‘Richard was more like a member of the group,’ says Lauder. ‘He wasn’t like a commercial manager thinking, “Well, if this doesn’t work I’ll go and sign another band.”’
To that end Lauder understood that, although they were from a different generation, Buzzcocks had a similar attitude to the first generation of acts on United Artists and he was amenable to the band including full artistic control in their contract. ‘We had a clause,’ says Boon, ‘which ends up being meaningless really, about controlling your artistic direction – but when things stop selling, which they did, then suddenly all the other clauses in the contract come out.’
As Buzzcocks embarked on the path of career pop stars as fully-fledged members of the recording industry, Spiral Scratch’s legacy ensured that there was an incipient, viable alternative cottage industry left in its wake. Boon now found he was managing a band on international tours and dealing with the corporate entertainment business, and he was as bewildered as anyone at what Spiral Scratch had achieved. ‘It just felt weird,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I thought it was some kind of art prank, not business, and then it became business and I’m still not very good at business.’
Buzzcocks and Boon had unwittingly started a ‘record company’ by releasing Spiral Scratch. Some of their contemporaries were having similar, if slightly more refined, ideas. Bob Last was a twenty-year-old Edinburgh architecture student drawn to some of the emerging concepts of the day, principally the discussions taking place around art and design and in particular the emerging practices in architectural history. ‘I actually never had any interest in the music industry per se whatsoever,’ he says. What interested Last was what is now called ‘branding’ and the power of identity in the market place. ‘I had the political, cultural and theoretical kind of background from which emerged the popular form of postmodernism,’ he says, ‘the one that first emerged in terms of architecture with Charles Jencks, then, in terms of popular culture, in Peter York.’
York’s series of articles for Harpers & Queen magazine were widely read and discussed in the late Seventies and were eventually collected into books. In his breezy texts, York determined to join the dressier, theoretical elements of punk with the other, Peter Jones, end of the King’s Road. He identified what would come to be termed ‘lifestyle’, with its attendant concern for design and consumerism, in the way that previous contributors to Harpers & Queen had written about debs coming out. What threaded the components of York’s idea together was, inevitably, what he called ‘a bit of spare cash’. York’s postmodernism was a way of re-evaluating and reintegrating class distinction with a lowest common dominator of aspirational vim. Everything was of equal cultural value if it was stylish, reasonably pricey and helped guide the consumer towards the required level of product identification. The idea’s effect on the ensuing decade, and how the Eighties liked to talk about itself, often via York himself, was pronounced. For Last, part of a generation emerging from the long shadow of the attritional politics and economics of the Seventies, York’s conceits were, in their novelty, breathtakingly exciting. ‘It informed the brand. And the brand was driven very specifically by what postmodernism did,’ he says. ‘It mashed up populist instincts with classical and theoretical instincts, so that was very much the nexus.’
The name of Last’s brand was Fast Product, and the name came before any fixed purpose or decision about the brand’s function. ‘It came out of the same zeitgeist that punk emerged from, but as a brand it pre-dated punk,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know about punk; it probably was beginning to happen in London but certainly hadn’t reached us in Scotland. Spiral Scratch was a key moment when my girlfriend Hilary bought it for me, because that was what made me think, OK, music is what we should do with this brand.’
Fast Product eschewed the conventions of record companies. Last had little interest in releasing albums or developing careers. Instead Fast Product released one-off 7-inch singles and compiled bands on to Earcoms, ear comics, which played around with formats.
A narrative on packaging and consumption, the Earcom series appeared with concentrated rapidity throughout 1978 and featured bands from the vanguard of the more theoretical space that had opened after punk: the Mekons, Gang of Four, Human League. Behind the layers of commentary was some ground-breaking music that proved Last had serious A&R skills and his ear to the ground. The second Earcom featured a nascent Joy Division contributing a track. After little more than a year Last decided to wind down Fast Product and began managing some of the Earcom acts, most notably Human League. The impact of Fast was intense and far-reaching – the iconography and style of the Baader-Meinhof gang for instance, which appeared on Earcom 2: Contradiction, is still being unravelled, co-opted and rebranded today.
In just over a year Last had packaged and released music by Joy Division, Human League, the Mekons, Dead Kennedys, Scars and D.A.F. in a mess of beautiful texts and signifiers. Last had proved that an artfully constructed label could be much more than the sum of its parts and discerning record buyers were now literate in the possibilities and language of releasing and designing records – none of which was lost on many of Last’s contemporaries. In a matter of months the combination of sharp design, playful marketing, and a broadly anti-industry stance would be the lingua franca of small new record companies.
*
Just as Last had done in Edinburgh, another group of individuals from a similar, if more extreme, non-musical background found themselves turning to music to work through their ideas about society. Like Last they were thinking theoretically, although the theory around Industrial Records is still a shape-shifting point of argument that continues to engage and entrance today.
Along with Chelsea’s Lots Road and the avenues of squats in north Kensington which were home to many of the people affiliated to Rough Trade, London’s East End remained one of the undeveloped areas of the capital. It contained London’s highest density of post-war council rehousing, which had been built alongside semi-demolished terraces that were now derelict.
‘It was a very charged atmosphere much of the time; Hackney was a strange place then, nothing like it is now,’ remembers Chris Carter. ‘There was still a strong racial tension then, that and skinheads and gay bashing. East London was still finding itself and didn’t have a specific vibe, unlike, say, north London, which was always more chilled out and liberal. You really did take your life in your hands if you went out alone at night in some areas.’
Carter was a teenage long-hair with a deep love of kosmische electronics, who first visited the studio of COUM Transmissions on Martello Street in Hackney in February 1978, at the invitation of its founders, Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. ‘It’s funny, because when Gen and Cosey first introduced themselves to me they just seemed like a couple of colourful hippies with a lot of mad ideas,’ he says. ‘Even though we were obviously from quite different musical backgrounds, within hours we discovered all these shared interests and points of reference and really bonded.’
The difference in backgrounds between Carter and his new friends was pronounced. Carter was a shy bedroom engineer who had done lighting for Tangerine Dream and was sufficiently dexterous with a circuit board to build his own synths. Tutti and P-Orridge were performance artists who had decided to explore music as part of their practice. To the technologically astute Carter, it looked as if they needed some help. He recalls, ‘They invited me to their studio in Martello Street. They were playing with all these half-working, broken-down and borrowed instruments: guitars, drums, keyboards – some things were home-made and many were on the verge of self-destruction. And there was Day-Glo paint everywhere. It took me days before I could take them seriously; I thought I’d come across some offshoot of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.’
Tutti and her partner P-Orridge had formed COUM Transmissions during the swell of the early Seventies performance art movement, rising through provincial beginnings in their native Hull to appearing at the Venice Biennale.
Joining the duo and Carter was Pete ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, a freelance sleeve and graphic designer whose clients included Hipgnosis, the iconic design studio who framed progressive rock in witty, often photographic-based, abstractions that complemented the self-consciously complex music contained in the record covers to perfection. This was the basis for the project Carter, Christopherson, Tutti and P-Orridge undertook together: Throbbing Gristle.
‘Sleazy’s work with Hipgnosis, and his knowledge of layouts, printing, photography and so on was a real asset,’ says Tutti ‘because we had at our fingertips first-hand knowledge of all these techniques used by the industry. He put together the finished art works, knew about printing methods and the best printers to use. Between the four of us we had everything necessary to be TG and run a label.’ The Industrial Records/Throbbing Gristle quartet had a unique skill set which allowed the label to have a distinct modus operandi, one which had the lingering air of analysis and enquiry, and of a risk-taking avant-garde sensibility.
‘Chris’s technical ability was the key, really,’ says Tutti. ‘He did the final production and mastering on all TG releases.’ Carter’s hands-on ability as an engineer, along with Christopherson’s knowledge of design ensured Industrial releases had an incredible attention to detail.
Industrial’s sleeves had the clarity and authority of Hipgnosis, but in a monochrome, austere reverse. Making their own equipment meant Throbbing Gristle were elevating the idea of taking control to a higher level. The band rejected the format of bass, guitar, drums and vocals and, although they were releasing records, Throbbing Gristle were wholly detached from the conventions of the record business. The early releases on Industrial pre-dated punk, a style and movement of which Throbbing Gristle were dismissive. ‘Although punk painted itself as “revolutionary”, it wasn’t, in my opinion,’ says Tutti, ‘because business was its master, it didn’t crack its own whip, it still sought idolatry via a raw form of rock ’n’ roll dressed up in designer clothes.’
If Hackney suffered from dereliction and tensions, it offered a cheap or free environment for creativity. ‘I’d always operated in this kind of atmosphere,’ Tutti remembers. ‘Living in derelict squat-type buildings that no one else wanted meant we could have large spaces for small money and we were reasonably isolated too. I personally liked the feeling of living and working in disused buildings. They provided an additional disconnect with mainstream society and became like my own territory. Society’s failure assisted our “success” in a way; because of all the political unrest of the Seventies it was easier for us to operate under the radar because people were focused on the inconvenience of the power cuts, uncollected rubbish. Me and Gen having the Martello Street studio was also an enormous advantage because we had a space in which to experiment to our hearts’ content. And just across London Fields we had our house in Beck Road, so when we had extended jam sessions, or were working late in the studio, we all bunked down together.’
As well as COUM’s studio in Martello Street, which the duo leased from the Arts Council, P-Orridge and Tutti squatted in a terraced house in nearby Beck Road where Throbbing Gristle often slept side by side to achieve a group mind/dream state when sleeping.
Throbbing Gristle’s self-confidence meant the business of running a record company was an enjoyable experiment. ‘In the beginning,’ says Tutti, ‘it was all a real novelty and we enjoyed discovering all the nuances of manufacture, distribution and promo. Of course, we played around and twisted things around a bit to suit our own needs. There was and continued to be a lot of game play. But the mundane day-to-day slog of going to collect mail, answering that mail, packaging orders and duplicating cassettes took up a lot of our time. Chris and Gen went to do the test pressings, deliver stock to Rough Trade. After a while, as things got more intensely active, we had to bring in two people to work for us in “the office” so we could get on with creating our music.’
Upon its release Throbbing Gristle’s debut album Second Annual Report sold well and eventually achieved sales of over 100,000. In Rough Trade the record had a secondary use. ‘When it got too overcrowded,’ says Richard Scott, then a new recruit to the fledgling Rough Trade staff rota, ‘we’d put on Throbbing Gristle to clear a bit of room in the shop.’
At a Throbbing Gristle concert at the Crypt in London, the support band was The Normal, whose only band member was Daniel Miller, a bedroom boffin with collar-length hair and the air of an amateur inventor. ‘I was mucking about at home with synths just as the first independent labels were starting and I just wanted to put out a single,’ he says. ‘I had very low expectations. I was listening to the Ramones and I was listening to Kraftwerk. I was disillusioned with the straight record industry, because everyone thought that the music they were putting out was shit and now if you were so inclined you could do it yourself.’
Miller had recorded two songs that he intended to release as a single at home. Once he had mixed the tracks on to a cassette, he summoned enough courage to approach the counter of Rough Trade. ‘I didn’t know any of the people there,’ he says, ‘and I felt incredibly nervous.’ The tracks ‘TVOD’ and ‘Warm Leatherette’ were two corrosive and minimal songs that sounded as though they had been intimidated out of a synthesiser. Geoff Travis, as he did for anyone who walked into the shop, gave Miller a reassuring smile and inserted the tape into the Rough Trade tape-deck. A few feet away Jon Savage was flicking through the week’s new releases; he was in conversation with his fellow Sounds journalist Jane Suck as the pair debated which records might be worthy of further investigation or a review. ‘I remember Daniel coming into the shop with a tape of “TVOD” which he’d just made,’ he says. ‘Jane Suck just went berserk when she heard it – she thought it was Lou Reed’s new record.’
To Miller’s relief and surprise Travis offered to manufacture and distribute ‘TVOD’ and ‘Warm Leatherette’ on the spot. ‘They listened to it and liked it and took over the distribution, which was fantastic,’ says Miller. ‘I’d walked in with a tape, and came out with a record deal. The weird thing for me was before that that I had no contact with the music business whatsoever.’
Miller settled on the name Mute for his label and attended to the requirements, if only for one release, of becoming a record company. ‘I put my address on the back of the sleeve,’ he says ‘because that seemed to be what people did. And I started getting demo tapes from people with long letters saying, please will you put my record out.’
The atmosphere in the Rough Trade shop was buoyant. More and more 7-inches were being manufactured by Rough Trade on their customers’ behalf, and the racks of one-off statements, angular ideas about music, and primitive essays in pop started to swell. As well as over the counter at the shop, each release was also sold via Rough Trade’s ad hoc mail order system; a new haphazard form of supply and demand was being slowly created away from the established music industry.
Richard Scott was tall and hirsute and still carried the air of his former occupation as an architecture tutor. He was now de facto in charge of the embryonic distribution of all the material flooding into Kensington Park Road and trying to organise a way for it to leave, the impetus of the moment almost willing the records out of the door. ‘There was just a huge energy,’ he says, ‘and very soon we could see that we could sell 10,000 of anything that was halfway decent and 10,000 actually generated a lot of money even then. I walked in there, I think it was late one afternoon, to talk to Geoff and they were busy collating any spare copies of Sniffin’ Glue and I was sort of spat out ten years later. I’d walked into something which was so dense that really there was no time to stop and think or catch your breath.’
A community was building, but despite its energy and nervous ambition, it was still localised and small. ‘We used to go to gigs every night,’ says Scott, ‘and there was always a saying at Rough Trade that if there were more than six other people in the audience you were at the wrong gig. John Peel used to hang around the back. He used to come in and
go through the shelves … he was so gentle.’
Rough Trade were ready to take the next step and become a record label, releasing singles that extended the DIY production values and sensibility. The early releases came from the diaspora of ideas fermenting around the shop, and drew on a regional and international talent pool. Kleenex were from Austria and Augustus Pablo maintained the store’s connection with reggae. Cabaret Voltaire were from Sheffield, and had been brought to Travis’s attention by Jon Savage.
‘I stayed at Richard Kirk’s one night,’ says Savage. ‘You could hear the factories, and they sounded just like Cabaret Voltaire. Richard was really into Kraftwerk, so they gave me a whole load of tapes, one of which became a cassette release on Industrial, another, Cab’s first vinyl release, Extended Play, on Rough Trade. I regarded that as part of my job at that time, putting people in touch with each other.’
Jon Savage felt that things around punk London in general were starting to dissipate. ‘I felt that the Rough Trade scene was getting very dislocated. I didn’t want a whole load of people telling me what to think. I was desperate to get out of being a lawyer; I got in touch with Tony and said, “I want to get a job in telly,” and Tony said, “Right, well, Granada are having boards for researchers,” and I went up for a board in November ’78 and I got the job.’ The Tony in question was a fellow Cambridge graduate, a suave former grammar-school boy from Salford: Tony Wilson.
* The manager’s name was John Webster. As well as taking a box of Spiral Scratch on commission, Webster would go on to work at Virgin in the marketing department, where he would be part of the team behind the Now That’s What I Call Music series of compilations. A decade later he would come up with the idea of the Mercury Music Prize. All of this suggests that the impact of Spiral Scratch was far-reaching.
How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 Page 4