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

by King, Richard

  The idea of Guernica was straightforward, but within the 4AD system it lacked coherence. The fact that Watts-Russell had all but moved to the States also meant there was no one in the London office to drive the project forward. He had conceived Guernica as a way of rekindling his love of releasing records without the pressures of career building and long-term planning, but had instead created another pressure in an ongoing series of communication problems at 4AD.

  ‘Guernica didn’t fucking work because Ivo, the bloke who ran the company, had fucked off to the USA’, says Watts-Russell, ‘and dumped this stuff back on the label and wasn’t there to guide it through. It didn’t seem to work for the artists or the people back there.’ Simon Harper was acting as a de facto label manager in Watts-Russell’s absence and was one of the few members of staff included in his confidence. As Watts-Russell considered emigrating to live full-time to America, he and Harper started to make some contingencies for how the label would be run while he was away. The reality was that 4AD, without the singular vision and authorial voice of its founder, would be a difficult company to steer.

  ‘I was aware of the fact that he didn’t want to live in England for a myriad of reasons,’ says Harper. ‘He wasn’t having a great time with the industry and so it came as no surprise to me that he was moving to the States. When he moved there, things obviously started to become slightly more complicated primarily on the A&R front. We had a very capable A&R guy in London called Lewis Jameson, but it was obviously going to be an issue as to how practical it would all be in terms of Ivo’s involvement.’

  Away from his unease in the industry and his despondency over 4AD, Watts-Russell was beginning to realise that his personal problems were also starting to become difficult to manage. In search of sunlight, he took himself away over the Christmas and New Year break of 1992–3 to Thailand, where, rather than escaping his problems, he was confronted with their magnitude. ‘I’d gone to Thailand on my own,’ he says. ‘In Thailand, like lots of places, you can buy prescription drugs at the chemist. I came back with enough drugs to shuffle off this mortal coil. My depression, it was becoming apparent, was something I really had to deal with.’

  Robin Hurley had got to know Watts-Russell through Rough Trade America where Hurley had handled the Pixies and a number of 4AD acts. As Rough Trade began disintegrating, Watts-Russell suggested to Hurley that he would be welcome to join 4AD. Hurley moved the fledgling 4AD office from New York out to the West Coast where, in an example of how seriously the industry regarded 4AD’s chances of increased success, Warner Brothers were in the process of offering the label, rather than just a selection of its acts, a long-term deal.

  ‘Robin could tell I was down,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘I’d just got back from Thailand, and he said, “Why don’t you come out here for a month?”, as we’d opened the office. I thought, can I do that? I felt the old feeling when I’d come to America for the first time, years ago, that things are possible. I felt I could do this. I rented an apartment in LA and I tried to live in both places and go back and forth. It took me a while to settle in LA and work out what the fuck I was doing and then when I was back in the UK I felt cheated that I was back because I didn’t want to be there. I was exhausted and it contributed to me going off the rails.’

  To Vaughan Oliver, Watts-Russell’s emigration had come as a shock. While their relationship had always fluctuated with their moods, Oliver had been a constant presence since 4AD’s infancy and the designer was horrified that he would now be answering to an ad hoc selection of 4AD label managers rather than directly to Watts-Russell. ‘I didn’t see that coming,’ he says. ‘He said, “That’s where I’m going, that’s what I’m doing. I’m going back to LA.” “Right, oh, I’m sorry about that …” It’s not as if we even had dinner together and discussed it. It just happened and I had to accept it – these divvies coming in and running the company, with him in the background.’

  Watts-Russell’s relocation had a further implication for Oliver. For a long time the designer had felt that his input into the label had never been fully recognised. In an awkward moment some years earlier, he had brought up the subject of becoming a shareholder or partner in 4AD, a suggestion that surprised Watts-Russell. ‘In 1984 I suggested that I should be a partner,’ recalls Oliver. ‘Ivo said something to the effect of “fuck off”, which nearly had me in tears. He said, “Well, what money are you going to put in?” It was just an idea. It lasted about three minutes and I scuttled back into my box.’

  Other members of staff were under the impression that Oliver still bore a grudge that, combined with his temperament, made his relationship with Watts-Russell increasingly choleric. Oliver, whose work will be for ever associated with 4AD, still maintains that his contributions are underappreciated. ‘Looking in, folks would have thought I’m a partner,’ he says. ‘When Ivo sold the company, I should’ve had some fucking money out of it. You put twenty years of your life into something …’

  Throughout his period at the label Oliver was also engaged in freelance commissions, but it is the unique use of typography, colour and photography he applied to 4AD’s record sleeves for which he is most recognised. Whatever the difficulties of the relationship between them as label owner and graphic designer, the partnership between Oliver and Watts-Russell was one of the most creatively successful to have survived the ups and downs of the music business. Oliver’s designs are instantly identifiable and synonymous with 4AD; his bold strokes and willingness to experiment, a suitably individual and vivid representation of the label’s music.

  ‘A few years ago someone said to me, “You’ve created a brand, v23’s a brand, 4AD’s a brand,”’ says Oliver, ‘that’s not what you aspire to, you’re just trying to make something that’s true … it’s about truth isn’t it, and that’s all we were trying to do.’

  Through the turbulence of emigrating and the problems of how he would be replaced, Watts-Russell managed to sustain his interest in music. While the label may have employed an A&R man, Watts-Russell continued to listen to the demos and tapes that came his way and maintained a close working relationship with the new generation of acts he had signed, almost all of whom were solo performers. One of his later signings especially saw him work with an artist in the manner in which he had enjoyed his most successful partnerships. ‘Ultra Vivid Scene, His Name, Heidi Berry, Lisa Germano, I love those records,’ says Watts-Russell, ‘and Red House Painters in particular.’

  Red House Painters were a Bay Area band formed by Mark Kozelek, whose lugubrious singing and atmospheric chord changes gave his songwriting a hushed intensity. A fellow San Franciscan, Mark Eitzel, had passed a whole C90 cassette’s worth of Kozelek’s songs to the journalist Martin Aston, one of 4AD’s few long-term supports in the media, who sent the tape to Watts-Russell.

  ‘The first time I listened to it all the way through, I rang Mark Kozelek,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘He was in the bath and heard my voice on the answering machine. That was a fantastic collaboration between us. There was that hour and a half, quickly followed by tons of tapes, long songs. So I said to him, similar to Come On Pilgrim, “Let’s pick six songs put them out as it is, and let’s do another record and re-record some of it.”’

  Watts-Russell and Kozelek picked the six tracks that would comprise Down Colorful Hill and Watts-Russell decamped with John Fryer to the studio where, for one last recording session as the head of 4AD, he shadowed the Red House Painters songs in a light haze of reverb. The Red House Painters’ material that was released had an echo of 4AD before the label’s multiplatinum success and its unhappy evolution into a machine.

  Red House Painters’ music also corresponded closely to Watts-Russell’s frame of mind. Down Colorful Hill had a vulnerability and directness to which the increasingly fragile Watts-Russell could relate. Working closely with Kosolek had offered him an opportunity to do what he most enjoyed: producing and compiling a record with an artist in a mutually rewarding process. ‘It was very bleak,’ says Watts-Ru
ssell. ‘This very melancholy sound.’ Although a welcome distraction from his problems, Red House Painters offered only temporary respite for him. ‘I suppose by the third or fourth record we put out’, he says, ‘I started to lose the thread.’

  In America the Warners 4AD deal that Hurley had supervised had been slow to yield results. Unrest’s Perfect Teeth had been a priority release and been given a significant push, to little effect. All was not lost however, by the time Dead Can Dance released Into the Labyrinth, Warners finally had a release that could justify the deal.

  ‘Warners were putting out as many records in a month as we were doing in a year,’ says Hurley. ‘Into the Labyrinth came out into the chart at no. 75 or something and went on to do half a million sales. So we thought, “Ah, light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve turned a corner,” and at the same time Belly did really well – they were part of the Warner group – Ivo had been very involved in the recording and it reflected well on us that the A&R was working.’

  Dead Can Dance, an Australian duo, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, had relocated to London where they had been treated sniffily by the UK press and been dismissed as Cocteau Twins copyists or world music Goths. Outside the UK they were one of 4AD’s most commercial propositions.

  ‘I remember Lisa saying she didn’t know what 4AD was or who the Cocteau Twins were,’ says Ivo. ‘When they played, it was opera houses. They were by far the most respected band that had been on 4AD outside of UK.’ Hurley was sensing that within Warners feelings had improved and the perception was that 4AD were only ever one release away from striking gold. With the right single an act could cross over into the frontline alternative market, where, post-Nevermind, bands like Belly were being lined up for multiplatinum sales and regulars in MTV’s Buzz Bin.

  ‘We were on the cusp of breaking beyond critical acclaim and playing the Roxy to something much bigger,’ says Hurley. ‘When Lush got offered Lollapalooza, we thought that would be the breakthrough. The LP did 125k and was in the days when modern rock radio really did sell records, and we were so close at that point.’

  Neither Lush nor Belly managed to connect to a wider audience in the hoped-for manner. ‘Luck is always what you need,’ says Hurley. ‘If someone at MTV had suddenly loved Lush – who knows?’

  In Watts-Russell’s absence Martin Mills had gradually become more involved in the behind-the-scenes running of 4AD and was included in the negotiations with Warners. Mills had dealt with Warners himself on various licensing deals with Beggars, and knew that the company was a music-led label and that the Burbank offices took their West Coast heritage of critical and commercial artist-led success seriously. There remained, however, a vague sense of incongruity about how a UK independent as distinctive as 4AD could be embedded within the Warners system.

  ‘You could get untold riches through licensing artists in America’, says Mills, ‘but those deals put pressure on you and made you spend money to give them the tools that they needed – and 4AD got badly caught in that trap with Warners.’

  For Watts-Russell, who was by now starting to lose whatever interest he had in the Warners deal altogether, the reality of having to interact with what he viewed as the corporate mind-set, however sympathetic to his artists, was one he had encountered before. The frustrations of having to, as he saw it, play the game, merely accelerated his feelings about quitting. ‘One of the first big Warner Brothers meetings I walked into was to discuss the Wolfgang Press,’ he says. ‘The track “A Girl Like You” was at that point of transition to whatever they called it, modern rock radio or whatever. And they turned me down. Here I am with the same goddam people making the same stupid decisions. Terrible.’

  On his return visits to London, Watts-Russell was feeling equally frustrated. He had assumed a transatlantic arrangement with the London office would allow him to retain an overview of the label, while letting him to remain at first remove. Instead he was finding the quality control that he had made his benchmark was slipping. He began to gain a reputation for being quick-tempered and uncommunicative when in the office, his natural reticence exacerbated by the fact that he was almost always jet-lagged. On one visit he listened through to some new Lush recordings and found the results unimpressive. ‘I remember having a rare blazing row with Miki [Berenyi],’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Mike Hedges had produced it in France, in another one of those studios that’s got the desk that did Sergeant Pepper, I mean how many of them are there? And it was absolutely awful. Somebody had said, “Don’t just point out the negatives.” Miki said, “Fuck off, it’s not your fucking record, it’s ours.” My point was, “Yes, it’s your record and it’s my label and I’m as proud about my label as you are about your records.”’

  Of all his relationships with his artists, the one between Watts-Russell and the Cocteau Twins had always been the most intense, and initially, the most rewarding. Things had soured after Victorialand, a record the Cocteau Twins had made as a duo. A combination of the shyness of all involved, and the way in which drugs had replaced the shyness with a passive-aggressive power struggle, had led to an ongoing and volatile dialogue between the band and Watts-Russell.

  ‘I wasn’t as closely involved beyond Victorialand,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Whether he was or he wasn’t taking a whole bunch of drugs, Robin became impossible. This chap called Raymond Coffer started to manage them on Blue Bell Knoll and he was really useless. We’d make plans on what should and could be done and Raymond would go away and then nothing would happen. One didn’t really even want to talk to Robin, because he was being so unpleasant. It just got worse and worse.’

  Watts-Russell had grown so disillusioned with the situation that he felt he had no choice but to make a decision that would have once seemed incomprehensible – he let the Cocteau Twins go. ‘I wasn’t prepared to be the bad record-company guy that they hate,’ he says, ‘and to be bad-mouthed all the time. We met at the lawyers. We got Raymond over there early one morning and I told him the Cocteau Twins were free to find another label; and Raymond couldn’t stop the smile from appearing on his face.’

  For Colin Wallace, who had left Grangemouth with Fraser and Guthrie and had remained their confidant throughout their career, Watts-Russell’s decision hadn’t come as a surprise. ‘It just broke down so badly,’ he says. ‘I remember Elizabeth having a shouting match with Ivo on the phone because Robin had broken down in tears after a conversation they’d had together, and I remember her launching at Ivo and I thought, fucking hell, Elizabeth never did this kind of thing.’

  The timing of the end of their relationship was loaded with significance for the Cocteau Twins and Watts-Russell; despite their grievances, and Guthrie’s perceived lack of commercial success, the band had just released their strongest-selling album, Heaven or Las Vegas. It was also one of their finest records. The songs featured tender, decipherable lyrics from Fraser that celebrated the birth of her and Guthrie’s first child. Fraser’s voice soared over some of their most melodic and rapturous arrangements, although they had been recorded in a mood of vitriol and blame.

  Despite the fact he was no longer welcome or involved in the recording process, or any other aspect of their career, Heaven or Las Vegas holds a dear place in Watts-Russell’s heart. ‘I think it’s the best record we ever put out,’ he says. ‘For all those people who love to think I manipulate and stick my finger in and control, it’s a record I had absolutely nothing to do with, zero, and I love that record.’

  The full extent of the upheaval he and the band had undergone finally caught up with Watts-Russell on his way to see the band play the album live. ‘They were playing at the Town & Country,’ he says, ‘and a couple of their fans – you can imagine what hardcore original Cocteau twins fans were like – spotted me and ran over and started asking me all these questions about Robin and Liz all this personal stuff. I realised I had no idea what had happened since I’d last seen these people. I just burst into tears and had to leave before they even came on. It all felt like a lie.’
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br />   Along with the toxic rancour of Watts-Russell’s and the Cocteau Twins’ relationship, Wallace was also aware that, in the absence of its founder, changes were taking place at the company that were going to alter the nature of 4AD permanently.

  ‘First of all this guy Richard Hermitage, who had been involved with the Pale Saints, was brought in,’ says Wallace. ‘He gave us all this stuff about cutting costs and the next day he turns up in a seventeen-grand car. That was the beginning of the end. Ivo was like, “This is a big mistake, big, big mistake.” Then Robin Hurley was brought in, and Robin had a very, very tough job. Martin Mills said that 4AD is being run like a Rolls-Royce on the budget of Lada and people started being fired left, right and centre.’

  *

  Throughout the label’s history Watts-Russell had always remained a loyal listener to the John Peel show. One evening the visceral sound of a strong female voice on the programme left him smitten and energised in a way he hadn’t been for several years. Instead of hearing something he’d found in the lonely pile of demo tapes in the office, Watts-Russell had been seduced by the debut single ‘Dress’ by PJ Harvey, an act already at the start of a momentous run of activity that would result in their debut entering the charts at no. 11 six months later. Both the album and single were released on a tiny London start-up label, Too Pure, at whose Sausage Machine club PJ Harvey had made their London debut.

  ‘The single was out and had been played by Peel, who had started the buzz,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘That trio was so exciting and I really wanted to work with them. I realised that she was on Too Pure, and that this album was recorded and was going to come out on Too Pure, but that she was maybe going to respond to all the interest around her.’