Fact #92814
When:
Short story:
Pink Floyd, The Steve Miller Band, Captain Beefheart, Roy Harper, and Linda Lewis play at Knebworth Festival, Knebworth Park, Knebworth, Hertfordshire, UK. Pink Floyd's typically understated set opens with two Spitfires flying overhead. The Steve Miller Band perform their future No1 hit single Rock'N Me live for the first time. Roy Harper arrives backstage wearing a cowboy hat and riding a white charger which proceeds to evacuate its bowels, somewhat undermining the romantic illusion Harper is trying to create.
Full article:
Neil Warnock (agent, Pink Floyd) : Pink Floyd pout on a great gig, but the thing that really sticks in my mind from that day is Roy Harper being on a white charger backstage, and the horse misbehaving.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, Aug 7, 2015, for Audience magazine)
Robbie Williams (Pink Floyd crew) : I left university prematurely . . . in other words, I dropped out. I used to run a mobile disco round Kent and Surrey. One day I met Peter Watts, Pink Floyd’s tour manager; we became mates and the next thing I knew I was in Paris loading up some things called bass bins.
Floyd had always been at the cutting edge and owned their own PA systems. They were successful and had been touring for most of 1973 and 1974. When they got to Knebworth at the end of the tour they decided to take a year off. They were faced with the choice of selling the equipment and letting go of the crew or storing it and offering the crew the chance to run it as a rental business.
They bought a large warehouse in Britannia Row, Islington. Most of the band lived in North London. Roger [Waters] lived just round the corner and was anxious to have enough room for a full size snooker table. The founders of Britannia Row Audio were myself and Mick Kluczynski. Graham Fleming had the lighting side.
We worked with the band and they started building a studio. Initially we were just roadies and [from the band’s point of view] the business was just there to keep us quiet until next time they went on the road. But obviously there was a future there.
Mick Kluczynski (Pink Floyd crew) : The rules were that we could run the rental company but only purchase new products from profit. The Floyd didn’t have monitors and didn’t own a monitor board and we had to scramble to get new equipment. Initially it was stop start.
We were rigging crossovers in Old Holborn [tobacco] tins. We used Sony hi fi pieces which didn’t last ten minutes.
But we scraped a little system together and [engineer] Perry Cooney stayed and ran an Alex Harvey tour. We went off with the Floyd and managed to keep the name alive for those few weeks. Slowly but surely it built up. Floyd started using monitors. After a slow start, we did a whole bunch of work in the UK – The Strawbs, Be Bop Deluxe and Alex Harvey.
By 1977, we were out with the big Animals tour. We had done good business, but we wanted to expand into America because Britain didn’t have the volume of venues at that point. Robbie and I tossed a coin and we decided he would stay in the UK and I would go to the United States, so we divided the gear up and I went to the US.
That lasted two years. It was very hard work starting from scratch. Because the Floyd were so insular and never had support acts, we didn’t know the management of other bands. But Robbie managed to do major work in the UK, like Bob Dylan at Blackbushe in 1978.
It was apparent to me that we were in America too early. One of the biggest problems we had was that people wouldn’t use us because they were afraid they wouldn’t live up to the Floyd reputation. In the end I got fed up with being married to black boxes for seven days a week and I quit.
there was a bit of contention between Robbie and I. To me they were my friends and I had not considered the capitalist option of running a company. Neither of us saw ourselves as captains of industry. It started out as fun and only became serious in 1977 when we realised we were growing up.
Robbie Williams : By the late-‘70s and early-‘80s, the band was getting fractious and fragmented. Every time there was a dispute, the accountants would come in and divvy up the assets. It made it difficult to keep going. At that point I brought Bryan Grant in and we managed to negotiate a management buy-out with the accountants.
(Source : interview with Mike Gartside, Audience magazine, Jan 2005)
Bryan Grant : I’d been working with Floyd in 1975 and had been running a service company, IES, before that. Britannia Row asked me if I wanted to join then, but, for my sins, I went into management for about four years. I rejoined the party in 1979 and at that point they had lighting, sound, staging and trucks, studios and studio equipment hire.
(Source : interview with Mike Gartside, Audience magazine, Jan 2005)
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(Source : interview with Johnny Black, Aug 7, 2015, for Audience magazine)
Robbie Williams (Pink Floyd crew) : I left university prematurely . . . in other words, I dropped out. I used to run a mobile disco round Kent and Surrey. One day I met Peter Watts, Pink Floyd’s tour manager; we became mates and the next thing I knew I was in Paris loading up some things called bass bins.
Floyd had always been at the cutting edge and owned their own PA systems. They were successful and had been touring for most of 1973 and 1974. When they got to Knebworth at the end of the tour they decided to take a year off. They were faced with the choice of selling the equipment and letting go of the crew or storing it and offering the crew the chance to run it as a rental business.
They bought a large warehouse in Britannia Row, Islington. Most of the band lived in North London. Roger [Waters] lived just round the corner and was anxious to have enough room for a full size snooker table. The founders of Britannia Row Audio were myself and Mick Kluczynski. Graham Fleming had the lighting side.
We worked with the band and they started building a studio. Initially we were just roadies and [from the band’s point of view] the business was just there to keep us quiet until next time they went on the road. But obviously there was a future there.
Mick Kluczynski (Pink Floyd crew) : The rules were that we could run the rental company but only purchase new products from profit. The Floyd didn’t have monitors and didn’t own a monitor board and we had to scramble to get new equipment. Initially it was stop start.
We were rigging crossovers in Old Holborn [tobacco] tins. We used Sony hi fi pieces which didn’t last ten minutes.
But we scraped a little system together and [engineer] Perry Cooney stayed and ran an Alex Harvey tour. We went off with the Floyd and managed to keep the name alive for those few weeks. Slowly but surely it built up. Floyd started using monitors. After a slow start, we did a whole bunch of work in the UK – The Strawbs, Be Bop Deluxe and Alex Harvey.
By 1977, we were out with the big Animals tour. We had done good business, but we wanted to expand into America because Britain didn’t have the volume of venues at that point. Robbie and I tossed a coin and we decided he would stay in the UK and I would go to the United States, so we divided the gear up and I went to the US.
That lasted two years. It was very hard work starting from scratch. Because the Floyd were so insular and never had support acts, we didn’t know the management of other bands. But Robbie managed to do major work in the UK, like Bob Dylan at Blackbushe in 1978.
It was apparent to me that we were in America too early. One of the biggest problems we had was that people wouldn’t use us because they were afraid they wouldn’t live up to the Floyd reputation. In the end I got fed up with being married to black boxes for seven days a week and I quit.
there was a bit of contention between Robbie and I. To me they were my friends and I had not considered the capitalist option of running a company. Neither of us saw ourselves as captains of industry. It started out as fun and only became serious in 1977 when we realised we were growing up.
Robbie Williams : By the late-‘70s and early-‘80s, the band was getting fractious and fragmented. Every time there was a dispute, the accountants would come in and divvy up the assets. It made it difficult to keep going. At that point I brought Bryan Grant in and we managed to negotiate a management buy-out with the accountants.
(Source : interview with Mike Gartside, Audience magazine, Jan 2005)
Bryan Grant : I’d been working with Floyd in 1975 and had been running a service company, IES, before that. Britannia Row asked me if I wanted to join then, but, for my sins, I went into management for about four years. I rejoined the party in 1979 and at that point they had lighting, sound, staging and trucks, studios and studio equipment hire.
(Source : interview with Mike Gartside, Audience magazine, Jan 2005)