IT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 70s: STORIES FROM DAD'S DAYS AT UNITED ARTISTS RECORDS

I suppose you could call this the second installment of blog posts regarding my dad's history in the music business. Where the last post was more memorabilia based, this post is simply telling the stories of the early days of my dad's career at United Artist Records.

On the 27th of November 1974, a young man started a brand new job at United Artists Records (UA) in London as a van-based vinyl salesman. That man was my father.
At this point in time, this was the way most vinyl sales were done: from the back of a van. The highstreets were filled with independent record stores, never having more than eight stores to their name, and salesmen like my dad would have to go round them and sell them vinyl from their record label. The 'big' chains in London at the time were Downtown, Andy's and Kelly's.

Sales results for the January after Dad joined UA. 

Dad instantly became an expert seller, often getting seller of the month or quarter and winning the bonuses that came with it, which ranged from a United Artists branded watch to a £100 bonus (around £450 in today's money).

At this point, UA wasn't a particularly big label but they certainly had a genre for everybody. Film soundtracks from United Artists Films were big sellers along with rock represented by, then fairly undiscovered, ELO.

"A lot of time was spent socialising with the staff of the record stores" he states, undoubtedly due to the fact that if the staff liked you, they'd buy more. Networking was the absolute key to being the best in the game. At one point this socialisation featured a football match between the staff of Downtown records versus the record company reps. However, this was to be no ordinary football game. "In the half-time of the game, owners Clive and Paul Spelman arrived on Basildon recreation ground in a Rolls Royce with buckets full of champagne in the boot." This is just a glimpse into how extravagant the industry was at the time.

Promotional shot for UA's new cars.

Eventually, UA decided to start using nice cars rather than vans to sell their vinyl records out of. When UA decided to use cars rather than vans for their record sales, they promoted this change by taking a picture of a group of brand new cars spelling out 'UA'. "It took hours" he says "and then after the helicopter had come over and taken the picture, everyone started to leave and at least three of the brand new cars crashed straight into each other".

Another part of the job was sales conferences. I say part, but the conferences could easily be classed as a benefit to the job. These raucous events would be held all across the UK in the swankiest of hotels and "always ended up in a mess". Dad recounts a particularly enlightening story of when a car rally was held at one of these conferences when the company moved on from using vans to using cars. One of dad's colleagues wanted to make sure his car really stood out so decided he would get some balloons and tie them to the car. "While we were waiting got the rally, we looked out and saw the car on fire" Dad laughs. "Turns out, Clive had burnt off the leftover string on the balloons and then proceeded to throw that into the car itself, setting the whole thing on fire."

A couple of pictures from sales conferences gone by. Unknown what year or where they were other than it was in the 70s.

The "best moment" of my Dad's life (I assume excluding mine and my sister's births, but knowing my dad and his love of music, who knows) was to come a few years into his work at United Artists. At this point in time, the previously mentioned 'relatively undiscovered' ELO had become worldwide sensations and were just coming back from spending a lot of time in America. They were in the midst of discussing their distribution deal with United Artists in the UK (which was to fall through and lead to the swallowing up of UA into EMI). Whilst this was going on, it was time for another infamous UA sales conference and on a whim the team invited ELO to come along, expecting no response. Then on the day, there they were. ELO had come to a conference with all the sales team of UA. When my dad arrived to the table there was a single seat left, sitting next to Jeff Lynne. "I assume everyone was too intimidated to sit there. Even I was intimidated to sit there. We were all a bit starstruck". Dad took his place next to Jeff Lynne and tried to think of something, anything, to talk to him about for the upcoming few hours.

Birmingham City football club ended up being the golden ticket of conversation topics. Jeff Lynne had a long time love affair with the club and somehow my dad managed to muster up enough knowledge to talk to him about it the entire way through the dinner. Dad had nothing but good words to say about Lynne "one of the nicest people I met in my career. I was in awe of him really."

Sales conference picture with ELO. Dad is third from the left (standing) and Jeff Lynne (without his famous dark glasses) is the fourth from the right in the same row

Fun fact, Birmingham City play Mr Blue Sky when the teams are in the tunnels waiting to run out.

Not long after, a varied amount of things occurred and UA ended up being swallowed into EMI and that's when dad started his journey as a merchandiser for record label giant EMI. But that is a story for another day.

Read my other post on my dad's most iconic pieces of memorabilia HERE
Follow my Instagram for updates on when the EMI days post is coming HERE

Written by Ruby Crowhurst