\n<\/p>\n
Pop mogul Sir Robin Millar is not a man who you would expect to struggle with access in the music industry.<\/p>\n
In a glittering career that spans decades, he has worked alongside some of the most celebrated names in British music, from Sade to Boy George, and counts legends such as the Rolling Stones among his list of A-list friends.<\/p>\n
But a recent struggle to get a ticket for a concert was nothing his profile could solve. Instead, it was his status as a disabled person that caused him difficulty.<\/p>\n
Millar tells the anecdote with a sarcastic world-weariness. A music venue refused to sell him a ticket for an accessible seat unless he could provide \u201cproof of disability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Millar, who was registered blind as a teenager before losing his sight entirely in his 30s, said: \u201cI told them: \u2018Oh, OK, I\u2019ll get my neighbour to photograph me walking down the corridor and smashing straight into the wall at the end. Will that do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At 73, Millar has spent a lifetime confronting societal ignorance about disability and confounding assumptions about the limits of his usefulness, all the while carving out a stellar career in the music business, as a producer and label owner.<\/p>\n
The starry career, the model girlfriends, parties with the Rolling Stones, the country houses and Ferraris are a compelling part of his story, but Millar, who is chair of the charity Scope, also wants to talk about disability rights, welfare cuts and culture war debates around diversity, equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n
His disability rights evangelism \u2013 whether it\u2019s opportunity in the workplace or an accessible concert hall seat \u2013 in part reflects his own extraordinary life experience. \u201cI never had the option of a conventional career. All doors were shut to me,\u201d he says. He\u2019s a slightly reluctant disability activist who fights for what he calls \u201cthe right for disabled people to live the same life as everyone else\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t think of a disability so complex and profound that that person cannot make a positive contribution to the work, their environment, their friends and the world of work, given the right possibilities and options,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Millar grew up in north London in the 1950s and 60s, \u201ca frightened little skinny boy with Mr Magoo glasses\u201d, he told the BBC\u2019s Desert Islands Discs. He had an inherited genetic condition that meant his eyesight was chronically poor and deteriorating. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see in the dark and I had tunnel vision and little spots in the middle of my eyes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The young Robin Millar played in bands, and had dreams of becoming as songwriter before trying to get into record production.<\/span> Photograph: Robert Millar\/Home & Studio Recording<\/p>\n Boyhood was an endless round of tests and treatments, his Irish GP father deploying medical science \u2013 daily vitamin A injections, stinging eye drops \u2013 and his Guyanese nurse mother trying faith healers and psychics, \u201cpeople putting their fingers on me and poking me and putting stuff on me and saying: \u2018You\u2019ll be cured.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n None of the cures worked. He was having to sit ever further forward in the classroom to see the blackboard at his north London grammar school. He was clever, but \u201cblundering through life\u201d. \u201cNobody taught me any useful skills like braille or, like learning to touch type. I had to do all that as an adult. Because they were all obsessed with curing me. Rather than equipping me.\u201d<\/p>\n As a teenager he was taken to the Royal National Institute for the Blind (now known as the Royal National Institute of Blind People) for career advice. \u201cThey said: \u2018Do you want to be a physiotherapist or a piano tuner?\u2019 I said: \u2018Neither.\u2019 And they said: \u2018Well, we can\u2019t help you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At 16 he was told bluntly by doctors he would be totally blind in a few years. Raging, miserable, determined, he got himself to Cambridge University to study law.<\/p>\n He subsequently played in bands, and had dreams of becoming as songwriter before trying to get into record production. His big break came when he wangled an apprentice job in a Paris recording studio in the mid-1970s, making coffee and doing microphone checks for the likes of Elton John and David Bowie.<\/p>\n Getting the studio job was an \u201cincredibly random\u201d thing, he admits. The owner wasn\u2019t ticking an inclusion box (\u201cthey weren\u2019t woke in 1976\u201d) but he was prepared to take a risk. \u201cI think I just charmed him \u2026 I\u2019d been a male model and I was a very striking young man. I think he liked the idea of having someone who hung out with the Rolling Stones and was a bit kind of cool in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe owner said: \u2018Do you want the job?\u2019 I just mumbled something like: \u2018I\u2019m a bit worried about knocking over microphones.\u2019 And he said: \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we can work around that.\u2019\u201d Millar pauses. \u201cWe should have that phrase hung across Trafalgar Square. At every school: \u2018We can work around that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That kind of lucky break won\u2019t happen to 99% of young disabled people, he admits. But he believes his experience is a lesson for institutions, companies and entrepreneurs to make themselves open to spotting, nurturing and investing in talented employees who also happen to have a disability.<\/p>\n <\/span>Diamond Life by Sade.<\/span> Photograph: Publicity image<\/p>\n The studio owner\u2019s\u2019 instinct was right. The many gold discs on the walls of his south London home attest to Millar\u2019s massive success, not least a golden streak in the mid-1980s when produced a string of bestselling albums, notably Sade\u2019s acclaimed Diamond Life. He was involved in 44 No 1 hits and has sold millions of records.<\/p>\n Life was not happy ever after. He became totally blind while producing Sade\u2019s second album in the south of France, prompting a breakdown and a patient rebuilding of his life and career. Outdated attitudes about disability from the past that had been in some ways masked by his success, resurfaced, often in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n He recalls how his 40th birthday he hosted his parents for the weekend. \u201cCountry house, everything I\u2019d aspired to. Gravel drive. Bentley parked outside. Swimming pool, tennis court, two lovely children. My mother says to me: \u2018If we had known about your eyesight, your father and I would have had you aborted.\u2019\u201d He is clearly still hurt, adding: \u201cShe was so blighted by the negative side.\u201d<\/p>\n The world has moved along way since then, he says. There have been incredible improvements in accessibility. There are disability discrimination laws. On a visit to the BBC he was thrilled to be met by a visually impaired trainee. \u201cI went: \u2018Blimey, that wouldn\u2019t have happened in my day. They\u2019ve taken you [on] not just knowing you are blind but hopefully actually realising that disabled people are pretty amazing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That said, he\u2019s not complacent. He and Scope have spent years campaigning to persuade employers to do more to recruit and retain disabled people, and yet the disability employment gap remains stubbornly wide. He\u2019s scathing about the \u201carc of progress\u201d argument that says \u201cof course it was terrible in the 70s, but now, let\u2019s face it, things are all right for disabled people\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Companies who employ disabled people are more profitable and understand their markets better, Millar says.<\/span> Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Of the post-Trump pushback against \u201cwoke\u201d,equal access and affirmative action \u2013 \u201call the stuff that worries Telegraph readers\u201d \u2013 he says: \u201cI\u2019m sorry guys and girls, but sexual harassment at work, sexism, gender pay gap, worse prospects for people with disabilities, worse prospects for black and Asian communities \u2013 I\u2019m afraid it is all true. It may not be as true everywhere, but it is true.\u201d<\/p>\n This is nothing to do with being woke, he says. Companies who employ disabled people are more profitable. They understand their markets better. He reckons employer negativity stems less from prejudice and more from misplaced fears about the costs of making \u201creasonable adjustments\u201d that allow disabled people to do the job.<\/p>\n Millar would overhaul the 35-year-old legal principle of reasonable adjustment, because it implies there is an \u201cunreasonable\u201d adjustment, allowing companies to feel they have done enough if they stick strictly to the interpretation of the law. At Scope he asked for the word \u201creasonable\u2019\u201d to be removed from job ads and replaced with \u201cwe will make any adjustments to allow you to apply\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a government ambition to get more long-term ill and disabled people into work. The independent report by the former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfie on how to do this is due to be published next month. Millar wants to see it recommend financial and other incentives to persuade employers to take \u201cthe big step on inclusion\u201d.<\/p>\n Millar opposed the government\u2019s now abandoned plans to cut \u00a35bn from disability benefits. But he believes attitudes and intentions around disability rights are generally \u201cpretty good\u201d. He starts to say there are pockets of discrimination, and then pauses. \u201cIt\u2019s not pockets of disability discrimination, actually, it\u2019s just pockets of wankers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pop mogul Sir Robin Millar is not a man who you would expect to struggle with access in the music industry. 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