Barry Tomes Media Group operates across the globe from the UK, Europe, Australia and the US. They pride themselves on giving their clients a chance to extend their reach in the Music and Media business. I had the opportunity to catch up with Barry to talk about his career and his incredible life. Barry has managed many big artists including singer Norma Louis, who had many hits in the 80s.
Jannie Rawlinson: I’ve been looking forward to this interview for quite a while now, as your life is so interesting and inspirational. From a young boy, running the school disco to a successful entrepreneur running a successful music media company covering the UK and the US. That’s absolutely incredible. How does that happen? You must have been really driven from a very young age?
Barry Tomes: I think I was driven by hunger a little bit, because we had eight children. My dad was always absent, at the pub, and my mom looked after us. She was an amazing mom. From the age of eight, and I remember clearly, going door to door selling firewood, every single house in our road had an open fire, so that was the norm in the early 60s… that led on to selling other things. I understood, if I got up and went there with that, I’d come back with my own money. I learned that at the age of eight, and that’s the fantastic thing.
Jannie Rawlinson: You started with the ambition to be a builder. How does that ambition transpire to working with big names like Alvin Stardust and Lulu? You ended up as Lulus tour manager for over four years. You had a major tour with Lulu in South Africa with the Beach Boys.
Barry Tomes: It was a total mistake how it started. ake. I did both for about 12-15 years till it became impossible. What happened was, at the age of 15, I wanted to be self-employed, which 53 years ago, nobody knew what that meant. But I wanted to work for myself, because I realized I could keep more of that money, and set the agenda. So that was the driving thing but then I started to work, and I knew I couldn’t be self employed for the health… So I thought I needed to get a job to earn that regular money to pay my housekeeping and stuff but from there, I knew that extra job would give me that extra pot of money towards getting the car and buying new tools. So that was how it started.
Very, very quickly. I don’t know whether people like my aftershave, or whether I was just really sweet, but I got invited back so many times. I got customers all over the place. At that time, I was traveling on the bus, or getting a lift because I was too young to drive. So that was it.
At the age of fifteen, I decided I’m gonna build my own house. I’m gonna have a swimming pool. I’m gonna have horses. Well, the only flaw there was, I wouldn’t have time to build my own house. I was too busy. I don’t swim, and I haven’t got a horse. So it was kind of good that that didn’t happen in the end. But, literally, I started building. I was earning more money, but I also had a full time job at Kalamazoo directing parcels around the country. I was into T Rex. That was my big music thing. I met a woman, and I had a T Rex t-shirt on, she introduced me to her daughter. She told me she was a massive Alvin Stardust fan, which I’d heard of but wasn’t really interested.
She got some tickets to a TV show… We met Alvin Stardust afterwards. He was a wonderful man, kind – gave us pairs of gloves, he gave us necklaces. We did all this, we did a recording with him. A week later we got a phone call.. from his PR guy Jeremy Mills who said look, “You two guys were great at the TV show. I’ve just started working for him. I know nothing about him. I know nothing about his music. I actually got to do the milk race at Wimbledon. Could you give me some advice? Would you love to come to a gig?” Off we go to Stoke on Trent Steam Machine.
The following Saturday, she took us, we sold posters, badges and T-shirts, and I’ve never seen so much cash in my life. I was doing all right but you know, 2000 kids throwing their 5P or 10 shilling across the counter for their poster and probably two quid for a T-shirt. I’ve never been driven by money but I know money is important and it gives you choices. It doesn’t make you happy but it does give you choices so that was great. But also, I was more fascinated with the TV show and how they built the sets. Between each song when a TV commercial came on, they changed the set completely in like one and a half minutes. As a builder I was like “Hello, this is fantastic!” I’d be more interested in working as a carpenter on TV! But Alvin was amazing and from that day, we started working on his shows. My first girlfriend Jackie and I ran his fan club, which we took out from Todd Slaughter (who runs Elvis Presley fan club to this day). It really just grew and grew and grew from there.
Working with Alvin we met everybody in the day; Freddy Stars, the Jim Davidson’s, all of those artists, including Lulu… Alvin introduced me to Lulu because his manager’s sister managed Lulu. It’s one of those jobs where you don’t go to the Job Center. You never get an advertisement for a job. You get a recommendation. You get a call because somebody recommended you.
To learn more about Barry Tomes incredible life including a special story about two Christmas dinners, stream “The Early Years” (Part 1 in my series) on Spotify now and stay tuned for more of his story in future episodes
Connect with Barry at barrytomesmediagroup.com
Barry, Jannie and Lulu!😍What a great article!