The first time I ever met Dante Bonutto, who heads up the A&R department of the great Spinefarm Records, I was frogmarched to a moderately posh fish restaurant in Notting Hill and ordered to tell him that the multimillion selling band in his charge that I’d made a verbal agreement to put on the cover of Kerrang! magazine were now not going to be on the cover of Kerrang! magazine. And probably never would be.
Not the best way to make a good first impression - oh, and not only that, but the money the label had spent on flying a journalist to interview said band, and a photographer to take photos, and hotels, taxis, food and the like, was not going to be reimbursed. The publishers of the magazine, my bosses, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that from now until whenever (three years, as it transpired), I would have to recycle the same ten bands - we ‘agreed’ a list - over and over and over again until I was sat on a bus to work crying, my OCD out of control, fairly sure I could hear the voices of every person who had ever sat on this bus but was now dead, thinking, “I am as creative as anyone I know, but how the fuck can I find a new way to put My Chemical Romance, without a new interview, without any unseen photos, without anything at all left to say, at all, on the cover of this fucking magazine again?”
But hey, the fish was good. I think I had plaice.
More of that - I’ll even tell you who didn’t make the list and why; it’s amazing how a bloke from Heat magazine thinks he knows more about commercial merits of the Deftones and Enter Shikari than a room of rock fans who have lived and breathed rock music since they could barely read or write - in my coming book! And yet somehow, despite our first meeting being the sort of fiery car crash that you only see in Nascar, Dante Bonutto became one of my very favourite people in all of the British music industry. Much of my love for the dude concerns his relentless, terminally unquenched love for music. Much of it concerns his decency. Some it is to due to his eccentricity. His love of the late, great Warren Zevon. His sartorial style. And his excellent taste in music. Make no mistake, if a rock band is doing something interesting right now, they’re probably signed to Spinefarm. And if they’re signed to Spinefarm, Dante Bonutto probably had a big part in signing them. Watch the video for this episode above, or listen to the audio here when you’re walking the dog.
There is wisdom, inspiration and a few fun rock ‘n’ roll stories contained within.
Dante Bonutto speaks to The James McMahon Music Podcast [Episode 133]