Henry and the instinctive theatrical brilliance of Hugh Laurie.

The invaluable lesson of free thinking is more relevant today than ever, as the business drifts into what is now Music business v3. I catch myself trying not to think in too much of a linear way. Rules are not so much to be broken but can be re written, and certainly not applicable for everyone. Feeling incredibly lucky and thankful for having been able to work in music for most of my working life, and still wholeheartedly in love with music.