Bernard Rhodes

Set the scene. You and Malcolm. What was the dynamic?

The big difference between Malcolm and myself is this — Malcolm and I knew each other way back in the '60s. We spent years together, worked together, and we worked fantastic together. Out of it came terrific things. The difference between us, why it worked, is that he always wanted to be part of the establishment and felt that he wasn't allowed in, although he was great. And I never wanted to be part of the establishment. I always wanted to be the alternative. I thought that was a great place to be. So dynamic, worked good together.

So what happened that day on Wardour Street?

I had this meeting with someone from the establishment — but not really, because he was a crazy guy. He was sent from America to set up Columbia Records here. His name was Maurice Oberstein. Going into the history of the guy, he was an interesting guy, he just wanted to run it like — forget it, do what you like.

So I was walking down Wardour Street, I was quite early, and I bumped into Malcolm. And Malcolm looked really depressed. Normally he's quite a happy guy. So I said, what's the problem? We went for a coffee. We used to work on ideas all the time — I'd come up with something, he'd add to it, he'd come up with something, I'd add to it. And we came up with this idea to start a record label and put all these unknown groups onto it. Mainly down my studio — the Sex Pistols, The Clash, loads of different groups. Onto one label.

And you just walked in?

We went round there and just walked straight to the lift and went upstairs. The receptionist wasn't too happy. We went in and we put it to him — this label. Game over for everything.

So Obi's sitting there, and he said, “Okay guys, how much is it gonna cost?” And Malcolm said, “A million pound.” Well, in '76 a million pound was a lot of money. A million pound's a lot of money now. Twenty pound's a lot of money.

Obi thought about it, did some notes, calculated and whatnot. And he said, “I'll give you 800,000.” Malcolm said to me, “No, we're walking out. I want a million. If I don't get a million, that's it.” So we got downstairs and Malcolm says — “Bernard, lend us a fiver.” I said, “What do you want a fiver for?” He said, “The cab fare home.” The cab fare home. And I said, “Do you know you just turned down 800,000 pound?” He said, “Did I?”

But how does that make him not part of the establishment — he just walked away from £800,000?

That's the dichotomy. Life is a dichotomy. A paradox. You just have to fall in love with a girl, find out. But he wanted to be the king. I always wanted to be the person on the outside. He wanted to be the insider that everyone acknowledged — and the only way he knew how to do that was to refuse the terms they offered. Which means he never quite got there, but he never quite wasn't there either.

Did he end up being too much of an insider in the end?

I don't want to talk about Malcolm too much because he's not here. I love Malcolm. He's a great guy. We did fabulous stuff together and I have very little negative to say about him — except that he continued to try to rip me off, but that's another story.

On Maurice Oberstein — “Obi”

Columbia Records' London chief in the mid-seventies, Maurice Oberstein was one of the industry's genuine originals — sent from America, ran the operation on instinct rather than committee, famously available and informal in an era when record label heads were anything but. He later became chairman of the BPI. The meeting Rhodes describes — two men walking straight past the receptionist to pitch a million-pound punk label — would have worked with almost nobody else in that building.

And that's when you went and did The Clash instead?

That's when I got sober. That's when I did The Clash.