Dave will Get Up and Stand Up to bring you Legendary tales
From helping Island Records ship over 44 million Bob Marley albums to launching the careers of so many stars, Dubliner Robinson is steeped in music folklore
No man is an island, to quote the famous 16th Century poet John Donne. But it was an Irishman who helped turn Island Records into a roaring success back in the 1980s.
Legendary music figure Dave Robinson – who’s doing a one man show in Belfast tonight and Dublin tomorrow to tell the story of his pioneering indie label Stiff Records in anecdotes and music – took over as president of Island when big acts were jumping ship and the label was still reeling from the untimely death of Bob Marley.
It looked like Island was sinking fast, but Dave was able to turn things around thanks to new signings such as U2 and Frankie Goes To Hollywood – along with, of course, his brainwave to bring out the Bob Marley Legend compilation that sold 44 million copies.
“The Bob Marley Legend album is on my CV – I’m the man who made a ‘Legend’ out of Bob Marley!” he joked.
“I really liked Bob Marley and I found out Island had not sold a lot of his records really. He was kind of a cult figure rather than a big crossover artist at that time.
“I was a bit amazed by this because I was doing Madness at the time and Madness were outselling Bob Marley. I thought, ‘How can this be? Madness are great, but Bob Marley is an absolute genius’.
“So, I put the album together and I did a world-wide marketing campaign for it. And it’s done phenomenally well. It still sells 2 million units a year. I’d love to have had a part of it, but I was a salary (staff) member, so I didn’t get a royalty.”
An excellent raconteur, the co-fonder of Stiff Records will have plenty to regale his Irish audiences with considering the amount of bands he signed for the label – such as The Damned, Motorhead, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Kirsty Mccoll, The Pogues, Madness, and Ian Dury & the Blockheads
As Dave – who once shared a flat with Jimi Hendrix and then with Van Morrison whom he also briefly managed – says himself, “There’s a funny story pretty much about every record and every artist.”
Growing up in Drumcondra, Dave first started out as a photographer taking snaps of The Stones and The Beatles during the Swinging Sixties, which was his “entrée into the British music scene”.
He recalled: “I remember The Stones were really unpleasant. They were really rude and nasty. Their manager had got them geared up to be very unpleasant. The Beatles were very friendly. So hanging around with them and taking a few picture was a lot of fun.
“But The Stones were constantly putting their hands over your lens, not wanting you to take part. Even though they had agreed to allow photographs, The Stones really didn’t enjoy it.”
Dave’s next big music assignment was of Van Morrison with his then band Them. “I photographed Them a lot – Van Morrison being ( from) Belfast and everything, I got the gig to do quite a few photographs of Them,” he said.
What was it like being close friends with Van The Man?
“Well, ‘close friends’ with Van is a difficult thing. We shared a flat for a while. And, yes, we did become friends. But he’s a difficult man – although what a genius. But to communicate with. He’s not very chatty.”
The musician Eric Bell, who was briefly in Them before he went on to join Thin Lizzy and famously wrote Whiskey in the Jar, once told me he left Them because he didn’t enjoy working with Van. “He likes tormenting people! I think that’s what it is,” he said, laughing.
Speaking of ex-flatmates, Dave also lived with Jimi Hendrix. “I mainly was there when he wasn’t. So, yeah, I did share his flat for six months. It’s a very small flat. It just has two bedrooms. I’ve had a lot of interesting flatmates,” he said.
“But I’ve never been pushed about celebrities much because my everyday was made up of celebrities that people would like to talk to – and a lot of them were not always that super friendly when you got them up in the morning!”
Dave might’ve never been starstruck, but he admitted to being impressed when he first met Jim Morrison. Dave was walking along the streets of LA with his flatmate Jimi Hendrix (inset) when they stopped to talk to a guy that he presumed was just another fan of the legendary guitarist. But it turned out that the stranger was the iconic singer of The Doors.
“How naïve is that! I just thought it was a fan who liked Jimi. I wasn’t quite aware who Jim Morrison was. I knew The Doors but nobody had said, ‘That’s Jim Morrison of The Doors’,” he recalled, laughing.
“So, I’m looking at this great looking guy in leather pants talking to Jimi. I’d just come from Ireland, so I had never seen anybody in leathers trousers! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. And of course they were very tight!”
After giving up photography, Dave got into managing bands and singledifficult handedly created a network of 35 pubs in London where acts could “play what they wanted” and this became the forerunner of punk.
He then built a recording studio above the legendary Hope and Anchor Pub in Islington and started up Stiff Records with Jake Riviera back in 1976.
It was Stiff Record’s idea that the then up-and-coming English musician with Irish roots named Declan Patrick Macmanus should change his name to Elvis Costello
“I was fairly amazed that he allowed us to present to him the idea of changing his name and changing his look with the glasses and stuff,” he recalled.
And then for good measure Dave managed to get Elvis locked up overnight in a police cell at a time in his
‘We’ve got this guy called Elvis Costello who says he belongs to your record company?’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of him!’
music career when it looked like, as the old adage goes, he couldn’t even get arrested!
“We sent Elvis down to busk outside a conference happening in London at the time. And I told him, ‘Whatever happens don’t stop playing’,” he said.
“I called a police station – I didn’t really put on an act or anything, but
I think my Irish accent alerted them to the idea this guy was busking outside a conference in Park Lane and maybe they should go and see what was happening!
“It was before the Troubles and there wasn’t any anti-irish (sentiment). But I suppose the Irish accent gave them something to think about and they went down and they arrested him. But he wouldn’t stop playing. He was playing as they put him in the Paddy Wagon, if you’ll excuse the Paddy expression.”
Laughing, Dave confessed: “The police called the record company and I answered the phone, and they said, ‘We’ve got this guy called Elvis Costello who says he belongs to your record company?’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of him!’
“So, they kept him in over night and took him to court in the morning! I had a friend on the ITV
News and I alerted him to what was happening.
“So, we got him on the news that day and that was a very big start to Elvis succeeding and world domination. That was the first step. He got so much notoriety on that news piece that, of course, people went out to buy his record.”
It’s hard to interview Dave without asking about U2 who were still an up-and-coming band when he took over running Island.
“Well, U2’s a perfect example of the Irish entity where you have to really hustle to make it. Bono was always a very clever marketing guy,” he said.
“And Bono was clever enough to observe all the groups and lift all the good tricks – all the good stuff that he could see they were doing that was attracting attention.
“So, Bono was a great learner and had a great attitude to getting his band going. And they were good. I mean, let’s face it, at the end of the day, U2 are one of the biggest bands ever. So, another Irish success.”
Dave has countless other stories to tell, such as how his act Ian Dury & the Blockheads got blacklisted by Arista Records because they offended record boss Clive Davies backstage after a gig!
The record mogul “didn’t like to be touched” and, of course, they ended up manhandling him in order to find out what was the brand of his fancy jacket because one of their entourage was into “blazers with the shinny buttons and things”!
The next day, Dave was summoned to a meeting with the record label and informed the band where being dropped! He was told, “Your people abused Clive last night, so we’re pulling the whole deal! This is how the record company in America works, Dave: We’re going to f*** you up now and if you survive you get to f **** us up later!’”
Dave has enough material for an entire book, never mind “an evening with…” event like tonight in Belfast and tomorrow in Dublin.
“I keep getting hassled about writing a book, which is great that people are interested. I will write one before I forget everything!” he joked.
“There’s a story behind every record. It’s great to get to the hometown and shine you buttons, do you know what I mean?”
We do indeed… ldave Robinson is tonight (Feb 28) at The Belfast Barge and tomorrow (Feb 29) at the Liberty Hall Theatre in Dublin. Tickets for the Dublin show cost €20 and are available from ticketmaster.ie. Tickets for the Belfast show cost £15.