Kenny MacPherson, publisher who worked with Radiohead, dies at 71

Kenny MacPherson, the music publisher who worked with Radiohead at Warner/Chappell and with Thom Yorke at Chrysalis, died in Los Angeles on 23 October, aged 71.

MacPherson joined Warner/Chappell in 1989 and stayed more than a decade. Billboard says he signed or developed Radiohead there, along with Underworld, Paul Westerberg, the Afghan Whigs and the Blue Nile. Variety's obituary names Radiohead first among the acts he worked with. He went on to run the North American arm of Chrysalis Music, and both outlets name Yorke among the acts he worked with there, beside OutKast, TV on the Radio and St. Vincent.

Billboard gives his birthplace as Largs, in Scotland. He started out in live music at the Apollo in Glasgow. In the late 1970s or early 1980s he moved to the US, where he worked with the Manhattan Transfer and Supertramp. In 2012 he co-founded the independent publisher Big Deal Music with Dave Ayers and Jamie Cerreta. Hipgnosis Songs Fund bought the company in September 2020, and MacPherson became chief executive of the renamed Hipgnosis Songs Group.

A world without songs would be a very dull place,

Kenny MacPherson¹

he once told Billboard.