Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Robinson’s somewhat weary view on the denouement of Stiff needs to be taken in context. Everyone involved in the stewardship of the label (they even made Robinson joint managing director with Sinclair) wanted it to succeed. One of the final straws for Horn and Sinclair was the sale of Madness’s masters back to the band when Stiff couldn’t find £70,000 in back royalties it owed to them. To them, this was terrible short-term business. The Pogues catalogue (including masters) was sold to Warners to bail the company out – although that also solved the problem of Robinson’s dissolving relationship with Frank Murray - reducing further still its A&R assets. In the end, as the main creditor to Stiff, ZTT pursued a ‘hive-down’ sale of the company to protect what masters it did still retain. Bailing out Stiff very nearly sank ZTT – which was eventually put back on a firm financial footing with the success of Seal and the Art Of Noise, before it too signed with Warners.

  Stiff was revived in 2006 (without Robinson or Riviera’s involvement) with the signing of The Enemy. “We’ve managed the catalogue for quite a long time,” reveals Pete Gardiner. “It was acquired by Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair at the end of the eighties, because of a tie-up they had with Stiff at the time. We just ran it as a catalogue concern. But at the beginning of 2006, I met someone from the BBC and I pitched the idea of a documentary, just to give us a bit of catalogue profile, to be honest. The BBC ended up producing that documentary [If It Ain’t Stiff]. As we were doing it, we realised there was still interest and quite a lot of awareness of the brand. So we thought, why don’t we do some low-key bits and pieces, in the original manner of the label? We had an A&R guy that worked on the publishing side that went to Warners and came up with this band, The Enemy. So we did the first couple of singles. A lot of the originals on Stiff were one-offs originally. We never had any intention of signing the band to any long-term deal, we’re not in that sort of market. We did those two singles, just 1,000 limited editions, and they sold rapidly. Suddenly we had more and more interest and people contacting us. So we just thought, this is a good chance now. And it’s something we can manage – it’s being run as a relative cottage industry, if you like – we’re not heading for the big time with this one, unless something gathers its own momentum.”

  The documentary proved popular, though not with everyone. Cowderoy: “The real essence of Stiff was never obvious in that TV programme – and that was the humour. We laughed all the time. It was that sense of humour and the trailblazing marketing we did – the visual style. When you look at ads today – there was Sounds, Melody Maker and NME in those days. And we would run ads in a given week in three papers, and each ad for each paper would be completely different. Nowadays you look at ads for Hard-Fi or whatever, and they all look the same. I just didn’t think it came across in the documentary the sense of fun we had.”

  Also, getting everyone to contribute wasn’t all that straightforward: “We approached Jake,” recalls Gardener, “and apart from the documentary itself, he’s never talked about the label. And he was really reluctant to do so. We had a go from here, and then the BBC, and initially he just said ‘Fuck off, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.’ It’s a bit like the film Swingers. The guy meets a girl in a club, then he phones up and leaves a message. Then he keeps leaving messages until he breaks up without ever having had a date with her. Jake conducted that sort of relationship with us when he kept ringing up telling us to fuck off. In the end he just phoned us himself and agreed to do it.”

  Your writer had a similar experience. Not that Riviera has gone to ground completely. Simon Morgan was involved in plans for a reunion of the original Damned in 2006, bridging the Sensible/Scabies divide, to try to get the warring factions to record Damned Damned Damned 2 with Nick Lowe. Riviera was brought into the equation in an attempt to knock heads together, as only he could. “Apparently, even after an agreement in principle,” recalls Morgan, “Dave ‘n’ Cap were not playing ball. Jake had wanted 2006 to be ‘The Year Of The Damned’ … but the current Damned were still taking bookings for the UK and Japan for the end of 2006. Dave’s email said that he and the Captain had spent the last ten years ‘building up momentum’ on the back of their most recent work, and that the ‘force’ was naturally with them. That ‘they’ were the bigger draw and that some financial dispensation had to be made with regard to this anomaly. Jake’s reply accused Vanian of ‘suffering from lead singer syndrome’, and that if that was the way the two of them felt, then they could both ‘go fuck themselves’. Jake signed off: ‘May the momentum be with you!’”

  Unlike some of its peers and progeny, Stiff did not produce an identifiable sound. It is the spirit of the label, rather than the music (although it produced some of the finest of the era) that endures. Their innovations include, but are not limited to, the packaging of UK single releases, the importance of a good slogan (aped by the advertising industry wholesale), the irreverent pop video, the ‘package’ tour and high-profile, targeted press campaigns. So, when Carl Dalemo of Razorlight bears the legendary t-shirt ‘If It Ain’t Stiff …” on the cover of their album, it is a testament to the philosophical principles of ambition and sweat, as well as independence, that marked out Stiff. And singularly doesn’t mark out Razorlight or much of today’s music scene.

  Chapter Four

  How About Me And You?

  New Hormones, Small Wonder, Step Forward and a Cast of Thousands

  Stiff and Chiswick may have been small, but they were comparative monoliths to the likes of New Hormones, formed in Manchester to house Buzzcocks’ ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP, released on 29 January 1977. It was very much a custom label for the enterprise. In fact, apart from The Secret Public, a poster collage fanzine that year, a collaboration between artist Linder and writer Jon Savage, there were no further releases on the label until March 1980. New Hormones would eventually be revived to release material from Dislocation Dance, the Diagram Brothers and Ludus, but it has remained synonymous with ‘Spiral Scratch’ ever since.

  Band confidante/manager Richard Boon took the name New Hormones from a magazine singer Howard Devoto had once written. Guitarist Pete Shelley’s dad loaned them £250, while friend Sue Cooper donated £100 from her student grant. A further friend, teacher Dave Snowden, was also tapped for funds. Produced by Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett, the session was recorded ostensibly live at Indigo Studios in December 1976. The Polaroid Instamatic black and white portrait of the group, in front of the Robert Peel statue in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens, underscored the record’s humility and authenticity. It is easy to underestimate how shocking that grainy image seemed in comparison with the garish, over-elaborate artwork of the day (especially since most singles did not have sleeves).

  Only the third punk single (after The Damned’s ‘New Rose’ and The Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy In The UK’). 1,000 copies were pressed. They needed to sell 600 to break even. The first pressing sold out within four days. Within six months, 16,000 copies had been sold. A new era of independence had arrived, one arguably more significant than that embarked on by the likes of Stiff and other medium-sized players who were all, to an extent, industry vets of some stripe.

  Boon was one of the motivating forces behind much of that early Manchester scene, as Steve Shy (of Shy Talk fanzine) recalls. “The fanzine came about from getting mithered off Richard Boon, who did as much for Manchester music in the early days as Tony Wilson did and Pete Shelley. They more or less said you are involved, so now you have to do something.” ‘Spiral Scratch’, similarly, had been put together as an expression of enthusiasm, despite an almost total lack of knowledge of the music industry. “The main motivation, really, was to document this funny little activity,” says Boon. “Howard [Devoto] was going to go back to college, so it was just to document it – a souvenir of a small group of people through a short period of time. We had no real knowledge of what we were doing.” In fact, the only music industry connection they were able to draw on was Hannett. “Phonogram Custom Pressing made the record
,” Boon continues, “we find out about that through Martin. He’d produced some funk record for someone at Riverside Studios who used Phonogram Custom Pressing, So we just followed his information – we didn’t look about for pressing plants because we didn’t know anything about them.”

  Distribution was similarly rudimentary. “We only talked to people once we’d done ‘Spiral Scratch’ and it kind of worked,” Boon explains, “but we didn’t understand how distribution worked. So we talked to Ted Carroll and Roger Armstrong [Chiswick], and probably Dave Robinson at Stiff. Most of our relations were with Rough Trade, but not exclusively. We sold some to Spartan, Pinnacle – almost anyone who phoned up. We probably gave them 500. It just rolled on in a whole series of small pressings to meet demand.”

  Devoto would indeed leave Buzzcocks immediately following the EP’s release, having made it clear to Boon, at least, over the Christmas period that it was his intention to return to his studies (though he has also stated elsewhere that his departure was only marginally connected to academic concerns). ORG 2 (the catalogue number eventually given to Linder and Savage’s fanzine) was originally slated to be a Buzzcocks follow-up. “’Spiral Scratch’ was a one-off entity, yes,” says Boon. “But it worked. Howard had gone and Peter [Shelley] took over vocals and [Steve] Diggle switched to guitar. As it was still selling out of our front room, we were planning another EP, to be called ‘Love Bites’, which would have had ‘Orgasm Addict’, ‘Oh Shit’ and ‘Sixteen’ on it. We talked about that a lot. But that’s when labels started sniffing around us.” The band opted to sign with Andrew Lauder and United Artists, partially under pressure from drummer John Maher’s father. Maher Snr was concerned his son should not turn down the offer of a job unless he could demonstrate music could offer him a steady income. That was far beyond the reach of the coffers at New Hormones. “John had just left school,” Boon adds, “and he could have had a job as an insurance clerk. And his dad was very concerned. So we said, give it a bit of time, and we’ll see if we can bring this to fruition. Instead of going straight from school to being a lowly insurance clerk, he signed on for a bit while we talked to the labels who approached us.” The most significant other factor in signing to UA being Lauder himself. “Andrew’s really good, and it felt like being on a ‘minor major’ was more comfortable. We talked to CBS and got a no. Chrysalis said no after coming to a gig. Lots of people just appeared. Also, Andrew was quite convincing.”

  So New Hormones spent, effectively, two years in hiatus, despite receiving a flood of demo tapes (including Gang Of Four and Cabaret Voltaire) and paying for The Fall’s first recording session (later released as ‘Bingo Master’s Breakout’ on Step Forward). It would re-emerge in the 80s (see chapter eight) but the nation-wide DIY revolution it had set in motion with ‘Spiral Scratch’ was well underway.

  Spiral Scratch’ vies with The Desperate Bicycles’ ‘Smokescreen’, which came just a couple of months down the line, for the honour of being the most inspirational independent record of them all. Directly influenced by ‘Spiral Scratch’, and released on the band’s own Refill records, its amalgam of garage rock and Syd Barrett-esque pop-psych was similarly a hugely individualistic statement as well as an equally galvanising one. Its compressed, breathless recording did much to augment punk’s progression from rock music with an attitude to a deconstruction of rock aesthetics – as evinced by the post-punk period and the restless creativity that fuelled both Mark Perry and Vic Godard. It was also a call to arms. “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it”.

  “It was just, ‘let’s make a record’, vocalist Danny Wigley recalled in one of the few interviews the band ever gave, to Common Knowledge fanzine in 1979, when asked about signing other bands to Refill. “We didn’t even think of it, or think about anything. We never thought we’d sell any copies. We just raked together our holiday money, and just made the record. Everything came afterwards. That was the idea, really. If we’d thought about it, we wouldn’t have done it.” At a cost of £153, the band pressed 500 copies of the single in April 1977. They could not possibly have imagined the reach it would have, or the fact that it would set in place a template for independent music that would flourish for years after. To wit; blag or borrow the money to press your record, send to John Peel, then sell it via Rough Trade/Small Wonder and mail order. As a means of demystifying the process of recording ‘art’ it was revelatory. At one point they considered making a film illustrating the entire process; a kind of public information documentary. The rear of the Bicycles’ second single, ‘The Medium Was Tedium’, meanwhile, demanded to know “why you haven’t made your single yet”. Lots of them did.

  The Television Personalities’ ‘14th Floor’, for example, was one of the records informed by a brief correspondence with the Bicycles, who were always willing to offer a fee-free consultancy to other aspirants. “We got a leaflet back showing us how,” Treacy would recall to John Reed, “and all we needed was £400. So I went to work for a while and saved up the money. I asked Ed [Ball] along to the studio with me to record a few of my songs, and I figured John Peel would play them, as he seemed to air all the other stuff.” The single was recorded in Shepherd’s Bush in November 1977 in one take at a cost of £17. Plus bus fares.

  However, Treacy’s plan was knocked off course when he received a letter from the pressing plant informing him they’d hiked their prices. Disappointed, he threw the tapes in a cupboard until, a couple of months later, he decided it was worth the effort of getting at least a couple of white label copies pressed up. The original intention had been to record it as Teen 78, until Treacy was hand-writing the song titles on the labels, and decided to identify the ‘line-up’ as comprising a bunch of ‘television personalities’ such as Hughie Green.

  The ensuing, and predicted, sponsorship of John Peel led to his parents offering to fund a proper pressing run (Peel had also offered loan capital if he was stuck). But his family’s largesse came following the extraction of a compromise – that he would return to work (he would find gainful employment with Led Zeppelin’s Swansong imprint). The single was followed in due course by The Television Personalities’ ‘Where’s Bill Grundy?’ EP, spearheaded by the inspirationally amateurish ‘Part-Time Punks’, a song which grooved wryly on the emerging punk phenomenon and its conceits. Released on the King’s Road label set up by Treacy and Ball in November 1978 for the purpose, and both child-like and unerringly literal, it was also extremely funny. “By the time I’d written ‘Part-Time Punks’,” Treacy told The Face, “I was more aware of how you could get things done at a lower cost. I got it pressed really cheaply, 1,500 of them, black labels with sleeves that cost tuppence each. Whereas on ‘14th Floor’ about 200 of the early sleeves were hand drawn, and I used to have to take the staples out and then glue them back together. It was a bloody big risk!” Running parallel to the TVPs’ releases were singles by Ed Ball’s group, ‘O’ Level (directly referenced in the lyric to ‘Part Time Punks’). The line-ups of both groups were identical aside from leadership status. The ‘East Sheen’ EP (including ‘Pseudo Punk’ and released on one-off imprint Psycho) was issued just a few weeks later than ‘14th Floor’ in May 1978. ‘The Malcolm EP’, ‘O’ Level’s second release, the lead track a homage (of sorts) to the Sex Pistols’ manager, was issued on King’s Road in December, again a few short weeks after the ‘Grundy’ EP. In the process, what Ball describes as “a casual scene” had begun to coalesce around the King’s Road imprint and its progenitors.

  The TVPs story would continue (see Chapter 13). Marvellously, however, The Desperate Bicycles have been the one group who have exhibited no inclination whatsoever to revisit or expand upon their agenda. They have been approached many times to re-release their three 7-inch singles, one EP and album (the first to do so was Daniel Miller of Mute), but have shown absolutely no inclination to do so. They have also resisted any invitation to submit to interview, including my own, beyond a polite, but cursory, “I think I speak for the others when I say th
at our records say it all.” And that’s doubtless true.

  Another group to whom the Bicycles mantra spoke was Scritti Politti, who would acknowledge in print the fact that they gave them the ‘incentive’ to organise their own release. Just as the Bicycles had done before them, they immortalised the production costs on the cover of ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’.

  “Recording: Space Studios @ 19 Victoria Street, Cambridge. £98.00 for 14 hours, master tape included. Mastering: Pye London Studios @ 17 Great Cumberland Place, London W1 – IBC (George) Sound Recording Studios @ 35 Portland Place, London W1. £40.00 for cutting of lacquer from master tape. Pressing: PYE Records (Sales) Ltd. @ Western Road, Mitcham, Surrey. £369.36 for 2,500 copies at 13p, £27.00 for processing (electro plating of lacquer). Labels: E.G. Rubber Stamps, 28 Bridge Street, Hitchin, Herts. £8.00 for rubber stamp on white labels (labels included in cost of pressing.)”

  “Something was happening,” notes Richard Boon, “which was encouraging. In terms of the actual tactic of demystifying the process of getting a record out, we’d just written how many tapes and overdubs there were, and The Desperate Bicycles took that further. Then Scritti Politti came out with ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’, with a foldout sleeve, which detailed how much everything cost. It was all part of that process of demystification, which seemed very important.”