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In the countless articles that have been written about the Movida madrileña for 40 years José Carlos Sánchez, “Charlie”, has never been among its protagonists. And it has been of the first order. Keyboard player of the Madrid quintet Alphaville and trumpeter of Los Iniciados, two groups with very different styles but with a similar intellectual focus – the name of the former referred to one of Jean-Luc Godard’s films, and the latter mixed music and theater, and devotion to playwright Alfred Jarry – became by the inscrutable twists of fate partner and worker from the leading independent record company at the time, Organized Radioactive Disks (DRO) that, over the years would merge with two others, GASA and Twins, before being acquired in 1993 by the very powerful American multinational Warner Music International.
The newborn spanish division of the multinational would end up calling Warner Music Iberia and “Charlie” would be its president from 2007 until last July. Now he goes back to the origins, creating a new independent label, Precious Metals Music & Records.
In the world of the music industry, he was surprised by his departure from Warner. What was it due to?
It was the end of a 38-year stage. They are the decisions that corporations make and, as I have always said, and you have heard me say many times, at any moment they will send you to the bench. It does not matter if you are doing bad, good or regular, these are things that happen. I cannot say anything bad because I have learned a lot, I started as a musician and there I learned a profession.
How is it possible that a person without business training ended up becoming president of Warner Spain for 14 years?
I happened to enter a company when it was being formed. But having said that, I immediately realized that that was what I like the most in the world: creating records.
The records are made by musicians and producers, recording engineers and such, and I liked participating in that selection process. But there is something that nobody values, which is not talked about much: when a record is finished someone has to go out to promote it and sell it, and that was, then, what I did. And I did it because it excited me with the good records that we had.
What I do think I did well was that I did not limit myself to working at my jobl, but I was training in an alternative way. I had started doing promotional work and then became the international manager, because I had taken the trouble to learn English while still driving subway trains.
And from there to the presidency?
Next, since I didn’t know marketing, I started studying marketing with another DRO colleague, Evelyn Harte: at the beginning, as we did not have money to pay for the official course, we attended the courses of the Saint Louis University on the Madrid campus, around 1986 or 1987. And in parallel to training you are acquiring, through daily work, the know-how and you are understanding how an independent company works. Then when we became part of Warner, because we sold our shares to them between 1992 and 1993, you begin to understand how the corporate world works and how it works. Warner Music Group, which is a very, very peculiar company.
You are learning to do that job and, by a mixture of being at the right time, in the right place and having mentors like Saul TagarroPresident of Warner Music for almost two decades, who is the person who has taught me the most, and fellow travelers like the ones I have had, there comes a time when you find yourself as the president of a corporation. And the moment you are president of a corporation, the next thing you are going to be is a former president.
And when do you decide to start over from scratch, creating an independent record company again?
Precisely, it was Saúl Tagarro who encouraged me to do it, because when you go out you get a little out of place. So after thinking about it for a few months, I decided this is what I know how to do. And, above all, what I’m seeing is that there is a lot of talent and that creates an opportunity.
There are a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who are making great music and I have met a generation that surprises me every day. It is a moment in the history of music that I think is a very good opportunity to start, especially if you have the experience. Many times I have thought … “if I had known in 1984 or 1985 everything I know now!” First of all, we would not have sold the company to Warner in 1992 or 1993 (laughs): we would have waited. What I want to do in some way is to contribute my experience to all these artists that I am working with, who are young.
What is the structure of Precious Metals?
We are all part of the shareholders. We are at the beginning and we have already signed several artists: Fac & Jara, Kike M., Luis Fercán and Ly Raine. We want to work with 10 or 12 at the most. And on the business side, after several conversations, I signed with Universal Music Group because they proposed something to me that was interesting to me. They act as my industrial partner. We establish the marketing, the philosophy, the way of doing things and Universal puts all the backoffice, distribution, everything that is service.
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