Bob Roper
Bob Roper has worked for over thirty years in the music industry of Canada and North America. He was born in November 1947, in downtown Toronto.
His first job was with Capitol-EMI; after a couple of years, in the early seventies he was headhunted by A&M, working with bands such as Supertramp, Nazareth, Cat Stevens and (Andy Richards’ band) The Strawbs. “I promoted new releases on A&M to radio, newspaper, and other media,” explains Bob. “It is the promo rep’s job to ‘break’ the artist through the media and hope that the public will then buy the records.” Bob was one of the first people to come across Rush, and was instrumental in the Rush discovery story in early 1974, when he was working as regional promotion representative for A&M.
Bob left A&M in 1977 and went back to Capitol-EMI, moving to Vancouver as their “West Coast promotion man,” he explains. “I always liked that gig because it reminded me of the old Rolling Stones track of the same name.”
He then moved to Warner, to run their A&R division. He was then “headhunted” to manage a famous children’s act, Sharon, Lois and Bram – famous for kids, that is. “They had a North American TV show and sold a million CDs per year!” Despite claiming that “It was a wonderful education,” it was two years in this job however, that left Bob wondering what he was doing it for. “I couldn’t handle not doing rock music,” he says. “Had I heard ‘She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain’ one more time, I would have needed a straitjacket!” In 1993, looking to get back to real music, Bob contacted Ray Danniels, who by coincidence had just lost Val Azzolli to Anthem as general manager of A&R. Bob’s main job was to manage Anthem artist Lawrence Gowan. He stayed in the post for two years, before Ray decided to trim down some of Anthem’s acts at the same time as he landed Van Halen’s management. “Gowan and I had an inkling that our days at SRO/Anthem were numbered,” says Bob. “When Gowan didn’t generate huge commissions it was time for Ray to move on. Van Halen was certainly a much bigger payday for Ray both financially and prestigiously.” Bob nonetheless saw his firing as an opportunity. “It did work out because it forced me into self-employment which I now regret not having done much sooner in life,” he remarks. Meanwhile, Gowan fell on his feet when the position came up to replace Dennis DeYoung as the keyboardist/vocalist of Styx.
Bob has been running his own artist management company for 13 years now, and he is a director at The Harris Institute For The Arts, which provides training for careers in the music industry. Bob is also on the board of the Metronome foundation, a music charity.