The Exchanges

Q And you're starting to think, okay, what does this mean? I mean, what was your, were you thinking, all right, I'll be a manager, I'll manage bands, or were you thinking, did you start to think, well, maybe I should really think bigger about what I want to do in, in this industry?

A Well, I, I kind of went with the flow, and I think a lot of people do that. I think, you know, to sit back and say, well, I'm going to do this, this, and maybe some people plot out their lives, but do they really know what they're going to do? I had a group called Wishbone Ash. I then picked up the Climax Blues Band and Renaissance and Curbed Air and Caravan and, you know, Al Stewart and, you know, did I know when I had signed Wishbone Ash in the beginning that I was going to end up managing five acts, you know? No, I didn't really know. And one thing led to another, led to another, led to another.

AI assessment note: “Well, I, I kind of went with the flow”

Q But, but it's still an A&M record, right? So how does your label IRS emerge?

A Well, IRS records probably would not have existed had it not been for the police. And when the police became really big, I all of a sudden gained a certain credibility as well, because I, I had sort of masterminded, in their view, this opening of The Police to come and break America, and it was the first punk rock band that really sold some records and was really happening, and, but I then had these bands back in England that were saying, well, you know, what about me? So I decided I would go to Jerry Moss and do the same thing I did with The Police in the beginning. I went to Jerry and I said, look, I've got a lot of bands that I've already recorded in England. I'm prepared to put my own money in, so I'm not going to ask you for a penny, but I want to have a record company that A&M will distribute, and you can decide how many records you press, whether you're going to market it or not. It's totally up to you. I'm giving you the label for free, but you have to put out the records. And, you know, Jerry Moss would have sort of thought, well, this Miles guy seems to be onto something. He's gonna pay for the record, so

AI assessment note: “I want to have a record company that A&M will distribute”

Q There's something else you wrote in your book, which is you described, you write, I could think that IRS records was a very unlucky record label, given all the acts I worked with. What do you mean by that?

A Well, you know, when you look at, you know, record contracts, you know, people always say, well, you know, you sign acts to five album deals, and seven album deals, and this and that, and, and, and aren't the record companies really bad, and they aren't they making all the real money, you know. Well, I, I look at IRS records and say, how many acts ever got to five records? Only one. It was REM. Acts broke up after the first record, after the second record. Uh, we had a couple acts that got to the third record, the Go-Go's, for example. Fine Young Cannibals broke up after the second record, which reached number one in the U.S. charts.

AI assessment note: “how many acts ever got to five records? Only one. It was REM.”

Q uh, you came back to Lebanon, to Beirut, to do a master's degree at the American University there, I guess, in, in economics. And, and the story I wrote is that while you were a student, uh, there, you, what, like, started to promote some concerts on campus. What, what did that mean? Like, what did you, how did, what were you doing, and how did you get into that?

A Well, it actually was a, a series of accidents, you know, that had really no plan involved, you know. My little brother Stuart had decided he wanted to be a drummer, and he had got himself a drum kit, and as it happens, there was a local group at the high school, you know, called the Wichita Vortex Sutra, and they lost their drummer who went back to America for Christmas, and so they went to Stuart and said, well, we've lost our drummer, will you sit in and drum with us? So, obviously, Stuart invited me to the show, and it was some silly little club, you know, and I went with a friend of mine, and, you know, Stuart was up there drumming, and I thought, there's my brother, who's actually in a band. So, all of a sudden, the music business, the distance between me thinking that there is a chasm between me, the, the kid listening to music, and the music business itself, that chasm sort of disappeared.

AI assessment note: “Well, it actually was a, a series of accidents, you know”

Q order to be successful, Miles, you, in your position, right, running a record label, knowing that there's always going to be competitors and sharks circling the waters waiting for your bands to jump ship, right? And they're also, there's fierce competition. This is the eighties when people are making a lot of money off record sales. In order to be successful, do you kind of have to be an SOB?

A Yes and no. Um, the reality is, you know, everybody wants more later on. Do you think Jay Boberg would have accepted a hundred dollars a week salary three years in and after we've had a number one record with the go-go's? Well, no. And so that's why a lot of labels never make it and why a lot of groups break up is that they imagine that, that Things are going to be like it was in the early days. Well, it never is, you know, and I mean, I remember the REM deal. REM came to us at the end of the contract and said, look, you offer us the best deal. We'll sign with you. We love IRS, but we owe it to ourselves to go to the marketplace to see what the marketplace will offer. And I remember with REM, I had finally gotten to the, paid the most money that I could possibly pay. So I went to Jerry Moss and he says, well, I'll, I'll contribute you three million. And I was putting up three million. Anyway, I say to the group, this is what we'll offer. And it ended up between us and Warner Brothers. And then the manager and the lawyer come to me and they said, well, Miles, we just left the Warner Brothers offices and here's what they said. Whatever Miles offers you will double it.

AI assessment note: “Yes and no. Um, the reality is, you know, everybody wants more later on.”

Q But then in, in 1979, I guess, you saw the police rehearsing, or I guess they, they, they played the song Roxanne for you. Tell me what you remember, like, where, where were you when you first heard that song?

A Well, actually, what happened was my brother was impatient. He had a burning desire to succeed. He had formed the police. He wanted to be a punk group, and nothing was good enough, you know, and, um, I had come across a studio just outside of London where the, where the doctor, the MD by day, was hoping to become a record producer engineer and And he said, he said, look, I've got this studio I've built in the back of my medical practice, and I'll give you a month in the studio for a thousand pounds. So I said to Stuart, how about let's make a police album? So I became effectively the record company. So the police went in to this studio in Leatherhead for a month and put down the album.

AI assessment note: “So the police went in to this studio in Leatherhead for a month”