ABSTRACT
During the 1980s, Ibbs and Tillett, the flagship of British music agencies, but with Emmie no longer at the helm, steamed on inexorably towards its appointment with fate and finally sank in 1990. It could be said that, like the Titanic, the agency struck its iceberg back in the 1960s, and, having been holed below the water line, took another 25 years to sink. During the six or seven years that Hunt, Harrison, Parrott, and Campbell-White were employees, opportunities had presented themselves for the agency to keep up with and even get ahead of the times, but Emmie kept faith with her memories of her husband and would change neither her ways nor the agency's methods of operation. After her departure in 1979 and death in 1982, Ibbs and Tillett needed a generation jump at the head of management, but what it got instead was Wilfred Stiff, a gentleman of the old school, courteous, enthusiastic and experienced, but, in the view of his younger employees, 25 years behind the times. He took over at a point when what the agency urgently needed was the right sort of infusion of energy, competitiveness, and capacity to deal with new ideas. It also required rationalization by someone in mid-career, rather than leadership from a man who was approaching the age of retirement. History was repeating itself, for ten years earlier Emmie was at a similar point in her life at the time of the rise and fall of Harrison and Parrott.
