by Alex; Ogg
The gestation of the record label took some time. “I had gone on about starting a record label quite a bit with Martin and Nick,” Stone remembers. “And funnily enough, they did have this strange thing they were going to do – an album of music that featured on adverts. It never happened, possibly thank God! I even remember the artwork they drew up, and I’m sure it was a Campbell’s soup tin. They didn’t take it any further. In the meantime I’m at North End Road, and all this independent record thing is taking off, and anything in a picture sleeve sold. It was all the indies that were doing that. I really loved those bands, coming out the woodwork. So I said to Martin, why don’t we do an independent label? So it wasn’t a great innovative idea. I just picked up on something and said, why don’t we do it? I talked about it till I was blue in the face. Eventually Nick came down with me to see The Lurkers at the Roxy. And they put on a pretty reasonable performance, and that was it.” Prior to this, Stone had also tried to get Decca to sign the Stranglers after he’d seen them at the Nashville Rooms. “In my naivete, here I am – a record shop assistant trying to get a major label interested in a punk band!”
Mills and Austin tried to get The Lurkers a record deal, though Stone had no part in that. They got nowhere – giving the lie to the oft-repeated observation that the majors were signing anything that moved in the period. “By the time we started managing them,” explains Mills, “every major label – they weren’t even called majors in those days, just labels, because there weren’t any independents – every label already had a punk band. And most of them had one as an insurance policy, just in case. Virgin was a bit different. The Clash were at Columbia, The Jam at Polydor. And by the time we came round with The Lurkers, everyone already had one. We tried everyone!”
Instead, they bowed to Stone’s overtures and elected to proceed themselves. Released in August 1977, the ‘Free Admission’ single paired ‘Shadow’ with ‘Love Story’. It was a short, sharp coda to the ongoing punk revolution, slated by Charles Shaar Murray in the NME while Sounds dismissed it as being ‘pretty vacant’. On the upside, Record Mirror made it single of the week, while Chainsaw fanzine observed that it made “the Ramones sound as complicated as Yes.” In keeping with the sly rhetoric of catalogue numbers fashioned before them by Stiff’s BUY prefixes, it was released as BEG 1. It came out almost exactly a year after Nick Lowe’s Stiff debut. Initially, distribution was handled by the distinctly ‘old school’ President. Had Stiff set the template? “I’ve never really thought of it as following their example,” thinks Mills. “In retrospect, it looks like that, and it was definitely us, Stiff and Chiswick at around the same time or a few months apart. I guess we probably all saw the same opportunities at the same time. But I guess Stiff were leaders of the market at that point. And they did it with tons of style and character. But they weren’t particularly punk. But then, we weren’t particularly punk either.”
A second Lurkers single, ‘Freak Show’, followed in November, by which time they’d also assembled a compilation LP highlighting the recent independent labels boom. Streets (BEGA 1) contained licensed material including The Members and a large Mancunian contingent comprising Slaughter And the Dogs, The Drones and John Cooper Clarke. It was followed by The Lurkers’ debut album Fulham Fallout, which reached the Top 60, sandwiched between two Top 50 singles (‘Ain’t Got A Clue’ and ‘I Don’t Need To Tell Her’). The label was thus initially a broadly successful venture, but Beggars were unable to follow up with another breakthrough act as The Lurkers began their commercial slide. None of their other signings, including The Doll and Johnny G, were able to capitalise. “The bands I was responsible for were The Lurkers, Merton Parkas and the Carpettes,” says Stone, “who were fantastic, but they just didn’t do it. Image? Time? Name? The latter possibly. But what Beggars Banquet needed was turnover.” Breathing space came from an unlikely source. Ivor Biggun’s ‘The Winker’s Song’, a joyful ode to onanism, caught the imagination of the pubescent playground. “Yeah, that made us a ton of money,” laughs Mills, “thank you Ivor! That record sold a ton.”
A more viable act was finally discovered after Tubeway Army’s Paul Gardiner came into Beggars’ Ealing branch to dispose of a few unwanted albums, and used the opportunity to pass on a demo of a song called ‘That’s Too Bad’. Mike Stone witnessed a subsequent meeting with the band’s de facto leader: “I remember Gary Webb walking into Earl’s Court when I was there. Nick invited him downstairs, and by the time he’d walked back upstairs, he’d signed him.”
A remixed version of ‘That’s Too Bad’ became Tubeway Army’s debut single on 17 February 1978. Webb (or ‘Valerian’ on the sleeve, before later adopting the billing Gary Numan) had for some time been a slightly uncomfortable presence on the periphery of the punk scene. He’d started out with Vortex regulars Mean Street, but his interest was much more in electronics and Bowie than three-chord bluster. Yet while he was a clear talent, initial success for Tubeway Army was fleeting, ‘That’s Too Bad’ earned coruscating reviews across the board (“Turkey” noted Sounds, “Feeble” said the NME, “Mundane” stated Record Mirror, “sub-Bowie” judged Melody Maker). One can easily see where Numan’s terse relationship with journalists, famously recounted on a later Beggars single ‘I Die, You Die’, began.
“Ivor Biggun’s single was paying the bills, to be honest,” admits Mills, “while we were investing in The Doll. We definitely thought Gary was a huge talent – but I think Gary always felt that we thought The Doll was more commercial than he was – and I guess initially he was probably right. Gary’s potential unveiled itself more gradually.” In truth, Beggars was suffering and near bankruptcy. A distribution deal with Island fell through when that company fell into difficulties and had to negotiate a bailout with EMI, leaving Beggars with no room at the inn. Eventually WEA stepped in with a cheque for £100,000 that helped keep both the label and the shops afloat. The cash infusion allowed them to pay off a growing army of creditors, with no ‘breakthrough’ on the horizon. “I’m not sure we even knew what the concept of breaking through meant, to be honest,” says Mills. “It was very much one foot after another. I think The Doll was what we perceived at that point as our next one that would sell.”
How near to closure did Beggars get? “We were pretty much on our knees,” Mills admits. “We were funding it all out of the cash from the shops, and there came a point where we were bouncing salary cheques, so it was pretty tense. The credit for the Warners deal is due to a guy called John Cooper, who was introduced to us as a consultant by our accountants, who used to run Arista of all places, and he was well connected. And he got us in to see Dave Dee at Warners. And thanks, I think, to Mike Heap, who was the sales and marketing guy at Warners, they decided to invest in us. It kind of fitted there with what they were trying to do at that time – they had a load of licensed labels, and they were active in acquisitions. And we were one of many labels they were working with.” Nevertheless, £100,000 was a fairly substantial investment in an unproven company, especially as they weren’t taking any stake in the company itself – just a one-year advance on licensing. “No, we couldn’t believe it!” laughs Mills. “I can’t remember if we had a party afterwards – we should have!”
“They were really struggling,” remembers Stone. “They didn’t tell me everything, but rumours go around the staff. I think it put the shits more up Martin and Nick than us though, to be honest. But they started to do quite well with Gary and things started to happen. I left Beggars Banquet and the week I moved to Stoke-On-Trent, Gary Numan went to number one! I’d met a girl from there – it changes your thoughts! We were both a bit fed up of London, so we moved up there with the intention of starting a record shop.”
The transformation of Beggars’ fortunes was completed by the runaway success of Tubeway Army’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ in May 1979, one of the unlikeliest hit records ever – over five minutes in length, featuring no recognisable tune as such, and spoken lyrics. Themed ostensibly on Philip K Dick�
�s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (later the inspiration for the film Blade Runner), some of the lines were inspired by Webb’s friendship with Beggars staff member Su Wathan (later said to have also inspired the bitter ‘I’m An Agent’ on Telekon). “She was a close friend of Gary’s,” says Mills. “No-one ever knew what the lyrics meant in ‘Are Friends Electric?’ But there was that line, ‘About little deals and issues and things that I just don’t understand.’ And the ‘issues’ was actually ‘SU’s – that referred to Su.”
The single rose to number one, followed there by an accompanying album, Replicas. Numan’s subsequent solo album, The Pleasure Principle, also topped the album charts. In 1979 alone Numan gave Beggars an unprecedented two number one albums and two number one singles. It was a dramatic upswing in Numan’s fortunes – Tubeway Army’s original self-titled August 1978 album and a trio of singles had all flopped. Warners’ money had allowed Beggars the luxury to afford Numan a decent budget to record Replicas at the 16-track Gooseberry Studios in Soho. “We’d done the Warners deal in November 1978,” remembers Mills, “so there would have been more money. By more money, we’re talking about six grand rather than three.” Could that not have made a difference, though, to an artist who was feverishly obsessed with new technology and harnessing the latest production methods? “Well,” Mills continues, “when Gary bought his first synth, a Moog, we had to buy it on hire purchase. When he’d exhausted that after a few minutes, he wanted the latest one, and it was the same thing again. So for a long time we had these odd little £25 monthly payments going through. At the end of the first year, Tubeway Army had pretty much recouped that advance on their own by having enormous success. And by the end of ’79, we had three Gary Numan albums, including Tubeway Army, in the Top 20. Three new albums, not catalogue!”
In the end, Warners too recouped on what might initially have seemed an unduly generous offer. “Oh, yeah!” says Mills. “It was a great deal for them. They gambled and they gambled well.” Numan’s chart success continued with top ten singles in ‘Complex’ (November 1979), ‘We Are Glass’ (May 1980) and ‘I Die, You Die’ (August 1980), preceding a third successive number one album, Telekon, in September 1980. Thereafter the hits faded away, though Numan always kept a dedicated fanbase. In any case, the aforementioned releases had netted him a personal fortune estimated at just under £5 million.
Numan’s breakthrough utterly eclipsed the rest of an under-performing roster. Ivo Watts-Russell was by now overseeing the whole retail operation, which amounted to five shops, and was based upstairs at the Beggars offices in Hogarth Road. Peter Kent ran the shop downstairs. “I was born on a farm in the country in Northamptonshire,” says Watts-Russell. “To paraphrase John Lennon, the first thing that made sense to me was rock ‘n’ roll. Jimi Hendrix, literally, on Top Of The Pops, changed my life. I was 12 years old, and I didn’t really know what it was, but I knew it was exciting. And then John Peel effectively became my professor. And then getting away from there as fast as possible to get down to London to be near music, getting a job in a record shop. I just wanted to be around music. If you’ve ever worked in a record shop – after a year or so, you have to be interested, and you have to explore. Within six months of moving to London, I was lucky enough to work at the Musicland shop in Ealing where the manager, Mike Smith, exposed me to things like Terry Riley, John Cale’s Paris 1919, the Pure Prairie League records, which to me are still the only true country rock records. I was getting excited by pedal steel guitar! And Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris – absolutely, in love with that voice – shivers down the spine.” Mike Stone remembers Ivo’s advocacy of classic 60s west-coast rock and country. “He had a vast knowledge of all those bands; the Byrds, Tim Buckley, Emmylou Harris, Flying Burrito Brothers, that was definitely his bag. That seemed to be all he’d play on the stereo at Beggars.”
“So, hungry and enthusiastic and interested in music,” Watts-Russell continues, “one starts to explore. So when the thing called punk came along, in terms of me needing to have the table swept clean, and a different attitude – I wasn’t looking for music. There was plenty of music around, and plenty of obscure music to find. And what really inspired me far more than punk itself was ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ on Ork and Pere Ubu. Those were the first signs of – what is this? Really, punk in England was gobbled up by the majors. Extraordinarily so. Ninety-nine per cent of it was just taken by the majors, because there weren’t labels and a system to deal with it independently. And it was the onslaught of music that was inspired by the attitude of punk and the journalism and the change of fashion of the time – a system to take care of that HAD to be created. It obviously had to be created outside of the mainstream major record companies, because they were completely clueless. I think it’s fantastic when something is generated out of necessity. People talk about reggae having to be played at the punk clubs because there wasn’t any punk music. What else was considered outlaw music? You can’t get much more interesting and inspiring and fucked up than good dub singles. Much in the same way, the music just kept on coming, and studios cropped up everywhere where people could make records cheaply. Therefore an outlet was needed.”
Between them, Watts-Russell and Kent became Beggars’ unofficial A&R antennae. They were the first point of contact with bands shopping demos to the store, and would make recommendations to Mills and Austin. After they became enthused by a cassette handed in by a band called Modern English, it was suggested that they take the concept further and they were offered the money to start their own label.
“I’d left and gone to America for three months,” remembers Watts-Russell, “and I came back to England and they gave me my job back. But Mike Stone had a rehearsal room at the shop at North End Road, and these people were making a noise in the basement that he enjoyed, and so I guess he took them to Martin and Nick and that’s how the label started. Yeah, it was a similar thing, at Earl’s Court, this little shop, quadraphonic department in the basement, and upstairs there were a couple of little rooms, which became known as the record company. Myself and Peter would be the people standing behind the counter in the shop when people came in to deliver a tape inspired by – I dunno, Ivor Biggun? Or Tubeway Army, to be kind! People were inspired by that. So what do you do? You’re standing behind a counter, someone offers you a tape. You listen to it. The one I remember most clearly was Modern English. Their first batch of demos were excellent. I remember both me and Peter saying to Martin and Nick – I threatened to walk out the door if Nick signed another Ivor Biggun! He’s a lovely man, that Ivor B. Really nice person and music fan who would always be in all the Beggars shops, hunting for obscure 7-inch singles. But his music was truly silly and a lot of BB releases were, frankly, embarrassing. Perhaps that served as inspiration for Peter and I to do something quite different.”
“One of the reasons we started 4AD and one of the reasons we struggled to find an identity,” says Mills, “is that Gary’s success was so enormous, that it kind of swung the other way. Gary Numan and Beggars Banquet were seen as being completely interchangeable. Gary’s later albums we felt less attached to than the first ones, and we wanted to do our own musical things. So it was a struggle for Beggars Banquet to emerge from Gary Numan’s shadow, not withstanding the fact that, had it not been for Gary, we wouldn’t be in business today.”
“I think at that point we probably were struggling for an identity,” he continues. “That’s partly because my partner and myself had different musical tastes. Nick’s were more commercial than mine, he was very much the Merton Parkas guy, and I was very much the Gary Numan guy. Gary never got on with Nick. So there was quite a split. We were perceived as a label that started in punk, but we were a rag bag of styles initially.” That’s a criticism that could also be levelled at Stiff’s roster. “Stiff kind of imposed their label identity on their artists, though, which we never did,” says Mills. “And I suppose since then the ethos of the label is that it would be determined by the identity of the artists,
and that has grown in a much more organic way over the years. At the outset it was always a bit of an odd connection. And it probably wasn’t until Bauhaus transferred from 4AD, and then we had the likes of Birthday Party on 4AD and Southern Death Cult and so on – that [an identity for] Beggars Banquet started emerging. And it took five years, really, for that to emerge.”
Ambitiously, Watts-Russell and Kent decided to release four records simultaneously to inaugurate their new ‘feeder’ label. “I was inspired by Factory definitely,” says Watts-Russell. “I was inspired by the fact that if something from 1977 onwards came out on an independent label; it deserved to be listened to. It could be on Fresh or a label that only did one single – to hear Glaxo Babies, to hear Family Fodder or Modern Eon before they were China Crisis – it was all so exciting. I’d started a conversation with Martin Atkins [ex-Public Image]. I’d actually started the idea of doing something myself [with Atkins’ Brian Brain project]. But I didn’t have any money or even knew how to do it – but I was talking to Martin and his producer John Madden about putting out a single. Maybe Martin and Nick got wind of it? I don’t know. But around that time they came to me and Peter and said, you keep telling us to sign these things, why don’t you do it and start a label. And we had a budget of £2,000 to begin with. And without even really talking about it, me and Peter really wanted to make an impression. So we started with the four singles.” The initial proviso was that any success they had would see the artists transfer to the ‘big brother’ imprint. Kent came up with the name Axis Records.