Music Cork 2017: Hot Press meets Island Records president Darcus Beese

Darcus Beese is the President of Island Records, one of the world’s most successful record labels – which is home to the music of Bob Marley, U2, Amy Winehouse, Florence & The Machine, Hozier, The Weeknd, Mumford & Sons, Drake and many more superstars of the modern era. Darcus joined Island as a ‘tea-boy’, and subsequently rose through the ranks in the A&R department before taking full charge of the label in 2013.
He was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to the Music Industry. In 2016, he was named European Executive of the Year by MUSEXPO Europe. For his keynote address at what turned out to be a remarkably successful Music Cork 2017, Darcus was interviewed by Niall Stokes, editor of Hot Press (pictured, right). Here are some extracts from what was a hugely informative and insightful exchange.
Growing up in London...
“I was born in 1969, I know black doesn’t crack and I look 21, but… (laughing). I was brought up in what I call the struggle. A young black boy walking down the street in London back in the day wasn’t easy. Most of my childhood was going to demonstrations. My mom and dad were in the Black Panthers. There’s pictures of me at the front of the demos holding placards from five, six, seven onwards. I was born into the struggle. That’s part of my outlook...The household was very much a Caribbean household.  So the soundtrack for me growing up was reggae, soul and calypso music. I remember Linton Kwesi Johnson very early on, as well. He was the first with that poet-reggae thing.”
Being a hairdresser
“When I was washing hair, I remember meeting a young man who at the time had signed a band called Bros. They were huge. I asked him what he did, and he said, ‘I’m an A&R person’. And I said, ‘Well, what the fuck does that mean?’ And he said, ‘I sign bands’. And I said, ‘Who’ve you signed?’ And he said ‘Bros’ – and I was like, ‘Fucking hell!’ They were the biggest thing in the world at that point. So then I was looking at this guy like, shit, he must have the most amazing job in the world.” 
The Tea Boy meets Island Records founder, Chris Blackwell
“We had a room called the War Room. And we had this massive whiteboard that had a ladder that you could slide up and down, and my job was to fill what radio plays the bands had that day, what DJs wanted to play the band, and I had to keep this board updated. It was huge. One day I was up the ladder, and there was a hush that went around the war room. I looked down, and it was Chris Blackwell coming into the room. And they all had their heads down, like, ‘Shit, Chris is here, let’s look like we’re working’. I was seventeen at the time. And I just jumped off the ladder like, ‘Oh, Chris Blackwell’, and he was like, ‘Yes’. And I said, ‘My name’s Darcus’, and he said, ‘Okay. I was like, ‘I run your promotions’, and he’s like, ‘Where’s promotions?’ And I pointed, and he’s like, ‘I thought that was Stiff Records’ – it hadn’t been for about fifteen years, so that’s how infrequently he was in the building! Then about three or four months later, Chris was taking all the A&R people to France for the day, and I got a call, saying, ‘Chris wants you to go and fly off to France with everyone else’. So that was my kind of thing: if I put myself in front of these people, I can get a reaction. And so I always made an acquaintance, made sure that I put myself on people’s radar.” 
Becoming Director of A&R
“You have to learn what it is to be an A&R person. So you start as a scout, you become an A&R manager, and then you become a senior A&R manager. And then hopefully you get the chance to be rewarded as the director of A&R. So then you have to become less selfish. ‘Cause as an A&R person I was selfish as fuck. I was caring about me, myself and my acts. And then you become director of A&R, and you have to give a fuck about other peoples’ acts, and you have to give a fuck about them.” 
What it means to develop acts
“We live in a smash and grab culture, when you should think: ‘What’s its going to be like in 5 years time, what’s it going to be like in 10 years time?’. So it’s full of mentoring, you know, especially when the artist is young, and the manager is young, and they want to say: ‘Yeah we know it all’. In reality they don’t know what they are doing, so you’re winging it.”
On Finding Amy Winehouse
“I had a meeting with a manager, who came to pitch the wares of his producer/writers, and he was playing all this shit on a CD – actually it was a cassette. And all of a sudden this girl came on singing, and I was like, ‘Who’s that?’ And he was like, ‘I can’t tell you. But my boy’s a producer, you wanna talk about my boy’, and I was like, ‘No, I want to talk about this girl’. He was like, ‘I can’t tell you’. Without the internet, I had to go and find this girl, I literally had to go on this mission, to find this voice. It sounds romantic, but seriously, it took weeks and months and asking around, and finally I found out who the manager was. So, if you’ve seen the film Amy, there’s this young kid Nick Shymansky, who was the manager. He wouldn’t return any of my phone calls. This went on for weeks and weeks. And I finally found out that he worked at 19 Management which was in Battersea in London. So I called another manager in the building, and I said, ‘Can I come and see you?’ He said ‘Yeah, come and see me’. So I went up and saw this guy, another manager called Pete Evans, and then I said, ‘Actually, Pete, it’s not you I’ve come to see. Where’s Nick Shymansky?’ He’s like: ‘He’s down there, turn right, he’s in the room round the back’. So I went to the room and I knocked on the door, didn’t wait to be asked in, just walked in. And Nick Shymansky looked at me, and he’s like, ‘Oh, fuck. Shit.’ And on the floor was this young girl, surrounded by photocopies of a tattoo she had. A feather on her forearm. They were looking for some imagery that they could relate to Amy. And she was sitting surrounded by all these photocopies and I went, ‘Is that Amy?’ She turned around, she went, ‘Yeah’. And I said, ‘My name’s Darcus’, and she went, ‘And?’ I said, ‘Oh, I work at Island Records and I’ve been trying to find you’.”
U2 and Island
“There’s a reason why they are Island, as much as they are U2. They have been here for long enough and they have bank-rolled Island. Island was an independent company that was going down the drain, and they said don’t pay us our royalties this year. So, they are Island. “ 
Seeing Florence & The Machine for the first time
“It was a shit gig, she was smashing pots and pans – she literally had pots and pans on the stage – and it was a complete shambles. But in the middle of it, you could see that there was the potential of a star. I remember saying I hadn’t a fucking clue, but it looks like she could be a star. But then you have to back the process, and luckily enough the process paid off.”
Falling in love with Sigrid
“I’d like to say where I’d discovered this girl singing ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’. That was Annie Christiansen, who works for Island Records. She was responsible for Ben Howard coming through the door, she was responsible for Hozier coming through the door, with Mark Crossingham, here in Ireland. And I’ve said this before: there are songs like ‘Take Me To Church’, that you hear and you think: ‘Who the fuck is this, where are they from, where do they live?’ And it was like: jump on a plane and get to them now. It was the same with Sigrid.”
Ireland and Jamaica
“Most of the greatest storytellers and singers come from Ireland. I was having a conversation with Hozier’s dad and brother today and I said ‘What the fuck is it, between the Jamaicans and the Irish? How do Irish people and Jamaicans sound the same?’ Right? When Jamaicans say 1 2 tree, Irish go 1, 2, tree! There’s no blacks no dogs no Irish, so there’s that affinity as well. But the lilting voice, the storytelling, the love of the lyric, the understanding of the melody, is very much an Irish thing, so it translates globally.” 
What he is most proud of...
“Island was never put into mothballs and then pulled out to give to someone to say ‘Here’s a logo’. Island has such a unique legacy. It’s been a front-line label for over 50 years and over the past 16 years, we haven’t broken it. I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of in terms of the music industry.”
The importance of standing for something...
“I always say to people, whether it’s staff or artists, what do you stand for? And some artists go ‘well I don’t fucking know’, and that’s cool. And some artists can answer it. And some artists get asked that question and say, ‘I get why you’re asking me that question, I’ll come back to you’ – and then they go away and figure it out. So it’s very much about what you stand for, as an artist, in a sea of people not saying anything, especially with what’s going on in the world now, and how fucked up the world is and how hard it is for the youth coming through. Where is the next Sex Pistols, where is the next Nirvana?”
It’s a risk business
“You have to take risks. I couldn’t have told you in a million years that Mumford & Sons were gonna sell millions of records; couldn’t have told you that Amy was going to go on to be the most iconic female singer of her generation; couldn’t have told you that Ben Howard or that Hozier was going to be huge. All I could say was, ‘Fuck, this music’s amazing, how do we bring this to market?’”
The one that got away
“We used to run a competition that was kinda like a battle of the bands wasn’t it? (Addressing Annie Christiansen in the audience) Don’t cover your face Annie (laughs). We used to run this  battle of the bands and a young red-head guy won it (laughs). You thought I was gonna say Ed Sheeran didn’t you? The person or the band that won the competition was gonna get a singles deal, and Ed won it – and he didn’t want the singles deal. So I was like ‘who the fuck is this dude?’ And the rest is fuckin’ history (laughs).”
For more on Music Cork 2017, see The Phantom, Page 104 in the Forbidden Fruit issue.