The path to success in investment banking these days is pretty much preordained: top university, first-class degree, ball-breaking spell as an intern, some sort of post-grad qualification and no time for any outside interests.
So it’s nice when you discover it doesn’t have to be that way.
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Kevin Rodgers is global head of foreign exchange at Deutsche Bank. But before he got into finance, he had a brief but successful career as a rock musician.
Well, we say rock, but his former band, the Happy Refugees, were described by one music website as having "a unique blend of quirky, DIY garage-pop, shambling post-punk and delicate introspection...wrote brilliant songs, had a unique and well-defined aesthetic and an underlying sense of poetry that ran through everything it did."
That was in 1984. You can spot a then-hirsute Rodgers in the photo below, fourth from the left. A couple of years ago, their mini-LP The Last Chance Saloon was re-released, prompting Rodgers and his bandmates to get together in late 2011 for a couple of reunion gigs in New York. There’s apparently a second album on the way, 30 years later.
Rodgers’ talents don’t end there – he’s also an accomplished opera singer.
And if you’re not familiar with the Happy Refugees’ oeuvre, then you might recognize the song "Papa’s got a brand new pigbag", by Pigbag. It’s a staple tune today from football terraces to nightclubs. It’s probably the second most recognizable instrumental tune from the early 1980s after the theme tune to Chariots of Fire, and a lot better to dance to.
Rodgers played as a session musician on the Pigbag recording. He told us: "If only I got royalties every time that song got played!"
Kevin, mate, we think you’re probably doing quite well enough as head of the world’s biggest foreign exchange house...