Mike Smith knows a great artist when he hears one. But then he’s a pretty decent one himself. Over nearly three decades in the music business, Smith has built himself a reputation as one of his generation’s foremost A&R-orientated executives, but also as a renowned painter and sketcher, his etchings of musicians in action even being honoured with their own exhibition at London’s Somerset House gallery.

For the last dozen or so years, Smith’s drawings have been doodled on the ...