Alan Edwards: The 'godfather of modern music PR' on working with David Bowie, the Beckhams and The Rolling Stones

As the founder of public relations agency The Outside Organisation, Edwards, 69, has worked with the biggest names in the business. The list is long and impressive: Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Shakira, Naomi Campbell, Michael Jackson and more.

When Victoria and David Beckham married on July 4 1999 in Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland, it was Edwards who brokered the reported seven-figure media deal for coverage of the wedding.

His career has seen him labelled the ‘godfather of modern music PR’, and with years of experience and the stories to match, Edwards has released the book I Was There, which follows his career from the punk scene of the Seventies through to setting up his own PR company and beyond.

In many ways, you could say the book had its early beginnings as far back as the Eighties, because Edwards is someone who was “always writing stuff down”.

“I was always a collector of bits and pieces, and I was always writing stuff down. I’ve kept a desk diary every day now for 50 years. It’s a work in progress. Also, I found when I was touring, particularly in the early Eighties, because you didn’t have social media then, you didn’t have mobile phones, you were really on your own.

“So if you were in a bus in, I don’t know, Milwaukee on a Monday night, (it) could be pretty miserable, and it could be quite lonely, and often you’d be staying in hotel rooms, and so I started to, I’d often just write stuff down. And I realised, of course, at some point, say with The Stones and with Bowie, this is important. It’s culturally significant.

“I used to trot the stories out, or trot is the wrong word, but I used to tell the stories often to journalists really, when we were on trips, or when we were waiting outside in a hotel room, we were in a bar and someone hadn’t turned up, and it was sort of, just be a way of passing the time. And everyone would always say, ‘Why don’t you do a book?’ and it just sort of built to a crescendo. I thought, well, yeah, I’ll just do it.”

He collaborated with pioneering musician Bowie, who died in 2016, over nearly four decades and writes and speaks about him fondly.

Bowie taught him the importance of preparation, he recounts, telling an anecdote about the 1999 Newsnight interview the Ziggy Stardust singer did with Jeremy Paxman, in which he famously spoke about the impact the internet would have on society.

“David was very wary, he said ‘I don’t think I should do it’. I said, ‘No, you should do it, they have a cultural slot, it’s great’. David did actually say if it goes wrong you’re fired, he could be quite tough.

"But he worked out that Jeremy was into fishing. David knew nothing about fishing, but he went down to Waterstones or whatever, got a load of books on fly-fishing.

"He made sure that when he turned up for the interview, he just happened to have a book on fly-fishing in his pocket showing and he sort of talked to Jeremy about, ‘Oh, the new salmon season started, or whatever’. And you know, ‘What kind of bait do you use?’.

“And the other thing I learned from David, he had amazing optimism, he hardly ever got negative about things.

"And if stuff went wrong, you know, and he had his ups and downs, he got dropped by record companies, it wasn’t all plain sailing, and in the Nineties, it was a struggle for him.

"At one period, he was a bit out of fashion, but he’d always be looking forward and positive. He didn’t dwell on the past, and he wasn’t a blame type person.”

Starting out, Edwards describes himself as a “music obsessive”, a trait which would serve him well as it turns out.

He was inducted into the PR Week Hall of Fame in 2017 and also fronted the BBC’s Music Moguls programme in 2016, and in 2018 also appeared in another BBC series, Hits, Hype & Hustle. Given his impressive client roster over the years, has he ever been starstruck?

“No, and it’s funny I should say that so emphatically. I mean, I didn’t come into it interested in famous people. I was really a music obsessive. I was listening to music all day, going to every band. This was even before I was in in the job,” he says.

“I think if I had been starstruck, I probably couldn’t have done the job, because you’re just chucked in at the deep end. Suddenly, I’m on the road with The Rolling Stones and in a room with them, and if I got nervous, they’d sense it. So you sort of have to be able to just be an immediate part of the gang.”

What does he attribute his longevity in the industry to?

“People often say, what do you need to do the job? And one of the first things I say is stamina. It’s a really tough job,” he says.

The job can also be mentally and emotionally challenging, and a “built in sense of survival” helps.

“I never had a Plan B, and I never wanted a Plan B… I knew what I was going to do.

"There was never, (it) never entered my mind that I wasn’t going to do it, so I didn’t really care what went wrong, how I got fired, I still got up.

"You have to be, I mean, again, going back to the Bowie thing… to achieve, anything, you know, politician, whatever, footballer, you have to have a sense of optimism.”

I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll by Alan Edwards is published in paperback by Simon & Schuster