A Generous Romantic

70 Old Compton Street - The birthplace of Charisma Records

70 Old Compton Street - Photograph: Jackie Hopfinger

The first record I owned on the Charisma label was found in a box buried two feet underground. I was fourteen when I discovered music as buried treasure. The older brother of a pal at school heard that a record pressing plant in North London dumped all of its seconds at a refuse site a twenty minute bus ride away from where we lived. This wasn’t just any record plant — this was the plant that did the independent labels of Island, Charisma and Trojan.

Sundays were generally spent digging through layers of rotten food and nappies until we hit a rich seam of vinyl. Some had no covers, mis-printed covers or no covers and no labels at all. A few had the hole in the wrong place (and frankly anywhere not dead in the centre of the disc sounded spectacularly wrong). But whether or not you knew who you were listening to, most of the vinyl that we mined was eminently playable. For music lovers with limited pocket money, this was an ideal way of building a record collection. As long as you didn’t mind smelling of fish and excrement for a couple of days.

My first dig at Park Street dump provided me with a very slightly warped copy of Five Bridges by The Nice - the first LP released by Charisma Records - a pioneering prog rock album that married a band and orchestra in live performance. This wasn't to everyone's taste, with John Peel describing it as akin to "grafting a tomato plant onto a cricket bat", but The Nice ushered in a wholly new direction in music and, from its small office above a shop on Old Compton Street, Charisma led the charge of the independent labels in providing new music to audiences in Britain and beyond.

A Soho label

Charisma grew organically out of Soho's music culture, with proximity to the area's music clubs and pubs being crucial to its success in signing talent that the mainstream music industry ignored or simply didn't understand. The story of Charisma is also a story about one individual's passion, vision and determination.

Active from 1969 to 1986, Charisma Records was founded by Tony Stratton-Smith and was known for signing and promoting a diverse range of artists, including Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, Monty Python, and Peter Gabriel. The label also had a significant impact on the development of progressive rock in the 1970s and displayed some eclectic and daring risk taking, making it one of the most influential and innovative record companies of the period. It's doubtful whether any other rock label would have hired modern jazz pianist Keith Tippett to back comedian Charlie Drake, or signed Poet Laureate Sir John Betjemen for a three record deal.

Tony Stratton-Smith started his career as a sports journalist, working for the Daily Sketch and the Daily Express. His passion for football was matched by a passion for music, and a meeting with Brian Epstein shifted his interests decisively towards music management. According to Mike Rutherford of Genesis “He was a larger-than-life character – jovial and a big drinker – and he loved music.” His regular haunts were The Ship pub and The Marquee Club, both on Wardour Street.

The Nice were regulars at The Marquee. Contracted to Immediate, the band was unhappy with their manager and label boss Andrew Loog Oldham, so one evening at the club Keith Emerson asked Stratton-Smith to look after them and secure larger venues for their increasingly audacious stage act. One of his first acts as their manager was to secure the now infamous Royal Albert Hall concert in June 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, during which Emerson burnt an American flag, resulting in a lifetime ban from the venue. If anything this helped to boost the band's standing in the US and across Europe.

As The Nice enjoyed increasing success as a live act, their own label - Immediate Records - went bankrupt. Stratton-Smith was frustrated with the major labels who appeared out of touch with the new sounds of progressive music, so he decided to start his own label to release their records, and thus Charisma Records was born. The idea was to base the label on the Motown model with a small team of like-minded people working with him to manage the label, book tours and handle PR. Initially this was all conducted from the small offices rented on Old Compton Street, directly opposite the 2i's Coffee Bar where British rock and roll kicked off in the 1950s.

Glen Colson was hired at the start to handle PR: "Strat signed all the bands and we just sort of ran around listening to him. He was a drinker, you see. He was out every night until five in the morning. He was hanging out with MPs, he had racehorses. He was a homosexual as well so he used to really get around... Strat wanted one of everything. He wanted a classical band, a jazz band, a rock band, which used to confuse the shit out of everybody that worked with him. Because you'd come in one day and he'd have signed something that you knew nothing about, like Monty Python or John Betjeman. But he just wanted to sign acts that were the best of their kind. That was always his dictum."

Stratton-Smith may have been the public face of Charisma - but it was Glen's sister Gail Colson who drove the business - starting as PA, then becoming the label manager and managing director of Charisma. Music journalist Chris Charlesworth has described her as the supremely efficient heart of Charisma: "She was the businesslike money person and made sure that what needed to be done was done. Strat would waft in and out. If it wasn’t for Gail, God knows what would have happened to the bloody company! She was fiercely determined and put her foot down. She was incredibly charming as well.”

The Nice disbanded after their first Charisma album, and the company was narrowly beaten by the other leading independent label, Island Records, in signing Emerson Lake & Palmer, which grew out of The Nice. But Charisma's instinct for recognising innovative artists was undiminished. Van der Graaf Generator's 1970 album 'The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other' is considered a classic of progressive rock, and the band's experimental approach to music would influence many other musicians.

Having built an enthusiastic following on the club and college circuit, the Newcastle folk rock band Lindisfarne were signed by the label, delivering three top 5 albums and two top 5 singles in their first two years on the label. The band became one of those who performed regularly at Stratton-Smith's own live nights, when he was asked by The Marquee Club, just around the corner from his Old Compton Street offices, to host evenings at the clubs. Billed as Marquee Sunday Special Nights by Stratton-Smith, the events showcased Charisma acts along with others.

From Genesis to the Holy Grail

Walk two minutes from The Charisma offices in the opposite direction to the Marquee and you'll end up at Ronnie Scott's Club on Frith Street. It was a walk taken by Stratton-Smith one evening in February 1970 where, in the upstairs room at the club, he joined an audience of twelve people watching a young band, some members of which were still at school the year before. As he recalled:

“There are certain bands you see just once and they get so many areas of your mind stimulated. They had it all going that night. In a way, I think the timing of it was right. I was hungry for a band I could really be proud of and they were looking for a manager they could rely on. And they had some astonishing attitudes, foremost among them the belief that they would never make it as a live band."

Genesis signed a deal with Charisma at the Old Compton Street office the following day, with Stratton-Smith putting them each on a £10 weekly wage. This paid off, as they were to become one of the world's top selling music artists - with 150 million albums sold worldide. Their first Charisma album - Trespass - was recorded in Soho's Trident Studios and wove together influences from classical, folk, soul and rock music. Their success also launched the solo careers of Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, the latter using it as a means of initiating the WOMAD Festival.

According to Gabriel, "Charisma Records was a label that was unafraid to take risks and sign unconventional and experimental artists. This willingness to take risks is what made the label so important and influential."

Charisma wasn't just a progressive rock label, they also signed and promoted a diverse range of artists. Along with Sir John Betjeman they also worked with the Monty Python comedy troupe, who released several albums on Charisma. With film companies unwilling to invest, Charisma financed the production of their Holy Grail movie, persuading Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd to join in. The movie became the top grossing British film in the US during 1975.

Charlie Drake had been a popular television comedian in the 1950s and 1960s with a successful recording career that included My Boomerang Won't Come Back. With its characteristic daring, Charisma teamed him up with Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp, Keith Tippett and Phil Collins to record the single You Never Know. While failing to chart, it later became a much sought-after collectors' item.

Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and later signings like Julian Lennon and Malcolm McLaren kept Charisma financially succesful, but it was acquired by Virgin Records in 1983 and three years later Virgin absorbed fully absorbed the label. Charisma was no more.

Tony Stratton-Smith passed away in 1987, but his legacy lives on through the many classic albums and artists that were released on Charisma Records. He is remembered for his pioneering spirit, helping to shape the British music industry. His willingness to take risks and believe in his artists enabled the label to establish its unique identity. It was to set the template for independent labels that would later be applied in the years of punk and new wave.

A memorial service for Strat was held at St Martin-In-The-Fields on 6 May 1987 where Keith Emerson performed a piano piece composed for the occasion and Monty Python's Graham Chapman provided a eulogy. An after-party was held at the Marquee at which the club's manager Jack Barrie said “I’ll best remember him as a generous romantic. A romantic, because he made dreams come true; generous because they were always other people’s.”

Park Street dump was eventually bulldozed to make way for the M25. Somewhere under the hard shoulder, just south of St Albans are a couple of boxes of the original pressing of 'The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other' by Van der Graaf Generator, some Charlie Drake records with the label missing and a test pressing of the first Lindisfarne album. Now that, my friend, is real buried treasure.