Music careers

Chris Cowey’s unruly barnet and larger than life Geordie wit have helped to make him infamous in music and TV circles over the last 25 years. He started out his career as a teenage DJ before moving into TV and clocking up credits at legendary 80s music show The Tube. Most famously he’s produced shows including Top of the Pops and the Brit Awards. He sat on the judging panel for the Community Channel’s First Up talent show, which aimed to discover the best of Liverpool’s up and coming musical talent…

YM: Why did you get involved with the First Up talent show?
CC: I think its important to be supportive of new bands, especially really good acts with musicians in them, rather than the Pop Idol type of manufactured stuff that seems to proliferate on television at the moment.

YM: How hard is it for “real” musicians to break through in current Pop Idol climate?
CC: It’s almost like there are two music businesses now: One for musicians and one for wannabe stars! I think it’s important not just to create star schools. Here in Liverpool there’s a great tradition of proper musicians; The Beatles created a climate where any of this could happen and blazed a trail. It’s easy for us to forget, but they quite literally changed the world. I think it’s very important to continue that tradition. If Britain ends up breeding a nation of dodgy karaoke singers then where will we be? And who will create the backing track?

YM: How did you manage to carve out your music career?
CC: I started off DJing when I was at school doing my A-levels and local TV station, Tyne Tees, came along and asked me to audition as a presenter. As a kid growing up in a poor mining village in Sunderland, I never considered media as a career. At Tyne Tees I worked on shows like Razzmatazz and The Tube and learned a lot and then did all sorts of live things like the Brit Awards and the White Room. After that, the BBC poached me, and I worked for six years as producer on Top of the Pops. I’m just a music fan who got lucky and I’m just waiting for the hard bit. I still wake up every morning dying to get to work.

YM: What do you think of Top of the Pops since you left?
CC: I finished there a year ago. My priority was to put a lot of live music and try to make it as real as possible now there’s a lot of pop music on it. I think they wanted to take it in a different direction and make it into a karaoke pop show. A lot of people don’t like that but I’m sure there are also a lot of young people who probably love it. I think it’s cheating if everyone mimes and I think it’s just important to have good music played well.

YM: What are you working on now?
CC: At the moment I’ve just started up a TV company called Smashing Television and we’re pitching programmes to channels who want to have good music programming.

YM: What artists are exciting you at the moment?
CC: I think the Scissor Sisters are pretty damn amazing and I love The Streets album. Also, there’s a lot of good American stuff around at the moment like Outkast.

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