IT could have been worse. Vince Power is only half an hour late and he is at
least softly apologetic for leaving me sitting like a lemon on his office
couch. Power is a man with a difficult reputation – rough, tough, grumpy and
terse – so best not to complain.
Anyway, reputations are often wrong. “People say t’ings about me and they’ve
never even met me,” says Power in his Irish brogue. “I’ve heard stories
about me picking up blokes and physically chucking them out of clubs. It’s a
bit like folklore . . .“
So he has never thumped anyone? “Yeah, but they thumped me first.”
He chuckles wearily. Short and stubbly, with hands like hams and the
bashed-in, balding build of a rugby hooker, 60-year-old Power still looks
like he could intimidate.
He built that reputation assembling the Mean Fiddler group, a string of music
venues and rock festivals that he sold for £38m in 2005, pocketing £13m for
his share. Many credit him as the key driver behind Britain’s now-booming
live music scene, and a man who almost single-handedly revived the rock
festival business.
Then he stopped, but now he’s back, with a clutch of London bars, clubs and
restaurants – including Spiga in Soho and Odette’s in Primrose Hill – and a
stake in the big Spanish rock festival Benicassim. He even organised last
month’s Berkeley Square Ball for the Prince’s Trust.
Has he gone posh? “Nah, my ball is not Hooray Henries. It’s an antiball if you
like – no black tie or big auction prices, just excellent wine and
champagne.”
He will return to his music-festival roots when his no-compete agreements,
signed when he sold Mean Fiddler, run out next year. He is also pushing a
new concept in American-style “supper clubs” in London. Retirement, he says,
was boring. This is fun.
And he is still his own man. He shuffles into his office in London’s Soho like
a spruced-up hobo – baggy jeans, jacket, untucked shirt – mumbling that
apology, before walking me up to the room he shares with his PA, Emily. At
another desk sits his 20-year-old daughter Brigid – Power, born in
Waterford, has eight children by three mothers and some often tag along.
Could we do this without an audience? No, he says, there’s nothing they
haven’t heard before. Then he smiles at the tape recorder I put on the
table. For security. “Oh to be sure I’d never sue you,” says Power. “That’s
an absolute waste of time. The press will say what they like about you.”
And they have. Does he deserve the scary reputation? He shrugs. He admits he
pushed too hard when he started. Managers, agents and record companies liked
things how they were, so he sidestepped the system to book bands direct.
Some felt elbowed aside. “I just felt I wasn’t being listened to,” he says.
But it wasn’t only his nononsense approach. He also ran a tight, secretive
operation, and wasn’t big on explaining himself. When he organised a benefit
for the Birming-ham Six appeal in 1991, one London newspaper even queried
where the money was going, suggesting links to the IRA.
Power gives me a blue-eyed stare. “I didn’t sue them because they would have
only made more of it. But it hurt. Everyone knew I was the opposite of
someone who would put any money behind terrorism.” He frowns. It still hurts
– he brings this up, not me. He adds that he felt vindicated last year when
he got an honorary CBE for services to music.
Others suggest that Power, who came over from Ireland at 16 and started his
club empire with proceeds made selling secondhand furniture, quite liked
having a bristly reputation. He grins when I put it to him. “It kept a lot
of idiots away, I suppose.” Now, you sense, it’s a hindrance, and he is
happier chasing plaudits.
Next year should see the publication of a long biography of Power by the
former Loaded editor James Brown. Power also has plans for a new rock
festival south of London. By then he hopes his supper-club concept – dinner
with cabaret – will have firmly taken hold.
He launched the Pigalle Club in London last year, then bought and refurbished
the Bloomsbury Ballroom. From next week that will host Louis Hoover’s Salute
To Sinatra – “a sumptuous meal . . . then dance ’n’ smooch till the early
hours” says the PR.
Is he making money from supper clubs yet? Yeah, he says, but it’s been hard
work.
Former associates say, if anyone can do it, Power can. “The demographic is
getting older,” says John Giddings, boss of the Solo artist agency. “It’s
where people like me want to go. And Vince likes creating things.”
So why sell in the first place? Power rubs his chin. There are, it turns out,
two answers. Having used his Mean Fiddler group to rescue Meanfiddler.com, a
ticketing and intellectual-property firm that he floated during the dotcom
boom, he found himself running his business as a listed plc, and didn’t
enjoy the experience.
“I guess I was never a plc man,” he says. “You just want to do something, but
you have to sit round tables convincing boards and shareholders when you
have already convinced yourself . . .”
And then there’s the emotional answer. “I was splitting up from my partner, I
thought it was the end of an era. If I was breaking up with the woman I’d
met when I was starting Mean Fiddler, maybe I should get rid of the whole
lot.”
It sounds brutal but he says it gently, as if it still perplexes him. He
entwines business, family and social life – he is out every night visiting
his clubs and restaurants, where tables are always kept free for him – so it
is probably inevitable.
Hence the property empire. He has 20 houses and apartments in London, and more
in Ireland, where he also owns a racecourse. Why so much? He smiles. “I have
a lot of property because I have a big family.”
Is he mellowing? He doesn’t know. Giddings says Power is just “growing old
gracefully – that’s what money does for you”.
Some are not so sure. Brown says Power, bound by no-compete agreements – no
festivals and no venues over 2,000 capacity for three years – is simply
learning new tricks. “He has concentrated on the luxury end, and that
requires a softly-softly approach. He’s good at cutting his cloth
accordingly.”
That’s been a leitmotif of his career. “I’m a quick learner,” says Power, “and
all business is the same, whether booking a band or buying furniture. You
have to buy it right to sell it right.”
What drives him on? Initially, he says, he just wanted to get out of Ireland.
His family was poor, his father a forester. Power was born the fourth of 11
children. Four of his sib-lings died in childhood, including his twin
sister. “I did think I was different, restless, more ambitious.” He won a
scholarship to agricultural college but instead left for London aged 16, to
stay with an aunt. By 19, he was married.
He worked in Woolworths and Whiteleys, but hated being told what to do. During
a job in demolition, he noted the furniture left behind by families moving
to new high-rise blocks. He garaged it, sold it, and later built up a string
of secondhand shops.
But he always liked country and western music, and when he saw an old
cinema-turned-club for sale in Harlesden, northwest London, he bought it. It
opened as the Mean Fiddler in 1982, and Power plunged into the business,
selling shops to fund it.
By 2005 the Mean Fiddler group included 14 live music venues and eight music
festivals – including Leeds and Reading, and a partnership with the Eavis
family at Glaston-bury. Power’s introduction of better staging, catering and
security at festivals fuelled a boom in attendance.
Yet it’s not a business for faint hearts. Power admits to losing millions
along the way. An early Irish gig with Bob Dylan in 1991 nearly wiped him
out. A London restaurant with chef Conrad Gallagher six years ago also ended
disastrously. “I lost £1.5m there,” shrugs Power. And there have been other
ventures in Ireland and America.
But he likes to gamble, so long as he knows the downside. “I always work out
the worst scenario, it’s important you can pay your bills.”
A few still query his motivation. “Vince never pretended to be a music man,”
says Giddings. “He’s just like a secondhand car salesman.” But that misses
the point, says another. Power is a skilled organiser and persuader.
And next year, he expects to put on more festivals in Europe, where there is
big money to be made. When I tell him that my daughter went to Benicassim
this year, he immediately wants an e-mail from her giving a British punter’s
view on what worked, and what didn’t.
That, says Brown, who followed him to Spain this year, is pure Power –
hands-on, customer-focused. The downside is that his empire can never grow
beyond what he can get around.
But maybe Power is not in it merely to build scale. After all, he never
forcefully rolled out his venue brands. He just likes the life.
Later, he unzips a suit carrier to show me the reason he was late. He was
being fitted for a bespoke suit at tailor John Pearse. “How much would you
pay for this?” he asks.
I don’t know, up to £3,000?
He grins. “I’ll sell you it for £2,000 – it cost me £1,200.” And he laughs. He
does love a deal.
VINCE POWER’S WORKING DAY
THE founder of Vince Power Music Group wakes up at his west London home at
8am. “I never have breakfast,” says Vince Power. “One morning a week I see a
yoga teacher.” He has had a bad back since the 1970s, when an operation on
his spine was unsuccessful.
Power gets to his Soho office after 10am. “I like to know how things are
going: performances, venues, there are always issues. And family, work and
social life run into one.” He goes to Spiga for lunch, then works till 6pm,
goes home to change, and returns to visit his venues. “I’m out till 1am or
later. Three or four hours’ sleep is enough.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: April 29, 1947
Marital status: divorced, with eight children from three women
School: Dungarvan technical school in Ireland
First job: floor walker at Woolworths
Salary package: ‘I don’t take a wage yet’
Homes: Brondesbury Park in London and Waterford
Car: red Ford GT40
Favourite book: The Bible
Favourite music: Christy Moore
Favourite film: High Noon
Favourite gadget: Nokia 63i
Last holiday: Benicassim, Spain
DOWNTIME
VINCE POWER spends his money on property and cars. He has a collection of
American classic cars.
“I’ve had all the American sports cars. It’s the dream I had as a kid looking
at magazines we got sent from cousins in New York.”
To relax, he takes his kids to watch Arsenal, where he has eight season
tickets, four in the posh Diamond Club. “The kids accuse me of being in the
prawn-sandwich club,” he says.
He took all his children to the recent Spurs-Arsenal derby. Despite being an
Arsenal fan, he has a soft spot for Tottenham’s Robbie Keane. “I like
Robbie, he comes to the Pigalle.”
I worked for this man for nearly eleven years from 1984.
I booked the bands at Reading Festival from 1989 to 1994.
Have I been asked to contribute to the his book?
Have I hell!
Whilst on a good day I can look back at the experience as tough aprenticeship
for later life, other days I look back and think, this man royally ripped me off.
Ask some questions of his ex staff to get the real story, way more interesting than this fluff.
Daveid Phillips, London, UK