ROCK & POP

MUSIC

EMPRESARIO 1960s

Los primeros días de la

Música Rock en Gran Bretaña

Por Gerry Carty

PART EIGHT –

DEMASIADO TARDE PARA LAS PREGUNTAS

On the following Monday  I had a hastily scheduled meeting with a lawyer. A good, small town Scottish lawyer. He probably didn’t get to see many contracts between rock music groups and music promoters. He read the document carefully, took off his glasses, pressed his fingers between his eyes and sighed.

‘Son,’ he said, ‘I have two things to say to you: the first thing is this is a good, enforceable contract. You must pay them - at a pound a week if necessary.’

FACING THE MUSIC

He had noted that the agency I dealt with was known as ‘Bob James Enterprises.’

‘The second thing is, never deal with a company that has “enterprises” in its name, they are fly-by-nights and they won’t last.’

When I got home I called Bob James, the pop group's agent. I ignored the lawyer’s advice. A pound a week? That would take me twelve years to pay off and I was only eighteen!

I immediately went on the attack: he had cancelled out on my rock concert in Aberdeen and that had ‘chilled’ the sale of tickets for the show in Edinburgh, I said. Highly improbable as that sounded, I was about to elaborate. But he stopped me.

He said he would cancel all of the debt. He felt badly about Aberdeen, but the more important thing was that we remain good partners in the future in bringing his rock music groups on tours of Scotland.

OUT OF THE ROCK MUSIC BUSINESS

We parted, promising bigger and better things in the future. But the truth was - standing in that huge ballroom in Edinburgh with only a hundred and five people around the stage that night - I vowed I would never be in that position again. That meant getting out of the rock and pop music business.

I live now in Atlanta, Georgia. How I came to be here is another story for another day. Every few days I drive by the headquarters of one of the world’s largest, most successful companies, one which started here more than a hundred years ago.

Coca Cola 1958 Cuba

I cannot do so without thinking of that small town lawyer’s advice back there in the sixties: ‘never deal with a company that has "enterprises" in its name.’

I smile as I think about that and look up at the large letters on the wall of the building, ‘Coca Cola Enterprises’. THE END