Robert Fripp's Diary for Thursday, 13th July 2006

Robert Fripp's Diary

	Thursday, 13th July 2006

19.22

Hotel Acceptable But Being With the Minx It’s Fabbo, Nottingham;

A reading breakfast, for the second consecutive morning: two books (Jason Elliot, Peter Vansittart) & the Financial Times.

Headline news is the arrest yesterday of Lord Levy, who is being investigated in an alleged loans-for-lordship police enquiry. Prior to his ennoblement, Michael Levy left school at 16 for a career in accountancy and (to quote the FT) used his experience on showbusiness accounts to launch his own record label in 1973. Mr. Levy sold Magnet to Warner Bros in 1988 for around £10 million. I have no information as to how much of this sum was distributed to artists involved in Magnet, but I am able to hazard a guess: probably as much as when Geffen Records was sold, when Island Records was sold, and when EG Records was sold.

Sam Alder’s background in accountancy took him to the EG group of companies in 1970 as a “backroom boy”. So, both Lord Levy & Mr. Alder have backgrounds in accountancy & the record industry; both belong to the generation of accountants Anthony Sampson referred to in the phrase “the bean counters took over”. Sampson argues that this generation of accountants became initiators & entrepreneurs, using their financial training to do so, rather than operating a service industry which supported the financial affairs of clients.

On February 22nd. 1976 Mr. Alder, then my business manager, advised me to sign over my copyrights to EG that they might:

protect my interests;
collect my royalties;
defend the copyrights around the world.

Regrettably this information was unsound, untrue, contrary to my personal interest, and significantly in the personal interest of Mr. Alder, the accountant & adviser giving me advice (a license was sufficient for all of these). The copyright assignments were a necessary part of the strategy to re-license the EG catalogue, on very different terms to those of the preceding period, and on much improved terms to EG vis a vis their artists. (The longer story is waiting to be told).

Back to Lord Levy: I have just seen & heard a leading Labour party spokesman has just said, on Channel 4 evening news: Dodgy things have happened here but whether they are illegal is a different matter. Is it only my nose, or does this stink?

On the opposite page to the Lord Levy story, this: The big four accountancy firms have been berated by regulators for continuing to let their commercial goals take precedence over audit quality.

Well. There are also comments I could make on this, but not today.

A wonderful walking-morning with the Minx: we are enjoying Nottingham immensely. This is a very different city to the one I visited in the early 1990s. An afternoon of practising while T rehearsed at the Theatre Royal, which I visited for the press photo call at 17.15.

I…