Wiley’s mum’s choice
Rosa Doherty meets the man who manages the musician known as the godfather of grime
IARRIVE AT the Primrose Hill offices of music manager John Woolf’s A-List Management in good time for our four o’clock interview. Woolf, the company’s founding partner, boasts a roster of successful songwriters, DJs and producers but he is best known for being the man behind Wiley, well known as the “godfather of grime,” music which sprung from the council estates of east London.
This leafy suburb, home to coffee shops and yoga studios, is a long way from the Bow E3 studios where Spurs-supporting Wiley is credited with creating the grime sound more than 17 years ago.
I’m intrigued by the contrast, especially this week, as BBC presenter Reggie Yates has just apologised for boasting that popular black music artists are no longer managed by “some random, fat, Jewish guy from north west London.” Here I am in north west London, about to meet Wylie’s manager. What will he make of Yates’s comments?
I ring the doorbell and am let in by a tall figure in jeans and t-shirt; he’s on the phone and ushers me upstairs.
Once his call is finished, he introduces himself to me as Shivas Howard Brown, one of the team’s music managers.
Brown delivers me to Woolf’s presence in his open-plan office, and I find myself standing in the middle of a meeting that has not yet finished. Woolf, who is 35 and looks neither random nor fat, is coming to the end of a conversation about how many cows he would need to marry his guest. I listen, a little confused, as the “African tradition” is explained to him. “Is John going to be in the JC?” Brown, now off the phone, barks excitedly. “You don’t understand, I’m basically Jewish too. I went to Highgate, so every Jew in north London knows me and I’ve been to most north London synagogues I’m still trying to learn the full Shabbat prayer. Please shout me out in the JC.” This is similar to the response I had when I asked Woolf for the interview in the first place: “I’ve only ever been in the JC because of football and the Maccabiah Games. I’ll tell my mum; she’ll be so excited.” Eventually, the meeting comes to a close, the guests leave and I ask Woolf where he would prefer to talk. Somewhere more quiet?
“There is no such thing as privacy in the Jewish community, so we can just chat here,” he says.“We’re all family.”
I’m facing a triangle of desks, occupied by Brown, Woolf, and Cyrus Alamouti, A-List Management’s co-founder.
“Cyrus is an Iranian,” Brown says with a smile. “There is peace between the Iranians and Jews in this household.”
I’m keen to know how Woolf, a Jewish boy from Holland Park, ended up managing Wylie.
“It was 2007, and we met in Hoxton. When I met him, the first thing he said to me was that his mum had told him that he needed a Jewish manager.
“I don’t know why she told him that and I have never asked.”
Woolf had started out by promoting parties and raves, which led to DJ-ing and a growing realisation that he wanted to work in music management.
When he first met Wiley, he had a whole speech worked out.
“It was about management being like a marriage, and why you shouldn’t just jump into things.
“But Wiley was like ‘no, you’re Jewish, my mum told me I need a Jewish manager’ and suddenly we were head-first into things and working together.”
Since then, Wiley has had chart success, performed at Glastonbury, and released his latest album on his own label — Chasing The Art. This year, he won the Outstanding Contribution To Music gong at the NME Awards, and he has just released his autobiography, Eskiboy (William Heinemann).
Woolf says it’s a book that “Wiley had to write. It is his legacy.”
In it, Wiley, 38, charts his life and
career over 96 chapters, including the trauma of being slashed across the face, and how he invented grime, the gritty music of the inner city.
Despite Wiley’s mum’s insistence, Woolf is adamant that “where you are from should not define your ability, or who you interact with.
“Yeah, I’m from Holland Park and grew up between there and South Africa and yes he is from Bow, but I love grime music.
“I grew up in the era of drum and bass and garage and grime was the natural progression from that. It was exciting and raw, how I imagined punk rock would have been back in the 1970s. Such amazing energy and people doing things just for the sheer love of the music.
“It was what I was into; I grew up excited about that kind of music.”
He says he could have done something “conventional, but that wasn’t me. Music is what I love and I think it is important to do what you love.”
I take the chance to ask him what he thinks of Yates and his “fat Jewish manager” slur.
“I had a feeling you were going to try and ask me about that,” Woolf says. “I know Reggie very well and have done for many years. He is a good guy and I stand by him. I know what he meant by his comment. The way he phrased it was not great but
Your religion doesn’t determine your success