Your view of Norman Petty's overall business relationship with Buddy Holly is in sharp contrast to that of Holly historian, Bill Griggs. If we had brought in investors we may have been more successful - but in many ways I'm happy we didn't it's been fun and I doubt I could say that if someone had been nagging me to make a good return on an investment! I also had some good publishing connections and we were lucky enough to earn a little money from that, for example with the Darts. Peter lived some distance away and found it difficult to put time in, so he split but continued to bring us projects and to help in other ways. We both put in enough money to press a few records. I had a partner for a while, Peter Eden, who was an old friend who had produced artists like Donovan in the '60s. Did you start out slowly with the label and personally invest in its growth, or did you have some partners or investors to help you open the door? I was so pleased with the results we went in that direction, helped by the rockabilly revival and our acquisition of some old '50s tapes from Bill Haley's Philadelphia label, Arcade. Reissuing old records was going to be secondary, but our first release was an EP, which featured a couple of rarities by The Crickets and Sonny Curtis. We knew that they needed a light bulb or two in their head office royalty department, so ultimately we both left and the company closed. I had worked for a publisher who was always turning down people I wanted to work with he'd let Neil Diamond go when Neil announced he wanted to be a singer rather than a writer! And any time we got involved with a group or singer who did well in the UK, like the Honeybus that Terry Noon brought to the company, the owners tried to take over everything connected with them. John Beecher We started in 1976 and my original idea was to record new talent. '50s rockabilly tracks Rollercoaster's primary goal without any consideration of jumping on the '60s British-rock bandwagon? As it turned out later, I was right about Bang, but fortunately he did have a couple of hits like "Brown Eyed Girl" and got a deal with Warner Bros. Van was pretty broke, and luckily he decided to ignore my advice and take a chance. "They'll eat you for breakfast," I told him. (He came by our office to tell us about it and I tried to talk him out of going.) Over a cup of tea I told him the rip-offs he had experienced at the hands of London agents and managers would be nothing compared to what they would do to him in New York. I might have written off Van Morrison's career for him when he was offered a deal to go to New York and record for Bert Berns' Bang Records. Bill Wyman stands out in my memory for being "normal" and pleasant when most of the others were big-time. John Beecher I had some contact with many of them when I worked in music publishing, but no one I could say I ever got close to or liked that much. Did you meet some of the other big British acts like The Animals, The Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, etc? It was interesting to see how different life was for someone that famous, and how he was distanced from everything we take for granted, like hopping on a bus and going down Oxford Street. And we worked together on the documentary he produced with the BBC, "The Real Buddy Holly Story". John Beecher No, but I used to see Paul every year when he did the Buddy Holly Week events, and I was usually involved in some capacity together with his office manager Alan Crowder (who became a friend). Did you ever meet him or any of the members of The Beatles? John Beecher Hardly a comparison we had about 300 square feet of selling space! So you and Brian Epstein have something in common, as you both had a retail record shop. tour was going to Lubbock and visiting Petty's studios in Clovis. Hank and Bruce told me back then their biggest thrill on the U.S. operation was not renowned for promoting or even releasing British acts, even later! There's no reason why their discs couldn't have been hits in the U.S., but EMI's U.S. early on, but never caught on in a big way, I suspect, because Cliff was seen as another Elvis clone and the Shadows (or the Drifters as they were) as his backing group. Here, the music industry was in awe of America and its artists. charts, it was a novelty rather than a reflection of their talent. LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER SONG BUDDY HOLLY CRACKJohn Beecher That's the way things were in the '50s and early '60s if British artists were able to crack the U.S. Even I had never heard of The Shadows during my early '60s guitar picking instrumental days with The Knights. during the band's breakout success in the UK probably because they were overshadowed (no pun intended) by The Ventures. The Shadows remained relatively unknown in the U.S. Up Close with John Beecher, President of Rollercoaster Records Part 2
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