How Soon Is Now? The Madmen & Mavericks Who Made Independent Music (1975-2005)
Posted 11/02/12
{blog_images} {/blog_images}'If you look at all the people involved - Ivo, Tony Wilson, McGee, Geoff Travis, myself - nobody had a clue about running a record company, and that was the best thing about it.' - Daniel Miller
How Soon Is Now? is the thirty-year story of British independent music, from its inauspicious beginnings in the back of a record shop to the catch all genre of ‘indie’ today.
Based on extensive and exclusive interviews with the sector’s leading protagonists, it charts the rise of the independent record business and its wayward and risk taking successes and failures; all achieved in shaky, unruly counterpoint to the conservative orthodoxies of the established music industry.
As well as the history of indie guitar music, How Soon Is Now? explores the way in which the high watermarks of independence were achieved by a mixture of luck, ambition and improvisation. The book includes the behind-the scenes stories of the sector’s first number one: Pump Up The Volume by M/A/R/R/S and of how Depeche Mode achieved arena status in America and Warp Records’ early releases infiltrated the Top Twenty from the backroom of a Sheffield record shop. It also tells the story of Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond’s extraordinary five-year musical partnership, culminating in the incendiary eighteen-month period during which, the KLF became the biggest selling singles band in Britain.
Although set principally in the UK the story also covers the impact of British independent music in America, where a generation of bands played to the largest audiences of their careers. Conversely the story of Blast First illustrates how a wave of American bands arrived on an unsuspecting British music scene and set in motion the events that helped pave the way for the worldwide phenomenon of grunge.
Alongside the story of the label owners, would-be-moguls and hustlers who made up the indie music business How Soon Is Now? examines the careers of such iconic bands as Orange Juice, The Smiths and New Order, and in conversations with Jeannette Lee, Grace Maxwell, Liz Naylor and many others, the gender imbalance in what is sometimes a boys club is discussed with candor.
The contribution of graphic designers including Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville, whose creative ideas became synonymous with the labels they worked for, is also analysed in detail.
The result is a comprehensive and revealing journey through one of the most colourful and important moments in British popular culture.
How Soon Is Now? is published by Faber & Faber, Record Store Day, April 2012