Terry On Esther Rantzen Show (25th FEB 2002)


ESTHER: Terry, when you were in East 17, were you surrounded by body guards, and groupies...
TERRY: Umm...yeah, at one point, when we was touring and stuff, we must have had forty people working for us. So, yeah, you got a lot of people...you gotta put trust in a lot of people. Basically that's the way you gotta be really. You can't really trust anyone.
ESTHER: Why did you break up? What happened to East 17?
TERRY: Ummm.... ha ha. Well, when Tony left... Tony left and uh, there was three of us left, and uh...
ESTHER: Was that the controversy about drugs, and did I take it and...?
TERRY: Yeah, yeah, but that was a set-up. Truthfully that was a set-up. The thing is, we weren't really getting on with our manager. We was having company meetings with everyone round these massive tables. And basically, we weren't happy with our manager. I started when I was 17 and this was, well basically it was a five year contract that we had. So I was, what, 22?
ESTHER: So you were still pretty young?
TERRY: Yeah. I was still quite young. We weren't getting on with our manager. Brian likes to speak his mind, where there's certain situations where he seems to speak his mind all the time. If someone asks him a question, he'll just tell ya. Whatever he's thinking, and we was having these big meetings and he just got up and basically the manager's contract was running out. We had a month left and we was all gonna just say "thanks a lot Tom for what you done, but we don't want you no more. But thanks a lot for what you've done." Just repeated that! Anyway, instead of that, Brian got up at the meeting and started swearing and stuff and sort of messed everything up. And basically, he got put in to a meeting which weren't planned - it was about drugs - and all the questions came out and Brian just said what he thought. And that was that really. Ha ha! I think it was a set-up though. It weren't scheduled on the interviews what we were meant to do.
ESTHER: So this was an unexpected set of questions which Brian answered?
TERRY: Hmmm... yeah, just for him.
ESTHER: So up until then, you'd been living, I presume, a very glitzy life.
TERRY: Yeah... people think you're rich though, but you're not. It was like, we were on a weekly wage... when it first started out, we was on, the contract was for like a million pounds - we was on £125 a week. Which John, John used to earn more roofing - he was on £350 a week! So he took a cut of under half. And then every three months it went up £25. Ha ha! Which ain't a lot!
ESTHER: But what happened to all the royalties from all the records.
TERRY: Dunno! Ha ha! The record company lends you money, they lent us a million pounds. That's an advance, they lend you it. And basically you have that million pounds and you have to start up your business on that million pounds. Uh, like videos you shoot for singles, we had to pay half of the record companies and stuff like that. So you have to set money aside...
ESTHER: And all those supporting people you were talking about, they were on your payroll?
TERRY: Yeah, all of them. But like I said, I was young and naive at the time and I was just happy to be in a group, you know? But when you start finding out, but when you start finding out the business side of it and you start finding out things don't add up and stuff, that's when it starts to become... it's not enjoyable then.
ESTHER: Would you have done things differently looking back? What would you have done?
TERRY: Took an accountancy course! Ha ha! Gone to college, took my accountancy course - done everything myself! Paid people who I had to pay... At least I would have been rich!
ESTHER: Have you ended up with money at the end of it, Terry? I mean are you... did you manage to grab some back?
TERRY: No, not really. What money I did have, I invested it, and uh, I live out in Spain now, with my girlfriend Dina and her family, and invested the money in to a bar and a club and things like that really. But I never had a fortune and could never retire at any part of my career and nor could John or Brian. Tony did! Ha ha! Tony earned loads. He was the writer for the first two albums.
ESTHER: So the music writer does get a profitable career out of it.
TERRY: Yeah, well that probably got all the money, yeah. Ha ha!
ESTHER: What was your life like before East 17?
TERRY: In and out of jobs - getting the sack. Ha ha! Me dad, he always sort of made me work from a young age, from when I was at school doing paper rounds, then down at the market on a fruit 'n' veg stall. With Brian as it goes, I worked with Brian on the fruit 'n' veg stall down the market.
SHEILA: Do you still speak to Brian?
TERRY: Yeah! And John. And Tony now and again. But he made me work all time. And I used to lie to him every now and again. When I got the sack. Ha ha!
ESTHER: So if you lost the lot, if the Spanish bar...
TERRY: Nah, it's like I said. It's about, it's about, it doesn't matter how much money you got, it's about keeping it real. And money ain't happiness. If anything, money creates problems. The higher the life styles, the more money you need to spend to keep it.
ESTHER: It is strange, that no matter how big the income, you always manage to spend just that little bit more.
TERRY: Yeah, you do!
ESTHER: And then down-sizing, cos you must have in a sense, had to shrink your horizons so to speak. Was that painful?
TERRY: No, not really. Cos we'd been together for eight years anyway, so it was like a break. We haven't really split to be honest with ya... it wasn't like the break up of the band, it was just a couple of years off, and let's see how it goes from there.
ESTHER: So you might come back?
TERRY: Yeah. Well, we're talking about writing an album at the moment.
ESTHER: So what will you do differently this time round?
TERRY: Uh... just basically, it's like I said, in the beginning we never knew anything. Like, you'd look at a contract and you'd be like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah... not really understanding it. No one speaking layman's talk, y'know, so you can understand it. So there's a load of words in there that you can't understand. Everything's confusing and you go "yeah, alright, I'll sign it" just to keep the peace.
ESTHER: How old were you when you signed your first contract?
TERRY: Well I weren't old enough, my dad had to. I was seventeen - I was only little!