Simon Cowell - Career

Career

Cowell's father's connections originally got him rehired as the assistant to an A&R man. From there onwards, Simon worked his way up and eventually got promoted to a music publishing position but left during the early 1980s to form E&S Music with his boss at EMI, Ellis Rich (later Chairman of the Performing Right Society). The company had several hit records at one point with five singles in the UK top 40. The offices were in a converted gentleman's washroom in the NCP car park on Brewer Street in London's Soho district. Cowell left by mutual agreement a few years later. He worked for Iain Burton, manager of choreographer Arlene Phillips, co-founder of dance group Hot Gossip and of nascent independent record label Fanfare Records. Cowell worked with Burton for eight years at Fanfare where he achieved his first real success in the music industry, becoming a partner and building Fanfare into a highly successful 'indie' pop label. Fanfare had numerous top ten hits with various pop artists and particularly Sinitta, selling more than 500,000 copies of her debut single "So Macho", and more than 500,000 copies of her album Rondo Veneziano. Next in 1984, Cowell and Burton met up with Pete Waterman for the first time.

Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman formed the songwriting and record producing trio known as Stock Aitken Waterman. Stock Aitken Waterman helped Fanfare during the second half of the 1980s producing several hit singles for Sinitta and licensing The Hit Factory SAW Compilation Albums to Fanfare. Next in 1989, Fanfare's parent, Public Company, found itself in difficulties, forcing Fanfare into the hands of BMG. An in-debt Cowell was forced to move back in with his parents. Later that year, he became an A&R consultant for BMG. In 1990, he appeared as a contestant on the UK gameshow Sale of the Century.

Subsequently, Cowell signed up a number of acts to S-Records that became successful, including Curiosity Killed the Cat, Sonia, Five, Westlife, Robson & Jerome, and Ultimate Kaos. He also released several novelty recordings featuring the likes of Teletubbies, wrestlers of WWE Zig and Zag and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, that were huge successes. In 2002, Cowell set up another label, Syco Music, which later became part of Columbia Records and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Artists such as Leona Lewis, Il Divo and contestants from The X Factor and America's Got Talent are released on Syco. Cowell explained, "There has to come a point when I will step down from being on camera and remain behind the scenes because you can't keep doing this forever...I think by that the public will be sick to death of me anyway and it will be time to go."

In 2006, Cowell signed to two more record-breaking deals. In the US, he agreed to remain as a judge on American Idol, earning £20 million (US$33 million) per season for another five years. He also has a deal with FOX which allows his production company to broadcast Got Talent and American Inventor on other networks, but he may not appear on them. In the UK, he signed a "golden handcuffs" deal with ITV, worth approximately £6.5 million a year for three years, which gave ITV rights to his talent show The X Factor, a British singing talent show, and Grease Is the Word, a musical talent show to find the stars of a Grease production in London's West End. In late 2005, he signed a new contract to remain working for Sony BMG.

In 2010, Cowell finalised a deal which secures the long-term business future of Syco with Sony Music Entertainment. The deal will also see him launching a US version of X Factor on 21 September 2011.