BEN NISBET OF BIG BEN MUSIC
I've only just learnt that Ben Nisbet died in July (on the 16th) at age 89. He was the Ben of the British music-publishing house Big Ben Music. As it said in the Acknowledgments section of the first edition of Song & Dance Man, "Copyrights owned by DWARF MUSIC, BIG SKY MUSIC and RAM'S HORN MUSIC are controlled in the United Kingdom by Big Ben Music Ltd. of 18 Lancaster Mews, W.2..."
It was through the tireless work of Nisbet's then office manager, a Christine Seville, that I managed to get through to Dylan's office and gain permission to quote from over 100 of his songs in my book for what Dylan clearly regarded as a nominal fee.
More importantly, it was also through Ben Nisbet's publishing outfit that the original circulation of 14 recordings from the Basement Tapes came about; it was Big Ben that distributed acetates as song demos to various British pop artists, including of course Brian Auger & Julie Driscoll, who made 'This Wheel's On Fire' into a hit single... a distribution that let these hugely mysterious Bob Dylan recordings out into the world. So we all owed Ben Nisbet something back then.
It was through the tireless work of Nisbet's then office manager, a Christine Seville, that I managed to get through to Dylan's office and gain permission to quote from over 100 of his songs in my book for what Dylan clearly regarded as a nominal fee.
More importantly, it was also through Ben Nisbet's publishing outfit that the original circulation of 14 recordings from the Basement Tapes came about; it was Big Ben that distributed acetates as song demos to various British pop artists, including of course Brian Auger & Julie Driscoll, who made 'This Wheel's On Fire' into a hit single... a distribution that let these hugely mysterious Bob Dylan recordings out into the world. So we all owed Ben Nisbet something back then.
posted by Michael Gray | 3:15 pm
1 Comments:
I've often thought about Ben over the years, having worked with him at 18 Lancaster Mews for about 18 months around 72/73. He was a very genuine man, and it was a nice little job for a young office chief cook and bottle washer whose band had just folded.
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