Dave Trott’s Blog

(I’m away for 2 weeks in Umbria. But I’ll check in on all the comments from the local internet cafe.)

My daughter went to a boarding school in the country.
One day I got a call from her housemistress.
She said there was nothing to worry about (never a good sign when someone starts off like that) but Jade had spent the night in the sanatorium.
They’d wanted to keep her under observation because they’d found her passed out on the lawn.
Apparently she and some other girls had been drinking vodka.
So I put the phone down and thought it over.
Then I called my solicitor and talked it over with him.
Then I called the school’s headmaster.
I said I’d just talked to my solicitor to find out exactly what my position was.
In what way was the school culpable?
My solicitor told me I must make it absolutely plain to the school what I find acceptable.
Once notified of that, they can be held responsible.
So I called the headmaster and told him that I was notifying him of the boundaries I expected him to enforce.
I said I found it acceptable for my daughter to drink beer and wine and smoke marijuana.
I didn’t find it acceptable for her to take any serious drugs or serious alcohol, i.e. spirits.
The headmaster said he thought that was a strange position as most parents were against any drugs, because they were illegal.
But they generally okay with alcohol because it was legal.
I said I wasn’t really interested in what was legal.
I was interested in what was life threatening.
I didn’t know anyone who’d died from beer, wine, or marijuana.
But I knew several people who’d died from serious drugs and serious alcohol.
I wasn’t saying she should smoke marijuana, just that I found that safer, and therefore more acceptable than vodka.
See it depends on what you see your parental responsibility as.
I thought it was my duty to get my children to 18 in one piece.
After that I hand them back to themselves.
My wife is an art director.
So to allow her to work, the children had a nanny when they were small.
I told every nanny the same thing when they started.
“The rules are very simple:
Rule One: the children must be safe.
Rule Two: they must be happy.
Rule Three: they should be educated.
If you’re ever in any doubt at all, default to Rule One.
Because as long as the children are safe, we can fix anything else.”
That was my attitude to drugs.
Of course they want to experiment.
Of course they want to be a bit naughty.
You don’t want your children to be goody-goodies.
So it’s about damage limitation.
Everything that’s fun is usually harmful in some way or another.
It’s naughty because it’s harmful.
It’s fun because it’s naughty.
You want your children to grow up with a bit of spirit.
But you want them to grow up safely.
So it’s a compromise.
Allow them to do something a bit naughty, but make sure it’s the least harmful of the options.
That way everyone gets some of what they want.
I get the children relatively safe.
They get to join in with their friends and be a bit daring.
And I was always honest with the kids about it.
Because the problem when I was young was that no one was honest.
Everyone’s attitude was exactly that of the parents at my daughter’s school.
All drugs are illegal therefore all drugs are equally wrong, dangerous, and harmful.
So, when I got to be a teenager, I started to experiment with grass.
I found it wasn’t so harmful.
So I figured if they lied about that maybe they lied about all drugs
So my generation ignored all the advice.
They took vast quantities of drugs, and a lot of them died.
I thought it was safer to be honest with my children.
To tell them some drugs are a lot worse than others.
Marijuana is the least harmful (at least it was before skunk).
Sure, like any smoking it can cause respiratory problems.
Also, taken to excess, you lose all ambition.
But I think everything else is more dangerous.
So that’s what I told my children.
It’s exactly the rule for tackling any problem.
In life or in advertising.
Be honest.
If we find out the facts, and present them in the most powerful way, they must work.
If they don’t work, then either the facts aren’t good enough or we’re not presenting them well enough.
So something needs to change.
Someone once said to me, “If you only ever tell the truth you never have to remember what you said.”
That’s true for any argument.

Artie Kane was in a band called The New York Dolls.
They were one of the founder punk bands.
Maybe even pre-punk/post glam-rock, if you’re purist.
Anyway they broke up in the mid eighties I guess.
Excess of everything as usual, drugs, booze, bad behaviour.
They were generally naughty boys.
Morrissey, who had been leader of their fan club when he was young, asked them to reform for a concert at The South Bank.
This was a godsend to Artie, who had been destitute since they broke up.
He’d been just about surviving in LA.
Living in a dump, spending every day finding some way to get wrecked.
He got badly mugged while stoned, and was near death for a while.
He said the only people who gave a damn were the Mormons.
So he joined their Church.
When he found he was coming to London for the concert he sent tickets for me and my family.
Artie and I had been mates at art school in New York in the late sixties, and shared an apartment.
I told my kids all the stories about those times.
I don’t think they believed me.
Until they met Artie.
He came to stay with us for the weekend following the concert.
Artie started reminiscing about the industrial quantities of drugs we (he?) did.
Grass and hash were like offering a cup of tea, merely a courtesy.
Then there was speed, LSD, seconol, Valium, Thorazine, DMT, THC, pscyllosibin, glue, coke, and heroin.
Oh yeah, and when he had no drugs, Artie would shoot whiskey straight into his vein.
We had a fridge full of Ready Whip cans that were useless.
These were cans of spray-on whipped cream, but the cream only dribbled out because Artie had sucked all the gas out.
He thought it was curious that when he’d come home with heroin I’d refuse to use a needle.
I’d say, “I’ll snort it Art, but I’m not shooting it.”
He’d say, “What are you Mr Straight, a fucking bank manager?”
In Artie’s world I was an eccentric Englishman.
Our ways parted about the time I graduated.
I wanted to work in advertising, Artie wanted the world of rock and roll.
So fast-forward thirty years.
After the concert, Artie was staying with us and we thought we’d take him to a restaurant for Sunday lunch.
My wife thought Pont de la Tour would be good.
Americans like it because it has view of Tower Bridge.
Then she met Artie and realised Tower Bridge wasn’t going to be his scene.
Camden Town would be more appropriate.
So we spent Sunday there, and Artie felt right at home.
To my kids he was like an eccentric old uncle.
They were walking around the market trying to make conversation with him.
My son pointed to a T-shirt with The Ramones on it.
He said, “Did you know The Ramones, Artie?”
Artie said, “Yeah, I used to go out with the same chick as Joey Ramone. She stabbed him in the ass and me in the hand.”
Well, he did ask.
Anyway, later that evening we had a quiet moment together, and I said to Artie, “Isn’t it time you thought about settling down, no more groupies?”
He said, “Yeah, you know I’ve met this chick I dig a lot.
She’s like very attractive you know.
In her thirties, with short blonde hair.”
Artie got strangely coy at this point.
“I’m kinda thinking of, you know, maybe asking her to marry me.”
I said that sounded like a good idea.
Artie said, “Yeah. But I think I have to ask her to stop hooking first. Waddya think?”
I said yeah, that was probably a good idea too.
The Mormons came to visit us while Artie was staying.
They were making a film about him that was eventually released as “New York Doll”.
They filmed Artie and me talking about the days at art school in Brooklyn.
But none of it made the final cut.
I don’t think the subject matter was what the Mormons really wanted in the film.
Like Artie talking about the time we took his friend’s Camaro up to Harlem to try to score.
We were so trashed we were driving around with the top down in January.
So everything inside the car, including us, was covered in a couple of inches of snow.
We crashed into a cab in Times Square while we were doing doughnuts.
I don’t think the Mormons wanted that in the film.
Or how we stole the 20’ long side off a truck to make two beds, and ended up being chased with it through the streets of Bedford Stuyvesant by the locals.
Or how we ate dog food because we were saving our money for dope.
(If you’ve ever seen a comic called ‘The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers’ by Gilbert Shelton, cross that with ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and you get the idea.)
I used to ask Artie if he wasn’t worried about getting addicted.
He used to say, “I ain’t worried because I’m not addicted to any particular drug, I’m just addicted to getting high.”
That sort of summed it up really.
Artie remembered things about those days that I’d forgotten.
He remembered I had nicked the domed top off a huge rubbish bin and sprayed it pink.
Then drilled a hole in the centre and put a bottle of Jack Daniels behind it, and a baby’s teat in the front.
Then hung it off the wall so we could all stand round sucking it.
I didn’t remember that.
But I did remember when Artie dropped out of college and I had to nag him to get a job to pay his share of the rent.
He got a job as a cabbie.
The first night out, on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, he got a puncture. So he lit up a joint while he pondered what to do.
Then he noticed a liquor store nearby.
So he went and got a bottle of blackcurrant brandy to help him ponder some more.
Eventually he decided he was in no state to change the wheel himself.
So he called the cab company and they sent a guy in a truck.
When he’d finished changing the wheel Artie had finished several joints and the bottle of blackcurrant brandy.
He was too wrecked to drive.
So they had to tow the cab back to the garage.
The next morning I asked Art if he had the rent.
He said not only did he not have the rent, he now owed the cab company twenty seven dollars.
So he quit driving a cab and got a job servicing phone boxes.
One day his supervisor came with him to check why the takings were way down.
They went for a coffee and Artie offered to pay.
He took out a large bagful of dimes from his coat pocket and poured them on the counter.
So that job didn’t last long either.
In those days we all felt it was important to try absolutely everything.
Not to be repressed, it was important to break taboos.
One day Artie was discussing this with another guy in a coffee bar in the East Village.
They started discussing how they had never tried homosexuality, but felt they should.
I asked Artie what happened.
He said, “Well you know, we went back to his place, and I said whaddya think we should do? And he said, I dunno, we should probably take our clothes off or something.”
So I asked Artie what happened next.
He said, “Well, we’re standing around in our underpants and I say, maybe we should like do some foreplay. And he says okay. So I say, hey you look kinda cool you know? And he says, thanks you look kinda cool too.”
So I asked what happened next.
Artie says, “Well we kinda felt like we should maybe touch each other to get in the mood you know. So we sorta stroked each other a bit.”
And I asked what happened then.
Artie said, “Well like, we couldn’t think of what else to do next you know. So we both got dressed and I guess that was kinda it really.”
So Artie’s attempt at being gay didn’t really work out after all.
Anyway, after reminiscing for a while it was around midnight.
In the old days that would have been time to start going out.
But it was Sunday night, and Cathy and I had work tomorrow.
So we went up to bed.
And Artie and our two kids, Jade and Lee, went out onto the front steps to smoke a joint.
Just like me and Artie would have done thirty years ago.
The kids said, while they were passing the spliff back-and-forth, Artie was talking to them, something about The Book of Mormon.
Then he sort of drifted off.
So the kids just sat there, toking quietly.
Then after a while he came back and said, “Hey, what was I saying?”
They said they weren’t sure.
He said, “Whoa, when I’m talking at least one of us should be listening to what I’m saying, you know?”
In Artie’s head that made sense.
That’s why it was great that Artie spent that weekend with us.
And it was great that his band got reformed and people were making a film of his life.
On Monday I took him to Paddington station and put him on The Heathrow Express.
Two weeks after he went back to LA he died.
It was all over in two hours.
He got pneumonia, checked into hospital, and after all the years of abuse his body just couldn’t take it anymore.
At his last performance, at The South Bank, he had a T.S. Elliott quote filling the stage behind him.
“The end of all our exploring.
Will be to arrive at the place
Where we first began,
and know it for the first time.”

What was great for Artie is that he went out on a high.
In more ways than one.

Brian Stewart was a brilliant young art director working in Edinburgh, at a really good agency called Halls.
Brian came back from lunch one day and noticed everyone smiling at him.
He thought, that’s unusual.
Then someone told him the creative director wanted to see him in his office.
So Brian walked in and the creative director said, “Seven, okay.”
Brian said, “Pardon?”
The creative director said, “Seven, I’m putting you on seven, okay.”
Gradually it dawned on Brian he’d just had his salary doubled.
He was on £3,500 a year, the creative director had just put him on 7K.
In a situation like that you don’t argue.
You say, “Thanks very much” and leave before they change their mind.
Which is what Brian did.
But he couldn’t work out why it had happened.
And why was everyone smiling at him?
Why had the creative director doubled his salary?
Outside his office a secretary casually said to him, “Oh John Hegarty called for you.”
Brian said, “Thanks very much.” And went into his office.
Now he knew what had happened.
While he’d been at lunch John Hegarty (from BBH in London) had phoned up to speak to him.
He wasn’t there, but it went round the office like wild fire.
“John Hegarty called to speak to Brian Stewart.”
“John Hegarty’s been trying to get hold of Brian Stewart.”
“John Hegarty needs to talk to Brian Stewart.”
“John Hegarty wants Brian Stewart to call him back.”
By the time it got to the creative director everyone knew that John Hegarty must have been so impressed by Brian that he wanted to offer him a job at BBH in London.
So the creative director was worried.
Brian was one of the best young art directors in Scotland, and he didn’t want to lose him.
But BBH in London, there was no way Halls could compete with that.
Except maybe money.
Maybe they could hang on to Brian if they doubled his salary.
So they did.
Meanwhile Brian went back to his office and made the phone call to John Hegarty with the door shut.
This proved to everyone that it was indeed a heavy phone call.
But why Brian actually shut the door was because he’d met John socially, and John was just calling him to ask for a favour.
Nothing to do with work.
But when you’ve just had your salary doubled it’s best not to mention that.
So he didn’t.
I once heard John Cleese talking about returning from a holiday.
He came through the front door to find lots of mail waiting on the mat.
He began gradually opening the letters.
One of them said something like, “Dear Mr. Cleese, we represent the advertising agency for Sony and wonder if you’d be interested in appearing in a campaign for us, for a fee of £100,000?”
John Cleese thought that was a nice ‘welcome home’ present.
He put it aside and carried on opening the rest of the post.
A little while later he opened another letter from Sony.
This one said, “Dear Mr. Cleese, as we haven’t had a response to our last letter we feel we should improve our offer. Would £150,000 be more acceptable?”
And indeed he felt it was.
Sometimes you don’t have to do anything.
Sometimes the world changes around you.
You can’t depend on it.
You have to carry on working, looking for opportunities, trying to make things happen.
You try everything you can possibly think of.
And sometimes, just sometimes, you get a lucky break.
You can’t depend on it.
And, funnily enough, the more you depend on it the less likely it is to happen.
The more you don’t depend on it, the more likely it is to happen.
So how do you increase the chances of luck happening?
Paul Grubb always liked American tycoon Armand Hammer’s quote, “People say I’ve been lucky. But it seems to me the harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Personally I’ve always preferred the way The Bible puts it, “God helps those who help themselves.”

The one radio show I make an effort not to miss each week is ‘Desert Island Discs’.
That’s the radio show where they invite an unusual celebrity along each week: actor, explorer, philosopher, scientist, just interesting people.
And they say, “Imagine you were cast away alone, on a desert island with only 8 records for the rest of your life.
What would you choose and why?”
Sometimes the celebrities are interesting, sometimes not.
But, what’s always useful from our point of view is this.
Here’s someone who’s lived an entire life and picked out the 8 most powerful pieces of music from everything they’ve heard over all those years.
Of course some weeks you won’t hear anything useful.
But some weeks you will.
I think it’s our job to spot stuff.
So, if we’re smart, we put ourselves in places where we’re most likely to be stimulated by things we might not otherwise encounter.
Of course you could just go to a concert and listen to whatever sort of music you like.
But you’re really not going to learn much that way.
You’ll just hear 2 or 3 hours of the same sort of stuff.
With Desert Island Discs you hear the key music throughout a person’s life.
Music for all their different moods, their different ages, their different influences, their most evocative memories.
You’ll hear classical music, rock, country, world music, rap, modern jazz, blues, and opera.
Every piece is, for them, the sound equivalent of Proust’s ‘Madeleine’.
Something so powerful that it transports them immediately back to wherever they first heard it.
Now I’m a big believer in the maxim, “Don’t work hard, work smart”.
And I think these people do a lot of our work for us.
Selecting the 8 most powerful tracks from a lifetime’s listening.
Not only that.
Because the programme’s only half hour long, they can only play a minute or so of each piece of music.
And in our job, we need powerful music that can work in short time lengths.
So this programme is like me getting someone to help me do my job.
Someone to do music research.
And I’ll take all the help I can get.
I’m not proud.
Years ago, we decided to take the family skiing.
We’d never been before, so I used the Desert Island Discs’ principle.
I asked Gordon Smith.
Gordon goes skiing every year, sometimes twice a year.
He’s an expert and he’s been all over the world.
So I figure I don’t have to go through the whole painful learning process for myself.
Gordon’s already made all the mistakes, sorted out the good from the bad.
It would be dumb not to use that.
So I asked Gordon and, like anyone who loves something, he talked about it for ages.
Eventually he decided Europe would be wrong, as we were beginners and had small children.
He said America would be best.
Because everyone speaks English, they’re more tolerant of novices, the slopes are wider, and Americans love children.
Whereas Europe has too many competing nationalities, most runs are for experts, not as much room on the slopes, and restaurants are much more formal.
So I took Gordon’s advice and went to Colorado.
It was perfect and we went back every year.
For me this is what our job’s about.
Getting the right answer.
We don’t have to invent the right answer out of our own heads every time.
But we do have to take responsibility for making sure the right answer happens.
So we need as much input, as much stimulation as possible.
Ideas from places we wouldn’t think of looking.

And I would rather get to the right answer the fastest, smartest way possible.

In the days before Macs, every agency had a studio.
This is place where all the artwork was done.
Typographers would choose a typeface for each ad and get it set.
Then the cut-and-paste guys would carefully stick everything together to make the finished ad.
Photo, illustration, headline, copy, logo, packshot.
The studio was like a little artwork factory.
I always liked to hang out with the guys in the studio.
They were more normal, and less pretentious, than a lot of the superstar  ‘creatives’.
I heard a story about a very shy guy that worked in one of the studios.
He didn’t get out much, he’d never had a girlfriend.
He was pretty much what you’d call a ‘geek’.
It was his birthday and the rest of the guys thought they should take him out for a few drinks.
Then one of the guys had a better idea.
Since he was obviously a virgin, what would be the best birthday present they could get him?
They thought the best birthday present they could give him was to get him laid.
So they all had a whip-round and put in as much as they could afford and hired a hooker for the night.
They briefed her that she was to be in the bar, and make it obvious that she fancied the guy.
And she was to make herself available to go back to his place and stay the night.
But, whatever happened, she mustn’t let on that she was a hooker and they’d paid.
That night they took him to the bar.
They bought him a few drinks.
Someone said, “Look at the bird at the end of the bar, she keeps looking over here.”
Someone else said, “Who’s she looking at?”
Someone said, “She’s looking at Ron.”
Someone else said, “Here Ron, I think she fancies you.”
After a few more drinks it was obvious even to Ron that she did.
After another drink Ron was persuaded to chat to her.
In fact Ron got on very well with her.
She kept rubbing against him and stroking his leg.
After a while everyone said it was time to go.
Ron said to her, “I’m getting a cab. Can I give you a lift?”
And she left arm-in-arm with Ron.
Everyone was very pleased with the good deed they all felt they’d done.
It had been expensive, but it was worth it.
It was his birthday and they’d given the shy guy the night of his life.
The next morning everyone turned up for work as normal.
Although they were curious, no one mentioned anything.
They kept waiting but Ron just carried on as if nothing had happened.
Eventually one of the guys couldn’t stand it any longer.
He winked and said, “So Ron, how did you get on with that bird last night?”
Ron looked up conspiratorially.
He raised an eyebrow and quietly said, “Do you know what? I reckon I could’ve had her.”

Sometimes the chance is on a plate, right in front of us, and we can’t see it.