Roy Flynn is an English former music manager. He managed The Speakeasy Club in 1960s London, in which capacity he associated with and befriended rock stars of the era like Keith Moon and Jimi Hendrix. He began managing bands, and after one night when Yes was called in at the last minute to replace Sly and the Family Stone at a 1968 gig, Flynn was so impressed with the band he offered to manage them.
Flynn would become best known for managing Yes, to whom he devoted his sole attention and much of his personal savings. The band was signed to Atlantic Records and recorded their first two albums on that label. But those albums failed to sell well in Britain and made no impression in the U.S., leaving most of the members unhappy with Flynn. As the band was writing songs and rehearsing for its third album, The Yes Album, at a Devonshire farmhouse he was renting for them, he and the band parted company.
After Brian Lane replaced him and Yes finally achieved the success it sought, Flynn negotiated a deal which, in addition to a share of the band's publishing revenues, gave him five percent of all its future revenue. They were not happy about this, and renamed a short Bill Bruford-penned instrumental on their next album, Fragile, "Five per Cent for Nothing", as a protest. Flynn claims he did not receive any revenue from the deal, and sued the band and Lane, eventually settling for what he considers to be a small portion of what he was owed. He has not managed any bands since then, and later ran pubs and restaurants in South West England.
Career
Flynn started out in printing; he was a keen jazz fan. He began moving into nightclub management in the early 1960s with the Pontiac Club in Putney.
In 1966, Flynn opened The Speakeasy Club at 48 Margaret Street in London, just north of Soho. It soon became a regular hangout for popular musicians of the era, like The Beatles, and leading record label executives, along with film and television stars like Dudley Moore and Albert Finney. The presence of the former led to impromptu jam sessions. Jimi Hendrix, who became a close friend of Flynn's, was a frequent visitor and performer, known for jamming with whoever might be playing that night, on whatever instrument he could, Family's Charlie Whitney recalled. Ritchie Blackmore, later guitarist for Deep Purple, also sat in with many acts.
In the audiences watching were other prominent musicians of the day, some of whom distinguished themselves by their nonmusical antics. Cream drummer Ginger Baker once threw his meal at a rival; another drummer, The Who's Keith Moon was banned by Flynn from the club on three separate occasions. "The first time I banned [him] it was for spraying the bar with mace at 1am" says Flynn. "It emptied the club. Then once I looked through the glass window and Moon was on the dance floor with some girl totally naked." He could not remember what earned Moon his third ban, but Flynn always let him back in after he had begged sufficiently.
Yes management
In September 1968, Flynn was managing another club, Blaises, while The Speakeasy was temporarily closed in the wake of a fire. One night, Sly and the Family Stone canceled a scheduled performance. Casting about for a replacement on short notice, he consulted with a friend, future Charisma Records founder Tony Stratton Smith, who told him there was an unknown, unsigned band that lived just around the corner from the club.
That band was Yes, who came and played the gig, with Keith Emerson, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton in the audience. Flynn was grateful, and so impressed with the band, that after they were done he went to them and offered to manage them, even though he had never managed a band. "[T]heir music was so exciting. I'd never heard anything like it and I wanted to help them" he told Yes biographer Chris Welch.
Within his first twenty-four hours as their manager, Flynn made a serious investment in Yes. He bought them a new drum kit, Hammond organ and a van to travel to gigs in. He guaranteed them a weekly salary of £25 (£ in today's pounds), and rented space to live and practice in. Yes began to perform regularly at Soho's Marquee Club, and within two months they were the opening act for Cream at its farewell concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, which paid them only £25, a sum Flynn attributes to the penury of Robert Stigwood, that band's manager. They would play the Royal Albert again, opening for Janis Joplin.