Record Label President
Parlophone and Virgin Labels, UK

Miles L

President of Parlophone & Virgin Labels

00.03

Hi, I’m Miles L I’m the President of Parlophone and Virgin Labels UK. The thing within the role, its always very exciting when you find a new act, or you hear a new demo or hear some new music and you follow up on that and I think that aside from that there’s nothing more exciting than when you see then that one of your artists starts to have hit records and actually starts to have the success that you hoped that they would always have or what you feel they really deserved to have. We went to meet Tinie Tempah, he talked to us about many aspects of not just about his music career, but his ambitions from his merchandise or clothing range, or his studio or the label that he wanted to set up and find new people and just immense ambition and I think we signed him in November and we had a number one record in February. And then the attention just blew all through that year, 2^nd single went to number two, 3^rd single went to number one, the album went to number one, I mean everything just happened so quickly for him and, and very well deserved.

01.21

My mother is very aware of the arts and my mother is very integral in introducing me to a lot of things in film and art and photography, and, and she probably actually doesn’t know that. But from a very early age, you know I remember, I don’t know I think probably about 10 or 11 and making me sit down and watch Midnight Cowboy you know  and I remember, she said you have to watch this film which I look back now and just think they are absolute classics and so she was very important and integral in helping me to find the love and excitement in, in, in art. When I say film, art, photography, music all those sorts of things

02.03

And I sat in my careers meeting and said, and they said well ok what do you want to do, and I remember saying I want to work in a, do hair dressing or work in a shop in the Kings Road or something like that. And it was very much well okay, wonderful Miles, but forget about that, let’s talk about Panasonic or whatever it was up the road. That actually, I realised and recognised then that it was so narrow minded and I thought no I want to do this more than anything, but I just didn’t know what, is it music? I just didn’t know how you get into any of these things. How do you get in? It seems this world that just happens and so I hadn’t a clue what to do so left school and became a plumber.

02.44

As I was a plumber I was going out and buying new music and finding new bands to go and see, I was interested in new music. So I thought that should be the place I should go in. Suddenly I started to realise that actually anyone could get in, it wasn’t sort of the chosen few it was about whether you had real passion for it and you didn’t take rejection and you kept pushing until you got a foot in the door. And then eventually somebody said, come over and see us and gave me a job.

03.21

You know I remember when I first started as a scout and thinking one day, just one day I could be the head of A&R and it seemed so far fetched, you know to be Head of A&R and now being able to work across Parlophone and Virgin, two labels that you know I always admired before I worked here. And in fact actually years ago I got fired from Virgin about three years after I started. A real sense of pride when actually they said well actually can you come and run Virgin and it was like, you know after being told you’d never work there again. So the fact that I’m still here and I’ve had twenty years working in music, you know, I feel immensely fortunate.