That Mills Magic

His name is Gordon Mills, but it might as well be Midas. In the mid-1960s he transformed a pigtailed Welsh rock belter, Tommy Scott, into the tuxedoed dandy whom the international pop world now knows as Tom Jones (the nom de chanson capitalized on the then-popular movie). Two years later Mills took a nondescript provincial singer, Gerry Dorsey, whimsically tagged him with the name of a 19th century German composer and made Engelbert Humperdinck almost as big a nightclub, TV and recording star as Jones. The musical empire that Mills has built largely on the careers of those two singers is now worth between $35 and $40 million.

As if to prove that he can turn the same trick with even less promising raw material, Mills recently unveiled as his latest protege one Raymond O'Sullivan, 25, an Irish ex-postal clerk. His new name is--of course--Gilbert O'Sullivan. Mills admits that O'Sullivan has terrible diction, little rapport with women, and has never set foot on a stage. Despite all that, Gilbert O'Sullivan currently has the No. 1 hit single in the U.S. with Alone Again (Naturally). Last week the effusively bittersweet ballad was making the biggest sweep of Top 40 radio stations since the Beatles' salad days.

Clunky Boots. Mills first heard of O'Sullivan when the would-be star wrote him a letter two years ago. O'Sullivan included a "demo" record and a snapshot, and it was the photo that particularly intrigued Mills. Peering out from under fierce Irish eyebrows and a flat cap was a thin-faced youth garbed in short trousers, waistcoat, athletic socks and huge clunky boots. "I couldn't believe it," recalls Mills. "He looked like a young Charlie Chaplin." As it turned out, it was a getup that O'Sullivan had cannily contrived to draw attention to himself.

Mills, a man who believes that a rose by any other name could smell not only sweeter but more salable as well, began by changing Raymond's name, then set to work on his image. The hair, which looked as if it had been cut around a bowl, was allowed to grow. The waistcoat and boots were traded for pleated tweed trousers with cuffs, open-neck shirt and a collegiate sweater with the letter G on the front. "A college sweater can be sexy," says Mills. "It hugs the shoulders."

In the recording studio, Mills exerted the same close supervision that he lavished on Tom and Engelbert, acting as producer at every session and approving every arrangement. It was not necessary to search for songs, as he does for Tom and Engelbert, because Gilbert writes his own. But when Gilbert begins to make concert appearances this fall, Mills will be giving his customary attention to every last detail both in front of and behind the footlights.

At 37, Gordon Mills stands at the forefront of what Variety calls "the new strong men of the music biz"--the talent managers, who now wield the influence and prestige once exclusively held by pop publishers, record-company executives and sometimes disk jockeys. Mills is releasing O'Sullivan's songs on his own new record label, MAM, named after the parent Mills company, Management Agency and Music. The original MAM, whose profits are running around $6,000,000 a year, has some 30 subsidiaries that, among other things, own all of Paul Anka's songs, manage the British appearances of Frank Sinatra, and will shortly produce movies.

Like Humperdinck, Mills was born in India, the son of a British soldier. Like Jones, he grew up in Wales (after his father returned to the little mining town of Tonypandy). As a young man just out of the army, Gordon began playing a mouth organ in theaters and clubs, eventually becoming the harmonica champion of Wales. He gravitated to London, landed a job with the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang, formed a vocal group called the Viscounts, then tried his hand at songwriting.

Befitting its status as a front-rank British entertainment corporation, MAM operates out of an elegant suite of offices on London's Bond Street. Befitting his horror of all things corporate, Mills rarely goes near the place, leaving the day-to-day bookkeeping to lieutenants. Mostly he works out of his home in suburban Surrey, which he shares with his wife, four young daughters and a small zoo (properly penned) of seven gorillas, three Bengal tigers, a panther, leopard and cheetah. Inside the house live a Great Dane, two cats, hamsters, guinea pigs and hummingbirds. "I could actually be happy on an island with various threatened species," says Mills. Threatened species are something Mills obviously knows a bit about. After all, is there any species more vulnerable to the tides of time and nature than pop singers?

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