Exec Defends Wife’s Role at EMI

Janet Jackson and the Spice Girls may be EMI Group’s top-selling acts, but the woman that everybody in the giant British music conglomerate is talking about is an executive named Nancy Berry, wife of the company’s worldwide president.

In fact, everybody in the music business is talking about Berry, now the vice chairman of EMI’s Virgin Records division, whose rise in the company quickly followed her husband’s ascent this summer to the top music job.

Critics say she rose only through nepotism, and their anger about her rise has spilled into the mainstream media, with a recent Forbes article describing the 39-year-old executive as a “former groupie” whose “relationships with many performers” are “well, let’s just say they’re unusually close.”

While Nancy Berry was elevated, her husband shut down two of EMI’s New York record labels, overhauled the West Coast office of its Virgin Records division and fired about 150 employees, including most of its top U.S. executives. Berry also recently replaced longtime President Phil Quartararo with the executive team of Ray Cooper and Ashley Newton, co-managing directors of Virgin’s British division.

Ken Berry, 45, joined Virgin in 1972 and rose through the ranks to take charge of Virgin’s international record company when EMI purchased it in 1992. Sources say he is, in effect, the company’s top music executive and will take over as chairman when James Fifield steps down sometime next year.

Nancy Berry, formerly the executive vice president of Virgin Music Group Worldwide, joined the company as Ken Berry’s assistant in 1978 and is credited with creating successful global campaigns for such superstars as Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones and George Michael. Before joining Virgin, she worked in a record store in Detroit, where she managed a rock band. Ken says he met Nancy in the late 1970s, fell in love and married her. She has worked by his side ever since.

Ken Berry is unusually press-shy and has never given an extensive interview during his career. After requests extending over several months, Berry said he agreed to talk to The Times because he is concerned that criticism and gossip about his wife could affect the company. Speaking by phone from his London office, Berry on Wednesday addressed the controversy surrounding his wife, and the impact it has had on her, him and EMI.

Nancy Berry declined to be interviewed, though she was aware of the questions her husband was asked:

Q: A big criticism about Nancy Berry is that she only got where she is because she’s your wife.

A: This is a difficult topic because Nancy obviously is my wife. I can’t change that. If we weren’t married, would it be viewed differently? She is very talented in global marketing, and the fact is I put more pressure on Nancy to perform at her job than others. Because she is my wife, I am thoroughly responsible and accountable for everything she does. If nepotism was my stock in trade, I guess I would have brought in my brothers and other relatives. That’s not the case. Nancy is my wife and we have worked very closely together since my early days at the company.

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Q: Can you clarify Nancy’s title and what qualifies her to be vice chair of Virgin Records Worldwide?

A: I think titles mean more to people in the U.S. than to a Brit like me who was raised inside the Virgin culture where titles rarely existed until recently. Nancy basically does the same job that she did as executive vice president of the company. As vice chairman, what Nancy does is a global job. With global superstars, you need a very detailed major plan everywhere from South Korea to Argentina to the United States to Germany and the U.K.--and that’s what Nancy does. She has been in the company for nearly 20 years and knows everybody all over the world and how records are marketed in all kinds of territories.

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Q: Would you comment on tensions between Nancy and former Virgin President Phil Quartararo and other executives?

A: Nancy is a hard-charging kind of person and when she has got a project on she obviously tries to push for that project to be successful. Sometimes that causes friction between people. But honestly, looking around this business I know a lot of male executives who charge a lot harder than Nancy and nobody’s taking shots at them in the media.

We have 10,000 employees at EMI and the fact is I deal with frictions around the entire organization. Sometimes the tensions involve Nancy. And every so often people think, ‘Well, she shouldn’t have said this or that’--and sometimes maybe they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong.

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Q: Did Nancy Berry drive Quartararo out of the company?

A: Absolutely not. Phil had some frustrations and we had a frank conversation about them. His frustrations with Nancy weren’t at the top of his list, but they existed. He also had frustrations with me, by the way. He started talking to Warner Bros. and decided that’s where he wanted to go.

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Q: The most venomous gossip in the music industry these days revolves around your wife’s alleged character and personal life--particularly rumors about her alleged sexual relations with artists.

A: It’s revolting. Nancy works very hard with the artists and she is extremely professional in the way she gets things done. She is not interested in sleeping with our roster of acts. That is not what she is about. Nancy and I have been together 20 years and happily married. This kind of allegation is really horrible. And it goes right to the root of her professionalism as an executive. Her job is to work with artists. This kind of press is very distasteful and very damaging. When she goes to work with the next male artist, are they supposed to assume that all Nancy wants to do is hit on them--because that’s what they read in some stupid magazine about the type of character she is? She is not that type of character, and it makes me angry to read that kind of stuff. I can’t believe that people actually write it. That is not what is going on.

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Q: Forbes magazine recently alluded to these allegations.

A: Yes. I was passed that article when I was on an airplane and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I was shocked and disgusted. Nancy was very offended by it. The article was riddled with factual inaccuracies about the company too. I have sought out legal advice regarding what to do and the company has demanded an explanation from Forbes. Do you have any idea what it does when someone reads something like this in what is supposed to be a reputable magazine? What Forbes managed to do in a crass way was to mix sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll into a business issue and try to make something out of nothing. I think that is a very trashy kind of journalism. We are very offended by it. I prefer not to go into what we plan to do beyond that.

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Q: Nancy has even been criticized for dressing “too sexy” by some of her critics. What do you make of that?

A: I think there is a double standard for women working in the music industry and I think it is very unfair. It makes it difficult for women pursuing a career in the record business. If you’re attractive as well as bright, people ignore the bright and focus on the attractive and try to make some innuendo out of it. It is distressing. Men don’t ever suffer from the same criticism. Nancy is a pretty woman. How should she dress? Should she get dowdy? She can afford nice clothes, so she wears nice clothes.

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Q: Are the attacks against Nancy motivated by competitors hoping to drive down EMI’s stock price to set the stage for a takeover?

A: I don’t know. You’re getting into conspiracy theory territory here. Who knows what drives these vicious attacks. I’m shocked and surprised by it. You can dream up all kinds of motives and it can make you paranoid after a while.

Obviously there has been a great deal of speculation about EMI in the business press for some while now. We’ve had to live with people suggesting one minute that we’ve been sold and the next that we’ve not. It’s very annoying and distracting for the staff and the company. I suppose that articles like that could cumulatively have a sort of destabilizing effect but I don’t think they will.

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Q: After decades in the business, how do you feel about having to address these attacks on your wife?

A: I feel badly about it. It’s really sad. I suppose that running EMI Music is a high-profile job and Nancy being my wife means that these kind of things are interesting. I wish people would know who Nancy is and understand that what I’m trying to do is run a record company to the best of my ability and deliver success for EMI’s artists.

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Q: Let’s talk about the performance of the company. There is speculation that EMI’s cash reserves are depleted and headed for financial trouble in early 1998 after your superstar records by Janet, Rolling Stones and the Spice Girls run out.

A: Everybody asks that question about every company that has a good year. Well, what about next year? You live year by year in the record business, but I am very optimistic about the future. EMI is a very successful music group. We are a strong No. 3, aspiring to be No. 2 in the world--and doing everything we can to achieve that soon. We are a major player in most of the world markets where we do business, but in the U.S. we have been lagging.

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Q: Critics say you’ve given overly lucrative deals to Garth Brooks, Smashing Pumpkins and other EMI acts to set the stage for the sale of EMI.

A: Oh, please. That’s ridiculous. The same thing was said about Virgin when I signed the Rolling Stones, everyone said what a stupid deal it was. That we did it just to make the company more valuable so it could be sold. But if it was a stupid deal in the first place, it wasn’t going to increase the value of the company, was it? They said the same thing about Janet. But if it’s a stupid deal it would reduce the value not inflate it. Because anyone who buys this company would have full due diligence and have access to all that information.

We do the business we do, like our competitors, simply to get the business done. We do deals all the time. There is no thought in my mind ever about let’s do this or let’s do that so we can sell EMI. [EMI Chairman] Colin Southgate is firmly on the record that he is not interested in EMI being sold. Nor am I.

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Q: Is there anything I neglected to ask you?

A: No. Except maybe sometime I would be interested in doing a proper Q&A; about what we are trying to do as a music company. Because I think that is what my job is and what Nancy’s job is and what Virgin’s job is and EMI’s job is. I prefer that to be the focus of our next interview.