their wives. Women were getting screwed by lots of men, and were not very happy about it.’ But even those who disapproved of the weekend atmosphere conceded that they had thought of Virgin almost as a feminist company in the early days. It was only later that the cynical thought crossed their minds that Branson might actually have been so keen to employ women because they were cheaper than men and worked twice as hard. ‘It was manipulative, but with Richard it was instinctive,’ said another ex-employee of Branson’s uncanny ability to motivate people to work hard for him. ‘He had an instinctive way of handling people that got this reaction from them.’
The core element in Virgin’s successful mixture was the talent of Simon Draper. As an ‘A&R’ man, a specialist in artists and repertoire who decided which new acts the record company ought to sign, he was beyond compare. Draper seemed to have an uncanny touch for artists who were not yet famous but would soon become so; and it was on this touch that the Virgin Records empire was built. Branson never claimed to have any musical discernment; when he tried to hide his ignorance, the results were apt to be embarrassing. On one occasion, when Simon Draper was trying to sign Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Branson opened the conversation over a negotiating lunch on his boat by saying how much he had loved their last album. The band’s manager, who was intensely suspicious of Branson and was trying to persuade the band that it would be better to sign with a record company which made no pretence of being young and fashionable, saw his chance.
‘Name me your two favourite tracks,’ he said.
Branson was embarrassed to have his ignorance exposed, and stayed silent. Dessert was not served.
But there was more to Virgin’s success than Simon Draper’s ears. Only slightly less important was the quiet talent of Ken Berry, the clerk whom Branson had plucked from the accounts department above the Notting Hill Gate shop to sit in an office next to him at Vernon Yard. ‘Kenny’, as Draper and Branson called him, had won his promotion because Branson noticed that whenever he or Nik Powell telephoned the department for a piece of information, it was always Berry who provided the answer – and Berry’s answers were always right. A pattern soon emerged in which Draper would make the artistic decisions about which acts to sign, Branson would knock out the broad agreement in his office up a flight of spiral stairs from Draper; and then Berry would be left to tie up the details in a formal contract. Later on, as Branson was to withdraw from daily involvement in the label, it would be Berry himself who carried out the negotiations in all but the biggest deals.
In the mid-1970s, Virgin was just one of a number of fashionable independent labels that had succeeded in reaching the general record-buying public. It was still smaller than Island Records, and roughly the same size as companies such as Chrysalis and Charisma. Branson’s talent, without which Virgin might have stayed a small but politically correct name under the leadership of Simon Draper, was to put in place the policies that would turn Virgin into one of the ‘majors’.
His approach had two prongs. One was to take breathtaking risks that others shrank from. When Draper told him that the rock group 10cc were going to be big, for instance, Branson was willing to bet a huge sum on a group that would have sunk Virgin if its next record had not been a hit. The group had already had a couple of light but successful pop singles when Simon Draper was played a tape of The Original Soundtrack, their latest album. Branson flew to New York and struck a provision deal on American rights to the record with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic (who had bought the Tubular Bells package for $750,000).
In the event, the £350,000 offer that Branson then made for the group was insufficient; their manager, Harvey Lisberg, signed the group to a rival label while the two members who were most keen to sign with Virgin were on their way to a holiday in the Caribbean. But the story got around the British music business, and demonstrated just how serious a competitor Branson was. Richard Williams, who was Island’s A&R man at the time, was dumbstruck. ‘At Island, we weren’t dealing in big sums,’ he remembered. ‘We’d sign people for £20,000. I remember being in competition with Simon and Richard [for 10cc], and realizing that they were prepared to pay major-label money for this act. That was quite a shock: to realize that Richard, who was on a level with us and perhaps slightly junior, was prepared to compete with the EMIs and the Phonograms and the Warner Brothers.’ The point became still clearer a year later, when Branson just failed to sign the Rolling Stones for $3.5m.
But it was not only by offering larger sums than he could afford that Richard Branson succeeded in raising the profile of his record label. He also paid attention to an aspect of the business that most of the other British independents had neglected: foreign distribution. While A&M Records were modestly established in America, almost all Virgin’s other competitors were entirely domestic companies. When they had records to sell abroad, they relied on licensing deals. Branson was not happy with that idea. He knew that licensing a record to another record company overseas brought with it an advance, and required no managerial effort. But in the long term, a record company that relied on foreign licensees was putting itself in a similar position to the musician: instead of making the bulk of the profits on a successful record, it was taking only a modest commission.
Richard Branson therefore devoted much of his time from the end of the 1970s onwards to establishing a network of record companies across continental Europe. On every trip to France, Italy or Germany, he would have his eyes open not only for licensing deals, but for the key people whom he would be able to hire in future to run a Virgin company in that territory. At first it took time to win over Ken Berry and Simon Draper to the idea. But by the end of the decade, the structure was in place and the strategy was agreed. With Luigi Mantovani in Rome, Patrick Zelnik in Paris, and Udo Lange in Frankfurt, Virgin was now able to sign up artists and guarantee them not only good distribution in Britain, but also entry into the most important European markets. This made Virgin a more attractive business prospect to top-ranking musicians than the other independent labels. Despite the combined efforts of Branson, Draper and Berry, however, one thing was holding the record label back. Having failed to win 10cc, there was now no really exciting new act for Virgin to acquire. That was to change in 1977, when Richard Branson signed the Sex Pistols.
Malcolm McLaren, the eccentric and unstable talent who was responsible for the Sex Pistols, never liked Richard Branson. In fact that was an understatement; he hated him, with a loathing that was incomprehensible to others. Years after the Pistols had broken up, he would paint a series of fascinating but wildly improbably stream-of-consciousness pictures of his dealings with Virgin. The first concerned how he had taken his demo tape of the Pistols to Virgin’s offices in Vernon Yard early in 1976, and had rudely refused when Simon Draper suggested that he leave it for Branson to listen to. ‘No,’ said McLaren. ‘He either listens to it now or forget it.’
‘I didn’t trust Richard,’ said McLaren. ‘I looked into his eyes and didn’t even want to leave without my demo cassette with me. I was thinking: this is a guy who could bootleg me tomorrow morning and have it on a stall in the Portobello Road … I didn’t like the feel of the place. The chairs were so uncomfortable … I was asking for £15,000 for a couple of singles, and see how we go … I thought creative accountancy is definitely going to be a problem with this company.’
McLaren was by no means a professional manager. He had spent eight years at different art schools before opening a shop in the King’s Road selling rubber and leather bondage gear. His principal experience of the record business was of managing an unsuccessful New York rock group in 1974; and the package that he brought to Simon Draper that day in 1976 was hardly the sort to appeal to an A&R man known for the sensitivity of his ears.
The Sex Pistols were, to put it bluntly, a band of yobs. Their sole musical talent, Glen Matlock, had been dropped as bass guitarist in favour of the more startlingly thuggish Sid Vicious. Johnny Rotten, a misanthropic teenager whose complexion and posture had been ruined by a bout of childhood meningitis, was the lead singer. The prime talent for which the band’s other two members were famous, and which they had displayed to disastrous effect at pubs across
