Cliff Cooper – Founder & CEO

One day in 1978 – without giving any notice – building contractors appeared on the scene, closed off New Compton Street and prepared for demolition work of all the shops… including ours. Customers and suppliers could not enter the street and the shops couldn’t trade.

A good friend of mine, Nigel Benjamin (ex – Mott the Hoople’s front man), suggested I contact his father, Ben, who was a barrister. After explaining our situation, Ben told us that the builders were totally out of order. His advice was simple: I needed to ‘move a judge’ and persuade him to issue an injunction against the developers. An injunction would immediately stop all construction work and would be extremely costly to them.

As we had not been given proper and formal notice Ben was able to persuade a judge to issue an injunction. He believed the developers would be unlikely to sue, and each day that passed would have cost them a small fortune by holding up the development.

On the same day the judge issued the injunction, I received a frantic phone-call from the property developers who asked me if I would attend a meeting at their offices in London’s Pall Mall.

I arrived at their prestigious offices and was directed to the boardroom. Inside, four well-dressed gentlemen asked me how much money I would accept to remove the injunction and allow building work to continue. I held my breath for a moment and said £100,000. They immediately called in their secretary and dictated a short letter requesting a cheque for that sum to be drawn in my favour. I was delighted with the outcome – although I couldn’t help thinking that I could have asked for more. Nevertheless, I was very happy with the outcome. The pay-out bankrolled our move to new offices at Mason’s Yard in St James’s London. It did mean that we had to close the Orange Shops for good, to make way for the bulldozers. Their closure marked the end of an era. I think that almost everyone who worked for Orange back then has at some time made contact with me and said how much they miss those days.

Those days were so exciting, every day bringing new problems and new opportunities, and it never ceases to amaze me how after closing the shop, some forty or so years later, I am once again doing what I loved doing then, back working with Orange, but as a truly global company.

The Orange Shop.

Landing the deal for Orange equipment to be used exclusively onstage at the MIDEM shows was a real coup for us…. It was where Stevie Wonder first tried and loved our amps, and in effect launched Orange onto the world stage.

Cliff Cooper – Founder & CEO

MIDEM (Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale) is a music business exhibition held in Cannes, France. Each year, Cannes hosts this record exhibition as well as the famous film festival. Managers, record companies and artists take their promotional tapes and songs for publishing to the exhibitors. Would-be stars go around the exhibitors stands looking to secure record, publishing and licensing deals.

The guy who actually started it back in 1967 was Bernard Chevry. I can’t remember how I first got in contact with him, but he was looking for a company to supply amplifiers and a public address system for MIDEM. Bernard asked me to fly over to Paris where his business was based. The deal I put to him was a three-year contract to supply all of the equipment for the festival at a fee of $20,000 each year. That was a lot of money in those days. We sent the equipment over in two large Mercedes trucks, along with studio technicians and engineers.

The central focus at MIDEM was the theatre, where world-class stars would stage special shows promoting their latest records to all sectors of the music industry. To my delight, in the very first year, Stevie Wonder – one of my favourite artists – performed. I met him and invited him to come and visit Orange Studios when he was next in London. Stevie took me up on my offer and recorded some demos. That was how our association and his subsequent endorsement of Orange started. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was Stevie who really promoted Orange worldwide and helped us to earn our title ‘Voice Of The World’.

Stevie Wonder with Orange at MIDEM

Beat Club Logo

Cliff Cooper – Founder & CEO

After we set up Orange Hire in 1969 we supplied Orange equipment to a lot of English and American bands when they worked in Germany and the rest of Europe on tours organised by the major German promoters, Lippmann and Rau.

People working in the German music business soon began to notice these orange-coloured amplifiers on stage. Out of the blue, I got a phone-call from Mike Leckebusch who was the producer of the Beat-Club television show which was broadcast nationwide from Bremen. Mike asked me whether we would provide Orange backline equipment for his show, and I was only too pleased to oblige.

This was an important development for Orange because although bands who appeared on Beat-Club had the option in the studio of using their own equipment, fortunately for us most of them chose to use Orange and many of them then placed orders for equipment with us soon after.

Beat-Club gave Orange television exposure throughout Germany and orders began to flow in. As a result of this we decided to form a German subsidiary – Orange GMBH

Cliff Cooper – Founder & CEO

Turntables

Orange Strings – They actually were orange too!

In the early years we used our name on all sorts of selected products which were music-industry related and which we believed there would be a demand for. We started with the Orange DJ Consoles. Then guitar and bass strings, which sold very well. The microphones came next: anti-feedback condenser microphones with a hypercardioid pattern to give a more directional response. These microphones were virtually indestructible and initially silver in colour. We later had them enamelled in four different colours and supplied carry cases for them. They were made for us by a company called Calrec, who were based in West Yorkshire. These microphones were also used for studio recording.

Orange Microphones

Drums were added to the range and were made by our French distributor, Capelle. For the first set delivered, we had the hardware plated with 24-carat gold. This immediately gained the attention of the press, and the Orange Drums were launched. More products came, including stroboscopes which were very popular in those days. We sold huge amounts of T-shirts and caps, which of course helped promote our brand.

Drums

Strobe

We also designed an Orange guitar [below], which we had built for us by the famous American luthier, Randy Curlee. We only sold six of these guitars, and to date we have only been able to trace one of them, which is owned and still used by John Miles. These guitars were beautifully made and sounded great. I wish I’d kept one for myself.

Only 6 of these guitars were ever made.

Orange Guitar

In the late 1990s we introduced the Orange computer tower.

Cliff Cooper – Founder & CEO

Very soon, 8-track recording studios had become the new industry standard. I formed Amity Schroeder as an Orange affiliate company with Roger Jeffrey as chief designer. We started to build our own tape decks, starting with an 8-track. I invested a lot of money in Amity Schroeder, and soon found out that it was a struggle to introduce a new brand into the highly competitive studio equipment market. Nevertheless, we managed to keep our heads above water with our early range of analogue tape recorders and ‘spot’ cartridge machines built for radio broadcasting studios. Our clients included the BBC and a number of independent radio stations.

Amity ‘Spot’ Cartridge Jingle Machine

From left: Cliff Cooper, Jenny Murd and Roger Jeffrey. Amity exhibit their professional studio equipment at the APRS trade show

Amity Schroeder then designed and marketed the world’s first 16-track tape recorder, and built a 1-inch tape deck . This was cast in aluminium and machined to exacting tolerances, and was really ahead of its time. We had the tape heads specially designed for us by Nortronics in the USA. These had an excellent crosstalk specification. Later, we introduced a 24-track recorder that utilised our newly designed 2-inch tape transport .

Amity 1” Tape Transport

Amity 24-Track Tape Recorder with a 2” Tape Transport

At that point we really needed to manufacture these machines in larger quantities. Due to other business commitments, I couldn’t devote the time it would have needed to open a new facility and develop this specialist market. It would also require a huge financial investment, which would have weakened the other businesses. It was time to sell. The company that bought Amity Schroeder was Trident Audio.

Amity ‘Spot’ Cartridge Jingle Machine