Simon Cowell will forever be known as one of the people behind assembling One Direction on X Factor and eventually signing them to his label Syco, but if it were up to him he would have also been the owner of the boy band's name.
Appearing on Stephen Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast, the 64-year-old music exec discussed his time working with the guys in 1D, saying, “One thing I regret is I should have kept the name … I should have owned the name.”
Cowell explained that the members of One Direction - Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson - own the rights to the name, which means he has zero rights to use it for any other projects... of which he seems to have many in mind.
“That’s the problem," he said. "Could have made an animation or whatever, but when you give an artist the name."
“If one of the band members, for whatever reason, say they don’t want to tour, it can stop the others [from] touring," Cowell added. "So, if it was me who owned the name, it wouldn’t be a problem. [However] if one band member says for whatever reason that they don’t want to tour, it can stop the others from touring."
Cowell joked that he's interested in acquiring rights to the name, which he could then use to reunite a truncated version of the group (say with Zayn, Louis and Liam??). "You could do a tour with three of them," he said. "If you’re listening, I’ll buy it back from you,"
As for whether he sees One Direction ever reforming, Cowell responded, “I doubt it.” But he planted that seed in their minds early on, should they want to get back together at some points in their career.
“When I was talking to One Direction, I remember saying to them, ‘Our goal is for you to have enough hits that if you ever reform, that you can do stadium tours. That means you got to have about 10 hit singles,” he said.
Cowell isn't done with the boy band market just yet though. He has revealed plans to put together a docuseries to search for the next One Direction because “I don’t think [there has been] a band as good as One Direction since One Direction,” he explained. “If you look at the amount of solo artists versus bands right now in the world of pop music, it is unbelievable.”
“The only way I know to put a band together is somebody has to audition them. And so, we just thought, ‘If I don’t do it this year I’m going to really regret it, so let’s just do it.’ And we’re going to document the whole process,” Cowell continued.
Watch the full conversation below.