Key Songs In The Life Of… Darcus Beese

MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have – so far – defined their journey and their existence. Compiling the playlist of their life this time is Darcus Beese, the Island exec who helped break Amy Winehouse and, during his stint heading up the label in the US, signed Sabrina Carpenter. He now runs his own independent company, Darco Recordings. The Key Songs In The Life Of… series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.

It would be bordering on clichéd and right in the bustling heart of obvious to say that the selections made by MBW’s Key Songs guests represent chapters in their lives.

But it would be entirely accurate and completely justified to say that, in the case of Darcus Beese, they don’t just represent but, in fact, are chapters in his new book – Rebel With A Cause: Roots, Records and Revolutions.

Having spent 32 years at Island Records (from Promotions to A&R, then UK President before taking the helm in the US in 2018 and eventually leaving in 2021), there are, of course, a couple of artists from that fabled label in the mix (tape).

They happen to be Amy Winehouse and Taio Cruz, but if he’d wanted to fill all seven slots with tracks by acts he’d either signed or worked closely with, he could have chosen from Ben Howard, Bon Jovi, Demi Lovato, Dizzee Rascal, Jessie J, Florence And The Machine, Mumford & Sons, Shawn Mendes, Sugababes, Taio Cruz, The Killers or U2.

Or Sabrina Carpenter, who Beese signed in 2020 as part of what he describes as a zag against the zigs strategy. “When I went to America, TikTok and data signings were blowing up, and we were losing deals left, right and centre. I couldn’t compete with Interscope, I couldn’t compete with Republic, I just couldn’t afford it.

“So I thought, you know what, we’re going to go our own, separate way. And we went and signed acts like Remi Wolf, Baby Rose, Keshi, and of course Sabrina Carpenter.

“The tactic was to create a roster that might come to the fore in the next three or four years. You look at Sabrina Carpenter, and you look at Remi; I signed them in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

“If that’s the time it takes, then that’s the time it takes. I find artists by thinking in terms of development rather than data. And those two artists, for me, bear out what I was doing at that time.”

Since he returned to the UK he has launched Darco Recordings, a label which was initially a JV with Warner but is now a fully-fledged independent.

“music still matters, people still experience profound moments through music, they still buy tickets for shows, so the future is healthy, we just don’t know exactly what shape it will be.”

He’s in no rush, however, to make headlines – instead concentrating on developing artists (but, again, no rush). He says: “The landscape is tougher. The industry seems to be re-setting itself, including Universal, Sony and Warner. But music still matters, people still experience profound moments through music, they still buy tickets for shows, so the future is healthy, we just don’t know exactly what shape it will be.

“The delivery system, in terms of technology, is different now and might change again, but some things remain the same: the patience you need for the development of an artist; the importance of gigging and putting in your 10,000 hours; finding your community.

“There will be another Ed, there will be another Amy, there will be another Adele, because if there’s not, let’s pack up and go home and a record label will just be a catalogue. Today’s music has to be catalogue of the future, it’s got to be substantial – and at the moment I’m not sure it is. That’s why I think the next five years will be interesting in terms of finding out what people believe in.”

Here, chapter-by-chapter, track-by-track, artist-by-artist, is as good an explanation as any of what Beese believes in…

1) The Specials, 10 Commandments (2019)

The Specials were probably the first band that I saw on Top Of The Pops that I recognised as me and my mates, in terms of being multicultural, black and white guys hanging out for the same reasons me and my mates were hanging out.

Their first record was the first album I bought and Too Much Too Young was the first single I bought. Decades later, when I got to America and I was running Island over there, Johnny Chandler [A&R & Cultural Projects Director, Universal Music Recordings] did a deal with The Specials, and he knew how much of a fan I was. And I mean fan in the true sense, as in fanatic. I’m religious about that band and Terry Hall was my hero, God rest his soul.

So when Johnny said they needed an American release [for Encore], I was in, of course. Putting out a Specials record was bucket list time for me. One of the best things about running a label is that sometimes you just get to do what you want [laughs].

And then when the guys were in town, they came to the office and I got to meet them, which was such an honour. Forty years after buying that first album, I got to tell them how much they’d meant to me, which I’m sure they hear all the time; they’re that sort of band.

I also got to see them at Brooklyn Steel, and that was the first time I got to see them live – because I was just a little bit too young – although I do remember that incredible Rock Goes To College show that ended in a mass stage invasion by all these little skinheads!

2) Public Enemy, Fight The Power (1989)

This was one of those records where the sonics, the lyrics and the visuals, the Spike Lee video and the film, Do The Right Thing, provided the perfect collision.

That was a period where I was coming into my own, and that record gave me a sense of purpose.

The John Wayne and Elvis part, hearing that for the first time was incredible – it still is. This was a band who showed no fear, who made really angry protest songs. Where are those records these days?

When I first heard it, I was a promo assistant/tea boy at Island and I was reading the Malcolm X autobiography at the same time. I probably came across as quite edgy!

I suppose I was still trying to figure out what I stood for. Again, that might be alien to some people, like, ‘Why not just have a good time?’ But being young and Black, there were certain records that inspired you and helped shape you, and this was one of those records.

3) Bob & Marcia, To Be Young Gifted And Black (1970)

As you get up in the mornings, and you go about your day, you’re reminded from a young age, that maybe you’re not that gifted. And that maybe being the colour you are is a problem.

I grew up with undiagnosed ADHD, so I was often told that I was nothing special when I was in school – that I wasn’t going to amount to much.

And at the same time, race was a central part of growing up in the seventies and eighties. So when I had my children, who are mixed race, I wanted them to be proud of their mixed-race heritage, but I also wanted them to not be mistaken – to be aware in no uncertain terms that they are going to be seen as Black. Because of that, this was a record that I always used to play and sing to them.

4) Talking Heads, Once In A Lifetime (1980)

This is actually chapter one in the book. It starts with me in America, in the summer of 2020 and, as I say in the opening line, I had COVID of the soul; I couldn’t smell or taste music anymore.

I don’t know whether it was George Floyd, Trump or just America, but the rose-tinted glasses were off. Going to run Island in America was a once in a lifetime moment for me, but in the end… be careful what you wish for.

As the song says:

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’

That’s where I was at that time. I often used to wake up in the morning and think, ‘How the fuck did I get here?’ [laughs]. I used to live on the Upper West Side and I would get up in the morning, cut across Broadway, walk across the Central Park, and honestly think, ‘How the hell…?’

There’s also the fact that one of the ways I found alternative music was through the sampling of those records by hip-hop artists. So it was Sugar Bear’s Don’t Scandalize Mine that gave me the route into Talking Heads.

Sample culture’s always been brilliant and has led me to interesting artists. I remember when I was massively into The Beastie Boys and Rhymin And Stealin samples When The Levee Breaks, which made me start buying Led Zeppelin records – which I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done otherwise!

5) Linton Kwesi Johnson/Poet and the Roots, It Dread Inna Inglan (1978)

When other kids were listening to Mud and Showaddywaddy, I was listening to Linton Kwesi Johnson, because he was part of the movement that my mum and dad belonged to.

He’d written Man Free for my Dad (Darcus Howe, described in Beese’s book as an ‘irascible social commentator, writer, broadcaster and former Black Panther’), so I was tuned in from an early age, lyrically, musically and politically:

Come wat may

We are here to stay

Inna Inglad

Inna disya time

This record, for the Windrush generation and after, was saying, As bad as it is in England, we’re here to stay. So, while I was tuned into the Top 40, of course, I was also listening to this.

And Linton was the reason why I signed George The Poet. If you look at the legacy and the blueprint of Island: Linton was signed, [Jamaican dub poet] Mikey Smith was signed even before Linton, so in terms of lineage I thought it was an important signing.

I knew Linton from when I was about seven or eight, and you can actually hear me on this record. At the end, there’s a recording of a demonstration in Bradford, and I’m shouting ‘Free George Lindo’ [The record is about Lindo who was framed and jailed for robbery in 1978; cleared and freed in 1979].

Linton reflected how we were all feeling at that time. And he’s still relevant now.

6) Amy Winehouse, Rehab (2006)

If you’re an A&R person, you’re on this path, and you want it to lead to the perfect record: what would the perfect record sound like?

You’re always going, ‘But why can’t it sound like this or that record?’ Back then we were all running round saying, ‘I want it to sound like Lauryn Hill’.

I remember flying out to New York to see how Amy and Mark [Ronson] were getting on. As I was flying out, Amy had news that her Nan was ill, so we were going to miss each other.

In the end, we literally had a few hours on the ground together. We met up at Mark’s studio on Mercer Street, and I was hearing the music that would become Back To Black.

The first one that they played was Rehab, and the demo wasn’t far off from the version that the world heard.

You could just tell. You always want those moments when people go, ‘Where were you when you first heard it?’ Or when someone calls you and says, ‘You need to come to the studio and hear this’. Well, this was one of those moments.

I was like, holy shit. I don’t think they even got past the intro and I said, ‘Yo, stop it, rewind it, play it again’.

It was one of those moments where you know. Actually, you don’t know what you’re hearing, but you know it’s something special. Part of you is thinking, ‘Is this amazing?’ I think it is, but it’s so different, it just hits you.

And then they played Back To Black, and You Know I’m No Good. We went downstairs to the bar to have a quick drink, and Amy asked, in her unpretentious way, ‘Do you think it sounds alright?’ [laughs].

7) Taio Cruz, Dynamite (2009)

This record doesn’t get the flowers it deserves. In fact we had two records, Dynamite, which was No.2 in the US, and Break Your Heart, which was No.1. The success he had in America, as a black guy from the UK making R&B pop, it was just incredible.

Making those records which go around the world, it’s fucking hard! And Taio doesn’t get enough credit for that.

The great thing about the job I do is the ability to soundtrack people’s lives. And Dynamite, for me, is one of those songs where you know what period of your life you were in when it came out, it has that quality – and that applies globally.

We have our hits in the UK, we have our hits in Europe, but those records that you send around the world are special.

So yeah, I think just for the ambition of it, it’s a really significant record.