Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [99]
Now, in 1984, Q Prime was on the hunt for new blood. Mensch had been a keen observer of the NWOBHM scene, had circled Diamond Head in their earliest, still exciting days, but had been shooed away suspiciously by Sean Harris’s well-meaning but desperately inexperienced manager-mother, Linda. ‘Mensch offered us the chance to open for AC/DC at two shows in Newcastle and Southampton early in 1980,’ Brian Tatler recalls. ‘Afterwards we had a little meeting with Mensch in the dressing room while he told us things about how the music business worked. We were very impressed, avidly listening, and it occurred to me, wouldn’t it be great if Peter managed us. But Sean’s mum and [her partner] Reg probably tried to keep us away, ’cos if [Mensch] had got involved he’d steal us away from them.’ Mensch had also been in discussion with a young Marillion, then on the verge of major success with EMI, but again was rejected not because of any perceived lack of knowledge or experience, but rather the opposite. ‘Peter Mensch was very urbane, very American, very obviously big time,’ recalls former Marillion singer Fish, ‘and I think, still being so sort of parochial in our tastes in those days we were offended by all that.’ As with Diamond Head, Mensch’s can-do demeanour proved too much for the more homespun British five-piece who signed with a manager less high-powered but more on their level personally. In both cases, it might be suggested, the bands would live to regret their decisions as their careers never quite reached the heights achieved by so many others who did have the courage to sign with Mensch and Q Prime.
One American metal band that went through a very similar experience with Q Prime in the mid-1980s and never regretted it is Queensrÿche. Like Metallica, Queensrÿche’s first, eponymously titled EP had been released on their own independent 206 label in 1983, while the band was managed by record store owners from their hometown of Seattle. The band was picked up for a major deal by EMI America but two albums into its career, despite rave reviews in America and the UK, career-wise felt it was essentially treading water. Enter Q Prime, who Queensrÿche singer Geoff Tate now describes as ‘extremely valuable’ in getting the band to the next level. Says Tate, ‘They had such clout and muscle as far as being able to demand what they felt was best for the artist. In regard to the record companies, the production, going on the road and doing deals with promoters, you know, clout with MTV. They were very well respected and they had success under their belts and so people listened to them. They didn’t have a lot of opposition to their plans, and so, yeah, it was a big plus to have that kind of muscle.’
Of the four albums Queensrÿche would release over the ten years they were managed by Q Prime, the first three went platinum in America – not through putting the pressure on the band to make any commercial adjustments to their sound, Tate hastens to point out. Quite the opposite, he says: ‘Q Prime had a very simple philosophy, and that is: follow your muse. Follow what it is that you want to do artistically and that will always be your calling card. At the end of the day whether you sell records or not you still have the fact that you followed your artistic calling.’ The key lesson Mensch and Burnstein preached, he says, was ‘“Never ever listen to anybody. You didn’t listen to anybody in the beginning and look where you are. So follow what it is that you want to do.” And I liked that immediately. Upon meeting them that was the thing that really struck me, that they weren’t gonna sit there