Back in 2002, a butler to the British royal family, Paul Burrell, was charged with stealing a number of Princess Diana’s possessions. The case came to court, but was dropped a few days later after the Queen suddenly remembered she’d had a conversation with him on the very same subject – where he disclosed to her he wished to keep a number of those items, with her blessing.
A bidding war ensued between the tabloid newspapers for his story – and he chose to speak to the Daily Mirror for the sum of £300,000. Over several days worth of interviews with the paper, he disclosed exactly what he was said during that meeting with the Queen – where she reportedly warned him that “There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge”.
Something very similar came to mind this weekend when I discovered Crispin Hunt – a prominent campaigner for #BrokenRecord, a reform movement within the music industry – had been told “dark forces are out to get me” because he dared speak out about the fact Lucian Grainge was being paid an obscene amount of money during 2021.
Another campaigner in the form of Rebecca Ferguson chipped in, mentioning she’d “been given the same warning”. And I see little reason to disbelieve them. The music industry is filled with shysters who operate behind the scenes. They think the whole thing is basically their own little mafia, and they see no issue with threatening anyone who might get in the way.
It’s because of things like this that I decided to start this blog. I’d been writing about music in addition to producing it for a number of years, but I believed this was hindering me and stopping me from speaking out about certain issues. Being inside the machine, even in my own very limited capacity, was inhibiting.
And now that I’ve stopped producing music – despite three requests recently from established producers for me to reconsider? I feel great. I can write whatever I want and whenever I want. This has annoyed some people no end – something which helps me sleep easier at night. It also renders the “dark forces” almost completely ineffective.
In the past, whenever I threatened to write about something someone would prefer I didn’t, I was repeatedly told these people would stop me from progressing any further within the dance music world. This used to bother me. Not anymore. I don’t want to progress in an industry where huge swathes lie in sewage-filled cesspools.
No, the truth is I’m a far better writer than I ever was as a producer – and I think I was pretty good at making music. And as I get reminded frequently, I rather enjoy making people feel uncomfortable by asking questions they’d rather were ignored…
