Mr. Beese, as a music executive and record producer, what does your role in the studio look like?
There's this clip of Anderson Cooper interviewing Rick Rubin, and he asks Rick, “What do you do? Do you play an instrument?” He goes, “No, I don't play an instrument. I don't even know how to produce technically. “ And Anderson asks, “What do you do then? What do people pay you for?” And Rick says, “My taste.” That’s the same for me, I have taste, I have confidence in my taste, and my palate is broad.
As an executive at Island Records, you were responsible for signing some of our generation’s greats: Amy Winehouse, Florence + The Machine… How did you gain that confidence in your own taste?
I think that comes through experience, through your love of music and what you listen to and what you're in tune to, it just grows with you. For me, I’ve always loved voices, ever since I was a kid, whether it was Bob Marley or whether it's Billy Holiday, or Mahalia Jackson, Curtis Mayfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, or Led Zeppelin. Those are voices. And I think that helps you recognize when you’re hearing a voice. Amy Winehouse, that’s a singular voice. When that comes along, it’s very easy to say that a voice like that is going to be successful. You’d like to think that you can spot those things a mile off.
“It really is a once in a lifetime moment when the human being and the voice and the lyric and the melody all come together to create something special.”
Have you ever been wrong?
I’ll tell you what, I had a chance to sign Ed Sheeran at one point, because he’d won this songwriting competition we put on at Island, where the winner would get a singles deal. So he won, this little redhead kid with his loop pedal, and his manager came to me and said, “Well, I know Ed's won it, but we don’t want a singles deal. We want an album deal.” And I went, “Who does this kid think he is?” So I said no! And he showed me, didn’t he? I remember a few years later, he was playing a show with another artist I liked, so I went to see them. I saw him backstage and I asked him, “Is there any conversation we could have?” And he said “Nah, I’m signed!” (Laughs)
Do you regret not signing him, or other artists you might have missed an opportunity with?
No, I don’t think you can live life like that! If I take the heat for not signing stuff, then I’ll also take the heat for signing stuff that was spectacular.
How often does that spectacular, singular kind of artist come along? With Amy, for example, that seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Oh, yeah. You’re giving me goosebumps just saying that! She really was that once in a blue moon talent. Maybe when we were in the sixties and seventies, you could walk down the street and trip over them, but nowadays, it really is a once in a lifetime moment when the human being and the voice and the lyric and the melody all come together to create something special. What I loved about Amy was how impactful her lyrics were, how eloquent she was, her personality. When I heard her voice on a demo, it really stopped me and made me go, “Who the fuck is that?” Her music is the stuff that lasts. I've had a hand in music that’s just sugar rush, microwave stuff. But Amy was a timeless artist. I think anybody can sign anyone if you're given enough dough, but to do what Amy and I did… To be around that… I mean, I was just grateful to be in that orbit at that time.
You weren’t just in the orbit; you made the orbit! You joined Island Records as an intern, and eventually worked your way up to CEO.
That’s true, I mean, people say things like, “Oh, you’re so lucky to do what you do,” and to me, I think you create your own luck, you create your own opportunity. It doesn’t happen by accident. Like you said, I was a hairdresser when I was a teenager, and I was cutting rich white women’s hair, and that allowed me to express myself differently in a room of people that I'd never been around before. I figured out how to communicate. That’s what I mean by making your own luck, because that ability to communicate and network, that really helped me down the line.
There’s a great line in your memoir, Rebel With a Cause, where you write, “When opportunity knocks, you need to be ready to run with it. What use is luck if you don’t capitalize on it?”
Exactly that! Growing up, especially as a young black boy back in the seventies in London, there wasn't that many opportunities. I mean, I was never going to go to university. My parents were both activists, they were both freedom fighters, part of the Black Panthers, working so that I could have a run at life, right? I knew that I couldn’t waste the opportunities they were making for me by hanging out with my mates after school. I was really good at meeting people — I guess we would call that networking today, and I was good at creating those opportunities and using them to make the next step. So when I got the job at Island, I didn’t waste it.
“My journey took two decades. I had to have the most significant failures to have the most spectacular successes.”
Do you think your success as a record producer and executive has helped open the door for the next generation of young black creatives or tastemakers?
I don't think that's played out yet. I do have a lot of people coming up to me saying, “I saw you in that position, so I knew it was possible for me,” and I think that’s great. I want young people to have a path with more understanding, more empathy, without bias. But I also don't want people to be fast tracked, right? I don't want women or women of color or young black men to be fast tracked in the glow of DEI or BLM or MeToo. It still needs to be earned. Because people that got fast-tracked were never given the right tools or enough experience, and ultimately that isn’t a great thing as time plays out. My journey, my trajectory took two decades, and I had to learn the art and craft of making records, I had to learn the art and craft of managing people. I had to have the most significant failures to have the most spectacular successes. And that can only happen if you have life and work experience.
Having been involved in this industry for so long, are you finding yourself becoming jaded at all? Or has your faith in music and its industry been unwavering?
Oh, I still have a visceral reaction to music. Some things in life have changed, but that has stayed the same. Growing up, I was always just a fan of music. I was an only child, so my my companion was my Walkman, right? Lyrics, melody, a chord change meant so much to me that I didn't need to be able to able to play anything! And I still feel that way: music is always going to be the key to my life. If I didn’t believe that, or if I thought the music industry didn’t have a future, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I can’t be jaded because the actual music, that's what gets you up in the morning. The business process is what depressed you, and even success you didn't enjoy because you had to repeat it. So in order to get that dopamine, to get that moment of, “Oh my God!” you just have to go to the studio to hear new music, good or bad.
One thing you have lamented is how there are fewer artists making protest songs these days, fewer artists really speaking the truth through their songs.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have powerful music these days, you’ve got guys like George the Poet, Hozier’s “Take Me To Church,” there’s PJ Harvey, or U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” or Demi Lovato’s “Commander in Chief.” It’s important that you have acts that stand for something. Some labels want to sign acts and have hits and make money, but I want to sign acts that make music that means something, who are standing on a hill for something. I don’t expect everybody to think that way, but I was brought up in the struggle, so I understand that records should hold a message and tell truth to power. That’s my responsibility, and that’s a responsibility I took on when I started running the label.
What kind of advice would you give to musicians who want to make music that matters?
If you treat music as pop, you’ll be a pop act. Treat music as art, and you’ll be an artist.