Hello Mike.
Chapter 12 “Hello Mike” (Unedited extract from “Calling All The Dreamers” 2023)
We’d been getting wind that the end of the MCA Universal contract would be the end of Electrasy. As fans that was tough for us to process because we didn’t want our boys to be one-hit wonders, we knew they had a lot more in the tank and had even heard songs played live that could be worthy of a future album.
At the same time, over in America in the parallel universe of Providence, Rhode Island, a radio station called WBRU which specialised in indie and alternative music had picked up a song called ‘Morning Afterglow’ from a little known U.K band called Electrasy and it started to take off. WBRU had a good pedigree of listeners and the song ended up being their most requested song of all time at the radio station. A promotions guy called Mark Zimmerman from Arista was tasked with checking out the most requested lists from the student stations and he spotted it. Once he’d seen the music video he decided the band was marketable and set things in motion that nobody was expecting.
The band was about to get a second shot in the arm.
Nigel: It’s early 1999, and I’m looking around for new management. Talking to some big London based players, like Sanctuary, and was pretty much about to do a deal when I got a random call from our publisher, Windswept Pacific.
The secretary from Windswept tells me that there is this guy in town from the American record label, Arista, and he’d like to meet me because they’re interested in the band. I was told to go to the Dorchester on Friday at 7pm and ask for Mr Davis.
We’d been doing meetings like this a fair bit so I agreed and just went with it. I had the impression we were going to meet some junior A&R guy over in London on a scouting trip or something, which would have been quite common.
Jim and Paul weren’t really into the whole meet and greet thing, so me and Steve headed over to the hotel with our demo CD of Renegades.
Steve: There’s a town called Dorchester near Weymouth, so I found the whole thing hilarious. We’d done a pub gig in Dorchester at some point in 1996 to about 10 people. That Dorchester definitely wasn’t as shiny as this Dorchester.
Nigel: The first inkling I had that things were not as I had originally imagined was when I was told that “Mr. Davis would see us in his suite on the 7th floor”. Steve and I are looking about as unremarkable as it is possible to look, and we head on up.
My brain is already ringing alarm bells as we’re greeted by two guys in suits who basically interview us for 15-20 minutes to see what we’re all about.
I have now fully clocked what’s going on, I have no idea who Mr Davis is, but I now know exactly what he is; He’s this big time record company guy and his guys are checking to see if they think it’s even worth his time to meet with us.
Steve: I was starting to realise that this was one of those life altering moments and we were in it up to our necks. Again. It was pretty surreal.
Nigel: Steve and I have never exactly been fashion icons, but despite our pretty dire appearance, we were ushered in to see ‘the man’. It’s almost like meeting a mafia boss or something.
He seemed nice enough and we made small talk about the band and learned that he’d heard and liked ‘Morning Afterglow’, and that the A&R guys had heard some talk about it maybe being used for a movie with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant that was being released that year called “Notting Hill.” Which was all news to me.
Steve: This guy, Clive, seemed pretty down to earth, I liked him. I was also amused that his initials were CD and he worked in the music industry, it was the little things that tickled me. I think I was more daunted by the suite we were in than him to be honest, it was a long way away from Dorset.
Nigel: He liked our track ‘Angel’ and he wanted to know about the lyrics. I told him about teaching at Bruton School for girls and how powerful it had been getting the students to form their own band and perform at a parents night show.
I was really proud they’d done that; “All my angels, made in England, oh so well”. It was fairly uncool and not very rock and roll, but as a family man he loved the story.
We played the ‘Renegades’ demo to the room, which got everyone pretty excited, and one of the other suits in the room suggested the track would probably be huge on KROQ, which we found out later was this influential Alt Rock radio station in LA.
Steve: It was a cool meeting. It felt like a second chance might be coming for us.
Nigel: Everything’s going well, we learned that ‘Morning Afterglow’ was the most requested song of the year on WBRU, a college radio station at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. Which we obviously didn’t know because this is all pre-internet, how could we possibly know stuff like that?
And then Clive says; “Where’s the guy?”
“You two, you’re OK. The songwriter and the guitar player. But neither of you are THE guy, where is he?”
Ahhh shit. He meant Ali.
Clive wanted to meet him, and he needed him to be there by 10am the following morning because his flight back to New York left the following afternoon.
After the sudden departure of the band from the music press and scene we all figured they’d be taking some time out to plot their next steps, or go back to gigging locally again. What we didn’t realise was that being dropped by MCA really had a big impact on the individual members of the band in very different ways. Nigel being Nigel had got busy, Steve was just kind of hanging around. Paul and Jim were lugging furniture for an Indian family-run-business in Fulham, and Ali had gone to Glasgow to hide and drown his sorrows.
When you climb that high so quickly, the fall back down is pretty far, and Ali had been very sprained when he hit the ground.
Ali: After the meltdown with MCA I went up to live in Glasgow with my girlfriend at the time. I won’t lie, I wasn’t in a great place. I did not have a pot to piss in and I was sitting around moping, smoking lots of weed, and drinking a lot. I was over-thinking about the fact that it had all come to an abrupt end just as we were on the ascendency. A couple of months before I’d been performing to 9 million punters watching TFI Friday, and now I was broke, depressed and probably not heading in a great direction.
Then one random evening I get this phone call from Nige and he asks if I can sort myself out and get to London to meet this record company guy the following day. I borrowed the money for the flight off my girlfriend, Kay, booked a flight over the phone and flew down.
The funny thing about that short flight was it was at a time when the airlines were still imbuing you with free alcohol regardless of what time of the day it was, so I’m on this early morning flight, and typically for me I get straight on the fucking sauce. I’m still acting like a rockstar even though the airline staff haven’t got a clue who I am. Living the lifestyle y’know? I was knocking back a few whiskeys and kicking back. The flight from Glasgow to London is only about an hour, but I had a good liquid breakfast.
I get down to London. I’m already buzzing a bit. I go on the tube to Hyde Park Corner and I go to the Dorchester, which is this silly posh hotel on the edge of Mayfair overlooking Hyde Park. At the front desk the scene is hilarious because obviously I must just look like a fucking right state.
I told them I was there for a meeting with Clive Davis, and two security guards came over all dressed in black like bouncers, and they escorted me to the lift that only goes to the penthouse. I’m half-cut and I have no fucking clue who this guy is, or what the fuck is going on.
In my head I know I have to go into ‘Electrasy Ali’ mode and style this one out. I come out of the lift, walk into a living room (who has a living room in their hotel room?) where Steve and Nige are sitting on a sofa.
There’s probably four or five suited A&R men there. I can sniff an A&R person out by now. All corporate and stiff. So at that point I panic a bit and think, what the fuck is going on here, I need another drink.
Nigel: Me and Steve are already there, chatting to the Arista guys when Ali finally arrives. Ali being Ali he’s late and he’s already a bit hammered. He enters this big suite and first thing he does is sort of break off from being introduced, walk over to the mini bar, pours a large brandy, probably downs it, pours another, and goes outside onto the balcony for a cigarette.
Ali: I get my drink and go straight out onto the balcony for a fag because the view is nice, and I want some air. I’m feeling really claustrophobic in there, and I need to make sure I’m on my a-game.
When I walk back in, this bloke enters. Like, it’s a big moment. Apparently this Clive fella is the big cheese at an American record label, but it literally means fuck all to me. I don’t know who he is. Literally no idea, or how powerful he is. You have to remember that just a couple of years before this moment we’re doing gigs at The Royal Oak in Dorchester to a dozen pissed up old men at the bar or whatever, and now I’m in the suite at The Dorchester meeting some fella from America.
In all honesty it all probably played to my advantage, because I was in no way intimidated by the bloke.
Nigel: Ali then turns to Clive Davis and says, “Hi Mike, so great to meet you!”
I feel like now is an appropriate moment to jump into the middle of this particular story to fill in the blanks about ‘Mike’ just in case some of you are as clueless about him as Ali is in this moment.
Clive Davis is one of the most powerful figures in the recording industry, and had presided over Arista Records for more than two decades at the moment Ali is addressing him as ‘Mike’. Davis had helped to shape the trends in the pop and rock music industries since the mid-1960s, and he has piloted Arista Records through the changing musical scene of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The man is quite literally an industry pillar. Under Davis’s management Arista averaged more than $300 million in annual sales during the 1990s with a catalogue of artists that at that time included Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, the Grateful Dead, the Kinks, and the Crash Test Dummies.
Clive was also instrumental in the careers of Dionne Warwick, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, Kenny G, Notorious B.I.G., Toni Braxton, Lou Reed and Patti Smith, among many others.
In an interview another of his proteges, Barry Manilow, told a reporter that Davis “Had the mind of an executive and the ears of a teenager.” Davis also had an intense interest in vibrant rock music and in his previous role at Colombia had assembled one of the most impressive rosters of talent ever under the same record label. Which included artists as Janis Joplin; Santana; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Pink Floyd; Billy Joel; and Bruce Springsteen. He also discovered Aerosmith. The man knows what he’s doing, and he’s standing in his penthouse suite at the Dorchester being addressed as ‘Mike’ by a half-cut Alisdair Hamish McKinnell from Weymouth, in front of his top-brass.
Ali: I could tell this bloke was there to give us the big spiel, but I just jumped in front of him and I started calling him Mike because in my head he looked like the comedian and actor Mike Reid. “Frank fucking Butcher from Eastenders was in the house.”
Nigel: Ali’s entrance has been pretty loud, almost rude, and now he just called Clive Davis, Mike. Me and Steve have no idea what is going on. Everyone turns to Clive knowing that this moment is everything and the deal is about to be knocked stone-cold dead in the water, but Clive is beaming. Clive loves a star. Sure, he picks hit songs, but even more so he picks stars, and he saw Ali and he saw attitude. Probably everything he didn’t see in me and Steve he immediately saw in Ali. In these situations, charisma is everything.
And after that we knew we were safe and the deal was done.
Ali: I told him I was there to talk to him about Electrasy and what we were and what we would like to do, I just blew off some steam for about ten or fifteen minutes because he seemed like a nice bloke.
He asked me to sit down while explained what he’d achieved in his career and who he was, and when he did that, I was like, oh my fucking days, what have I just done? If a hole had opened up in the ground, I would have jumped in it back down the hotel lobby.
But then he just literally said this was the reason he wanted to see me in the flesh. He was the starmaker. He knew we had the songs, and he knew there was a band there, but he wanted to meet me. I think he just fucking liked what he saw. And that was it.
Steve: I didn’t really know what was going on if I was honest, but Clive told us we needed to get to New York, and by Sunday we were in New York rehearsing for a showcase. Mental. Totally mental.
Ali: I’m just a lad from Weymouth playing at being a rockstar. It was pretty surreal.
Nigel: When we first showed up at Arista records on 52nd street or wherever the heck it was, it had a massive gold plated front entrance. Huge 46 story building purely I think devoted to the record label. It was so bizarre. Even just thinking about how much that must have cost to maintain blew my mind.
We went off to this rehearsal space called SIR Studios in midtown New York on 475 10th Avenue and got ready to do the classic high pressure record company showcase. 25 guys in suits and cigars filed in and silently watched our short set of 5 or 6 songs. I think we did Angel, Renegades, Morning Afterglow, Todays the Day and one other that I can’t remember, probably Lost in Space.
Ali: Honestly, I was so stoked to be back in the game so soon that I just went over to New York and enjoyed the whole experience. We got totally wasted the first few days. Went large. Then into the rehearsal space we go to play our showcase. I’ll be frank (Butcher), I wasn’t feeling great about it because this wasn’t like a gig where you’ve got a crowd to feed off. This is a room with a bunch of stiffs in suits watching you. There’s no energy.
Truth be told it was a bit of a nightmare. I didn’t enjoy it. No atmosphere at all. After we finished playing our set Clive grabbed me and took me outside, put his arm around me and told me he didn’t like it, and that he wanted me to do it again, but pretend I was playing to 6000 people.
Steve: They loved the set so much they asked us to play it twice. An incredible result really. Twice!
Nigel: We did the set once and were asked to do it a second time because Clive liked it so much.
Ali: Honestly, I just thought “What a fucking dick.” Asking me to pretend like I was an actor or something. No crowd. No energy. I went back in and I had the right fucking hump about being asked to do that. My voice was going from being up all night partying and rehearsing and I really just didn’t have it in me, but I thought, right, “fuck off, Mike, I’m doing this for the lads.”
So we did it again for the execs, and this time I just fucking stared the bloke out for every bit of every song. I never took my eyes off him. And that was it. I just drilled into him that those songs were his if he wanted them. And that was it, he was like, yeah, I’ll sign you.
Nigel: The lawyers spent 3 months haggling and by June we were a signed band again - all done with no management.
Ali: Listen, I can be a dick about stuff sometimes, but this was life-changing shit. Like the impossible had been achieved. We’d been given another opportunity when some people don’t even sign once. To sign for a second time, to an American label, and go to the states was unbelievable.
The boys were back in the game.
26 May 99
After months of tense negotiations, we can exclusively announce that Electrasy have signed a huge new record deal with American giants Arista Records of New York.
A band spokesperson had this to say earlier today:
“We first began talking to Arista a few months ago, and then out of the blue Clive Davis (President and founder of Arista) came over to the UK with some of his A&R people. We met them, and from the start it was obvious that these were people we could work with. They had a real spirit of enthusiasm and genuine excitement for our music.
We flew over to New York to do a showcase performance for people from the record company and it was a real success - we actually got to play our set twice. The songs that really knocked them out were ‘Morning Afterglow’, and a new song we’ve got called ‘Renegades’.
It’s taken a little while to sort out the deal but now it’s all on, and we can’t wait to be off and running again”
