When the drugs change, the music changes. That was my big takeaway from this book. And maybe it works the other way round as well.
If you want to see how drugs and music have run in parallel over the years, read Black Vinyl White Powder. Simon Napier-Bell was there for a lot of it. He managed the Yardbirds, Japan and Wham!, among others. This is his inside story of the British music business from the 1950s onwards, and he doesn’t hold back.
He has some fascinating stories. The managers, the hustlers, the deals and the hype. It’s funny, it’s candid and it’s often a bit shocking. Plenty of the people who built the business were chancers and dealmakers, every bit as much as the artists were stars. And the money rarely went where you’d expect.
If you work in any kind of business, that part is worth reading on its own. Talent was never enough. The artists who lasted usually had somebody in their corner who understood people, timing and the deal. The ones who didn’t often got eaten alive. Different industry, same lesson: people buy people, and the people around you matter.
Every era has its sound, and its drug
The idea at the heart of the book is simple once you see it. Each era of pop has had its drug, and each drug has shaped the sound and the business around it.
Think about how different the decades sound. The tempo, the length of the tracks, what people wanted from a night, how long the night lasted. Napier-Bell lays out how much of that was shaped by what was going round the scene at the time. Change one and the other follows.
And then there’s the other way round, which is the bit I keep chewing on. Does a new sound pull in a new crowd, with its own habits? Or does the crowd arrive first and the sound grow up around it? I don’t think there’s a clean answer. Both things feed each other, and the business sits in the middle trying to make money from whichever comes first.
I’ve been DJing since 1987. I’ve played parties, festivals and raves. I’ve watched scenes come and go and seen the records change with them. So a history that joins those dots was always going to grab me.
I should be clear. This isn’t a book that glamorises any of it. There’s plenty of damage in these pages. Plenty of people paid a heavy price. Napier-Bell writes with a dry sense of humour, but he doesn’t pretend it was all fun.
It’s bigger than drugs
Here’s why I think it’s worth reading even if you’re not that bothered about music history. The real lesson is about context. What surrounds something shapes what it becomes.
That goes for technology too. In 2000 I put four of my own tracks on BT’s getoutthere site. It was one of those early websites where anyone could upload music and people voted. A lad from Southampton making beats in his room, and strangers on the internet were listening. A few years earlier that couldn’t have happened. The tools changed, so who got heard changed.
Look at your own world through that lens. Your business, your industry, your team. What’s changed around you in the last few years? The tools, the money, the way people buy? The work changes to fit, whether you notice or not. The people who do well are usually the ones who spot the shift early and move with it.
Napier-Bell spent his life spotting the next shift, and that’s a big part of why the book works. It’s one man’s view from the inside, warts and all.
It’s an older book now, and I read it a long time ago. The big idea has stuck with me ever since.
You’ll find it in the music chapter of my free guide, 50 Books That Shaped Me, with the other stories behind the records.
Give it a go. You won’t hear the charts the same way again.
