Gareth Murphy on writing Cowboys and Indies – The Epic History of the Record Industry

Ding dong goes the doorbell. A moment later, you’re holding up a chunk of your life. When the manuscript went to print, you knew what to expect, but nothing can prepare you for the smell and feel of the real book.

Nor does it take long for a bewildered relief to set in. “How in God’s name did I spend three years writing this?” Because you never knew it would take so long. Because you got sucked up the cliff face of some personal Everest. Remember the day you hit the final full stop, thinking you’d planted your flag on the summit? Then looked down, realising: that was just the first draft. You were only halfway home.

So now it’s in book stores from New York to London, how strange the way people ask: “How do you become a published writer?” as if it’s about careers and agents. Anyone can be a writer, in theory, but going the full distance is all down to the force of your subject. The story makes the writer, not vice versa.

Mine was born from personal experience. In our house, if you wanted to learn about life, you studied the record collection. We were a showbiz family, not major players like the American and British legends, but we were right there at the centre of Ireland's early rock scene. My father, Pat Murphy, had been a guitarist who toured through the sixties supporting Bill Haley, the Carter Family, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and many others. Shortly after meeting my mother in 1970, he landed a job with an American agent in London, found a flat in Notting Hill Gate, then began working on shows for Curtis Mayfield, Frank Sinatra, the Everly Brothers, Kool and the Gang, Junior Walker, Anne Peebles, Nile Rodgers and various soul, funk and country acts. In those formative London years, a young Phil Lynott dropped by, and recorded Little Girl In Bloom, depicting my mother staring out the window onto a cricket field – pregnant with my sister, Tara.

After I was born in 1974, we moved back to Dublin where Dad organised Ireland’s first ever stadium concert in Dalymount Park featuring Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and Graham Parker. My grandfather, put in charge of the gate, squinted out from his caravan, waist deep in fivers, at the dry ice rolling across the stage, dialled 999 and asked for the fire brigade.

Throughout the late seventies, Mum and Dad put on most of Ireland’s most legendary gigs: Ian Dury and the Blockheads, the Specials, Tom Waits, Dr Feelgood, the Clash, John Cooper Clarke, even that famous Ramones riot in the State Cinema, Phibsboro. Outside one AC/DC show, the same bemused grandfather stood watching a queue of grown men in shorts and schoolboy uniforms stretching all the way down the street. Dad called concert promotion in those years “organised chaos”. Bouncers with metal detectors began confiscating knives, hooks, even a meat cleaver. Meanwhile, those supposedly guarding the emergency exits were slipping hundreds more people into the already sold-out crush. In the Olympic Ballroom, people regularly dived off the balcony into the heaving, steaming, gobbing pogo-pit. It’s a miracle nobody ever got killed.

On Saturdays and Sundays, my mother ran a vintage clothing stall in the Dandelion Market, the weekend hangout for Dublin’s hipsters. It was here and in the nearby Bailey that a 28-year-old Paul McGuinness began cornering my father for contacts and advice. Regular gigging, Dad advised the rookie manager, paid the bills and taught bands how to play. He jotted down the phone number of London’s hottest agent, Ian Flooks, suggesting that the man in America was Frank Barsalona.

Six years later, having moved into staging, my father saw the Stad Rock future after watching Live Aid on TV. He presented a model for a new stage and roof system – capable of faster stadium scheduling – to U2 who duly invested in a new company, run by my father, for their coming Joshua Tree tour. Imagine our awe seeing Dad’s little model, now a thousand times bigger, in Europe’s biggest football stadiums. In a party at The Edge’s house, Bono thanked my folks for all they’d done for Dublin’s nascent rock scene, but these nice young boys would soon be transfigured by that breakthrough tour.

My father was, by now, a forty-something veteran compared to U2’s twenty-something crew of mullet-headed, rock zealots. And compared to the rockabillies, mods, funksters and new wavers he had known all his musical life, these Christian rockers had no sense of humour. When I hung out in Windmill Lane or backstage at the London, Dublin, Cork and Paris shows, even I, aged just 13, could see the problem. An exclusive pecking order formed around “the boys” as money began pouring in from all sides: merchandise, tickets, publishing, records. As a music-obsessed teenager, I’d loved U2’s early records and can still see that spectacular stage view of a packed Wembley Stadium in rapture, as if God himself was about to part the clouds. But off stage, that power had a dark side that in the end left a long trail of casualties.

In 1994, aged 20 and armed with a history and philosophy degree, I left Ireland for good, as an exciting new electronic scene began bursting out of Paris, London, Vienna and Scandinavia. Around clothes shops, clubs and magazines, a new underground of studio producers, deejays and indie labels was capturing the European Zeitgeist. My generation began killing rock and I wanted to join in.

At first, I was designing and selling club-wear for an indie fashion label in Lyons, then I moved to Paris to produce compilations for the Buddha Bar nightclub, working alongside DJ Ravin, also producing remixes and one-off tracks for the likes of Natasha Atlas, Lisa Hannigan and others. Colourful times of telephones, taxis, studios, soundtracks for fashion shows – constantly on the scout for new sounds. But no matter where you were in the naughties and beyond, there was no escaping the corporate Death Star.

I found myself in a milieu where music was viewed as branding and gimmickry. I was developing a serious allergy to the genre formats; lounge, chill-out. When a street happening becomes a multimillion-dollar cash cow, if you’re just an employee, chances are you’ll end up churning out more and more product just to feed some tyrant’s appetite.

By the time I went out on my own in 2006, the recession began to really bite. As CD sales collapsed, hundreds of contacts left the business. Struggling along as an independent, I survived happier than I’d ever been before, then became a father in 2009. One day, I was having lunch with a French label boss when he suggested I write “a book about producers”. A book? Gradually the idea grew into something more ambitious: Where did it all begin? Who were the pioneers? How did the music world lose the plot so spectacularly? Is there a future?

Digging deep into the forgotten past, my first important discovery was a massive record crash in the 1920s and 1930s, bigger than the recent one, but strangely similar in the way it happened. Armed with this information, I began contacting all the last great figures of the record business, until one by one, they read my early drafts and contributed their stories and insights; Andrew Loog Oldham, George Martin, Geoff Travis, Martin Mills, Daniel Miller, Seymour Stein, Jac Holzman, Rick Rubin and all the key genre-breakers. Cowboys and Indies was turning into a collective testament. More than a simple history book, it was addressing the next generation.

Music is, and shall always remain, a central pillar of our social structure. Twice in a century, when music crashed, Wall Street followed. Conversely, music has played a pivotal role in every single economic recovery and golden age. Did I find what I was looking for? Yes. My book had carried me out of the Paris underground, to the very front line of the post-crash renaissance. At my book’s launch in Rough Trade NYC, the world’s indie leaders gathered in a corner around a legal document destined for Washington and the new market bullies, YouTube. These noble patrons of our musical world – especially Martin Mills, the erudite boss of the Beggars group, had restored my faith.

The thing about music is that, however cynical it may appear, it’s driven by love and the eternal quest for new talent. The CD market may have collapsed, but the underlying music community is waking up, reorganising itself, getting back on track, arguably spiritually healthier than it’s been in decades.

Cowboys and Indies was truly a labour of love, but thanks to the great pioneers who inhabit its pages, it stands, I believe, as the definitive music business bible, revealing the true story of how it all works, how we got here, and why the show must go on.

Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry (Serpent’s Tail, £14.99) by Gareth Murphy