He's football crazy, pop music mad

So Chris Wright has bought QPR. Pop moguls seem to like empire building - are they shrewd businessmen or just boys at heart?

Chris Wright is living every lad's fantasy, a life revolving around football and music. The 51-year-old founder of Chrysalis records, first home of Sixties stalwarts Jethro Tull and Procol Harum, is the proud, new owner of QPR, having sunk more than pounds 10m into his life-long passion.

With an estimated worth of pounds 60m, Wright is the third member of the Seventies record boss trinity that also includes Richard Branson and Chris Blackwell, founder of Island records, and the latest to diversify into new-business opportunities. These men, the first and perhaps the last generation of backroom pop moguls, may have started out in love with music, but they were certainly smart enough to make it pay. In the Sixties, so the myth goes, everyone was far too stoned to think about making money; in the Eighties, however, "Greed was good" (allegedly). Yet these three Sixties survivors are wealthy enough to buy their dreams; while their yuppie successors have all too often ended up the casualties of capitalism.

Wright wasn't just an idealistic music-lover - he steered clear of drink, and read politics and history at Manchester. When he left the university in 1966, he began working for a talent agency while he wondered what to do next, then formed his own company with Terry Ellis (hence Chrysalis). "My first job didn't seem glamorous at the time. We always wore jeans and T-shirts and sported long hair and beards,'' he says. "The beauty of the job was that it didn't feel like work and I would have done it for free. I worked hard."

Unusually for a pop person, an old friend and fellow QPR supporter is Sir Terence Burns, Chief Secretary to the Treasury (another is Branson, who visits the Wright family at their home in Gloucestershire). "He is very able,'' says Sir Terence. "He's very good fun, I don't regard him as enormously showy or with a giant ego ... in a pop culture developing all the time [success comes from] his ability to read where tastes are going. I think Branson has a lot of the same abilities."

In 1985, Wright floated Chrysalis Group, which now includes television and film production companies, on the stock market and in 1991 sold the record label on to Thorn-EMI. So, although he has supported QPR with a passion for more than 20 years - his Chrysalis office even overlooks the club ground - his new toy is intended to make a profit. "He would never have done it on a whim,'' says Mark Edwards, a spokesman for Wright (the mogul, very sensibly, is on holiday). But as a small club recently relegated to the First Division, QPR alone was no money-spinner, so Wright has bought half of Wasps, the rugby union club, and plans to play first- team matches at the QPR ground, Loftus Road in Shepherd's Bush, west London.

"It's been something he has thought about for a while, but it was the idea of putting QPR together with Wasps that began to make financial sense," says Edwards. Wright professes himself "delighted" and "slightly worried" by the success of his bid. "But,'' he adds, "brave moves are necessary and I hope that this will be to the advantage of all concerned.'' And the omens are good: he has made his fortune so far by investing in his favourite pursuits (he owns a 300-acre stud farm and string of race-horses, Heart FM radio station and the Sheffield Sharks basketball team). "He's made a lot of money, but he's involved in activities which he likes and enjoys, but which make financial sense," says Edwards.

The same could be said for Chris Blackwell (of Crosse & Blackwell), though people in the record industry say he is the mogul driven most purely by his love of music. He released his first record in Jamaica in 1958, then moved to London in the Sixties and began distributing West Indian records to specialist shops. His first British single was "My Boy Lollipop" on the Island label in 1964, and he followed this up by signing Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group and working with Free, Jethro Tull - at Chris Wright's request - and Mott the Hoople. He distributed Tubular Bells for Branson's Virgin group, and signed Roxy Music. But, true to his roots, he also picked up Bob Marley and the Wailers. And 10 years later, he had a new act, an Irish band - U2.

His defining ability, and the one that sets him apart from his rivals, is his "inherent musicality", according to Rob Partridge, who has worked with Blackwell for 20 years. "He can actually go in and produce a record,'' Partridge explains. "I don't think Richard Branson has every claimed he can go into a studio and come out with a B52s album.''

Blackwell's life-long passion is Jamaica, his home. He owns Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming lived, and has (at official request) restored Firefly, Noel Coward's home, inspired perhaps by the fact that his mother, Blanche Blackwell, often acted as hostess for Coward. He now owns several hotels beloved of travel hacks and celebs - yet surprisingly affordable to the non-Jet Set - including Compass Point on Love Beach in the Bahamas and Strawberry Hill in Jamaica.

"It's a way of actually ensuring the local economy succeeds," says Partridge. "We're not talking about eco-tourism, but we are talking about making sure the local communities are involved in, rather than divorced from, the buildings.'' So all produce served at the hotel is locally grown, for example.

Blackwell, who sold Island to Polygram, has also started a record label in Jamaica. He has "revealed himself to be equally at home dealing with music and business", says Partridge. "He obviously has an acute business brain." But an industry executive adds: "It was all about his personal taste and that's why the label retains credibility. [Island] weren't signing pop, they were signing tasteful broadsheet kinds of artists."

As for Branson, there is little new to say - Virgin now encompasses cola, condoms, PEPs, and, of course, the tycoon's pride and joy: his airline. Britain's cheeriest magnate is now going back to square one, with a new record label. Like the other two, he sold out to one of the major record companies for several hundred million dollars, thanks to the label's lucrative back catalogues.

That is not really an option for the next generation of music entrepreneurs, the men who founded Factory (Anthony Wilson) and Rough Trade (Geoff Travis). Both labels, the success stories of the post-punk era, collapsed around the turn of the decade. Although both men are still in the business, both still need to work for a living. The reason, Wilson explains, is a fundamental difference in approach from the hippie magnates who went before.

"We were just a different generation, very much coming out of punk, very anarchistic and very anti- materialistic," he says. "I think they were business people." It's not, he said, that the Big Three were simply entrepreneurs. "I think they went into it loving music as well. The question is always where making money comes in your list of priorities; I think for most of them it was 1 or 2, and for most of us it was number 43."

Up to a point. The Sex Pistols re-formed this year for the "Filthy Lucre" tour designed entirely to make money, while Wilson himself was famous at the time for his yuppie suits and conspicuous consumption. But he did put his money into schemes that he loved - the Hacienda club in Manchester, for instance.

What of the moguls of the Nineties? Alan McGee, 35, the founder of Creation records whose assets include Oasis, Primal Scream and the Jesus and Mary Chain, discovered this generation's lovable northern lads just in time to save himself from bankruptcy - he owed pounds 8m to Sony. Now he, too, is a millionaire with footballing ambitions. McGee "behaved more intelligently," Wilson says, by selling half of Creation to Sony several years ago, thus ensuring there were deep pockets to tide him over the lean years. And this year he has made a complex but highly lucrative deal with Sony over Oasis that will allow him to keep artistic control for several years and pocket around pounds 12m.

"Money doesn't really mean anything to me,'' he has said. "I get more of a buzz from the music." However, real riches are the key to realising his boyhood fantasies. "I need pounds 100m so that eventually I'll come up and buy Rangers from David Murray. That's my absolute dream and, for me, it's making it. The bottom line is buying Glasgow Rangers - even if it takes 10 years.'' Chris Wright would be proud.