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Turning 50 this spring is one of the truly great record labels–Chris Blackwell's Island, launched to release blue beat singles from his native Jamaica but, in time, home to everyone from Jethro Tull and Roxy Music to Nick Drake and U2… not forgetting Bob Marley and the Wailers. Melody Maker's Richard Williams was there to report on the culture of the company. -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages


If you work for Island Records, nobody minds if you take your dog into the office every day--or even if it misbehaves on the carpet.

Island's headquarters is in a particularly loose part of Notting Hill, and that's one of the factors that gives the company a very strong personality.

Musicians and hangers-on wander in and out at will, checking out what's happening in the studios or just rapping with friends. Island's substitute for the security men most record companies employ is an instruction to staff not to smoke dope on the premises during office hours.

Not for nothing was Island being called, a couple of years ago, "the British Elektra." Like Elektra, Island is almost totally a reflection of the man who founded it--in this case, Chris Blackwell.

It's indicative of his personal attitude to his job that he lives, literally, "over the shop." His small, cluttered apartment is reached by climbing a stone spiral staircase, concealed behind an unobtrusive door at the back of the offices.

He divides his time between this flat, Island's Los Angeles office, his house in Nassau, and various recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Kingston, Jamaica.

Blackwell is the son of a Jamaican plantation owner, and there's a lot of the Isle of Springs left in him--an almost utter disregard of time, for instance, coupled with an easy, relaxed manner and an ability to see both sides of a problem.

It's there in more obvious ways, too: in a transatlantic phone conversation with a Kingston record producer, he'll slip easily into Jamaican speech-patterns: "What you 'ave, Harry? What time it is with you?" It's a singsong, almost Celtic inflection that contrasts strongly with his "normal" voice.

I saw it employed when I watched him working in Jamaica: an English record man would find it hard to communicate with the Jamaicans, but Blackwell can operate quite easily on their level, because it's on his too.

It makes dealing much simpler for him--and deals are 50 per cent of what he's about. The other 50 per cent is music.

His staff in London are obviously awed by his abilities. His name really is spoken in a special way, and they talk of his business ability with admiration.

"C.B. is an amazing businessman," one of them said. "He's not like most people, who'll spend hours haggling about a deal. He walks in, makes the deal on his terms, and walks out."

If that suggests an obvious dynamism, it's wrong. He makes deals in an almost aesthetic way, like an art connoisseur choosing an old master. There's a pleasure in the act itself.

He's quiet, reserved with people he doesn't know, says he hates being interviewed and having his picture taken, and yet is remarkably good company.

He's a very rich man, but you'd never know it--in Jamaica he drives a battered old Mini-Moke, because it's the best form of transport, and his apartment is no more opulent than that of any middle-bracket executive.

Blackwell makes it hard to stick to one's implicit belief that record company bosses are either (a) crooks, (b) stupid, or (c) both. In this country, he's probably the exception that proves the rule.

The story of how he started Island in this country by selling West Indian Ska records from the back of a van is well-known.

Throughout most of the Sixties, that was where the company was at--concentrating mainly on Ska, and also on the Sue label, which issued a series of magnificent R&B records licensed from various American companies.

Guy Stevens, who probably has better taste in R&B than anyone in the country, collaborated with Blackwell on Sue, and made it an oasis for soul fans with releases like Ike & Tina's "Gonna Work Out Fine," James Brown's "Night Train," Elmore James' "Dust My Broom," Derek Martin's "Daddy Rollin' Stone," and scores of others--which had a huge impact on the adolescence of musicians like Pete Townshend.

Island is now, of course, one of the world's premier independent labels. It began as an indie only, really, because the market for its initial product--blue beat music--was so small.

He was thus able to buy a list of shops which stocked West Indian records from another company, Carlo Krahmer's Starlite Records, and distribute the records himself.

By printing the label's address and telephone number on each record, he ensured that other interested outlets would contact him. In a very short time, he was dealing profitably with 50 or 60 shops.

There was never, he insists, a great masterplan to take Island into its present state. In the beginning, there wasn't even the idea of recording white rock music. His only real guidance was his veneration of Atlantic Records, another indie, and in particular of Atlantic's founder, Ahmet Ertegun.

"I've always been, quite literally, a fan of Atlantic. A lot of my ideas in the early stages of Island were based on my reaction to what Atlantic was, as a company. And I think that Ahmet is the man in the record business--because to me, if you want to be a record man, you have to start as a fan. Now Ahmet is a shrewd operator and all that, but he's really a fan of music.

"I always knew that Atlantic had a label identity. I used to go to secondhand record stores in New York, when I came up from Jamaica, and I'd leaf through the records. Whenever I saw an Atlantic label I'd stop and look at it.

"The value of having that identity is tremendous--it's what every record company should aim for, although I don't say that we've got it, by any means."

Having established Island as a Ska label, and with Sue now failing because of EMI's heavy interest in American R&B ("They set up an office in New York, and they were very on-the-ball at picking up masters, so it became more and more expensive to compete in that limited market"), 1968 became a particularly crucial year for the company.

"I said let's not invest money in finished masters from America; let's invest it in creating our own thing, which we'd have world rights to."

He'd been managing the Spencer Davis Group for a couple of years, signing them initially to Philips, but now he had Traffic and Spooky Tooth, whom he also managed, on Island. The problem was to build an entire stable around them, thus effectively standing Island's previous philosophy on its head.

"Up till then, we'd been a West Indian record company, and also a management company which had released records of its own artists. Suddenly it occurred to me that we were doing it all wrong, and that we should really have a record company which managed some of the artists."

The turning point was the signing of Jethro Tull in 1968.

"That was our most key signing, because their manager, Terry Ellis, was taking a real risk. They had the choice of all the other well established companies--maybe they weren't all that much into what the group was doing, but they were still strong and we were a tiny little outfit who, in that field, had released just two Traffic LPs and a Spooky Tooth album. That was really the sum total of our 'white' catalogue.

"I must say that, with Jethro, Terry and Chris Wright have done the best management job I've ever seen. I don't get involved personally with the artists that we don't manage--in five years, I've met Ian Anderson exactly once."

The second key signing was that of King Crimson, in 1969,

"At that time, they were the group that everyone in the country wanted to know about, and the competition to get them was tremendous. But we were at the stage where it was worth us signing them, no matter what.

"It was very important--because by signing them, we showed everybody that we were really in the record business, good and proper. It was like growing up."

Since then, Island has indeed grown--to the point where, a couple of years ago, there was intense competition among the major companies to buy out Blackwell.

Kinney emerged as the clear favorites to own Island (as they now own Elektra), but somehow it all fell apart and Island is still, happily, independent.

"All the talk and interest began because several American companies were starting up their own British operations, and as Britain is such a source of talent for the American market, they wanted to have a strong, ready-made A&R department over here. We were hot at the time--we had a lot of groups appearing in the charts."

For a while, Chris favored the Kinney takeover, because of his admiration for Ertegun and Atlantic, who were already a big part of the combine.

"I thought it might be fun to work with them. But what made me decide that it wouldn't be was the realization that, as the boss of the British end of the company, I'd have had to report to all these boards of directors and so on. I'm glad that I didn't go through with it--it's more fun to compete with them."

The other part of Blackwell's life is also connected with dealing--in property. Even before he entered the music business in Jamaica, he was involved in property.

"I really do love the land business. It's very satisfying, and in its own way as creative as the record industry. When you see a nice piece of land, and you visualize what you can build on it...there's a great solidarity about land, which is a great balance for the music business, where you might hand somebody £20,000 for a piece of tape. That's crazy, but land is secure."

A year or so ago, many people began to feel that Island was somehow losing its previously strong identity--getting too big, maybe, and releasing records which weren't worthy of its usual standards. Blackwell doesn't deny it, and willingly shoulders some of the blame.

"I think that's the case. You see, I believe that a record company is very much a matter of taste, and I think pretty much that it has to be the taste of one man--or, after a while, of maybe one other person who's very much in tune. Then it can work--let's say Roxy Music, who were signed by David Betteridge (his managing director). That's a great signing for Island.

"The label is the alter-ego of the person who picks the records, and I think I moved away from it a little. We've had different people signing records, and it's very hard...to me it's all fun, and if there's something that I can't get into, then I can't get behind it either.

"When the whole thing grows, you can't be everywhere listening to tapes all the time, so other people have got to listen for you. If they decide to sign something, and you stamp on them signing it, they end up in a job where they're unable to back their own judgment, which is the most frustrating thing in the world.

"So the identity of the label begins to change, and at the moment I'm trying, very selfishly I suppose, to get it back to my taste on the A&R side."

He readily admits that there have been several Island releases which he hasn't liked at all--but follows it up by saying that he was personally responsible for their two all-time worst-selling LPs, which he's almost too embarrassed to name.

"There was a period, last year, when I wavered a bit. I got involved with the business side of getting Island off the ground in the States, and you can't do it all. These last few days, I've been in the studio every night until dawn--and it's very difficult then to meet at lunchtime and talk about distribution costs or something. In that respect, Island is fortunate to have David Betteridge to take care of that side."

His object now is paradoxical: "I have to find a way for Island Records to become more successful--and get smaller at the same time. I don't know how to explain that--but we don't want to fall into the capitalist trap of starting companies all over the world.

"If companies as big as Columbia and Decca can't be good all over the world, how can we be? And I'd feel very ashamed if my company wasn't fantastic everywhere--as I'm feeling a bit at the moment over America, because we're not yet a genuine record company there. If we give them a hit record they'll sell as many as anyone, but the real point is breaking the new talent, and that's what we haven't got right yet."

In Britain, they'll be moving into new offices in Hammersmith next year: "Here, in Notting Hill, there's not enough space. We need a place for artists to sit around and get together with each other in a very creative way, instead of sitting at home taking downers.

"I want to get a balance between what you might call a 'progressive' record company and what Motown had, or has--the workshop idea. If one can have that, but in a free-form way...it happens already in our studios, when artists come in at night to see what's happening, and maybe stay to play on a friend's session."

Another of his pet projects is the Blue Mountain label, which started earlier in this year as the company's outlet for straight pop, but fizzled because none of the employees could get involved in the music.

Now it's re-emerging as a "custom reggae label," with handpicked artists whose careers will be the subject of great concentration, as opposed to the usual reggae manner of shoving out dozens of records and hoping that one hits.

"When we sold our interest in Trojan back to Lee Gopthal, we retained certain Jamaican artists--Joe Higgs, and the Maytals, for instance, and we want to build them up as artists, just as we do with people like Free and Traffic. Obviously, we'll also release records that we've picked up because they're very successful in Jamaica--like 'Breakfast In Bed'."

Blackwell dislikes practically all the "whitewashed " reggae that makes the British chart, and is unhappy that the hard-core stuff hasn't yet developed a market here.

"But the answer is that when we first released records by Spooky Tooth and Traffic, they didn't sell, or even get played, either. More to the point, the Sue records didn't get airplay."

Does good reggae, then, have potential here?

"Yes. But I don't think people ever buy a craze, or buy a particular sort of music. The advantage of people talking about reggae as a particular sound is that it gets recognized, and the beat becomes less weird. But I'd like to get rid of the name--I hate it, to me it means the stuff that's in the British charts, which I hate.

"It's down to the artists, the good artists whose music has been rooted naturally in reggae, and who write their own songs, like Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. The danger comes when it's not natural."

So we're back to Blackwell the Fan--and nowhere is his sympathy with artists better demonstrated than in his treatment of Traffic and, particularly, Steve Winwood.

He doesn't try to pressurize them to work more or make two albums a year, because he realizes that artists must always work at their own speed. So while Winwood hasn't reached his creative peak, at least he's still alive.

"I agree that he hasn't completely fulfilled his potential, but then I think it's a mistake for anyone to do that too young. I know I'd hate to feel that I've done everything already, and that there's nothing left. Sure, I know that Steve is always capable of more.

"But I honestly think that he's pacing himself, and that he's building up. After eight years, he's still building...that's fantastic. Perhaps if I or another manager had hustled him harder, he'd be more widely known. But he sells a million albums worldwide, and he can still walk down the street without being recognized. I think he's very lucky, actually. It fits with his personality, and he wouldn't have been happy any other way."

"I'm a real Traffic fan. I go on tour with them, partly to work, but also because I don't want to miss a gig. The problem in this business is that there's much more talent than there are good people in record companies. There are so many people, working in the companies and even journalists, who're there just because they like the life, grooving around....

"So to succeed in this business, you don't have to be good.

"You just have to be into the music."

Read more Richard Williams articles at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 14,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.