Veteran British music PR Alan Edwards spoke solely to PEOPLE about his life with among the largest names in music, together with David Bowie, the Spice Ladies and Amy Winehouse, plus David Beckham”David offers me a hug. And naturally that was the final time I noticed him,” he tells PEOPLE in regards to the final time he met David Bowie earlier than his loss of life in January 2016“I felt I’d type been within the presence of form of greatness,” he tells PEOPLE about his first assembly with David Beckham
David Bowie at all times contacted his media adviser Alan Edwards in London simply earlier than a brand new album was about to be launched. However when the decision got here from his assistant Coco about his final album, Blackstar, there was extra urgency than typical.
“She stated, ‘Do you suppose you can (meet) in a few days?’ [I thought] he have to be actually enthusiastic about this report,” Edwards tells PEOPLE.
Once they met, the singer was watching the film The Good. The Dangerous, and the Ugly. “We’re flipping right into a little bit of Blackstar from time to time. And he begins telling me these nice tales in regards to the Nineteen Sixties when he was beginning out in golf equipment and ducking and diving. So I used to be matching him with a number of of my tales. And it is actually, actually good enjoyable, actually intimate,” says Edwards.
Later, they have been out on the street and “David offers me a hug. And naturally that was the final time I noticed him,” he continues. Bowie died in January 2016 — simply two days after the album was launched.
“He was most likely extra poorly that day than I spotted,” Edwards provides. “I suppose he needed to say goodbye to me. You by no means know what folks actually take into consideration you. You possibly can’t take it with no consideration. And I might labored for him for almost 4 a long time. And possibly that was his form of goodnight.”
Alan Edwards with David Bowie, left.
Courtesy of Alan Edwards
The poignant second is recounted in Edwards’ new e-book, I Was There. In it, Edwards — one of many U.Okay.’s best-known and best-connected, music PRs — offers an insider’s account of life alongside artists together with Blondie, The Spice Ladies, The Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse and Prince.
Edwards says that regardless of his worldwide fame, Bowie may mix in and be “regular.” As soon as, they took a practice to Manchester in northern England: “We weren’t in top quality. Folks could be pondering ‘It will probably’t be David Bowie.’ He would carry a Greek newspaper underneath his arm and sometimes put on a cap so that folks would suppose he cannot be David Bowie,” Edwards tells PEOPLE.
After a BBC radio interview that day, Bowie requested if he may learn the visitors stories on air. “So he spent the remainder of this system telling folks in regards to the pile-ups on the M6 [freeway], or there’s delays on the M25. I do not suppose anyone picked up on it.”
Alan Edwards with Debbie Harry, left, and Chris Stein, proper, of Blondie.
courtesy Alan Edwards
Blondie has been one in every of his longest-running shoppers — and it started with Edwards displaying some PR hustle on one of many group’s early visits to the U.Okay. in Jan. 1978. “On the finish of the gig, I knock at their altering room door and I say, ‘I might prefer to be your PR.’ Chris Stein opens the door and he simply appears to be like at me. Then he leans again into the dressing room and he says, [Edwards breaks into a NY accent] ‘Hey Debbie, this child needs to do our pr. What do you suppose?’ And Debbie appears to be like out and stated, ‘Okay, he’ll do.’ And I get employed and I am nonetheless actually working with them now,” he says.
Since then Stein has stated they employed him as a result of he regarded like Brit glam rocker Marc Bolan. PR was in its infancy on the time and Blondie was larger within the U.Okay. than they have been again house within the U.S. on the time. That was quickly to vary, nonetheless. “It actually exploded in London and to such a level that folks I believe thought they have been English after some time,” Edwards says. “I used to be very happy with that.”
The PR Alan Edwards withthe Spice GIrls on the launch of Without end Spice in 1999.
courtesy Alan Edwards
“Debbie was very a lot a part of the band. She did not like journey in a separate factor. And she or he was a part of Blondie. Trying again, you had Patti Smith, runaway Joan Jet, you had Poly Styrene, you had The Slits,” he says. “It was very stage. Punk was fairly an androgynous form of motion actually. It was a little bit of a watershed second for feminine artists, despite the fact that possibly they did not understand on the time.”
“She’s delightfully eccentric,” he provides of Harry. “And never scripted — you can by no means media practice, Debbie. Final time she came visiting, she’s doing interviews and she or he’s primarily speaking about bees. She did not discuss punk rock, however about beekeeping. That’s so Debbie.”
It hasn’t all been rock and roll. When Edwards first met soccer star David Beckham, he was a budding first-team soccer participant at Manchester United and residing in “digs” (lodgings with a landlady). He had so little meals in the home, he may solely serve Edwards baked beans from a tin when he got here round in these early days, he writes within the e-book.
In addition they needed to put cash in a meter to energy up the electrical energy within the house. However Beckham’s star energy was evident then. “I felt I’d type been within the presence of form of greatness. It was fairly clear that he was going to go the entire method. The opposite gamers went house at lunchtime, he’d practice all afternoon. He was studying all of it, however I assume like soaked it up. Studying, studying on a regular basis. And he grew to become a grasp of PR. He left us all behind.”
David Beckham, in 1999, with Alan Edwards (proper) protecting a detailed eye.
Herbie Knott/Shutterstock
Edwards began dealing with the Spice Ladies, and he discovered himself serving to Beckham deal with the bottom level of his skilled life — when he was closely criticized by some sections of the British media for being despatched off in a vital soccer sport for England in summer time 1998. Somebody even hung an effigy outdoors a pub in south London.
“It was actually, actually vicious. He was almost destroyed by it,” Edwards says. The PR was in New York, with the Spice Ladies, and David fled there. The Spice Ladies have been enjoying at Madison Sq. Gardens and David — comparatively nameless at the moment as soccer wasn’t so large within the U.S. — was pacing up and down outdoors unnoticed, and even requested for a ticket as he’d misplaced his cross. “I stated ‘You possibly can have the entrance row, no matter you need.’ He was very self-effacing.”
“To me, they have been fairly an extension of punk rock,” he provides of The Spice Ladies. “They have been very British, very tabloid, very mad, very enjoyable. A really form of anti-establishment in a method, and lot of it was humorous. The lady energy message was fairly critical too. And I had daughters who all regarded as much as them.”
A kind of daughters was even given a serving to hand by Victoria Beckham, when she was having doubts about college. “‘Look, I am Posh Spice. Be sure you go to a complicated college,’ ” Victoria advised his daughter Ruby — one thing she has lately reminded him of.
David Bowie requested Alan Edwards’ 4 daughters (Lola, Bryony, Josey and Ruby) to sing backing vocals on a monitor recorded by Brian Eno.
Courtesy Alan Edwards
“Ruby stated, ‘It modified my complete life, as a result of I did go to a complicated college. She hadn’t needed to go there. And it was due to Victoria that she went. It had seismic impact on her complete life.”
Edwards describes the frenetic first days when he was taking care of their PR. “They have been doing a gig on the balcony of the resort in Rome for the followers. After which they determine they are going buying in Paris they usually go off in a non-public jet. And I am simply going together with it. And everybody’s acquired piles of Gucci baggage after which they go all the way down to Madrid,” he says breathlessly summing up the way it was. “After which I am in a disco with Victoria speaking and discovering truly that beneath that form of very barely austere unapproachable picture, she’s actually pleasant, and I used to be having chortle.”
He has a way of how the Beckhams deal with fame amid the large quantity of noise round them, and their kids. “With them household’s the reply truly — they’ve at all times had that. Not simply them and the youngsters however but in addition the mums, dads, Sandra Beckham. There’s at all times been a number of household round them from day one. So once you’d go to a TV studio, prime of the pops, it will be the ladies plus 50 — aunts, uncles, no matter. That’s actually a robust protecting bubble and I believe that helped them preserve their toes on the bottom.”
Alan Edwards’ e-book jacket.
Schuster and Schuster
Edwards and his firm Exterior Organisation represented Amy Winehouse throughout her brief, Grammy-winning profession and since her sudden and tragic loss of life in July 2011, and her household and the Basis arrange in her honor.
He says Winehouse’s “magic was her authenticity. She lived it — it was a bit like Billie Vacation in that you can really feel the angst, the ache, you can really feel it in her voice, you can really feel it within the songs.”
He provides, “I believe we may all empathize with it. Not that we lived the identical life, however you type of felt a part of it. It wasn’t one thing that was constructed and cleverly put collectively in Hollywood and manufactured.”
Edwards recollects seeing her carry out a small gig in a store with a colleague. “She was simply waif-like, a puff of wind may have blown her over. After which this voice comes out. It was simply one thing God-given, there was a depth to it. And ache”
“For all artists, it isn’t a job. They’re like that the entire time. They put your complete self into it for higher or for worse. And she or he did that.”
