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A ‘brief preview’ of the David Mackay biography. (c) 2014

 

By Alan J Richards MA in Popular Music Studies and Society

 

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In the hidden histories of popular music, many individuals stand in the wings. In the case of David MacKay he reaches a very high position, as an Australian, in British popular music and although he has achieved great success in the fledgling Australian popular music market at an early age, he moves to the UK and works in the European market for EMI UK and in the USA also. It is at a very important time in popular music history. The decades of the 1960’s and 70’s are the very peak time for record sales. It starts to decline after that in and around the 1978 and 1979 era, which was when the very height of record sales is reached. It begins to decline because of digitalisation and downloads after that.

We have a history of someone here, David Mackay, working with EMI Uk at their very peak, the world’s largest record company. As time goes by his work becomes more fragmented and he leaves the major players and starts to work as a self-employed person, leading up to the present day when he is in semi-retirement but still a leader in the industry. This is a classic example of how someone in the music industry creates a ‘portfolio career’, which is more important at a time when we are trying to get more young people into the business. We may have to tell them that they too will have a similar career, doing lots of things but nothing of substance at first. It also shows that you can lose lots of money as well as make lots, as besides the multi-millionaires in the music industry, there are many people who have lost fortunes, either through poor representation, naivety or crooked dealings.  Some like David Mackay have been able to make it back; this could be with the appropriateness of his particular type of music, his style of arranging or producing at any given moment in time.

 

An Ethnographic Approach to Studying Popular Music.

 

‘A pub on one night in Bromyard, Herefordshire’. (c) 2014

 

By Alan J Richards MA

 

 

 

 

Hereford and Worcestershire is situated in the West Midlands of the British Isles. It is a very rural area and Bromyard is an old market town centred between the two cities. It has a population of 3254 which has grown from 2018 ten years ago. This is mainly due to the influx of immigrants from the Eastern bloc, who currently make up approx 10% of the town’s workforce and the improvement of communication technology which has attracted big city dwellers to come and live in a less hectic environment and work from home.

This ethnographic study is aimed at collecting data from direct observation of behaviour in the town’s music society, its tastes and preferences and popularity. The focus will be on one of the town’s 10 music licensed hostelries ‘The Rose and Lion’, which is situated in the centre of a fairly busy high street in the town.

Herford and Worcester has always been an area which values it’s music and has a popular monthly ‘What’s On’ magazine called ‘Black Sheep’ which covers the Arts, Music, Theatre, Dance, Film and Food establishments in Herefordshire, South Shropshire and The Marches. This is a vast area of the West Midlands with a huge population but what is interesting is that the emphasis of the editorial and advertising attached to the publication is of a ‘Folk Genre’ and this reflects the enormous following this genre of music has in the area.

The ‘Rose and Lion’ in Bromyard is a hub for local musicians to perform gratis each Thursday evening throughout the year. There is not one particular group or ensemble of musicians, it is open to all local would be entertainers who wish to join in. Live music in a rural place can be listened to and performed for a variety of different reasons., notwithstanding, genre can play an important part, for instance in Bromyard, the town does have a musical history having the largest Folk Festival in the UK annually each September. Therefore the genre can be affected by ‘Locality’, ‘Class’, ‘age’ and also the attraction for families to get together on social occasions, which is very much a ‘Folk thing’. As Ruth Finnegan (popular music historian) states: at a local level, folk music today often attracts well educated, professional and middle-aged audiences with a few if any teenage adherents but the latter would appear to be even more diverse on a Thursday evening at the ‘Rose and Lion’ in Bromyard, as the participating musicians playing to a crowd of regular customers has an average age of around 18-25years old. The ‘Rose and Crown’ does not have a Juke Box or any other form of background music on the premises so therefore does not generate any sort of influence on its patrons. It also does not serve food and is therefore deemed by the community as being a ‘real pub’ offering only its pleasant surroundings and a wide variety of ales supplied by a local brewery ‘Wye Valley’ and the Landlord is a single Man with previous ties to well known Rock Bands such as Metallica through his Catering skills whilst they were touring. The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has reported recently that 26 pubs in the UK are closing their doors each week, yet the ‘Rose and Crown’ in Bromyard appears to be ‘bucking the trend’ and keeping its popularity in the community. Could this be due to contributing factors such as, the attraction of being a true local pub, giving the community what it desires in style, decor, variance on local brews and the genre of music that is applicable to the locality and popular with patrons on a Thursday evening? Through participation and observation it may be possible to attempt to analyse witness accounts and settings that may reflect the social influences that this venue has on the community and its perspectives on the music concerned and evaluate the attraction it offers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the highs of live independent TV broadcasting Alan returned to Liverpool and recommenced his live work around the Liverpool clubs. It was arduous and somewhat conservative, but Richards found that he could integrate his own material into the live experience without great difficulty, for it all had that “pop tinge” of the day. Other than holding an aversion to music of the ‘heavy’ variety, patrons were not especially judgemental, and with Alan’s name being mentioned in the local press after competing in the Duke of Edinburgh competition, he was never short of an engagement. He even decided to create his own small revue, ‘The Alan Richards Show’, and along with a local comedian and a couple of dancers, toured Liverpool’s club-land with some degree of success.

By 1971 Richards was successfully placing his songs with London publishers, and working directly with Valley Music. He was finally persuaded to go full-time into the music business when offered a position of A&R at the Liverpool Sound Studio in Kirkby. This enterprise had evolved out of CAM Records in Moorfields, Liverpool which had effectively ceased to function via a variety of ideas that had run aground such as the CAM label, together with the news of the imminent arrival of a new Moorfields underground railway station. Co-owners Harold Collins and Joe Wilmington ran the diminutive studio as something of a plaything. Harold Collins was part of the Industrial Marine Company and Joe Wilmington was proprietor of the Wilmington Agency. Collins purchased Wilmington’s share of the studio and moved it lock, stock and barrel to the industrial estate in Kirkby next to his security company. The idea was to upgrade facilities with a new 8 track recording desk. The 8 track recorder had been promised to Collins and business partner Eddie Hunt by a local boffin who had bits and pieces of equipment from, of all places NASA, but the desk failed to materialise. However the studio, upon employing Alan for £30 per week, advertised in both the Melody Maker and the local press for local songwriters to contact them. For a fee of £3 Liverpool Sound would record a demo, consider its merits and then, if suitable, Richards would take on the job of hauling it around his publishing house connections in London.

The Liverpool Echo was to report:

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Launching pad for a new Mersey sound

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A&R Manager is local songwriter 20 year old Alan Richards, who produces the sessions. “Like Harold, I really believe that it is all going to happen again. I also believe that this studio is going to be the place where it will all start from” said Alan. (Liverpool Echo)

The £3 demo money immediately brought in several hundred pounds in a very short space of time and gave Alan the opportunity of continuing his contacts in London via the publishers he had already got to know. Although none of the music being demo-ed at Liverpool Sound ever made it into the charts, several songs were recorded by leading artists of the day and the name ‘Liverpool Sound’ became respected in London among those publishers who dealt with more mainstream tastes, such as Ronnie Scott and Bobby Barrett (EMI). Alan “knew who would be interested and who wouldn’t depending upon the genre of each song – although I never really took anything ‘heavy’ down there – this would be the age of Tony Macaulay and his songs [such as ‘Baby Make it Soon’, ‘Love Grows’, ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’, etc] ruled. I was looking for that kind of material as well as writing my own in those styles”. 

 

Other books by Dr Michael Broken: