David Enthoven
Music manager who guided the careers of T Rex, Roxy Music and Robbie Williams
DAVID ENTHOVEN, the music manager, who has died aged 72, had a career which spanned British rock, pop and experimental music over the last five decades. In the late 1960s Enthoven worked with “progressive” acts such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson, masters of multiple time signature changes and baroque flourishes.
During the same period he also managed Tyrannosaurus Rex, which consisted of the ringlet-haired Marc Bolan and bongo-playing Steve Peregrin Took. When they made the transition from hippie folk to glam rock, Enthoven’s suggestion that they shorten the name to T.Rex quickened the pace at which Bolan became the first big British pop star of the 1970s.
With his partner John Gaydon, Enthoven operated the EG Music group, which included a record label as well as publishing and management divisions. EG’s most notable act was the art-rock group Roxy Music and they subsequently managed the spinoff solo careers of members Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry, as well as King Crimson’s virtuoso guitarist Robert Fripp.
After an extended career break in the 1980s, when he successfully fought addiction to drugs, Enthoven returned to the music business in the 1990s with another industry veteran Tim Clark. Together they launched IE Music, working with acts such as Massive Attack, Lemar, Will Young and Robbie Williams, who described his former manager as his “friend, mentor and hero”.
David John Enthoven was born on July 5 1944 and brought up at Houghton Green, near Rye, East Sussex, the only child of Tom Enthoven, a stockbroker, and his wife Margot; in adulthood Enthoven discovered that his biological father was in fact Tim Sitwell, a relation of the literary siblings.
Educated at Harrow, after leaving school Enthoven tried his hand at accountancy at Tom Enthoven’s suggestion. His first attempt at being an entrepreneur was in 1966 when he acquired the rights to that year’s football mascot, World Cup Willie; but the venture failed.
With his fellow Old Harrovian John Gaydon, Enthoven gravitated towards the music scene in London, and in 1968 the pair founded EG with the aim of hot-housing and recording musical talent and then licensing completed releases to major labels. This went against the industry model of artists signing direct to the big companies, and gave them greater creative and commercial control over their output.
A union was struck with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, which was expanding into the booming rock business from its base in reggae, and early hits came with the release of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s eponymous debut LP and, in particular, with King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson
King (1969), with the terrifying screaming face painted by Barry Godber for the album cover.
In the pre-MTV era when album sleeve artwork was the key promotional tool, this turned out to be a marketing masterstroke. “We always believed some people bought the album just for the sleeve because it was so startling,” Enthoven later recalled. This understanding of the visual potency of popular music was shared with Bryan Ferry, whom Enthoven and Gaydon met when he auditioned for the role of lead singer and bass-player with King Crimson. Ferry described the pair as “ex-public schoolboys with a whole mews full of Harley Davidsons. There always seemed to be loads of beautiful blonde women there. It was all incredibly glamorous to me”.
Roxy Music’s prominence throughout the 1970s was accompanied by the acclaim heaped on the solo releases by Brian Eno as well as Ferry. Eno left the group after two LPs but stayed with EG, where he was granted an environment in which to explore his interest in ambient music with his own boutique record label, Obscure. This became home to landmark releases by, among others, Gavin Bryars, John Cage, Michael Nyman and Eno himself.
In the early 1990s, by now fully recovered from his drug problems, Enthoven resumed management of Ferry and teamed up with Clark, whom he had known as head of marketing and promotions at Island Records in the 1960s and 1970s.
Their signing of Massive Attack in 1994 coincided with a resurgence of interest in the Bristol-based trip-hop collective. A couple of years later IE Music attracted Robbie Williams, who had left the boy-band Take That and was struggling to establish himself as a credible solo performer.
Much of the turnaround in Williams’ fortunes can be attributed to the soundness of Enthoven and Clark’s advice. More recently they represented the R’n’B singersongwriter Lemar Obika and the actor and singer Will Young. Enthoven also dedicated much of his time to supporting and working for Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.
David Enthoven’s first marriage to Penelope Wills, with whom he had two children, was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, the Danish former model Maren Greve. The model and TV presenter Tania Strecker is his stepdaughter.