Dick Leahy obituary | Pop and rock

Behind every great artist there is often a wise mentor, and Dick Leahy, who has died aged 83, played that role for many of the acts he worked with.

Dana, the Eurovision Song Contest winner in 1970 who enjoyed a streak of hits on Leahy’s GTO record label, said: “He’s one of the people in the business I would always think of fondly. He was a man I felt I could trust. He was a man of his word.”

Leahy also guided George Michael’s career from the moment he signed a publishing deal with Wham! through Michael’s subsequent solo career.

He backed David Bowie’s Space Oddity (1972) to be a hit even when nobody was playing it on the radio and stoutly defended Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s suggestive Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus (1969) from prudish critics. He was unrepentant about the sexual frisson of Donna Summer’s groundbreaking I Feel Love (1997) – after all, it was a worldwide phenomenon.

Leahy’s gift was spotting hit records and everything else was just background noise. If the public did not immediately agree with him he kept on trying until they saw it his way.

Born in Hornchurch, Essex, Dick was the second of the six children of Patrick and Gladys Leahy (nee Jackman), and, as a gifted footballer in his youth, was nicknamed Dick, rather than Derek, after the Everton footballing legend Dixie Dean. His father, an Irish immigrant, worked at the Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham factory.

Bright enough to win a place at grammar school, he displayed a flair for razor-sharp teddy boy style as well as a gift for languages, and when drafted for national service he was posted to Germany as a radio operator. This gave him access to American Forces Radio, which fuelled his passion for music.

After leaving the military he spent a short trial period with the Foreign Office. He knew this was not where he wanted to be and took a job at Ford’s while he puzzled over how to break into the music industry.

In 1965, after working at Ford’s, he landed a job with the stock and distribution department of Philips Records, but his ambition was to work in A&R – artists and repertoire. He struck up a rapport with Carole Chapman, a secretary in Fontana’s A&R department, who recommended him when a vacancy arose there; the two went on to marry in 1972.

Rising to the post of A&R manager, Leahy worked with a string of leading acts of the era including Dusty Springfield, the Pretty Things, the Walker Brothers and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

In 1969, Leahy gave Bowie’s career a boost when he told Philips it would be mad to give up on Bowie’s single Space Oddity. Thanks to his persistence, the record was picked up by BBC Radio 1, and reached No 5 in the UK charts thanks to its association with the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Also in the same year Fontana enjoyed a big hit with the breathily erotic Je T’aime …, which reached No 2 in the UK charts before its parent company, Philips, succumbed to moral outrage and withdrew the disc (a subsequent reissue on Major Minor Records reached No 1). Leahy, who spoke French, had become Fontana’s contact man with Gainsbourg, and had argued strongly with Philips against their proposed ban.

In 1971, unmissable in his Tommy Nutter suits and full-length mink coat, Leahy was recruited by Larry Uttal, the boss of New York-based Bell Records, to manage the label’s new UK office. Leahy oversaw a streak of hits by Leicester’s 50s revivalists Showaddywaddy, including Hey Rock and Roll (1974) and Three Steps to Heaven (1975), while he successfully sensed the chartbusting potential of the Bay City Rollers, whom he had chanced to see playing at an Edinburgh disco.

After early success with the single Keep on Dancing (1975), the Rollers then suffered a couple of flops and were on the verge of splitting up, but Leahy kept faith with them. “I went to see Dick Leahy and I believed he was going to tell me it was all over,” recalled the Rollers’ manager Tam Paton, but instead Leahy gave them another chance. The band’s next release was Remember (which went to the UK No 6), and it opened the door to the Rollers’ hot streak of international success.

Leahy also worked with Bell’s roster of American artists, which included the 5th Dimension, Tony Orlando and David Cassidy. The latter, keen to divorce himself from the bubblegum image he had acquired via the TV show The Partridge Family, enjoyed much greater solo success in Britain than in the US, and scored UK chart-toppers with How Can I Be Sure (1972) and Daydreamer/The Puppy Song (1973) under Leahy’s shrewd supervision.

Further successes flowed from a deal between Bell and Laurence Myers’s Gem Records, which delivered Gary Glitter’s hit I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am), I Love You Love Me Love and Always Yours and Edison Lighthouse’s string of early 70 hits.

In 1974 Leahy teamed up with Myers to start GTO Records, after Leahy had been able to resist the blandishments of the renowned music executive Clive Davis, who planned to recruit Leahy to bring his magic touch to Columbia’s music division.

As Myers put it: “Dick was totally responsible for the mass of talent that was signed to GTO, including the Walker Brothers, the Dooleys, Donna Summer, Billy Ocean and Heatwave.”

Dana, after her Eurovision win with All Kinds of Everything, had subsequently struggled to sustain her career. Her agent, Dick Katz, recommended that she join the GTO roster.

“Dick Leahy was regarded as a hit-maker,” Dana recalled. “He had a sixth sense about what was going to be a hit, and once he believed in it he just didn’t let go of it. He was also a man of instinct. Dick got in a conversation with the man who was painting the GTO offices before we moved in, and he had very clear ideas about the music business, although he had never been involved with it. He ended up being head of promotion.”

Dana’s first single for GTO was Please Tell Him That I Said Hello (1975), but though it reached No 7 in Ireland, it failed to appear on the UK chart. “It just couldn’t break into the charts after three months,” she recalled, “but Dick would not let go. He said ‘I believe it’s a hit,” and it ended up going to No 8. I had a string of hits with GTO after that.”

His other artists were equally complimentary about Leahy’s hands-on, personal touch. According to Rod Temperton of Heatwave: “Most companies ask when you’re playing in London and say they’ll come and see you then. The day after we’d come to see Dick Leahy he came to our gig in Wolverhampton and the next time the whole company came.”

In 1976 GTO achieved their biggest hit with I Feel Love, a game-changing electronic masterpiece which ran into some resistance for its aural approximation of an extended orgasm, including a ban by Radio 1. Leahy was unfazed: “I don’t care, I really don’t… It can’t harm sales, you only need to sell to 1% of the population to get a gold disc … I don’t see any need to go crazy just because the BBC put a ban on this single.”

GTO was sold to CBS in 1978, with Leahy moving to the new owner to continue running the label. However, the corporate environment was not his natural habitat and in 1981 he left to form the music publishing company Morrison/Leahy with the former Pretty Things manager Bryan Morrison. Leahy’s unerring instincts now prompted him to sign Wham!, on the strength of hearing some of George Michael’s home demo recordings.

His relationship with Michael was not just that of publisher and client, but also guru and guide. He was permanently at Michael’s side during his disastrous legal challenge to his contract with Sony Music, which was rejected by the high court in 1994, and as Michael’s solo career developed Leahy acted as his de facto manager. He was one of the few people whom Michael felt he could trust in the industry.

In his latter years Leahy spent increasing amounts of time in Spain, teaching himself Spanish and building a house in Chite, a village south of Granada in Spain.

He is survived by Carole, their daughter, Tinca, and son, Ben, and by his sons, Richard and Russell, from his first marriage, to Patricia Glacken in 1959, which ended in divorce.

• Dick (Derek) Joseph Patrick Leahy, record executive and music publisher, born 20 May 1937; died 29 August 2020