In music, you need to stand out. It’s why as mentioned in the last article Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire. It’s why artists and bands dress up on stage and pyrotechnics are added because it’s more than just music to get people in the seats. There are offstage antics too. Snazzy press conferences for tour announcements, charity events and TV appearances for the next album. There’s a lot to take care of.
What happens when the P.R. goes wrong? What happens when in all good intentions things go wrong that are out of your control? Does it affect your band? Or How will it affect your band? Here is one of those stories about P.R. going wrong. Today The Beat Marches On to 4th April 1970 when Brinsley Schwarz had one of the biggest P.R. disasters in the music industry.
Brinsley Schwarz didn’t start as Brinsley Schwarz. The band had formed in the mid-sixties as Kippington Lodge. They were signed to the same record label as the Beatles before Apple, Parlophone, and had some bubble-gum pop singles which didn’t chart but probably because they were nothing special.
By 1968 the band, as many of the time, wanted to change their music to the psychedelic style that was becoming popular. Influenced by the San Francisco scene of the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, and Nash the band changed their name from Kippington Lodge to Brinsley Schwartz. This also was the name of the band’s lead guitarist.
They replaced a couple of band members who didn’t agree with the new direction and the new Brinsley Schwarz was born. Now the band needed to get some attention and a manager to give them the exposure they wanted.
Dave Robinson was always looking for new talent. A former tour manager for Jimi Hendrix who also helped Van Morrison launch his career, he knew a thing or two about the music business. Robinson had just formed a new management company called Famepushers which was funded by a conglomerate called Motherburger. The new management company advertised in the music magazine Melody Maker and of the 70 bands that auditioned for the management company Brinsley Schwartz came out on top.
Motherburger sent their P.R. firm over to help promote the band and that’s when the stunt idea started to take place. When asked by Ricky Blears, the P.R. Man sent by Motherburger, what’s the biggest place you can see the band playing the reply from Robinson was the Filmore East in New York, arguably one of the most famous venues around at the time. Then Blears said, “If I get you that, would you get the press to go?”
With some convincing from the venue’s promoter Bill Graham, they managed to get a slot at the Fillmore East to play two shows on two nights as a warm-up act for Van Morrison and Quicksilver Messenger service. With some bargaining with Irish airline Aer-Lingus, they managed to hire a plane to bring 140 members of the British music industry press along to New York and witness the start of the next big thing in music, Brinsley Schwarz.
The seats filled up quickly on the plane. Who would turn down a free trip to New York? The definition of a music journalist was starting to get questioned by their peers but if it’s a free trip to the Big Apple in 1970 the chance would be jumped upon.
Brinsley Schwarz decided to head across the pond a few days before the gig to nail the performance down and rehearse. Unfortunately, the US immigration department had other ideas, due to a drug charge previously of band members Bob Andrews and Nick Lowe, they couldn’t get visas. The band travelled to Toronto, Canada to get around the problem but that didn’t work either. Furthermore, Brinsley Schwarz’s ears were blocked from the flight and he couldn’t hear anything. Not great for playing music. The band were eventually let into the country, but it was on the morning of the first gig.
The promoters were hoping that the plane carrying the journalists would be less stressful than the visa issues the band was having but again problems arose. First of all, the flight was delayed by three hours, then they had to land in Ireland because of reports of brake fluid on the runway at Heathrow. They had to check over the brakes at the Irish Airport, which took a few hours to do. Luckily for the journalists though the promoters put a load of alcohol aboard for them to consume. What could go wrong?
When the brake checks were finished the plane was back up in the air again. Aer-Lingus were offering complimentary drinks for the inconvenience and added with drinks provided by the promoters it’s safe to say the guests were getting quite buzzed.
When the plane landed the journalists were greeted by a fleet of 22 limos to take them straight to the venue. With a police escort to accompany them, 16 motorcycles rode alongside. The idea of this was to get heads turning by the public and think that a big rock band had arrived in their city but with all the delays from the flight it was night when the limos set off and nobody noticed.
The limo idea went as well as the flight for the journalists. From the start, two limos collided and were left at the airport. More limos dropped out of the convoy throughout the journey. It didn’t help that one of the promoters convinced one of the limo company’s employees to provide pre-rolled marijuana joints in the ashtray. Only five of the 22 limos managed to get to the venue and seats that were originally reserved for the journalists had to be given away due to how late they were. The only thing that could rescue the bad trip was the band performing well.
It wasn’t going well for the band either. With guitarist Brinsley Schwarz still struggling with his hearing at the soundcheck he had to rely on bass player Nick Lowe’s finger placement to know where he was in the songs. The performance was delayed while waiting for the journalists to show up which was angering venue owner Bill Graham. Luckily Dave Robertson used his previous connection with Van Morrison to help talk Graham over in delaying the performance.
When the band took the stage there were around 10 journalists darted around in the crowd. The performance was underwhelming. It may have been that the band was nervous and took something to take off the edge which in turn made them disorganised on stage. Van Morrison and Quicksilver messenger service by most reports were outstanding which made the Brinsley Schwarz performance look worse than it was.
The performance was so bad that none of the journalists stayed for the second set, they just went back to the hotel. Partly because of the bad performance, and partly because of the alcohol and drugs taking their toll. They were invited to all the shows but after all the experiences they had on the trip, they didn’t bother seeing the band again.
It was a shame that no one stayed on to watch them on the second night because the band thought it was one of their best performances ever. Maybe because the pressure was off the band played better.
The band came back to the UK after the gigs and although the band thought it had been a successful trip it soon came to pass that most of the press concentrated on their disastrous trip rather than the band’s performance. It affected Ricky Blears quite badly and took him years to recover from it.
It wasn’t just the journalist’s scathing reviews of the shows that Dave Robinson had to worry about. Upon his return to the UK, it turned out that Eddie Moulton the main backer of Motherburger had disappeared and hadn’t been seen for about 10 days. Aer-Lingus, the limo company and all other expenses were waiting to get paid, all things that Motherburger would take care of.
Further examination of the name found that it was fake, and the cost of this P.R. disaster was £30,000. It took the band over 30 years to pay back the debts owed. Although the initial reaction was a gut punch to the band, it gave them the exposure they needed. Perhaps the band were expecting more exposure, but it was more than the non-existent exposure they had before the incident happened.
There is the saying that there’s no such thing as bad P.R. In this case the saying is true due to the circumstances of the stunt. The band got five albums from the incident until the band split in 1975. What makes this one so special is everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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Websites used for research are:
Brinsley Schwarz and the press trip from hell | Louder (loudersound.com)
Brinsley Schwarz | Biography & History | AllMusic
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