I first joined Chrysalis after working for Elton

John and Bernie Taupin, where I ran their publishing companies. Great fun working with Elton and an honor to be among the first as his publisher to hear his new demos or new mixes, but far too many brown nosers and politics for me to survive long. Although I have some great memories from that short 18 months.
I joined Chrysalis as a Professional Manager in 1975, ended up for 9 months as General Manager. Music Week ran an interview with me writtern by Teri Anderson. First Lady of Chrysalis, and Joe Lustig, who personified what a manager should look like (some time later when I had moved to LA, Joe proudly showed me his new very expensive watch with the times around the world, but what day is it in Australia, I asked), a good man and a hard worker and a caring one. Also managed Steeleye Span and Jethro Tull.
In fact he turned a Jethro Tull after show party into a celebration of my promotion, which was really kind of him.
Plus, one of my favourite anecdotes is his telling me of "innocently" asking the head of Chrysalis Records promotion, what he'd thought of the Steeleye Span show the night before at the Hammersmith Odeon (now the Hammersmith Apollo, and that should always be annouced by Eddie Izzard ref: Glorious), and on learning that the promotion man had enjoyed the show, asked what he'd thought of the lighting rig crashing to the stage and nearly harming the band. One very stumped promotion man!
1976 the UK passed the Equal Rights for Women law. Don't think it's worked out that well yet for women, however, there's always hope.
But this made me a "valuable commodity", and the recipient of many job offers as music companies scrambled to find qualified women for managerial jobs.
Paul Russell, then head of business affairs for CBS Records kept trying to get me to work for them. He'd met me when I worked for Elton and had to come to an agreement with him regarding the April music title, "I've Got The Music In Me" - John Reid had decided that we should participate in the publishing, but we didn't get quite that far, but got a share of royalties - and they couldn't work out the legal document, so used mine. But I wanted to work in business affairs, realising that there was somewhere I could learn a lot about running a company. No, he wanted me to run Mike Batt's publishing company. And I quickly realised that he just wanted to find a job for a woman, so that they had one in a managerial position.
I'll never know how many times my name was brought up as Chrysalis expanded into other areas and had to face questions about their policy towards women.
Terry Connolly was my immediate boss, and mentor, however, I temper the latter with the knowledge that I was part of his ambition.
Nevertheless, Terry was a good boss and fair, although had a temper on occasions. Remember arguing with him about UFO, and his getting really angry with me and me wondering what to do, as I knew what the contract contained. I knew what all of the contracts contained, an ability I had until the day came and I didn't need to know anymore. He was wrong and somehow I had to summon the sinews to make another call to Terry and tell him that I had read the contract again, and the provision he didn't agree with existed in writing. To do him full justice, he apologised and on we went.
Then there was the other board director, who couldn't work with a woman, unless he had had sex with her. I finally gave in, although was pretty drunk when I did.
Was a bit pissed off to later learn that he had bragged about it. And wasn't very kind in responding that I had to be drunk to do so.
My funniest story about Terry is his meeting with Eddie Howell, a songwriter one of the outgoing heads of publishing had signed and was trying to take with him. He went off to Eddie's home to meet with him and ended up getting really angry and intended to storm out, but ended up in the broom cupboard!
A & R meetings were usually taken up with what various football clubs were up to and only became more fun when punk took over and all the A & R men, used to looking for the next Deep Purple or Pink Floyd and were suddenly confronted by bands who couldn't play guitar like David Gilmour, in fact were often not very good at playing any instrument, but the public loved the music and we did end up with Generation X, an excellent band. to be contd...