Dave Robinson helped Island Records sell 44 million Bob Marley albums and launched many music careers.
"No man is an island," as the renowned 16th-century poet John Donne once wrote. Yet it was an Irishman who played a key role in transforming Island Records into a tremendous success during the 1980s.
Legendary music figure Dave Robinson took over as president of Island when big acts were jumping ship at a time when the label was still reeling from the untimely death of Bob Marley.
It looked like Island was sinking fast, but Dave was able to turn things around thanks to new signings such as U2 and Frankie Goes to Hollywood — along with, of course, his brainwave to bring out the Bob Marley Legend compilation that sold 44 million copies.
"The Bob Marley Legend album is on my CV — I’m the man who made a ‘Legend’ out of Bob Marley!" he joked.
"I really liked Bob Marley and I found out Island had not sold a lot of his records really. He was kind of a cult figure rather than a big crossover artist at that time. I was a bit amazed by this because I was doing Madness at the time and Madness were outselling Bob Marley. I thought, ‘How can this be? Madness are great, but Bob Marley is an absolute genius.’
"So, I put the album together and I did a worldwide marketing campaign for it. And it’s done phenomenally well. It still sells 2 million units a year. I’d love to have had a part of it, but I was a salary (staff) member, so I didn’t get a royalty."
The co-founder of Stiff Records signed a huge amount of bands for the label — such as The Damned, Motorhead, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Kirsty MacColl, The Pogues, Madness, and Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
An excellent raconteur, Dave — who once shared a flat with Jimi Hendrix and then with Van Morrison, whom he also briefly managed — says himself, "There’s a funny story pretty much about every record and every artist."
So, let’s here some of them…
But first things first. How did Dave get into the muisc biz in the first place? Growing up in Drumcondra, Dave first started out as a photographer, taking snaps of The Stones and The Beatles during the Swinging Sixties, which he recalls as a time that he "realised I remember the scenes were really unpleasant."
He also realised many of the bands he photographed got up to no good and "hanging around with them and taking a few pictures was a lot of fun”. He added, “But The Stones were constantly putting their hands over your lens, not wanting you to take part. Even though they had agreed to allow photographs, The Stones really didn’t enjoy it.”
Dave’s next big music assignment was of Van Morrison with his then-band Them. "I photographed Them a lot — Van Morrison being (from) Belfast and everything, I got the gig to do quite a few photographs of them. "I’ve had a lot of interesting flatmates."
What was it like being close friends with Van The Man?
"Well, ‘close friends’ with Van is a difficult thing. We shared a flat for a while. And, yes, we did become friends. But he’s a difficult man — although what a genius. But difficult to communicate with. He’s not very chatty."
The musician Eric Bell, who was briefly in Them before he went on to join Thin Lizzy and famously wrote Whiskey in the Jar, once told me he left Them because he didn’t enjoy working with Van. "He likes tormenting people! I think that’s what it is," he said, laughing.
Speaking of ex-flatmates, Dave also lived with Jimi Hendrix.*"I mainly was there when he wasn’t. So, yeah, I did share his flat for six months. It’s a very small flat. It just has two bedrooms. I’ve had a lot of interesting flatmates," he said.
"But I’ve never been pushed about celebrities much because my every day was made up of celebrities that people would like to talk to — and a lot of them were not always that super friendly when you got them up in the morning!"
Dave might’ve never been starstruck, but he admitted he was really impressed when he first met Jim Morrison. Dave was walking along the streets of LA with his flatmate Jimi Hendrix when they stopped to talk to a guy that he presumed was just another fan of the legendary guitarist.
But it turned out that the stranger was the iconic singer of The Doors. "How naive is that! I just thought it was a fan who liked Jimi. I wasn’t quite aware who Jim Morrison was. I knew The Doors but nobody had said, ‘That’s Jim Morrison of The Doors,’" he recalled, laughing.
"So, I’m looking at this great-looking guy in leather pants talking to Jimi. I’d just come from Ireland, so I had never seen anybody in leather trousers! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. And of course, they were very tight!"
After giving up photography, Dave got into managing bands and single-handedly created a network of 35 pubs in London where acts could "play what they wanted" and this became the forerunner of punk.
He then built a recording studio above the legendary Hope and Anchor Pub in Islington and started up Stiff Records with Jake Riviera back in 1976. It was Stiff Records’ idea that the up-and-coming English musician with Irish roots named Declan Patrick MacManus should change his name to Elvis Costello.
"I was fairly amazed that he allowed us to present to him the idea of changing his name and changing his look with the glasses and stuff," he recalled.
And then, for good measure, Dave managed to get Elvis locked up overnight in a police cell at a time in his life Music career when it looked like, as the old adage goes, he couldn't even get arrested!
“We sent Elvis down to busk outside a conference happening in London at the time. It was before the Troubles, and there wasn’t any anti-Irish sentiment. But I suppose the Irish accent gave them something to think about, and they went down, arrested him. But he wouldn’t stop playing, even as they put him in the Paddy Wagon.”
