Bums For BPI. What Factory thought of the Brits.
Posted 20/02/12
However unlikely it seems given its annual attempts at being a family friendly cause célèbre, during the 1980s the Brit Awards were usually regarded by the independent sector as being part of The Other. These days the Brits are busily preoccupied with things like audience interactivity and across the board synergy, activities it’s had to come to terms with in its race against Saturday night talent shows to provide the definitive televised experience of a certain kind of pop life. The Brits journey from a rather insular music business awards ceremony to its conception of itself today, as a celebration of national street level talent and attitude, has been suitably colourful. One long process of Britpop cocaine spats, celebrity arrests and Spice Girl Union Jack micro dresses, if it all feels rather heavy handed and manufactured that’s because to a great extent it is.
For many years the producer of the awards was Jonathan King. According to his version of events it was King who coined the name Brits by shortening the name of the awards then sponsors, the Britannia Music Club. After the Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood live on-air car crash of 1989, King revamped the production significantly. In an attempt to make the awards less redolent of the Live Aid aristocracy, in January 1991 he promoted a concert at Wembley Arena that celebrated the more music press friendly side of British music.
The bill featured bands like Ride, New Model Army and Jesus Jones and was headlined by The Cure. A fortnight later The Cure won the award for Best British Band and the process of decontaminating the awards from its black tie and rolled-up- jacket-sleeve image began in earnest. The push towards mainstream event status had begun two years previously in 1988, when the ceremony, then still known as the BPI – British Phonograph Industry - Awards, relocated from the Grosvenor Hotel to the marginally more happening Royal Albert Hall.
It was against this backdrop of the pre-attitude Brits that Factory released a single that year: ‘Stereo / Porno’ credited to Vermorel and accompanied by a promotional poster entitled ‘Bums for BPI.’
‘Vermorel’ were Fred & Judy Vermorel. In the late 1980s they were best known as a writer couple that had collaborated on the book Starlust. Fred Vermorel also published an infamous Kate Bush biography, was a friend of Malcolm McLaren and had been through similar experiences to The Sex Pistols manager at the Croydon and Hornsey Art College sit-ins of 1968. Vermorel’s connections with King Mob, The Sex Pistols and the Cash From Chaos narrative ensured he was certain to be indulged by Wilson, whom he approached in 1998 with the idea of running a campaign against the BPI.
The result was Fac198 ‘Stereo / Porno’ released on 7” and 12” vinyl.
Both versions bore the label copy ‘specially commissioned for the BPI Awards 1988.’
Here is the single
The suitably lavish fold-out sleeve contained a detail from the ‘Bums for BPI’ poster
It’s interesting to note that even in 1988, a year after the million selling success of New Order’s Substance, Wilson’s capriciousness still extended to such enjoyably futile gestures. Through its combination of indifference to London and the wider music business, to say nothing of its shaky grasp of paperwork, Factory was not a registered member of the BPI. This was a fact not lost on the trade body when, having perceived in the release a possible defamation of character, it started legal proceedings against the record company (the action came to nothing).
Things could have turned out far, far, worse for Factory however if Fred Vermorel’s promotional strategy for his campaign against the BPI had been fully realised. Dave Harper, one of the first PR people Factory employed and certainly the first to be based in London, handled the media for ‘Stereo / Porno’.
This is an unedited transcript from one of the interviews I conducted with Harper. Sadly there wasn’t room to include this story in the final draft. We had been talking about his early relationship with Factory and the label’s rather ambivalent attitude toward the press and PR in general. It’s a remarkable insight into the sense of absurdity that always ran through the label and, needless to say, it’s unthinkable of any record company doing anything similar today.
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‘The best thing in terms of conceptualism and sheer stupidity was the Fred and Judy Vermorel single, which was one of Wilson’s Situationist moves. I knew of them, but didn’t really understand what Fred was, and Judy I can hardly remember. They had this fucking awful record that it was quite obvious they hadn’t played on, and I was struggling with the idea of trying to promote it.
One of the things Mike Alway used to say was ‘Make everything up. No one knows what you’re talking about anyway. Make up a story.’ Anyway, Fred Vermorel came with what would now be called a backstory. His Kate Bush fans book meant he was a slightly controversial figure. No one knew what the hell he was going on about and I didn’t know what he was going about, but he had a fucking brilliant, brilliant, idea.
It had nothing to do with selling records it didn’t make any financial sense at all.
At the time the BPI Awards were stagnant. It was the same nonsense every year Annie Lennox, Phil Collins just the same fucking rubbish. every fucking year, completely fucking boring. So Fred & Judy came in and said ‘This is what we want you to do’ – which was quite an interesting phrase – ‘This is what we want you to do, the BPI Awards are coming up in four months at the Albert Hall and we want you to get hold of some BPI Awards headed notepaper.’
Back then you could go round the offices of NME, Melody Maker & Sounds and journalists’ desks would be full of shit. There would be press releases from the BPI Awards and the PR doing them, detailing who was up for nominations etc. and you could just grab one and take it away. I had my own printed paper done round the corner from the office in Gray’s Inn Road at Prontaprint and put a lot of work their way. So I stole a handful of BPI press releases and said ‘Can I have five hundred of these please?’ I’d tippexed out everything but the official heading. The printer said ‘Come on, that’s dodgy, I cant do that.” I convinced him and said ‘It’ll be fun’ he said ‘Alright, but I'm not happy.’ So I had five hundred reams of official BPI Awards notepaper, blank.
So Fred would come round once a week with a new press release to send out and it started out innocuously, he’d written it all and I just had to type it up.
The first one was along the lines of ‘We can exclusively reveal that Phil Collins will be appearing live at the BPI Awards’ something obvious and anodyne. I’d print these things up, send them off to my mailing list and opened up the papers next week and everyone had printed it, but it was so bland nobody noticed. Gradually Fred began to rack up the pressure very subtly. So over the weeks these press releases were starting to stream out.
It was a brilliant critique of the whole ‘We’re really successful rock stars patronizing the plebs,’ basically. Fred said ‘I want you to send out a PR saying at this year’s BPI Awards, the grand finale at the Albert Hall will feature Annie Lennox, Chris de Burgh, Phil Collins etc. all singing ‘Jerusalem’. I thought this is getting good now, of course ‘Jerusalem’ we’re bringing the Proms in, and they printed it: ‘Balloons and Union Jacks at the Albert Hall for BPI Awards’.
And the next week was a PR to alert the head teachers of schools for handicapped children, both physically and mentally, that the BPI Awards committee had decided to make everybody feel wonderful. We invite the schools to bring a selection of your handicapped children to door D of the Royal Albert Hall, where Chris De Burgh and Annie Lennox will judge which ones are deemed worthy of taking part in ‘Jerusalem’, the singing of which was to be a marvellous thing.
I thought ‘This is where it’s going to get nasty.’
Anyway nevertheless I sent out a press release along those lines. Tony never really cared. He’d set it all up and he wasn’t really bothered, it wasn’t going to sell any records. The whole thing was fucking stupid, the fact it could happen was what appealed. At Lynne Franks PR, there was this guy Julian Henry, he now writes PR analysis for Media Guardian and has his own PR company and is a mature man, he was a mature man then, and he also did PR for the BPI.
So I sent out something about handicapped children at the BPI Awards. I knew Julian vaguely, we were talking about Miaow earlier and he’d been involved with them and he was in the band The Hit Parade with Cath Carroll. Stan who was working for me said ‘Julian Henry’s been on the phone’ I said ‘Oh really…… has he?’ as my bowels were going through the floor. ‘He wants you to ring him back.’
I rang him.
‘Hi Julian’
‘Look Harper, I don’t want you to say anything, I know what you’re doing, I just want you to fucking stop. You don’t have to admit it just stop.’
I had boxes of this headed notepaper, I’ve got to get rid of this shit. Fred Vermorel’s coming round in a minute with another wacky idea. I better stop doing this stuff now…. meanwhile Fred turns up.
‘I’ve been to the British Library and I’ve got a map of all the tunnels at the Albert Hall.
I said ‘No, we’re not doing that anymore.’’