Memorabilia

Rolling Stones 1982 Press Release

Stones press communique from the early eighties. More formal than the punk style releases, but the famous tongue logo makes it stand out.
Hazel O'Connor at The Marquee Club

Hazel O’Connor was a switchboard operator in our office who went onto hit the heights with the Number 1 album and hit film “Breaking Glass”. This press release addressed criticism about Hazel being ‘hyped’ head on as a way of getting people down to a gig at The Marquee Club.
Stranglers & The Heartbreakers PR

Punk was a creative force of nature that indirectly influenced all the arts especially music and fashion – it’s spiritual home. This press release for The Stranglers puts an emphasis on the visual as opposed to written word.

Prior to that press communiques tended to be long, formal and incredibly dull. I wanted to bring a bit of humour to the proceedings and ensure that we grabbed people’s attention.

The Heartbreakers release was inspired by US comic books and tried to reflect the bands trashy New York style. Again it aimed to catch the eye.
Motorhead, and a young Alan Edwards

This shot was taken on board Gerry Bron’s private jet headed for a Motorhead gig in Marseilles. Gerry was the head of Bronze Records, the band’s label at the time.
As you’d expect enormous amounts of lager had been consumed, only for us to find out at half past France there was no toilet on board! Empty glasses were collected. Predictably the next thing that happened was hitting turbulence…..
Rolling Stones Retrospective: It Was Only Rock and Roll

This great photo of Keith and I would have been taken outside a hotel on Nice seafront, most likely in 1982.

I was in my early 20s and the tour was an incredibly steep learning curve. For one it took a lot of stamina. The group preferred to work at different times for media interviews: Mick early morning, Keith and Ronnie late evening. From a PR perspective this almost started to feel like a 24-hour day. Having said that I remember it being great fun with lots of laughs especially with the photographer Dennis O’Regan.

The Stones were on what was probably the first global stadium tour ever which was obviously groundbreaking and started a trend that’s carried on ever since. Nothing was done by halves on that tour. In fact the Rolling Stones had a full size private plane which flew the group and tour party to gigs throughout Europe, returning the same evening. Nobody had ever done anything like that before. Lunch in Nice, a gig in Austria, and back to the Cote d’Azur for dinner. It was great waking up to a beautiful beach despite whatever gloomy North European football stadium the band had played the night before – Rock & Roll Groundhog Day!