Gary James' Interview With Publicist To The Stars
Alan Edwards



He's been the publicist for some of the biggest "names" in Rock And Rock 'n' Roll, including The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Prince, Alice Cooper and David Bowie to name just a few. And now he's taken pen to paper to write his story titled, I Was There: Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll (Simon And Schuster Books). His name is Alan Edwards and he spoke with us about his life to date in the music business.

Q - Alan, I always thought that being a publicist was a pretty good job - that is until I spoke with Van Halen's publicist many years ago. He told me he had pains in places he could never have imagined. Did that kind of thing happen to you?

A - Yeah. How do I answer that one? I'm just thinking about it.

Q - Looks like I stumped you on the first question!

A - Yeah. You got me on the first question. Being a publicist is a bit like Upstairs Downstairs. It's a sitcom here. You're always at the big star's launch or event or dinner, but you're really downstairs at 1 o'clock in the morning with a cup of coffee with the star afterwards if you're lucky. I'm just trying to think about the specific quote from Van Halen's publicist. It can be painful, the job. I found the job came naturally to me. It was in my DNA and sort of in my calling. I used to buy all the newspapers. I really got to understand how journalism works. I was a natural communicator. I used to walk down the road and it would take me hours to get down to the end of the road. I spoke to the baker, the pie man, the electrician. Everybody in the street. I had a natural sort of evangelical twist to me. Once I discovered music, when I was about 12, then I had to tell everybody about The Velvet Underground I'd just bought or whatever it was. When I eventually ended up working with The Who it seemed quite normal to me. I haven't found the job painful. Logistics can be a nightmare, getting people from A to B. And of course crazy things happening.

Q - Now that record companies seem to be a thing of the past, how much of a demand is there for publicists these days?

A - Well, I think it's a bit like a plumber or an electrician. There's always work to do. This job has gone back forever under different guises, the Town Crier in the days of Mozart. We used to give out flyers for gigs in London. You're always going to need storytellers and artists are always going to need people to develop an angle to develop a bit of humor. Often I'll meet someone who's very successful and I'll say, what's interesting? What's the angle? We've sold millions of records in Japan. Yeah, but I need a hook to work with the media. And then it turns out to be their hobby is gardening or whatever and that's the story that gives us the platform to talk about the records. You always need people that can create that. To me, even though I've done the job a half century, it's pretty much the same. I look at things. I create stories. I call journalists. I'm quite old school. But of course we're using Tik Tok and Social Media and Instagram. But, the essence of the thing is the same. You could argue the demand for labels is more important than ever. We're talking to an audience around the world, instantly, all day. It's a very long answer, but I think our demise has been massively exaggerated.

Q - I was at the supermarket checkout the other day and there on the cover of six different magazines was Taylor Swift. Isn't that overkill? How long can something like that go on before the public loses interest in her?

A - Well, you to say one way it's pretty impressive. She's got the bullseye there. I mean she's already kept it going for a few years. Look, there may come a time when she just wants to sort of switch it off and concentrate on making an acoustic album. Maybe the public will never lose interest. If you look at The Beatles, they seem to get bigger and bigger. I can't believe it. I remember them as a kid. Or Elvis. There's Elvis musicals and exhibitions or ABBA in the hologram. If Taylor Swift wants to she can probably keep this thing going for the next 100 years. She may lose interest herself. (Laughs) Who knows?

Q - You're right.

A - You could get into a conversation about are we producing enough new, innovative things? That's a thought. You could also talk about The Stones. I saw an interview with Mock recently and he was asked about holograms and he said something like, "Well, maybe I'm already a hologram." For sure the Stones will be on tour for many hundreds of years from now in some way, shape or form.

Q - Now, I'm glad you brought up The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones were five guys - Mick, Keith, Brian, Charlie and Bill. People seem to think Mick is The Rolling Stones. He's only one fifth of The Rolling Stones.

A - I mean, I suppose you could argue that Ronnie has been in there for quite a long time, but you are right. I saw them in about 1975. It was a gig at Earl's Court. It was a bit of a mess. The acoustics weren't great. Keith forgot some lines. The audience was full of young kids who went out and formed bands. The (Sex) Pistols and The Clash went out and said, "I'm gonna form a band. I can do better than that." I actually believe some of us thought that's probably the end of The Stones even then. So, here we are now nearly half a century later and they're still going strong. But, back to your point, one day it will only be Mick. Will it be a hologram? Why not?

Q - You see Alan, I'm a purist. To me The Rolling Stones were and will always be Brian Jones. He put the band together. He booked the band in the early days. He was the most musical. He was the best dressed. He was the best looking. And so when you ask fans of The Rolling Stones about Brian Jones they'll say...

A - "Never heard of him." As you say, he was the most musically advanced, the most experimental. He was very creative. Look, I'm a purist in some ways too. If you take me back to that era when the singles were coming out, to me "Get Off Of My Cloud" was probably my favorite. Charlie's drumming on that. "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown", "Sympathy For The Devil". They may be at that moment the greatest Rock 'n' Roll band ever, ever, ever. I guess it shows you the song goes on, doesn't it?

Q - I guess it does. Why didn't Charlie Watts give interviews? Not many interviews anyway.

A - No, he really didn't. When I did a tour with him I only got him to do one interview with The Daily Telegraph about cricket. He was the most lovely, modest guy. Really sweet. In a lot of ways in his head he was still drumming in a Jazz band in a club. He thought I'll let Mick do all that Pop star thing. He wasn't interested. It wasn't that he was difficult. He was really a charming, nice guy. He'd talk for hours about race horses or where he got his latest suit from. But, I don't think he thought of himself as a Rock star. He thought of himself as a musician and at that, a Jazz musician. So, he didn't see that as part of his thing. As I said, he'd leave all that thing to Mick and Keith.

Q - You received a 60 page contract from Paul McCartney's business team to handle his public relations. You had to hire an attorney to negotiate the terms of that contract.

A - Yeah, I did.

Q - Why does Paul McCartney need a publicist at this time in his life? And what was in that 60 page contract?

A - I think Paul, like any artist, especially when we're talking about the really big ones from the '60s, they're looking to constantly refresh their image and constantly renew it and make it exciting. One of the ways you do that is with a publicist. Obviously you get a new generation of media that come along quite often and so a younger publicist is maybe going to be in touch. At the same time I was doing it there's always going to be new kids on the block. P.R. can help do that. The artist is always looking and driven to get validation. They want to talk about their new material. Paul doesn't want to talk about what he achieved with The Beatles. He wants to talk about the new songs. So, the publicist really has an important job. I'd go 'round to meet Paul and he'd play me new songs and it was like he was playing them for the first time. It was really important then. In terms of the contract, I can't remember what was in it. It was like, "You must agree to any press releases. Approved in advance in triplicate and you have to sign off on such and such a date." To be fair, I doubt if he really read the contract. He would have had his team doing it, some lawyer, some executive. They would be saying, "Hey, we're just taking care of business for Paul." It was a nightmare for me, not only in the time involved, but the fact that I had to give it to an attorney and had to pay some really high legal fees for this. A P.R. company really runs on very tight margins. So, that might have been the first couple of months fees would have gone on this contract, which by the way if he didn't like the contract he forgot it anyway.

Q - You write about a tour manager for The Stones who couldn't wake Keith Richards up at a hotel the group was staying in. So, the roadies carried the bed he was in out of the hotel and onto a plane. Wait a minute here! You mean nobody from the hotel said, "Where are you going with our bed?"

A - (Laughs). Was there some exaggeration there? I don't know. The thing is The Rolling Stones would take a whole hotel over and so whatever The Stones wanted was okay. I remember I was in The Hotel Cominsky, which was a very famous hotel in Berlin. I was sticking press releases under people's doors. The hotel manager was sent up to investigate. When I said, "I'm with The Rolling Stones," he said, "Rolling Stones. That is good. Whatever you want." In all honesty they probably would have turned a blind eye. The Stones in a big hotel would have a whole floor. Or maybe more. Sometimes Keith would give rooms to fans he's met. The traveling entourage with The Rolling Stones could be 100 people. So, if you think of the revenue for the hotel... Of course bands at that level don't go through the front door. They go out through the kitchen or there'd be a back exit and a secret van waiting. There's all kinds of subterfuge involved.

Q - You write about going out to dinner with David Bowie. A couple of autograph seekers approach the table and say, "I hope you don't mind." And David says, "Actually, I do mind. I'm just about to start my meal." How often did a situation like that occur? Couldn't he have been seated in a private room somewhere in the restaurant or had someone with him stand up and prevent autograph seekers from approaching him at the table?

A - Yeah. He could have done that. It was a very ad lib situation. He hadn't planned to go there. It wasn't a fancy place. I would say in retrospect it's a shame I put that in there. It's the only time I can remember David behaving like that. In fact, he was incredibly gracious with fans. He also knew them by name. He couldn't spend enough time talking to them. He was very genuine about that. That was just a moment of real tiredness. That was not David. He didn't have minders. He was very modest and a self-effacing person. He would turn up at our office with absolutely no entourage, no minders whatsoever and walk up the main street. I said to him, "You're not worried about getting recognized?" He'd be wearing a cap and carry a Greek newspaper under his arm so everybody would assume he's just some Greek guy. It can't be David. I remember him coming up to the office and maybe I was in a meeting and he's make coffee for everyone. So, he was so kind with everyone. That moment did happen, but that wasn't what he normally was like.

Q - Just how big of a problem was it to keep fans and "groupies" away from people like Bowie and The Stones? Was someone leaking information to the public where they would be staying?

A - It was more of an issue for the security people keeping these things under control than me, but it did come onto my doorstep quite a bit 'cause the media could be very responsible. I remember a situation, I think it was in Scandinavia, and it was The Stones. Someone had gotten a floor plan of the hotel. They'd figured out where everybody was in which room, although The Stones used pseudo names. Anyway, they'd figured it out and it was published in the newspaper. It was a center page. "This is The Rolling Stones. This is the hotel they're staying in. This is the floor plan. This is who's in which room." Absolutely crazy. Hundreds of people know when a band as big as the Stones hits town. It's obviously not someone in the band or a close person. Maybe someone in the hotel gets $20 for phoning up and giving that information to a newspaper. Who knows? It's an incredible security risk and that kind of thing did happen.

Q - You write the Mob controlled jukeboxes and record pressing plants. Jukeboxes I've heard about, but record pressing plants? Where did that come from?

A - It absolutely did happen. We have to be careful about things we say about this obviously. The way I heard it is there might be a parallel record label where the records would be going direct to the source and not through the normal system. Those days it was all cash. There could be two versions of one label. There could be another one just selling the product direct and keeping the cash without it being registered in Billboard or any trades or going through the system. I would say it is alleged that things like that did happen.

Q - "Journalists and Editors were treated like Rock stars. They have limos and drivers." You're talking about people from Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair?

A - No, I wasn't really. Obviously I'm more U.K. centric in that respect. I was thinking of The Times, The Sunday Times, maybe The Telegraph. Things like that. They would have cars outside, say Scots, which was a very popular restaurant in London at the time. The drivers would be out until midnight when they decided to go. That was absolutely normal. If you were the editor of a national newspaper in the U.K. you got a driver and everything with it. That came with the job.

Q - It would have been great to have been associated with those kinds of papers then.

A - Yeah. Well, it was.

Q - You were managing a group called Big Country that played five gigs in Moscow. After the gigs were done you were told the money couldn't leave the country. You mean the agent who booked those gigs didn't know that?

A - (Laughs). It was the Wild West. It was the New Frontier. There was no sort of road map on how to do this. When you're behind the Iron Curtain at that time it was pretty scary. We landed in Moscow. The plane was on the tarmac for four hours. Then you'd be searched. You'd be followed. It was a bit like some of those Cold War movies. Even though it was Gorbachev and Glasnost, it was still pretty extraordinary. We were staying in this big hotel opposite Red Square and you wouldn't even be allowed to have a room key. On each floor there was a lady with these big keys sitting behind a desk and you had to go and get the key from her. There would be guys following you around in leather coats. So, it was pretty unpredictable. You couldn't take the money out of the country. The government made a decision. It didn't matter what promoter you got or what had been agreed upon in advance. It was still the Iron Curtain, even though it was in the process of coming down.

Q - It's probably still like that or maybe even worse.

A - Yeah. I would think it's even more unpredictable now 'cause we were dealing with the government to a degree. We had the launch for the event at the Russian Embassy in London. Everyone was very polite and there were lots of toasting and raising of glasses. When we were in Moscow we felt perfectly looked after at the Ambassador's residence. Now I would think anything could happen. I'm not planning to take any bands out there soon.

Q - You write that Punk had become less interesting by 1979. How long would you say Punk lasted? I would say 6 months.

A - I would say more like 18 months. It wasn't that long. Really we can credit New York with creating the Punk scene. There was a lot of cool, artistic creative people involved with what The Clash were doing with their boiler suits and some of Malcom's stuff was touched with genius. Unfortunately after a year or two, Punk became the opposite of what it was. Everything was exactly the same and everybody was copying it. A lot of the scene moved on. To be fair, it does re-emerge in California with bands like Green Day. Another kind of hybrid of it. When The Sex Pistols did that famous show in San Francisco at the Winterland and the whole thing of Have You Ever Felt You've Been Cheated? You could argue that was probably the end of Punk around that time. It was like a short explosive moment wasn't it?

Q - In the States, yes.

A - But its still reverberates. You will still see and hear Pistols and Clash and their influence. It's still with us to this day. But, it affected things like haircuts and style. I suppose it made music become shorter and more focused.

Q - David Bowie didn't like managers. I believe he was talking about personal managers. Why didn't he like managers?

A - It's got to back to Tony DeFries, who was David's original manager who had a deal that David was really pissed about to speak in America. I believe the deal was based on gross not net, which meant if you were doing a tour and the tour lost money the manager still got paid. My understanding of it was that was not even paid off until the '90s. So, he was not a fan of managers.

Q - Bowie didn't like politicians, especially local politicians having their photos taken with him. Did he feel like he was being used in some way?

A - Yeah. I think that's correct. You want to be very wary of being caught in Left, Right or whatever. He wasn't a political animal. I very rarely heard him talk politics with a capital P. He was clearly a Liberal. He wasn't really a big fan of politicians, although he did get to know Bill Clinton a bit. He once went and played saxophone with him at The White House. That was pretty cool. He actually ended up being quite friendly with Tony Blair, much to everyone's' surprise, including David. But generally after a gig we'd have lots of people turn up, radio station DJs, young bands, fans, the normal stuff. But, he normally wanted to dodge the politicians.

Q - Are you still working as a publicist today?

A - I am. I've been working on shows and even I was a little bit taken aback. We've had a Deep Purple show, Alice Cooper, a bit of work on a Dylan show, Youngbloods, Nick Cave, and I've absolutely forgotten a few. So, I thought when I did the book it might sort of wind down, but it's done the opposite. Far from slowing down, which is what I should be doing, I'm speeding up. It wasn't the plan, but it's kind of exciting.





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