Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Spaceward started when Kemp and Gary Lucas were still students in 1972. “Gary and I got off to a flying start,” Kemp remembers, “as our first recording was a live performance of Hawkwind at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, a notable event in that the legendary Syd Barrett made one of his last ever live appearances. We continued through our student years recording local bands, and when it was time to enter real life, we just had to continue recording. We wanted to offer top quality without costing the arm and leg traditional studios charged at that time. By converting the two basements of the terraced house at 19 Victoria Street we set up a tiny but effective recording and control room. Word got around and we were able to improve our equipment and in 1976 we completed building our own 16-track recorder, allowing us to offer top class facilities just as the punk era was starting.”

  They were quickly inundated. “There were lots of small record labels, from Raw in Cambridge to Rough Trade in London, and demos and masters for bands from Iron Maiden to Gary Numan and Stiff Little Fingers to Toyah. We worked close to 24 hours a day to make a living on the tight budgets we had, and we loved every minute. It was great to engineer and produce those sessions. Often the bands needed help to get their ideas onto disc. I remember great sessions from The Mekons and Scritti Politti, Gary Numan and local band The Soft Boys with Robyn Hitchcock. I think many bands were surprised by how small the studio was, but the results show that we turned out some great stuff, often to tight time schedules, with mixing running into dawn after a full day of recording.”

  “I suppose in some ways we were a beacon for the home recording boom of recent decades,” Kemp reflects, “where low budgets and limited space are now common. The difference being that then we had to really know our equipment, which, since we built a lot of it, was easy for us. Gary and I stayed clear of the mainstream of the music business. We’d had a few run-ins with record company execs and we sided with many of the bands of the time. We hated that side of things. I suppose if we’d ‘bought into’ it, we might have got rich on it, but there was nothing like working at the coal face of the punk boom, with so many ideas and kids of all ages making their own music. We were even approached by a local businessman who wanted to buy us out and fund a big recording complex just across the river from the graduate centre in Cambridge with Gary and I running it. But we just hated the idea of becoming mainstream or subservient to the man with the wallet.”

  In the 80s they moved from Cambridge as their Victoria Street premises, which had always been rented, was sold. Relocating to the Cambridgeshire village of Stretham and purchasing The Old School, they built a bigger desk and 24-track studio, and finally took on more commercial projects. The studio closed in 1988. “Luckily I’ve been able to keep close to the audio business by inventing novel tools for the recording engineer and musician,” says Kemp. “I’ve also been able to keep my hand in with some recording work, but undoubtedly the fun of working 24 hours non stop definitely fades as time goes by!”

  Pathway is another of those institutions that unequivocally deserves celebration. Founded by Mike Finesilver, partially from the royalties he received as co-writer of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’, it was little short of a shed. A tiny one at that; estimated to be just eight by eight metres. Yet many of the most important records of the independent boom were recorded here, not least a coterie of early Stiff artists (Costello, Damned, Ian Dury, Madness) as well as such notables as The Police and Dire Straits.

  Arguably the most significant and prolific studio of all, however, was Rochdale’s Cargo, run by John Brierley, whose story overlaps with that of Factory Records. “I was a staff cameraman at Granada,” he remembers. “It was a great era for pop music at Granada, and I worked on Shang-a-Lang with the Bay City Rollers and The Marc Bolan Show. There had been one series of So it Goes with Tony Wilson, which was studio bound, with a production crew who I think didn’t understand the music. So for the second series Tony persuaded them to record bands live on film, We worked together on the local news programme and we often spoke about recording bands live. He knew about my mobile studio, so when the second series came up, I was called to the seventh floor at Granada. Would I hire my mobile to them? At that time I used to record bands live at pub gigs for around £50 a session. Granada, not knowing my usual rates, asked if I would do a deal. Would £900 per gig be OK? I thought about it for about three seconds and said that would do. I left Granada later that year and the money from those shows helped me set up Cargo Studios in 1977. I have always been into live sound and some of these bands were quite amazing. Recording bands like Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop – they were just so good. I didn’t realise initially that this was the start of something new in music. In many cases I found the music too abrasive. But I did appreciate that the punk scene was a rebellion against the established music of that time and fitted into my philosophy.”

  While Cargo would become synonymous with budget independent labels, Brierley already had some experience of one notable 60s forerunner. “When I was in my late teens I produced some albums for John Peel’s Dandelion label with Tractor. A guy called Chris Hewitt became the band’s manager and some years later opened a music shop in Rochdale called Tractor Music about the same time I left Granada. He approached me and mentioned the shop he was opening on Drake Street and that he had far too much space and did I want to rent the rear part of the building on Kenion Street from him to set up the studio? I had been on the lookout for premises but it was difficult to find somewhere that didn’t have neighbours and at a price I could afford. The building was pretty run down but it had a car park outside thanks to Yorkshire Bank and it was cheap.”

  Brierley installed a Soundcraft desk, costing him £8,000, JBL speakers, a Ferrograph ¼-inch mastering machine and Cadey 16-track tape recorder. “I made a decision that because I didn’t have much money left, instead of spending thousands on sound proofing, I would go for a ‘live’ studio. I put a carpet down on the floor and cellotex boarding on the walls, which really didn’t do much to reduce the sound levels. The control room was fairly conventional apart from two enormous reclining chairs behind the desk and unusually the desk was 90 degrees to the adjoining window and studio. That was deliberate. I really didn’t want to have to look through the window all the time at the band or for them to have to look at us in the control room. I found it far less distracting looking at a blank wall when I had to concentrate on mixing.”

  Studio in place, Brierley waited for the work to roll in. And waited. “By then panic was about to set in, because only a couple of local Rochdale bands had been in. But then The Gang of Four came in from Leeds with this amazing sound and recorded ‘Damaged Goods’ for Fast Product [recorded June ’78, released in October]. There was something immediate and urgent there. That opened the floodgates. Due to the rise of punk, the new bands no longer wanted to spend weeks recording an album, it was almost ‘one take and out’ and the live sound decision paid off. This is the sound they wanted, like they were on stage. I couldn’t cope with the number of bands wanting to come in and so I took on Colin Richardson as a trainee engineer and he proved to be quite brilliant.”

  Indeed, the list of artists that Cargo would work with over the next few years is almost bewildering. “We were getting bands in like OMD, Joy Division, The Fall, The Chameleons and from Liverpool Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Dead or Alive, Pink Military. As most of these records were played on John Peel’s show, the fame of the studio spread. We even had some bands who came in just so they could have ‘recorded at Cargo Studios Rochdale’ on the sleeve, so they would be played on Peel. John used to refer to it as ‘the legendary Cargo Studios’. Of course, all these bands were new and these were their early recordings for independent labels, so at that time I had no idea which of these bands would make it big. Unfortunately many subsequently signed up to major labels and their thinking was that you couldn’t possibly record a single/album for a major label with a top producer in a 1
6-track on a back street in Rochdale. It had to be some plush 24-track in London with some producer the band had never met and then they wondered why the feel and excitement had gone.”

  Cargo indeed dealt almost exclusively with independent record labels. “They were the only ones who were prepared to take a risk musically,” says Brierley. “Record companies like Factory, Fast Product, New Hormones, Rough Trade, Zoo, No Future, Clay, Red Rhino and Cherry Red. Bands were now coming in from all over Britain and France and Germany as well.” And Brierley came to know many of the most prominent members of that emerging community. “Tony Wilson spent a lot of his time at the studio with the Factory bands. He once said that his most amazing musical moment was the first time he listened to Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’. Martin Hannett spent a lot of his time in Cargo producing Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, OMD, Nico, Durutti Column, etc. Mike Stone from Clay used to do his own mixing. Another regular was Bob Last from Fast Product. When Bob came in the studio he always altered the loudspeaker settings to his personal setting, an unusual thing to do – took me hours to correct after he’d gone.”

  Not that Cargo’s fame ever made Brierley a rich man. “The rates I charged were too low. I realise that now. I didn’t realise until many years later that the bands were actually coming in because of the ‘Cargo sound’. Maybe I should have charged more but I thought I was in competition with other studios around Manchester like Smile and Pennine, Revolution, and I didn’t want to go back to the early days of no bands coming in. Many of the bands didn’t even have an independent label backing them or a great deal of money. It would have been unfair to exclude them or their music because of the price. But if I had charged more then I could have afforded a new desk and new tape machine. Essentially I was trying to make money from the studio and help the bands along the way. It was an awkward balancing act. The rates were around £16 per hour for 16-track and £10 per hour for eight-track. There were many punk bands who managed to record and mix a complete album in a ten-hour session.”

  Such was Cargo’s throughput that eventually Brierley became concerned that the equipment was being worn out due to constant use. “I remember Mark Burgess from the Chameleons, after he had just finished the brilliant Script of the Bridge album, saying ‘Colin Richardson worked wonders in a dying studio’, with reference to the mixing desk getting knackered. That really pissed me off. They were an up and coming group and their record company had come to me with an allotted sum of money to do the album, which is all they could afford. The band actually used about twice that amount on doing the album in endless extra hours. I never charged them extra, just trying to help the band get it finished. If I’d held on to the tape and asked for the amount they had actually used then I doubt the album would ever have come out.” It may or may not be coincidental that The Chameleons were one of the few bands Brierley worked with who were allied to a major (Statik Records were distributed through Virgin). “I tried to help most bands financially. In hindsight, business wise, that was probably a mistake.”

  A combination of factors led to the label’s closure. “In 1983 Colin left and all the sessions were then done by me for the last year before I closed the studio. By then the music had changed, it was becoming less exciting and it was starting to bore me. On top of that, I damaged my hearing, albeit not permanently, with listening to those JBL speakers at too high a level. A specialist warned me that if I carried on recording, I would permanently damage my hearing. So that’s when I called it a day. Cargo Studios was nothing to look at either inside or out – you certainly wouldn’t go ‘wow’ when you walked in the place. It had a lot of rough edges but the band’s felt very much at ease. It was incredibly hard work but it was worth it. I got a great deal of enjoyment out of it as well as a living.”

  The infrastructure that allowed independent music to thrive is rarely appreciated. The Cartel made the rich diversity of independent music available in nearly every high street. Spaceward, Pathway and Cargo trapped the initial musical ideas on tape. Manufacturers such as Orlake turned tape to vinyl, wrapped in sleeves printed by the likes of Delga Press. The enduring titular myth of DIY music was that you could indeed ‘do it yourself’. That’s entirely deceptive on one level. In fact, the real story of independent music is to a large extent ‘we’re all in this together’. Studios, printers, manufacturers and distributors were always part of the equation and no-one in the independent record community, at least prior to the cassette DIY scene, could get by without accessing one or more of their services.

  Chapter Five

  Music Is A Better Noise

  Rough Trade Records

  Rough Trade began as a shop founded in 1976 in Kensington Park Road, part of the Portobello district that had been settled by a large post-Windrush West Indian immigrant community. In 1983 it would move to 130 Talbot Road and open a sister branch in Covent Garden. But for its initial heyday – it has had several – 202 Kensington Park, now a toddler’s and baby retailer, was the location of London’s most iconic record shop, instantly recognisable for its domed arch dominating the front window display and the overhanging wagon wheel that became its logo.

  Geoff Travis, the son of a loss adjuster born in 1952 and an eager fan of rock music, had studied photography and English at Churchill College, Cambridge. “I didn’t really know what to do when I finished university, to be honest,” he explains. “The thing is, I’ve always loved music, and it had been a massive part of my life growing up in London. I was lucky to grow up in London in that perfect era; The Beatles, Stones, The Kinks, Yardbirds, The Who were releasing their first records, and Stax and Motown – it was exciting times. I’ve always been a music fanatic from a very early age. Mostly because we had a cousin who came to stay with us from Canada, whose father was a bit of a black sheep in the family and committed some kind of petty crime that we never talked about. And my family very kindly took him in. And he brought with him some fantastic 50s records; Everly Brothers, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, ‘All You Have To Do Is Dream’, Buddy Holly and the Crickets records, McCoys records. They made a very vivid impression on me. Freddy Cannon’s ‘Palisades Park’, which was a fantastic instrumental record. I just remember listening to them over and over again for hours on end. So that was the beginning of my musical obsession.”

  At this stage, he had no plans for a career in the music industry. Or many plans at all. “I’d been to university and I enjoyed it, I liked reading and studying, so I thought for a while about being an academic.” Legendarily, waiting at a bus stop one day, he placed his future in the hands of London Transport, the fulcrum being how long it took the next bus to come. “That is true. I was at teacher training college, waiting for the bus. I really enjoyed the kids, they were fantastic, but I really hated the teachers. They probably hated me, I just didn’t like the way they talked about the children; they really talked down to them. It just wasn’t really the spirit I wanted to be around. So I did say to myself that. It was like a stupid Dice Man moment. If it didn’t come that was it. And the next day I was in Montreal.”

  There he hooked up with a former drama teacher acquaintance and helped run a health food store. His travels took him through both Chicago and San Francisco, purchasing an album collection from thrift stores en route. It was this ‘collateral’ that convinced him to open his first record shop, initially in Dollis Hill. “Ken Davidson was the person who said, ‘Why don’t you ship these records back and start the shop?’ He was a Dutchman, and he was hanging out with an old school friend of mine, Alan Newman. That was who I went to stay with in San Francisco.” But the Dollis Hill venture ended almost before it began. “That was just a false start,” Travis confesses, “we didn’t really know what we were doing. You could squat in London in those days – nobody had any money, and nobody seemed to care. Especially when you could squat and the living was cheap. So we were squatting there and we found these premises we could rent. We started sanding down the walls and getting ready. Then we started contacting record comp
anies to start up accounts. A man from Polydor came along and said, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘What do you mean? We’re opening a shop.’ ‘OK, good idea, but there’s no passing trade.’ We said, ‘What’s passing trade?’ You look out on the pavement, and there’s three Jamaicans and no-one else. So it dawned on us that maybe it’s not the best place to start a shop. It shows how naive we were. But we learned quickly.”

  They relocated to Kensington Park Road. Part of the attraction was its proximity to Powis Square, where Mick Jagger’s arty Performance had been filmed. Travis was well versed in the bohemian cultures of New York’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, and the new enterprise would share similar aspirations. The site, they discovered, was formerly used as a print workshop; a gathering place for ‘heads’ during the 60s that had fallen to wrack and ruin. Rough Trade would, in turn, add to the premises’ legacy of progressive thinking, not to mention financial brinkmanship. The company was founded in the name of Travis and his father, who contributed initial funds of £4,000 and was an intermittent presence in the shop, helping his son with accounts.

  While one cornerstone of the shop was Travis’s abiding love of music, another was the ideological discourse he had encountered, and embraced, at college. “Absolutely. And from growing up around the counter-culture; Oz and Friends magazine, Vietnam demonstrations, the Living Theatre at the Roundhouse, the RD Laing era and the beginning of feminism. You had the start of Spare Rib, and being informed about women’s liberation politics. It was quite a political time when I was at university at Cambridge. There were demonstrations about the Greek Colonels just before I went ‘up’, as they say. And then when I was there, there were a lot of things going on. It seemed that students were a lot more political in those days, or at least at some tangent to some political party. The Communist Party was very strong, and there were lots of debates. There was the IMG [International Marxist Group], the Workers Revolutionary Party, there was a lot more political debate in the air. I’m more of a loner and not so much of a joiner-in, but I do recognise the need for community. I was also informed by the fact that I was sent to kibbutz when I was a kid, because my family had been involved in setting up kibbutz in Israel. And I spent a happy summer holiday with my uncle in his kibbutz, working on the tractor and the farm. Watching all that – working and eating collectively – that made a big impression. I was very young, and [it was partly] just the excitement of being out of a suburban house! But there was a moment when that was an interesting utopian idea and it worked for a bit, but it’s kind of changed and soured as inevitably utopias do. But it was inspiring, really. Also beat culture was important to me. Reading Burroughs and Ferlinghetti and Kerouac and all those things, and the Velvet Underground. And the great American poets like William Carlos Williams, people like Carl Sandburg, the Black Mountain Poets, Robert Lowell and Charles Olson – I really liked all of that. One of the great things about being at university is that you have access to libraries and you can read what you want. I read a lot of American literature. I liked America in the same way that Jean Luc Godard liked America. I liked the plastic facade and the symbols.”