perfidy

Joe Boyd: The main inspiration was losing my job running Hannibal Records. I mean, I always thought I might write a book one day. I've always enjoyed writing and when I found myself out of a job, I thought, this is the time. Hannibal had become part of Rykodisc in 1991, and Rykodisc in 98 became part of Palm Pictures, the Chris Blackwell company. And that never really worked very well. There was a lot of downsizing, and all the people who got downsized were my people and the people who didn't really understand or sympathize with the music I was doing were the people who were kept. It got pretty impossible to look an artist in the eye and say, "I'm going to do a good job for you." I made demands to change it, and they said, "No. You're obviously not very happy, so why don't you go away?" That was 2001.

Yep, that's pretty much how that went down. I was there. And now I don't have to write that chapter of my autobiography.

The whole interview, by the way, with former Hannibal Records label honcho Joe Boyd, is pretty great. He's been around everywhere, knew everybody, did everything and then some and more than that too, and has a million great stories to tell.