The Epps File

‘They don’t realize that if you actually want to succeed in it and make money out of it, you have to present something worth buying’

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend an hour talking to a Stuart Epps, a man with a story to tell.  At a very young age when most of us are deciding what university we want to go to, what career choice we are going to make, Stuart was touring America with Elton John, boarding private planes with John Lennon, getting to know Oasis and thought he would retire at the age of 23. His life reminded me of a scene that should have been the film Almost Famous, take out the journalist, add an office junior and an assistant and we have The Stuart Epps Story. Let’s backtrack to 1969 where every musician was in show business.  

The moments that pass, I am being introduced to Stuart, sitting casually on his chair adorned with a giant pair of silver headphones. After a few courtesies and shared laughs, I asked him to transport me back to when he was a 15 year old boy.

With a Reminiscing look on his face, he begins, ‘At age 15 went to work for Dick James who was the Beatles music publisher.  He didn’t have a record company although having the Beatles , The Hollies, The Troggs, Gerry And The Pacemakers and many others he was one of the biggest  publishers at that time . One of those songwriters was named Reg Dwight.’ Reg Dwight is more commonly known to us as Elton John. ‘Reg and I became friends and he was a pretty outrageous guy back then already. I was only 15 but I had already been in bands and I liked to sing and write songs. That’s what I really wanted to be, but meeting Reg and hearing his songs I was just taken away really and I thought he was quite brilliant, just sitting there playing the piano. I never really thought I’d have that experience.’

                                                                                             

Stuart and Reg Dwight became friends when Stuart was an office boy, but soon went to be a Disc cutter and cut demos for Reg, who was renamed Elton John. ‘We were all mates and it just became like a big social thing and I went pretty quickly from working in the studio to A&R and working in the office. It’s quite a long story actually; I managed to write a book about it...’

He started working with a man by the name of Steve Brown who was working with Elton at the time and ‘Things used to happen pretty quick in those days and within in a year or two he was this star.'
Stuart got the opportunity to be his Assistant and worked with Dick James who formed record   company DJM. There were other artist but the main focus was Elton and they had been working on this every day, booking gigs and eventually tours and at the age of 18, he went on an American tour with Elton, who   by that time had already been to the states and was starting to do rather well.

He engages me with a story of how things used to happen in those days, he remembers going to see Bob Dylan at the Isle of White and a year later Bob Dylan came to see Elton in Los Angeles at the Troubadour and how Elton got a few albums on the American charts, Tumble Weed Connections, Yellow Brick Road.

Stuart decided to form his own record label called Rocket Records. So he left DJM after five years and as it was quite unusual to have an independent record label in those days, personally, I  believe he might have influenced how music became so available from an independent level. Rocket Records went on to signed Kiki Dee, who was one of the artists, Stuart signed a band called Long Dancer, which one won’t have heard of, but the guitarist of the band was Dave Stuart who became one of the Eurhythmics. Having Kiki Dee on the label, he became her personal manager - and even did and a tour with Elton John in 1974.

Stuart and the team had their own plane and did a massive tour of America with Kiki Dee second on the bill to Elton. Redirecting the story, he told me of how he thought he would retire at the age of twenty three. ‘I felt like I had seen everything and done everything, so I was going to retire.’  But before he made a decision, Elton’s producer, Gus Dudgeon told him about the studio he was going to build, sadly Gus has since passed. Instead of retiring Stuart came out to Cookham and started working on building this studio, Mill studio.

‘I was more involved engineering and working on Elton Albums however, a band called voyager and Chris Rea was discovered there- we did his first album there and I started singing and became friends with him.’

Gus had to sell the mill, to Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and Stuart became his engineer and started running the studio for him. He was now with Jimmy Page who was working with Atlantic records. Stuart began to see another side to music as opposed to the more mainstream type in those days and got to meet heavy rock bands and produces the band Twisted Sister and Vandenberg more heavy rock, than what he was used to working with Gus.  Following that Stuart had founded his own studio called Wheeler End. 

‘Wheeler End was what I made into a pretty good commercial studio.  That wasn’t easy, it was a beautiful studio but a lot of hard work to get it known, and to get new business, but I had Bill Wyman and some people knew Paul Weller so he joined, and then the word got out and it grew and one day I got the call.’ 

In the time of Brit Pop the mid 90’s, groups like Super grass and Oasis where at the top of the charts and one day, Stuart received a call from  Oasis’s record company, they told him that Noel Gallagher wanted to book his studio. 

’That was great; because they were literally the biggest band of that time, so during that Mark Owen, from Take That!  Who I had been singing and working with came to the studio and then naturally Robbie Williams came too. The studio was doing quite well, but eventually that had to go too. It’s quite hard keeping a commercial studio. It’s like the bigger the bands, the better the deal and the more you have to look after them but  that was good and during that I just carried on freelancing as I didn’t have my own private studio anymore . So I just used studios that suited the artist really. So that’s it, that’s a short version of my story. ‘

 My curiosity and dreams of the Rock and Roll lifestyle spoke for me when I tried to ask Stuart about some of the craziest moments, but being in the business, he knows what to say and what not to say, he was only inclined to give me a moment that to this day, 40 years later and before my time, gives me Goosebumps.

BOTS: Tell me about that moment, when you were side by side with John Lennon, at Madison Square garden, only one of the most iconic moments in live music history.

The performance was all based on a bet. When John, Elton and Stuart were on the Plane, they had come to agree on a bet about a song called, ‘Whatever gets you through the Night’ which was co-written by Elton and John. If that song made it to number one, John would have to perform it on Tour. It did become number one and Elton rang up John and said, ‘I’m playing at Madison Square Garden and I want you to come on stage with me.’  John at that stage hadn’t been on stage for about 10 years , he had become a bit of a recluse living in New York, but he had to do it, because that was the deal, so true to his word, he went with them.

‘That was incredible moment for us as we all are massive Beatles fans, but then we were at this incredible venue in New York and I’m back stage with John Lennon, literally with him when he went on stage and he was very nervous, he didn’t know how the crowd would react, but he just went up and the whole place - 10,000 people- went absolutely crazy for what seemed like forever. They went into ‘Whatever Gets You through the Night’ and then did ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ which was a Beatles song.  It was the most amazing thing I had seen on stage. Even though Elton has had some incredible gigs this was just something else. It is still regarded as one of the top 5 concerts of all time.  Sadly following that, he was shot.’

As a lover of music from the 70’s it is incredibly sad to think I could never see the Beatles perform or if we will ever have a moment captured like that on stage. The pure spontaneity of show business. I asked Stuart if he thought that the quality of music has changed from 1969 to present day. I wanted to know if he thought it is just mass generated and people are putting out anything or are we lacking the artistic element that went into music production back then, because it is so easy to do it these days?

‘Well, in some respects, nothing has really changed.  A good song is still a good song and a good artist is still a good artist.’

‘The business has changed; the way of gaining recognition and selling records has changed. Everything can be done through the internet.  I mean, the one interesting thing is going through the 60’s and then the 70’s with all the bands that were around and all the changes that were happening.  It was new, it’s quite possible that that will never happen again, these days everything has been done and everything copied. So it’s a bit like a rehash. So from my age group, we have seen a lot so there’s very little that is new, which I personally find a shame.’

‘In those days, you would get phenomenal artists like Elvis or Michael Jackson, people that were giants in the industry and then you had songwriters like Lennon & McCartney.  I still think that is because that was still early days for the business. So maybe that time period, we thought it was really good at the time and now everyone is copying it, everyone is doing covers, and every band favorite band is Led Zeplin and so on… Everyone is constantly going back to those great days. So I guess it must have been great and when you hear the music, it is still great.  And today’s music tends to be a little more disposable.  Not for all artists but there is just so many coming up, which is good for music because it makes sure that everybody gets a bit more chance, new artist get a chance. There are so many places you can advertise your music. It’s not totally reliant on record company moguls to say, yes, we will take you and make you into a star.  You know there are other ways of doing it.’

‘Those days it was more specialized. I liked it like that. But I have to say, I enjoy the fact that everyone is more into music generally.  Music gigs, Xfactor etc.  I love the fact that I walk down the street and everyone has headphones on. When I used to do that, I got pointed at, they were like, look at that funny person walking with headphones listen to music…stereo music! But I’m quite pleased now that the whole world seems to have caught up to where we were in the business 40 years ago. You still need to be a Great Artist, you need to be focused, you need to be talented and all those things. That hasn’t changed. Even with all the technology. You still need to be good.’

I took this moment to ask him, if he had to make a list of say five things a musician must have, in order to succeed in the business, what would they be?

‘Talented, absolutely focused and passionate – it cannot be a part time thing, Ruthless- It’s not a nice word but you got to be ruthless with yourself. In making decisions to be in the top .There is always a bit of ruthlessness. And Resilient- having drive and ambition.’

‘It can be a very long conversation because artists being artists and having artistic temperaments, they personality is very sensitive. They have an ego. At the same time, especially if they are performers, they put themselves in the firing line. It’s not exactly where a sensitive person wants to be. Defiantly not on a stage in front of 10 thousand people.’

‘I should actually tell everyone this, because I get young artist coming here girls or guys who can’t take criticism- except that they are performers and that’s what you set yourself up for. It’s the same for everyone. It’s like an artist who paints, they paint a picture, they are going to want to sell it, they have to ask people what they think of it and some might say it’s horrible, and that will upset the painter. But they have to have a resilient to that.  There are so many things that a musician, singer, songwriter has to be.  I don’t think people realize how difficult it can be. I mean if you look at a show like Xfactor, there are people crying and breaking down and I think that’s its very bad for that because it can destroy young people’s career in the very early stages. But you know, it weeds out the ones that can’t handle it and it helps you realize very early on if you can or can’t handle it. It’s not easy, that’s why not everyone can be a big pop star or rock star.’

 This is something I am faced with things like xfactor, yes, you are an artist you are a singer, but you are told you are not set out to be a recording artist. What does it take to be a recording artist? Audiences play a huge part in deciding if a musician is any good, but it can’t be the deciding factor. For instance, Rodriguez went to America and performed and he wasn’t too well received, by an entire country.  He then went to South Africa, people loved him and now he has reached iconic status. If he gave up then, we wouldn’t have the gift of his songs. How do you know when to give up?

‘Well these days, with live music been more popular than it’s ever been. You can’t just be a recording artist. You have to be a performer. There are very few people who can just make records without performing. All these things take time to perfect. Any talent needs time to develop.’

‘Now and again, you have these people who have this god given talent and need very little before they make it and before you know it, they are big, Elton John being one of them.  A lot of kids these days want it to happen tomorrow. Because they think that is how it happens by looking on the telly, where as they don’t realize how hard it is.’

‘It’s a tough way to find out through the audiences and that’s why I think with bands in the 60s they developed so well, and when they did succeed they had this incredible longevity. The classic one that stares you in the face is the Rolling Stones, they been going for 50 years. The reason why they have lasted so long is because they are grounding, they were playing every night in clubs all over the place, and they were playing cover songs, just like Musicians today. So they were seeing what went down with the audience… honing their craft. You wouldn’t think so at the time as they were pretty outrages, but if crowds are not taking to you, you do something about it, you change it.’

‘It’s very difficult for an artist to distinguish who they are, what they are, what audience are going to like them,  that’s why an artists has a manager, then the manager sees these things and can help that person. In the case of Elton john, I used to go to gigs with him and people were totally ignoring him, it’s hard to believe, but when he went out to America, he designed this persona. He did this flamboyant jumping on the pianos and wearing crazy outfits and the America liked that, they took to him.  So as soon as the Americans liked him, everyone in England liked him, that doesn’t happen to every artist. Oasis went to America and nothing happened. Robbie Williams went and nothing happened. One artist, for some way or another, appeals to a certain market whether it’s the style of the music or what they look like. That’s all down to marketing that artist. It’s a huge question really as an artist has to find out who they are first really and invent themselves, based on the music. That’s what record companies and managers are supposed to help with; if they are experienced they will recognize the possibilities.’

 We have spoken a lot about what musicians can and should do. What are some common mistakes you find that they make and how could they avoid it?

‘Not being able to decide on anything and spending too much time making demos.  One of the things I believe is that too many artists want to do everything.  They got to be the singer, guitarist, writer, the producer and the engineer, all this stuff. Well very few people can, the thing to do is team work. Team work can produce some of the best artists out there. Not every artist seems to know that.’

‘Take advice and not being too precious. If you can’t write words, but you can write great melodies, find someone who can write great words.  Focus on your strengths and ask for help.’

‘Most people in the 60’s became artists because they didn’t know what else to do, that’s all they wanted to do. I can’t do anything else so this is what I do.’ – I suppose that’s why they make it, if you aren’t able to do anything else, you focus so hard on making it happen, you don’t lose site.

Sadly We have reached the end of our time together and usually at this moment, we are inclined to give a bit of wise words or pass on some knowledge, what do you want to say to our readers?

‘Fake it 'til you make it…in other words, always presents something great that you can live up to. The era I grew up in was show business. I think that young musician don’t appreciate the meaning of show business, there’s not so much emphasis put on the fact that you are actually selling something.

‘They don’t realize that if you actually want to succeed in it and make money out of it, you have to present something worth buying’

If you go on stage, you put something on to wear, don’t come to the gig and get on to stage with clothes you arrived in. A lot of young bands do that. They look at oasis and think they are just ‘Yobos’ who got lucky, but that’s far from true, I worked with them and they are incredible showmen and amazing promoters. Sure they have some down sides but that’s what you need to be, you need to be able to sell yourself. They are not really dark glasses, moping about. They are great performers. That is generally the case with people who have succeeded. There is a reason for it. It’s not just how they look or luck.  It’s how they marketed themselves.’

The End

By Romy Newman