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 | | Tuesday, 7 May, 2002, 00:33 GMT 01:33 UK Waterman blasts 'greedy' pop stars  Pete Waterman made Kylie Minogue into a UK star Pop svengali Pete Waterman has lashed out at pop stars who he claims are risking their careers by getting too greedy. Waterman, who launched Kylie Minogue's UK career in the 1980s and was a judge on TV hit Pop Idol, said many young pop stars do not realise how lucky they are. He told Radio Times there was no loyalty to record companies and performers were just in it for the money. "Artists are pricing themselves out of the market, like footballers. All they talk about is how much money they can make and I'm fed up with it," he said. 'Uneducated' "Musicians come off the street, uneducated like me, and the business gives them millions, although a bank wouldn't lend them 100 quid. "As Mark Twain said, 'Feed a starving dog and it won't bite you.' That's the principal difference between an artist and a dog."
He told how Kylie Minogue nearly destroyed the label he owned with fellow producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken - even though the company made millions out of their association, which began with her 1988 hit I Should Be So Lucky. Overdrawn "In 1989 we banked �17 million and I thought, 'Fantastic', until the accountant phoned to say we were �8.9 million overdrawn," he said. "No-one warned, 'You're paying the artist too much'. In retrospect Kylie was the worst thing that happened to us although she's fantastic and we're all best mates. "We were a small company, sharing our revenue with the artists, which sounds applaudable, but when you become Kylie, running the empire is enormously expensive. "This sounds silly but we didn't have time for a haircut so the hairdresser came here - for �1,000. Clothes and shoe shops visited us and we spent �15,000 a time on suits. The cost of not having to shop is enormous." | |
 'Too greedy'Are pop stars just interested in the money? 
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