{"id":491019,"date":"2019-10-08T09:14:43","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T15:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=868262"},"modified":"2019-10-08T09:14:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T15:14:43","slug":"rs-recommends-the-magic-chaos-of-musics-golden-age-as-told-by-mick-jaggers-accountant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/rs-recommends-the-magic-chaos-of-musics-golden-age-as-told-by-mick-jaggers-accountant\/","title":{"rendered":"RS Recommends: The Magic Chaos of Music\u2019s Golden Age, as Told by Mick Jagger\u2019s Accountant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI\u2019m not going to be singing rock & roll when I\u2019m 60,\u201d Mick Jagger<\/a> told his accountant 50 years ago, matter-of-factly, when he was merely an ex-economics student who\u2019d started a rock band. Jagger\u2019s dogged defiance of his own proclamation \u2014 the frontman turned 76 earlier this year and the Rolling Stones<\/a> wrapped a major three-year tour last month<\/a> \u2014 became a source of lifelong motivation for that very accountant, Laurence Myers, who\u2019s now publishing a memoir about his own zig-zagging career in the music industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That book<\/a> is Hunky Dory (Who Knew?)<\/a><\/em>, out this week, which recounts Myers\u2019 journey from an apprenticeship at a small London accounting firm to his stint working with the Stones \u2014 which included sharing his management office with the struggling, up-and-coming band when the members were kicked out of their own \u2014 to his decades as an industry-spanning entertainment executive in his own right. Meyers believed in David Bowie so much that he signed the artist from near-obscurity and invested his own money into helping him make promo discs, which led to major-label deals and eventually the albums Ziggy Stardust<\/em> and Hunky Dory<\/a>.<\/em> He helped shepherd acts like the Animals, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, The Sweet, and Billy Ocean into stardom by putting them in the right studios and handing them the right contracts. He witnessed the better part of music\u2019s major moments in the Sixties and Seventies firsthand, and his memoir serves as an insider\u2019s history, if a somewhat wistful one, of those impossible-to-replicate times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI became the go-to accountant for the music business when it was brand new, the wild west,\u201d Myers, now 83, tells Rolling Stone. <\/em>\u201cI quit being an accountant because I didn\u2019t like it, but after that I got to know the business even more. The inspiration for this book was that my grandchildren would always hear me say \u2018Did I tell you about that time?\u2019 and they\u2019d say, \u2018You boring old fart, write a book.’\u201d While dozens of accounts of the time period have been penned by artists, Myers takes readers into the scene as a behind-the-scenes industry player. Chapters explore his relationships with various artists, as well as the deals he helped mastermind and the opportunities he, in amusing retrospect, missed. One example: Myers threw away most of the 500 copies of the original Bowie promo without a second thought, not knowing that they would sell in the future for as much as $10,000 each.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy book is subtitled \u2018Who Knew\u2019 because \u2014 who knew? Every other paragraph seems to be saying it. I didn\u2019t predict where things would go. At the time, Mick talked about his future and the possibility of not seeing rock and roll,\u201d Myer says, recalling how Jagger, who\u2019d attended the London School of Economics before diving into music, once asked him for help with moving into a career in the insurance industry. But luckily, \u201cthe Stones never stopped,\u201d Myers says, pointing to their endurance in the zeitgeist even in 2019. \u201cNostalgia is just huge. People who bought their records as kids are now grown up and more affluent and they feel comfortable at a Stones show, a Led Zeppelin concert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Myers\u2019 book ends in the 1980s \u2014 not because his adventures did, but because that was when he began stepping away from the music industry out of lack of personal interest in the new types of music that were emerging. \u201cRap and its various forms are the biggest watershed change in the music business, but I love the old pop songs,\u201d Myers says, though he concedes that he does find himself in awe of how deeply certain contemporary works of music connect with a new generation. In recent years, the veteran has found himself turning toward film and theater, most recently worked as a producer on Judy<\/em>, the biographical drama of July Garland starring Ren\u00e9e Zellweger. While he doesn\u2019t have much to do with the music business these days, he does enjoy watching from the sidelines: \u201cSome of the rappers these days, they\u2019re poets, great poets, and they\u2019re saying meaningful stuff and they make kids feel like they have a chance of saying something in music,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that will always be inclined to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Find the Book Here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m not going to be singing rock & roll when I\u2019m 60,\u201d Mick Jagger told his accountant 50 years ago, matter-of-factly, when he was merely an ex-economics student who\u2019d started a rock band. Jagger\u2019s dogged defiance of his own proclamation \u2014 the frontman turned 76 earlier this year and the Rolling Stones wrapped a major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-21 22:03:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}