IT was the world’s coolest firm – where sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were more likely than data, suits and blue-sky thinking.
EMI was the home of legends: The Beatles, Stones, Tina Turner, Queen and Spice Girls among a glittering roster of acts.
The Beatles became EMI’s ultimate cash cow, producing culture-defining music and dominating the globe[/caption]
In 1977 EMI dropped The Sex Pistols because of public outrage[/caption]
It was also home to a penthouse “shag pad”, a “sex lift” and an alleged £200,000-a-year fund reserved for “drugs and hookers”.
And the extravagance didn’t end there — one exec splashed out £20,000 on candles for an artist’s green room.
Tales of extreme indulgence emerge on new six-part podcast Money, Music & Mayhem.
Host Chris Atkins says: “Pick out your favourite bands and most of them were EMI.
“They had the golden touch and the magic ears.
“They gave us the best music that defined our culture for generations.
“Britain punched above its weight for decades because of EMI and it meant our music was an over-represented force in America and the world.”
And with that status came a workplace culture of excess.
Hundreds of workers would flock to Glastonbury every year on the company dime.
The only company with more attendees was the BBC, which broadcasts the event.
EMI also had the second-largest corporate private taxi account, used to ferry staff to gigs and after-parties and then home again in the small hours.
Chris says: “That corporate extravagance, which is alien now, was celebrated and the calling card of an industry that showed off how much money it could p**s up a wall.”
Then there’s the sordid story of a cleaning cupboard at Virgin Records where a lift used to be, before EMI bought the label for £510million in 1992.
Ernesto Schmitt, who worked at EMI, says it used to be a “sex lift”, adding: “I’m not making this up, it was real.
“This relic was a running joke at EMI for years.
‘SEX TOYS & VODKA’
“The elevator was straight out of a knocking shop.
“It was padded with studs and had secret compartments with sex toys, vodka bottles and stuff.
“And then you would go to the penthouse and it was laid out like a shag pad, I kid you not.”
This type of excess created monster egos.
But even EMI eyebrows were raised at one demand by Can’t Touch This hitmaker MC Hammer.
In 1990, his album Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ’Em had topped the US charts, selling 10million copies, and he had sold out Wembley Stadium.
Record plugger Phil Barton recalls the rapper summoning everyone into a dark room to pay tribute to him while he sat on a throne with a cane and black-lensed glasses.
Phil says: “We individually went up to him and said, ‘Thanks’, and then walked off and he would nod in a kind of regal way.
“We were giggling at the back and we got shot dirty looks, like ‘Don’t f***k this up!’.”
But the world’s coolest record company’s demise came after it had been taken over — by “the least cool man in the world”.
Private equity investor Guy Hands bought EMI with his company Terra Firma Capital Partners in 2007, a year before the financial crash.
It was a huge tragedy when EMI fell apart and was bought by multinational companies
Chris Atkins
The company was already losing out on millions of sales due to illegal music sharing on notorious website Napster.
And it only had a new band success rate of ten per cent.
With stats like that, Guy — who paid £4.2billion for EMI, borrowing from US firm Citigroup — decided to take a data-led, risk-averse approach.
This contrasted to the previous way, which could be categorised as “throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks”.
But it eventually saw him lose 60 per cent of his personal net worth and EMI being taken over by Citigroup in 2011, when the debts could not be repaid.
The company was then broken up and sold off.
“It was a huge tragedy when EMI fell apart and was bought by multinational companies,” says Chris Atkins.
“Not enough was made of that.
Snoop Dogg was said to be a big fan of spreadsheets[/caption]
“Their successes weren’t celebrated enough nor was the decline mourned enough. I’m sad it’s gone.”
When Guy came on board in 2007, Chris says his “army of whizz kids” were focused on data rather than the “massively risky gamble” of “throwing mud at a wall”.
EMI’s old approach may have had some “terrible returns” but it did find once-in-a-generation talent.
That pool also included Coldplay, Kate Bush, Mariah Carey, David Bowie and numerous others.
And, of course, there were those four working-class lads from Liverpool, who had been told by every other label that “guitar music was dead” and “no one would buy it any more”.
The Beatles became EMI’s ultimate cash cow, producing culture-defining music and dominated the globe.
Mind you, even the old EMI could be risk averse.
In 1977 they quickly dropped foul-mouthed punks The Sex Pistols because of public outrage.
But they were on safer territory when they snapped up Oxford-band On A Friday in 1991.
Chris explains: “EMI got to the front of the pack, signed them for a six- album deal, but said, ‘Your name is crap, how about you call yourselves Radiohead?’.”
A lot of it was a car crash,” Chris says. “All of this bonkers stuff was seen by rock stars as selling out
Chris Atkins
Later, under Guy, EMI tried easy cashgrab ideas, such as a Coldplay toothbrush that played their hit Yellow, a scheme to charge people to watch sessions at Abbey Road Studios and for Radiohead to front a marketing campaign with “bland, boring, middle-class” brand Next.
None was accepted by the artists.
“A lot of it was a car crash,” Chris says. “All of this bonkers stuff was seen by rock stars as selling out.”
Mick Jagger was pitched a Rolling Stones-themed board game, a spin-off for video game Guitar Hero and an outrageous reality TV show.
Chris says: “They had the idea for Stones Idol, like Pop Idol, to find a new member for the band, with Mick and Keith Richards as Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh.
“The aspiring pop stars in wigs would stay in trashed rooms, with tellies thrown out of the windows, and the Stones would reject or tutor them.
“I’m gutted it never made it to air.
“I was told Mick was so insulted, he went to the loos and never came back.
“Weeks later they left EMI.”
There were money-saving contract disputes, too.
Joss Stone’s advance was slashed after EMI believed they “wouldn’t sell very many of her future records”.
‘UTTER SACRILEGE’
Furiously, she marched into Guy’s office with her poodle, Dusty Springfield, for a showdown — only for the dog to “deliver what prisoners call a ‘dirty protest’.”
Similarly, when EMI refused to write off a “small debt” owed by indie band The Verve, their manager allegedly threw a CD at Guy’s head, “trashed his office” and “threw paper everywhere”.
But sometimes Guy’s approach worked.
EMI’s Beatles back catalogue reissue in 2009 sold 20million in a few months.
The label’s market research had discovered Fab Four fans did not know where to buy their music any more and that most of them watched the QVC shopping channel, so Chris says “data wonks” said to sell it on there.
He adds this was “utter sacrilege to the traditional folk at EMI” and insulting to the firm’s “crown jewels”.
Some artists sneered at the use of data but Snoop Dogg “loved the spreadsheets”, as did David Guetta.
Both became “hugely successful as a result”.
Sadly, those wins were not enough and Guy eventually oversaw the company’s demise.
Musicians such as Lily Allen fumed.
Guy Hands took over EMI in 2007[/caption]
She even changed lyrics to her 2008 song F**** You to “F**** you, EMI” at one concert.
“When you have musicians like Robbie Williams on one side and bankers on the other, you’re always going to go, ‘Poor Robbie’,” Chris says.
Guy was staring into the abyss.
He had a mental breakdown from the stress and developed a “bizarre eating disorder” where he became addicted to roast potatoes.
Citigroup took ownership of EMI in 2011 due to the unpaid debts, and later cut it up and sold it off to different companies.
Chris does not entirely blame Guy and says the investor “admits all of his mistakes” and lost billions.
He even suspects he was ahead of his time.
“When Guy took over, the pantry was empty, they were screwed financially,” he says.
“The least cool man in the world had to save the world’s coolest company and s**t hit the fan.
‘ANTITHESIS OF ROCK AND ROLL’
“It was a clash between money and art, which are really, really odd bedfellows.
“Penny-pinching, cost-cutting and playing it safe are the antithesis of rock and roll.
“Guy wasn’t a lunatic banker who ruined the music business for everyone.
“But the situation became nitroglycerin and went up in a big explosion.”
- Music, Money & Mayhem, from Novel in association with BBC Studios, available wherever you get your podcasts.
