New EMI owners caused record label split

Posted on December 2nd, 2007.

Radiohead refused to sign a new deal with EMI when the company went under new management.  Ed O’Brien claims that new owner of EMI, Guy Hands,  prevented them from signing a new deal.

Radiohead ended their long association with the company earlier this year and decided to find other partners to release their seventh album ‘In Rainbows’.
Guitarist Ed O’Brien said the band were keen to do a deal with EMI but added: ‘EMI is in a state of flux. It’s been taken over by somebody who’s never owned a record company before, Guy Hands and Terra Firma, and they don’t realise what they’re dealing with. It was really sad to leave all the people [we've worked with]. But he wouldn’t give us what we wanted. He didn’t know what to offer us. Terra Firma doesn’t understand the music industry.’O'Brien’s comments, made in an interview with the Observer Music Monthly to be published next week, are the latest blow for Hands and his private equity company Terra Firma, which paid £2.3bn for EMI in July.


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Would old EMI have offered exactly what Radiohead wanted anyway?

Sam
December 2nd, 2007

they probably would have, Sam.
seeing that they’d seemed to be quite open-minded and supportive of the band’s ideas…Kid A with no singles, the tent tour, not selling the albums by track, but the whole albums only, etc. etc. i mean, even OK Computer was considered a commercial suicide prior to its release, but EMI went with it anyway.

Sunny
December 2nd, 2007

Guy Hands .. lol
Girl Hands

Marko Knezevic
December 2nd, 2007

Was Guy Hands one of Jerry’s ex-girlfriends on Seinfeld…. oh wait, that was Man-hands! haha

nella evets
December 2nd, 2007

Pfft. Guy Hands. That’s class.

jeeves
December 3rd, 2007

I can’t imagine EMI would have been cool with the ‘pay-what-you-like’ idea.

Sam
December 3rd, 2007

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