The pop man: an interview with Nick Godwyn, Guilfest, 2024

Image: Jayne Houghton

Primarily known as the first manager of Amy Winehouse, promoter and manager Nick Godwyn has rubbed shoulders with music’s great and good. He joins us on-stage at Guilfest, Guildford’s festival of sound and literature, to give us a glimpse of his life in the recording industry

Music promoter and manager Nick Godwyn has been to Guildford before, or somewhere nearby, when he had to drive his client Amy Winehouse to rehab. Did she want to go? Noooo, noooo, noooo.

It’s a hot Saturday at Guilfest at the tail end of June but not uncomfortable if you’re wearing shorts, which Godwyn is – khaki, with a navy polo shirt and an intriguing phone case that resembles an audio cassette. Old-school! On first impressions, this mogul in our midst seems too accommodating to have been a hard-nosed music-industry Leviathan, but perhaps our perceptions of those who deal with the likes of Lady Gaga, Spice Girls and Phil Collins – as Godwyn has – are skewed. We can’t all be ogres.

As Amy Winehouse’s manager at the start of the Southgate singer-songwriter’s career, Godwyn ought to carry a sort of rock ’n’ roll Distinguished Service medal. Winehouse would have been 40 this month. Inexorably, time marches on – but we were fortunate that Godwyn allowed us an hour of his busy schedule to re-live some of his many adventures in the shelter of Guilfest’s literary tent.

Is it true that you’re responsible for S Club 7?
It wasn’t my idea. That was Simon Fuller, who I was working with. We managed them together. They did really well. The idea behind S Club 7 was that if Take That and the Spice Girls were involved in a plane crash, these would be the survivors.

You’ve been in the music industry since 1984. What was your plan at the start?
I’ve got severe dyslexia so I find it difficult to read and write. Numbers are confusing, too. School was an anathema to me. I went to a violent school so I was glad to get out. To be honest, I just wanted to run away with the circus. I ended up working for British Steel and I was like, “Well, I don’t want to do this.” XTC, a band which some of the more mature members of the audience might remember, had a record called “Making Plans For Nigel”. In the lyrics, Nigel works for British Steel, “whose future is as good as sealed”. I was in the office wearing a tie and a suit and I was, “F***, that’s me! I’ve got to get out of here.” I went to France on the beaches for six months, got work on a boat, came back, went on the dole, which you could do in those days, and moved in with Mum and Dad – they weren’t too happy about that. And I managed a band, which I just loved.

You sent me a detailed CV, and you certainly got around – in 1987, you became head of promotions at Virgin Records.
Yes, but a couple of steps before that I worked for an independent distribution service. In the day of record shops, we’d supply independent releases – Aztec Camera and things like that. I went to Virgin as a rep. My area was south-east London right down to Margate. I ended up with Virgin working in their promotions.

What is promotions?
Back then it was split into press and radio. Press was a thing in those days, not so much now, although there’s online promotions. Radio – I was going down to Radio 1, Capital Radio and there was local radio too, but I didn’t do local radio. A&R would make the record and I’d have to convince the radio to play it. The famous A&R quote is, “But it was a hit when it left me.” It was competitive. Daytime shows, drivetime shows, with a producer for each. All the record companies wanted to see these shows play their records. For example, with Belinda Carlisle, she came in with a single “Heaven Is A Place On Earth”. Radio loved it. Then you’d also sort out interviews. I travelled around with her – she was great.

You moved to BMG Records at the end of the Eighties. Is that when you worked with Take That?
I went to BMG, a German company, who started after the Second World War with mobile libraries. Non-PC days, we used to make fun of the Germans. We used to annoy them when we had conferences. We’d put towels over the chairs. When I went there, they had nothing apart from Elvis Presley. There was no back catalogue. I don’t know what had happened. Pretty tough. We didn’t have anything and then Take That came along. Boy band. Really difficult to sell. I went to see them doing a PA in Essex, an under-14 disco night, and thought, “Bloody hell, these guys have got it.” Then we finally cracked through with them after a year. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Did you personally make a lot of money from a band hitting the big-time?
No, I worked for a company. I was on a salary. The more successful they are, the more likely you are to keep your job. But they looked fantastic. Gary [Barlow] was a great songwriter. We just pulled that moment.

Were you involved when Robbie left?
I was there. We went to a music industry night, the Silver Clef Awards. It’s for charity, for children with special needs. We had a table. Take That were there. Back in those days, you know, champagne was everywhere. Then Robbie just got up and cleared the table of all the champagne, put it in a massive bag, and said, “I’m off to Glastonbury.” The image of the band was everything – to be a rocker, that wasn’t in our plan. We said, “Are you sure about this?” And he said, “Yes, I’m off.” I didn’t see him for a while after that. But that’s really when he left the band.

He appeared on stage with Oasis, didn’t he – 1995? I was there.
He did. Wearing a red tracksuit.

You sent me a long list of artists you’ve worked with. I’m a bit of fan of Roxy Music. Bryan Ferry – what was he like?
He came from Sunderland, not Newcastle, not that you could tell from his art college accent. We did a TV show up there. It wasn’t The Tube. It was something else that came after that. We’re doing the rehearsals. So when you do TV, the band arrive at 10am. We do three run-throughs. It’s normally live vocals to the backing track. You’re there all day. We’re doing the rehearsals and Bryan’s smoking. I’m told, “Bryan can’t smoke on the stage.” So I say to Bryan, “I’m sorry, you can’t smoke on stage.” And he says, “Dear boy, this is a prop.” It was for the album Bête Noire and on the sleeve he’s smoking. He then gave up 10 years later, and on the reprints of the sleeve there’s no cigarette. So if you’ve got the original it’s probably worth something.

Are there any people you’d never want to work with again?
There was a band called Killing Joke. They were narky and all the rest of it, and I get that. But when I’m sitting in the car driving to a radio station, I say, “You don’t have to be f***ing wankers with me.” I just got bored with it. It’s like: I don’t need this. But the big bands were easy to work with. Someone like David Bowie. He’d done all his drugs and all that stuff. He was just fantastic – and I was a fan. But it was before mobile phones so I never had a photograph taken with him.

Tell us about Ronnie Wood…
I was in France doing a gig for Belvedere vodka. We had Cyndi Lauper on. We’ve got this venue. It’s an invited audience. If you don’t know Belvedere vodka, it’s like £45-£50 a bottle. A fancy bottle. It’s very nice. So we have this venue and we’re doing the soundcheck and Ronnie Wood’s manager arrives. There’s no audience at this stage. The manager – a lady – is walking around and she says that they’d like to play. I said, “I’m sorry, you’re not playing. This is a private gig we’re doing.” It got a bit heated. But she said, “Well, Ronnie wants to play.” Eventually I said, “What Ronnie might be able to do is a number with Cyndi Lauper, and maybe a number on his own.” So I asked Cyndi Lauper, who’d never played with The Rolling Stones, and she said, “Yeah, why not.” So in an impromptu moment Ronnie did something with Cyndi Lauper – The Faces’ “Ooh La La”, with the line, “I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger”. He was brilliant. And I did get a photo with him.

It’s 1999 and a 16-year-old singer walks into your life. Do you remember your first meeting with Amy Winehouse?
Oh yes, distinctly. I managed Amy and then decided that to develop her further I would need a partner and financial backer. I’d worked with Simon Fuller on a lot of his acts including Annie Lennox, Spice Girls, etc, promoting them to media. Simon agreed to be a silent partner and provided financial support. I also employed Nick Shymanski as an A&R scout. He worked with Amy a lot – they were not that far apart in age. Nick’s relationship with Amy, and being the first act he’d ever worked with, was very important and he must take a huge amount of credit for his belief and many hours tracking Amy down to get her to studios. Nick was a part of the management team, but not the manager. He was really keen and he loved music. He got some Sylvia Young acting students together because he had this idea of a duo, a male/female duo, and he picked a guy called Tyler James. He met Tyler, who said. “Oh, you should meet my friend, Amy Winehouse.” And we said, “Yes, no problem.” She comes into the office. She’s 16 and she’s quiet.

Any tattoos at this stage?
There’s no tattoos. There’s a bit of a beehive already going on. And she played us this track which I think had something to do with sexuality, not that I could work it out at the time. It was really a poem. She brought what she called ‘Baby Cherry’, which was a little guitar, an acoustic guitar. Immediately broke a string: “I won’t be able to sing now.” Normally you’d just go, “Yes, right, go away.” But we told her to come back. She arrived the next day and… she was so different. Her voice was amazing. It sounded like she’s smoking Marlboro all the time, you know. It was not commercial at all. I said, “Do you want to be a singer?”

As simple as that.
We started working together and we’d go to the studio – so she could get used to it. But she was troubled right from the beginning partly because her parents separated when she was young. Nick and I, naively, because we’d never managed before, just utterly believed in her: we’re going to make the best record we can. And it sells itself. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

Unusually, you gave Amy a lot of time to develop her sound.
There was no hurrying Amy. Maybe there was no pathway, really. When you sign a new artist, a young artist, they haven’t got that much experience. You put them in studios with writers and you work with different producers. With Amy, there wasn’t any of that. She wasn’t built like that. First of all, you don’t want to work with someone that’s 16 because you’ve got to get their parents to sign for them. When they get to 18, they might say, “Well, I didn’t really want to do this.” It’s a bit of a mug’s game. So at 18 we signed her. That first album took five years and it was basically all the songs she’d written. She didn’t have, like, 30 other songs which we’d discarded because they weren’t good enough. She wrote the album – and the next album mostly when she was with me. Again, there’s no spare tracks. There isn’t like 58, 59 or 60 songs with Amy. There’s two albums. That’s it.

A fairly slow process for writing those few songs.
We kept developing her. We worked with producers the Lewinson Brothers. She did a song called “Procrastination”, which I think is on YouTube. It’s a really good song. And the Lewinson Brothers played it to an A&R man, but at that time we didn’t want to play anything to anybody. I get a call from Darcus [Beese] at Island Records. “I’ve heard this track.” I said, “You’re not meant to have heard anything.” “Can I meet her?” “You can’t.” “Can I have a picture of her?” “OK.” She had a tattoo on her arm, which was like a feather. So we put that on the photocopier. We went to see him. He said, “Have you got that picture?” “Here you go.” “What’s that?” I said, “It’s a picture – of her arm.” If you make yourself less available, sometimes it’s actually better.

But Island were interested.
Eventually we said to her, “Do you want you to meet this A&R guy?” She’s like, “Really?” Anyway, they were transfixed. Her voice, she had that tone. We went to several other record companies. The rule we had was, we would always go and see them first, and then bring Amy later because she was of a temperament that if the meeting wasn’t going well, she’d just tell them to f*** off and walk out. We were careful who we introduced her to. The minute we’d see an A&R man and they said, “Right, what you need to do is this, this and this…”, we’d say, “Stop there, because we don’t need to do anything you tell us to do.” We were very protective of her. We utterly believed in what we had.

Did you feel that Amy had a reluctance to sign to a label?
Oh yes. No one ever told Amy what to do.

You knew Amy liked a drink but were there any alarm bells ringing at this point?
At 16 she was rebellious. She’d left school and gone to Sylvia Young [theatre school]. Got kicked out of that because she was never attending. It was slow. And then 17, 18, she got into spliff. She had lots of issues. You’re not her parents, you’re a manager, so there’s a line. Sometimes they want to let you in. It was a gradual descent and yes, she was drinking too much and smoking strong spliff. She bought a flat with the money for the record deal and the publishing deal. She had three or four good friends. Then there was Blake [Fielder-Civil]. He was a good-looking boy. Camden was a hotbed at that time. She idolised some of these people and fell in love with Blake. Once someone’s on heroin, be it an artist or a friend, you can’t talk to them. They don’t make any sense. They don’t make any sense – and that’s horrible.

You said the disintegration when it came was rapid.
Yes, it was a matter of months. I’m finding some of this out myself even now. But apparently it was Blake who said, “I can’t go on with this.” There was a call from one of the girlfriends that she’s in a real mess. We went round to her flat in Camden. Amy’s crying, almost incoherent. The neighbours came round and said she’s in a bad way. I could see heroin paraphernalia everywhere. I had a friend that had been an alcoholic, a woman, and she had got dry and ran seminars, working in clinics to help people. I phoned her and said, “Amy needs to see somebody.” She recommended a guy, Adrian, I think he was called, and it wasn’t too far from here, near Guildford. It was called The Works. It may still be here. She got us an appointment the next day, which isn’t easy to do. Sometimes you wait a week. Amy goes home with her dad. We get to see her dad the next day, with Amy, and she’s sobered up. She’s relatively OK. She said, “I don’t want to go,” but she begrudgingly agreed so Nick and I drove her and got her into reception, met Adrian, and said, “We’ll see you later.” We look for somewhere to have a coffee. We’d just ordered a sandwich and Amy called to say, “I’m ready to go now.”

She was having none of it?
So… we picked her up. She said, “I don’t need any of that.” We drove back to London. We’re in Piccadilly and she said, “Drop me off here.” She’s obviously going to score and, you know, off she went into the night. That changed my whole relationship with Amy because we’d been managing her from 16. She’s now 22. But the reason I did it – and I lost my job through it because the contract ended; she didn’t renew – is because my daughter is about the same age, and I wasn’t going to watch it happen. That’s why I did it.

Amy wrote a song about it.
She was like, “F*** you. I don’t need to go to rehab, noooo, nooooo, noooo.” In the song, it says, “My daddy says I’m fine” – he didn’t say that. I didn’t like that line because I thought, “Well, you’re making it up now, aren’t you?” But by that time, I wasn’t managing her. The record was all over the radio and people are saying, “Nick, well done,” and I’m saying, “I don’t manage her now.” But I’d been part of something that became massive.

Amy would have been 40 this month.
Yes, weird. I saw her a couple of times afterwards. We always got on well. I didn’t like watching her on TV, partly because she was off her trolley. We would never have done that and we wouldn’t have put her out on tour. Putting a heroin addict out on tour is like putting an alcoholic in a bar. But she did get clean and I met her a couple of times clean. And you know, she really just wanted to get married and have kids.

Nick, you need to write an autobiography. Would it be difficult to say that you’ve enjoyed your life in the music business?
You asked me on the phone earlier in the week if I had any hobbies that I wanted to talk about. I suddenly realised I didn’t have any. I’ve got interests but I was always working. I worked seven days a week. The life I had, it caused a divorce. I didn’t see my daughter every day. When you reflect on it, you wonder if it was worth it. And I’m still asking that question.

Let’s take some questions from the audience.

Audience member No 1: What did you think about the Sam Taylor-Johnson film about Amy?
I deliberately haven’t seen it. I will see it but the reason I haven’t seen it is because I know the story, and I know it’s not going to be right.

Audience member No 1: I thought it was very pro-Blake, actually. I thought they gave him a victim role in a sense.
I think that’s interesting. If that is true, then that is a different angle. I mean, he was the most hated person in Britain.

Audience member No 2: What did Island pay for Amy?
We got offered good money from various labels but I decided not to push for the money. We’d done a publishing deal six months before. I thought if we give Amy too much money, she’s just going to go off the rails. Sony signed a guy called John The White Rapper. I think they gave him £100,000 and he spent it all on slot machines. For Amy, I think it was about £250,000. I didn’t want too much money.

Audience member No 3: If you were managing Amy today, would you do it any differently, as things have changed about mental awareness?
Would I have done things differently? Yes. I think I would have… It’s difficult. Maybe the new managers did try things but I don’t think taking £1m to do a gig in Russia was a good idea. When she got there she was so off her face she didn’t do it. I knew the promoter in Russia, which is quite mafia organised. They just said to the manager, “Don’t ever come back to Russia.” So yes, I would have done things differently. But would it have turned out differently? I don’t think it would have done.

That’s all we’ve got time for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Godwyn.