MusicTank

Bestriding the recorded music industry, looking like Napoleon Dynamite in a nylon suit, Guy Hands has finally unveiled his 'brave new' vision for EMI. Which seemingly involves sacking 30% of the staff, driving out the most popular label executive in the country (Tony Wadsworth), upsetting the managers of every big act left on the post-Radiohead label and treating the artists themselves as if they were in Victorian times by forcing them up the chimneys for 23-hour stints every day.

If that's his vision, I fear he might have cataracts. Yes, it's true that EMI was in need of a shake-up, but this is is the biggest example of cutting your nose off to spite your face in recent years. Hands might have a grasp of the financials, but he's displayed a shocking inability to understand and value creativity (in terms of both staff and artists).

We're not expecting him to indulge all the artists by buying them gold helicopters that run on cocaine; but, based on the evidence so far, he's little more than music's Bernard Matthews, treating artists and their work as mechanically-reclaimed meat that can be pumped out in bland parcels that satiate no one and probably slowly poison you. He's conducting 'A&R by spreadsheet' and that way lies ruin. He's talked repeatedly about "turning around this great British institution". In reality he's skinning a cat and making it wear dungarees made of vinegar.