*If anyone from Kokomo, or anyone who knows how to contact them, reads this please get in touch. Six great tracks recorded at Apple are yours for the asking.

This is a story about the mistreatment and exploitation of artists and an insight into the sort of cynicism that gets the music industry a bad name.

I have changed a couple of names to protect myself from getting sued.

So, once upon a time there was a group called Arrival.

No, there really was. That’s not the bit I made up.

Ok. Let’s get this straight. All of this story is true. A couple of names are omitted because the bastards are still alive and might sue me.

Can I get on now? Thank you so much.

Arrival had a hit with a song called Friends on the Decca label in 1970, but recent success had not followed.

I met Arrival when I went to work at CBS, where they had recently been signed.

I fell in love with them. Frank Collins and Paddy McHugh were very out gays. Paddy sometimes wore a dress on stage. He was very beautiful.

Tony O’Malley was very huskily hetero, with soulful sandpaper where his vocal chords should have been.

And then there was Dyan Birch.

Oh, Dyan. She was that most exceptional kind of singer who simply transformed in performance into a repository for all your right-brain longings.

Offstage she was slightly terrifying. Tall, ramrod straight and utterly dignified, her default expression was a sneer of disdain and distrust. If you could make Dyan smile, it would light up your year.

I’m supposed to help them find new songs that will resuscitate their career.

Except, they don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, Arrival has departed. They’re now part of a new band called Kokomo and they want to enlist my help in getting them out of their Arrival contract.

Personally, I couldn’t give a toss one way or the other. I just want to work with these people. Not only are they an utter joy to be with, but they sing like angels. One night I offered them a lift home. I was raving about a Joni Mitchell gig I’d been to and, right there in the car, they began to run through Joni’s latest album Court & Spark, in three part harmony. That’s 30 minutes of heaven stored in my memory mansion if I ever get stranded on a desert island.

I went to see Kokomo, just to check out what I was being asked to fight for. Oh my God. An obsession was born. There were Frank, Paddy and Dyan front of stage, Tony O’Malley hunched over his keyboard, and – wait a minute – isn’t that Alan Spenner from The Grease Band on bass? Yes it is, and another Greaser, Neil Hubbard, is on guitar. And there’s the legendary Jim Mullen on lead. And Mel Collins from King Crimson on sax.

There were 10 people on that stage, everyone of them Google-able today. And no-one who saw them around that time has forgotten the experience.

So, back at the office, I set about the task of persuading CBS that this is the future, not Arrival. Which is where I get my first lesson in the artist as an asset, not a creative force. Apparently we ‘need’ an Arrival single, and then an album. Kokomo will have to whistle.

Fast forward a few months and the situation is getting desperate. Frank, Paddy and Dyan are broke, and CBS still doesn’t have the hit record it wants out of them. I’m pushing hard, (and making enemies).

And here’s where I see one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life, all the more appalling because it’s completely unnecessary, and just involves a record company executive proving who’s boss.

CBS is refusing to sign Kokomo. The guys from that band who are signed to CBS want to be released from their contract.

We’re in a room, and the guys from business affairs are shouting at the members of Arrival. Seriously. Shouting at them. And waving contracts at them. This is what you signed. This is who you are. Kokomo can go fuck itself. You. Are. Arrival.

Look, I say, these guys have moved on. Arrival is over. And they’re broke. They’re our artists, and the rest of Kokomo is happy to become part of their deal. Let’s go with what’s happening, not with what you think should be happening.

And the shouting starts all over again. Frank, Paddy, Dyan and Tony – these wonderful, wonderful people, these brilliant artists – sit there like broken children. Their future is not their future. It belongs to CBS.

And then, the pièce de résistance. “Right. You need money. We’ll give you £50 a week each, for the next six weeks. But you have to sign this contract.”

This ‘contract’ is a single piece of paper that says that Dyan Birch, Frank Collins, Tony O’Malley and Paddy McHugh are signed to CBS Records in perpetuity. In other words, for the princely sum of £300 they sign away their lives.

I left the room so that no-one would see my tears of rage and frustration.

The saga dragged on. In the meantime, I used Arrival as session singers at every possible opportunity, partly to keep their rent paid, but mostly because they were simply the best. I also used other members of Kokomo from time to time – including, I think, her first paid session for the fantastic percussionist Jodie Linscott.

And, as I recounted a couple of posts back, I brought the whole band into Air Studios for a memorable session recording backing tracks for Asha Puthli.

But I also, against all orders from within CBS, took the band into Apple Studios where the great Phil McDonald set them up to record live. And that’s my track this week – one of six songs I recorded with them on January 23, 1974 in the hope that they might attract a decent manager who could negotiate a way out of this mess.

And you know what? That’s exactly what happened. And so, another unsavoury chapter begins, where the manager of a massive global band (MGB), whose contract with their longtime record company was up, dangles MGB in front of CBS’s US executives. “You can have this band, MGB, if you sign this band, Kokomo.”

But, good for Kokomo. They made two albums at that time which you might like to check out. They were slickly produced and the first, at least, was well received. But the raw funk and soul that I admired could only really be heard when they played live. And that’s what we’ve got here. Kokomo, live at Apple Studios.

This track, a version of Bill Withers’ Lonely Town, Lonely Street, cuts in at the beginning of the second verse. Remember, this was a hit and run session. We weren’t even supposed to be there, so there certainly was no chance for a mix session.

And here’s Arrival on Top Of The Pops, Dyan Birch on lead vocals. Check out Frank Collins (on the right, dark hair) unable to suppress a “look at us, we’re here!” smile. And a brief mention of Carroll Carter (between Paddy and Frank) who gets forgotten, but was there.

On the day the entire Driver 67 oeuvre is reissued and appears on iTunes, I’m arguing with the pop star who lives in my house.

She insists a publishing deal is essential to being a successful songwriter. I disagree. Music publishers in my experience are the least useful component in the artists’ toolkit. I’d go so far as to call them parasitical.

I hope someone sees this who can change my mind. I’m happy to post a mea culpa if you can convince me I’m wrong.

Meanwhile, the thing is, you know what record companies do. They finance, distribute, market and promote your music.

You know what booking agents do. They book your gigs, arrange your tours, ensure the sound is set up.

You know what managers do. They negotiate with everyone else, get the best possible deal for you (and themselves, naturally) and try to create an environment where you are protected from the daily bullshit so you are free to create and develop your music.

Music publishers – well, what do they do?

In my experience they mostly just collected publishing royalties and kept 50% for themselves. As I got smarter, I got this down to 25%, which today appears to be more of a standard.

But in 2014, you can spend an hour online, register your song(s) with PRS/MCPS and direct 100% of the money into your own bank account.

So what are they for, music publishers?

Here’s what I would advise the pop star who lives in my house to do: challenge any publisher who makes an approach to explain exactly what added value they will bring to her career.

They will say: Well, we’ll get other artists to cover your songs.

Ok, I would say, I’ll contract to assign you any song you get a cover on. But you’re not getting my publishing willy nilly on the basis that you reckon you can get covers on one or two of them.

They will say: We’ll introduce you to other writers and producers with whom you can collaborate.

Ok, I would say, I’ll contract to assign you any song that results from any such collaboration to which you introduce me. But again, I will not, willy nilly, give you all my publishing based on a nebulous possibility that may never come to pass.

In other words, make the publisher work for you, and let them benefit from the fruits of their labour.

This is all the more important to me because today, May 21, 2014, is a red letter day for The Driver.

It is the day that Cherry Red Records reissues the Driver catalogue. (Digital only, I’m afraid. You cd and vinyl fans are out of luck, at least for the time being).

It’s a good time to reflect on the mistakes I made and the contribution I made to the demise of my own career. I hope to be useful in helping the pop star who lives in my house to avoid at least some of the same mistakes.

In fact, The Driver’s career – such as it was – is an object lesson in how not to do it. It was a car crash (pun intended) more or less from beginning to end.

The biggest mistakes were that I handled my own negotiations (no manager) and produced my own records.

A manager, for instance, would have insisted that Driver 67’s one top ten hit would appear on Driver 67’s first album.

In fact, there never was a Driver 67 album. After the failure of the follow up, Headlights, and the third single, If You Were Going My Way, Pete Zorn and I reverted to our Tax Loss moniker, insisting that the album be released under the Tax Loss name. Worse still, we didn’t put the hit single on it. We replaced the Brummie controller with an American voice (Bill Zorn, Pete’s brother) and put that version on the album.

A producer, on the other hand, would never have let me (and it was me, not Pete Zorn) get away with the single version of If You Were Going My Way that more or less killed off The Driver as anything but a one-hit wonder. Listening to it now, it’s one of those “what was I thinking?” moments. Fortunately for my sanity and the song’s reputation, the original version remains intact on the album.

The album itself was at least 20% a career suicide note. It started with the song Hey Mister Record Man, which I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago. The record company didn’t want it on the album at all, let alone as the first track. To add insult to injury, we segued Hey Mister Record Man into the American version of Car 67, which seemed to suggest (given the satirical message of Record Man) that we thought Car 67  was a piece of pop crap.

Then, at the end of the album is a truly weird montage of end-of-the-world conspiracy theatre, rounded off with Pete Zorn and I lambasting cassette jockeys: “We liked your record so much, we taped it off the radio”.

Now, lest I am making the whole thing sound unattractive, let me say – without undue modesty – that in amongst all this career mayhem are some great songs. There’s also the one and only Tax Loss single, The Secret, which Capital Radio play listed because they suspected it was Bryan Ferry on a side project.

And then there are the Pete Zorn songs. If you’ve never heard Pete sing I urge you to listen to My Crazy Friend, Folk Like Us and Spare Me The Sad Eyes.

But this week I’m putting up another Driver 67 oddity, because there’ll never be a better opportunity.

Tail Lights was the B-side of Headlights. It’s a joint effort between Pete and his brother Bill and is a wonderful satire of a certain type of country song that was prevalent in the 70s. To my shame, I can’t remember who plays the fiddle, but the marvellously precise guitar is from Mart Jenner, and the short but very, very sweet banjo section is Bill Zorn himself, now fronting the legendary Kingston Trio in America.

I’m pretty confident the pop star who lives in my house will never make a record like it…

https://soundcloud.com/driver-67/rear-tail-lights

So I’m hunkered down with Frank Zappa.

He’s already shown me his new toy – a portable piano keyboard he can take anywhere. He demonstrates how it works.

He shows me how he can write and compose on an aeroplane! Who would have believed such a thing possible?

And now he’s telling me this story.

Seems Frank had been signed to a  deal with MGM Records which was going nowhere and he wanted out.

Being Frank Zappa, he hadn’t just signed any old deal without reading it. He knew that, on a particular date, the record company had to formally advise him they wanted to continue with him.

He also knew that the contract was locked away, as he put it, “in an old filing cabinet in the basement”. Nobody was left at the label who was there when he signed; he calculated no-one would remember to let him know they wanted him to stay at the label.

So he kept his cool, waited for the day. No word from the label. Then he served notice that he was no longer under contract, and no longer wished to record for them. He was free!

This is a rare story in the music industry – one where the artist uses the contract to his own advantage. I kept this story in my metaphoric back pocket for five years until I was negotiating my own record deal.

Record companies always ‘recoup’ artists’ costs. You spend £500,000 recording an album, filming a video, releasing a single: the record company is going to recover those costs from your sales before you see a penny.

Of course, if you don’t sell any units, that’s their loss, although you will carry that debt for the term of the contract and possibly beyond. According to the last royalty statement I received, I still owe somebody £22,000 for an album I made over 30 years ago.

So here’s what I did in 1978, employing the ‘Zappa Strategy’.

I negotiated an initial three month deal for one single – Car 67 – after which the record company would have what’s called ‘an option’ to pick up the deal for an album.

My calculation was that by the time we recorded the single, it was scheduled for release, made its way onto the Radio 1 playlist, and started to chart, we would be way beyond three months.

What this meant, in practical terms, was that if Car 67 was a hit, I would get paid. The album would be under a new contract at the record company’s risk.

For their part, the record company was not going to commit to an album until they knew the single was selling.

And I was right. The deal was signed in September, the single was released in November and it didn’t hit the top 30 till January.

So when the letter arrived telling us the record company was “picking up its option” for an album, I had the great joy of telling them they were out of time. And I offered a silent prayer of thanks to Frank Zappa.

We renegotiated, got a small advance, a much higher royalty, and off we went to record the album.

Of course, it didn’t end happily ever after. Never underestimate the power and sheer venality of the record industry. When pay day came, no cheque. Instead, a statement showed that we owed the record company money.

And this is the reason they gave: the second contract was simply an extension of the first, and as such was the same contract.

In reality, as the managing director said to me, quite baldly and blatantly: “Look Paul, we’ve got the money and you don’t. So why don’t you just go and make some more records, and the money will follow”.

I’d seen some stuff in my time in the record business that had, literally, reduced me to tears. The way struggling artists were treated was beyond belief. I had been determined to avoid this pitfall.

But greed and incompetence were the order of the day. One of the industry’s most beloved figures back then – and rightly so – was a guy named Maurice Oberstein.

One of the cleverest people I have ever met, Obie (as he was known to everyone) had, for instance, foreseen the oil shortage in the early 70s. Crude oil was a vital ingredient in making vinyl. So what Obie did was, he bought up pretty much Europe’s existing vinyl stock to ensure CBS Records would outride any oil shortage.

And yet, this brilliant man once said to me, vis a vis the record industry: “You know, Paul, this is the only business I know where you can be wrong nine times out of ten and still be a genius”.

Is it any wonder, then, that far from being starry eyed and naive, I was cynical and sceptical? Which brings me to this week’s song. It was the title track of the only album I made before I walked away from the record industry disgusted and defeated in 1981.

The song is Hey Mister Record Man and the lyrics are self-explanatory. It is an artist more or less begging just for the opportunity to play a song to a “record man”.

As the song progresses, you will hear the artistic integrity disintegrating until, finally, the “record man” is bribed with “co-authorship” on a piece of dross he wants, that the artist will hate himself for recording.

And if you think this is satire, believe me, it’s impossible to satirise the record industry. Then or now.

For those who are interested, Hey Mister Record Man will be reissued on May 12, along with 20 other Driver 67 and Tax Loss recordings. I’ll keep you up to date with that.

If you listen to the end, you’ll hear that the song segues into Car 67, which is how it is on the album. But I haven’t let that song play out. There’s a limit to your patience, I know!