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We work with the groups the way they want to work. We had an option on the individual members of the group.ĭoes the PIL contract allow them to do things other bands on the label can’t? We pay them as much as we pay the Pistols. They were very difficult in the beginning, but it’s much better dealing with them now.ĭid PIL sign to Virgin because of the Pistols’ contract? Lydon does things the way he wants them done and he has the most extraordinarily good ideas about artwork and such. How is Virgin’s relationship with Public Image Ltd? We set about trying to make a new start, which just happened to coincide with what was going on in music at the time. We terminated quite a few contracts as a result of that meeting.
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We had a meeting where we sat down with all of the main members of the staff - about 16 people - and went through the roster, and we more or less voted on them. There was a lot of belief in them in the company, but we weren’t actually selling any records. A lot of the groups that had originally formed the label’s roster weren’t getting anywhere: Can, Wigwam, Henry Cow. But at the same time, it happened to coincide with a period that we were going through. SD: We’re an English label, and what’s happening in England is what we’re concerned with, and new wave was overwhelmingly what was happening, from the end of 1976. Was Virgin’s interest in new wave a conscious change of direction? We spent a lot of energy trying to sign the Rats. SD: We signed the Motors before, although it’s questionable whether they’re really new wave, and we had really tried to sign the Boomtown Rats at around the same time as we signed the Pistols. Were the Pistols the first real new wave group signed by Virgin? He liked to get that polarization with the record company. SD: I read a recent interview with Malcolm in which he said that the only thing he found was that he couldn’t fight against us in the same way as with the other labels. RB: Actually there weren’t many people left they could go to by then. One imagines they had worked off a lot of steam by the time they settled down with Virgin…
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Simon Draper: In fact, we couldn’t have planned it any better. The next day, A&M announced that they were going to sign them, which they did, but a few days later, when A&M fired the group, we had a call asking if we’d like to sign them again.īut you really did want to sign the group by then? Then McLaren came in, and we basically came to a deal.
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I read it over and agreed to take over the contract from EMI. I went over to EMI and he showed me the Pistols’ contract and asked if I’d read it there, because they needed to make a quick decision. We then saw another concert and heard the “Anarchy in the UK” 45, and I rang up Leslie Hill, the managing director of EMI, and left word with his secretary that if he’d like to get rid of this embarrassment, would he give me a ring? The next night the Pistols were on the Bill Grundy show, and the following day I got a call from Leslie Hill to arrange a meeting. Richard Branson: When EMI signed them, we’d shown interest but hadn’t really gone after them. Had you wanted to sign the Sex Pistols before their deals with EMI and A&M?