The author of the book “The Insights Collection – Insights From the Engine Room,” he now resides in Florida but worked for many, many years in the UK, with clients that ranged from REM to The Police to Bob Marley, Matchbox Twenty, Elvis Costello, and Peter Gabriel, among many others. His career spanned more than 30 years and even included being asked to serve as the publicist for David Bowie’s “Earthling” tour. He inspires audiences all over the world as a speaker.
“I started my career in the music industry in 1974 selling records out of the back of a van for 25 (British) Pounds a week.”
“Here’s a (record) label I grew up buying… and then all of a sudden I’m working with them. So not only are they going to give me all my records for free, they’re going to pay me. So how weird is that? So, I go from kind of growing up listening to Traffic records as a teenager and working with Steve Winwood!”
“I wrote a blog every day, so all of a sudden I had a blog with, like, 30 thousand words. So, that kind of became the basis for a book. So I actually wrote a book in three months.”
“If you’re an artist and you get up on a stage, you have to kind of have so much belief that you can do this because, like any artist, you want to project what you’re doing, your music, to as many people as possible… You have to have almost like a relentless belief.”
“We have a generation of people growing up, I think, that never had it to miss it.”
(On the early days of U2) “It was kind of like Nirvana were in the garage – you shouldn’t be very good at that stage in your career.”
“I said (to Bono and The Edge) ‘Listen guys, I can get you in here because of who I know. Only you can get yourselves back in here because of who you are.’”
“Being interested in music isn’t a qualification for getting a job in a record company.”
“Anything that potentially attracts a lot of money attracts a lot of sharks.”
“People didn’t play my records because they liked me. They listened to them because they respected me.”
“If you believe it enough it won’t be hard to convince others.”