He attended Ilford County High School for Boys, before going on to Loughborough University, graduating with an undergraduate degree in Politics, Sociology, and Russian.
After graduating in 1971, Dickins joined Warner Bros Music Publishing and was appointed Managing Director in 1974, and International Vice President of the company in 1979.
[1] His first signing, Howard Jones, sold 4 million records, whilst US artists such as Prince, Foreigner, ZZ Top, and Madonna also contributed to the Warner recovery.
Dickins constructed Cher's song "Believe" with six songwriters (who never actually met each other until the award ceremonies that followed), leading to a front cover article about him in The New York Times Arts and Living section.
Dickins also worked with other Warner acts such as Rod Stewart, on singles such as "Downtown Train" and Rhythm of My Heart", and The Corrs on their album Talk on Corners.
Dickins oversaw the creation of a classical record division, with a repertoire of works by composers such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Daniel Barenboim and José Carreras.
The company's first album release was How to Steal the World by Helicopter Girl in 2000, and the label also had chart successes with I Monster and The Alice Band in the UK and Addis Black Widow in Scandinavia.
In September 2002, Instant Karma became an independent label, and achieved a Top 5 single in January 2003 with "Mundian To Bach Ke" by Panjabi MC.
He was a founding trustee of Youth Music, a charitable foundation which helps provide access to music-making for young people, particularly in socially deprived areas.
The same year he sat on the Conservative Party's Creative Industries Advisory Board and delivered a paper on Skills and Education co-authored with Double Negative's Alex Hope.
In the 2002 Birthday Honours Dickins was appointed a Commander of the British Empire for services to the music industry, and on 15 July 2002 he received an Honorary Doctorate from his alma mater Loughborough University.
In July 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from University of the Arts, London and gave a commencement speech at the Royal Festival Hall.