by Alex; Ogg
Riviera also made an attempt to licence the Modern Lovers’ album from Beserkley, a label he’d been impressed by, but that plan was scuppered where the American label elected to set up its own UK base in Kingston Upon Thames. Stiff also placed an advert inviting new talent to submit demos. The first respondent was Declan MacManus, who turned up for an audition after the release of ‘So It Goes’ with guitar in hand. In the event, neither Riviera or Robinson were at the office, but they made him their first signing after hearing the demo he left behind (Lowe had never signed an official contract). Similarly, Eric Goulden handed in his demo in person, but was so nervous he got drunk beforehand and bolted from the office after handing it over. Within days he too, under the name Wreckless Eric, joined the fledgling label.
But it was with the release of BUY 6 in October 1976 that Robinson and Riviera’s then tiny independent gave the world its first taste of punk on vinyl. The Damned’s ‘New Rose’ beat the Sex Pistols to the punch, providing irrefutable evidence that a new breed of independent could now respond quicker to events than hidebound majors. The Pistols’ delay in reaching vinyl, though only a few months, was decisive in this fast-moving timeframe. Despite their unconventional billing and reputation, the Pistols were put through the same ‘development’ rigour as other EMI artists – different producers were assigned to perfect the sound, discussions were held between management and label as demo tapes were circulated, etc.
The Damned came to Stiff’s attention after playing alongside a clutch of their bands at the first Mont de Marsan European Punk Festival and had their effort recorded, cut and in the racks within weeks. They were ably, albeit nonchalantly, assisted by Nick ‘Basher’ Lowe (nicknamed thus due to his titular ability to ‘bash it out’) “We were much faster,” agrees Robinson. “At the end of the day, we could do everything very, very quickly. And we planned to. We did plan to have the first punk album [a feat Stiff duly achieved with the March 1977 release of Damned Damned Damned]. There were a load of punk singles about, but obviously getting the first punk album out was an effort that was worthwhile. There was a huge crowd of people who wanted to buy an album but nobody had made one. So that was a big moment.”
Although the Stiff connection to punk was tenuous, Robinson was quite happy to use the window of opportunity to help the label build up a head of steam. “It pointed the press at us a bit, because we had The Damned and [later] The Adverts. But there were four or five papers at the time, and the amount of weekly news that was required was huge – so any kind of pumped story was of interest to the papers. Any new band you made a bit of a hubbub about, which we planned to each time, would get coverage. Do something unusual, put them in an odd place – we were thinking that punk would be the way to open the door towards music that we considered very good, but was ignored by everyone else. It was a way of getting the focus of the public on it, and of course John Peel – he really liked Stiff, and he played ‘So It Goes’ – he was a huge part of it.”
The immediate successor to ‘New Rose’ was Richard Hell’s ‘Another World’. Better known for one of its b-side tracks, ‘Blank Generation’, it provided a domestic showing for the late 70s New York CBGB’s set that many consider punk’s true progenitors. Notable for a sleeve featuring a topless Hell and razorblade typography, it was licensed from Terry Ork’s independent Ork Records who had also released Television’s debut single. This time the gimmick was the numbered pressing – 5,000 copies were seemingly all given the release number ‘0001’, which still bemuses unwary collectors to this day.
Thereafter, Stiff releases reverted to type. Plummet Airlines were a band who established an accommodation between pub rock and punk, while Motorhead offered a similarly perfect hybrid with metal. However, Motorhead’s ‘White Line Fever’ (BUY 9), was pulled from the schedule for reasons aligned to ongoing negotiations with Island for a full distribution deal. Skydog eventually licensed the single for a French release. Stiff’s eventual two-year deal with Island was ultimately celebrated by the release of a second Damned single, ‘Neat Neat Neat’. Stiff deleted all their previous single releases not just as a mark of respect, but a statement of intent.
“We were very lucky to be able to get some help from United Artists,” remembers Robinson, discussing the link to a major that technically saw the label cease to be a true independent. The association had begun when Riviera brought in his old friend Andrew Lauder at United Artists to cope with the demand for ‘New Rose’. “To begin with, you couldn’t press records. There were very few records made outside the majors’ manufacturing factories. And they weren’t that pushed about doing other people’s records. The whole basis of the majors is that they would be distributors and manufacturers. Because they had factories, they signed up their own groups.
That’s how they started. Originally they were manufacturers and distributors. And essentially that’s all they were ever fucking good for, in my book. Even to this day, look at the chaos they’ve caused in the music industry – the fact that people are downloading for nothing and feel that music is free is all down to the attitude of the majors. They’ve buggered up everybody’s game here in the record industry. They’re still thrashing around not quite knowing what to do and allowing Apple to run their businesses. They can’t last much longer. But they weren’t that clever then, either. At the end of the day, manufacturing was hard to come by, so United Artists manufacturing our records through EMI was a boon. Then Island, who were independent, or at least running their own business, came in through EMI.”
This was, indeed, revolutionary stuff, and others took note. “All the indie labels started calling us saying, ‘How do you do it?’ We did a sheet that gave them the in-roads of how to make labels, and what to do and how to get your records made, your 7-inch or whatever. We sent out loads of those. I suppose, to a degree, you’ll find that Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, all those kind of labels, essentially got their start in life from a photocopied sheet from Stiff. We started saying,’ We’ve no time to be dealing with your stupid questions, but here are the details.’”
In fact, despite their accumulated wealth of experience, Stiff’s founders were navigating their own voyage of discovery. “We knew nothing about labels. We had been brought up on the idea of signing a band to a major and them becoming Decca Recording artists, etc. It was still in that kind of era. No, we didn’t know anything. So when we found we were pressing up a record – we didn’t have a huge amount of money but we could press 1,000, which we got rid of quickly. Then we pressed another 1,000 and then another 1,000. Eventually we took the plunge and pressed 5,000. It was all feeling it out. But, between us, Jake and I, I suppose all our efforts in music as long-term managers had been towards this particular end. I started as a photographer, I worked at printing for a while – I had learned a great deal. I had produced quite a few records – nothing very good, but things like Frankie Miller. So when it came to the record label, we found, between Jake and I, we had pretty much all the talents to make it work, from the advertising through to the physical production of the vinyl. And we put it in picture bags because we were keen on artwork – we had Barney Bubbles, don’t forget, probably one of the great UK graphic artists. He was working for Stiff. So we had great art. We had a lot of music that was organically produced by the bands themselves, we had Nick Lowe to do it in the studio, and Jake and I were, I think, quite talented promotion men.”
Indeed, Bubbles, aka Colin Fulcher, was among the most innovative designers of the punk era – his influence openly acknowledged by the likes of Malcolm Garrett and other scions. A former illustrator for Oz and Friends magazines, and sleeve designer for underground rockers Hawkwind (he would actually record an album with Hawkwind’s Nik Turner in 1982 as the Imperial Pompadours), his friendship with Robinson dated back to the latter’s days at the Famepushers’ PR agency. He was also an intimate of Riviera, having designed the sleeves for his Revelation releases. Probably his most iconic designs were the mock-Cubist Blockheads’ logo and the 1
978 redesign of the NME masthead that still survives in adulterated form to this day. However, he committed suicide in 1983, and his longstanding refusal to sign his work limited his legacy. “Only a unique man with Barney’s immense dignity and talent had both the courage and modesty to do just that,” Riviera would later state.
Riviera came up with most of the slogans, though the most memorable, ‘If It Ain’t Stiff’, was coined by Kilburn & The High Roads’ drummer George Butler, who was eventually paid a £100 gratuity for his masterstroke. The limited print run of the singles was done with a wary eye on the collector’s market – making public their intention to delete everything in the catalogue after release. Bulk orders soon flooded in from retailers. And, as was the case with The Damned’s debut album, Stiff weren’t above old-fashioned hype – proclaiming the fact that a quantity of the sleeves featured a picture of Eddie And The Hot Rods ‘mistakenly’ printed on the rear. They were also aware of their own history and that of the band’s – the Hot Rods had replaced The Damned at the Nashville after the infamous 100 Club bottling incident, the group being dismissed by the Pistols’ John Lydon as “a glossy Eddie & The Hot Rods”. “Of course it was a stunt,” Scabies later told Will Birch. “Although it was described at the time as a printer’s error. But it’s safe to blow it now. Jake had worked out how many LPs we needed to sell to recoup the recording costs. That was the quantity that was pressed with the Hot Rods picture on the back; about two or three thousand only. Jake knew that it would appeal to the collector’s market. He was totally hip to all that. The marketing was brilliant.”
Meanwhile, Stiff’s greatest asset had been kept under wraps – principally because it took a little while for everyone to recognise its potential value. MacManus’s first recordings for the label had been made with Lowe back in September 1976, but the proposed selections, ‘Radio Sweetheart’ and ‘Mystery Dance’, had lost their place in the schedule. So too had ‘Whole Wide World’ by Eric Goulden (shortly to be renamed Wreckless Eric due to his predisposition for anxiety and alcohol). At one point there was a proposal to release a joint album featuring both. After hearing demo tracks recorded by Costello during studio downtime at a Goulden session, both Robinson and Riviera immediately recognised the potential of the songs. MacManus was thereafter remoulded into the now familiar image – skinny-tied punk rock Buddy Holly complete with horn-rimmed glasses – with Riviera suggesting he adopt the name Elvis. In the event, his first single for the label, ‘Less Than Zero’ (BUY 11), failed to sell. The same fate befell a follow-up, ‘Alison’, which led to a revision of plans. Stiff asked Costello to give up his job as a computer programmer at Elizabeth Arden and turn professional. In return they would throw the label’s weight behind him and guarantee him a wage – he was married with a young child – and also sponsor a full-time backing band. Costello thereafter became Stiff’s ‘priority’ act.
With the release of music hall comedian Max Wall’s version of Kilburn & The High Road’s ‘England’s Glory’, two things became readily apparent. First, the label’s rising profile could not rescue a commercial flop of that magnitude. Secondly, there was no ‘Stiff sound’. Robinson believes that what Nick Lowe, working at the famously budget-conscious Pathway Studios, brought to the table was exactly that he didn’t stamp his production style on those records. “Essentially the groups at that time would do their own rehearsals,” he says. “They’d have written the song, worked it out – they were all live bands, they’d all have played the songs in. And so Nick would, as he well put it – ‘bash it down, and tart it up’. And that stops long recording sessions. We were allowing time very much like the Atlantic or early R&B labels in America, where you would come in for a session of three hours, and produce an a-side and two b-sides.” That efficient use of time and resources “is the reason I think some of the tracks still sound OK – they were made to a unique kind of ethos. They weren’t ‘produced’ into any kind of stylistic production arena, really.” Thereafter Stiff also used the services of a second ‘in-house producer’ in the shape of Larry Wallis, freed for the task after the collapse of The Pink Fairies. He was set to work on the one-off single, ‘One Chord Wonders’, produced by Stiff’s second legitimate punk act, The Adverts, though bass player Gaye Advert was not best pleased with the scam of using her image alone on the single’s cover. The label’s unapologetic exploitation of female sexuality would continue well into the 80s.
Despite renegotiating the Island/EMI distribution deal and extending it from two years to three, a third Costello single, ‘(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes’, again failed to establish him on release in July 1977. Anxieties were such that when his debut album My Aim Is True was finally released, it came with a ‘Help Us Hype Elvis’ leaflet – the first 1,000 purchasers would be entitled to a second copy of the album to be despatched to a friend. It almost crippled the label financially. That represented only one of myriad attempts to heighten his profile. Costello busked outside the Hilton Hotel in an effort to persuade American CBS executives to attend his performance that evening at Dingwalls. And Riviera took out double-page spreads in Sounds, Melody Maker and NME to promote the album – if each were cut out, they assembled into a giant poster. The album rose to number 14 and Elvis got his American deal through CBS-owned Columbia.
Meanwhile Ian Dury was growing frustrated, as the rest of the pub rock pack seemed to be overtaking him. Indeed, he had produced and drummed on the b-side to Wreckless Eric’s ‘Whole Wide World’, which finally emerged in August. Blackhill had funded the recording of his debut album, but hadn’t found a berth for it among the majors, despite protracted negotiations. So Blackhill took the step of suggesting he look downstairs, especially since Stiff now had the muscle of a major distributor. Licenses were signed and his ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll’ was released the day after Wreckless Eric’s single as BUY 17. New Boots & Panties followed at the end of September.
Plans were being hatched for arguably the key moment in establishing Stiff’s identity. The 5 Live Stiffs tour started out on 3 October 1977, just after the release of New Boots & Panties, featuring Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Larry Wallis and Dave Edmunds. Again, it harked back to the American R&B model (the Motown Revue especially), but also to a 1968 tour Robinson worked on with Jimi Hendrix, The Move and Pink Floyd. Over 24 dates, mainly on university and polytechnic campuses, the Stiff bandwagon rolled, each performance concluding with a sozzled choir augmenting the finale of Dury’s ‘Sex & Drugs And Rock ‘n’ Roll’. The personnel was flexible. Dury would drum for Wreckless Eric, former Kilburn & The High Roads saxophonist Davey Payne would back both Dury and Wreckless Eric, etc. Kosmo Vinyl served as MC (and the bus driver, Trevor, would naturally become ‘Clever Trevor’ in honour of the Dury song) while everybody got a flat £50 a week fee. Of course, in later years it has emerged that serious rivalries rippled just below the surface among the label’s leading lights, especially concerning the abandonment of the original plan whereby the acts would alternate for headline status. The tour’s Olympian levels of debauchery – and the notorious ‘24-hour Club’ of hardcore drinkers – are thought to be the inspiration behind Costello’s ‘Pump It Up’ single. It certainly inspired the memos circulated to all artists telling them to stop charging any additional hotel refreshments beyond breakfast to the record label.
Costello and Ian Dury became natural figureheads for Stiff, but very much in that order. By now, music journalists were describing a more structured, traditional rock format derived from punk as new wave (although the etymology of that term is complicated and weaves in and out of the ‘punk’ story), and Stiff had the two most inspired and capable songwriters in that firmament. Dury’s vaudeville Cockney funk was more playful than Costello’s precise, erudite pop, but both were immensely gifted wordsmiths who would reinvigorate the pop charts. Sadly, Costello’s potential was only glimpsed at Stiff. Following the end of the Live Stiffs tour, Riviera moved on to form Radar Records with A&R legend Andrew Lauder. In the sett
lement eked out, he took Costello, Nick Lowe and recent Stiff singings The Yachts with him. Barney Bubbles would continue to work for both labels. The split sprung from a confrontation the two protagonists had on 24 September 1977, at which Riviera was said to have thrown a bunch of empty cider cans through the office window. The incident was later cheekily referenced in Nick Lowe’s first hit for Radar, ‘I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass’.
“Essentially it was about 14 months, really,” Robinson remembers of the first phase of Stiff. “That’s how long it lasted. It seemed an awful lot longer at the time!” It’s tempting to assume that this was a natural conclusion for a relationship between two very strong-minded characters who were both natural ‘leaders’; that it could only have worked for a set amount of time “There was a bit of opportunism,” Robinson states. “I struggled quite a bit and got my foot in the door with CBS to get a record deal in America. The deal we were talking about would have moved us up several notches. But the major interest at the time was Elvis. And Jake saw an opportunity, I think, and wanted to do his own thing.”
Although Radar, backed by Warner UK, didn’t prosper as many expected, they released close on a century of records, following a similarly wide-ranging A&R brief (though they may have separated, it’s fair to state that Robinson and Riviera’s musical tastes didn’t diverge too greatly). As well as Lowe and Costello, there was power pop from The Yachts, Inmates and Bram Tchaikovsky, French avant garde from Metal Urbain, UK psych-pop from the Soft Boys, and a raft of formative American pre-punk reissues, including the Electric Prunes and 13th Floor Elevators. Finally came the experimental post-punk of Bristol’s Pop Group – which legendarily tipped Radar over the financial brink. By March 1980, Riviera had set up F-Beat, while the Radar imprint would latterly be used for Jools Holland’s solo releases. Later in 1980, in concert with Lauder and Elvis Costello, Demon Records became Riviera’s fourth record label in just over three years. Notable early Demon releases include Department S’s ‘Is Vic There?’, their first hit, as well as material by Bananarama, Lamont Dozier, Hoodoo Gurus, Men They Couldn’t Hang, That Petrol Emotion and Costello himself. Later the roster was notable for a clutch of US artists such as Thin White Rope, Giant Sand, Dream Syndicate and American Music Club that represented a halfway house between the Paisley Underground movement and the coming age of folk-rooted Americana. Acquired by Crimson Productions, a subsidiary of retail giant and Woolworth’s owner Kingfisher, it merged with its Westside Records operation in 1998. It is now known as Demon Music Group, though a repertoire that includes cruise singer Jane McDonald, and the absence of any of its founders, rather distances it from its historical origins.