Taken from an interview with Roy and Same Eldridge from UROK Management with www.musicbusinessworldwide.com read the full article here
AS A MANAGEMENT COMPANY, YOU SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU HAVE THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH A MAJOR LABEL, IT STILL WORKS AND IT STILL HAS VALUE.
Sam: For us it wasn’t a case of let’s [use this interest] to go and take some money out of Universal or Sony. Atlantic felt like the right home, so that’s where we went.
With Liam, we didn’t shop it around either. People came to us, Max and Phil Christie in particular, who displayed a real bravery with that signing. What was interesting with Liam is that we thought a lot about the A&R process at the beginning, and put together the key early sessions for the album before anyone else was involved.
YOU GOT THE RECORDINGS GOING?
Sam: We did two tracks with Greg Kurstin and two tracks with Dan Grech, and that was really important: it showed Liam wasn’t going to make an old-fashioned record with old-fashioned producers. Greg was the biggest pop producer in the world at that point in time.
NOT EVERYONE THOUGHT TAKING ON A POST-BEADY EYE LIAM GALLAGHER WAS GOING TO BE A CLEVER MOVE.
Sam: Maybe those people missed the fact that Liam’s an incredibly modern artist. He’s great on social media, he’s got a huge personality, and he’s one of the greatest rock stars of all time. If you discount that somehow, sorry, but you’re an idiot. Also, he wanted to collaborate, and of course he has that voice.
When you add all of that up, the opportunity is staring you in the face, isn’t it? Also, we’d heard the first demos, before we had any involvement with the [album], and we noticed that there were elements of his vocal range that he’d got back through rest, plus the quality of Liam’s own songwriting had matured into something special.
From there, everything was about him signing him to a major. Warner Bros’ biggest domestic artist today is a pop star [Dua Lipa], but ultimately the rest of the their roster includes Muse, Royal Blood, Foals, etc.
The Liam record deal was big – it was 10 times the deal that I think other people would’ve offered us – because it was all about ambition. We sat down and we went, We’re going to sell a million records. And Warner Bros saw it, and created a deal that looked like a million-record deal.
Roy: I don’t think many people realised how ambitious Liam was on a personal level, either.
He absolutely, really wanted it, and you can definitely see that looking back from then to now. It’s been crucial.
I’M SURE SOME PEOPLE WERE ALSO A BIT SNARKY ABOUT THE FACT HIS MISSUS WOULD BE CO-MANAGING HIM…
Sam: I’m really, really glad you said that. Immediately, when we met Debbie [Gwyther], it was clear she was a really, really good manager. She wasn’t just #TeamLiam all the time; she was focused, like, I want this to be really successful.
Debbie is very practical and, with Liam, probably more brutally honest than any other manager would be or could be. She’s been an amazing partner to work with.
Our job is obviously to bring the best out of the artists that we work with, but I think increasingly our job is also to support and bring out the best in the managers that we work with. I hope we’ve helped in some way to bring out the best in Debbie, because she’s a great manager and she’s completely proven it. She deserves to be seen and talked about by everyone as Liam’s co-manager – not his girlfriend, or his fucking ‘PA’ – but his co-manager.
She’s an amazing partner, she absorbs so much of the work on that project, and she has helped created a great model for us as to how we could grow our business in the future.
Source: www.musicbusinessworldwide.com
