For decades, British bands like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Wham! and even the Spice Girls have dominated the music industry and made countless millions for themselves, their record companies and their managers. For behind each of those bands was a guiding hand, a Svengali, protecting, promoting, persuading and occasionally punishing on the band's behalf. Some of those managers became almost as famous as the bands themselves. Brian Epstein was a household name while Malcolm McLaren, Don Arden and Peter Grant became infamous. Others like The Clash's Bernie Rhodes and Pink Floyd's Steve O'Rourke were happier out of the limelight, but they shared the same strange devotion to their upstart charges. "Guns, Cash and Rock 'n' Roll: The Managers" celebrates this special breed - often flawed low achievers but true believers, hard-nosed wheeler-dealers and schemers who were as at home talking to drug dealers and the Mafia as they were to corporate lawyers. Of the twelve managers featured, at least five of them were drug enthusiasts, while others liked having guns to hand.
Four of them died young - one committed suicide, one may have been murdered. Two others escaped a premature death by the skin of their teeth. Although times have changed and Simon Fuller has given us a masterclass in twenty-first-century management, one thing remains the same: like the bands they ran, the managers were all world class.