How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005

by King, Richard

  ‘The Buttholes started climbing up the bills,’ says Smith. ‘At Reading in ’89 you could see the same people who were jumping around to the Wonder Stuff or whatever the fuck it was were struck with terror going, “What the fuck is this?” They weren’t really even getting Sonic Youth, but the Butthole Surfers they would vaguely get on a kind of spectacle basis.’

  Smith’s timing was propitious. The generation of bands he had signed had started their careers with a sporadic and hand-to-mouth sequence of scattershot EPs, live tracks and mini-LP releases, allowing a slow progress across the USA via the network of fanzines and punk club drop-in houses that made up the American underground infrastructure. By the time Smith got to work with the bands, they had reached the peak of their powers. Butthole Surfers finally found a way to replicate the onslaught of their live show in a studio and released the startlingly heavy Hairway to Steven in 1988. Both Sonic Youth and Big Black were also turning in an album a year. The music weeklies became smitten, having found a garrulous set of characters with complex and contradictory personalities and stories from hard yards on the road. Distinctly not intimidated by the British press, they were excellent copy.

  ‘It wasn’t that considered,’ says Smith, ‘but we certainly sank a generation of English squat bands. Bogshed and all those guys sank pretty swiftly. I still run into those people and they still do bear a bit of a grudge, which I can understand; they were on the dole and they could get by and there was three newspapers a fucking week that had to get filled, so they got written about. But if you deal with the vast expanses of America, and the vast gap between any kind of media, then that wrought certain kinds of characters, Sonic Youth in particular. Thurston was always very outgoing and interested in [them] and wanted to see that kind of music come through. It was a disparate bunch that vaguely crossed paths and they’d done all their playing to literally two people and a dog and then driven 600 miles to do it again. Here you’d have been to Scotland and back. It produced a level of performance that, to be honest, sad Britons at that time could not pull off.’

  A group with which Smith was initially hesitant to work proved to give Blast First their most radio-friendly material and an indie disco anthem. ‘Kim [Gordon] was the mover and shaker behind Bug,’ says Smith. ‘I went, “That’s fucking horrible.” It was almost as bad as Die Kreuzen, which was their mate’s band who were really bad, but they couldn’t see it, ’cause they thought whatever his name was, Butch Vig, was really cool. I played Bug and I went, “No, I didn’t get that,” then I was humming a couple of the melodies to myself and thought, oh, that was that fucking record I heard earlier. So I phoned Kim up in the evening and went, “Have you still got the tape? Can I hear it again, ’cause …’ and she went, “It’s under your pillow,” and I always thought that was very clever of her. She’d left the cassette under my pillow and then after that I was like, bang, very much into the record.’

  Dinosaur Jr released the hyper-melodic Bug in 1988, the same year as Butthole Surfers’ Hairway to Steven and Sonic Youth’s masterpiece Daydream Nation; with most of their British independent contemporaries still taking tentative steps into the studio, it was as breathtaking a trio of albums as any British label released at the time. All three records were distorted and submerged in a mess of chaotic electricity; above all they marked a moment when records that actually rocked took up residence at the top of the independent charts. †

  Alongside Big Black’s weapons-grade riffs, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers and Dinosaur Jr marked a wholesale return to the guitar, an instrument that in the last five years had been primarily used to jangle, if it had been used at all.

  Keeping up with bands with no management who spent much of their time out on the road proved complicated for Smith. The force of the personalities at work within Blast First and its acts made the situation even more wearisome. With a staff of three, Blast First was riding the crest of a wave that threatened to crash at any time.

  ‘Paul was very sort of passionate and brilliant,’ says Liz Naylor, ‘but also I remember him ringing me from Japan, and I’d got Sonic Youth “single of the week” in NME and Melody Maker but not Sounds, and he really bollocked me for that. He was completely unpredictable and people were acting out on you all the time. Lydia Lunch came into the office saying, “Now, I don’t want to speak to the monkey asshole.” All these slightly deranged people were always ready to kick off.’

  Smith was starting to get a reputation for being slightly erratic. The time difference between the UK and USA meant a never-ending series of late-night calls and negotiations. Added to this, the personalities of Haynes and Albini, for whom getting up in someone’s grille was often the equivalent of exchanging pleasantries, made communication tricky. J Mascis had the opposite problem, a mixture of shyness and awkwardness. He left people confused as to whether or not they had just had a conversation. ‘It was a nightmare trying to talk to J,’ says Smith. ‘Impossible to get anything out of him.’ By the end of 1988 the bands and staff of Blast First felt as shredded and explosive as their music.

  ‘We were all fucked,’ says Naylor, ‘apart from Sonic Youth. For them it was like an art project and I didn’t realise it was an art project. I thought it was a rock ’n’ roll band.’

  Smith’s relationship with Sonic Youth had intensified with every release. He was now their manager, sound man, label head and all-purpose fixer, calling as many shots on their behalf outside the UK and Europe as he was at home; it was also a relationship in which Smith and the band’s love of music was a unifying bond. ‘We would be driving over the Pennines and out of nowhere Thurston would be going, “So, Joy Division, did you ever see Joy Division?” When they actually hit the realities of Manchester, they were quite spooked. Tony Wilson came down to see them and Hannett turned up and he was always pretty weird. I was going to Thurston, “Look, Hannett’s there, come over and meet him and say hello.” By the time I’d got the pints and come back, Hannett had got this gun which he put on the table and Thurston had turned white and was shaking. I was like, “Hannett, put your gun away, we don’t want that today,” and he was like, “Oh, sorry mate.” If you knew him even vaguely, you knew that he’s not going to fucking shoot anybody – he was far more likely to shoot himself in the foot, literally and metaphorically.’

  However, a slight fissure was starting to open up between Smith and Sonic Youth. Having relocated to New York, Smith and the band were seeing an awful lot more of each other. While Smith was acting, he thought, as a de facto manager, the band were becoming increasingly weary of some of his behaviour. ‘I was always surprised, when I went to New York, that they didn’t go out. They didn’t have the money to go out, they didn’t drink and they didn’t take drugs,’ says Smith. ‘They’d go and see films, and they’d go and see bands but they didn’t go “out” out, and one of the key cultural rifts that developed was that I’d be going, “All right, well, so we’ve done everything and it’s only ten o’clock and I’m in New York … so I’m going out now.” This was when the Lower East Side was still a little bit dangerous and had prostitutes and I’d be like, “But there’s a great bar at the end,” and I’d come from a culture where you went out and enjoyed yourself and they never could get that. Kim particularly was uncomfortable with that kind of lifestyle.’

  His allies and colleagues were also noticing a slight possessiveness in Smith over the band. When Sonic Youth played live, Smith was either behind the mixing desk or could be glimpsed stage right, cross-legged behind a monitor. Smith, with some justification, would explain that such closeness was a product of his intensity and commitment. Others detected a hint of claustrophobia.

  ‘Sonic Youth didn’t have a manager. They didn’t have a record label. They didn’t have an agent,’ says Richard Thomas. ‘What they had was Paul, who should’ve let go a little bit sooner.’ Thomas also saw that Sonic Youth were having an influence on their generation in the manner of a modern-day Velvet Underground, particularly in London, where Thomas was notici
ng several of the C86-era bands were growing out their hair and buying larger amps. ‘The impact of Sonic Youth and the Blast First bands was pretty instant,’ he says. ‘Overnight, bands I’d put on before all had twice as many effects pedals.’

  American music was now a currency that other labels were exploring. Smith, having failed to interest anyone three years earlier, was now seen as a totemic presence around London, somewhere between a seer and a hustler who had revitalised the sector.

  ‘Ivo called me up,’ says Smith, ‘and said, “I’ve just signed a band that sounds like one of yours. I’ve looked at all the records and it doesn’t say who produces them. I assume it’s you. Would you like to produce this record?” Stupidly I said, “No, no, I don’t produce the records, they all produce themselves.” Really stupid, because if I had produced the Pixies I could’ve shut their fucking career down. Much as I have to say I love Kim Deal, and had some nice times with Kim … but if only I could’ve kept my mouth shut.’

  The idea of putting bands with producers was not something that had ever occurred to Smith, who, for all the accusations that he was a control freak, acted as an enabler rather than a hands-on A&R. ‘You don’t need to be the man rushing up to Sonic Youth saying, “I’m just thinking a bit of a remix here, lads,”’ he says. ‘When those tapes arrived, you put it on, you sat there and kind of went, “Holy fuck.” You didn’t sit there going, “Hmm, I’m thinking if only we’d put you with the right producer,” or something.’

  For Smith, in the eye of a hurricane it was full steam ahead in the small unit he had built in Harrow Road. But the idea of marrying the masthead group of the American underground – something that was now starting to be called ‘indie-rock,’ or ‘alternative’ – with the working dynamics of an industry-grade studio budget was on the rise in America. A handful of executives were starting to wonder what might happen if you dropped the ‘indie’ in ‘indie rock’ and see what occurred in the mainstream, never mind the alternative.

  * Shellyan Orphan were the exemplar of what might be called ‘Merchant Ivory indie’. Their debut album (for which Rough Trade managed to afford Abbey Road) was named after an orchid. A notable performance by the band on The Tube included a string section gently playing while a painter got to work on a Cubist-style piece behind them.

  † The video for Dinosaur Jr’s single ‘Freak Scene’ was filmed in the back garden of John Robb of the Membranes’ house in Manchester, which shows that at least some of the British bands Blast First displaced were disinclined to hold a grudge.

  11 Gigantic

  Pixies, Gigantic BAD 805 (Vaughan Oliver/4AD)

  Watts-Russell was finding the growth of 4AD more and more difficult to negotiate. Along with Vaughan Oliver and Colin Wallace, by 1987 he had a staff of around six, including his partner Deborah Edgely and Ray Conroy who managed Colourbox. With his unwavering attention to detail as focused as ever, Watts-Russell was starting to spread himself thinly over a growing release schedule. Despite employing a small workforce, he was still micromanaging every aspect of the label to ensure that its reputation and aesthetic remained intact; he was overstretched and increasingly reliant on his energy reserves and stress was starting to takes its toll.

  ‘If I was out of the office I was always in a hurry to get back to check everything was getting taken care of, and then, when I had people there to take care of everything, I kind of lost the plot,’ he says. ‘It was every day, full on. I could never get off all year, then at Christmas I wanted sun, so I went to terrible places like the Maldives. Ray Conroy somehow tracked us down to this very remote place and rang up to say that Alex Ayuli, who was later in AR Kane, at this little company called Saatchi and Saatchi, had enquired about using “Song to the Siren” in a commercial, and I said no. I got another call to say that Alex had tracked down Louise Rutkowski, who I knew and had worked with on the second This Mortal Coil album, and she was going to re-sing “Song to the Siren” for this commercial. I think I swore at him and said, “Tell her not be so fucking stupid,” but that was that, she did it and suddenly “Song to the Siren” was in this ridiculous ad on televison. Any real knowledge of Rudy and Alex will ruin anything you think of them.’

  AR Kane remain one of the most revered yet little known groups of the late Eighties. A duo of Ayuli and Rudy Tambala, AR Kane, after working with Watts-Russell, eventually released two albums on Rough Trade. The band’s music was a seductive hybrid of gently distorted guitar lines, dubbed vocals and drum machines; Ayuli, an advertising copy-writer, is credited with inventing the phrase ‘dream pop’, which described their music perfectly. AR Kane’s songs sounded as though they had been recorded in a flotation tank. Their first release, ‘When You’re Sad’, sounded like the Jesus and Mary Chain after a health regime, its crunching feedback pop delivering a sense of beatific contentment. ‘When You’re Sad’ had been released on One Little Indian, a label owned by Mayking Records, manufacturers to the bulk of the independent industry and run by Derek Birkett.

  ‘I already had the One Little Indian EP and really liked it,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Alex came to see me and said, “We’d like to do another record, but One Little Indian haven’t got any money and they keep stringing us along and we want to make a record with you.” Next thing I know, someone buzzed at reception and said, “There’s somebody from One Little Indian here to see you.” Derek was there outside with Paul White, who did their artwork, and this smiley, shaven-headed bloke who, it turns out, was Einar from the Sugarcubes. He’d been to visit me in Hogarth Road in 1981 with some Iceland collective idea. Anyway it soon became clear Derek was going to fucking hit me.’

  It was a short walk from the One Little Indian premises to the Alma Road office and Birkett had arrived agitated and mob-handed, determined to resolve the issue of, as he saw it, 4AD having stolen one of his bands. His perception of the situation had not been helped by AR Kane’s failure to tell him they had been in discussions with Watts-Russell. Having caught wind of what was happening, Colin Wallace mustered a response team from the 4AD warehouse, resulting in a stand-off between the two companies. It wasn’t quite the mafia power struggles of Broadway or the back-alley thuggery of Denmark Street in the late Sixties but as things threatened to get physical One Little Indian and 4AD started squaring up over one of the most ethereal bands of all time.

  ‘Derek came up,’ says Wallace. ‘All the boys in the warehouse stood in reception waiting for him, and I think Derek got a bit of a fright. His bark’s worse than his bite really. I became really good friends with Derek afterwards, but we were like, “You’re not gonna come up here and cause trouble, pal.”’

  The conversation that followed was an animated debate between Birkett and Watts-Russell as the former accused the latter of pinching AR Kane. ‘Derek was furious,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘“You fucking don’t do that! You fucking stole my fucking band!”’ Putting the disagreement to rest, Watts-Russell signed the band for a one-off release and the vague agreement to work on a further release. AR Kane’s first release for 4AD was the Lolita EP. Its sleeve image was of a naked girl with a knife behind her back that perfectly captured the blissful menace of the music. It was also a premonition of the events that were to follow.

  ‘We did the Lolita EP,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Jürgen Teller did the photo for the sleeve. They said the thing they were disappointed with at One Little Indian was that they had been promised they could work with Adrian Sherwood and they didn’t. I said, “Work with Martin Young from Colourbox, he’s much better.” That was my innocent suggestion.’

  The result of the collaboration between AR Kane and Colourbox was a one-off release by M/A/R/R/S, a band name consisting of the first letter of each of AR Kane and Colourbox’s forenames. After a bad-tempered recording session, M/A/R/R/S had managed to come up with just two tracks in the studio, ‘Pump Up the Volume’ and ‘Anitina’, along with a lingering resentment towards one another.

  ‘They made the record,’ says Watts-Russell, ‘and they f
ucking hated each other. “Pump Up the Volume” has got one guitar part by AR Kane, the B-side has got Steve programming the drums, and that’s it, that’s the extent of the collaboration. AR Kane were really happy with it, Colourbox and their manager, on the other hand, were conscious that this was going to do something.’

  ‘Pump Up the Volume’, a collage of beats and samples threaded together over as modern and propulsive a rhythm as a studio could produce in 1987, was the record that Colourbox had always been threatening to make. As tough and funky as anything heard on pirate radio, it had an effortless and infectious groove; its use of samples was sufficiently futuristic and visionary to ensure it sounded startlingly contemporary.

  ‘Colourbox came to me and said, “We don’t want ‘Anitina’ on the B-side. We don’t want it to be M/A/R/R/S,”’ says Watts-Russell, ‘and I said no. The reason I said no was because the Colourbox singles had come out in ’86 and ’87 and Martin had been in the studio for a year and a half. So I thought no, don’t screw it up, it’ll take him another year and a half to do the B-side. Whatever. So this war started.’

  Watts-Russell, his workload stretched even further, became a mediator whose primary function was to say no to the rival factions. Caught between the two camps, Watts-Russell cut his losses and decided the single would go ahead as planned and be credited to M/A/R/R/S, ruining his four-year-old relationship with Colourbox in the process.

  ‘We agreed that this was going to be a joint single,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘I fell out with Colourbox and told AR Kane to fuck off, because their behaviour just got dreadful; it was all just fucking awful. What happened with “Pump Up the Volume” was, we were a staff of five or six and I saw the impact it had on my employees – that they loved it. They loved the fact that they could be on the phone to contemporaries of theirs in the industry and say how great, excited and jealous or whatever they were. It was Rough Trade’s first-ever no. 1, and I was really proud of that, but it was the closest I ever got without drugs to a nervous breakdown.’