Life and Career
Bron was born in Hendon, Middlesex, the elder brother of actress Eleanor Bron. Their father, Sidney, shortened the family's surname to "Bron" from "Bronstein" when founding Bron's Orchestral Service. Bron's record label, Bronze Records, was home to many popular bands. In recent years he was involved in a diverse range of musical projects, releasing a number of records for songwriter/musician Paddy Milner, and Rockford's Christmas, a record which inspired the audiobook Rockford's Rock Opera.
Bron's career in music covered just about every aspect of the industry. He was at various times a clarinetist, a sheet music printer, an artist manager handling acts including Gene Pitney, Marianne Faithfull, Manfred Mann, Colosseum and Uriah Heep, a record producer working with the Bonzo Dog Band, Osibisa and Juicy Lucy plus all the acts he managed with the exception of Faithfull, a booking agent, record label owner and a studio owner and manager at Roundhouse Studios. Bron was brought up in a family steeped in the music industry. His father's company, Bron's Orchestral Service, was claimed to be the largest supplier of sheet music in the UK. Gerry Bron joined the company at 16 to assist his father when Bron senior's health started to fail. "I suspect I may have left school at 16 anyway," Gerry commented in an interview with Billboard's Encyclopaedia of Record Producers.
The company moved into music publishing and one of the first acts that Gerry Bron was responsible for was Gene Pitney. This business relationship led to Bron and Pitney discussing making records together and Bron produced all the demos for the publishing company. The positive response to the quality of these encouraged Bron to move into the area of production more actively and he produced Manfred Mann's hit singles "Ha! Ha! Said The Clown", "My Name Is Jack" and "Fox On The Run". This was followed by albums with Colosseum and Uriah Heep. Heep were the cornerstone of Bron's label, Bronze, founded in 1971.
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