Roy Flynn
He managed The Speakeasy Club in 1960s London, in which capacity he associated with and befriended rock stars of the era like Keith Moon and Jimi Hendrix.
Flynn claims he did not receive any revenue from the deal, and sued the band and Lane, eventually settling for what he considers to be a small portion of what he was owed.
[3] It soon became a regular hangout for popular musicians of the era, like The Beatles, and leading record label executives, along with film and television stars like Dudley Moore and Albert Finney.
Jimi Hendrix, who became a close friend of Flynn's, was a frequent visitor and performer, known for jamming with whoever might be playing that night, on whatever instrument he could, Family's Charlie Whitney recalled.
[1] In September 1968, Flynn was managing another club, Blaises, while The Speakeasy was temporarily closed in the wake of a fire.
Casting about for a replacement on short notice, he consulted with a friend, future Charisma Records founder Tony Stratton Smith, who told him there was an unknown, unsigned band that lived just around the corner from the club.
[2] Yes began to perform regularly at Soho's Marquee Club, and within two months they were the opening act for Cream at its farewell concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, which paid them only £25, a sum Flynn attributes to the penury of Robert Stigwood, that band's manager.
Bassist Chris Squire, who was equally elated at the time, recalled after Ertegun's death in 2007 that as a result of being locked into such a long-term deal, the band's share of the album revenues was very low and they spent considerable time and effort during the 1970s trying to renegotiate those terms more favourably.
Yes toured to promote the record while writing songs for its next album, Time and a Word, released almost a year later to the same combination of encouraging reviews and disappointing sales.
By contrast, during those two years, "Yes managed only to tread water, run red lights and lose money at gigs in Kidderminster that cost us more to do than we were paid.
[2] Banks was replaced by Steve Howe, who had himself performed at, as well as patronized, the Speakeasy, where he met his first wife, two years earlier as a member of The In Crowd, later known as Tomorrow.
[8]: 40 After touring to support Time and a Word, the band settled down on a Devonshire farm to write and rehearse songs for their third album, the last one Atlantic was contractually obligated to release.
[8]: 71 Several weeks into those sessions, Flynn, who had been paying the rent on the farm, came to visit and told the band that he could no longer afford to support them financially, ending their relationship.
He had come from an accounting background and done some promotion and management; after seeing Yes he thought they could be stars despite playing songs that were generally too long for radio airplay.
He felt was due some compensation for the time and money he had expended, and went to Lane's company, Hemdale, to negotiate a deal.
At the time they were recording Fragile, their fourth album, for which they had decided that every member would write something short that would show off their talents and allow newer fans to get to know them better as musicians,[d] balancing out four longer compositions which were group efforts.
To express their bitterness about the Flynn deal, the band retitled a 35-second percussion-driven instrumental written by Bruford from "Suddenly It's Wednesday" to "Five per Cent for Nothing".
[10][11] Fragile's release was an even greater boon to Yes than its predecessor had been, getting the band radio airplay and concert dates in North America.
At the end of 1971 he filed suit against the band and Hemdale[2] (Bruford recalled Flynn years later as "an emotional man who, rightly, felt hard done by"[7]).
He and his wife, Suzanne Bassett, a former model whom he had met during his Speakeasy days, moved out of London and spent two years renovating a Wiltshire farmhouse they bought.
Flynn felt his move into managing pubs was an even bigger mistake than turning down Peter Gabriel until they sold The Bell and bought The Bull Inn in Charlbury, West Oxfordshire.
They included the filing cabinet with the club's membership cards, and a light-blue suit with black maroon lining and Nehru collar that Flynn had personally picked up from Granny Takes a Trip, the popular psychedelia-influenced boutique of that era, to bring to Jimi Hendrix on tour in New York.
