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CHAOS MANAGEMENT
The Hunter S. Thompson quote on the back grabs you and drags you in.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway, where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs... there's also a negative side".

Inside are biogs of the biggest names behind the biggest names in the Brit music business in the past 50 years - the ruthless managers.
Kicking off with the Godfather of Rock, Don Arden, through to the world's most successful manager, Simon Fuller, we are treated to an anthology of popular music and how it got to our ears.

Skullduggery
More than a little skulduggery, danger and downright nastiness fills the pages as the unquestioned skills of the Svengalis are laid bare.
Read about Malcolm McLaren, Chas Chandler, Brian Epstein, Alan McGee and Led Zeppelin's Peter Grant and find out how they made fortunes for themselves and the people they took under their wing.
A clear insight into how hard, smart and often downright bastardly you have to be to make it in the business.

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GCRR
We've got five copies of this great insight into the music industry to give away from our pals at Mainstream Publishing.
To be in with a chance of winning a copyall you have to do is answer this dead easy question. Name the heavyweight mastermind behind the legendary Led Zeppelin.
Was it a) Peter Grant, b) Peter Grunt or c) Pewter Tankard?
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Classic Rock
Summer 2007
Circulation 56,000

Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll: The Managers
Steve Overbury

The dirt! The dozen
In this easy and fascinating read, Overbury profiles 12 of music's most legendary and colourful managers, from Brian Epstein to Alan McGee and Simon Fuller, and in the process illustrates just how hugely the rock 'n' roll business and its methods have changed over the decades.

Most interesting are the sections devoted to the Svengalis of the early 60s - Epstein, Don Arden, Andrew-Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert and particularly Chas Chandler whose one-time band The Animals also seem to have a sorry tale to tell. Back then, the music business was small, incestuous, sometimes naïve and frequently lawless, with some intensively competitive managers prepared to go to any lengths to protect their own interests.

Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll is an exciting concept conscientiously delivered.
Carol Clerk

Amazon review

Music Management for the Masses, 27 Jul 2007
By Dan Harvey

For those of us unfortunate enough not to have lived through this era of music management, Steve's book is an intriguing insight into music management before the era of mass production and audience manipulation. The time of Svengali's with dreams, guts and attitude rather than stylists, spin doctors and high waistbands!!

Behind the scenes with the managers                     
Tuesday, 18 September 2007  

By Owen Douglas. Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll is undoubtedly a book of its time. There's nothing noticeably original in the text, it condenses the most pertinent elements drawn from numerous sources yet is by and large an enjoyable, quick read.

Let's state up front however that there is a very real, and certainly under appreciated skill, in taking existing material, such as interviews or other works, and condensing them into a lively, engaging read. Overbury has excelled.

So if you're intrigued by the machinations of the business of music, particularly the svengali types that drive the back room deals, then Guns, Cash & Rock 'n' Roll was written with you in mind.

This is less a book about the deals though than it is about the people that made them. And in this case it is particularly about the British talent managers that created some of the biggest recording and performing artists the world has ever, and is ever, likely to see.

Written by Steve Overbury, a former Chrysalis Records staffer during the punk era who, according to his bio, "danced with Debbie Harry and loaned money to Billy Idol," the book is a tribute to the men--always men--who were as peculiar as the artists they represented.

Don Arden, Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit Lambert, Chas Chandler, Steve O'Rourke, Simon Napier-Bell, Peter Grant, Malcolm McLaren, Bernie Rhodes, Alan McGee and Simon Fuller, all are under the spotlight in this book.

And if, by chance, you don't know who those guys are then you'd know The Small Faces, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones,  The Who, The Animals, Pink Floyd, Wham!, Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Oasis and the Spice Girls, all represented by the aforementioned respectively.

Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll is both a history lesson and source of some of the funniest, most notorious and more often than not saddest incidents in rock history. From dangling competitors from the balcony of the fourth floor office to assaulting women with fish to drug consumption that killed, maimed and destroyed, all the stories are there.

The only problem with taking such an over arching approach, and by focusing on the people per se, is that many of the nuances of the times are omitted. It is either assumed that you were there or otherwise know about the 1960s and 70s, and so it is that much of the behaviour exhibited by some of the craziest talent managers of all time is without an appropriate context.

That said, Overbury doesn't make any effort to hide the fact that the book is essentially a collection of other people's stories, however he does bring a confidence a flair to the telling. (And remember, there's a genuine skill in doing what he has done.)

The upside of course is that if as a reader you're struck by one of the characters in the book--for there is no doubting that each of the managers about whom Overbury writes had character the size of ocean liners--then ample sources are cited to which you can investigate further.

We think Overbury is onto something here, the concept of this type of book that is. As the world becomes increasingly busy and as information becomes so ubiquitous that one is assaulted by brand messages and noise simply by walking down the street, there is a place for filtering the most important information.

This is something that is driving the development of the internet and we see no reason why it can't work in the world of book publishing.

In any case, we'll leave you with a wonderful misquote from Hunter S. Thompson that opens the book: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs ... there's also a negative side."

May 2007

Scottish Sunday Herald

20 th May 2007

Circulation 58,000

British mangers of rock bands make up, according to Steve Overbury, an exclusive club whose membership comprises "world-class entrepreneurs, Machiavellian schemers, eccentris, adventurers, buccaneers, dreamers and big-time litigants". It's a romantic view of a profession whose starriest names, his book reveals, spent their careers ripping off everyone... including their clients. Some were little more than gangsters, Don Arden, manager of Black Sabbath and ELO, said of a business rival; "I drilled the lit end of the cigar in the middle of his head... Stuff like that made you feel alive".

http://www.knack.be/cmp/72/5/6347/Boek--Guns--Cash-and-Rock--N--Roll--boeken.html

Boek 'Guns, Cash and Rock 'N' Roll'

19 juli 2007

Schietgrage malloten, schaars verlichte despoten en leperds die zich door geen graaitaks voor uitpuilende zakken laten behoeden: we hebben het natuurlijk over rockmanagers. Muzikant en publicist Steve Overbury zet de foutste op een rijtje.

Guns, Cash and Rock 'N' Roll: The Managers

In 1966 gaven The Small Faces, die net hun eerste single hadden opgenomen, in Saint Tropez een interview aan The Daily Mirror over een Franse film waarin ze binnenkort zouden figureren naast Brigitte Bardot. Eenmaal terug in Groot-Brittannië bleek er - tot verbijstering van The Daily Mirror én de Faces - van de betreffende prent geen sprake te zijn, maar ondertussen had het verhaal toch maar mooi in alle dag- en weekbladen gestaan en was de voorheen onbekende groep opgestuwd in de vaart der volkeren. Verantwoordelijk voor die al even doortrapte als geniale stunt was Don Arden, een mislukte stand-up comedian die zich manu militari tot muziekmanager had opgewerkt.

Het is maar één van de vele onthutsende anekdotes die de revue passeren in Guns, Cash and Rock 'N' Roll , een kroniek van de meest baanbrekende, grensverleggende, gevaarlijke, gewetenloze en op geld beluste rockmanagers uit de Britse geschiedenis. In dit boek dus geen Colonel Parker of Albert Grossman, die respectievelijk Elvis Presley en Bob Dylan tot op het hemd uitschudden, maar lui als Peter Grant (Led Zeppelin), Malcolm McLaren (The Sex Pistols) en Simon Fuller (The Spice Girls) moeten nauwelijks onderdoen voor hun Amerikaanse tegenhangers.

Zo bestond Ardens voornaamste onderhandelingstechniek erin zijn gesprekspartner afwisselend omgekeerd uit het raam van diens kantoor te laten bengelen en een revolver tegen de slaap te drukken. Samen met Andrew Loog Oldham, zakenbehartiger van The Rolling Stones, slaagde hij er zelfs in aan platenfirma EMI een onbestaande groep te slijten voor een slordige 10.000 pond. Lucht verkopen - gebakken of niet - behoort nu eenmaal tot het vaste takenpakket van elke muziekmanager. Net als muzikanten van drugs voorzien of net helpen afkicken, concertorganisatoren bedreigen met de dood en uit eigen zak duizenden singles van je opdrachtgevers kopen om ze in de hitlijsten te krijgen.

Behalve een alarmerende waarschuwing aan het adres van elke beginnende rockgroep is Guns, Cash and Rock 'N' Roll ook het bewijs dat zelfs wereldbands als The Who en The Animals het zonder die afzetters, charlatans en fraudeurs van managers nog niet half zover zouden hebben geschopt.

Vincent Byloo

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