London-based media and commercial law firm Simkins has announced the death of leading entertainment lawyer and former senior partner Paddy Grafton Green.
According to Simkins, which called him a “doyen of music business lawyers”, Grafton Green’s clients were “extraordinary people at the top of their careers”, including the Rolling Stones, Robert Stigwood, Tina Turner, David Bowie and Joan Armatrading.
Joyce Smyth, manager of The Rolling Stones and Celine Dion, and a former partner at legacy firm Theodore Goddard, where Grafton Green was senior partner, described him as “exceptional in so many respects – a great teacher and mentor, an innovator in the world of tax planning and entertainment law and a man of huge intellect”. She added: “He also had a lengthy and high-profile tenure as a law firm leader. This is a very sad day.”
Grafton Green, who died aged 83 on 13 April after a brief illness, began his legal career in 1967 when he joined legacy firm Theodore Goddard as an articled clerk. When Prince Rupert Lowenstein, a director of merchant bank Leopold Joseph, consulted the firm on behalf of The Rolling Stones, Grafton Green stepped in to advise and quickly became a close confidant of the band.
He rose to head of the firm’s media group and, in 1997, became senior partner before leading the firm into its 2003 merger with Addleshaw Booth & Co to create Addleshaw Goddard. He chaired Addleshaws for a brief period and subsequently joined Simkins with Addleshaws’ highly regarded entertainment team in 2006, where he served as senior partner.
Throughout his career, Grafton Green advised entertainers, artists and high-net-worth individuals on corporate, commercial, employment and taxation issues relating to recording, publishing, public appearance, management, sponsorship, merchandising, production and distribution arrangements.
In a statement, Simkins said: “His clients loved his diligence, discretion and incisive advice, but it was his ability to take on their problems with empathy and provide practical and pragmatic solutions that was the key. He managed to do all this while remaining unfailingly polite, even while being tough. He was always able to deliver his message with humour, warmth and humanity.”
London lawyers like Mark Stephens, of Howard Kennedy, who started his professional life as a music lawyer, also fondly remember Grafton Green.
Stephens said: “When I was an articled clerk, Paddy was the music lawyer we all aspired to be. He brought a rare sophistication to a fledgling discipline, at a time when there were only a handful of music lawyers in London at all. Paddy understood artists instinctively and represented them with imagination and rigour.
“He was innovative in the way he structured careers and relationships, helping to build and steward some of the most important artists of his generation, like Dire Straits, Tina Turner, Elvis Costello, David Bowie and Oasis. For many of us who followed, he set both the professional and personal standard.”
Messages of sympathy on Simkins’ LinkedIn page included a tribute from Luke Anthony, senior legal counsel for music licensing at ByteDance: “One of the most upstanding human beings I have ever known," he wrote. "A mentor to me and a leading light in the music industry. He exemplified utter dedication to his art.”
Green is survived by his wife, Deborah, his four children, Nicholas, Charlotte, Patrick and Lucy, and five grandchildren, Hugh, Theodore, Francis, Wilfred and Hannah.
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