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Artist and Repertoire – Drawings by Mike Smith, head of Columbia Records, 19th October
Not content with being, as he puts it, “a kid from Birkenhead who ends up signing a few decent bands and then gets given Columbia Records to run”,... Mike Smith is also a pretty brilliant artist. Having drawn inspiration from pretty much every gig he’s been to, it’s been our pleasure to wade through thousands of Smith’s images (head of Columbia Records = a whole lot of gigs) to bring together an incredible selection for your viewing delight.
Beginning his illustrious career as a talent scout for MCA Music in 1988, Smith later joined EMI Music in 1992 and rose rapidly through the ranks due to impeccable taste and superlative scouting skills. Having signed Supergrass, Doves, Avalanches, Starsailor, The Libertines, The White Stripes, Gorillaz and Teenage Fan Club before moving on to assume his current role as MD of Columbia Records, it seems Smith is something of a talent guru. Did I mention he’s also an artist? A really good one?
Produced as fine art prints, the collection for this exclusive exhibition spans 20 years of musical magic and includes the likes of Bob Dylan, Blur, Faithless, Elbow, The Doves, Kasabian, The Gorillaz and many more besides.
The first of its kind and a unique event, this exhibition should on no account be missed, forgotten, stood up or otherwise unseen. If you’re the thorough type, you can even check out Smith’s enviable blog at http://mike-columbia.vox.com As the editor of the book that accompanies the exhibition says
Behind the glamour of actually finding your name on the guest list is the truth that much of the life of an A&R - or Artist & Repertoire - person involves waiting around for something to happen: standing in the queue outside the venue; killing time before the band come onstage; sitting around in the recording studio so you can hear the finished mix at 4am; endless hours in cafés listening to plans of world domination which end in a midweek chart position of 41.
Mike – or Michael, as I’ve known him all my life – has never wasted a moment of this lost time. While the rest of us made small talk, practiced our leather-jacketed, arms-folded stance at the back, or discovered new and exotic lagers, Mike had his pencil out. Like all those who continue to thrive in a business, which very rarely makes any sense, Mike has always maintained an exuberant optimism. No amount of cynical asides from people like me can steer him off course. Sure, he now gets to draw Angus Young or Bob Dylan but he’ll just as soon get his sketchpad out and draw a first-on-the-bill nobody. And not in the hope of them one day becoming huge – indeed there are several artists in this book whom he probably sketched out of sympathy. No, he draws simply for the love of it.
It’s not really accurate to brand the pictures collected here sketches. Sketch implies something roughly done, an impression or imprecise rendering, a bit sketchy. Mike’s pictures are bold and precise, each line, like a tracking shot in a Robert Altman film, knowing where it’s going in one graceful swoop without stopping for a jump cut or a bit of self conscious cross hatching.
I suspect Mike’s drawing style, much like his A&R success, comes from his left-handedness; left-handers, they say, are better able to hold conflicting ideas in their head concurrently. Certainly the idea of a senior music executive sharpening a 2B pencil at the bar is not something you see every day.
For a while I toyed with title ideas for this book, which cleverly alluded to left-handedness. I’m afraid I wasn’t clever enough and anyway I was always destined for failure because of course, Morrissey had already used the best one. Artist and Repertoire, it is then and for those of you unfamiliar with what it’s like being on the guest list every night, I promise this book will put you in the picture. Without any waiting around.
Throughout the exhibition the artists are captured in intimate settings including Alex James of Blur who says: Looking over these images, intimate pictures of so many iconic figures of the last couple of decades I shudder to think what a similar undiscovered collection of photographs might be worth. But this wonderful collection of drawings is so much more than that: the result of years of patient study. Some people smoked, some drank themselves into a comfortable fug but whatever was happening, Michael was always drawing. He often has an intimate relationship with his sitter, and the careful strokes of his pencil always seemed to invite intimacy, rather than chase it away like a camera might. some of these pictures I hadn’t seen for years. How many memories they evoke, tumbling cascades of nostalgia and quiet explosions of mirth. This is a unique collection: a perfect picture of the last great days of pop through the eyes of an insider.
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