I see Peter Gabriel announce new album,
i/o
.
Good news, since he hasn't released a collection of new songs in 20 years.
And that he has his own studies, a budget to experiment and a head that is perpetually boiling.
It could be different.
In 1970, Gabriel and his group were demoralized.
They had debuted in 1969 with
From Genesis to Revelation
, a flat tire: the liquidation of their record label, Decca Records, specified that they had sold 650 copies that year.
They came from the wealthy middle class and their parents insisted that they return to the real world.
The boys lowered their heads and asked for places in universities;
Gabriel wanted to study film at the London School of Film Techniques.
But they gave themselves one last chance.
They met in a chalet in the Cotswold hills and sought out bowling in London, 150 kilometers away.
They managed to play Tuesdays at the Upstairs at Ronnie's.
It sounds very prestigious but it was a makeshift venue above Ronnie Scott's, a jazz club that wanted to compete with the nearby Marquee.
And the rock public did not bite.
The performance on March 24, 1970 did attract a handful of onlookers.
They worked for the Charisma record label and were headed by the company's founder, Tony Stratton Smith.
Something happened that night as they were immediately booked.
Stratton Smith asked them to move to London, promising to pay each member £10 a week (in reality, he offered £15 but the musicians didn't want to abuse).
The story is told in
Strat!
(Bedford, Wymer Publishing), by Chris Groom, a biography of Tony Stratton Smith that has gone somewhat unnoticed, perhaps because it hit the market in the dark days of the covid, when the so-called British strain was running.
Or maybe the text breaks the consensus that record companies (and managers, since Tony sometimes combined the two) are the worst human subspecies.
Stratton Smith broke the schemes.
He achieved some fame as a sports journalist in the 1950s: in 1958, he was on the verge of getting on the Manchester United plane that crashed in Munich.
He traveled a lot and in Brazil he understood that soccer was already global: he inaugurated a series of yearbooks called
International Fooball Book
that would provide him with regular income.
Stratton Smith may have seen pop as the most exciting game in town during the 1960s.
In addition, the British industry was concentrated in Soho and adjacent streets: it overlapped with the gay scene that attracted artists and managers.
Tony Stratton Smith was happy and had the patience to endure the unsuccessful years until the big cows came with Genesis (and all its satellites), Van der Graaf Generator, Lindisfarne, Julian Lennon, etc.
He was into everything: from a dense conceptual double LP like
The Lamb Lies Down in Broadway
to half a dozen Monty Python albums and the recitative set to music of the poet John Betjeman.
He had an amazing predisposition for getting into complicated messes.
After a talk with Leonard Cohen, he started a publishing house, Charisma Books.
Also, bless him, he sunk money into music magazines like
Zigzag
.
Occasional outbursts that revealed his growing financial problems: fond of the so-called “kings sport”, he invested millions in creating a stable of racehorses.
In 1983 he sold Charisma to a voracious competitor: Virgin's Richard Branson.
Soon, he went to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, for tax reasons.
From there, he was able to watch Peter Gabriel's first number one,
Sledgehammer
.
Tony Stratton Smith died suddenly in 1987, aged 53.
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