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also claimed that the subsequent rise in the value of the record company was hard to predict. He pointed out that a few years later, Virgin bought Charisma Records, an independent label that had a fat catalogue including work by Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Monty Python, for only a few million pounds: ‘The contract that I gave Nik originally gave him his shares for nothing but stipulated that when they were sold they were to reflect a minority stake in a private company … he was not selling control. Therefore I believe the price paid at the time was a fair one. I had also agreed to leave him with a small profit share for the future which he decided not to take and to swap for something else.’
After a decade in which the two men spent hours of every day in each other’s company, the separation was very sudden. Nik Powell went off to found Palace Pictures with Steve Woolley, and was responsible for a number of successful films during the 1980s, including Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, and latterly The Crying Game. Almost exactly ten years after his departure, however, Palace ran into financial difficulties and Powell came back to Branson, cap in hand. Virgin invested some money in the company, allowing it to continue in business for a few crucial months. When Powell returned a second time, however, Branson turned him down in the friendliest possible way: he asked him to go and see Robert Devereux, his brother-in-law, who was by then responsible for Virgin’s film and other media interests. Devereux took a hard look at the Palace books and decided not to invest. Branson consoled himself with the thought that Polygram, the large European record company, were about to take a substantial stake in Palace. But Polygram were interested only in the company’s production arm. By May 1992, Palace had gone into administration, and Powell was forced to start again for the second time in his career. ‘I don’t think we realized how close he was [to going under] at the last minute,’ said Richard Branson afterwards.
‘I gather,’ said the headmaster sternly, looking down his nose through his spectacles at the school’s morning assembly, ‘that some of you are not entirely happy with the musical selections that we’ve been playing. So today we have a slight change in the usual programme. Instead of classical music, I have decided to offer you something a little different.’
The headmaster stepped to one side. A powerful spotlight picked out a circle in the centre of the curtains behind him. The curtains opened. And eight hundred primary school pupils, aged from five to twelve, jumped out of their seats in astonishment and began to scream. Not in their wildest dreams had they expected Boy George himself to perform a number-one hit song, at their school assembly.
Behind the scenes, Steve Lewis gave a smile of quiet satisfaction. He had been at the school since seven o’clock in the morning, helping to supervise as the roadies and technicians assembled the loudspeaker system, and watching as curious teachers peeked into the classroom where George, his make-up already applied, was ironing the shirt that he was about to wear. The ‘concert’, if that was the right word for a performance of a single song at a school in Finchley, was an outstanding success.
It had been set up for a television programme – ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ – and filmed by hidden cameras. Two girls from the school had written in to Jimmy Savile, complaining about the miserable diet of Schubert and Shostakovitch to which their miserable headmaster subjected them at every morning assembly. Long after the girls had given up on their request, the programme’s producer at the BBC had telephoned Virgin Records, just on the off-chance that the world’s most famous pop star might be willing to co-operate in bringing the girls’ fantasy to fruition. He was; the idea tickled his fancy, and his manager and his record company recognized that although he would receive no fee for his performance, the exposure to a television audience of millions of children and adults would help to sell records. The faces of the astonished children – most notably the two who had sent in the letter, who had been identified for the cameraman from school photographs so that viewers could see their disbelief as their dream came true – turned the concert into brilliant television. The only irony was that Boy George, a consummate professional performer who had played all over the world, sometimes to audiences of tens of thousands of people, was more nervous about playing in front of a school assembly than he had ever been before. Only when the curtains opened did the star begin to enjoy himself.
Not even the most skilful A&R person could have guessed in 1980 that George O’Dowd would within three years be topping the charts in seventeen different countries. A former window-dresser and model, who had worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company as a make-up artist, George had almost joined a band under the influence of Malcolm McLaren. By 1980, he was delivering stylishly polished performances in gay nightclubs in London, and had been signed as a songwriter to Virgin Music Publishers – but he had no recording contract. His manager, Tony Gordon, had contacted Simon Draper and offered to provide a fleet of limousines to take Draper and his colleagues down to a rehearsal room where Culture Club, George’s new band, was performing an odd mixture of soul, pop and reggae. Danny Goodwyn, a Virgin talent scout, was one of his most enthusiastic fans. ‘He was an extraordinary creature,’ remembered Steve Lewis. ‘What I liked about it was that there were some really classic pop songs – “I’ll Tumble For Ya”, which I thought was great, and “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”, which was brilliant.’ Back at Virgin’s offices in Vernon Yard, however, there were doubts about whether such a clearly gay artist could attract a straight following.
Those doubts were soon laid to rest. Under intense pressure from Gordon – who had agreed with George and his fellow-members of Culture Club that he would either get them a place in the top thirty on one of their first three singles, or lose the right to manage them – Virgin assigned Lewis, who was by then deputy managing director of the record company, to look after the artist personally. There was little that Lewis needed to do. As well as an ability to write elegant songs in a number of different styles, George also knew exactly how he wanted the band to look. The artwork on record sleeves, the T-shirts – all the ideas came from him. An album had been recorded, and two singles from it had already been released in order to drum up public interest. But there was not yet a Top Thirty single. And Tony Gordon was getting worried.
It was the promotion department that solved the problem. A message was passed to Lewis that the song which the disc jockeys at the radio stations would be willing to play was ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?’. At a meeting with George, Lewis reported this. ‘George freaked,’ he recalled. ‘He was convinced that it wouldn’t be a hit.’
‘People will think we’re a white reggae band,’ said the singer. ‘It’ll ruin our career.’
‘Right now, George,’ said Lewis, ‘you don’t have a career.’ George allowed himself to be persuaded; the song duly went to number one.
But Culture Club just grew bigger and bigger. By 1983, with the launch of Colour By Numbers, the album containing the ‘Karma Chameleon’ hit single, George was the world’s most successful musician for more than a decade. Virgin employees, sometimes unable to reach their offices because of the crowds of fans who had assembled outside in the hope of catching a glimpse of Boy George, began to understand what it must have been like to be at the centre of Beatlemania. The sums that flowed into Virgin’s London bank accounts made the Oldfield millions of eight and nine years earlier seem almost paltry. Not for nothing was it later said that Boy George paid for Richard Branson’s airline. There would be trouble later, as George became a heroin addict and attracted the wrath of the tabloid press. But for the moment, he and Virgin Records could do no wrong.
Long before George’s popularity reached its height, Richard Branson had withdrawn from daily control over the record company. In no sense had he lost his touch as manager and deal-maker; only recently he had faced down an attempt to form a staff union by appearing uninvited at the meeting at which the staff were intending to prepare their demands, and shedding genuine tears at the idea. ‘We’re all one family,’ he had said, prompting the plotters to melt away, shamefaced at the realization that they had hurt his feelings so much. But Branson had left the creative decisions to Simon Draper, and the contractual and managerial matters to Ken Berry, since 1978. Branson’s role consisted of two activities: talking to both his lieutenants on the telephone, often several times a day; and appearing at the record company’s new offices on the Harrow Road whenever his presence was required to elicit the signature of an especially big or important