Jazz Summers obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/24/jazz-summers

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The music manager Jazz Summers, who has died aged 71, was best known for developing the pop duo Wham! – George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley – who under his guidance became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 1980s, and the first western group to tour China. Summers moved on from Wham! to work with a long list of successful musicians, including Coldcut, the Orb, the Soup Dragons, Lisa Stansfield, Soul II Soul and, in more recent years, Snow Patrol, Badly Drawn Boy, La Roux, Scissor Sisters and London Grammar. Between them his artists sold more than 60m albums and 72m singles worldwide, and amassed more than 100 top 40 chart hits worldwide across the globe.

The main vehicle for his music business activity was Big Life Management, the company he set up in 1986 with Tim Parry, and a record company, also called Big Life, created in the same year. But the force behind his success was an abrasive, often intimidating persona and a combative loyalty to his acts. Gary Lightbody, singer with Snow Patrol, described Summers as “a lion” who could “make grown men cry”. But he saw Summers as “essentially a kind man with a big heart” and said: “If you’re part of his pride, he will fight to the death for you.”

For the most part Summers did not deny that he had a sometimes frightening demeanour, but claimed he had calmed down in his later years. “Years ago I was a drunken, drug-taking, screaming loony,” he said. “Today, I’m much more Zen ... I was never really violent with anyone in the music industry. Except one day, this guy was being a complete arsehole in our folk club – I picked him up and threw him down the stairs ... I still don’t take prisoners easily or suffer fools gladly.”

He could be modest about his achievements and was particularly sanguine about his huge success with Wham!. “When nobody knows you, you’re a wanker,” he told the record industry journal Music Week. “When you get your first act away, you’re a genius. If you get a second one away, you’re probably a crook. Then when you get fired, you’re straight back to being a wanker again.”

Born in Winchester, Hampshire, into an army family, Summers was sent at the age of 12 to Gordon’s school in Woking, Surrey, which had a military bent. He joined the army three years later and worked as a radiographer in Hong Kong and Malaysia before coming back to Britain in 1968 after more than a decade in the forces. He had played the drums in jazz bands while in the army and on his return made a living as a session musician and with semi-professional bands while also working as a hospital radiographer. He turned his attention to part-time management of punk and post-punk bands in London in the mid-70s, eventually giving up his hospital job so he could focus full-time on music.

His big break came when he took on the management of Wham! in conjunction with Simon Napier-Bell, helping Michael and Ridgeley to extricate themselves from their original recording contract. Wham! released the worldwide 1984 hit Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go during his tenure, and scaled the heights of pop music. In 1985 he helped make sure that Wham! were chosen ahead of Queen to be the first western pop outfit to tour China, and he was especially adept at marketing the duo in the US.

Asked how he had achieved success for so many of his British artists across the Atlantic, Summers explained, with typical bluntness: “There’s only a few managers in [the UK] who know how it works out there and I’m one. There’s a way in which you break the US. You’ve got to put the time in, you’ve got to do it right, and you’ve got to make the Americans believe their own bullshit.”

Wham! broke up in 1986, and Summers moved on to pastures new. Among his most successful subsequent signings were the Wigan band the Verve, whose third album Urban Hymns was a global hit in 1997. Summers later argued that the Verve’s success was in part due to the record industry allowing the group time to develop over their first two albums – in contrast to the trend in recent years when budgets for such growth have been reduced significantly and, he believed, led to a reduction in the quality of the music.

In 2003 Summers was presented with the Peter Grant award, which recognises outstanding careers in music management, and four years later he walked away with Music Week’s Strat award, for individuals “who have single-handedly changed the shape, direction and thinking of the music market”.

Despite his fearsome reputation, Summers was known for his support of good causes within the music business. He became chairman of the Music Managers Forum and campaigned for musicians’ rights within the industry through the Featured Artists Coalition. He was also involved with Julie’s Bicycle, a charity that promotes sustainability in the creative industries.

Summers is survived by his fourth wife, Dianna; by his daughters, Katie (with his second wife, Angela), Rio (with his third wife, the singer Yazz) and Georgia (from a relationship with Ineka Burke); by his granddaughters, Claire, Lila and Rose, and by his brother Don.

• Gordon “Jazz” Summers, music manager, born 15 March 1944; died 15 August 2015