Simon Napier-Bell

Simon Napier-Bell born 22 April 1937

London-born Simon Napier-Bell has undertaken many jobs in the music industry, including manager, producer, songwriter, journalist and author. But he is best-known as manager, particularly of The Yardbirds, John's Children, Marc Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Japan, London, Wham! and Blue Mercedes.

After becoming involved in music at school and heading off the the United States and Canada to become a professional musician, after two years Napier-Bell decided he wanted to pursue other directions.

When he returned to England he worked as an assistant film editor. With a thorough knowledge of music, he soon progressed to being a music editor and landed the job of working with Burt Bacharach on What’s New Pussycat, re-editing the score Burt had written for it. Later, he also scored, wrote and edited music for Clive Donner's Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush.

In 1966, Dusty Springfield approached Vicki Wickham and Simon Napier-Bell to write English lyrics for a song she’d heard at the Sanremo Festival. The result was You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which became Dusty’s first number one.

His friend Vicki Wickham, who booked all the acts for the TV show Ready Steady Go, persuaded him to move into the music management. He started by putting together an act of his own – Nicky Scott & Diane Ferraz – a boy from London and a girl from the West Indies. The inter-racial mix was a first for the British music business.

On the back of the publicity Napier-Bell generated for Scott and Ferraz, The Yardbirds asked him if he would manage them. Napier-Bell then co-produced the Yardbirds’ first studio album. He then oversaw the entry of Jimmy Page into the group and produced the group’s next single, Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, considered one of the most avant-garde rock records of the time.

Napier-Bell went on to manage John's Children, who were known more for their ability to shock than for their music. Napier-Bell then teamed up with ex-comedian Ray Singer to produce records for various artists including the Scaffold (a group which included Paul McCartney's brother, Mike McGear), Peter Sarstedt, Forever More (who became The Average White Band) and other lesser known acts. He also spent a year in Australia where he discovered and produced John Paul Young.

Following this, Napier-Bell worked in Spain and South America for two years, managing one of Spain’s biggest stars, Junior, with whom he co-wrote several Spanish hits, in particular one of the biggest selling Spanish language singles of the seventies, Perdoname.

In 1976, Napier-Bell came back to London and returned to management with two new groups, London, a group in the then-current punk vein, and Japan [pictured]. London was a short lived project but Japan involved him for the next seven years. Napier-Bell persevered with them through five lean years to eventually help make them one of the most influential groups of the early eighties, both musically and fashion-wise.

He then teamed up with manager Jazz Summers and together they took on the management of Wham!. The group had already had three hit singles in the UK but wanted to terminate their contract with their record company. Napier-Bell and Summers led them through four months of legal complications (during which they were unable to record), and finally settled the case by signing a new contact with CBS.

Napier-Bell spent eighteen months travelling backwards and forwards to China negotiating for Wham! to become the first ever Western pop artist to play in communist China. They eventually played a concert there in April 1985 at the Worker's Stadium in Beijing.

At the end of 1985, Wham! ended its relationship with Napier-Bell and Summers when George Michael left Wham! for a solo career. Napier-Bell went on to manage the duo Blue Mercedes, who had one worldwide hit, I Want To Be Your Property (1987). Napier-Bell also arranged for the defunct pop group Boney M to reform and had all their old tracks remixed by Stock Aitken Waterman. The result was an album that stayed at number one in the French charts for four months but sold little elsewhere.

Following this, Napier-Bell teamed up with another manager, Sir Harry Cowell, and they took on the management of two once major groups looking to revive their careers – Asia and Ultravox. Asia fared better than Ultravox but eventually Napier-Bell gave up on both of them. After taking time out to write Napier-Bell chose to go back to management, this time working in Russia. Initial success in Russia was not followed up with success in the rest of the world.

When Japan broke up, Napier-Bell wrote his first book, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, about his experiences in the music business in the 1960s. When he ceased managing Asia and Ultravox he wrote another book, Black Vinyl White Powder, about the British music business which was received with favourable reviews. In March 2005 he published another book, I’m Coming To Take You To Lunch, the story of how he took Wham! to China.

Simon Napier-Bell - official website

David Geffen

David Geffen born 21 February 1943

David Lawrence Geffen is a record executive, film producer, and theatrical producer, and philanthropist. Geffen is most noted for creating Geffen Records in 1980, and being one of the three founders of Dreamworks SKG.

Born in New York, Geffen attended the University of Texas at Austin but soon dropped out.

He began his entertainment career in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency, where he quickly became an agent. He left William Morris to become a personal manager and was immediately successful with Laura Nyro and Crosby, Stills and Nash. In the process of looking for a record deal for young Jackson Browne, Ahmet Ertegun suggested that Geffen start his own record label. Geffen founded Asylum Records in 1971, which signed artists such as Browne, The Eagles and Linda Ronstadt.

Asylum was acquired by Warner Communications and merged with Elektra Records in 1972 to become Elektra/Asylum Records. Geffen remained in charge until 1975, when he resigned as director. He worked briefly as Vice Chairman of the Warner Bros. film studios before retiring for a few years (during which he taught business at Yale University.

In 1980, he founded Geffen Records. After releasing John Lennon's album Double Fantasy in December of that year (because, Lennon said, Geffen Records was the only label with enough confidence in him to agree to a deal without hearing the record first), Geffen found themselves with a massive seller, albeit in tragic circumstances, when Lennon was murdered later that month. This helped bring the new label a mass of attention. Geffen Records/DGC became well known also for releasing works by the likes of Cher, Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, Neil Young, and Weezer.

Through the Geffen Film Company, David Geffen produced dark-tinged comedies such as (the 1986 version of) Little Shop of Horrors, Risky Business and Beetlejuice. Geffen was the Broadway backer for the musicals Dreamgirls and Cats. In 1994, Geffen co-founded the DreamWorks studio with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Geffen, who is openly gay, was the subject of a persistent but false 1990s rumour that he had married actor Keanu Reeves. Before he came out as openly gay, he dated Cher and Marlo Thomas in the late 1970s.

Geffen is a prominent philanthropist, renowned for his support to medical research, AIDS organisations, the arts and theatre.

According to Forbes Magazine (The 400 Richest Americans of 2004) and other sources, Geffen has pledged to give whatever money he makes from now on to charity (although he has not specified specific charities or the manner of his giving). In 2002, he announced a $200 million unrestricted endowment for UCLA Medical School.

Geffen is a keen collector of American artists' work, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. In October 2006 he sold two paintings by Jasper Johns and a De Kooning from his collection for a combined sum of $143.5m. In November 2006, the New York Times reported that Geffen had sold Pollock's 1948 painting No. 5, 1948 from his collection for a world record price of $140m (£73.35m) to a secretive Mexican financier David Martinez.

Geffen is the subject of Joni Mitchell's song Free Man in Paris. Mitchell and Geffen were close friends, and in the early 1970s made a trip to Paris with Robbie and Dominique Robertson.

Geffen can be heard on Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album, released in 1985. The track Putting It Together features Geffen, Sydney Pollack, and Ken Sylk portraying the voices of record company executives talking to Barbra. He resides in Malibu, California. He, along with other celebrities including Steven Spielberg and Brad Pitt donated money to stop Proposition 8 from becoming law in California.

David Geffen was named one of the 2010 recepients of Ahmet Ertegun Award from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mel Cheren

Mel Cheren born 21 January 1933 (d. 2007)

Mel Cheren was an entrepreneur, record company founder and nightclub boss, often acknowledged as the Godfather of Disco.

Mel Cheren played a crucial role in the evolution of dance music. In the mid-Seventies, while working at Scepter Records, he introduced the 12-inch single and the instrumental B-side, which enabled DJs to mix and loop tracks and build the excitement on the dancefloor. He was also one of the prime movers behind the Paradise Garage, the New York nightclub famed for employing the DJ Larry Levan.

In 1976, Cheren co-founded the equally influential West End Records. The label sparked off the house music movement in Detroit and also scored several hits in the UK, most notably with Hot Shot by Karen Young (1978), Don't Make Me Wait by the Peech Boys and Do It to the Music by Raw Silk (both 1982), and Another Man by Barbara Mason in 1984.

Born in Everett, Massachusetts in 1933, Cheren started as an office clerk at ABC-Paramount Records in New York in 1960, progressed to sales rep and eventually became head of production. In 1970, he joined Scepter and was an early mover in the New York disco scene with acts like B.T. Express.

After Scepter folded in 1976, Cheren and his colleague Ed Kushins launched West End Records with Sesso Mato, a disco version of the soundtrack from an Italian comedy. The following year, Cheren provided the financial backing for his partner Michael Brody to open the Paradise Garage in Greenwich Village.

Since it was a private rather than a licensed club and didn't sell alcohol, the Paradise Garage could stay open all night and became the streetwise alternative to Studio 54. It also boasted the biggest dance-floor and the best sound system in New York, and hosted appearances by Grace Jones, Madonna, New Order, Phyllis Hyman, Colonel Abrams and Gwen Guthrie during its lifetime. In a notoriously faddish city and industry, the Paradise Garage managed to stay open until 1987.

West End became a very collectable label, in particular tracks like (Everybody) Get Dancin' by the Bombers from 1979 and the much-sampled Heartbeat by Taana Gardner from 1981. After a lengthy hiatus between 1985 and 1998, Cheren bought Kushins out and West End Records was reactivated. In 2001, the DJs Kenny 'Dope' Gonzalez and Little Louie Vega compiled a non-stop mastermix double-CD to celebrate the label's 25th anniversary. 'We were on the cutting edge without realising it,' Cheren said, looking back. 'I've always heard we had a special sound, but 'til today I still don't know what that was . . . If I liked a song, we would put it out.'

In addition to his role in music history, Cheren became a dedicated AIDS awareness activist. Seeing the impact of the epidemic at first hand, Cheren became actively involved with the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1982. During that year, he donated his building in Chelsea rent-free to GMHC for use as their headquarters, until they moved into larger quarters in 1984.

Cheren's philanthropic efforts remained an integral part of his life and in 1987 he formed 24 Hours For Life, a not-for-profit organisation of media and music professionals which produced fundraising events for AIDS relief and education.

In 2000, Cheren published an autobiography entitled My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin', calling it 'the story of my gay generation, the world we built, and the world we lost'. One of the themes of the book was the devastation caused to the New York disco scene by the AIDS epidemic, to which Mel Cheren himself finally fell victim on 7 December 2007 at the age of 74.

Brian Epstein

Brian Epstein born 19 September 1934 (d. 1967)

Perhaps few individuals were less likely to create the public image and oversee the career of the world's most famous rock group than Brian Epstein. Born into a family of affluent Liverpool Jewish furniture merchants, Epstein seemed destined for a career in their business. He was attracted, however, to such 'unmanly' pursuits as fashion design and the stage, which, along with his closeted homosexuality, put him at odds with his family's aspirations.

Epstein left school at sixteen to work at one of his family's stores until he was called up for military service in 1952. After only a year of active duty, he was discharged for unspecific psychiatric reasons - actually he had been arrested for impersonating an officer in a club and referred to a psychiatrist who uncovered Epstein's homosexuality. Epstein subsequently enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but before completing his studies he returned to his family's business, where he became the manager of the store's record department.

It was in this capacity that, in October 1961, he first heard of the Beatles, a Liverpool band whose fans were seeking their recordings. Epstein was unable to locate these records and, intrigued by the mystery, ventured into the Cavern Club, where he encountered John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and then-drummer Pete Best.

Within two months, although he had no entertainment or managerial background, Epstein had signed the group to a contract. Over the next year, he transformed the group's image from that of leather-clad ruffians to 'Mods' attired in fashionable suits with longish hairstyles, creating, in effect, an androgynous look for his protégés.

Epstein also successfully negotiated the Beatles' first recording contract with EMI Parlophone, replaced Best with Ringo Starr, and became the manager of various other successful Liverpool acts, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black, and Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas.

By 1964, when the Beatles and his other acts took America by storm, Epstein seemed to personify worldly success. He was, however, living in an almost constant state of anxiety lest his homosexuality - and his attraction to rough and often abusive young men - become public knowledge, as male homosexual acts were still illegal in Britain and any scandal might negatively affect the Beatles' career.

It has often been suggested that Epstein's devotion to the Beatles was based on an unrequited love for John Lennon. Speculation about a possible affair between them has existed since the two holidayed together in Spain in 1963.

In 1966, the Beatles decided to stop performing live and concentrate solely on studio recording. Although this decision resulted in such breakthrough recordings as Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Epstein felt that he had effectively lost control over the band and suffered from acute depression, exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse.

On August 27, 1967, Epstein was found dead in his London home from a barbiturate overdose. Although his death was ruled accidental, many have presumed it was a suicide. Ironically, he died a month to the day after legislation decriminalising homosexual acts between adult men went into effect in Britain.

For three decades following his death, Epstein was vilified by the popular music world as a controlling figure who tried to suppress the Beatles' creativity - and who was accused, falsely, of having cheated the group out of millions in income. All the while, the fact that the world would not have heard of the Beatles had it not been for Epstein's relentless efforts on the group's behalf was blithely overlooked.

In recent years, however, his reputation has been reconsidered and perhaps he will at last receive the honour due to the creator and manager of the group who permanently changed perceptions of popular culture. Paul McCartney summarised the importance of Epstein to the Beatles when he was interviewed, in 1997, for a BBC documentary about Epstein. He stated: 'If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.'

Henry Willson

Henry Willson born 31 July 1911 (d. 1978)

Henry Willson was an American Hollywood talent agent who played a large role in popularising the beefcake craze of the 1950s.

Willson was known for his stable of young, attractive, oddly-named, sometimes marginally talented clients, including: Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Nick Adams, Guy Madison [pictured below left], Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun [pictured bottom right], Clint Walker, Ty Hardin, Robert Wagner, and Chad Everett.

Willson was born into a prominent show business family in Lansdown, Pennsylvania. His father Horace was the vice-president of the Columbia Phonograph Company and advanced to the presidency when the company was renamed the Columbia Gramophone Mfg. Co. in 1922. He came in close contact with many Broadway theatre, opera, and vaudeville performers, and Will Rogers and Fred Stone numbered among the family friends once they moved to Forest Hills, an upscale neighbourhood in the New York City borough of Queens.

Concerned about his son's interest in tap dance, his father enrolled Henry in the Asheville School in North Carolina, where he hoped the school's many team sports and rugged weekend activities such as rock climbing and backpacking would have a positive influence on the boy, not realising the all-male atmosphere would more likely stimulate his budding homosexuality. He later attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, spending weekends in Manhattan, where he wrote weekly gossip columns for Variety.

In 1933, Willson emigrated to Hollywood via a cruise ship through the Panama Canal. On board he cultivated a friendship with Bing Crosby's wife Dixie Lee, who introduced him to the Hollywood elite and secured him a job with Photoplay, where his first article was about newborn Gary Crosby. He began writing for The Hollywood Reporter and The New Movie Magazine, became a junior agent at the Joyce & Polimer Agency, moved into a Beverly Hills home purchased by his father, and became a regular at the Sunset Strip clubs, where he wooed young men for both professional and personal reasons. One of his first clients (and lovers) was Junior Durkin, whose promising career was cut short by an automobile accident in which he was killed.

Willson joined the Zeppo Marx Agency, where he represented newcomers Margery Bell, Jon Hall, and William T Orr. He was introduced to Hollywood High School student Judy Turner, who he rechristened Lana and got cast in small roles, finally introducing her to Mervyn LeRoy. In 1943, David O Selznick hired Willson to head the talent division of his newly formed Vanguard Pictures. The first film he cast was the World War II drama Since You Went Away with Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, and Shirley Temple. He placed Guy Madison, Craig Stevens, and John Derek (billed as Dare Harris) in small supporting roles.

Willson eventually opened his own talent agency, where he nurtured the careers of his young finds, frequently coercing them into sexual relationships in exchange for publicity and film roles.

His most prominent client was Rock Hudson, whom he transformed from a clumsy, naive, Midwestern truck driver named Roy Fitzgerald into one of Hollywood's most popular leading men. The two shared an occasional sexual relationship and were teamed professionally until 1966.

In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson's secret homosexual life, and Willson disclosed information about Rory Calhoun's years in prison and Tab Hunter's arrest at a gay party in 1950 in exchange for the tabloid not printing the Hudson story. At his agent's urging, Hudson married Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates in order to put the rumours to rest and maintain a macho image, but the union dissolved after three years.

In his later years, Willson struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, paranoia, and weight problems. Because his own homosexuality had become public knowledge, many of his clients, both gay and straight, distanced themselves from him for fear of being branded the same. In 1974, the unemployed and destitute agent moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, where he remained until he died of cirrhosis of the liver. With no money to cover the cost of a tombstone, he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.