Part I
By Vincenzo Esposito
There's a man beyond the "The Famous Charisma Label", a man that all fans of English progressive rock still love. There's a man under the “Mad Hatter” (and the other characters “stolen” from Alice in Wonderland) of its logotype. That man was born Tony Stratton-Smith, in Birmingham, in 1933, but very soon, for his pals, he became simply “Strat”.
The day of his funeral, in 1987, Keith Emerson played an original composition called “Lament to Stratton-Smith” in front of the cream of prog: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Peter Hammill, Carl Palmer, Alan Hull. The Monty Python - who had nothing to do with the “dinosaurs” of progressive music, but had something to do with Strat – were also there. It was his big family, the family of his label: The seriousness of Genesis, the grandeur of Keith Emerson, the creativity of Peter Hammill, the surrealist joy of Monty Python. That family had been the quintessence of Tony Stratton-Smith.
Still very young, during the ‘50s, he had started to work as sports journalist for the Birmingham's newspaper Gazzete. Then, he ran after his passion for soccer to Fleet Street in London, the capital of British press, where he became editor for the Football Annual Magazine. The glittering atmosphere of “Swinging London” brought him into the (new) music, and the Beatles made the rest…
In the middle of the ‘60s Craven Cottage (Fulham FC) and Stamford Bridge (Chelsea FC) were no longer his favourite places, instead he became familiar with the capital’s music clubs: the Marquee, where the Rolling Stones made their first ever live performance on 12 July 1962; The Ufo Club, where the Pink Floyd were often booked; and the Speakeasy, where the Clash's Joe Strummer would be beaten up by a teddy boy and lost a tooth.
90 Wardour Street, the Marquee’s address at the time (now it is in Upper Saint Martins Lane, Covent Garden) used to be his second home, and its manager, Jack Barrie, his best friend in London.
During the last years of 1960s, Marquee was the best place to listen to rock music: Pink Floyd, Yes, Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience all the way from Seattle, USA.
During one of those memorable nights of 1967, Tony met Keith Emerson, and fell in love with the music he played with his first band, The Nice. When their former label, the Immediate, closed down, Stratton-Smith decided it was time to enter the Music Biz. He became the manager for The Nice, but was not able to find a record company that would release an album. Thus, in 1968, in Soho, he opened up the Charisma Records. But Emerson and the Nice had to wait a little longer, because the first single he released was Sympathy, by the British pop group Rare Bird, and the hit reached the UK chart #27.
[Watch Rare Bird’s Sympathy at Top of the Pops]
In an interview with Armando Gallo Strat said: “Rare Bird were different…They spoke a new language and had a new spirit”.
“New” was soon taken as Charisma’s password. Everything Tony was going to produce had to be “new”. Rare Bird, Nice, Lindisfarne, Atomic Rooster, Van Der Graaf Generator, Genesis were “new”. And definitely “new” was also the idea of releasing the “Comedy Records” of Monty Python, from 1971 to 1979.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
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