Rupert Perry’s Story of Manchester Square, 1987. Recorded at the EMI Archive, 2nd October 2013.

The Trust would like to thank Rupert Perry, who has kindly agreed to be the first person to contribute a memory to our Memories of EMI Campaign.

RP: It was a momentous day, it was a momentous week  because we charted a No. 1 single, video and album, and that was huge to be  No. 1 in all those three categories at that time

…It was a nice sunny day, so it must have been springtime. Of course, this is the 20 Manchester Square building that is no more.

But because we were going to be No. 1 for single, album and video, I organised with Tony Rice-Oxley (Senior EMI executive)  that we should have this celebration, and part of this celebration was that everyone in the company would be given a glass of champagne.  Hence, the reason you see some of the people in the company standing with their glass of champagne.  And I remember Tony Rice-Oxley pushing his trolley along all the floors of the building, serving champagne to everyone…(laugh) going up here…. look at all these floors.   And then, and I  can’t remember how it came about, how we had this photo taken, I think it was taken by Peter Vernon?   And here we all are, and it’s a wonderful photo.   At the time, I wanted to really celebrate this unbelievable moment of success, and that’s why we had everybody out of the windows, and had everybody having champagne, and we had all these signs up; it was great!

JH:  And you have everyone…I thought this was just a photo of the Snr staff, but you have everyone security…

RP: That’s right …office staff, everybody ran out.  We had everybody out there, we had all the way up… it going to be fun when you put this up and see what the responses are.

This is David Hughes. Next to Martin Haxby is Tony Wadsworth, between Martin and David Hughes is Nick Gatfield, who is the present head of Sony in the UK, and there’s Andrew Prior, between me and Malcolm Anderson, the man in the tie who was probably head of sales at the time.

…But the man between him is a man called Chips Chipperfield, who’s no longer with us.  Chips Chipperfield worked for this company, PMI (Picture Music International), which was the video company which we had. The other thing about Chips is that he went on to work virtually exclusively for Apple and The Beatles; he was very involved with putting together The Beatles Anthology series.

umm I’m trying to see… the man on the left is  Malcolm Hill, who now lives in  Australia, and next to him a guy called Mike Andrews …. I’m not sure where he is.

It was a wonderful occasion, and this was 1987; I had arrived in 1986…. It’s very important to celebrate success, and this was a great moment of really celebrating success.

Interviewee:      Rupert Perry

Interviewer:    Joanna Hughes

2nd October 2013 at the EMI Archive.

Rupert Perry joined EMI Music in 1971, and after six years, in 1976, he was made Vice President of Artist and repertoire for Capitol Records in the US. In 1982, he became President of EMI America. Between 1986 and 1995, Perry served as President of EMI Records UK, followed by a promotion to President of EMI Europe until 1999, when he became Senior Worldwide Vice President of EMI Music. He has received various awards for serving the world’s music industry, including a CBE in the Queen’s Honour List and the IFPI Medal for international service to the industry.

Main Image: Left to right – Malcolm Hill, Mike Andrews, Malcolm Anderson, Chips Chipperfield, Rupert Perry, Tony Wadsworth, Martin Haxby, Nick Gatfield, David Hughes, Andrew Prior

Celebrating No. 1 Single, No.1 Album and No.1 Video, EMI Records, Manchester Square, 1987. Courtesy of the Rupert Perry Collection