Wright - One Way or Another : My Life in Music, Sport & Entertainment

Copyright 2013 Omnibus Press
This edition 2013 Omnibus Press
(A Division of Music Sales Limited, 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ)

EISBN: 978-1-78323-029-7

Cover designed by Fresh Lemon
Picture research by Jacqui Black

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A great many people deserve my gratitude for the impact they have had on my life. Unfortunately, not everyones involvement is recorded in One Way Or Another, and I apologise to those who ended up on the cutting room floor during the editing process.

To those many individuals that I do mention, perhaps I should take this opportunity to apologise in advance for the candour in which I have written about everything and everyone. I have tried to call the lines as I saw them and no doubt there will be the odd occasion when I have judged the ball to be in when it was out. I have treated myself with the same degree of self-deprecation as I have adopted in my approach to everyone else, so happily we are all in the same boat when it comes to my recollection of the facts, good or bad.

I would like to acknowledge the role played by my wife, Janice, in helping me keep my feet on the ground, though sometimes it required superglue to make them stick. Also for having to put up with me disappearing into the study at 11 oclock in the evening for a five minutes that turned into over two hours, just as I thought of something else I felt an immediate urge to record for prosperity.

Thanks also to my first wife, Chelle, for being so understanding of the time I spent in the early years away from home in order to build the business that became Chrysalis.

We can never put the clock back on all of those times I was away at vitally important moments in the lives of all my children, often at the other side of the world at the behest of a musician or his representative who urgently needed my presence on that one particular day when something equally important was happening in the lives of Tim, Tom, Chloe or Holly. I appreciate their understanding for the way I somehow juggled these competing responsibilities, and find it hard to express in words the pride I feel at the way they coped with my absences and matured into adulthood.

Thanks also to my sister Carol for taking responsibility of looking after my mother and father in Lincolnshire, single-handedly, in their old age, something that I feel guilty about even today.

The story would have been very different were it not for the support and friendship of my former business partner Terry Ellis. We achieved so much together in almost 20 years sharing the helm of Chrysalis. We were as brothers, sometimes fighting, sometimes stubbornly incommunicado, but more often than not pulling hard in the same direction.

I need also to mention the late Charles Levison who was the nearest thing I had to a second partner as we re-built the company together in the Nineties and into the early years of the 21st Century. Even now when I am confronted with a difficult situation, I ask myself: What would Charles advice have been here?

My thanks to editorial aide Pierre Perrone without whom the book would surely not have happened, and his partner Em Irvine for transcribing many hours of tapes. Pierres painstaking attention to detail was amazing, as was his ability to remember things that even I had forgotten. Similarly, my thanks also to editor Ian Gittins for judiciously reducing the book by almost half without, seemingly, detracting enormously from the story. And my appreciation is also due to Omnibus editor Chris Charlesworth for understanding the whole concept of the book, making further editorial suggestions and being prepared to accept it in the form in which it is supposed to be read.

There are many more and I am sure you all know the various contributions you have made, not least Alan Edwards whose enthusiasm for the book has been vital in its passage from initial idea to printed page. My life has been made rich by the wonderful people that have crossed my path on this incredible journey. Long may it continue.

Chris Wright, June 2013.

I cannot think of anyone more suitably qualified to write about the music business and how it developed from the late sixties onwards than Chris Wright. He was no bystander gazing at rock heroes; instead he took hold of them, shaped them and made them successful, transforming the lives of scores of young musicians who became rich and famous as a result. His book One Way Or Another offers a vivid account of his life and times, following his career from the time he left university and plunged himself into the murky and turbulent world of music management to the eventual sale of his company, Chrysalis.

We had parallel lives. As a music producer I was lucky to have signed The Beatles but I knew that I would be hopeless if I tried to act as their manager. I watched Chris Wright in those early days and could see the mountain he had to climb to get recognition for his acts, especially in the USA. But he had the knack. More, he had the determination to succeed, and in no time became one of this countrys most respected music entrepreneurs. Then he translated that success into other fields, sport, radio and TV. His book, one of the best I have read about the workings of the music business, tells you how and why he did it and doesnt flinch at describing in detail the trials and tribulations he encountered along the way.

Chris has been a good friend for many years and we have had a lot of laughs together. Isnt that what its all about?

I was born as World War II was drawing to a close, on September 7, 1944, in the local hospital at Louth, a small market town about 10 miles inland from Britains east coast on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. As I grew up it often seemed to me that this was where the world ended, for the area is totally exposed; barren, isolated and unforgiving. When the icy winds blow in from the North Sea, it is said to be the coldest place in England, with no hills between here and the Ural Mountains in Russia.

Between the Wolds and the North Sea is the Marsh, totally flat and with large dykes running across. We lived in the middle of the Marsh, in a village called Grimoldby that was home to a few hundred people, with a pub and post office. It was halfway between Louth and Mablethorpe, a small seaside resort whose large beach was enclosed by sand dunes. I remember the tides could run three or four miles out to sea at any one time, and such was its isolation that the RAF had established a bombing range on the coast where they could practise aerial manoeuvres above land that was far away from civilisation.