I would argue the buck stopped with manager Simon Napier-Bell, he was responsible for the characters he employed as PR agents. It’s fair to say that he was coming from a bygone era and it was time for a change but he wasn’t about to make it. I don’t think it could have been much more ludicrous than it was. Spinal Tap couldn’t do it justice. The idea that any press is good press was, in the innocence of the 70’s & 80’s, still a concept, and making the press listen seemed to be a measure of how good a flirt you could be. It appeared desperate, without any dignity and treating the public like morons. And it stained everything. A PR might argue that attaining press coverage is what made the group successful but that’s not the reality. No one holds onto sensationalist storylines for more than a few minutes of curiosity then it’s forgotten, or it becomes a token piece of worthless knowledge: “oh yeah isn’t that the guy that ….’ etc. and is most likely mocked. It does nothing to further a musical career. It’s short-sighted, like downing relentless tequila shots so you don’t sober up to realise everything’s shit. Keep creating a headline because no one’s actually buying the records, but maybe they will if there’s something … anything in the newspaper. Pour another tequila. That’s how the PR functioned. Must have been hard work but not at all representative of the essence of what the group hoped to achieve. Yes, we liked looking a certain way that might’ve warranted some attention by older generations but that’s just youth expressing itself. Our actual job was to focus on making music, and PR’s job was to make the public aware of it, but we were two completely different machines thrown together by default under the misguided concept that we were aiming towards the same goal but were in fact in different ballparks. Most of us made a speedy exit from that as soon as the band disbanded.
