David Courtney calls the tune

David Courtney's rock and roll lifestyle took him all over the world but now he chooses to live in his home town, Brighton and Hove.

David Courtney is one of the city's born and bred residents. He grew up here in a prefab in Whitehawk and despite having lived all over the world, has always considered it home.

"My uncle, Henry Cohen, was the man who conceived and created Brighton Marina and as a kid I actually canvassed for him because there was a referendum to decide whether the plans could go ahead. Back then the people were allowed to decide a thing like that so why can't we be asked to decide about a mayor for our city?

"Back then I played in a band at school called the Urchins. I was the drummer and when I reached 15 I left school and the band went professional." At this point his partner Manon walks casually past and says "He was actually thrown out". David continues, "We toured Germany playing GI camps, it was what bands did then." In 1966 David was playing drums in Adam Faith's backing band when he decided that touring was not really for him and decided to move into promotion and management.

Faith has remained a life long friend, like so many of his music industry contacts. At first he organised and promoted all kinds of events and then in 1970 came a turning point in his career. "I decided to advertise in the local press for bands, singers and performers and booked the Pavilion Theatre in New Road. The response was huge and by the day I had to narrow things down to around 50 acts. It was a hot July day and after listening to about 46 hopeless acts I had a terrible migraine and was about to give up. Then this band called Patches came on and started playing and I heard this voice. At first I couldn't work out where the voice was coming from and this tiny figure walked on to the stage with his hands held to his chin in an almost Shakespearian pose, you know, very theatrical — that theatricality that was so special — that and the voice which just sounded in my head like an alarm bell. Anyway, I went back and met him, he was called gerald Hugh Sayer, Gerry, and he was living on a house boat in Shoreham by the Lady Jane pub with about 50 hippies.

"There was something really special about Gerry, or Leo as he became, he had this fantastic persona, and I signed him up straight away. The band didn't last long but soon we found ourselves writing songs together, Leo would write lyrics and I wrote the tunes. Sometimes I would play him a melody and he would say 'Oh yes, I have just the thing for that'. I was living in Hove and Leo would come round every day to write, the songs just flowed and it was there that we wrote The Show Must Go On. The Pierrot image, that became Leo's trademark, came out of his theatrical body language and one day I went out and bought him a pair of white gloves to emphasise all the gestures, the make-up came next and then it all gelled. That make-up, the costume and the skullcap would take Leo hours before each performance."

Leo Sayer's career rocketed, the singles were a huge success and through this they met Roger Daltrey, lead singer from rock giants The Who. "Roger asked Leo and I if we would write the songs for his first solo album 'Daltrey', we ended up writing all the songs including Giving It All Away and my old friend Terry, that's Adam Faith, produced the album." Daltrey, who lives in the Sussex countryside, has remained a close friend and is godfather to their child Charlie.

"I remember working at The Who's studios Rampart, in Battersea. It was about 1975 and one of the rising punk acts had been recording there the night before and had trashed the place. Anyway, the next day The Who came in for a board meeting, Roger, Pete, Moonyà They were very into the business side of things and when they saw their trashed studio they went mad, absolutely furious — the guys who had invented the whole trashing thing were upset because it had happened to them." Leo and David stopped working together in 1975 and David moved to Los Angeles where he recorded a solo album.

"The other day I was sitting outside and Paul McCartney and Heather Mills walked by arm in arm"

"It was a big hit in the States and I toured for a while to promote it. Then I moved more into producing but decided to come back home. One day we received a letter from my daughter's school telling us to look out for these bits of paper with Disney characters printed on them. Apparently they were impregnated with LSD. This was from the equivalent of a junior school and we just thought that this was so awful and that we needed to get our child back to the sanity of England and back to Brighton in particular. I never really had anything to do with the drug thing and I certainly wanted to protect my daughter from it. I saw plenty of the damage that drugs and drink had done to my friends in the music business.

"For a while we lived in Abbey Road in London and I also spent time in Sydney in Australia — those Australian bands had to work really hard to get anywhere, gigging all the time and always playing live. An Australian band couldn't get up on the stage and mime, they would have been mobbed. This year is the thirtieth anniversary of Leo's first hit and we¼d like to do something to celebrate that. Leo has continued touring and still has a busy career — did you know that he was one of the first acts to play Sun City and he was the first pop act to play in Vietnam?"
   These days David Courtney runs his own company involved in promotions and project development. "I spend a great deal of time promoting the Marina which is nice, as it is part of my own history, and there is a major new development going on down there. I also own the Walk Of Fame project which, as well as running here, we are planning for different venues right across the country. The Walk of Fame has created a great deal of interest, people are amazed at just how many famous people have lived here. Asking the public to vote for them was a great way of getting things going and the names on the local buses always attract attention, especially the historical ones that people don¼t really know about." These days David and his family live in a modern mansion block on Hove seafront.

"I love the views here and the terrace where we get sun all day long. The other day I was sitting outside and Paul McCartney and Heather Mills walked by arm in arm, I think that sums up what is so special about this place, real stars feel relaxed enough to walk down the street without being bothered by the public. It was like that in LA, big Hollywood stars would just go out shopping in shorts and a tee-shirt. Brighton and Hove has the same bohemian freedom, it really has become Britain's version of LA and that's why all these stars have moved here.

"pop into Waitrose and you can see Norman and Zoe doing a spot of shopping"

"On Saturday I was walking along the Western Road and there was Noel Gallagher and his girlfriend, pop into Waitrose and you can see Norman and Zoe doing a spot of shopping, Mark Williams drinks in the Regency Tavernà" Years ago David worked with Paul McCartney. "He came into the studio with this song on a demo cassette, it was just Paul sat at the piano playing the melody and singing. Then suddenly he would stop and say 'this is where the drum break goes' and he would sing the drum break, then carry on with the song, it was the whole concept and all the way through you could hear kids and dogs in the background. I kept it for years but somewhere along the way it got lost in a move." David laughs, he laughs quite a lot at things like this, perhaps a sign that he has comfortably formed his own set of values for the world of pop and its associated ephemera.

These days his energies are devoted to his promotions, the Marina, the new casino down there which is having £5 million spent on it and a menu created by Anton Mosimann, the Walk of Fame, writing some new music for The Money Channel, endless creative consultancy work — even an Entertainers' Walk of Fame for Blackpool. I asked him how he finds the time. "Oh I don't really like doing nothing, I can't sit on a beach and have that sort of holiday. I have to always be doing something. Right now I'm really excited to be working with Sylvia Anderson, the lady that created Thunderbirds, I can remember watching that as a kid and it's just such a kick to be working with one of the creators now." Manon appears with more coffee, she tries to convince David that a nice holiday, perhaps a few books, would be a good idea. He laughs and agrees but somehow you can sense that he will have to find some kind of project to justify it.