I signed Bowie and advised Mick Jagger – now I’m doing a quiz for my generation - The Jewish Chronicle

It says something about the demographic Laurence Myers is chasing with his latest project that he hesitates after mentioning that Sir Stephen Fry would be his dream booking.

He concludes that the Jewish polymath is, at 68, “a bit young”.

The music mogul, 89, is road-testing his brand new format, Senior Moments (subtitle: The Fun Quiz for Alta Kakkas) at JW3 this month. He had considered calling it Don’t Forget Your Bus Pass, he tells me in the gold disc-studded study of his St John’s Wood apartment “but the age you can get a bus pass is now 60. I’ve got kids with bus passes. So, that doesn’t really work.” Refreshingly, in an age obsessed with youth, he says his target market “should be about 70 up”. Ticket-holders at the show can merely spectate or choose to participate, getting bonus points for leading the audience in song. The quiz, to be hosted by stand-up Mark Maier and Jeff Morrow (a songwriter Myers used to manage), will also have an intermission, “because people my age need a comfort break”.

Reading the impresario’s CV in full also demands a comfort break – even at my age (39). He worked as an accountant for both the Beatles (he spoke at manager Allen Klein’s funeral) and the Rolling Stones (offering pensions advice to a young Mick Jagger – “After all, Laurence, I’m not going to be singing rock ’n’ roll when I’m 60” he recalls Jagger telling him). He managed David Bowie (once owning the rights to LPs Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars), “invented the compilations business” (his Elvis 40 shifted a million copies), started GTO Records, the label that signed Donna Summer, had his house trashed by Iggy Pop, his face felt by Stevie Wonder, cast Anthony Quinn in the film The Greek Tycoon, produced the film Scum starring Phil Daniels, and turned down the chance to manage Queen and Andrea Bocelli and produce Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Stellar company: Myers with actor Phil Daniels, star of Scum, and Anthony Quinn, who Myers cast in The Greek Tycoon[Missing Credit]

Not bad for a man who still identifies as an ordinary “Jewish kid from Finsbury Park”, who used to sit at home dreaming of Hollywood.

When he was 16, his mum, Alice, presented young Laurence with “the Jewish mother’s list” of job choices, starting with doctor, lawyer and dentist. He opted for accountant and went into business with another nice Yiddishe boy, Ellis Goodman.

But he “hated it” and when the opportunity to dip his toe into the nascent pop music business arrived, he seized it. After representing Mickie Most, with the money he made from managing “a very hot band”, The New Seekers, he invested £75,000 (about a million in today’s money) in the young Bowie.

Despite his concerns about the star’s androgyny, the punt paid off. He sold his rights to Bowie’s albums for £500,000 in 1974 (almost £5 million today) and bought a speedboat, naming her Ziggy Stardust. Myers had been won over not by Bowie's performance (“he was terrible, standing on stage, flapping his arms around”) but his lyricism – the fact “he didn’t only write love songs” – and that he sang in an English accent. Bowie, meanwhile, was taken by a sign on Myers’ desk: “Art For Art’s Sake – Money For F***’s Sake.” “I like that, I’ll bear it in mind,” said the Thin White Duke.

Myers has always allied himself with songwriters and one of his top “pinch me” moments came when Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (who penned Jailhouse Rock for Elvis and Stand By Me with Ben E King) came to essentially audition for him. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘Leiber and Stoller are pitching songs to Laurence Myers,’” he says with his Barry Cryer-esque patter. “It was like Shakespeare pitching me a play.”

Less joyful was his first encounter with another Jewish musical heavyweight, Don Arden – the mafioso-like manager of Black Sabbath and father of Sharon Osbourne. Myers was trying to get him to pay The Animals the £6,000 he owed them. After Arden told the “schmuck” he would not pay up, Myers threatened to issue a writ. Arden responded by hurling a waste paper basket out of the window and yelling: “That’s what I do with writs. And if you don’t get out of my office in two minutes’ time, you’re gonna follow it.”

I considered calling it Don’t Forget Your Bus Pass, but you can get a buss pass at 60. I’ve got kids with bus passes. So, that doesn’t work

The grandfather of seven, married to Marsha for 63 years, attributes his ability to avoid the excesses of rock’n’roll to his heimishe childhood with younger brother Roger (who co-founded the Café Rouge and Punch Taverns restaurant and pub chains). “I’m not by nature a drinker or a druggie, probably because of my middle-class Jewish upbringing,” he says.

The member of West London Synagogue is “the most devout Jewish atheist” and says he is “violently passionate about being Jewish”. During his long career – the music part ended in the 1980s when a punk threw up over his Gucci loafers – he “can’t say that I’ve suffered antisemitism”. Even at school, he swerved any prejudice “because sweets were on ration, and my dad had a sweet shop”.

In his 90th year, Myers finds himself still achingly relevant. His first number one, 1970s Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), by Edison Lighthouse, has been turned into a TikTok meme and used in 1.2 million videos. With Myers still owning the master recording, he is mulling over how to spend his windfall. “I was going to buy myself a watch and call it my TikTok tick tock, but I went out and bought my TikTok Tesla”. He is still making theatre and film – he executive-produced the movie version of his Judy Garland play End of the Rainbow, winning Renée Zellweger a best actress Oscar. And he has hopes that Senior Moments could be turned into a TV show or podcast. “You know, it could be a triumph, it could be a disaster,” he shrugs, “which is the story of my life, really.”

Senior Moments is at JW3 on September 9. Tickets: jw3.org.uk

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