Alan Edwards, the godfather of modern music PR

The dust jacket of his new memoir, I Was There describes, Alan Edwards as the “godfather of British music PR” which is a pretty accurate summation of a remarkable career, where he's been a Zelig-like presence at some of the most seminal moments in music history. 

Since launching his first public relations business from a Covent Garden squat in 1975, Edwards has hung out with Blondie in punk-era New York, played football with Bob Marley, helped pioneer the global stadium tour with the Rolling Stones and David Bowie during the 1980s, brokered the £1m OK! magazine media deal for the Beckhams’ 1999 wedding, and even introduced Shakira to Tony Blair. 

Along the way he arguably set the template for modern music PR by founding The Outside Organisation, where he’s worked with Prince, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Naomi Campbell and more. 

He tells Influence about launching surprise PR campaigns for David Bowie, keeping salacious stories out of the press and his advice for younger people working in public relations…   

Who's the best client you've worked with? 
David Bowie. I worked with him for nearly four decades. In the flesh, he was disarmingly down-to-earth and funny. But professionally, he would stretch you. He’d ring you up on a Sunday night and say, “I’ve just done a deal with Laura Ashley wallpaper, can you come up with a campaign tomorrow?” and suddenly you’re working out how to promote the fabric. Other times, I’d be sitting on a board meeting with Modern Painters magazine, bluffing on modern art with critics, or becoming an expert on drum’n’bass when he made his more experimental records. 

The campaign you're most proudest of? 
Bowie’s The Next Day [in 2013 Bowie sprang a huge surprise by suddenly dropping his first new album in 10 years]. We met in New York and he said, ‘I want to drop this album next Tuesday. Can you come up with a PR campaign?’ I went to a café round the corner sitting with a pen and napkin for 20 minutes before scribbling down the media I consume: Radio 4’s Today Programme, Sky News, the Sun, the Times. Bowie had one more caveat: “you can’t tell anybody what it’s about.” When I landed at Heathrow, I rung Kay Burley [Sky News presenter] and said, ‘I’ve got a big story for you on Tuesday with somebody born the same day as Elvis Presley’. She rung back in a minute and told me she’d give us the lead news item. It was first announced on the Today Programme; nobody had ever kicked off a campaign like that before.

The best party you’ve organised? 
We’ve done some amazing parties with Naomi Campbell in the south of France, including one in a fish market where Novak Djokovic turned up. 

The best or worst PR stunt? 
In 1976 our client Uriah Heep [rock band] released an album called High and Mighty. I sat there with [then-boss] Keith Altham and thought, ‘Why don’t we launch it on top of a mountain?’ In those days, money was no object, so we hired a plane and flew 100 journalists to Switzerland. At the airport, half the journalists were so drunk they could hardly walk, while the band’s drummer was fighting with a mountain bear mascot that the Swiss tourism board had sent to greet us. Later the band had a fight on the edge of a mountain, while the mix of booze and high altitude affected everybody’s equilibrium: I remember Alan Freeman or Paul Gambaccini being face-down in a bowl of soup. When we landed at Gatwick that evening, it was like the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, with people being carried away and ambulances called. 

Why do you think you’ve got so far in PR? What’s your secret? 
I think I can look at anything from a tomato ketchup bottle to a heavy metal band and figure out an angle or story. This skill – and ability to think like a journalist – is exactly the same as when I launched my first business from a squat in Covent Garden in the 1970s.

What's your advice for younger PRs? 
In entertainment PR, you’ve got to accept this isn’t a nine-to-five thing; this is your lifestyle and you may have to make personal sacrifices. When you work for somebody like David Bowie, you can’t say “I don’t want to work weekends or I’m not available after 6pm.” However, when I look back, all those times getting back at midnight, eating takeaway while the kids are asleep… it’s not great in one way. 

You’ve also got to love media, love journalism and love writing. Be alert for ideas the whole time. I always have a notepad by me, because an idea might come at 3am or when you’re in the bath.

Most despicable thing you've done in the line of work? 
At the height of tabloid intensity in the late-1990s/early-2000s, my phone would constantly be ringing from tabloid news editors. Sometimes I’d have to make bargains: “I’ll let you have the story about the star and his rubberwear fetish, but please don’t print the bit about the nun’s costume”. 

Your biggest mistake? 
I used to collect the pre-editions of newspapers at 1am from King’s Cross. At that time it wasn’t gentrified: it was a mix of winos, junkies, hookers and Andrew Lloyd-Webber rocking up in his Rolls Royce to read the first reviews of his shows! One time, I was reading the papers scrunched up in the dark and missed a bit about a band member having sex on the bonnet of a car. I heard they picked up the paper the next morning at an airport and went berserk, kicking over a newsstand. 

King or queen of the PR world? 
Malcolm McLaren, Alastair Campbell, Rogers & Cowan, John Hegarty, Tim Bell, Lynne Franks, Matthew Freud, Andrew Loog Oldham. And Les Perrin who represented The Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Krays in the 1960s. He used to sit in a Fleet Street pub called A Stab in the Back, a walking-stick in one hand, whisky bottle in the other, hitting journalists with a stick if they’d written a bad review.

Tell us about a time a client has made you cry 
Getting fired isn’t a lot of fun. 

What's the future of entertainment PR? 
There will always be entertainers and tours: I fully expect to see a hologram tour one day with Sinatra on vocals, Hendrix on guitar and Keith Moon on drums. But these hologram tours will still need promotion: if you go back to 18th-century Salzburg, you’ll have found town-criers shouting, “Mozart’s playing this weekend!” It’s like [US billionaire investor] Warren Buffett once said, “If I was down to my last $10, I’d always spend it on PR”. 

Alan Edwards’ memoir, I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll, is released on 6 June, published by Simon & Schuster UK.

Christian Koch is an award-winning journalist and editor who has written for the Sunday Times, Guardian, Evening Standard, Metro, Director, Cosmopolitan, ShortList and Stylist.