As I sift through my CD collection to root out my ten most seminal albums for this blog, it has struck me how many date from the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties - the formative eras of the modern music industry.
To understand why such a diversity of music existed back then, it is necessary to understand how the 'Big Bang' of experimental music came to be shackled by accountants and lawyers into the narrow mainstream that currently exists. This bought to mind a chapter I wrote for one of my draft novels - Chainsore - which outlined the history of one of the truly great record companies of the modern era, The General Music Corporation, or the GMC.
So here goes...



The GMC

Few companies can claim a closer association with British culture than The General Music Corporation and none have reinvented themselves more completely down the years.
GMC, or The General Merchandise Company as it was originally called, bumbled and blathered and dithered through much of the twentieth century as a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. This unwieldy conglomerate meandered aimlessly between the great wars, unfocused and directionless…as confused as a headless chicken barking up the wrong tree, its tentacles oiling almost every walk of life - fingers in a multitude of pies… Get the picture?
Quite…
In the nineteen thirties, for example, the corporation’s activities encompassed carpet factories in the West Midlands, shoe manufacturing in Somerset, cider production in Shropshire, an electrical goods assembly line in Bolton and the famous GMC Film Studios in Wembley, North London. Indeed, at one stage – just before the outbreak of the Second World War – the distinctive three cornered logo was almost as familiar in British high streets as the Union Jack, and some would even go so far as to argue that the company was as synonymous with England as fish and chips – as traditional as bangers and mash.
For example, every Saturday night millions would troop through the revolving doors of their local GMC Picture House to watch the latest Wembley Pictures romance, dabbing their eyes as heartthrobs Johnny Bearling and Irene Gecko plighted their troth in garish recreations of The Lost City Of Atlantis – ‘Love Beneath The Waves’ - or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – ‘Love Birds of Paradise’. The packed audience would slip off their GMC brogues and rest their woollen GMC socks on the plush GMC carpets as the whirring GMC projector behind them cast an image of the Pyramids – ‘Forgotten Lovers Of The Nile’ - backed by the lush string arrangements of Arsene Wenger and the GMC Symphonia, recorded in the pokey GMC sound studios, now known around the world as the legendary North Circular Recording Studios.
It was with the outbreak of hostilities with The Third Reich that an inexorable decline set in. Of course, it didn’t help that the then GMC chairman, Sir Harold “Harry” Prothero, was an enthusiastic proponent of appeasement with Germany, to the point of investing more than GMC could prudently afford in a munitions plant in Bavaria. ‘Herr Hitler is a man with whom we can do business,’ he confidently pronounced, and what better way to prove the point than to put his company’s money where his mouth was? However, within two years both the money and the mouth had gone, the arms factory having been nationalised by the Fuhrer and Sir Harry kicked upstairs with a handsome pension in recognition of his sterling work in virtually bankrupting the business, to say nothing of indirectly assisting in the subjugation of Poland.
Prothero’s successor was promoted from within – a canny up-and-coming Scottish engineer by the name of Fergus Woore. Almost immediately Woore was drafted into the war effort by Lord Beaverbrook and without having to be asked twice, devoted all of GMC’s resources to developing a new and hush-hush secret weapon, which it was generally believed could turn the tide in favour of the allies. The concept was simple and based around the belief that if the German population could be convinced of the superiority of the British Way Of Life, then morale would be sapped and a speedy capitulation would follow. Accordingly Woore directed that all of his company’s considerable resources be channelled into the development of that most deadly and clandestine of secret weapons - the GMC Projectile. Although dogged by technical problems and still in the development phase when the war ended, there is little doubt of the potency of the device. The GMC studios in Wembley worked round the clock, producing a series of films in which Bearling and Gecko extolled the virtues of English life. Even to this day the passion of their wartime performances remains unmatched and ‘Lovers On Parade’ is generally regarded as a classic of its time. Sadly, an insurmountable hitch arose as the massed white coats of the research and development department at the GMC Windlesham laboratories failed to overcome one major problem – judder. A squadron of Lancaster Bombers was fitted with giant projectors, and initial trials over Salisbury Plain were encouraging. So long as these ‘Flying Cinemas’, as they were colloquially known, kept low enough, images could be projected reasonably well. However, problems with cloud cover, the tendency for the machinery to ice up at ten thousand feet and crucially, exposure to enemy ak-ak fire of an enormous airborne cinema projector announcing its presence in hostile territory with a giveaway flickering beam meant that the idea never saw the light of day, let alone the dark of night.
The upshot of these fruitless efforts was that GMC emerged into the nineteen fifties a shadow if its former self. Gone were the factories in the Midlands and the cider mills - even the shoe workshops had to be flogged off for a pittance. For ten years the film studio stumbled on but although the newly ennobled Lord Woore might have been an engineering genius, he was to prove wholly out of touch with changing public tastes. A string of disastrous flops took the company to the brink and even ‘Swinging London Lovers’ failed to excite the box office. It was time to bite the bullet and accept that the great British public wanted Cliff and the Shadows rather than the ageing Bearling and Gecko.
It was the end of an era.
By the mid nineteen-sixties, The General Merchandise Company was all but down and out. The share price had slipped to next to nothing and this once proud standard-bearer of British industry had divested itself of all assets of note. Only the film studio remained, largely because no buyer could be found. More as an afterthought than in a serious attempt to revive the company fortunes, one last project was embarked upon. A swansong – a diversion while the remaining technicians worked out their statutory notice. With next no budget and even less in the way of expectations, a director and cast were chosen more for their willingness to work for peanuts than for any notable track record or talent. The original script for ‘She Loves Him Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ was left in the Laundromat by an absent-minded production assistant, requiring the young French director Jean-Jacques Mitterand to make up the plot as he went along. It had always been his intention to base the movie in and around swinging London, but the lack of a storyline meant that of necessity the setting became an end in itself. Three days of desperately scouring the streets and alleys of Soho for emerging rock and roll groups, pop singers and would-be models resulted in ninety minutes of non-stop sixties pop music fronted by grinning mini-skirted dolly birds with no more than a cameo appearance by Johnny and Irene, both heavily disguised with pudding-bowl haircuts, flowery shirts and flared trousers. As a matter of course and without particularly considering the implications, all the musicians and performers were signed up to the nascent GMC record label and recorded in the company’s pokey North Circular studios.
The rest is history. The film bombed and closed within two days of the premier but the soundtrack shattered all previous sales records and launched the careers of several of the best known bands of the sixties including a few that remain household names to this day. ‘Sonny Berry and The Cheeks’, ‘The Howlers’, ‘Flaxxy Simon’, ‘Claire Sebastian and the Honeys’, ‘The Peppermint Twisters’…all these and more exploded onto the scene as a result of that fateful moment of absent mindedness when Jilly Pendleton accidentally slipped the only copy of the film script into the Washerama with her smalls.
Kismet, fate, serendipity…whatever strange forces might have been at play, the outcome was spectacular. Overnight the tail began to wag the dog. The small neglected recording studio that had always been an adjunct to the main event now proved an unstoppable powerhouse, churning out hit after hit after hit under the watchful eye of chief recording engineer and legendary record producer Ronnie ‘Sniffer’ Talbot. Teams of office juniors were dispatched to scurry in and out of clubs, coffee bars and back street dives around London. Their instructions were simple – if it’s less than twenty years old, jiggles its hips, has long hair or a mini skirt and plays a guitar or ukulele…sign it on the dotted line – if it can write, that is…. Within a year the company name was changed and The General Music Corporation came into being. Few noticed and even fewer cared – the initials and triangular logo remained the same, and it was automatically assumed that GMC had always been a record company. It must have been – those three letters had become so intertwined with the swinging sixties as to overshadow the forty dour years of industry and tradition that came before.
Professor Kenneth Dodds, in his authoritative history of rock and roll entitled 'An Authoritative History of Rock and Roll' struggles with the nineteen-seventies. In a brief chapter entitled What On Earth Was That All About? he examines the rise to pre-eminence of the General Music Corporation.

“The Beatles with ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ opened the gates of a musical revolution. It was not just that pop music suddenly grew up and developed pretensions towards being a sophisticated art form; no – modern rock now had a vernacular all of its own, going well beyond the previously defined boundaries of simple but catchy three minute tunes. As the audience for this more profound and meaningful expression of popular culture exploded, so too did the profits enjoyed by those companies best placed to exploit a new breed of artists, and chief amongst these was GMC with its subsidiary labels. While EMI made a fortune out of the Beatles and Atlantic reaped a bumper harvest from the albums of Yes and Led Zeppelin, the General Music Corporation at first floundered as the company tried to compete in a changing market with increasingly dated and lightweight offerings from Sonny Berry and Flaxxy Simon. As hip and tuned-in record labels appeared from nowhere, GMC found their own sales stagnating. With new kids on the block such as Chrysalis, Charisma and Virgin successfully launching a string of internationally successful British bands, it became clear to Lord Woore that GMC either had to adapt to the times or suffer the fate of Decca and London Records, and fade into obscurity. There was one major problem, however, to which he could find no answer. Traditional standards appeared no longer to apply. Woore had always relied upon the philosophy laid down by his revered producer and chief talent scout, Ronnie Talbot, whose famous edict was carved above the door of North Circular Studios for all to see… “If the milkman can’t whistle it, you ain’t got a hit.” Kate Bush proved that it ain’t necessarily so, and suddenly albums started shifting in their millions comprising songs that were not merely incapable of being whistled or hummed, but which appeared to Woore’s ageing ears to be made up of nothing more than a jumble of white and pink noise. How to compete in such an illogical market place, and what’s more a marketplace doubling in value year on year? This new breed of progressive rock bands was generating massive fortunes for their copyright owners undreamed of in the past.
The answer he came up with was nothing short of breathtaking and served to put GMC back on top of the pile at a stroke. The catalogue developed during this decade went on to underpin the company’s fortunes and finance its position as the leading entertainments conglomerate of the twenty first century.
Woore’s logic was impeccable. In that it appeared impossible to judge the commercial potential of these new progressive rock artists on the basis of any normal creative standards, he commissioned his executives to examine those factors which could be empirically identified and then lay down an objective set of criteria to determine future signings. After several months of in-depth research, the answers were forthcoming. The most successful of the new breed of supergroups all had several things in common; a remarkably idiotic name, long hair, dirty jeans and horrendously loud amplifiers. Woore was delighted and sent instructions to his talent scouts the world over; forget the music - concentrate instead upon winkling out new bands with ridiculous names, stupid haircuts, the smelliest possible clothes and the most deafening amps. He would release this new crop of signings on a special progressive label set up especially for the purpose called “Ffarout”. In one of the most daring commercial strategies ever introduced by a major record label, this stroke of genius delivered a string of massive international hit bands. Groups such as “Fahrenheit Frognineone”, “Blimpballast”, and “SnaffleDuck”, supported by artists such as Thousandwatt Tyler and Hotdog dominated the charts for much of the decade while the restyled “Clarissa and The Original Honeys” rock opera “Nostradamus” became a classic the world over. GMC was back and back to stay.”

However, all things must pass, and nowhere is this saying more applicable than in the world of popular music. As the nineteen seventies drew to a close, a musical movement that had once been a breath of fresh air became stale and hackneyed – self indulgent and pompous. A battle developed between the leading contenders of prog-rock to outdo one another with meaningful, profound creations that would have left Wagner yawning. In the same month that Yes launched their tedious triple album snappily entitled ‘Tales Of The Topographic Ocean’ GMC’s own Liquid Feather countered with their epic ‘Sensitivities Of The Corrugated Onion’ ten-album boxed set. This helped to hammer the final nail into the coffin of progressive pomposity and the lid was well and truly slammed shut by the arrival of a radical alternative music from the streets – Punk.
Let Professor Dodds pick up the story once more…

“The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, UK Subs and others were as far removed from the self-important pseudo-classical grandeur of Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Blimpballast as could be imagined. Under Margaret Thatcher, the youth of the late nineteen seventies was angry and alienated by and from society and they found a common cause in this new alternative scene. Popular music was no longer merely the message but had rather become a means to shock and outrage; it was part and parcel of a genuinely alternative lifestyle that encompassed fashion, art, literature and most crucially of all, music.
The record industry had gradually come to terms with progressive rock and absorbed what was once an expression of alternative culture into the business mainstream. Yesterday’s long-haired guitar players had become today’s multi-millionaires, working hand in glove with big business to maximise returns. To a new generation this was seen as a betrayal of core values and the ultimate sell-out. Who was now exploiting whom? The increasingly moribund mega rock groups of the seventies now worked happily with the capitalist system and it was the audiences who were being ripped off. It was time to fight back, and the self-styled Punks enjoyed the element of surprise. In simple terms, it was not just that they didn’t play by the rules; no, an important part of the Punk ethos was to deliberately disregard convention and reinvent the nature of the game. That GMC was virtually alone in failing to throw a fortune down the drain by signing and then immediately dropping the Sex Pistols was entirely down to the pragmatism of Fergus Woore. However, his refusal to succumb to the mad headlong rush to fling unlimited cash at these musical rebels led directly to his downfall. It is a testament to his canny Scottish common sense that he was to enjoy the satisfaction of laughing last and laughing longest…”

To Woore, Punk was anathema. Whatever New Music Express or John Peel might say, he refused point blank to allow GMC to climb onto a bandwagon driven by what he saw as foul-mouthed, uncouth, musically illiterate yobs. Once more the company saw sales slide as the illustrious chairman let it be known that the General Music Corporation would have no truck with Punk and New Wave rock. Matters came to a head when Malcolm McLaren introduced his latest sure-fire chart topper to the influential head of A+R, Gazzer McGee who made his determination to sign the band clear to the point of threatening to resign if the chairman wouldn’t play ball. Lord Woore refused, saying that there was no way any record company controlled by him would ever release records by a group called The Black And White Menstruals. He didn’t care whether the lead singer, Stew Peed, was the most recognisable face in the country bar none – so long as Fergus Woore ran GMC, the Menstruals could take a hike.
The upshot was inevitable. A combination of avaricious shareholders and streetwise junior staff ganged up to force the stubborn chief executive from office, to be replaced by the smug McGee. As newly appointed CEO, he took it upon himself to ensure that his first act was to sign The Menstruals with a massive advance in the face of stiff competition from every other record company in town. As he stood before the camera with an almighty grin on his face and an arm around his new star, McGee felt an inner glow of pride as he imagined the following day’s headlines…’ GMC Sign Latest Punk Sensations In Record Breaking Album Deal’. His place in the annals of rock music would be assured and this bold and adventurous move would re-establish a new hip and street-credible GMC at the forefront of the industry. And yes – the headline duly appeared. And yes – Gazzer McGee duly achieved legendary status for paying a seven-figure sum for an untried or tested Punk band. And yes – McGee does indeed now occupy his rightful place in Professor Dodds’ seminal history of rock…

“Of all the shrewd operators of the era, Malcolm McLaren is without doubt the most notorious. In what many regard as the music business coup of the century, McLaren took a first year geography student from Tooting Beck Polytechnic and dressed him in black plastic dustbin liners held together with safety pins before parading him around all the major television studios with strict instructions to spit at anything on two legs. Having thus established a national profile for Stew Peed, or Justin Fitzroy as he was actually called, McLaren cut a handful of raucous demo tunes with four drunken session musicians and delivered them to all the major record companies in London. They immediately took the bait with the exception of GMC, where Fergus Woore saw through the ruse but was overruled by a combination of shareholders and employees and forced out of office. With a full hand of companies now bidding against one another, McLaren moved like lightening and separately instructed seven lawyers, unbeknownst to one another, while accepting the seven best offers that he had received. In an exhausting and frantic day Stew and Malcolm toured the companies signing a series of exclusive recording contracts, ensuring that the massive advances were all wired safely to a London bank account. This was promptly cleaned out as the artist and his manager left for a lengthy holiday in Brazil the following morning after announcing that the band had split due to irreconcilable musical differences between Stew and his guitar. Although none of the record companies ever publicly acknowledged how much they had paid for the privilege of being so easily swindled, the figure has been variously estimated at between three and five million pounds, of which the General Music Corporation alone paid out well over a million.”

McGee was duly promoted and booted upstairs, leaving a power vacuum in the company. It was now necessary to recruit a new CEO and after months of painstaking research, for the first time an American was headhunted to take over as managing director.
Joel Oberheim started life in the music industry as a backing singer for Bootsy Collins but an allergy to Spandex and a bad attack of vertigo bought on by wearing eight-inch platform shoes bought his performing career to a premature end. A chance meeting in downtown LA led to a post as a junior talent scout at the California office of Ffarout Records where his business education began in earnest. Always a quick learner, Oberheim soon worked out that the surest way to the top was to avoid making mistakes. This helped explain why most record company executives seldom turned up to work, as by diligently doing nothing whatsoever, regular promotion could be ensured. Unfortunately however, after a particularly large liquid lunch, he stumbled into a badly lit club in time to catch the most amazing band he’d ever seen. Without further ado, he marched into the dressing room and offered them a major recording contract on the spot, and this was how he came to sign Screwya who went on to become one of the hottest acts in the States. The rest is history, of course, and apart from filling Ffarout’s coffers, Oberheim became the Man-Most-Likely-To, to say nothing of ensuring a modest fortune of his own by virtue of a personal two-point overrider on the group’s recording royalties.
Several years later niggling doubts began to surface. As was his wont, Oberheim proudly recounted this triumph of inspired talent-spotting to a fellow party-goer when the casual acquaintance innocently asked how could it have been that this sensational unknown group was performing on stage and hanging about in the dressing room at one and the same time? After initially laughing off the question, Oberheim gradually became so haunted by the contradiction that he revisited the club and rooted out the records of that fateful afternoon. He was mortified to discover that the act that had so impressed him was in fact the embryonic REM and the group that he had mistakenly signed comprised the band’s three roadies and a passing groupie engaged in unspeakable activities of a nefarious bent. Hmmm… so when he asked what they called themselves and the semi-naked girl pressed up against the wall replied Screw Ya, buster… he might just possibly have misinterpreted her answer? If so, this remains a secret that he’ll carry to his grave…after all, it was an easy mistake to make, wasn’t it? And it turned out pretty well, all things considered. At least it went some way towards explaining why the rest of the band didn’t have the first idea of the singer’s real name until half way through recording the second album… Not that Greta Gripp could actually sing in the conventional sense of the word, any more than Brain, Dee or Smackhead could play their instruments…but by this stage in the game, Punk was all the rage, and whether by accident or design, Joel Oberheim had delivered GMC’s alternative Ffarout Label with their own contender in the New Wave stakes. Screwya became Joel’s passport to the top.
Oberheim walked in through the front door of GMC’s London headquarters just as the last vestiges of artistic creativity were being muscled out of the rear exit by corporate accountants, lawyers and marketing executives.
Once more, Professor Dodds takes up the story in a chapter entitled ‘Commercial Break’ - subtitled ‘A Decade Of Unadulterated Bilge’.

“The advent of the nineteen-eighties marked a sea change in the music industry. MTV arrived and was invited to stay - manna from heaven for record companies desperate to replace hit-or-miss speculation with what they were convinced was the sure-fire certainty offered by expensive marketing campaigns. Wall-to-wall pop videos pushed stylists, image-makers and public relations consultants to the fore, reducing the artist to a product, or more accurately, a by-product of a glossy promotional machine. The industry believed that it had hit upon a winning formula, removing tiresome uncertainty from the business of selling records. The approach was simple – package and promote new acts with same slick advertising techniques employed to shift baked beans or toilet paper and the unwashed masses would flock to the tills, ready to buy the latest carefully packaged and skilfully hyped releases. It worked like a dream, and Haircut 100 were followed by acts such as Flock Of Seagulls ¬(Haircut 101) Spandau Ballet (Haircut 102) Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark ¬(Haircut 103) Duran Duran (Haircut 104) The Thompson Twins (Haircuts 105,106 and 107) Howard Jones (Haircut from Hell) and so on. In next to no time Britpop ruled the transatlantic waves, and by the mid eighties over a third of all music sold in the valuable US market was produced by British acts. The power of these new techniques was proved beyond question when Milli Vanilli topped the charts with the ultimate sales coup – a million-selling act that didn’t even exist. This was marketing Nirvana – final proof that music was merely an irrelevant product and that style and promotion were all. The tables had been well and truly turned, for whereas ten years earlier record company executives trembled in their shoes and bowed before the all powerful progressive rock stars with their unfathomable music and incomprehensible appeal, now the records were merely a sideshow to high powered marketing campaigns – the actual music was all but irrelevant in the new scheme of things so long as it was delivered by a pretty face with a ludicrous hairstyle and a frilly shirt.”

Oberheim was determined to buck what he rightly regarded as a short term trend and when a rough and ready demo tape landed on his desk from Oxford band, Jericho Again he believed that in the front man, Jimi James, he had discovered the holy grail of A+R – a long term talent with potential world-wide appeal. After all, the new CEO of GMC knew what Middle America craved above all else, and that was…a guitar hero. With his gruff voice, archetypal British eccentricity, larger than life personality and electrifying guitar technique, Jimi James was made to measure for the role, and accordingly the Welshman and a hastily assembled backing band of session musicians – collectively known as Chainsore ¬- became Oberheim’s first major signing to the label.
The rest is the stuff of music industry legend…
Joel Oberheim chaired the weekly A+R meeting in the boardroom of GMC’s Thane Square headquarters.
‘Gentlemen, I got a vision….’
The assembled executives settled back into their seats expectantly.
‘I see a real good future for The General Music Corporation….’ …a ripple of applause, instantly hushed by Oberheim’s raised hand…‘An` it ain’t some fancy Britpop dude with a synthesiser an` a performin` midget…’…vigorous nods accompanied by muted murmurs of approval… ‘This may come as a shock, gents…’ …a slow glance around the assembled heads of department followed by a knowing smile… ‘But I reckon the next Big Thing will be….’ …a deliberate pause for effect… ‘This…’ …a demo tape banged on the table… ‘My first signin` to the label….’ …curious glances all around…. ‘An` it ain’t no wimpy synths an` girly haircut crap.’ …broad smiles and polite laughter… ‘No. I can feel it in my bones, gents…what the world is a-waitin` for is a new guitar hero – a classic rock an` roll singer-songwriter…’ …a buzz of anticipation around the table... ‘An` so, gentlemen, I present to you the sound of the future….’
‘Ahem…’ …all eyes turned to the head of A+R… ‘Er…but I thought Dire Straits were already signed to Vertigo…?’A long and awkward silence followed….
‘Dire Straits? Dire Straits? Who or what the fuck are…Dire Straits?’
Oberheim glared at the man who duly sank back in his chair. ‘Er…you know…surely? A guitar player called Mark Knopfler…er…a singer songwriter with a larger than life personality who…er…a guitar hero who…er…who writes classic rock and roll songs…er…his new single, Sultans Of Swing has been number one in the charts for three weeks…you know – Dire Straits…’
Oberheim stared daggers at the man for fully twenty seconds while his mind went into overdrive, desperately struggling to salvage the situation. Goddamn it…this was not an auspicious start to his career as head of the company. Rather than taking the world by storm with the sheer originality of his vision, it had just been pointed out that he had squandered the equivalent of three months talent acquisition budget on a carbon-copy of last week’s number one. Without pausing to consider the implications, he covered his tracks.
‘Ha…think I don’t know that? Idiot…’ All eyes turned scornfully towards the head of A+R who shrank even lower in his chair. ‘No, this band...’ Oberheim tapped the tape pointedly before surreptitiously slipping it back into his pocket… ‘Chainsore…’ he smiled at his minions triumphantly… ‘They got a chick singer. An English rock an` roll band with a guitar hero an` a chick singer. Real cute, she is – a foxy lady - but with soul…’ He glared at the A+R man. ‘Now tell me that’s been done, arsehole….you go ask your buddies at Vertigo what they got to say to that… ’ The odd whispers of ‘for Christ’s sake don’t mention Fleetwood Mac’ were drowned out by enthusiastic applause. ‘Brilliant…amazing vision… radical… bravo…breathtaking originality…thinking out of the box…revolutionary…’
And thus it came to pass that unnoticed by most of the industry with the exception of a recently unemployed ex-head of A+R from GMC, an advertisement appeared in the Musicians Wanted section of Melody Maker…
‘Female singer required. Grace Slick meets Janice Joplin but with looks.’
An unknown teenager called Kandi Curtis got the gig, and Chainsore found themselves with a good deal more than Jimi James or Joel Oberheim could ever have bargained for.
A legend was born – a wizard, a true star…