SRO Management

Ray Danniels was a booker and talent manager in Toronto. Danniels became acquainted with the members of Rush, a Willowdale, Ontario band, when they were all high school students. Danniels began to book the band – then composed of members Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and John Rutsey - for the high school circuit, which included a church basement youth drop-in center called The Coffin. In 1971, Danniels became the band’s full-time agent and manager. There was just one problem: Danniels could not find a single record label in Canada willing to release the band’s music. Undeterred, Danniels sold his booking agency and teamed up with Vic Wilson to start their own management company and record label, SRO and Moon Records, respectively. Under the Moon label, Danniels fronted the money for Rush to start recording. The band released their first single in 1973, a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.” The single sold a few thousand copies, mainly in Southern Ontario. In the spring of 1974, their self-titled debut album followed. This too received a fair amount of airplay in Southern Ontario, as well as south of the border, when the album was played on a Cleveland area radio station.
With cross-border recognition, Danniels signed Rush with an American talent agent, ATI, and the band also signed a major record deal with Mercury. Rush was set to begin touring extensively, but on the eve of their first big U.S. tour, Rutsey left the band. Auditions for a new drummer were held, and the band chose Neil Peart, who was to become the band’s chief lyricist. By the end of the U.S. tour, Rush had cracked the Billboard charts, and another album, “Fly by Night,” followed in 1975. The album was a hit in Canada, selling 100,000 copies and reaching No. 9 on the charts. It was certified platinum in both the United States and Canada. Through the 1970s, Rush would continue to tour and to release albums, including “Caress of Steel,” “2112” the live album “All the World’s a Stage,” “A Farewell to Kings” and “Hemispheres.”
Meanwhile, Danniels expanded SRO's roster of talent. He signed Toronto-area rock bands such as Max Webster, Liverpool, and A Foot in Coldwater, as well as solo artists Ian Thomas and Moe Koffman. Alongside Vic Wilson, Danniels also continued to expand his business, and SRO quickly became more than simply a management company. Its associated divisions covered a full range of music business activities including recording, songwriting and publishing, and merchandising. In the mid 1970s, Danniels and Wilson created two new record labels, Taurus Records and Anthem Records to showcase their artists. Moon Merchandising was established to handle merchandising rights – which would soon become a major revenue stream. At this time, Pegi Cecconi, a former SRO employee, rejoined the company, and helped to launch the additional divisions, Brandy Publishing, Core Music, and Mark-Cain Music, which handled songwriting and publishing.
Handling artist management, recording, publishing, and merchandising (known in the industry as the 360 deal) gave Danniels and Wilson (who left the company in 1980) the opportunity to sign, record and publish a diverse array of artists. In the 1980s, the company would go on to represent acts as varied as Coney Hatch, Lawrence Gowan, Mendelson Joe, Spoons, and BB Gabor. In addition to music, SRO/Anthem would also make its mark on Canadian comedy, with Anthem Records releasing the Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy album “The Great White North,” as well as “The Wankers’ Guide to Canada,” which featured the talents of SCTV alums Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and Catherine O’Hara.
SRO’s independence also gave Rush a certain measure freedom from major label interference, particularly as the band’s sound became more experimental, synth-driven, and progressive through the late 70s and early 80s. Drummer Neil Peart was once quoted as saying “We just complete a record, do the artwork, master it, and then present [Anthem Records] with a finished work rather than kibitzing [with label executives] all the way along from the demos. We just tell Ray our silly idea, and he makes it work."
A canny negotiator, Danniels excluded Canada as a territory when signing multinational recording contracts. With Anthem as the Canadian record company, Danniels and SRO’s artists had more control over how their music was released. Danniels once noted: “By having Anthem, every time the U.S. label wanted to do things differently than what the band or I wanted, and they told us ‘No,’ we had the ability to have the tail wag the dog instead of the dog wag the tail. It was the ability to say, ‘Fine, if you don’t want to release it until September, we are releasing it in May [in Canada].’” If the American label was reluctant to support a single, Danniels could force their hand, as a successful Canadian single could create a demand in the United States. The exclusion of Canada in multination recording contracts also meant that SRO’s artists could begin earning royalties on records sales in Canada right away, as well as earning royalties from worldwide publishing. Fiercely protective of SRO’s business interests, Danniels retained the worldwide publishing rights to Rush, despite being offered a large sum of money for them by Warner Brothers Publishing in 1981. Touring and merchandising were also sources of artist income – and here too SRO safeguarded their interests by going after bootleggers and counterfeiters. SRO’s legal counsel, Robert Farmer once joined the RCMP in a dramatic raid of counterfeit merchandise operations outside a Rush concert at Maple Leaf Gardens.
With the support of SRO, Rush went on to release over 20 studio albums, went on over 30 tours, won 9 Juno Awards, received a handful of Grammy nominations, and sold an estimated 40 million albums worldwide. They were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. SRO went on to manage the careers of other major Canadian musical talents, including The Tea Party, Big Wreck, Molly Johnson, and the Matthew Good Band. In 2015, music rights publishing group Ole acquired several of SRO/Anthem’s divisions, including Core Music Publishing, Mark-Cain Music, and the Anthem Entertainment Group, which included the publishing rights as well as the legacy audio and video release of Rush and other Anthem artists. The records in this collection highlight the growth of SRO/Anthem from its humble beginnings representing the band no one wanted to record, to a major force in the Canadian music industry who managed the career of one of the most successful Canadian bands of all time.

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Farmer, Bob. “Legal Affairs Memo, re: SRO/Anthem File Donation.” August 7, 2019.
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“Ray Danniels to be honoured with Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award at the 2015 Juno Awards.” January 29, 2015. http://junoawards.ca/2015/01/ray-danniels-honoured-walt-grealis-special-achievement-award-2015-juno-awards/
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Sharp, Keith. “ole acquires Anthem Entertainment Group.” The Music Express. November 23, 2015. https://themusicexpress.ca/ole-acquires-anthem-entertainment-group/