Where have all the good times gone?
"Where have all the good times gone?" by Louis Barfe was published earlier this year and is designed to offer a history of the British record industry from its beginnings right up to the 21st century. Unlike a lot of other books it's primarily focused on the economics of the record industry. So instead of looking at artists and the music they create it focuses on record deals and backroom deals.
Mariah gets several mentions including a detailed look at her Virgin deal and where it went wrong. Barfe is relatively sympathetic towards Mariah and offers some interesting insights into the financial trouble EMI was in even before the Mariah deal was signed, and whether, in Barfe's opinion, the payoff was a good business move for EMI.
The first Mariah reference is in relation to George Michael's infamous 1993 lawsuit against Sony. During the court case Michael named both Tommy Mottola, and another of Mariah's close business associates at Sony, Don Ienner, as the people he blamed for souring his attitude towards Sony. Interestingly, several interviews this year have asked Michael why he chose to return to Sony this year, 11 years after fighting, at a personal cost of £2m, so hard to leave. He has repeatedly replied that one of the major reasons was "because Tommy Mottola's left".
"Sony had to deal with a major grievance from George Michael. Michael had followed up the best-selling album 'Faith' with 'Listen Without Prejudice Volume I', which sold to a far more selective audience. Relations between Michael and the label worsened to a point in October 1993 when he started legal proceedings against the company to get out of his contract. He felt that its relative failure had been down to the lack of enthusiasm with which it had been promoted. Michael alluded to the massive campaign that Sony had undertaken for Mariah Carey (who was later to marry label boss Tommy Mottola), but Sony responded that such campaigns were used to break new acts. Whatever the truth of the situation, the figures made it look as though Sony wasn't really bothering."
The next reference to Mariah looks at Mariah's EMI deal, why it didn't work and the consequences for the label bosses. Barfe begins by setting the EMI deal in context with the financial problems the label was suffering as far back as 1998: EMI could perhaps be excused for its uncertainty. Even before the industry as a whole went into panic mode, EMI was having one of its periodic fits of the jitters. In January 1998, the company posted its first profits warning in a decade, blaming problems in the Far East, with Sir Colin Southgate relinquishing the executive part of his chairmanship to move on to the Royal Opera House, president of recorded music Jim Fifield wanted desperately to become CEO of the whole EMI Group, but the board were less enthusiastic about the idea. In April, Fifield resigned, taking a £12m payoff. In the year to May 1999, this settlement and disappointing performances from the Spice Girls contributed to an £80m fall in profits to £227m.
Fifield's replacement was Ken Berry, who was to receive a pay deal worth up to £3m a year in salary, with a further £1.5m in performance related bonus and stocks, less than the £6.9m Fifield got in his last year at EMI, but still a lot of wedge. It was also a lot less then the £17m per album that he pledged in 2001 to Mariah Carey, newly free from her contract with Sony and her marriage to Sony chief Tommy Mottola. On her past record this seemed like a safe bet, but two factors had not been taken into account. She was a star in decline, having peaked in 1993 with the album Music Box, which sold 20 million copies. Additionally, she was, to put it politely, showing signs of stress, having suffered an emotional breakdown and spent much of early 2001 in a clinic. The first album of her EMI-Virgin deal, Glitter, sold just 2 million copies.
Berry was fired in October 2001, with another bonanza compensation package, this time £5m. His estranged wife, Nancy Berry, who also worked for the company, and had been romantically linked with quite a few of its artists, followed a week later. In came Alain Levy, three years after he had been ditched by PolyGram following the Seagram takeover, on a basic salary of £700,000 a year, topped up with generous share options. This relative modesty was only right and proper seeing as Levy's first task was a "slash and burn" round of job cuts- shedding 1,800 of a total 9,000 staff.
Levy strenuously denied that it was all Mariah's fault. "With or without Mariah Carey this would have happened," he told the Daily Telegraph. "The company was not in the right dimension for the market we are now in. For instance, our Virgin record label organization was a complete duplication of our other EMI record labels in several countries."
Mariah got her cards as well, albeit with a £38m payoff, buying her out of the rest of the contract. Does this deal make sense? Only if EMI is absolutely certain that it could do nothing more with her. Two more albums like Glitter and the company could easily double its losses on the deal, through marketing and overproduction. Since then, however, Carey has pitched up at Universal, who seem to have no complaints. So much for investing in artists.
Later the book makes reference to Mariah's deal again, in comparison to Robbie Williams' deal: Undeniably EMI can still attract the talent. On the face of it, the Robbie Williams deal might seem as big a gamble as the Mariah Carey one was, but it breaks new ground by including a cut of his touring and merchandising revenue to hedge against relying on record sales. Then there are Kylie Minogue, Coldplay, and Norah Jones. (Mariah Connection)
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