EP44: Simon Draper

Electronically Yours with Martyn Ware

Today’s episode features the legendary head of A&R at Virgin Records during the glory years, Simon Draper. He was responsible for the signing and development of an enormously wide range of successful artists including Mike Oldfield, The Human League, Culture Club, XTC, The Sex Pistols, PiL, The Skids, Magazine, OMD, Magazine, Simple Minds and Heaven 17 amongst many others.
His intuition for talent and his willingness to take creative and financial risks enabled Virgin Records to become, for a while, ‘the coolest label on Earth’…
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the massively underrated talent of Simon Draper, without whom my and many other careers would probably never have happened…