Island Records founder Chris Blackwell: ‘I’m interested in what’s different’
Chris Blackwell, who built Island Records into one of most tasteful, artist-friendly and successful labels in music history, will quickly admit that, along the way, he made some grave mistakes.
After seeing a formative Pink Floyd perform, he commented to a colleague “that’s the worst thing I ever saw in my life.” Upon meeting a young Elton John (then going by his birth name, Reg Dwight), he couldn’t imagine how such a shy and self-conscious kid could possibly become a viable live performer. And when Procol Harum tried to grab his attention with their unreleased song Whiter Shade of Pale, he thought its 5-min length made it unmarketable. More, he hated the use of the word “fandango” in the lyrics.
“I blew that one for sure,” Blackwell said with a warm laugh to the Guardian. “But I have no regrets.”
And why should he? Blackwell’s record of discovering and nurturing epochal talent vastly overwhelms any bumps along the way. He candidly details both his hits and his misses in a highly readable new memoir, The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond. The dizzying list of stars it covers spans
