Lisa amongst many other celebrities and artists paid their respect to her former manager and friend Jazz Summers memorial service 'a Life Tribute' which was held at the 'Ministry of Sound' club in London yesterday.
Jazz Summers was considered by many who knew him in the music industry as an incredible man, entertaining, scary, generous, kind and passionate about the artists he managed over his long career. Those he managed included Lisa, Wham, Soul II Soul, The Verve, Snow Patrol, Betty Boo to name but a few.
Jazz Summers was considered by many who knew him in the music industry as an incredible man, entertaining, scary, generous, kind and passionate about the artists he managed over his long career. Those he managed included Lisa, Wham, Soul II Soul, The Verve, Snow Patrol, Betty Boo to name but a few.
Lisa performed "All Woman" a massive hit from 1991 when Summers was her manager almost 25 years ago - and told the story of when she first played it to him.
“We’d done the first album and it was a huge success,” she said. “And with huge success comes shitting yourself about the next album.”
She took in a bunch of demos to Big Life, ordered as she expected them to appear on the new LP.
“Jazz and Tim were really knocked out by it. Then we said: ‘There is another song, but it’s quite cheesy.’ “We thought we probably shouldn’t play it for you.’ Jazz said: ‘Get it on!’
“We played him the song and he just sat there. And it’s like, you know when you think someone’s a hard bastard, right? He just cried.”
Also before performing in memory of Summers, Boy George broke the emotion with an anecdote that reminded the crowd just how cutting Summers could be.
“When I first starting working with Jazz, I introduced him to my band who I’d been playing with for a long, long time,” he said, explaining that his guitarist began arguing with Summers “over some money”. “He said: ‘Look, Jazz, plumbers get paid more than this!’ “And Jazz said: ‘That’s because plumbers are useful.'"
The music industry has lost one of the greatest mangers of all time.
R.I.P Jazz Summers 1944-2015
Lisa performing on stage (bottom left) as well as Boy George (bottom right) Lisa with Darcus Beese (head of Island Records) getting into the spirit of things (top right)