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Alan Callan

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Alan Callan is a businessman, musician, and filmmaker.

Early career

Callan first met Jimmy Page in 1968, the year that Led Zeppelin was formed. Callan was pursuing a career in the arts producing short films, writing, and photography. All of these pursuits were combined with a lifelong passion for music. He and Page became friends at a screening of the film San Francisco which Callan produced with documentary director Anthony Stern. The film went on to win several film festival awards in Europe.

Some time later, Page asked Peter Grant to contact Callan and offer him Led Zeppelin's music for any future projects. Around this time, Callan had his involvement in music by playing with a succession of small bands and learned the rudiments of record production. Alan never made a film using Zeppelin material, but his growing involvement in the U.K music scene as a player/producer and his friendship with Grant and Page made him a natural choice to run Swan Song Records the recently formed, but very successful Record Label founded by Grant and Zeppelin.

While running Swan Song, he oversaw several releases on the label and was behind the efforts to sign John Lennon and Vangelis. Independently of his work at Swan Song, Callan produced a wide range of music by artists that included Alexis Korner, Paul Carrack, Back Street Crawler, Murray Head and Bob Weston.

Recent years

Since Swan Song, Alan went on to develop the international media company CPMA Group. He used his entertainment skills to build a portfolio of media-based sports rights that today have become some of the world's most watched properties. Callan has directed and/or promoted The European PGA Championship, The Scottish Open Golf Championship (which he founded, along with Harris Muir), the Rugby World Cup, the 1993 World Chess Championship, and several other leading sports properties.

In 1998 Callan founded WorldSport Networks and under a joint agreement with GAISF - the General Association of International Sports Federations began aggregating the online rights of the Associations members. In 2000 the company was primed for success when Callan was forced to stop work due to being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. During April 2000 the seriousness of his condition caused him to resign both as Chairman and CEO. Multiple Myeloma is incurable and potentially terminal. At the time of his admission to the Mayo clinic. His GP in London told him that if he wanted to seek aggressive treatment to a Cancer that has no known cure he should consider going to the United States. Arriving at the Mayo clinic he was told by the Doctors that they would offer him a series of experimental and other treatments - one of which "Samarium", had only been given to eight people in the world. The condition for treatment was that he could not go home till the treatment was completed. This led to the company's leading investment shareholder, Marint, deciding to close the company.

As a result, redundancies and eventual closure of the company by Marint led in September whilst Callan was undergoing Chemotherapy. There was no recorded compensation from Marint for the staff who had to be let go and Callan is on record as having lost "many millions" spent trying to support the company whilst he was in hospital. In October 2000 Callan had a stem cell transplant and eventually, was released from direct care in late November 2000. He was unable to walk properly for a further eighteen months and for two years following the treatment underwent tests every month. More recently Callan said he still felt saddened that such a great opportunity was unnecessarily wasted. "I dont think anyone understood why Marint closed the company or why they were quoted as having invested in a phoenix" More directly he said "Looking back i can only marvel at what we did and how brilliant were the people - the great joy of life is watching ideas come alive". Those ideas, and Callan's faith in them were expensive for some, however. At the time of his illness, he travelled exclusively first-class between the UK and the US, invariably with his entourage and family in tow running up massive bills. Those bills were never paid.

Following those months of extensive experimental and development treatment at the Mayo Clinic, eight years on, Callan remains in remission from a disease which has an expected survival of less than two years.

Nearly forty years on, he is still good friends with Jimmy Page and since returning to work has helped Jimmy reorganise his business affairs and encouraged him to start playing again. Whilst he claimed no part in the Led Zeppelin reunion he did say he was delighted to see that Led Zeppelin were again at the forefront and that if he had done anything it was to encourage Jimmy to start playing again after a period of musical inactivity in which Page had concentrated on overseeing the superb Led Zeppelin DVD. Also since returning to work, Callan has acted as an adviser to the PGA European Tour and a number of other businesses before working with a team from CERN laboratories (that now work in the private sector) to develop advanced systems for distributing digital content with an underlying intelligent technology that ensures everyone who uses the system can track all the commercial activities deriving from copyright use.

Callan's sports achievements include:- 1983 - 1985: Chairman, Commercial Director, European PGA Championship 1984 - 1996 Chairman, Commercial Director, Promoter, The Scottish Open Golf Championship 1986 - 1991: Commercial Adviser, Strategic Adviser, The United States PGA Tour, responsible for developing international TV Rights and broadcast distribution for all PGA Tour Tournaments. 1988 - 1991: Commercial Director, Strategic Adviser to IAAF and FISU for 1991 World Student Games. (This is the second largest multi discipline event in the world. 11,000 athletes, 40 disciplines, 67 nations. Responsibilities included all commercial development, broadcast and staging arrangements from original bid stragy to end of event. 1993: Commercial Director/Promoter : The World Chess Championship This World Chess Championship was the first to feature interactive play by viewers at home using their telephone keypad to predict the next move of the contestants, Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short. 1989 - 1999: Commercial Adviser, Rights broker, Strategy development for Rugby World Cup. 1996 – 2000 Commercial Adviser and Strategic development for GAISF – The General Association of International Sports Federations. This was a global involvement which covered 65 International Federations and over 120 World Championships 2000-2003 Cancer, treatment and recovery 2003 Appointment to PGA European Tour as Commercial Adviser and Strategy development for Tour Executive Director – Ken Schofield. 2005 Founder of iMC Technology Group.

He is a committed vegetarian and has followed a path of buddhist teachings since 1973.

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