Meet Alan Edwards

We’re sitting in plush third-floor offices on London’s Carnaby Street on a typically crisp but dry English winter morning. Little do the sparkly media-minded millennials realise, as they toil away feverishly on their screens, how much the street below has changed over the years.

Now a bona fide and gentrified global landmark trading on its misspent youth, Carnaby Street and its newly minted corporate status, is a far cry from the spiritual birthplace of punk and the anarchic rock and roll stylings that cultural wave ushered into the raucous United Kingdom (UK) of the 1970s.

And presiding over his dominion, in front of a suitably bling chaise lounge sofa, is the legendary public relations (PR) man, Alan Edwards. He has spent almost five decades making his own table and creating for himself a comfortable front-row seat at the head of the UK’s pop and cultural table. His first incarnation was as an insurgent poacher as a punk proponent and press whisperer. Then by the 1990s, he had graduated to become part of The Establishment as an all-knowing gamekeeper.

Whatever drama or crisis his clients – past or present – from Ariana Grande to Usher may bring, he remains a man with an open secret: like your dapper, well-travelled and humble uncle, he has seen it all before.

His new book, I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll, is an important piece of work, one likely to be studied by media students for some time. It is an honest slice into recent pop history as it covers everything from the birth of punk, representing Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross, doing PR and sometimes managing reggae greats such as Eek-A-Mouse, Jimmy Cliff, Jacob Miller, Smiley Culture, Maxi Priest, Gregory Isaacs, and Aswad. It takes the reader right through to the rise of The Spice Girls, The Beckhams, Michael Jackson’s legal woes, and an account of the events leading up to the Leveson Inquiry – the public inquiry into ‘phone hacking’ and the ethics of the British press.

BROAD CELEBRITY ACCESS

And, all of this content comes before The Sunday Gleaner can start a discussion about Blondie, being publicly fired by The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, humiliated by Riverdance’s Michael Flatley, his lifelong friendship with departed icon David Bowie, the premature downfall of Amy Winehouse, racism in the UK press, and being ‘blindsided’ by a Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney. His book covers numerous acres of fertile ground in a way that no modern-day account could because no one, nowhere, has that kind of broad and unfettered celebrity access anymore.

And through it all, one theme runs vein deep: Edwards’ love of Jamaica. His passion for the island and his love of its people are self-evident from his close-knit friendship circle and the work he has chosen to deliver to the general public. As a man who was joined by his lifelong friends Naomi Campbell and Grace Jones at the recently sold-out Marley London musical, he knows he can sit in his office understandably relaxed, unbothered, and content.

Jamaica and its underlying energy are the quiet narrators of much of Edwards’ life as it informs so much of his professional and personal relationships. For instance, his former partner, Valerie and mother of his four daughters, is half-Jamaican. “The journey I have been on has completely been about Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica and all the artistes I’ve worked with. It’s a big part of my story,” the man born and bred on the south coast of England begins.

“I got into music really young, perhaps 11, 12. I listened to Radio Luxembourg via a transistor radio under my pillow to Emperor Rosko. And at that time, I really got into Trojan stuff. I remember all the Tighten Up records. Ken Boothe, The Harry J All Stars, The Pioneers’ Long Shot Kick The Bucket, all that. I couldn’t afford the singles, so I bought the albums. Somewhere along the line, I came across Toots & The Maytals and Bob Marley, pretty early on for Bob. It was like lightning for me, especially when I bought Catch A Fire,” he smiles at the memory.

He commences his story about how he came to meet the world’s most popular reggae artiste. “So fast-forward to the point where I’m representing all the big punk bands at the time: The Stranglers, the Buzzcocks, etc, and I, therefore, had quite a bit of cachet with the music papers. So I had the ear of some writers. I received a call from Island Records’ Richard Griffiths. He [said] he has a band called Inner Circle and we need to make them hipper and cooler.

“Eventually, I and a small group of journalists get to Kingston, and you’re talking about a Jamaica that is around 12, 13 years post-Independence. The vibe is incredible. Electric. I had never been anywhere quite like that.

“The atmosphere is pretty intense. All that stuff with Manley’s PNP (People’s National Party) and Seaga’s or ‘CIA-ga’s’ JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) means that the island is crazy, and there’s loads of tension. But the creativity is insane, and it feels like all the greatest music in the world is coming out of this small island in the Caribbean: Jamaica,” he recalls.

MEETING THE PEOPLE’S PROPHET

After an inauspicious meeting with Inner Circle, Edwards then goes on to detail how this led to him meeting with the People’s Forever Prophet, Robert Nesta Marley.

“The next day we get a call from Island Records’ Suzette Newman asking us if we want to meet Bob Marley. He hadn’t become a world superstar at that point. Big in Jamaica, of course, and maybe a few London shows performed. I was there when he did the incredible Lyceum show. The one where No Woman, No Cry was recorded.” He adds, chuckling, “As it was a 1,500 people venue, I always make the gag that I did the backing vocals on that.”

“Anyway, Suzette said, ‘Did you want to meet Bob Marley?’ To which we quickly said, ‘Yes’. We go down and I ask, ‘How do we get in?’ She said, ‘Don’t worry, Bob has an open door policy. We get down to his home, 56 Hope Road, and there’s no door. I said to her, ‘Now I know what you mean by the open door policy because there wasn’t one!” Edwards sighs heartily at the memory.

“We walk in and there’s a game of football going. Someone asked us to join in and we played football with him for quite a long time. He was a good player. All of The Wailers were good: a very fast, very agile game, much like the modern game now. He adds: “Bob played, from what I can see, football every day [and] everywhere. I guess hundreds of people played football with Bob but I suppose, they were not English guys in his back garden.”

“Bob was really good on the pitch and then he said after a while, ‘Come in, guys. I will talk to you.’ So we went into this small, modest room. He sits down with his guitar and starts explaining to us about Emperor Haile Selassie and Rastafarianism. In between, Bob is strumming his guitar, and we’re there watching like acolytes,” Edwards says, eyes glinting.

“I always understood that Bob Marley was a lot more than just a singer. You know when you are in the presence of spiritual greatness. It is not like meeting a ’normal’ person. Some people just have this charisma, aura or whatever you call it. Bob obviously had that,” Edwards affirms.

“Bob was smoking away, and I remember at one point, we were struggling to make him out as all we could see was this silhouette in among the clouds. Eventually, we came out of the room and got into our hire car, and we promptly crashed it into the ditch even though none of us had smoked a thing!” he remembers, laughing for a long time.

Incidents such as footballing with Marley and Edwards’ inability to buy the rights to an emerging band’s music (the band was U2), to later running around New York with a bag of US$70,000 to talk to the radio promo (aka ‘payola’) guys in Philly (read: The Mob), all make for an entertaining and open read that gives the book a heavy cinematic quality, which should ensure that Hollywood will come calling given the amount of rich and real content on offer.

Edwards quietly concludes: “Reflecting on my career, it made me realise that I have a very strong personal connection with Jamaica, and it’s a thread through everything I have done. And I probably didn’t even notice how aligned that love is through everything until now”.

Toussaint Davy is the former editor of Touch Magazine. His published work, features and credits include BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, The Power List, The Independent, MOBO Magazine, Blues & Soul, The Mirror, The Sun, BBC News, MTV Base and various undisclosed ghostwritten projects.lifestyle@gleanerjm.com