The Skids From Fame

I've not been reading the music monthlies much - too many dead people on the covers and all these dense, forensic essays about underwhelming moments. But I did enjoy the coverage of Island Records in the current Mojo magazine. I liked it because it tried to understand the ethos of a label that was once successful and different. It delivered Bob Marley and U2 to the world. It gave space to Tom Waits and John Martyn, to Grace Jones and PJ Harvey. They were one of the rare places that allowed the liberty for people to develop. Sometimes they event treated their investments like... artists.

There's an interview with the founder Chris Blackwell in the issue. He talks about his first hit record, 'My Boy Lollypop', by Millie. To celebrate the achievement in 1964, he arranged a motorcade ride back to her shack in Tivoli, Jamaica. When the singer reached her home, her mother came out and curtsied. The family dynamic had been shattered by fame. Thereafter, Blackwell insists, he would treat his signings as slow-burning album prospects.

There was definitely a degree of that at the old Island Records building in West London. The employees were generally chilled and into the music. Acts didn't get dropped when their second single missed the chart. Famously, it took four albums to break U2, and the company held out for the ride. These days, the label has been subsumed into the Universal building in Kensington and it's hardly the same.

There was a connecting thread in the George Best drama on Sunday night. I'm not sure it even tried to be accurate, but the central theme seemed real enough to me. Sudden fame is nasty and corrosive. It messes up the innocent and it turns character flaws into gargantuan problems. And a lot of people don't escape intact. I wonder if Eoghan Quigg was watching.