THIS A TO Z WAS ORIGINALLY ENTITLED R IS FOR REJECTION LETTERS BUT I DECIDED TO TAKE A MORE OPTIMISTIC APPROACH AND LOOK AT HOW BEING TURNED DOWN CAN SPUR MUSICIANS ON TO EVEN GREATER HEIGHTS
D IS FOR...
DON’T GIVE UP
I once wrote an A To Z about how in the late 70s the Robert Stigwood Organisation (RSO) literally owned the music business. Everything they touched – not least the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever – turned to gold. But they dropped the ball on 10 May 1979, penning a now infamous rejection letter to U2. “We have listened with careful consideration,” they wrote, “but feel it’s not suitable for us at present.” Undeterred, the group were quickly snapped up by Island Records and the rest is history.
It got me thinking about the rejection letters of pop history, and the effect they had to spur artists on to great heights. While a copy of The Beatles’ infamous rejection letter from Decca Records has never surfaced, you can jump online and find Millennium Records turning down Madonna as she looked for her first record deal. “The production, arrangements and she [sic] are very strong,” wrote Millennium president Jimmy Lenner. “The direction is a good one in my opinion.” So far so good.
However, he concluded: “The only thing missing from this project is the material. I liked I Want You, Get Up and High Society (from the singer’s mythical The Gotham Tapes of 1981) but I did not like Love On The Run at all. I do not feel she is ready yet... I will pass for now.”
Maybe rejection and rejection letters are all part of paying your dues as an artist. “When we first started making demos in 1987 we sent a demo tape to all the A&R dance departments of all the major labels,” Deee-Lite’s DJ Dmitry told Blues & Soul magazine when they first found fame. “We didn’t get a response from any of them. One company sent us a rejection letter saying, ‘Sorry, your stuff’s completely unoriginal and we’re not interested at the moment.’ From that, we knew they hadn’t even heard our tape. But that didn’t discourage us...”
Trevor Horn once told me that rejection when producing Yes was what left him to create the fir
