James Barton – Cream

By the time James Barton entered the music business he was a ‘confident, cocky, ginger haired nuisance,’ a bright nineteen year old who had already learned the basics of business as a market trader.
‘I was very inquisitive,’ he says. ‘I had my head in every box, round every corner, under every rock.’
Barton knew he could sell. Taking a paper round aged 14 he performed his first acquisition buying a friend’s round for £30 on the way to accumulating the biggest paper round in the city; he pumped the profits into a market stall, learning the ropes from a fellow trader. He was involved in clubs in Liverpool, before launching Cream in 1992. He built Cream into the pre-eminent global club brand the centrepiece of which, Creamfields, is the biggest dance festival of its kind in the world.
‘If you’re involved in any creative industry you have to be willing to fall flat on your face. You have to use your imagination – and that comes with some risks.’
Particularly when you’re surrounded by depression, crime and even death as Barton was growing up on the Radcliffe Walk estate in the late 1980s. Heroin was rife and teenagers left school with little education (Barton has a single CSE) to take dead-end jobs or a route into crime.
It had a profound impact on his drive to succeed. ‘People who lived near me or who went to school with me are now in prison for selling drugs or they’re dead from selling or taking drugs,’ he says.............