Richard King

How Rough Trade Lost The Stone Roses

Posted 07/06/12

In the Geoff Travis’ small West London office hangs a framed artwork rough for a single, RT 215. The catalogue number has an entry in the Rough Trade discography but the artist and title information are blank. (RT215 CD was later used as a CD single for a Smiths live single). Although a rough, the artwork has the distinctive swirls and markings of its creator John Squire. RT 215 was the number Travis had assigned for Elephant Stone by The Stone Roses, a band he thought he had signed in 1988 and was sure would be one of the great Rough Trade guitar groups. Sadly it was not to be.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the interviews I conducted with Geoff Travis for HSIN? in which he explains how The Stone Roses fell though his fingertips. I didn’t include much on the band in HSIN? as their story doesn’t really involve a relationship with any of the labels in the book, although the band crossed paths with many of the characters in the narrative. Tony Wilson always took great delight in saying he was never interested in the band. He did though book them onto The Other Side of Midnight where Jeff Barrett watched them while standing behind a cameraman.

*

“The Stone Roses are one of the great tragedies of the Rough Trade story. We really, really, were on the verge of signing the Stone Roses. It was down to Lindsay Reid (the ex-wife of Tony Wilson). Lindsay called us up – ‘I’m co-managing this band, and you’ve got to come and see them’. We knew Lindsay and that was an unusual call for her to make so we went to see them in Manchester at the international Two and they were just unbelievable. And we talked to them and they came down on the train from Manchester and we had a meeting with them. We spent two hours with them in the pub talking about music. As far as we were concerned and they were concerned in our minds we’d signed them. When they got on the train back to Manchester they had a deal with Rough Trade

Then three things happened. One was their other manager Gareth Evans and he had his own agenda and secondly, because Rough Trade Distribution was falling apart it was a period of tension between the record label and distribution. And the lawyer for the Rough Trade label and Distribution was the same person and he just did not get it organised to send the contract.

And then the third thing that happened was that they wanted Peter Hook to produce them and we said ‘fine’. We paid for Elephant Stone and Peter, God bless him, did a pretty poor job and it needed a total remix. It was remixed down at Zomba Studios in Willesden, and if that hadn’t happened they wouldn’t have needed a remix in Zomba and the engineer in Zomba wouldn’t have alerted his bosses that an amazing group had just walked in, and they would have signed to Rough Trade.

Without being too arrogant it would have been better for them to be on Rough Trade and they wouldn’t have had to go through all they went to on Zomba, but on the other hand Rough Trade was going through a terrible period and had to sell the label’s assets. It is absolutely one of my biggest regrets.

They are the great band that got away and these things haunt you but you can’t be too greedy.”

*

Having signed to Zomba Gareth Evans took over the management of the band completely. Zomba had asked Andrew Lauder and his partner Judith Riley to run an imprint for them that Lauder called Silvertone. Silvertone's office was a Portakabin adjacent to the Zomba building and it was from here that Lauder and Riley ran The Stone Roses career while on Silvertone

Lauder & Riley told me some very funny stories about The Stone Roses and especially Gareth Evans that I’ll post soon, subject to the beak.

As fresh as the month of May

Posted 08/05/12

Tomorrow I will be at Monorail in Glasgow, giving a reading and doing a Q&A with former Belle & Sebastian manager (and current University of Glasgow lecturer)  John Williamson

There will also be DJs and Mono has excellent atmosphere and beer so we could have a real good time together

Glasgow is intrinsic to any history of independent music

This is a poster designed by the artist Jim Lambie for an early Vaselines show in 1987

It was a hand screen print, the club was short-lived and promoted by Jim along with Norman and Raymond, now of Teenage Fanclub but then of The Boy Hairdressers

Joe Orton was obviuosly a big influence on the scene

Wonderful

*May 9th Monorail Music, 12 Kings Court, Glasgow, G1 5RB. 0141 552 9458. 8pm - midnight

*

On May 12th I'll be at The Great Escape festival in Brighton

I'll be in conversation with Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, I sometimes wonder if everyone in Brighton was once signed to either 4AD or Creation

We shall see

*May 12th, Pavillion Theatre Brighton 29 New Road  Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1UG

*

On May 19th I'll be running a stall at the Independent Label Market in Spitalfields London

I'll have more news of this soon, I'm hoping to be able to sell limited edition How Soon Is Now? Welsh farm cider

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On May 25th I'm delighted to be contributing to the Caught By The River Variety Show on the South Bank

Full details are here

If you haven't seen Roy Wilkinson read from Do It For Your Mum I really recommend it, the book is also a wonderful read

I wrote a piece on Revolver Records in Bristol for Caught By The River last month which is here

It was a shop where I mispent my youth while learning nearly everything I know about music

*May 25th, The Caught By The River Variety Show, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, SE1 8XX

 

 

Laugharne / Ponderosa

Posted 11/04/12

This Friday, April 13th I'll be at the excellent Laugharne Weekend in West Wales, at the Millenium Hall at 5pm.

I'll be doing a short reading then hosting a HSIN? themed panel with Gillian Gilbert & Stephen Morris from New Order and Richard Boon, erstwhile Buzzcocks manager, Rough Trade er...executive and the person behind Spiral Scratch, the record which more or less got things going.

Here's a clip of Stephen and Richard in conversation from 1983 (around 4.45) It's from the wonderful New Order Play At Home documentary. They are discussing the newly built Hacienda which Stephen calls the 'Ponderosa.'

The reason the camera is a little shaky is because the rest of New Order and their manager, Rob Gretton, are bouncing the car Richard and Stephen are sitting in out of view.

The whole documenatry is well worth watching, it's a fascinating insight into how much fun Factory had between Blue Monday and the Acid House-era Hacienda (which was fun too of course, but of a different kind)

 

To Pitch A Tent And Go Inside

Posted 11/04/12

One of the most poignant stories I heard while researching HSIN? was not about a person but a record. Such was the lack of interest in Arthur Russell’s World Of Echo on release in 1987 that within a week or two, as the boxes of vinyl resolutely refused to move from the warehouse, the Rough Trade Distribution staff started to use copies as a frisbee. In a crowded field of unwanted vinyl, and RTD had untold amounts of unloved records taking up floor space, World of Echo’s fate seems exceptionally cruel. Last week was the twentieth anniversary of Russell’s death and I found myself wondering why his work has such resonance today. It’s quite a journey for a record to take: from an improvised toy used to kill some dead time to a hallowed masterpiece.

Artists who find their audience posthumously tend to produce deep emotional connections with their listeners. In the same manner that Tim Buckley, Albert Ayler or Nick Drake are the subject of great reverence, Russell’s music elicits an intense relationship from his audience, one that evaded him during his lifetime but one that is a fitting tribute to his memory and his talent. Russell’s more meditative songs, particularly the acoustic based ones, are occasionally compared to Nick Drake. Both artists have a lower register voice that can weave around a single note, a vocal style that creates a powerful and intimate cadence. I suppose Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ is also one of the handful of songs that bears comparison to the material Russell put together for Another Thought (another companion piece to Another Thought is Henri Texier’s incredible Varech – although Texier’s instrument is the double bass not the ‘cello).

It’s hard not to conclude that the main driving force behind Drake’s posthumous discovery in the 1990s was the endless repackaging of his catalogue. A more nuanced explanation is that a generation that had grown up listening to their parents’ Neil Young and Joni Mitchell records had found a lost voice from the same era that they could now claim as their own.

Something similar happened when Russell’s recordings were rediscovered this millennium, although it was revered by many of his friends and contemporaries Russell’s work was little known. The timing of the revelatory series of Audika / Rough Trade / Soul Jazz reissues was prescient - they were released at around the time MP3s and iPods started to become ubiquitous and our listening habits were changing and opening a space in which Russell’s shape-shifting methods made perfect sense. When not composing, rehearsing or recording, Russell spent many of his daylight hours walking in Manhattan listening to his music on headphones. As he navigated the flow of the grid, Russell would be submerged in his tapes, wondering around with a professional Walkman that allowed him to hear his material at first remove from the studio and setting his ideas in counterpoint to the rhythms of the city, its traffic, its sidewalks and its stop start logic. The urban headphone drift is a much more widespread experience today, it’s also the way in which many of us listen to Russell’s music. We scroll through our iPods just as Russell filtered and changed his ideas about sounds. Our listening habits have finally caught up with Russell’s approach to making music; place and sensory experience are more important than genre, we shuffle through tracks and styles in the way Russell’s muse could lead him to explore the ecstasy of The Loft and its Klipschorn speakers, or just as likely, set him off into the fragmentary introspection that produced pieces like 'Tone Bone Kone'.

Throughout his life Russell’s changes in style meant he struggled to find an audience or settle on a fixed position from which he could build a career, although the idea of a  ‘career’ would surely seem like an empty gesture to him. Russell lived and worked at a time when his multidisciplinary instincts and experiments left people confused, today they make perfect sense

I once heard the author Simon Reynolds suggest another reason why Russell’s music works so well in a contemporary context - he suggested* that Russell had a permanently temporary grasp on his situation and lived his life in perpetual flux. Perhaps this reflects Russell’s Buddhist sensibilities or perhaps that’s the just the kind of person he was. Either way that sense of flux is something most of us are all now familiar with, it reflects the situation in which many of us find ourselves living and working. Russell’s ever-shifting sensibilities, reliant on fluid and occasionally indeterminate resources, suit these precarious times. Listening to his music, on headphones, at home or in the middle of the dance floor turns that sense of flux into a state of grace as we get caught in the moment with him: the cello break in 'Kiss Me Again', the few minutes it takes for 'In The Light Of The Miracle' to reach transcendence, the chorus of 'That’s Us' / 'Wild Combination' or the almost unbearably poignant high note in the chorus of 'Losing My Taste For The Nightlife'. In everything he did Russell found a sound for every feeling and a space for every thought.

 

*you can hear the discussion Simon & I had which included this observation here

 

 

April Skies

Posted 01/04/12

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How Soon Is Now? is published Thursday 5th April by Faber & Faber

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So there is some attendant promotional activity / badinage to accompany its release this month:

*2nd April,

at The Faber Social there'll be conversation between Owen Hatherley, Bob Stanley & myself (I'll also read something (from the book))

Bob will also be DJing

After the conversation Edwyn Collins will be playing acoustically which is, frankly, beyond my wildest dreams.

*3rd April,

I'll be in conversation with Stuart Maconie around 2.30 on Stuart's 6 Music show. We'll be discussing some of the ideas in HSIN? & playing some appropriate songs.

*4th April,

At Rough Trade East there'll be a HSIN? themed panel debate chaired by Luke Turner from The Quietus.

On the panel will be Merida Sussex from Stolen Recordings, Ana Da Silva from The Raincoats, Sean Forbes  - or as I've always known him Sean Rugger Bugger - & myself.

*13th April,

At The Laugharne Weekend

There'll be a further panel discussion between Gillian Gilbert & Stephen Morris from New Order, Richard Boon & myself (I'd like to think we are temporarily rebuilding The Gay Traitor on the West Wales Coast) 

*21st April, Record Store Day,

Like everyone else I'll be at my local independent record shop. Mine is Tangled Parrot in Carmarthen where I'll be reading and doing a Q&A at 2pm

*

Thanks in advance to anyone who might attend any of the above and, especially, to all those who have agreed to take part in proceedings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Drummond, A&R man

Posted 14/03/12

In Dan Charnas' excellent The Big Payback there is a very interesting passage about Rick Rubin’s split with Russell Simmons and his subsequent departure from Def Jam.  About to relocate to Los Angeles to launch his new label Def American Recordings, Rubin’s last gesture in New York is to make a short film in his apartment with a friend called Ric Menello. As the camera rolls Menello reads a written statement and Rubin stands behind him nodding silently in agreement. The statement asserts that Def American will ‘take back rock’n’roll from the British,’ given that Rubin had a year earlier produced one of the very best British rock’n’roll records - Electric by The Cult – the sentiment is suitably self-reflexive.

This episode reminded me of a film Bill Drummond made two years earlier with his friend Bill Butt. In the film, entitled ‘The Manager,’ Drummond pushes a dust cart up a hill and bemoans the state of the music business. As he stoops down in his donkey jacket to pick up litter, Drummond laments that all that new groups want to do is sound like old groups and asks a question he would repeat a year later in 1987: ‘What’s going on?’  The film was made to coincide with Drummond’s ‘retirement’ from the music business at the symbolic age of 33 and a 1/3^rd and was released to the press along with a written statement.

Within a few months Drummond had written, recorded and released The Man on Creation, one of the label’s best albums. Just as the record was going on sale Drummond got in touch with Jimmy Cauty about making a record using a sampler. ‘The Manager’ catches Drummond at the exact moment he stopped being something of an industry player and became an artist. Sadly I can’t find either the Rubin or Drummond films online, although I’ve seen them both somewhere on the internet before.

Given the totemic shadow he has cast over a certain section of British cultural life as writer, provocateur and thinker, it’s easy to forget Drummond’s first job  - other than as a set designer - was to start Zoo with Dave Balfe; a partnership that included the management of the Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen and the production and release of their records.

This is a photograph of Drummond and Balfe with members of the Teardrops and the Bunnymen. It’s from 1979 and was taken by the photographer Paul Slattery for Sounds. The location is the Zoo office in India Buildings on Walter Street in Liverpool.

Before ‘retiring’ Drummond had been appointed as an A&R consultant for WEA at the behest of its young chairman Rob Dickins. Although Drummond had relinquished his management of the Bunnymen Dickins had wanted to keep Drummond close at hand.  As the head of Warner’s publishing arm, Warner Music, Dickins and Seymour Stein had jointly created the Korova imprint within WEA to release the Bunnymen. One of Korova’s few other signings were Strawberry Switchblade who Drummond and Balfe had also managed. In his own esoteric way Drummond had delivered hits to Korova, so Dickins must have anticipated more success around the corner. 

This is part of one of the interviews I did with Bill Drummond for HSIN? which didn’t make it into the final draft. (I think he may have included part of this story in his book 17 as well.)

*

‘The Bunnymen, used to use a sound engineer called Harry de Mack and the Bunnymen and the Teardrops were getting bigger, and what he'd got, his pa was no longer the right size.  But we all got on well and he had managed the thing, so he came to me and said 'look Bill, if we go into partnership, I can get a new pa'. So I’d bought a house in Liverpool so I was able to get a loan of £10,000 on that house which then went to pay for this pa. He builds the pa, both Bunnymen and Teardrops are getting bigger, I have to have another sound engineer cause Harry can't do both.

So we get this other guy in who was good, I’d heard him, he just says 'this pa's shit, I can't use this' and I think, my job as a manager has to be what is good for the band. And this guy's saying ‘I wanna use my mate down in Birmingham’, his pa, so suddenly half the revenue, to try and earn the money back, to pay for this pa, has gone and then...it happens with the Bunnymen, I don't know we stop working together and...anyway Harry and I fall out, and I’m left with, a debt of £10,000. So when Rob Dickins lands the job as MD of WEA from being at Warner Music, he offers me a job as A&R which I take.

I learnt a lot from Rob at Warner Music and I sort of did at WEA as well. I learnt how a mainstream record company works from the inside. They had big American acts, they had Madonna, ZZ Top, Prince, Van Halen so I could see how all that worked but I was useless. I had no....I was shit, I was rubbish, and became rubbish, but I learnt that, whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, I couldn't do it.

But...I tell you what I also learnt...I had to go over to Los Angeles to take a band that I hadn't signed but a band signed by WEA, they said well Bill you may as well A&R this band. It was a rock act and they got Mike Chapman of Chinn / Chapman who did all that in the 70s then did Blondie and that. Anyway he had a bit of a breakdown and had a bit of a break from producing and they got him in to produce this band. So he's living in LA then, and watching him work and how he worked with the band was fantastic. Cause Dave Balfe and I, as I said earlier, had no idea how to produce records, we were just producing our own mates records and trying to make them as best we can and learning on the job. And then I was seeing him work with a completely different take on it.

All he did, was sit in his chair, he had a pa, a gorgeous looking Californian, a notebook, and he'd just sit in his chair and by then he'd got a transatlantic accent, and he looked the part, he looked like a successful west coast producer. And this band are a rock band, AOR type rock band from Essex. And he'd get them in, and they were all good players, and he'd just get them playing and he'd just say 'that's fantastic boys, that's absolutely brilliant, can I just hear it again', and they'd play it better, and it'd just get better and better and better. I'd think 'how is he doing this, how does this work?'

We'd been in the studio with the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes and we'd just say 'Fucking hell Will that was rubbish, you can fuckin...surely you can do it better than that? We'll arrange the song for you, ok? Ok, I know you haven't got a keyboard player in the band, but, we're gonna put a keyboard on this, Balfey’s gonna play keyboard because that's what it needs, cause without a keyboard, it's rubbish.'

And that's how we produced.

Mike Chapman took the opposite approach he said...'you're genius boys, you're fantastic, I don't think I’ve heard.... this is gonna be one of the best.... if not the best record ever made'. And it just got better and better and better, until they kicked out the singer or imploded and fell apart, but, I learnt...not learnt that you just lick someone's arse, but just encouragement, and that's what he gave.’

*

Chapman’s methods must have lingered with Drummond. As well as a demonstration of a positive mental attitude in the studio, Drummond and Cauty took musical inspiration from Chinn / Chapman. Before long they would be sharing a songwriting credit and royalty with the duo on a number one single, The Timelords 'Doctorin’ The Tardis' which sampled The Sweet’s 'Blockbuster!' a Chinn / Chapman composition.

 

 

 

David E Barker & the Seminal Twang

Posted 05/03/12

Between the release of Nirvana’s Bleach and the global crossover of Nevermind, the UK had an interesting relationship with the American underground. The generation of bands Paul Smith had released on Blast First had either signed major deals or broken up. This left a space for regional independent labels like Sub Pop and K to fill. Beyond more celebrated artists like Mudhoney, Nirvana and Tad (celebrated initially at least because they toured together as a Sub Pop package) few of the bands on American independent labels were licensed to the UK and their releases usually appeared on import.

The 7” single was a format that was given a boost in its cultural cache by the innovative Sub Pop singles club. Consequently K and Sub Pop artists and their contemporaries would appear on split or one off singles on small run labels around the world. In the UK someone who was at the heart of this kind of activity was Dave - or to give him his full title - David E. Barker. Barker had started Glass Records in the mid eighties; his signings included The Walking Seeds, The Jazz Butcher, The Pastels and Spacemen 3. Very much an enthusiast with a lively ear and a capacity for a life-affirming musical bonhomie, Barker was in his element releasing records on the hop, in between jumping in a tour van with a band and trying to take full control of the stereo.

After Glass, Barker moved to Fire Records as an A&R where he was joined by Spaceman 3 and The Pastels, he was given his own imprint: Paperhouse.  Fire’s owner Clive Solomon had a legendarily technical approach to the minutiae of deals and contracts. In many ways Solomon’s methods were the polar opposite of the 50 /50 lets-go-to-the-pub-then-see-what-happens deals with which the independent sector usually operated. Solomon treated the contract as an opportunity for strategy and endgame with managers and lawyers, Barker was used to signing whatever his radar told him too. It was little surprise that while at Fire Barker became frustrated.

Barker dealt with such hindrances of legalese by starting the Seminal Twang 7” series. Seminal Twang was one of the many 7” labels that took its cue from the Sub Pop singles club. Beginning in April 1991 Barker released a single a month for just over a year. The label’s releases give an interesting insight into the energy and connections between the US and UK at the time. The full Seminal Twang set can be found here.

Two people helped Barker in the co-ordination of Seminal Twang: Stephen Pastel and Don Fleming. My favourite two Twangs are both Pastels related.

Stephen produced The Vaselines 'Dying For It'

Melody Dog features Katrina from The Pastels, their three track Twang includes an incredible version of Primal Screams 'Movin’ On Up', this 7” is a record to lift the heaviest hearts

 

Fleming was (and still is) a producer and engineer who had been in several bands, the highest profile of which were Half Japanese and B.A.L.L.  B.A.L.L. also included Shimmydisc’s owner Kramer in their line up, making B.A.L.L. something of an underground record producer super group. Among many other albums, Fleming would go on to produce the Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. The Fanclub had been one of Barker’s most significant signings at Fire. The band had produced their debut A Catholic Education themselves in Glasgow and for its follow up single 'God Knows It’s True' the band recorded in New York with Don Fleming.

Here’s a picture of Don (L) & Dave (R) on that trip

Later on the band recorded a cover of Alex Chilton's 'Free Again' with Fleming which was released as a 7" on K

The following is part of the conversation I had with David E Barker. Dave is a garrulous, highly entertaining man who has had an influence on several people who have gone on to find multi platinum success. Like Mike Alway, Barker is the kind of character who was always at the heart of things, but was perhaps less interested than some of his contemporaries in turning such energy into six figure record sales. The musical world would be a far less interesting place without them.

*

‘A label that's important that people don't think about is Shimmydisc. The Walking Seeds records were produced by Kramer, and the story on that is they just sent him a tape and said, ‘We want you’. They loved Shockabilly, I'd never heard of half of it until they introduced me to it, I think that was how I first heard Daniel Johnston, I think it was cause of Shimmydisc actually. And Jad had done something with Half Japanese that Kramer had produced ...The Band Who Would Be King I think. Anyway, the Walking Seeds, they went and did that record in New York in ‘88 and then I became pals with Don Fleming because B.A.L.L., Kramer's band came and played over here with the Seeds.

We went back to New York in ‘89 and Kramer’s studio was something man, I mean he had the whole building. I don't think he owned it but he had the lease on this building and Don used to rent an apartment in the middle. It was like the studio was one floor then Don't apartment then Kramer's apartment. Just about then Robert de Niro opened the Tribeca Grill down there and all of a sudden the place jumped, Kramer was in there from probably ’84, ’85, it was the bottom of Manhattan, the low end right down the bottom, you could see the World Trade, just look up. There weren't much there. It was warehouses and stuff. It was such a cool place, you go in the door...Jon Zorn fucking walks out and like all of Sonic Youth's guitars are in the studio cause they're rehearsing there and stuff.

I hooked the Fanclub up with Don; they knew Don cause they loved Half Japanese, the Velvet Monkeys and all this stuff and B.A.L.L. as well actually. They were heavily into all that American underground stuff…a lot of Shimmydisc stuff, King Missile used to be the popular one. You know that one 'Steal Stuff From Work' and 'Cheesecake Truck'? All these kind of funny records and they were very into Daniel Johnston. These were all Teenage Fanclub bus hits you know what I mean?

 I started doing Seminal Twang because I just wanted to do it. I think I was a bit frustrated at Fire in that there were a few records I wanted to do and Clive got fed up with me wanting to do these one-off things. I totally admit, it was totally based on the Sub Pop singles club, I think even Rough Trade were doing one soon after. I didn't want to do like a singles club but I put the dates on them. I wanted like a magazine, so 'this month's issue', that was really like the concept plus the idea of having all the sleeves done by Jad Fair. Except then you get a couple of them who play up, 'oh I don't want that fucking Jad Fair shit' you know. There were only a couple of them, the Red Kross was one.... I didn't care though man, cause I love the Red Kross.

 

Anyway, ‘91, so I started doing the Seminal Twang and it was easy the bands were up for it. Stephen got me a couple, Stephen got me Some Velvet Sidewalk, they were on K, the Vaselines one came through Eugene but I think Stephen organised it. And Don organised a couple in the States. Sonic Boom actually offered to do one.... and Jason. Well it was sketchy but I saw Jason.... when did Recurring come out, it must have been 91. They did a signing at the Rough Trade shop and I went down and no one else from Fire wanted to go cause like they weren’t flavour of the month with the Spacemen 3. The deal was, Sonic's gonna be signing them at 1 o'clock and Jason's gonna be signing them at 4 o'clock, cause they didn't want to see each other. So I went down, I see Pete and blah blah blah and then he'd said something on the phone before that, 'oh...if you wanna do a single I’ll do one’ cause he liked the Daniel Johnston stuff…anyway I went down that Rough Trade shop and I waited. I see Pete...about 2 hours to fucking wait, I wait around anyway, and Jason turned up and he offered to do one as well! They had a vibe that went so deep between them those two, like weird telepathy, even when they’d stopped speaking to each other.'

*

Halfway through Seminal Twang’s run Barker had signed Eugene Kelley from The Vaselines new band Captain America.  They and another Twang alumnus, Shonen Knife, were the support for Nirvana’s Nevermind tour in the late autumn of 1991.

‘The end of 91 how can I forget, Nirvana...both the support groups on the fucking Nevermind UK tour, Shonen Knife and Captain America. That was just amazing times you know, to see that happening. Cause they were booked into venues that were too small and every night was wild.'

*

In the wake of Nevermind Kurt Cobain was inevitably asked by the media to list his favourite records. Here’s what he gave Melody Maker for their Rebellious Jukebox feature in August 1992 which was published to coincide with the band’s headline appearance at Reading:

1. The Breeders: Pod

2. The Pixies: Surfer Rosa

3. Leadbelly: Last Sessions

4. The Vaselines: "Dying For It"

5. Young Marble Giants: Colossal Youth

6. The Wipers: Is This Real?

7. Shonen Knife: Burning Farm

8. The Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols

9. Jad Fair: Great Expectations

10. The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World

The list includes three bands that had appeared on Seminal Twang. It’s also interesting to note that every record on the list was originally released on an independent label.

Ivo, New Mexico

Posted 01/03/12

As you drive south along Interstate 25 towards Albuquerque the car sits low in the road. On either side the view is endless. To the right is long flat New Mexico shrub, which suddenly, on the horizon, gives way to the drama of the designated wilderness area of the Bandelier National Monument and its volcanic expanse of mesa. To the left is an arid landscape of desert vegetation that fades into an increasingly blurred middle distance.  The road itself is flat and straight. It may technically be an interstate but it has all the mythic properties of a highway.

I pressed play on the car’s CD player and Randy California’s softly strummed guitar picked out the chords to ‘America The Beautiful’, the opening song to Spirit’s Spirit of ‘76. The song segues effortlessly into Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a Changin’’, then back into the patriotic schoolroom sing-along; two cover versions blended into one song, one that celebrates a country while refuting its sense of destiny. In the expanse of the New Mexico desert America was certainly beautiful.

I had spent the last few days dwelling on the past. I’d been staying with Ivo Watts-Russell the man who founded 4AD, whose This Mortal Coil had covered Spirit’s ‘Nature’s Way’ on their 1991 album Blood and who now lives in the unique pueblo adobe atmosphere of New Mexico. The CD I was playing had been an unexpected present from Ivo. ‘I didn’t know which direction you’d be driving ’ he said as I was leaving ‘but I knew you’d need some music, so I made you this’. Something had been very clear from our time together, despite the ups and downs of the music business he had endured, Ivo was still as immersed and in love with music as he had been the day he started 4AD from behind the counter of a record shop almost thirty years earlier. The CD was an immaculately chosen compilation. It featured decades old album tracks by American singer songwriters and some more current music including a song by Electralane, a band that were signed to the label Ivo had so carefully nurtured and which still trades on the image which he created, but with which he no longer has any professional relationship. Listening through the CD it sounded, with a leap of imagination and wishful thinking, like a compilation of songs for future consideration on a hypothetical This Mortal Coil album.

My week had started in Santa Monica with Robin Hurley, a music business veteran and friend of Watts-Russell who had run the 4AD office in LA as Ivo’s involvement in the label had gradually come to an end. It was through his kind offer of an introduction that I had been able to ask Ivo if he would agree to an interview. To the astonishment of friends and former colleagues in London, Ivo had invited me over to talk.  The journey from LA involved a flight from Burbank to Phoenix and then another flight to Albuquerque. To the average American domestic traveller it was doubtless as routine as changing trains at Didcot Parkway, but the tiny departure gates, the subtle shift in time zone and the view from the plane, of infinite and geometric farms with their enormous water towers and fleets of harvesters felt like a journey into the interior.

Ivo had given me instructions from the airport and on arriving at his house I was greeted by an advance party of his rescued dogs. Within an hour we had begun what was to be a days-long conversation. His patience was astonishing, as was, despite his frequent protestation to the contrary, his memory. We talked about 4AD from its beginnings, through its successes and to his eventual uncoupling from the label. If I’d forgotten to mention an artist or record he would interrupt and we’d be discussing the finer details of a recording session or the time it took for 23 Envelope to turn around a particular sleeve.

In Santa Monica I had asked Hurley if he thought that perhaps Ivo’s temperament was that of an artist rather than that of a music business mogul. I had an idea that the most dynamic labels were run by people whose creativity needed an outlet beyond running a record company: Daniel Miller had recorded as The Normal, Silicone Teens and was / is a record producer, throughout Factory Tony Wilson had remained a broadcaster and as Biff Bang Pow, Alan McGee and his co-conspirator Dick Green released more than six albums.

In This Mortal Coil albums there is an intensity and reverence for the source material in Ivo’s choice of cover versions that took the recordings beyond the status of studio project into a hallowed, meditative environment. I wondered if he was recreating the experience of hearing those songs for the first time. “I don’t think we improved on the originals on anything we covered’ he told me, although most people I know who grew up in the sound world of This Mortal Coil would disagree.

Our conversation inevitably digressed into favourite songs and albums and the contact high that certain records produce in their initiates: a smile at the mention of The Notorious Byrd Brothers and a wistful nodding at the hours lost in the spaces of If Only I Could Remember My Name.

My flight back to Burbank had been diverted to Las Vegas. I watched night fall across the Grand Canyon as the shadow of the plane bounced along its contours then faded into the dusk as we began our descent. I realised we were about to fly over the Las Vegas sands that Joni Mitchell had sung about on ‘This Flight Tonight’, a moment of happenstance that hours spent obsessively with records always rewards the listener, whether one likes it or not. It was the kind of detail that had coloured our conversation for the last few days and the kind of feeling that I had been reacquainted with by meeting and talking to Ivo, seeing each small incidental moment through the lens and sensitivity of a song.

 

Bums For BPI. What Factory thought of the Brits.

Posted 20/02/12

However unlikely it seems given its annual attempts at being a family friendly cause célèbre, during the 1980s the Brit Awards were usually regarded by the independent sector as being part of The Other. These days the Brits are busily preoccupied with things like audience interactivity and across the board synergy, activities it’s had to come to terms with in its race against Saturday night talent shows to provide the definitive televised experience of a certain kind of pop life. The Brits journey from a rather insular music business awards ceremony to its conception of itself today, as a celebration of national street level talent and attitude, has been suitably colourful. One long process of Britpop cocaine spats, celebrity arrests and Spice Girl Union Jack micro dresses, if it all feels rather heavy handed and manufactured that’s because to a great extent it is.

For many years the producer of the awards was Jonathan King. According to his version of events it was King who coined the name Brits by shortening the name of the awards then sponsors, the Britannia Music Club. After the Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood live on-air car crash of 1989, King revamped the production significantly. In an attempt to make the awards less redolent of the Live Aid aristocracy, in January 1991 he promoted a concert at Wembley Arena that celebrated the more music press friendly side of British music.

The bill featured bands like Ride, New Model Army and Jesus Jones and was headlined by The Cure. A fortnight later The Cure won the award for Best British Band and the process of decontaminating the awards from its black tie and rolled-up- jacket-sleeve image began in earnest. The push towards mainstream event status had begun two years previously in 1988, when the ceremony, then still known as the BPI – British Phonograph Industry - Awards, relocated from the Grosvenor Hotel to the marginally more happening Royal Albert Hall.

It was against this backdrop of the pre-attitude Brits that Factory released a single that year: ‘Stereo / Porno’ credited to Vermorel and accompanied by a promotional poster entitled ‘Bums for BPI.’

‘Vermorel’ were Fred & Judy Vermorel. In the late 1980s they were best known as a writer couple that had collaborated on the book Starlust. Fred Vermorel also published an infamous Kate Bush biography, was a friend of Malcolm McLaren and had been through similar experiences to The Sex Pistols manager at the Croydon and Hornsey Art College sit-ins of 1968. Vermorel’s connections with King Mob, The Sex Pistols and the Cash From Chaos narrative ensured he was certain to be indulged by Wilson, whom he approached in 1998 with the idea of running a campaign against the BPI.

The result was Fac198 ‘Stereo / Porno’ released on 7” and 12” vinyl.

Both versions bore the label copy ‘specially commissioned for the BPI Awards 1988.’

Here is the single

 

The suitably lavish fold-out sleeve contained a detail from the ‘Bums for BPI’ poster

 

It’s interesting to note that even in 1988, a year after the million selling success of New Order’s Substance, Wilson’s capriciousness still extended to such enjoyably futile gestures. Through its combination of indifference to London and the wider music business, to say nothing of its shaky grasp of paperwork, Factory was not a registered member of the BPI. This was a fact not lost on the trade body when, having perceived in the release a possible defamation of character, it started legal proceedings against the record company (the action came to nothing).

Things could have turned out far, far, worse for Factory however if Fred Vermorel’s promotional strategy for his campaign against the BPI had been fully realised. Dave Harper, one of the first PR people Factory employed and certainly the first to be based in London, handled the media for ‘Stereo / Porno’.

This is an unedited transcript from one of the interviews I conducted with Harper. Sadly there wasn’t room to include this story in the final draft. We had been talking about his early relationship with Factory and the label’s rather ambivalent attitude toward the press and PR in general. It’s a remarkable insight into the sense of absurdity that always ran through the label and, needless to say, it’s unthinkable of any record company doing anything similar today.

*

‘The best thing in terms of conceptualism and sheer stupidity was the Fred and Judy Vermorel single, which was one of Wilson’s Situationist moves. I knew of them, but didn’t really understand what Fred was, and Judy I can hardly remember. They had this fucking awful record that it was quite obvious they hadn’t played on, and I was struggling with the idea of trying to promote it.

One of the things Mike Alway used to say was ‘Make everything up. No one knows what you’re talking about anyway. Make up a story.’ Anyway, Fred Vermorel came with what would now be called a backstory. His Kate Bush fans book meant he was a slightly controversial figure. No one knew what the hell he was going on about and I didn’t know what he was going about, but he had a fucking brilliant, brilliant, idea.

It had nothing to do with selling records it didn’t make any financial sense at all.

At the time the BPI Awards were stagnant. It was the same nonsense every year Annie Lennox, Phil Collins just the same fucking rubbish. every fucking year, completely fucking boring. So Fred & Judy came in and said ‘This is what we want you to do’ – which was quite an interesting phrase – ‘This is what we want you to do, the BPI Awards are coming up in four months at the Albert Hall and we want you to get hold of some BPI Awards headed notepaper.’

Back then you could go round the offices of NME, Melody Maker & Sounds and journalists’ desks would be full of shit. There would be press releases from the BPI Awards and the PR doing them, detailing who was up for nominations etc. and you could just grab one and take it away. I had my own printed paper done round the corner from the office in Gray’s Inn Road at Prontaprint and put a lot of work their way. So I stole a handful of BPI press releases and said ‘Can I have five hundred of these please?’ I’d tippexed out everything but the official heading. The printer said ‘Come on, that’s dodgy, I cant do that.” I convinced him and said ‘It’ll be fun’ he said ‘Alright, but I'm not happy.’ So I had five hundred reams of official BPI Awards notepaper, blank.

So Fred would come round once a week with a new press release to send out and it started out innocuously, he’d written it all and I just had to type it up.

The first one was along the lines of  ‘We can exclusively reveal that Phil Collins will be appearing live at the BPI Awards’ something obvious and anodyne. I’d print these things up, send them off to my mailing list and opened up the papers next week and everyone had printed it, but it was so bland nobody noticed. Gradually Fred began to rack up the pressure very subtly. So over the weeks these press releases were starting to stream out.

It was a brilliant critique of the whole ‘We’re really successful rock stars patronizing the plebs,’ basically. Fred said ‘I want you to send out a PR saying at this year’s BPI Awards, the grand finale at the Albert Hall will feature Annie Lennox, Chris de Burgh, Phil Collins etc. all singing ‘Jerusalem’. I thought this is getting good now, of course ‘Jerusalem’ we’re bringing the Proms in, and they printed it: ‘Balloons and Union Jacks at the Albert Hall for BPI Awards’.

And the next week was a PR to alert the head teachers of schools for handicapped children, both physically and mentally, that the BPI Awards committee had decided to make everybody feel wonderful. We invite the schools to bring a selection of your handicapped children to door D of the Royal Albert Hall, where Chris De Burgh and Annie Lennox will judge which ones are deemed worthy of taking part in ‘Jerusalem’, the singing of which was to be a marvellous thing.

I thought ‘This is where it’s going to get nasty.’

Anyway nevertheless I sent out a press release along those lines. Tony never really cared. He’d set it all up and he wasn’t really bothered, it wasn’t going to sell any records. The whole thing was fucking stupid, the fact it could happen was what appealed. At Lynne Franks PR, there was this guy Julian Henry, he now writes PR analysis for Media Guardian and has his own PR company and is a mature man, he was a mature man then, and he also did PR for the BPI.

So I sent out something about handicapped children at the BPI Awards. I knew Julian vaguely, we were talking about Miaow earlier and he’d been involved with them and he was in the band The Hit Parade with Cath Carroll. Stan who was working for me said ‘Julian Henry’s been on the phone’ I said ‘Oh really…… has he?’ as my bowels were going through the floor. ‘He wants you to ring him back.’

I rang him.

‘Hi Julian’

‘Look Harper, I don’t want you to say anything, I know what you’re doing, I just want you to fucking stop. You don’t have to admit it just stop.’

I had boxes of this headed notepaper, I’ve got to get rid of this shit. Fred Vermorel’s coming round in a minute with another wacky idea. I better stop doing this stuff now…. meanwhile Fred turns up.

‘I’ve been to the British Library and I’ve got a map of all the tunnels at the Albert Hall.

I said ‘No, we’re not doing that anymore.’’