How I Built This with Guy Raz - I.R.S. Records: Miles Copeland

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

As a music industry mogul and founder of I.R.S. Records, Miles Copeland prided himself on making deals that were easy to say “yes” to. With a mixture of shrewd business skills, swagger, good taste and great timing, Miles signed or managed some of the most popular bands of the 1980's, including R.E.M., The Go-Go's, and The Police. After getting his start booking little-known British bands in the early 1970's and nearly going bankrupt after a failed tour, Miles eased back into the business by promoting punk groups—who didn’t care that he was broke. He then landed one of the most important deals of his career by convincing A&M Records to take a chance on The Police (whose drummer, Stewart Copeland, was Miles' brother). After I.R.S. dissolved in the mid 1990's, Miles remained a force in entertainment, launching new labels, branching out into world music, and managing Sting’s career until 2001.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better your home might be worth more than you think find out how much at arbb.ca slash host i went to a and m i knew that i wouldn't be seen by the top guy but i went to the guy the guy that signs the artists right so i went in and i said look i have nothing to recommend this group. I've got no press. I've got no tour. They've got no fans. I've got nothing, except I've got a great record. And here's the deal I'm going to make with you. It's free. Just pay me the

highest royalty A&M page of it sells. If it doesn't sell, no skin off your nose, no skin off my nose. The record's yours. Now, let me play the record. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Miles Copeland helped rejuvenate rock and roll by taking a chance on unknown artists, founding a record label, and bringing us the police, the go-go's, REM, and many more. The music business is really tough. Every single day, somewhere between 20 and 60,000 songs.

get uploaded to Spotify. That is an ocean of music being put out every day, more music than at any other time in human history. And it means that for most artists, it's almost impossible to make money on selling music alone. You've got to turn your band into a business, live touring, merch sales, maybe a Patreon or a band campsite, brand partnerships, whatever it takes.

And if you're a record label, streaming services like Spotify, pay a fraction of a cent every time someone plays your music, which means unless your artist is Drake or Taylor Swift, it's pretty hard to make the kind of profits you used to make from record sales. But in the 1980s, running a record label was almost like printing money. Because if you could sign an obscure artist for next to nothing and figure out how to get their music played on the radio,

you could make a lot of money from selling records. And it really only took one good band to make it work. And for Miles Copeland, that band was the police. It just so happened that his small record label was starting to get some traction in the late 1970s. Right around the time Miles' brother Stuart, a drummer, met a singer named Sting. And it was one song in particular. You know the one. Go ahead. Sing it.

It was that song that Sting and Stewart played for Miles that convinced him that the police were destined for something big, and you will hear that story in this episode. If you listened to FM radio or watched MTV in the 1980s, it was impossible to avoid hearing the artists on Miles' label, IRS Records. He would go on to sign the go-goos, REM, The Stranglers, Fine Young Cannibals, Oingo Boingo, the Bengals, and many other. bands that would come to define the decade. And what made Miles Copeland particularly successful

was his instinct for good music. He simply signed bands he liked. But the story of how he became a record label mogul really happened by accident. After college, Miles had considered following in his father's footsteps and maybe joining the CIA. His dad also named Miles Copeland was at one point the CIA station chief in Damascus, and Miles grew up in Beirut, Lebanon at the height of the Cold War, the oldest of four kids, including the aforementioned Stewart and another brother, Ian, who would go on to become a prominent music promoter in the U.S. As a teenager, Miles attended the American school in Beirut, and just like any American teen in the 1950s and 60s, he was glued to the music on the radio.

Well, I would listen to the BBC, you know, I would listen to the voice of America. I would, every time my father went back to the United States, I would say to him, you know, walk into a record store and buy the top records. And what do you remember? I mean, this is the late 50s, early 60s. What do you remember listening to? Jerry Lee Lewis, great balls of fire, you know, Little Richard, the big bopper. Elvis Presley had been a big deal when I had just left America.

But later on, it would be what was going to. on in San Francisco and, you know, the doors and Jefferson Airplane and all those sort of bands, you know. You actually attended college in the U.S. and you graduated, I think, in 1966. But after that, you came back to Lebanon, to Beirut, to do a master's degree at the American University there, I guess, in economics. And the story of it was that while you were a student there, you, like, started to promote some concerts on campus. What did that mean? Like, what did What were you doing and how did you get into that? Well, it actually was a series of accidents, you know, that had really no plan involved, you know.

My little brother, Stewart, had decided he wanted to be a drummer. And he had got himself a drum kit. And as it happens, there was a local group at the high school, you know, called the Wichita Vortex Sutra. And they lost their drummer who went back to America for Christmas. And so they went to Stewart and said, well, we've lost our drummer. Will you sit in and drum with us? So obviously, Stuart invited me to the show, and he was some silly little club, you know. And I went with a friend of mine.

And, you know, Stuart was up there's up there drumming. And I thought, there's my brother who's actually in a band. So all of a sudden, the music business, the distance between me thinking that there is a chasm between me, the kid listening to music and the music business that's, itself, that chasm sort of disappeared. Yeah. And as it happened, later on, the group comes to see me and says, look, would you help us? We've got a gig at the university.

So I said, well, what the hell, you know? It was literally that. It was one of these moments where, as you just say, well, I got nothing better to do. So, okay, sure, I'll do it. You went to help arrange the concert for them on the campus of the American University. Well, I went to help organize the sort of show, you know. They had this idea that, well, we want to have the kind of a psychedelic happening. We've been reading about this thing that's going on in San Francisco.

So, you know, we need somebody to help us do it. And I had no clue. We did create it happening. Of course, it had nothing to do with what was going on in San Francisco. I mean, there were no drugs, for instance. But it was a big success. The kids went crazy. So then the group came to me and said, well, you've got to come and help us on all the other shows we're doing.

Well, there weren't very many. But the words had to go out. that I was, you know, helping. And then I was approached by a promoter who was importing groups from England. This is a Lebanese promoter. Yeah. The group that was brought in by this promoter was a group, an English group called Rupert's People. Rupert's People, right.

And the next thing I knew, I was helping him with his show. You know, he sort of sold them as from London, you know. Yeah. Rupert's People. So from what I understand, you graduated, I think, in 69. and I guess around that time, your family actually moved to London, right? And so you moved there too. And I guess there was this band, this band called Rupert's People, right, that you'd worked with before.

And what, they got back in touch with you and said, hey, we need a manager. Can you help us out? Is that right? Yeah. Like, what's the story? Well, Rupert's People had had a single that went top 30, you know, but at the time that I was seeing them, they all had jobs. You know, they were not a professional band. A lot of them didn't even have equipment.

So it was, you know, they said they wanted me to manage them. And I said, well, I don't know anything. And they said, well, we'll show you. Well, the first gig they took me to was to a club near my parents' house. And I happened to meet a group who later became Wishbone Ash, who really became my first management artist. Rupert's people sort of faded into the background because they really weren't a professional group yet. They were hoping that I was some sort of rich American who might finance them. And I think that's why they asked me to manage them.

All right. So that kind of fizzled out, but you went on to be involved in this group, Wishbone Ash, which was a massive group, a Prague rock group, right, in the early 70. People forget about them. They never really had a revival in the U.S., but they were even big in the U.S. at a certain point. Well, they were, I would say they were moderately successful. They weren't as big as, let's say, Jethro O'all or 10 years after or some of these big bands. But they were successful enough that people know who they were.

And I learned a lot from them. And they learned a lot for me. Basically, it was a learning experience because I knew nothing about the music business. But I did learn about touring America. You know, I brought them to America. That was a big deal for British artists, really, because the whole idea of, you know, oh, wow, we're going to play America. you know, that's the big game.

The fact that I was an American kind of opened the doors, I think, and a lot of the groups that I started to work with were thinking, well, I could take them to America, which was their big dream. So at this point, you're clearly, I mean, this is the early 70s, you're clearly now in this business. Yeah. And you're starting to think, okay, what does this mean? I mean, what was your, were you thinking, all right, I'll be a manager.

I'll manage bands. Or did you start to think, well, maybe I should really think bigger about what I want to do in this industry? Well, I kind of went with the flow. And I think a lot of people do that. I think, you know, to sit back and say, well, I'm going to do this, this. And maybe some people plot out their lives, but do they really know what they're going to do? I had a group called Wishbone Ash. I then picked up the Climax Blues Band and Renaissance and Curbed Air and Caravan and, you know, Al Stewart.

And, you know, did I know when I had signed Wishbone Ash in the beginning that I was going to end up managing five acts, you know? No, I didn't really know. And one thing led to another, led to another, led to another. I mean, what did it mean to manage a band? I mean, you were managing their finances, you were managing their booking schedule. And presumably these bands weren't making a whole lot of money at the time. Yeah, I booked the shows. I was the publicist.

Yeah. I even helped them carry their equipment. I was forced to learn every aspect of the business. And I think one of the advantages that I had was I had an American accent. So when I'd call up a club, you know, it'd be, hi, my name is Miles Copeland. I've got this new band to book, you know, and they would not be quite so sure as to who this guy was. Well, maybe he's somebody important, you know. Whereas if I was some British person, you know, hello, I'm Miles Copeland.

I got his group. They'd think, oh, yeah, yeah, this guy's from Birmingham. Yeah, he's a schmuck. Click, hang up the phone. But they assumed maybe I did know something. So they would listen. You know, and then I would basically sell them a group. One of the things I read about something you did early on in your career,

and I don't know how you did this, was you started a industry trade magazine called College Event. This was basically like a phone. It was like a listing of all the artist touring, who their agents were, what their booking fees were. And apparently nothing like this existed. But I guess also you would write positive glowing articles about your artist that you represented in this magazine, except your name was nowhere to be found in this magazine. So no one knew that Miles Copeland was behind this magazine,

and yet you were promoting your own bands in the magazine. Well, I learned very quickly, you know, okay, one of the major jobs is to let the world know that your artist exists. Well, the reality is when you started off with an artist in England, you literally had to only reach the people that booked the acts, which was probably two to 300 people maximum. Right. So I said, well, if I have a magazine, all I have to do is send out 200 copies to 200 people. And if they have booked the act, then, you know, I've done my job of marketing. It doesn't need to be fancy and flashy, but it's got to have credibility. So I found one of the university kids at University College London who actually books groups

and said to him, hey, how'd you like to be the editor of a magazine? And he thought, well, cool. So I now had the credibility of a guy that actually books acts as the editor of the magazine. So basically the magazine start off with a couple of mimeograph pages. and it had reviews of my artist, plus others, of course. Yeah. But I would have great reviews of Wishbone Ash in it, you know, of course. And actually, the magazine kind of took off because unbeknownst to me, there was literally

nothing like it. So a lot of the agents and everybody began to take advantage of it because now they could advertise for, you know, 52 cents and reach who they wanted to reach, whereas the act and the record companies were busy spending fortunes in the big magazine. So it was definitely one of the ways in the beginning that I used to let people know the act existed. All right. So you are managing these bands. And I guess in 75, you organized this, you launch this like multi-band tour of European festivals. This is called Star Trekken 75. And it had soft machine and Lou Reed was part of it. But apparently it did not.

go as planned. This was supposed to be a huge tour. What happened on that tour? Well, the idea of the tour was if you could associate your up-and-coming artists with bigger names, then people would assume your artists were bigger than they really were. Yeah. So my idea was to say, well, if I can have John McLaughlin's Mahavish No Orkish Orchestra and I can have Lou Reed and I can have, you know, these big names and then have my act. on the same bill with them, my acts will appear to be bigger. And I got the bands together, and off we went. We did the tour.

Where did you start? What was the first city that you went to? It was in Holland somewhere. I can't remember what the first show was. And you had all your bands, Lou Reed, John McLaughlin's group, Soft Machine, ready to go, ready to perform. Yeah.

Well, different groups I had in different countries. Like Lou Reed was very big in Spain. so I made sure that he was booked for the Spanish show. Right. The headliners would fluctuate based on who was big in that marketplace. But my acts were always there. Unfortunately, Lou Reed never showed up. He never showed up.

He never even flew to Europe. He had changed, unbeknownst to me. I had booked him. I had made contracts with the agency. Little did I know that he had left the agency. And I was getting kind of worried at one point because I was waiting and saying, well, you know, we need to know when Lou Reed is showing up in Spain because we had a meet him at the airport and all that, you know, so I contacted the agency

in America and, of course, no response and something's wrong here. And then I finally found Lou Reed in New Zealand. Wow. I realized at that point that now I was really in trouble. Lou Reed was not going to show up in Spain, which of course meant that the promoter then took advantage of me and said, well, you know, your headliner hasn't showed up, so therefore I'm going to pay you half the money. And that wasn't enough to cover all our costs. And it went downhill from there. So it ended up as a financial disaster. Disaster. You had to pay transportation fees and all of the venue fees and the artist fees. So, I mean, to say the least, you lost a lot of money. I lost not only a lot of money. I lost everything. I lost every penny I had plus money I didn't have.

And I could not pay Wishbone Ash and some of the bands that I was working with. And I had to say, look, I'm sorry, but this whole thing has become a complete disaster. And I don't have the money to pay you. But I feel so bad about it, I will resign. So I resigned as Wishbone Ash's manager. So this is 75. You're 31 years old. You're bankrupt at this point, completely bankrupt.

I'm on the verge of bankruptcy. And I went to all the people I owed money to it. I said, look, if you bankrupt me, you know what's going to happen. You know, it'll go to the courts and you'll end up with one penny for every pound that you're owed, if that. But if you give me a couple of years, I'll give you 50% of what I owe you. And luckily for me, everybody agreed. So I did not actually go bankrupt, but I was on the verge. I should have gone bankrupt.

But you certainly had a major failure. I mean, that's, that was. Oh, it was, and a lot of people wrote me off. A lot of people said, well, that's it. Miles Copeland's finished. Yeah. And did you think that, any part of you think that? Well, I couldn't really think about it because the reality is, what am I going to do now?

Yeah. I knew the music business, which was an asset. I just didn't have any money. Why don't we come back in just a moment? How Miles went from the verge of bankruptcy to just a few years later, managing and recording some of the biggest bands in the world. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

So it's around 1976, and Miles Copeland is in London, starting over after losing all of his money. And fortunately, for him, right around the same time, there's a new movement in the music scene where the bands couldn't really care less if he was broke. And that was the punk rock. marketplace. Yeah. The fact that you didn't have any money meant nothing to Billy Idol, you know, the Generation X or to Susina Banshees or to the fall, any of these bands.

What they wanted was somebody who could call up the various clubs and knew the music business and could help them get a foot in the door. I had no money, but I had the experience. So you could book some of these bands into clubs because you had the connections. And how did you find the bands? I mean, how did you identify or how did they find you? Well, as it happened, my old-time partner, who I first started into business with, had an office in a place called Dryden Chambers off Oxford Street in London.

So when I basically had fallen into hard times and given up my fancy offices and all of that, I called him up and said, look, do you have room? Can you give me a desk and a phone? And he said, well, okay. So it just so happened. it in that same building, there was Malcolm McLaren and the sex pistols. The manager of the sex pistols. The manager of the sex pistols.

He was in the floor above me. So I was reading in the newspapers about all these bands that the music business literally had written off and said, well, they can't play their instruments. It's a fad. So I read that, you know, the sex pistols couldn't get a gig. Well, I said, well, you know, let me call up some of the people I know. So I'd call up one of the clubs. and I say, well, you book the sex pistols.

And a lot of people said, well, okay, if the price is right, I'll do it. So I'd go back up, I'd go up to Malcolm and say, well, I've been reading that you can't book a show. I just booked three shows for you. And he would look at me and go, oh, what dates are? And then he would tell me, no, he can't do them. So I'd go back downstairs and I call the clubs and say, well, look, those dates don't work. And I go back up to Malcolm and say, look, can you do these? And he started yelling at me.

He said, don't you understand? I get more press saying the band can't get a gig. You're screwing up my whole rap. Get out of my office. And I said, well, by the way, I know you're going to scream at me. But I did book one show in Holland. And he says, oh, Holland. Oh, we can do Holland.

So I went with the sex pistols to Holland. So I became the first promoter to do you a period of date. with the sex pistols. Well, that gave me huge credibility among the punk world. Yeah. So all of a sudden, Billy Idle the whole lot, they all were at my door saying, well, you book my group. And that's really how I got into the punk world because I was the only person who actually

would call up some of these places and book the groups. And these groups, the whole rationale of the punk world was you don't need a lot of equipment, you don't need a lot of roadies, you don't need a lot of roadies, you don't need it was really minimalist. The problem was a lot of the groups were so disorganized, they couldn't get to themselves to shows. So I would book Generation X, let's say, in Birmingham. I'd get a phone call that afternoon.

Oh, I'm all sorry, we can't make the show because I can't find a van. Well, my brother Stewart had also become enamored with this whole idea of the punk world where it's minimalist, very few people. he had formed a group called the police. So I'd call up Stewart and say, look, I got this gig for Generation X, but they can't make it to Birmingham. Can you get to Birmingham?

And he said, sure. So the police ended up being a fill-in act for a lot of the punk groups. So this is an important, pivotal moment in your life and career and also in your brother Stewart's life and career, which is he co-found this band called the police with this guy

named Sting and eventually a guitarist named Andy Summers. When you first saw them play and you met Sting, you know, this is 77, it's your brother, he's a drummer. Turns out that he would become one of the greatest drummers in rock and roll. Were you blown away?

Were you like, oh my God, this guy, Sting is an amazing vocalist and front man? What was your impression? It was again another situation where you're going with a flow, basically, you know. Stewart was not a punk. Sting hated the whole punk rock scene. You know, I mean, he was a jazz player. Yeah, yeah. You know, he, he knew a lot more than

three chords. You know, most punks had trouble finding three chords. He was a teacher, right? He was a music teacher. Yeah, he was a professor, you know. So Sting was intellectual, but he didn't know what he was going to do with life, and Stewart had talked him into this punk group, and he'd read the newspapers too, so he figured, well, what the hell, you know, Stuart didn't co-found the group. He founded the police. Yeah, right. It was his idea. He came up with the name, and he said, well, the minimum I can get away was just three people. So he got in Henry, who looked right.

He looked like a punk. This is Henry Padavani. He was the first guitar. Henry Padavani, who later became a great player, you know. So basically, I didn't realize that there was something special there in the beginning. I mean, it was my brother. I threw gigs his way when I could. Sure.

Sting didn't really like punk rock. I mean, I remember him walking on a stage one saying, well, we call ourselves a punk group, which means we sing banal lyrics and we're full of crap or something to that effect. And I was thinking, cringing to myself thinking, sting for Christ's sake, don't say that, you know. But it wasn't until I had heard Roxanne that I realized that there was something really special there. So I guess there was a really important turning point. The police were a band that you were certainly, it was your brother's band.

You were promoting them, managing them. But you're also booking gigs for much bigger acts at that time. like Blondie, right? And Lou Reed, I think you did his tour in, you know, in the U.K. You were promoting Patty Smith, some big acts in the UK. Yeah. But then in 1979, I guess you saw the police rehearsing, or I guess they played the song, Roxanne for you.

Tell me what you remember. Like, where were you when you first heard that song? Well, actually, what happened was my brother was impatient. He had a burning. desire to succeed. He had formed the police. He wanted to be a punk group, and nothing was good enough, you know.

And I had come across a studio just outside of London where the doctor, the MD, by day, was hoping to become a record producer, engineer. And he said, look, I've got this studio I've built in the back of my medical practice.

And I'll give you a month in the studio for a thousand, pounds. So I said to Stewart, how about let's make a police album? So I became effectively the record company. So the police went in to this studio in Leatherhead for a month and put down the album. And towards the end of it, I went in. They played all the songs and I was not particularly impressed. And I finally said, okay, well, what else you got? And they said, well, there's one other song, but you'll hate it because it's a ballad. So the idea that Roxanne, which was a sweet love song to a prostitute, you know,

was really not what they figured I would be looking for. Anyway, I said, well, look, I'm here. I've come all the way to leatherhead. It's an hour a time. Play the song. Play the damn song, you know. Well, finally, the engineer just said, well, it's a good song. And he stuck it on.

And they had mixed sort of reggae with the sort of punk energy. And Roxanne was just this unique combination of stuff, you know. So at the end of the song, I looked at the guys and I said, gentlemen, that song is going to change our lives. You've written a classic. They all looked at me like I had two heads. They said, what? You like that?

Well, of course, then Sting has some more up his sleeve. That's when, you know, can't stand losing you and some of these other songs begin to percolate. And I said, look, I think this song is so good. it's bigger than I can do myself. So I'm going to go to A&M records and I'm going to try to make a deal to put you on A&M,

a real major label, respected record company because I just don't have the wherewithal to do it justice. Yeah. And I knew A&M wanted to be in the punk world. They knew something was going on, but they didn't want to deal with crazy people.

So I went to A&M. I knew that I wouldn't be seen by the top guy, but I went to the guy, what they call the artist and repertoire guy, the guy that signs the artists, you know. Right. So I went to him and I said, look, I have nothing to recommend this group. I've got no press. I've got no tour. They've got no fans.

I've got nothing, except I've got a great record. And here's the deal I'm going to make with you. It's free. You've got it. Just pay me the highest royalty A&M page of it. it sells. If it doesn't sell, no skin off your nose, no skin off my nose. The record's yours. Now, let me play the record. Because I knew that if I had, I'd gone in there and asked for money and put risk in the game, the guy would think, well, you know, it's going to take my budget.

Suppose it fails. What do I say to my boss? So I had to eliminate all of the negatives that could possibly be there. Yeah. And I think that's probably the first time he ever, listened to the music without thinking, ooh, what's this going to cost me? What if it fails? So he just listened to the music. And you know what? The music was good. Wow, you were giving up the IP of the record because you had no cash. You had no options. But I guess the upside. You would get the upside if it worked out. That was the plan. We would get our high royalty, which would mean we'd make money. Right. So now the police were on A&M records, which was a prestigious label. Right. And the only caveat was that they would put the single out in America,

which they ended up not doing, by the way. So they put the record out. It doesn't really do a lot in England, but the police could say we're on A&M records. I then called up my brother Ian, who I had taken a job with an agency in Macon, Georgia. And I said, look, can you book me a tour in America. And just to be clear, your other brother, Ian Copeland, also was very successful. I guess at the time he was working at this agency that booked and promoted bands, like rock, rock and roll bands in the U.S.? Yeah. Okay. Got it. And he said, look, it's going to be really tough. There's no record released here. A&M hasn't put out the record. And I said, yes, but can you do it? He said, okay, I'll try. And sure enough, we got a five-week tour of America, playing every dive you can think of. And did people

show up? Very few people showed up. In the most significant club, which was in northern New York, four people showed up. But one of the four people was a DJ. In watching the show was a DJ. Okay. And he loved Roxanne. And he went back to Boston and he started banging that single. Wow. So all of a sudden, we ended up with a heavy airplay in one of America's big cities. And that got the attention of Jerry Moss, the M of A&M records, who didn't know from Adam who the police were. But you can see in Billboard, it said, the number one import record in the United States is the police,

and it had A&M next to it. Wow. So I get a phone call from Jerry Moss saying, I'm looking at Billboard, and it says the biggest import record is the police. Is that my record in America? I said, yes, it is. And he said, well, we better do something.

I said, yeah, you better. He says, well, get the band over here and we'll start working the record. And that started the police off. But it's still an A&M record, right? So how does your label IRS emerge? Well, IRS records probably would not have existed had it not been for the police. And when the police became really big, I all of a sudden gained a certain credibility as well because I had sort of masterminded, in their view,

this opening of the police to come and break America. And it was the first punk rock band that really sold some records and was really happening. But I then had these bands back in England who were saying, well, you know, what about me? So I decided I would go to Jerry Moss and do the same thing I did with the police in the beginning. I went to Jerry and I said, look, I've got a lot of bands that I've already recorded in England. I'm prepared to put my own money in, so I'm not going to ask you for a penny,

but I want to have a record company that A&M will distribute, and you can decide how many records you press, whether you're going to market it or not. It's totally up to you. I'm giving you the label for free, but you have to put out the records. And, you know, Jerry Moss would have sort of thought,

well, this Miles guy seems to be on to something. He's going to pay for the record. So, yeah, okay, we'll give you a label. label. And IRS records was formed. But what I don't understand, Miles, is you were, I mean, was it a joint venture? My understanding is that IRS was basically an independent record company, and you kind of worked with A&M as, you owned the master recordings as IRS records. They would then sell them and press the records in the United States and distribute them, promote them. Was that basically the arrangement? Yeah, I owned the records, but I,

I gave them the permanent distribution rights. And as it turned out, I probably had to do that to get Jerry Moss to say yes. So I made him a deal he couldn't refuse. And guess what? He didn't refuse. And I think that was one of the secrets for me. I mean, I say there were two things. Make a yes an easy answer.

And secondly, make something affordable. Because if it's cost too much money, you can't do it. So the punk thing was affordable. IRS records was affordable. Why wouldn't you have just formed IRS and just come to the U.S. and done it yourself? Why did you feel like it was important to have A&M as a partner? You know, to take a record to market in America, you need somebody to go to radio stations. You need somebody to go to the record stores.

You need an organization. America is a big country. So you could be huge in New York, but nobody has ever heard of you in Los Angeles. So I knew I needed, number one, I needed credibility. Number two, I needed some sort of team that could take a record to a marketplace. And I needed enough of a prestige that I could go to certain acts and say, look, we're distributed by A&M records. Yeah. And if you give me your record, I can give you major distribution in America.

And that's what they all wanted. So is that, and this was a time where bands made money from selling records. They don't anymore. make money from touring mainly now. But at the time, right, this was, you really wanted your band to just get big so they could sell lots of records. That was how they were going to make money. So nowadays, you know, people say, oh, well, you don't make any money selling records. Well, selling CDs, no, you don't sell a lot of records, you know, but Spotify now, because there's billions of people who signed on to it, that zero zero zero one cent times X billion actually is real

money. So you can make money now with having being on some of these platforms. But yes, the Grateful Dead sell more T-shirts, you know, than they do records. Sure. Kiss make a lot of money for merchandise. So depending on the artist and what their infrastructure is, you can make a lot of money from all sorts of different areas of the entertainment or music business. So essentially now, you've got this label IRS, which was based in London, right? And you had an office in New York, too, I think. Well, our main headquarters ended up being Los Angeles. Because what I realized is that I'm going to be flitting all over the place with the police or squeeze or whatever. I needed some team here to work the label.

So I had to make, like one of my first employees was a guy named Jay Boulberg. I couldn't pay him a normal salary. So I said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to pay you $100 a week, which was a joke. But I'll give you 5% of the record company. each year you stayed with a company for the first five years. So Jay ended up with 25% of the label. Wow. And I made him vice president of the label.

So for him, here's this kid still in college. And he's vice president of IRS records. The fact that he makes $100 a week, who cares? He's probably living with his parents, you know. Was this why? Because, you know, within the first two years, I mean, you would go on to sign REM, the Buzzcocks, the Beat. I mean, REM, of course, would go on to be one of the biggest bands in the world. Was he the guy that identified some of these acts?

He identified. He got into REM before I did. But, you know, most of the acts I signed. It was my record company, and eventually I relocated to L.A. All right, L.A., an important place for you to be, because there were some really important L.A. bands that you would go on to sign. Oingo Boingo. The Gogo's.

became the biggest act in the U.S. and one of the biggest acts in the world. Was there a lot of competition at the time to get these acts to sign? Were there a million ANRs coming to them from different labels trying to... Because IRS wasn't a major, major label compared to the other ones at that point. So how were you able to sign these bands? Well, I think the Go-Go story would answer your question. Because the Go-Gos wanted to be on a big record company. But nobody would sign them because they were all.

girls. And they say, like, and they did a documentary for Showtime a couple years ago, and they actually say, they said, we were rejected by everybody. Because we're all female band. Because they were all females. Yeah. So I went to Whiskey A Go-Go, and I saw the band play, and they were fantastic. And I looked around. There was not one single ANR person from another record company in the room. And I looked at it and I thought, five girls, how bad could it be? What a great hook. And I went backstage and I said, well, I'd like you to be with IRS records. Well, they thought, well, IRS records, it isn't a real record company. I mean, yeah, they've got I and M distribution, but we really want to be with a big company. So they said to me, well, okay, well, think about it. And then

they went around to all the other labels. And they said, IRS has made us an offer. We and I sign us. Everybody said, no. So they came back to me and they said, okay, we'll sign them with IRS records. But they were not thrilled initially with IRS records. And nor should they have been, because we really had never had a hit. But the reality was once the go-goes went to number one, the world woke up and we started having competition. But by then, we had already developed a reputation. And so we managed to continue to sign a lot of bands. But it got harder and harder as time went on. So this was the record you're talking about, I think, is beauty and the beat, right? The first go-go's record. Our lips are sealed and we got the beat. And that, I mean, I think they were the first

all female rock band to have a number one album on the Billboard charts. Well, they remained the only female rock band to ever have a number one record on the billboard charts. There have been plenty of singles that were number one, but never an album. They were a lot more important than people give them credit for because they really did open up the world to girls being able to play as musicians and they got to be huge. Miles, let me try to understand the economics of a record. label back in the early 80s, right? You have a band like the go-goes and you put out this record, Beauty and the Beat, which you know, you're financing as IRS and it just goes gangbusters.

It becomes a number one hit. At that time, how much money would a band like the go-goes make from that record? I remember writing a check for a million dollars at one point for them. Yeah. But of course, the first thing that happens, you know, people always talk about record companies and they always make them out to be evil people and all that, you know, which in some cases, it's true. They are, they are, yeah, sure. But there's just as many times as the groups are, because they're usually very young and they don't really appreciate the fact that,

you know, it takes a lot of money to make something successful. The first thing that happens when you get a number one record is you renegotiate your record deal. Yes, right. So when the police really started happening, well, of course, the lawyer comes to me and says, look, let's go to the record company and let's get more royalty. and all we have to do is give another record on the deal. So we did that many times with the police. So the go-goes after that record went to number one,

of course, their lawyer calls me up and says, well, we want to break the contract and we want more money and we want this. Well, we ended up in dispute. And finally, Belinda Carlyle calls me up and says, Miles, I don't know what's going on, but will you meet the band, just you and the band? No lawyers, no managers, nothing. And I said, well, great.

So we go and we meet and we realize, really, there's very little dispute between us, you know. And I remember writing a check for a million dollars. I said, look, we're happy to give you more money. Just give us a few more records. Of course, needless to say, they broke up on the third record. So those extra records I negotiated I never got. So, I mean, here's a thing, though, right? When you're running a record label, you always have to know in the back of your mind that, yes, you are putting

money up for an unknown band. But, you know, if you're smart and from what I've read in your books and about you, you are very tough negotiator. You got deals that, understandably, were in your favor. But you always know that once that band gets big, they're going to figure out or find a way to go to a bigger label. You always have to know that, right, in your business. Well, as somebody once said to me, if you want loyalty, get a,

dog because there is no such thing in the record business, you know, because everybody starts whispering in their ear, you could make a lot more money if you were so-and-so. Thankfully, I ended up with a good relationship with a lot of people we signed. But there were some people that I've never had a great relationship with because they just assume that if you're on the business side, you have to be a crook. Do you think, though, in order to be successful, Miles, in your position, right, running a record label, knowing that there's always going to be competitors and sharks circling the waters waiting for your bands to jump ship, right? And there's also, there's fierce competition.

This is the 80s when people are making a lot of money off record sales. In order to be successful, do you kind of have to be an SOB? Yes and no. The reality is, you know, everybody wants more later on. Do you think Jay Bobberg would have accepted $100 a week salary three years in and after we've had a number one record where the go goes, well, no. And so that's why a lot of labels never make it and why a lot of groups break up is that they imagine that things are going to be like it was in the early days. Well, it never is, you know. And I mean, I remember the REM deal. REM came to us at the end of the contract and said, look, you offer us the best deal. We'll sign with you. We love IRS. But we owe it to ourselves to go to the marketplace to see what

the marketplace will offer. And I remember with REOA. I had finally gotten to the pay the most money that I could possibly pay. So I went to Jerry Moss and he says, well, I'll contribute three million. And I was putting up three million. Anyway, I say to the group, this is what we'll offer. And they ended up between us and Warner Brothers. And then the manager and the lawyer come to me and they said, well, Miles, we just left the Warner Brothers offices and here's what they said.

Whatever Miles offers you, we'll double it. Yeah. I looked at the group and I said, here's my advice. Get out of my office right now. Go straight to Warner Brothers. Sign that deal before they change their mind. So 1984, you have a massive year. Four albums in the top 40.

You have the go-goes. You've got REM. You've got the police. That year would go on hiatus and that they never record another studio record after that. But I mean, I think by 84, they'd only sold like 75 million records. I read that Synchronicity sold 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. So this is a big year. Yeah, I mean, the police were a phenomenon.

Let's be honest, you know. I mean, I can say, all right, I've sold over 300, 350 million albums of all the acts that I work with. Well, you know, that's probably an underestimation. I have no idea. But it was a lot of records, put it down. Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of nutty because here you are running probably the hottest label, one of the hottest labels in the world. And your brother is the drummer of one of the biggest fans in the world.

And you kind of built this business up together. Yeah, we had, and my brother Ian had the FBI agency. Right. Your brother was a promoter and a manager. He was the biggest agent in the whole field of the new wave, you know. Are you close to your brothers? I know Ian is obviously. I was very close to Ian and very close to Stewart at the time.

My brother Ian unfortunately died. And Stuart, he and I don't talk very much anymore. But the reality was, yeah, we were on to something. We were at the right place at the right time. Yeah. And we did open doors for a lot of people. You know, I don't want to pry into your family affairs. It's just sad to me that you guys aren't in contact because you both helped each other a lot.

Yeah, no, I think we all, we recognize that. I mean, I would not be where I am if it wasn't for Stewart, if it wasn't for Sting, if it wasn't for Andy. And they wouldn't be where they are if it wasn't for me. So we have a history that is intertwined. All right, 1985, you leave your relationship with A&M and you move to MCA records. And from what I gather, from what you've written about, it really, you call this a missed opportunity that you really regret that you didn't figure out a way to continue working with A&M in 1985? What happened?

The reality is that sometimes you have a relationship that should be more important than just what percentage you're making or what money you're making. When I moved the label to MCA, we had a better deal. Yeah. We made more money per record. But we didn't have quite the same relationship. with that company. In a way, when I look back at it, I said, well, I think we probably should have stayed. I should have figured some way to remain there. You wanted to merge with them, right?

That was what you were hoping. Well, Jerry Moss, I wanted to merge with A&M and get shares in A&M. And Jerry Moss had said initially, yes, we'll do that. Then when I went in to finally make the deal, he said, well, we can't give you shares in A&M, but we'll buy IRS. And he quoted a number which was so low that I took offense and stormed out. What I should have done is saying, look, no, we won't do it, but we would like to, you know, with Jerry Moss, I had a relationship that was worth something. A&M received the money, A&M paid me, I then paid the act, and, you know, each of us made a piece of it along the way.

When we went to MCA, our piece was bigger. Yeah. But it was only bigger if you saw records. When we come back after the break, how the deal with MCA takes some unexpected turns, and how Miles' ongoing relationship with Sting also goes into some uncharted territory, including a ride in the desert in a jaguar. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

So in 1985, IRS record signs a new distribution deal with MCA. A deal, Miles thinks, will be better than his previous deal with A&M. But it doesn't quite turn out that way. What's interesting is, I guess one of the things that happened with this move away from A&M to MCA was you had more freedom to do more things. But I guess it also meant you increased your overhead because you were a lean operation. I mean, I think even into the mid-80s, you had like 12 employees at IRS, and you were bringing millions of dollars. All of a sudden, you had to double your team or triple your team. And I guess it really started to weigh on the business, right?

It started to really eat into your ability to run an efficient business to the point where it wasn't looking as profitable as it had been by 87, 88, 89. Well, the reality is that we were making more per record, but we needed to make more. her record. Yeah. And we needed more records. And unless the company we were being distributed by really rolled up the shirt sleeves and helped us. And we had the hits that we needed to pay for everything.

We would be short of money. Yeah. Well, one, we were having, we were facing more competition. Two, my staff was beginning to want bonuses and increases in salary and they were getting offers. And three, we were not getting the same support from our company doing the distribution as we had from A&M records. So, you know, your overhead goes up, your pressures on you go up, you start signing acts

that maybe you would not have signed had you been under less pressure. Yeah. But now you needed the sales. So sometimes you're telling yourself, well, I don't really love this act, but they're going to sell records, so I better sign them because I need the money. And when that starts happening, you kind of lose the idea that you, you know, the idea that you started with. You know, it's interesting. A couple years ago, we interviewed the founders of Sub Pop. And they were talking about how, you know, once Nirvana just like, once the single

smells like Teen Spirit just went crazy, every record label just converged on Seattle. And it became hard for labels like them to sign people because there was so much competition and there was so much money being thrown at acts that none of us have ever heard of because they never went anywhere. You know, did it become harder for you to sign acts over? time because of the competition? Yes. That is exactly what happened to IRS records, which meant that the money I had to offer to sign the act had to increase, which meant the risks increased.

And I think in the end, it finally killed IRS. And in the end, you say killed IRS, you were sold, you sold to EMI in 1994. They bought IRS estimated to be about $20 million. I mean, it sounds like a good outcome. Was that a good outcome for you? Yeah, it was a good outcome. but, you know, was it the outcome that I expected in the beginning? No. You know, would I have liked IRS to build and become a 100 million, 200 million,

yeah, but those days had passed. Right. So an IRS was essentially shuttered by EMI two years later with a few other labels. Yeah. By that point where you just detached from it, that it was not, you had no emotional connection to it at that point anymore? No, you have an emotional attachment, but you also have to be realistic. is that some of your people had gone to different companies. Yeah.

Some of the acts had left. R.E.M. left. The go-goes broke up. You know, so it changes. And, you know, you have to adapt with it. The police broke up after a period of time. You know, you're working with Sting. You know, you're working with...

So things change. In some ways, you're in control of it. In some ways, you're not. Was it... I mean, after you sold the M.I., I mean, you continued to manage Sting. You managed him, I think, until 2001. And then you would go on to found

and create other record labels. A lot of your focus was on world music and also some of the acts you worked with in the past. I mean, you never had any intention of just like taking the 20 million and retiring. This sounds to me like this was the next chapter. You were going to start something new for sure. What was I going to do?

You stop? Yeah. No, I mean, but, you know, as I said earlier on, one of the rules I had always followed was that you have to be able to afford something. Yeah. So which acts were affordable? They were ones where other labels had passed over them. They were acts that, you know, people had thought, well, maybe their day is over.

Therefore, their price would drop. World music was not considered a big music. You know, acts that sang in foreign language were not doing well in America. So you could pick up a lot of these acts for very little money. So a lot of the acts that I would sign later on in life were acts that were priced right. Miles, as you sort of through the 90s, you continue to manage Sting and sort of shepherded, you know, him through his love. Really, I think one of his last major hits, which was Desert Rose. Tell me about why that relationship ended.

Well, you know, what do you remember about that? Well, you know, it was funny that I have very fond memories of Sting. But I think he was under pressures as well. I remember getting phone calls from other managers saying, well, I'll bet it's the wife, isn't it? You know, I was located in Los Angeles now. I was married. I had kids. He's located in Italy or New York.

There was no real reason for us to separate other than the fact, well, you know, we'd been together for 25 years and maybe it's time, you know. I think Sting had was said, well, I've set miles free. But from my standpoint, I have no ill feelings whatsoever. One of the things that you did with him, which I read about, and I thought was so interesting, was he had the song Desert Rose. That was a, it was a song that he did with, what's the name of the singer? Shepmami. Shabmari, right. And so it's an Arabic and it's an English, a beautiful song. And, um, And that was really, it was a hit for Sting. I think it was his last really major hit.

And that song, in that video for that song, Sting is, you know, it isn't a car driving to the desert. The car happens to be a Jaguar. And apparently you contacted Jaguar before this song was released. And you said, hey, do you guys want to collaborate and push this song out? Right. And so it was really that Jaguar commercial that made that song huge. Well, again, it was a situation where we put.

out the album, we put out the single brand new day, and it did reasonably well. So I would go to the record company and say, okay, well, we've done okay with the first single. Let's go to the second single. It's got Desert Rose. And the label said, well, no, it's not a single because the opening voice on it is not in English, but Sting believed in the song. I believed in the song. And the Europeans said, well, we'll put the single out, but we have to have a video. So, we were given a fairly limited budget. We got a director involved and he decided on a jaguar

because it sort of looked like an English car and Sting's English. And it was a simple thing. Stinging Shabami in this car driving to Las Vegas singing this song. The video goes out. I'm looking at the video with Sting and I'm looking at this car

driving across the desert and them singing in Desert Rose and I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's a pretty nice car. And I realize as I'm watching the video, that we made a car commercial. And I'm thinking, well, I'm going to find out who the advertising agency is for Jaguar and see if I can get them to do something. So the next day, I call a friend of mine who was at one of the advertising agencies,

and they say, well, Jaguars with Ogilvy and Mather, so call them up. So I call up this guy who must have thought, who is this idiot? I said, look, hi, my name is Miles Copeland. I managed staying calling you to let you know, that we used your Jaguar car in a commercial of Sting's new album and I'm going to send you a copy of it and see what you think.

Yeah. Well, three or four days later, I get a phone call. We've seen the video. We'd love to do something, you know, and I said, okay, here's the deal. Your car looks fantastic. I have a problem selling the single. Now, if you make an ad,

it looks like it's selling the single, I'm going to give you the video for free. So then comes the team to New York to show us what they've done. It's an ad, so it shows the Sting and Shemmami singing the song and the Jaguar Girl. At the very end it says, Desert Rose from the new Sting album, Brand New Day. Yeah. And the day earlier, I had asked the Jaguar what they were going to spend on putting out that video. So they gave me the advertising schedule.

$18 million. Wow. Including an ad on the Super Bowl. And all they did was they just recut the video. That's all they did? They recut the video so that it looked like a commercial for Sting's record. I then go to the record company and I say, look, I've given the video to Jaguar. And they looked at me like, you idiot, you're supposed to get money from it.

And I said, okay, if you can match this ad budget, I'll go back to Jaguar and ask for money. And I threw down to the marketing director, the ad schedule, 18 million. The guy looks at it, his jaw drops to the floor. He had never seen a TV advertising campaign as big as that. It's just incredible. So when that ad came out, what happened? How did people react?

So when the ad came out, the record company still hadn't released a single in America. Fans started phoning up the radio station saying, why aren't you playing the new Sting single? And the radio stations would go like, what Sting single? The one with the, you know, Sting and the Jaguar and the desert and so A&M, which is now universal,

rush out the single. It gets 140 top 40 stations, goes to number 10 in the charts. It was the most successful tie-in ever between a product line and an artist record. and from now on nobody would say, which they did say to me, well, Sting's selling a song for a commercial, he's selling out. Right.

Well, that ended with that song. And Sting was fine with it? He didn't care? Sting wanted that song out. So he was, he's like, however it happens, I don't care. Yeah. You know, obviously there's so much you've done in your life and career and there's too much for us to focus on, you know, we can't talk about every single twist and turn. You tried film companies. You've tried a bunch of different things. You've done management companies. But I'm curious about something. How did you know, and even now, how did you know who to sign? I mean, you know, you are a music fan like anyone else. And maybe your music taste is a bit better than other people. But still, you're going to, you know, there's no way you can, any single person can have, you know, a perfect hit rate or even a better than a better than.

50% hit rate. So how did you know when you saw an act that you were like, I want to sign them? I had a very simple rule. Do I like it? If I like it, all I have to do is find enough people who are like me that also will like the act. Yeah. And if the price was right, you know, if I could hear an act like in the case of the B-52s, I wanted to sign the B-52s. Yeah. So I went to Jerry Moss. He wouldn't give me the money. So I didn't sign the B-52s because I didn't have. the money. But I loved them. And I thought they were great. But there were other acts that I did sign that I thought were great that I did have the money for. So that was my rule. The reality is that sometimes your own gut is your best judgment. You know, Miles, I'm curious. As you approach 80,

right? You're a couple years away from being 80. Yeah. You've a lot of perspective. You've lived, you know, a life that's given you a lot of perspective. One thing that surprised me a little bit. And I'd love to hear you kind of talk about this. In your book, you basically say that you assume the worst of people. That's your default. That you assume people are not good. You kind of always or generally expect things to go bad, which allows you to be pleasantly surprised when it goes good. So can you unpack that kind of philosophy around that outlook for me?

Well, you know, I say that partly as a joke. but the reality is it's true. You know, if you constantly look for good, you're going to find bad. If you know that bad is going to be there and you find good, well, then you're pleasantly surprised, you know. When money is thrown at something, it causes dislocations, you know, and sometimes people with the best intentions do the stupidest things. Yeah. You know, it's not a perfect business. Human beings are not perfect.

So I've always had the view that, you know, don't be naive. that's not to say that, you know, I just, I assume everybody is a son of a bitch from day one. No, that's not true. But you have to accept the fact that, you know, not everything is going to work out. And I think if you approach life thinking that everything is going to work out, you're going to fail. And I think you have to approach you from the standpoint. Look, things are going to get screwed up, but you've got to keep hammering it away at it, one way or another. And in that way, you'll succeed.

There's something else you wrote in your book, which as you described, you write, I could think that IRS Records was a very unlucky record label given all the acts I worked with. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, when you look at, you know, record contracts, you know, people always say, well, you know, you sign acts to five album deals and seven album deals and this and that and aren't the record company is really bad and there aren't they making all the real money, you know. Well, I look at IRS records and say, how many acts ever got to five records?

Only one. It was REM. Acts broke up after the first record, after the second record. We had a couple acts that got to the third record, the go-goes, for example. Fine young cannibals broke up after the second record, which reached number one in the U.S. charts.

Yeah. They never made another record. So you think, well, a minute, in a perfect world, if you'd had a number one record, which was your second album, you would think you would at least go to album three or four or something, you know. So I said that Iris Records was unlucky in that respect and that we had one act that actually went to distance. And you think of acts like the Moody Blues and these and that, they're still putting out

records, you know, the Grateful Dead. You know, a lot of these acts are still doing things, you know. A lot of the punk bands have disappeared. You know, you mentioned IRS as an unlucky label, but I wonder when you think back in your career and, you know, everything that happened from Beirut, basically, you know, a guy grew up in Beirut. And then you became this major label guy and founded several labels and introduced these massive bands. You know, if you think about the 80s, right, the bands that you signed and that you put out into the world had a massive global cultural impact. it's a pretty big accomplishment. Do you attribute your success to the hard work you put in,

or do you think there was some luck involved as well? I think that no matter who you are, there's always an element of luck. You know, are you at the right place at the right time? Do you make one decision that really works? My title of my memoir was, you know, two step forward, one step back, my life in the music business, was really to say, look, you know, you're going to make mistakes.

and you have to accept the fact that you're going to make mistakes, and that's part of it. So, you know, I would say overall, yeah, was I personally lucky? Yeah, I have to say I was lucky. Did I have things that I say were unlucky? Yeah, but you can't dwell on those things, you know. I have to say, well, overall, I did it fine. Yeah.

What's one song that should have been a hit that wasn't a hit? Let's make it a hit now. Let's revive it. What was the song? Oh, I have. Now you're pushing. I'd have to go through, and there were probably many, many of them. But I would rather not say.

But sometimes I'll go to a restaurant and I'll be eating and I'll hear four or five songs come across the radio. And I think, wait a minute, I was involved in every one of those songs. Yeah. And those are moments that I think, well, you know, I did have some significance after all. That's Miles Copeland, founder of IRS Records. And yeah, I get why he didn't want to choose just one song that could have been a hit. But if I may, I think there could be a case made for going down to Liverpool by the Bengals. Check it out. It's a great song.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt at ID.wondery.com. On Twitter, you can follow us at How I Built This, and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, we're at How I Built This, and I'm at guy.ros. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtin Erebley. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. Our intern is Susanna Brown.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.