Sandy Roberton

Alexander William "Sandy" Roberton (7 July 1942 – 25 July 2022) was a British record producer and music business owner. His 60-year career spanned record production, artist management, record label ownership, and producer management.

Sandy Roberton
Birth name	Alexander William Roberton
Born	(1942-07-07)7 July 1942 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	25 July 2022(2022-07-25) (aged 80) London, England
Occupations	Record producer, music business owner
Website	worldsend.com/about/

Summary

After a brief early career as a recording artist in the mid-1960s, Roberton moved into music publishing, running the London offices of Chess Records and promoting songs from their music publishing companies Arc, Regent and Jewel. With record producer Mike Vernon, he helped to set up publishing for the Blue Horizon record label during the British blues boom that saw acts like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac achieve success. In 1968 he established his own record production and artist management company, September Productions. In the folk rock era of the 1970s he managed and produced bands such as The Liverpool Scene, Steeleye Span and Plainsong. In 1977 he established his own record label, Rockburgh Records, and released some 40 albums and singles by various artists, including four solo albums by singer Iain Matthews, formerly of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort.

In 1980, Robertson moved into producer management and established his Worlds End Management company in London, which claimed to be the first of its kind to represent the interests of producers, mixers, and sound engineers. He was also credited with establishing the 'points' system, whereby his clients would receive royalties for the work they did on producing artists' records. In 1985 he moved the company's base to Los Angeles. He became a US citizen in 2004 and ran his business there until his death, along the way founding two more record labels, Beverly Martel and IAMSOUND. Over the course of four decades, Worlds End became the leading management company in its field, with more than 75 producers on its books during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Early years

Roberton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 7 July 1942. When he was six years old, his parents emigrated to Africa. His father, Robert, was a tractor technician involved in the British Government's post-war Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme in East Africa. In consequence, he was raised firstly in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and latterly in Kenya, where as a teenager he had his first taste of the local music scene in a group called Les Hombres.

"We were called Les Hombres – God knows why – and that was the time I was finishing off school. It was a really professional band. We actually did gigs and had amps and a PA."

Sandy Roberton, interview with Fred Dellar, Sound International, June 1978

Intent on a career in the burgeoning music business of the early 1960s, Roberton moved to London in 1963. By day he took jobs at Olivetti typewriters and the department store C&A to earn enough money to exist, whilst nights were spent fashioning his singing career. He began playing in a venue called the Dive Bar at the King's Head pub in Soho, frequently joined on stage by his old school bandmate Rick Tykiff. The pair were soon signed up to a record deal by record producer Tom Springfield (brother of singer Dusty Springfield) and, as Rick and Sandy, recorded several singles in 1965 for the Decca and Mercury labels, including "Half as Much", "I Remember Baby" and "Lost My Girl". Both of the latter two songs were produced and arranged by songwriter Les Reed who would later become well known as the writer of several hits for Tom Jones including "It's Not Unusual" and "Delilah".

After Rick Tykiff decided to leave the music business, Roberton had a solo single released on Columbia in 1966 under the name Sandy, a cover of Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man'; and, backed by a group called Fleur De Lys, his version of the Bob Dylan song, 'Baby You've Been On My Mind' was released on Polydor in 1967 under the name Lucien Alexander.

By the time of that release, however, Roberton was already working in music publishing, running the London office of Chess Records' publishing companies Arc Music, Regent Music and Jewel Music through the offices of music publishers Chappell & Co. at 52 Maddox Street in Mayfair. Their writers, amongst others, included such Blues greats as Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley. He also ran the London office of Bill Lowery's company Lowery Music, whose writers included Joe South, Tommy Roe, Mac Davis, and Billy Joe Royal.

Roberton's job consisted mostly of convincing UK artists to record songs from the catalogs of these companies. Georgie Fame's cover of Billy Stewart's 'Sitting In The Park', which got to #12 in the UK music charts in December 1966, was one of his main achievements, and the Jewel Music song 'It Ain't Right' by Little Walter, was one of several Blues covers on John Mayall's seminal 1966 album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, also colloquially known as 'The Beano Album' from its cover picture.

That album resulted in a life-long connection between Roberton and its producer, Mike Vernon. It would lead to Roberton leaving Chappell to team up with Vernon and his brother Richard at Blue Horizon, a specialist blues label that Mike Vernon had started with childhood friend Neil Slaven in 1965. Together, they set up two Blue Horizon music publishing companies, Goodie Two Shoes Music and Uncle Doris Music. The label became synonymous with the cream of British blues in the late 1960s, releasing music by Chicken Shack, Duster Bennett, Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie) and Fleetwood Mac, including their eponymously named 1968 debut album.

In 1967, Roberton moved into music production for the first time, producing two singles by The Chocolate Watch Band, an English band featuring Gary Osborne, who would later go on to write several hits for Elton John in the early 1980s.

September Productions

Sandy Roberton formed his own music production and artist management company in 1968, calling it September Productions Ltd. after the month in which it was formed. One of the first artists to sign up with him was The Liverpool Scene, the poetry and music collective from Liverpool featuring poet Adrian Henri and guitarist Andy Roberts, together with Mike Evans, Mike Hart, Percy Jones and Brian Dodson. Roberton co-produced their first album, Amazing Adventures of, along with DJ John Peel who had championed their music on his BBC radio shows.

In the space of just two years under Roberton's management, Liverpool Scene would release four albums via a deal he struck with record label RCA to supply them with albums by artists he now managed; play on the same day as Bob Dylan at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival in front of some 150,000 music fans; tour on a three-act bill with Blodwyn Pig and Led Zeppelin which included playing at the Royal Albert Hall; and break up in May 1970 in the wake of a somewhat financially disastrous US tour.

"I think I enjoyed managing and producing Liverpool Scene most of all – they were such a good band. They've all done very well since in their own fields … Andy Roberts…Adrian Henri…Percy Jones – I love the records he's making now with Brand X. And then too there's Mike Evans – he's now in charge of the Musicians Union!"

Sandy Roberton, Fred Dellar interview, Sound International, June 1978

A first solo album by Andy Roberts, Home Grown, produced by Roberton and recorded during Roberts' latter days with Liverpool Scene, was released on RCA in March 1970. A second album, Everyone, by Roberts' post-Liverpool Scene band Everyone, was released on the B & C record label in 1971 in a deal Roberton negotiated when the RCA relationship came to an end. Talking with journalist Dave Thompson in Goldmine magazine in November 2013, Roberton said, "I had an arrangement with RCA and was taking most of my September Productions acts to them. When that relationship finished, I was approached by Lee Gopthal who was the co-owner of Trojan Records, saying he wanted to get into different areas of music. He'd started B & C and was distributing Charisma Records, but he wanted to sign his own acts. I started signing, producing, and releasing through B & C."

By the time the Everyone album was released, however, the band itself was no longer in existence, and both Roberton and Roberts had already begun working with singer Iain Matthews whose debut solo LP, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes, was released in May 1971, the first of a three-album deal with Vertigo Records. He would be brought in as producer at Andy Roberts' suggestion when the original producer, Paul Samwell-Smith, began to not turn up to recording sessions, though he remained uncredited on the album's label and artwork. It was the beginning of a long relationship with Matthews that would see him produce the third album of the Vertigo deal, Journeys From Gospel Oak (recorded in November 1972 but not released until 1974), and four more Matthews solo albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he formed his own record label, Rockburgh Records.

In his early days as a producer, Roberton's preferred studio in which to record his acts was Sound Techniques in Old Church Street, Chelsea, an 18th-century former dairy-turned-recording studio by sound engineers Geoff Frost and John Wood in 1965. His September Productions stable of artists included Scottish folk singer Shelagh McDonald, singer Keith Christmas, and flautist Harold McNair, all of whom had albums produced by Roberton and released on B & C in the early 1970s. English folk rock band Decameron were another of his artists, as were Spirogyra, American singer Marc Ellington, plus several artists on the 1970s folk scene including Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, Gay and Terry Woods; and later, in the early 1980s, singer John Martyn who he would both manage and produce.

His biggest breakthrough, however, was with Steeleye Span, the British folk rock band formed by Ashley Hutchings following his departure from Fairport Convention in November 1969. Roberton produced their first three albums - Hark! The Village Wait released on RCA in 1970, plus Please to See the King released on the B & C label in 1971 and Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again released on Pegasus, also in 1971. At that time Roberton became one of the go-to producers for the cream of British folk rock, along with John Wood, Joe Boyd, and Tony Cox. In addition to Steeleye Span, he also co-produced with Ashley Hutchings the album No Roses by Shirley Collins and The Albion Country Band, which was nominated as the 'Folk Album Of The Year' in August 1971 by renowned Melody Maker journalist Karl Dallas.

Sandy Roberton also managed and produced the folk rock/country rock band Plainsong, formed at the end of 1971 by Andy Roberts and Iain Matthews, alongside pianist and bass player David Richards and guitarist Bobby Ronga. Their debut album In Search of Amelia Earhart produced by Roberton received critical acclaim upon its release in October 1972 - Record Mirror called it "The Contemporary Folk Record of the Year"; and rock journalist Charles Shaar Murray, reviewing the album in New Musical Express, described it as "one of the classic albums of 1972".

Despite all the acclaim, the album did not sell well and the band broke up in somewhat acrimonious circumstances at the end of December 1972, with both Matthews and Roberts pursuing separate careers as solo artists - Matthews signing up as a solo artist for Elektra Records and heading for California to work with former Monkee-turned-record producer Mike Nesmith, and Roberts continuing to record two more albums as a solo artist with Sandy Roberton as producer, Urban Cowboy and Andy Roberts And The Great Stampede, both released in 1973 on the Elektra label.

Matthews and Roberton would also collaborate again in 1973, co-producing the album If It Was So Simple by Longdancer, a folk rock band that included Dave Stewart who would later find fame in the 1980s as one half of The Eurythmics alongside singer Annie Lennox.

Rockburgh Records

In 1977 Sandy Roberton formed his own record label, Rockburgh Records - the name was derived from a combination of Rock 'n' Roll and Edinburgh, his place of birth. Rockburgh Records existed from 1977 to 1981 and during that time released just over 40 albums and singles by a wide roster of artists, including amongst others The Woods Band (Gay and Terry Woods), British singer-songwriter Allan Taylor, Australian rock band Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, former Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, and, some five years on from Plainsong, once again Iain Matthews.

"I was sitting in Seattle, wondering what to do next. The phone rang and it was Sandy offering me a lifeline. I'd loved working with him in Plainsong, where he'd produced and managed us, and I knew that if he'd formed a label he would do a terrific job, without compromising my vision of who I was"

Iain Matthews, Stealin' Home CD booklet (Omnivore expanded edition, 2014)

Roberton would produce four albums for Matthews in the late 70s/early 80s – Stealin' Home (1978), Siamese Friends (1979), Spot of Interference (1980) and Shook (1984) – with 'Shake It' from Stealin' Home reaching #13 in the US Billboard Hot 100 in February 1979 giving Matthews his first hit single since topping the UK charts in 1970 with Matthews Southern Comfort's 'Woodstock'. All four albums were remastered in 2005 by BGO Records as part of a 2-on-1 series of Iain Matthews re-releases, and again in March 2022 along with numerous demos, outtakes and live recordings as part of a 6-CD box set from Cherry Red Records, I Can't Fade Away: The Rockburgh Years (1978-1984).

In 1980, Roberton and Matthews also released a 27-track double album compilation of Matthews material, Discreet Repeat, covering not only tracks from the Rockburgh albums they had made together, but also from Matthews' earlier solo 1970s albums, plus some tracks from the Plainsong 'Amelia' album. A shorter 21-track version of that Roberton-Matthews compilation would later be released on CD by Line Records in 1988.

Worlds End Management

With the folk rock era of the 70s having passed its peak, the beginning of the 1980s would see the end of Sandy Roberton's direct involvement as a record producer, his focus now shifting into working with and managing other record producers. The last of the 55 albums Roberton is credited with producing was Well Kept Secret, by John Martyn, who Roberton had taken over managing in 1980. It was the second of two John Martyn albums released on WEA (the first being 1981's Glorious Fool produced by Phil Collins) and commercially his most successful.

"I started winding down towards the end of the 70s. The last record I produced was a John Martyn record, Well Kept Secret. Phil Thornalley was an engineer I was using and I was really getting fed up with being in the studio all the time and I asked him what he was doing next and he said he didn't know..... so I said let me find you a project and I got him a job and I thought there's a business here. This was at the tail end of the 70s and I kind of created this business. Very few people were doing it at that time, representing producers."

Sandy Roberton, The Art of Music Production interview (2004)

Along with business partner Paul Brown, Roberton founded the Worlds End Management Company in Chelsea, London in 1980, named after the area of Chelsea in which they had their offices. The company billed itself as "probably the first full service company to ever solely represent record producers, mixers and sound engineers". One of the first clients managed by Worlds End was British record producer, Tim Palmer, who Roberton first encountered as a tape operator in the 1980s. In the event Palmer would become Roberton's client for nearly 40 years, working with such artists as Robert Plant, David Bowie, Tears For Fears, Pearl Jam and many more.

Roberton moved Worlds End's base to Los Angeles in 1985, when he became its sole owner and his company made its name representing successful producers like The Matrix, the songwriting collective made up of Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock, that had a big hit in 2002 with Avril Lavigne's debut studio album Let's Go, and later went on to work with artists such as Britney Spears, Shakira, Korn and Liz Phair.

In 2007, Roberton set up the independent record label Beverly Martel which released music by acts such as The Philistines Jr., Amelia Carey, the High Divers, Josh Difford and many more. And in 2007 along with his daughter Niki, he also co-founded the IAMSOUND record label that helped launched the careers of artists such Florence and the Machine, Lord Huron, Nikki Lane and Charli XCX.

Over four decades, Worlds End became the leading management company in its field, with over 75 producers on its books during the 1990s and early 2000s. The company, which Roberton continued to run until the end of his life, currently represents producers and mixers including Tim Palmer, Stephen Lipson, Larry Klein, Brad Wood, Stephen Hague, Ted Hutt and many others.

Personal life

Sandy Roberton died in London aged 80 on 25 July 2022 after a short battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife, Dinah (née Cullen), his former PA at music publishers Chappell & Co. whom he married in November 1968, and his two children, Christian and Nicola.

Like their father, both of Roberton's children have established highly successful careers in the entertainment industry. His son Christian Roberton is President of Technicolour Creative Studios, the largest visual effects company in the world, while his daughter Nicola, better known as Niki Roberton, is currently Senior Vice President, Creative at RCA Records who she joined in September 2022.

Tributes

Numerous tributes were paid to Sandy Roberton when news of his death spread across the music industry in late July 2022. He was described in Billboard as a "trailblazing manager of producers and engineers", as "an influential manager who helped pioneer the concept of representing music production clients", and as "one of the music industry's most significant unsung, behind-the-scenes heroes."

Among the various accolades were the following from veteran musician and songwriter Andy Roberts, record producer and mixing engineer Tim Palmer, songwriter Lauren Christy from The Matrix; and record producer Stephen Lipson.

"Sandy was my manager, my publisher, my producer and, above all, my friend for over 54 years. His is not necessarily a well-known name outside the music industry, but the breadth of his influence over nearly 60 years of relentless good work is significant."

Andy Roberts, Facebook, 26 July 2022

"Sandy changed the landscape for producers and especially mixers. In the same way that Jimmy Hill got soccer players the money they deserved, Sandy pushed for better deals and royalties for his producers and succeeded in getting them, even for mixers which was pretty unknown at that time. He basically created the genre of producer management."

Tim Palmer, Facebook, 27 July 2022

"Graham (Edwards) and I were saddened to learn of his death and shocked, too, because if you knew Sandy, you know he never stopped working. Ill health wasn't on his schedule! Sandy's passion for music and his endless hours of working connections and wheeling deals for his clients is unparalleled in the industry. The Matrix owes much of its success to him. He has been a pioneering champion for so many people who have written and produced many of the best songs of the past four decades."

Lauren Christy, Variety article by Chris Willman 2022

"Sandy Roberton was the best sounding board, the voice of reason, and above all the most honourable and loyal man I've ever had the honour of working with, never greedy, always fair. His funeral should be at the Royal Albert Hall – it would be standing room only."

Stephen Lipson, Billboard magazine, 29 July 2022

Recommended reading

• Ian Clayton: In Search Of Plainsong, Route Publishing, 2022; ISBN 978-1901927-87-0
• Iain Matthews with Ian Clayton: Thro' My Eyes: A Memoir, Route Publishing, 2018; ISBN 978-1901927-75-7
• Clinton Heylin: What We Did Instead Of Holidays: A History Of Fairport Convention And Its Extended Folk-Rock Family. Route Publishing, 2018; ISBN 978-1901927-73-3