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From The Times
December 19, 2009
Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson: the Saturday interview
Music, Maestro Please: The Man Who Steered The Dome From Doom to Boom
Rob Hallett turned the O2 into a moneyspinner
[See link for 5 more pictures]
He discovered Duran Duran and invented Adam Ant, he brought Prince’s 21 Nights to London, and organised the tour that Michael Jackson was planning before he died.
Beyoncé and Britney Spears are two of his protégées, he persuaded Leonard Cohen out of retirement and encouraged Barbra Streisand to keep singing.
Rob Hallett has also done what no politician managed to achieve: turn the Millennium Dome into a moneyspinner, the O2 arena.
Now he wants to create a Festival of Britain for the 21st century, a massive celebration of national pride. To be held on Clapham Common in June after the general election and before the World Cup, it could become David Cameron’s Cool Britannia if the Tories win power.
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His other plan is for a “real talent show — the antithesis of The X Factor” — for people who practise every night playing their instrument, writing original music. “Simon Cowell is a very clever man and a very rich man,” he says, “but he is bubble gum and always will be.”
When we meet Hallett at the O2, he is finalising the sold-out Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) concerts and putting together a Black Eyed Peas tour to South America, Australia and South Korea. He is immediately identifiable by his jeans and leather jacket but, instead of ordering beer, he asks for a cup of hot chocolate.
The president of international touring for AEG has music flowing through his veins. He was taken by his sister to see Gerry and the Pacemakers at the age of 5, and dragged to endless Cliff Richard concerts by his mother. At 16 he started promoting his own bands in a pub in Sussex. Now he is packing out the O2 with more than a million fans a year.
“I don’t think governments should ever get involved in entertainment,” he says. “They just had a big tent for the Dome, it was all farcical. Every time you picked up a newspaper there was another mistake. I was thinking, ‘They are mad, they are crazy. They can’t do this’.”
This music mogul knows from 30 years’ experience what will work: “If you ever catch me doing an ice show, shoot me.” His great skill is spotting new talent. “I first saw Beyoncé when she was a teenager in a group with three other girls in the Café de Paris and I thought, ‘This girl has got something’.”
Americans, he says, are more professional about art. “I am British and I want to support Britishness, but to be honest the Americans have a better work ethic than us. We’re lazy as a nation, we’re not very professional.
“If you see Jon Bon Jovi for three hours on stage running around, jumping up and down, he’s as fit as David Beckham, whereas the Brits think it’s OK if they smoke a fag and do a line of Charlie.”
It does not stop him wanting to promote Amy Winehouse: “I love Amy. I’m in talks with her manager.” Don’t the Brits like their singers to live on the wild side? “We still buy more records from Beyoncé.”
He preferred the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, “I’m a pop guy, I worked with the Sex Pistols, I worked with the Clash for five minutes. Siouxsie & the Banshees. I was heavily involved in punk. But Duran Duran was my first big success.” Duran Duran sold out at the O2 last year, but he says the music industry has changed since he went on the road in his twenties with Simon Le Bon. “When I started it was much more Wild West; 25 years ago we had bands. A lot of music is electronic now. You can create it in your bedroom with a drum machine. You don’t need to pay a bass player.”
He feels sorry for today’s stars. “We were all kids growing in the business, it was like a gang. Nowadays you see the individual superstar surrounded by four security guards. It breeds ego and makes for a very insular life.”
Divas, he says, are not only female. “Some of the biggest divas I work with are male. You get some people who become really paranoid. In the Eighties we used to have a laugh with our demands on venues. I remember with Duran Duran we put on a rider once that we needed a winkle sprocket winder — there’s no such thing but we wanted to see how hard they would try to get one. And we used to do things like ask for a bowl of Smarties with all the red ones taken out. But that was just to take the p***. No one has a laugh any more.”
Prince was one of the weirdest artists he has worked with. “When he played the O2, we decked out a couple of rooms with purple curtains, TVs and games machines and called it Princeville. The moment he left his dressing room we had to clear the corridors. He doesn’t want anyone to see him, but when a guitar’s in his hand he becomes a different person.”
Would he want his six-year-old son to become a singer? “Absolutely, but you can start too young.” He believes stars’ development is arrested the moment they become a celebrity. “Mick Jagger became famous when he was 19, so he stayed 19, Michael Jackson became famous when he was 12, so he was stuck at 12 — hence the playground and Neverland.”
Hallett saw Jackson three weeks before he died. “Michael was excited, he was enthused, fit. The day before he died we agreed, ‘Spain’s a bit depressed, so let’s go to Madrid after the O2’. He was driving home when someone called and asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’ I got drunk for three days.”
Leonard Cohen was Hallett’s childhood hero. “I was a weird 12-year-old listening to Songs from My Room when everyone else was dancing around to Cheep, Cheep, Cheep. I’ve lived my life by a couple of lines of Leonard’s poetry: ‘He refused to be held like a drunk under the cold tap of fact’. My mum said, ‘Oh, you can’t get into the music business, that’s too difficult, why don’t you get a proper job?’ I wasn’t going to accept that fact.”
Cohen was 73 and had been in a Buddhist monastery for ten years when Hallett proposed a tour. “His first reaction was, ‘People have forgotten me, nobody will want to come and hear me sing’. I gambled a million bucks on the fact that he would be great and the first day I walked into rehearsal he was magnificent, sublime.”
Curriculum vitae
Born March 9, 1958
Educated Uckfield School; Lewes Tertiary College
Career 1980-84, director, DBA Artist Agency 1984-90, managing director, Performance & Trident Studios 1990-2000, director, Marshall Arts 2000-04, director, Mean Fiddler 2007-present, president, international touring, AEG Live
Family partner Isha; son, Scott, aged 6
Quick fire
Duran Duran or Wham? Duran Duran every time
Mini or Beetle? Mini
Paul Smith or Prada? My heart says Paul Smith but my taste is Prada. Really I’m a Gucci boy
Trainers or brogues? Brogues
Brighton or Barbados? Brighton is the best place in the world The X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing? Neither Bacon or pancetta? Bacon
Fish and chips or tortilla chips? Fish and chips
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