by Alex; Ogg
Safari never did manage to lift The Boys into the Top 20. “It wasn’t for want of trying on their behalf,” says Dangerfield. “They paid for us to go on the Ramones tour, they hired one of the best pluggers, Alan James, who got us on a Radio 1 playlist. For an independent label, they did a lot.” Craig concurs. “We did work very hard for them, and they responded by working equally as hard. We didn’t have that magic record, but we did release a considerable number of singles, and we did support tours. One of their successful territories was France, so we supported quite a few tours in France. We never really had a row, which is quite unusual!”
Safari quantifiably had a punk/new wave pedigree through County and The Boys. But the rest of its catalogue was not short of oddities – such as MOR pianist Richard Clayderman or Scots comedian Bill Barclay. Undoubtedly their biggest seller, however, was Toyah, whom they signed in December 1978 after she’d gained notoriety via her appearance in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and Quadrophenia. After her initial recordings were helmed by Keith Hale and Steve James – son of Sid James – her first major radio success, ‘Bird In Flight’, was produced by Dangerfield, who became something of an in-house producer for Safari. He also produced Gary Holton’s ‘Ruby’. “God, I’d almost forgotten that!” states Dangerfield. “It was a version of the country song, ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’. But swapping the crazy Asian war for the crazy Irish war. It was a good record, but the BBC banned it outright, for mentioning the Irish war. That was the end of that.”
Toyah would go on to huge success, the pinnacle being a number two chart placing, and year-long chart stay, for third studio album Anthem. She would stay with the label until her fortunes subsided in 1985. At her peak, the label was profiled in a TV documentary, despite the camera crew being unable to get all the equipment they needed inside the still tiny Safari offices, which also doubled as Toyah’s fan club headquarters. Later ventures included Wolverhampton reggae band Weapon Of Peace and South African group Juluku – featuring a young Johnny Clegg. Despite releasing a charting album, the band would suffer from the Musicians Union boycott of South Africa, which had the unfortunate consequence of banning some of apartheid’s most vociferous opponents from touring the UK – a situation which Safari eventually overcame after a fierce campaign. Like Stiff, they were unafraid of seizing commercial opportunities as they presented themselves. They scored a Top Five success by releasing a Torvill and Dean version of Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ at the height of their ice stating fame. In one further two-fingered gesture to the majors, they launched Singing Dog Records, which featured a Cocker Spaniel kicking a horned gramophone. The similarity to the famed HMV logo was not lost on EMI, who sued. Safari simply excised the offending gramophone, and then hired a performing dog to service copies of the records to press and radio.
Safari was eventually retired in 1985 as Edwards and Craig devoted more time to the release of stage musicals via First Night Records after they were approached to release a record to accompany Tommy Steele’s stage version of Singing In The Rain. It was the first of more than 100 titles in their catalogue. It is doubtful if recent purchasers of the soundtrack to Martine McCutcheon’s West End hit My Fair Lady know they are in the hands of the pair who once terrorised pressing plants with a song called ‘Fuck Off’ recorded by a potty-mouthed transsexual.
Dave Goodman, the late former Pistols’ soundman and another noted bootlegger (though one who drew on his own audio archive) started The Label in late 1976 with friend Caruzo Fuller in an attempt to make some capital out of his unexpected status as ‘punk rock producer’. The first band he signed, Eater, were given the sort of run-around you’d expect a bunch of naive schoolboys to encounter once they’d stepped into the heart of the beast. “It was an eternal rip-off contract,” explains an older and wiser Andy Blade, their vocalist. Clearly, Goodman was trying to make best use of his connections – the initial approach having been made under the ruse of him running the Pistols’ new label, Rotten Records. “When I asked Rotten if it were true that he was setting up a label with Dave,” Blade later told Record Collector, “he cackled sarcastically for a very long time in a ‘You are fucking kidding, aren’t you?’ kind of way. I suddenly felt like a silly 15-year-old. Which I was.”
Eater duly performed the honours for The Label’s first release, ‘Outside View’. When Blade queried why ‘arranged by Dave Goodman’ had appeared as a credit, he was told “Well, he arranged the studio, didn’t he?” The imprint managed a dozen or so further releases, from bands including The Front and the Bombers. “They were a bunch of guys that Dave Goodman came across,” remembers Blade, “basically songwriters who were past their sell by. Dave wanted them to be an in-house writing team for The Label. We refused their services! I liked their single though, but they all looked like John Peel (with the odd razor blade).” But Goodman’s most successful wheeze was The Cash Pussies’ ‘99% Is Shit’; a cash-in the cult of Sid Vicious, using the great punk intellectual’s irony-free attack on the stupidity of the British public as its intro. Poor sod had hardly been dead a week. Intended as a parody of ‘Belsen Was A Gas’ (note the line ‘London Town where the Jews all pray’), the featured musicians included Alex Fergusson, formerly of Alternative TV. The ‘executive producers’, meanwhile, were none other than Fred and Judy Vermorel, McLaren’s old sparring partners from the Harrow School of Art.
Raw Records provided Cambridge with its first harbour for punk rock. Founded by Lee Wood, it shared many of the common archetypes of regional labels; growing out of his record shop on 48 King Street (Cambridge’s record shop hub), Remember Those Oldies. Having experienced working alongside Wood, a shady character for whom comical levels of ineptitude in almost every sphere of business and constant insolvency-dodging were a defining trait, this author can attest to the fact that independent record labels did not just offer an outlet for the gifted and the visionary. They were also quite handy if you lacked the discipline to work for anyone apart from yourself, had immeasurable quantities of personal ego and the moral anchorage of a twig falling over a waterfall. Wood was also a notorious bootlegger, who would later tell colourful stories of escaping out of windows in far-flung record fairs and abandoning his stock there and then when the BPI inspectors came calling. Since his failed publishing ventures in the early 90s he has gone to ground; theories abound that he upset so many people during that time, and owed so many people so much money, that he chose it best to exit the business altogether.
Financial problems beset Wood at every turn. It visibly cowed him and made him suspicious of answering the telephone – members of staff would be briefed never to pass over a call to him without a prior, whispered exchange. This could often cause great hilarity. “My only encounter with Lee was at the Falcon,” recalls writer Mick Mercer. “I had spoken to him on the phone, and someone pointed him out at a gig. So I walked over simply to say hello. The conversation went something like this: Me: Lee! Mick Mercer… Lee (not looking round): I’ll get you your money. Me: (perplexed): I haven’t written anything for you yet!”
And yet, to give him his due, Wood’s passion for music was undeniable, and as capricious as his tastes could be, he was an early mover on the punk scene. An ex-musician himself, he could spin a joyous, uplifting, soft-spoken tale about receiving the latest Who album as a Christmas present as a teenager. Even if such excursions into anecdotage were generally used as diversionary tactics when he was ostensibly being asked about when the promised cheque would be mailed. And the Raw roster, in its own grubby way, contained a smattering of gems. Not least the Users’ ‘Sick Of You’, the first release on the label, and one of the great UK punk singles, which Jello Biafra would later take into the studio in an attempt to get the same production sound for ‘California Uber Alles’. Wood was directly inspired by Ted Carroll at Ace Records, and also Stiff. With the advent of punk, he was quick to stock early copies of Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue and also the first Damned single. It was directly through talking with The Users while they
were hanging around his shop that he got the idea of starting a record label, and he also helped set up their early gigs.
From there Wood licensed Jesse Hector’s Gorillas single, a cover of ‘You Really Got Me’, originally released on Penny Farthing in 1974. But the label enjoyed its biggest success with the Killjoys, featuring future Dexy’s star Kevin Rowland. Their ‘Johnny Won’t Get To Heaven’ single would sell 18,000 copies. That led to a flood of demos and a clutch of punk releases of varying quality. But Raw was never a ‘pure’ punk play. Wood also indulged his penchant for overlooked 60s greats by reissuing The Creation and Downliners Sect. However, his greatest discovery was an act that effectively bridged the two eras he was enthused by, Robyn Hitchcock’s Soft Boys.
He would have his run-ins with the former. But then, it’s doubtful Wood ever did put his autograph on a royalty cheque. A straw poll. Ollie Wisdom, the Unwanted. “No, never got paid a penny.” Kevin Rowland: “I have never received a penny, not one penny, from Lee Wood’s Raw Records”. Ozzy Ego, ACME Sewage Company: “Lee came across as a likeable guy, but a lot of bands had problems getting money from him.” Between the collapse of Raw and his early 90s magazine publishing follies, Wood also attempted to start a new label – which came unstuck when a two-page News Of The World spread accused him of ripping off young bands sending in demo tapes.
Others would defend Wood on the basis of the contribution he actually made. Ted Carroll remembers him almost taking up residence at Rock On. “Lee always had a nose for what might sell. He seemed to have a real brass neck – he was impervious to insults, threats, whatever, he just carried on. At one stage he was driving quite a flash motor and making a lot of money from bootlegging. He was a very shifty guy. He used to come into Rock On and was fascinated by the stall. He was very interested in British 60s stuff, he was collecting that. Then we started Chiswick, and the next thing he started Raw.”
Raw is now one of the most favoured labels among collectors of off the beaten track UK punk. That status flatters it a little, but Lee Wood is certainly one of the characters that defined the early independent movement, even if he can hardly be regarded as one of its more agreeable architects. Ian Ballard of Leytonstone’s Damaged Goods eventually purchased the Raw masters. “Lee possibly owed me some money at the time. I think, in some ways, he was quite happy that I did it, because I knew him from the Portobello Road, from the record collector days. I think he was quite happy that someone took it who liked it, knew what it was all about, and who was going to do something with it. Also, it probably got him out of a load of trouble with whoever he owed money to from Raw. Maybe it served a few purposes. It wasn’t a fortune. I took out a little personal loan to do it. And there are some genius records there. It’s a great label, and very eclectic as well – not just punk. Anyway, that’s Lee, he’s a ducker and diver. Always was. I’d still go out for a beer with him.”
A little further down the regional punk ladder, both in terms of chronology and (retrospective) stature, came future EMAP big cheese Dave Henderson’s Dining Out Records. It gave the world the first Adicts single, plus The Sinatras, Occult Chemistry (featuring Tilly, later of A Certain Ratio), Normil Hawaiians, Swinging Laurels and Disco Zombies. The latter band featured both Henderson on vocals and future music industry heavyweight Andy Ross, founder of Food Records, on guitar. He, like Henderson, would go on to write for Sounds (under the name Andy Hurt). His primary musical influence, Ross would later confess, was “the whole punk rock thing, really”.
“I’d started it because my band couldn’t get signed and suddenly inherited loads of other people in the same predicament,” Henderson would say of Dining Out. He was also responsible for Dead Man’s Curve, which had a production and distribution deal with Red Rhino, whose biggest success came with Portion Control – part of the new wave of industrial bands whom Henderson would later champion at Illuminated. “I also had a cassette-only label called Corporate Sounds that released tapes of Funkapolitan, among others. If I still had a copy of that, it would be worth 5p at least.”
Ross meanwhile, who ran his first record shop aged 16, set up the South Circular label, while working intermittently as a bookies’ manager and tax official. “But then everyone had a record label in 1978,” he reasoned. Which was pretty much true. He was also half of the Steppes, a one-off collaboration with Adrian Lillywhite of the Members, who cut ‘God’s Got Religion (But I’ve Got A Car)’, one of the great DIY punk records. Dining Out later re-released it, with the sides reversed, credited to The 50 Fantastics. “By this time,” Henderson recalls, “we lived above Honky Tonk Records in Kentish Town and rehearsed in the label’s badly insulated back room alongside 23 Skidoo, DAF, Department S and The Raincoats, among others. It was a glorious shambles that also was home to local bands The Mysterons and author Will Self’s The Self Abusers.”
Dead Good Records, founded by Martin Patton and Andy Stephenson, held it down for Lincolnshire in the late 70s – not that they were overwhelmed by competition. Its roster featured XS-Energy, Pseudo Existors, Cigarettes and Amber Squad – the latter pair straddling the mod/punk divide, the former labouring under two of the worst names ever conceived even within the punk firmament. But its most successful graduates were B-Movie, who persuaded Patton that his future lay outside of punk (especially after the second XS Energy single ‘Use You’ stiffed). Patton would follow the band to Some Bizarre, while Stephenson joined distributor Pinnacle.
The outbreak of feverish activity among upstart independents, meanwhile, was documented by the Zig Zag Small Labels Catalogue. “I’d been involved in local music scenes in High Wycombe where I grew up and the Oxford area and Aylesbury,” recalls David Marlow, “and as a consequence of all that I knew Pete Frame who originated Zig Zag magazine. I ended up with a job on the local Oxford music paper which was a means to an end to pay off an overdraft. I then ended up working with the guy who at that point owned Zig Zag, Graham Andrews, a printer who had kind of inherited it. By then Kris Needs was the editor. I was taken on as someone who could flog ads, cos I’d done that for the local newspaper. So I was therefore in touch with all the independent record labels, as well as the others, basically to score ads off them, though I was also a consumer. I also got a bit involved in managing the production side of things. I wasn’t really involved with the editorial side to much. But at some point, as a fan as well, I was particularly into a lot of the records that Bob Last was putting out with Fast Product. I couldn’t tell you exactly when, but I came up with the idea that while everybody was trying to track down these records, it was sometimes particularly difficult. And people could hear stuff on John Peel, but find it difficult to get hold of. Even the Rough Trades of this world were not always finding everything. And I knew the people at Rough Trade obviously. So I decided it would be a good project.”
“Really,” Marlow concedes, “as well as providing an editorial service to people, it was also an opportunity to sell advertising, which was my primary task – to make Zig Zag economically viable. I began to put it together. The primary sources were getting the records themselves, and going to places like Rough Trade, and in particular going to John Peel’s house. He was very helpful. John Walters, his producer, was a regular contributor to Zig Zag and I was often charged with trying to get copy off him, which meant turning up at Radio One and waiting for him to finish it. So I got to know John Walters, and to a lesser extent John Peel, who also occasionally wrote for Zig Zag. A lot of people were sending records in to Peel to play, and that was the other big source of information. On a couple of occasions I would wait for John Peel to finish his programme of an evening, and then I’d drive with him to his house in Suffolk. He’d let me roam the shelves and jot down names, numbers and contact details. Not only from the sleeves, but from the letters that people had sent in to him. So that was an important and unique source of information.”
Of course, at the time it would have been almost unthinkable for an independently released single not to have been sent to Peel
. “Indeed! We put it together and published it. I got it, as I recall, Ray Lowry, the cartoonist for the NME and Zig Zag, to do a cover. Peel did some editorial preface thing, and that was it. It was well regarded and well liked, and in subsequent years we did three, altogether. I actually left Zig Zag and went into the press office at Virgin Records. Steve Taylor was a journalist that I knew and helped on the last one, as I recall. Latterly, there was more and more of it. The second one was twice the size of the first, etc.”
As Paul Rosen noted in his essay looking at the growth of independent labels (almost inevitably titled It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it!) the 1978 Small Labels Catalogue printed in Zig Zag listed 231 independent imprints. “Including both the larger and the smaller ones, the specialist labels catering to specific tastes such as rock ‘n’ roll and reggae as well as the newer labels inspired by punk. But it was this last category that caused the huge jump to over 800 labels by 1980, although that figure had settled back down to a still high 322 by 1981.”
The Small Labels Catalogue became the route map and guidebook to thousands of treasures on labels from Brighton’s Attrix to Michael Zilkha’s ZE. The foundations were being laid for a not so quiet revolution.
The other aspect of the culture of the independent recording industry so often overlooked is that of the handful of recording studios that, between them, were responsible for thousands upon thousands of the releases discussed in this book.
Spaceward Studios, located on Victoria Street, Cambridge, sported a pricing policy that quickly established it, alongside Cargo, as the go-to recording facility outside of London for independent bands – Scritti Politti’s ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ among its earliest notable efforts. “We were there at the time that punk happened,” producer Mike Kemp recalls, “and the fact that we built all our own gear and operated from a rented house in Cambridge kept our costs down. So we could offer 16-track recording below anyone else at a time when that’s what everyone needed. Also, we did not exactly like most of the music biz people we met, so that tallied with many the bands’ views! Maybe we missed out on the big bucks because of it, but it was fun.”