Let the Record Spin

It was the darling of the music, art and charity world’s social calendar. An event that brought creative people together in their thousands to use their skills for good. It had attracted worldwide attention despite stubbornly rooting itself in London and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for a roster of charitable organisations over the years. But in the end, seven years of running Secret 7” became too much for just two people to manage.

When Jordan Stokes and Kevin King set up the charity fundraiser in 2013 they didn’t have a fixed plan of exactly how it would work, let alone a road map for the next seven years. But when their seventh show finally came around in 2020, they decided enough was enough.

Jordan was running a design studio in Sydney, Kevin was moving his family to Portugal, and the pressure of organising a show from opposite ends of the world had taken some of the fun out of proceedings for both of them. So the seventh show would — fittingly, but not by design — be their last. Then Covid happened and lockdown scuppered their best-laid plans. What was supposed to be a last hurrah for an all-consuming and epic project just sort of fizzled out.

“That was disappointing for us,” says Kevin from his new home in Portugal. “In fact it was really the most depressing end possible, to have this show that nobody could see. It was meant to be a big bang and instead it was like… nothing.”

For the uninitiated, Secret 7” takes seven tracks from seven musicians and presses each one 100 times onto 7” vinyl. It then invites creatives from around the world to create and submit their own original artworks for the vinyl sleeves, which are sold in an exhibition on a first-come-first-served basis. This format saw loyal fans queue for up to 36 hours in line outside the venue to guarantee the first pick of artworks on the opening day from artists like Anish Kapoor, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Yoko Ono, David Shrigley and literally thousands more big names. Or that’s how it used to be. As of 2024, the format has changed a little.

Despite the reluctance of Jordan and Kevin to keep the project going, a hoard of devoted fans, artists and, crucially, a huge charity with longstanding links to the music industry, decided that Secret 7” was just too good to let go. So in the summer of 2023, King, and some new associates at War Child, began to map out how a resurrected and reinvigorated show might work.             

“In the last two or three years we’ve started working with the art industry a bit more, building relationships with galleries,” explains Rich Clarke, head of War Child Records. “So for us to have this product that’s an intersection of music and art opens doors and creates more possibilities with that format. It’s an amazing thing, and an easy project for us to say yes to.”  

For Kevin it felt like a natural fit too. War Child had been the show’s event partner in its second year, and even though “I’d been like, ‘No way, I don’t ever want to do it again’, they were persistent, and the more we talked about it, the more it seemed like a great idea.” So Kevin returned for one last, final hurrah to ensure things ran smoothly as he passed on the baton for real (although he’s already talking about getting next year’s show underway).

He needn’t have been worried. The show is in safe hands without him. War Child has serious pedigree when it comes to the music industry, or rather, “Music’s our DNA” says Clarke. Founded in 1993 by filmmakers Bill Leeson and David Wilson, War Child’s early years were spent organising fundraising shows with the likes of Brian Eno, Luciano Pavarotti and David Bowie on the bill. Leeson and Wilson had been inspired to take action after filming on assignment in the former Yugoslavia. They returned so moved by the horrors they’d witnessed in and around Sarajevo that they were compelled to do something to help, and their contacts in the music industry seemed the best way to raise funds. “They came back and couldn’t believe what they’d seen children subjected to,” says Rich. “The suffering — snipers shooting at children as a shock tactic — and the Western world not stepping up.”

After a few false starts organising gigs that didn’t raise much money, and a few nights on the South Bank that lost the charity a lot of cash, in 1995 they landed on a plan to generate some proper revenue. 20 artists, 20 tracks, recorded in a day, mastered by Brian Eno in two, then pressed, packaged and sent out across the country ready to be sold in shops by the end of the week. Oasis, Blur, Massive Attack, Radiohead, Orbital, Suede and Sinead O’Connor contributed, and the British public were angry at the ongoing conflict and hungry to buy some records to help.

“The conflict had been on the news for a couple of years by this point and there was this groundswell of people who knew that something had to be done,” says Rich. The HELP Album raised over £1.2million, enabled the charity to bring emergency support to hundreds of thousands of children caught up in the Bosnian conflict, and gave War Child its first taste of having clout on the world stage. It’s never looked back.

Secret 7” asks for a lot less from the recording artists involved by comparison to HELP, but as far as Clarke is concerned, that works in its favour. “It’s easy for people like Paul McCartney [one of this year’s contributors] to say yes to this,” he says. “Saying yes to a gig or a recording is hard; the material cost, coordinating musicians at different stages of their touring or recording cycle, the number of people involved all complicates things. But this format piques artists’ interests. It excites them.”

The 2024 format was only marginally different to what came before. Same number of tracks, same number of sleeves, same number of contributing artists, and a show of all the work at NOW Gallery to bring the project to its grand finale. What was different to previous years was the removal of the flat £50 price tag, with War Child instead using the auction platform Peggy to sell pieces off to the highest bidder.

“We liked the flat fee and the fact that it was equitable,” says Emily Simms, strategic projects manager at War Child, “but we have to balance accessibility with fundraising, and the auction enables us to do that.” This year some sleeves sold for under £50, but some sold for price tags in the thousands. “Some people got some real bargains,” says Emily. Perhaps a £100 Anish Kapoor or a Rachel Whiteread for a fiver? Wherever the price tag, 700 people came away with an original piece of art.

While the project might not ask a huge amount from recording artists, the effort from the visual artists producing the sleeves is huge. Each of them produces a sleeve to exact specifications and prepares it for the Secret 7” team to print. Some go even further in their efforts. “One guy came down on the Megabus from the north of Scotland to hand-deliver his artwork,” says Emily. “It’s insane.”

“The amount of people that support the project — whether that's NOW Gallery and our partners or the complete stranger who delivered me a load of cereal bars while I was invigilating the show, or that guy on the Megabus — the community side of it is incredible. And it's that kind of spirit we really want to build on in future.”

These are the kinds of devoted folks who make the project such a success, she says and give them the hope that Secret 7” will be part of the War Child calendar for years to come. Assuming Kevin does finally hand it over.

This Year’s Artists & Tracks

• Aurora, A Different Kind of Human
• Celeste, Stop This Flame
• The Chemical Brothers (Feat Beck), Skipping Like a Stone
• Hozier, Swan Upon Leda
• Paul McCartney, Pipes of Peace
• Siouxsie & The Banshees, Lullaby
• The Specials, We Sell Hope

If you would like to donate please visit secret-7.co.uk