Music In The Air: 50 Years of Albert Productions
When Rose Tattoo’s Angry Anderson was bailed up by star-struck fans of the band, like Metallica and Aerosmith, and quizzed on their sound, he had a simple answer: “It’s the Alberts’ sound. It’s that power chord and instantly recognisable riff, that big fat Australian guitar sound.”
While the blue collar Australian hard rock sound is certainly instantly identifiable with Sydney-based Alberts, a new Five-CD box set celebrating the label’s 50th anniversary tells a different story. The 102 tracks on Good Times: Celebrating 50 Years Of Albert Productions traces how the company always had its antennae directed at the latest trends.
The Alberts empire began in 1885 when Swiss immigrant watchmaker and musician Jacques Albert set up the publishing company. The firm became J. Albert & Son when his son Frank joined, and expanded into selling musical instruments (including Boomerang harmonicas) and sheet music. Jacques went to America and scored the local rights to top-selling catalogues including that of Irving Berlin.
In the 1960s, Ted Albert (Frank’s grandson) noticed that Sydney’s clubs were packed out with teens buzzing on rock music and surfing. He set up Albert Productions as its recording arm to sign up local acts. He became its managing director and producer, working with A&R chief and co-producer Tony Geary.
Ted Albert
From the 1960s beat scene came the label’s first Top 10, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs’ Mashed Potato (three words in the whole lyric and the first of the band’s 11 hits) as well as The Missing Links and The Throb. Then there was a band of newly- arrived teen immigrants that Ted’s agent friend Mike Vaughan had started managing; The Easybeats. A man who worked on instinct, Ted attended a private showcase, heard the songs penned by George Young and Stevie Wright and signed them within days. At this stage the Harry Vanda and George Young team hadn’t even written Friday On My Mind. A rarity unearthed on the boxed set is an early Easybeats outtake that Ted recorded at 2UW Radio Theatre on George Street, which the family owned.
The Easybeats
The Countdown glam-pop boom yielded hits from John Paul Young, Cheetah, Stevie Wright and William Shakespeare. From the glory days of pub-rock came AC/DC, the Tatts, The Angels, TMG and Choirboys. The disco pop of Love Is In The Air, written for the German market, became a much covered international hit. The current roster reflects the post-triple j landscape.
The box set includes tracks by Alex Hood, The Imagination, Dallas Crane, Knievel, Seabellies, Flash and the Pan and its latest release, Doc Neeson’s rendition of Flash and The Pan’s Walking In The Rain.
Between 1974 and the early 1980s, Alberts commanded 20% of Australian chart action (an astounding feat for an independent) with a strong international strike rate. Agrees its CEO, David Albert, a 43-year-old fifth generation family member, “There was a period in the ‘70s and ‘80s, where few labels in the world were as successful and making an impact on music culture as Alberts.”
Like the rest of Alberts, the label operated as a family business, private, conservative, hard-working and never flash with money. When Vanda and Young took over as in-house songwriting and production team in the early ‘70s, they had a set of priorities for any act they worked with. They needed musicianship, integrity, a strong work ethic and a sense of self-belief to sell their music around the world.
But just as important, emphasises Fifa Riccobono, who worked at the company for 36 years, the acts had to fit into the family. “You could fight among yourselves but you would always protect each other,” says Riccobono who started as a 16-year old and took over as General Manager when Ted died in 1990 of a heart attack. She later rose to Executive Director of Music. “There were no budgets. It was a spendthrift company. They looked after their pennies. But they always did what they thought best. They never skimped.”
AC/DC, for instance, took six years before they turned a profit with 1980’s Back In Black, which has currently sold 48 million copies worldwide.
AC/DC
Working at Alberts was “24/7, it was so exciting,” Riccobono points out. “They were the most unbelievably active company you could come across.” With its own studio built in 1973, acts had the luxury of always being able to write and record. It was always booked out. For an independent with a small staff, it would be no stretch to work five major albums within a 12-month period. AC/DC recorded three albums in less than two years.
For Alberts veterans as Riccobono, the excitement was seeing unknowns like AC/DC come into the offices for the first time (“Malcolm and Angus were very quiet. Angus barely said boo. He’d just have his cup of tea”), and watch them build up – from early killer shows in Sydney to a crowd of seven, to playing to a million fans at Moscow’s Tushino Airfield and before 450,000 at Rock In Rio.
In 2006, when David Albert took over the music division, the challenge was to build on the legacy built up by Ted Albert (and, of course, from Vanda, Young and Riccobono) and adapt to the global music industry of the 21st century. “To step into those shoes was daunting. But the business had changed so dramatically and we had to create our own story.”
Head Of Creative Philip Mortlock recalls that as a long-time executive with Warner Music Australia, “I used to look at Alberts with great envy. They had an incredible grip on Australian music like no other company at that time. They had so much going for them. On a professional level, what was grating was that AC/DC were signed to Atlantic Records for the world except in Australia. We at Warner had Atlantic but we didn’t have one of their biggest band. As I said, envy but also with great respect. I had to pinch myself when I started working here. I’d spent years admiring them.”
Alberts today has positioned itself as a leading rights management company, using its hub of artists, songwriters, composers and producers, and with long-time contacts with sub-publishers and international contacts. Says David Albert, “We see our strengths as having a studio and an active record label and a 120-year old publishing business.”
Adds Mortlock, “Having both the master and publishing rights gives us an edge. Even as physical sales have gone down in the industry, rights management becomes more important as music is heard in so many ways. Our international strike rate especially in sync has been very good.”
Australian artists such Wally DeBacker (Gotye), Josh Pyke, San Cisco, Megan Washington, AC/DC, Tim Levinson (Urthboy) and Lee Groves as well as internationals such as David Guetta, Jasmine Ash, Ellie Goulding and Fred Riesterer have expanded their careers with their music heard in wider areas than simply chart action from CD and download sales.
There are no plans for a DVD around the label’s 50th anniversary, but some video clips will surface online.
A 50th anniversary concert? Replies David Albert, “We’re taking to a few people about that. But the Alberts way is to let the music do the talking and tell the story rather than do anything over the top.”
Meantime last month Screen Australia announced funding for a two-part documentary for the ABC called Let There Be Rock: The Story of Alberts Sound. It will be made by Sydney-based Beyond Screen Productions.
Good Times: Celebrating 50 Years Of Albert Productions is released on August 15 with stories and images in a 48-page booklet. The full Alberts story is also told in House Of Hits — The Great Untold Story of Australia’s First Family Of Music by Jane Albert (Hardie Grant Books).