The third annual Virgin Festival was announced today for Sept. 6-7 on Toronto Island — with headliners Foo Fighters and Oasis reassuring Generation X that they, too, have a rock 'n’ roll nostalgia circuit to call their own.

Meanwhile, last year’s local V-Fest headliners Smashing Pumpkins filed a lawsuit this week in Los Angeles Superior Court complaining their reputation for “artistic integrity” has been damaged by the record label they were previously signed to, as Virgin Records used their music in a promotional campaign with Pepsi.

This would appear to be the same Virgin Records founded by Richard Branson in 1972, spun off from his record store that sold Krautrock records to be listened to in beanbag chairs while sampling vegetarian food. Famously, the company’s first LP release was Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, and the legacy helped the company thrive through several pop music trends — embedding the scrawled Virgin logo in the counterculture consciousness. But after the label was sold to EMI in 1992, the 57-year-old Branson took his $1 billion proceeds to enter the airline business — while the name is currently in the process of being phased out, the Pumpkins suit surely sounds the death knell for the fringe imprint of a fading music corporation.

In fact, Nathan Rosenberg, the Chief Marketing Officer of Virgin Mobile Canada doesn’t think there’d be any correlation made between the Virgin that Billy Corgan is accusing of killing their credibility and the company sponsoring an Earth Hour concert with Nelly Furtado on Saturday (March 29) at Nathan Phillips Square.

“There’s just not a strong enough link for people,” says Rosenberg. “Granted, if I were observing from the outside, I’d probably think the way all of the different Virgin companies are structured was just an exercise in madness.”

Virgin Group companies are all run as separate entities, some of which are owned by Branson in whole or part, while others are licensed to someone else. What’s supposed to be consistent are certain aesthetics established by Branson, although the record company bearing his brand fell out of his fiefdom. V2, a label started by Branson after his non-compete clause with EMI ran out in 1996, was sold off after a decade and basically closed down for good last year.

Music retail is also past tense for Branson, even though the Toronto Life Square complex finally being unveiled at Yonge and Dundas was originally supposed to be anchored by a Virgin Megastore. More than 250,000 titles on CD were promised along with DVD, software and specialty book sections. The retailer’s CEO was touting how Virgin’s presence would help assert the Times Square parallel in an exuberant press release issued in December 2001.

There’d be no such flashing neon, as the Megastore pulled out of its Canadian plans in 2005 — flipping their Vancouver location to HMV — and most of the chain was sold last year to the Zavvi Entertainment Group, which renamed them. A couple of real-estate firms snapped up the American locations, reportedly due to the fact that the New York City stores were paying well below market rent. While the L.A. store on  Sunset Strip closed, remaining locations are focused on “lifestyle entertainment retailing,” although it’s guessed to be a stalling tactic to cash in on the leases.

Branson himself hasn’t been invisible from Yonge-Dundas Square, though: for the 2005 Canadian launch of Virgin Mobile, he slid down a zip wire from a media tower with red smoke billowing from his boots, then boarded a monster truck, which crushed three cars. To promote number portability, he was publicly freed from a jail cell suspended from a construction crane, which he descended from using a rope made of bed sheets. And, last month, he drove a mini-tank to lead a convoy en route to a pronouncement that post-paid plans were now available to Virgin Mobile customers.

In a town that loves to hate commercial hucksters — who nonetheless have a tradition of laughing all the way to the bank, if not becoming mayor — how is it that Branson has managed to transcend a backlash? The windswept hair, hippie-hangover beard and too-toothy grin have to be annoying someone, right?

Not really, it seems, save for the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, who griped about the 2005 Virgin adverts that depicted members of their profession in short skirts and stilettos — a campaign relished by Branson’s Toronto emissaries.  

“Well, obviously I’m biased,” prefaces Rosenberg, a 35-year-old Australian who has worked for Virgin for a decade, and in Canada for four years. “But the appeal with Branson is that he represents the personal drive for success as something that you shouldn’t do at any cost. He believes that if the company can’t do better than what’s currently out there then we won’t bother doing it at all.”

The effort that set the template was a magazine called Student, which Branson started at age 16, along with an advisory centre — even though he was dyslexic.

Music followed in his early 20s, and the Virgin imprint synonymous with Human League and Simple Minds records no doubt continues to pay dividends with a certain demographic a quarter-century later. (Likely to a greater extent than the label’s mid-1980s CanCon signings Colin James and Northern Pikes.)

Virgin Cola never got much fizz on these shores, though, even though Branson rolled out an even bigger tank stunt to fire at the Coca-Cola billboard in Times Square in 1996. Despite accessing cheaper carbonated water from the Cott Corporation, the competitors protected their turf and shut down Branson’s threat.

“Part of the appeal is that he’s not a politician talking out of both sides of his month,” says Rosenberg. “If mistakes were made, he’s more than willing to own up to them, since there are always lessons to be learned for the next launch.”

Still on deck is Virgin Galactic, whose first tourist mission is slated for mid-2009, and Branson’s nonagenarian parents have booked their tickets.

Space travel is just another part of Branson’s conglomeration, though, while he actively solicits new ideas to join Virgin Balloon Flight and Virgin Brides, along with Virgin Money and Virgin Atlantic Airways. (Plus, he runs a not-for-profit entrepreneurial foundation.)

The carbon emissions created by his aviation and transport exploits are cited as a motivation for Branson’s increasing role in environmental awareness — yet another avenue for his trademark cheekiness, given his endorsement of the Flick Off campaign in all its four-and-a-half-letter-word splendour. A survey released by Virgin Mobile emphasized that “getting busy” is a popular option for spending Earth Hour. Presumably, the ones who aren’t so lucky will be forced to listen to an unplugged Nelly Furtado wail into the night.

Yet, the reputation of Richard Branson is all but certain to remain unscathed.

“I’ve been around him enough to know that he’s never removed himself from reality,” says Rosenberg. “While he’s probably done a million media interviews, he always seems a little less practiced and polished than you’d expect from someone with all those years of experience, and I think that’s genuine. Branson will come into the office when he’s here, happy to answer anything, and yet he’s the one who ends up asking people the questions.”  

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