Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  The duo also agreed to make a video, and by the end of its run on the UK independent singles chart, ‘Song To The Siren’ was to rack up 101 weeks, the fourth longest ever in indie singles chart history, behind Bauhaus’ ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ (131 weeks), New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ (186 weeks) and Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (195 weeks). ‘Song To The Siren’ also reached number 66 in the UK national charts, selling in excess of half a million copies, without the film soundtrack or major label marketing that had launched ‘I Melt With You’.

  Only a reissue of Bauhaus singles on the 4AD EP separated the release of ‘Song To The Siren’ and new Cocteau Twins records, which had been recorded before the This Mortal Coil sessions. Having had one-off contracts for Garlands, Lullabies and Peppermint Pig, the band had signed a contract for five albums, or to run five years, whichever condition was fulfilled first. Colourbox signed the same kind of deal. ‘Both bands wanted a wage and I thought they deserved a certain standard of living,’ says Ivo. ‘I also wanted to carry on working with them. We all recognised we were part of something that was becoming quite special.’

  Cocteau Twins’ second album Head Over Heels was released at the end of October, followed just one week later by the EP Sunburst And Snowblind, a collective hit of newfound freedom, expressed in a lush, panoramic drama that far exceeded Garlands’ stark origins. The album cut ‘Sugar Hiccup’ also fronted the EP with an equally new-found commerciality, while the album’s serene opener ‘When Mama Was Moth’ further extinguished all convenient Banshees and goth comparisons. Equally, ‘Glass Candle Grenades’ fed in a graceful, rhythmic imagery and ‘Musette And Drums’ was a magnificent finale.

  Ivo: ‘Robin and Liz’s relationship and their music had just blossomed. Head Over Heels showed an extraordinary growth, especially Elizabeth’s singing. The Peel session recorded shortly after includes my favourite ever Liz vocal, in the version of [Sunburst And Snowblind cut] “Hitherto”. It’s the track I play people if they’ve never heard Cocteau Twins. She sounds completely unfettered and it still gives me shivers.’

  If Cocteau Twins could magic this up on the spot, what could they do with a little planning? Part of the music’s magic was down to the euphoria between the duo, bound up in the album title’s expression of love and Fraser’s new engagement ring. ‘We were young and in love,’ Guthrie recalls. ‘We’d just moved to London, people were saying how great we were, which fuelled us. As did loads of speed!’

  23 Envelope mirrored Cocteau Twins’ huge pools of reverb with a silver-metal pool of ripples (inspired by a key scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker) and a fish disappearing, stage right, from the photo. ‘That was a mackerel,’ Nigel Grierson explains, ‘in coloured ink, in a bath of water, into which we’d thrown flower petals. Everyone at 4AD went nuts over the image, and from there, we were directing operations more, trying to create a connection between the music and the visuals, without narrowing the interpretation, but to let the imagination work.’

  Yet Guthrie again didn’t find 23 Envelope’s choices suited his own image of the band. ‘Some of Nigel’s other photos were joyous and beautiful but the one they chose was dark, dull and ugly. We’d say what we didn’t like, but they still did what they wanted. We had this joke, that Vaughan put fishes on everything, and we’d say, “No fish!” So I think he’d put it on there to piss us off. But I liked the Sunburst And Snowblind cover.’

  Guthrie also resented the sleeve credits. ‘John Fryer only came in towards the end and listened to the mixes, but got a co-producer credit, which I didn’t know until I saw the sleeve. Best of luck to John and I’m sure he got some work out of that, but he had nothing to do with it.’

  His mood would have lifted when John Peel played all of side one of Head Over Heels, and all of side two on the following night’s show. Like ‘Peppermint Pig’, the Sunburst And Snowblind EP fell just one place short of topping the independent chart, while reaching 86 in the UK national chart. But Head Over Heels was 4AD’s first record to top the indie charts, and only fell one place short of the UK national top 50. This wasn’t Depeche Mode-level success, but it added to 4AD’s tangible sense of arrival.

  If would be a perfect end to the year if Colourbox could make similar advances. At least the new EP, called Colourbox, had a new direction: Ivo knew Martyn Young’s reggae/dub predilections and had suggested reggae specialist Paul Smykle as a producer. New singer Lorita Grahame was a reggae specialist too, in the ballad-leaning area of lover’s rock, despite the band’s advertising for a soulful singer. Grahame had a more expressive soul than her predecessor Debian Curry, but she didn’t have enough to bounce off apart from ‘Keep On Pushing’.† The problem was, Young’s obsessive edits and mixes were wearing down the sonic quality of the music. ‘Nation’ had a memorably funky synth-bass riff but it had been as arduous to make as it was to listen to, at ten minutes long.

  ‘Some tracks were created with three Revox machines, cutting and pasting sound from the TV, which pre-dated sampling,’ Ray Conroy recalls. ‘One track might take three days, chopping it about. Martyn was so anal at getting it finished. But Ivo gave them a lot of time and space.’

  ‘The record was a real hotchpotch,’ Ivo concludes, ‘and not the most likely thing to progress their visibility and popularity.’

  The EP cover wasn’t designed to make it an easy sell, and the fact it didn’t create a stir showed Colourbox’s low profile. Among fans, the Colourbox EP was known as ‘The Shotgun Sessions’ after the lead track, but also ‘Horses Fucking’ after the chosen image, a photo (in reversed negative, so that the horse’s red penis turned green) taken by Vaughan Oliver years earlier while working a glamorous summer job at a local sewage works. In a manner more befitting a provocateur like Mick Allen, Colourbox had requested ‘something revolting’, says Oliver, who was encouraged by the EP song title ‘Keep On Pushing’. From the pretty horses on After The Snow to the rutting equine couple on Colourbox, Oliver could never be relied on, he says, ‘to take the easy road. I like to provoke, to be perverse.’

  ‘We thought the cover was funny,’ recalls Martyn Young. ‘You could discuss things with Vaughan, and then he’d go and do his own thing, but they were better than our ideas.’

  It was a temporary lull in a year that had seen 4AD on an upward trajectory that climaxed with Cocteau Twins’ first American visit, playing two shows in New York interspersed with a show in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve, ‘to about twelve people in the audience,’ recalls Ivo, who flew over to celebrate. In the heat of excitement, he even suggested he could manage the band, and give up 4AD in the process: ‘I was so proud to be involved with them,’ Ivo recalls. ‘I felt total commitment. I’m truly grateful they never responded to that particular idea!’

  In the meantime, there was a shared sense of love, pride and excitement – and tour profits to revel in: ‘I have a picture of Ivo with three grand in his hand!’ Guthrie grins. Grangemouth and Oundle would have felt a long way in the past.

  Another band in the giddy heat of ascendancy was The Smiths, who happened to be on the same New York flight as the Cocteaus, to make their own US debut. But Smiths drummer Mike Joyce fell ill and had to return home after one show, so their dates were cancelled. At a consolation party in promoter Ruth Polsky’s tiny New York apartment, Guthrie recalls, ‘being cornered in the kitchen by Johnny Marr – a lovely guy but all he wanted to talk about were Rolling Stones records! I was more, “OK, let’s have more drugs!”’

  * The Birthday Party turned out to only have one more EP left in them, the four-track Mutiny, which, in 1989, Mute allowed 4AD to add to the CD reissue of The Bad Seed, ensuring that every Birthday Party release did end up on 4AD. Mutiny rang the changes for The Birthday Party as Rowland S. Howard didn’t turn up for sessions and Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld stepped in on guitar, lending a more controlled, less jagged aura to the sound. Harvey confirms that communication between Cave and Howard had broken down, and the band had
‘no new direction’. Even before Mutiny had been released, Harvey had proposed the band split up; Cave and Howard instantly agreed, paving the path to the formation of Cave’s solo career with his Bad Seeds backing band, which changed over the years but started off with Bargeld, Harvey and Barry Adamson.

  † Without Ivo’s knowledge, Martyn Young had recorded a phone conversation with him, and part of it was spliced into one of the Colourbox EP tracks: ‘It was one of Ian’s,’ Young reckons, which makes it either ‘Nation’ or ‘Justice’. Yet the only audibly sampled phone call appears to be ‘Keep On Pushing’, even though the accent sounds more like Ray Conroy than Ivo. ‘When Ivo found out, he wasn’t pleased,’ Young adds. ‘It’s still on there, but we had to disguise his voice.’

  chapter 7 – 1984

  Dreams Made Flesh, but It’ll End in Tears

  (BAD401–CAD413)

  The scenario of 4AD as a family, drawn together by associations at school or shared aesthetics of sound and vision, expanded further with the arrival of Deborah Edgely, 4AD’s third full-time employee, following Ivo and Vaughan Oliver. Edgely started as general assistant but quickly graduated to 4AD’s press officer – and Ivo’s partner.

  In the historic city centre of Exeter, three hours south-west of London in the county of Devon, Edgely is understandably anxious about revisiting the many scenes of her past, complicated by her severed relationship with Ivo, the lost friendships with the artists and other friends at the label. She’s lived in Devon since the mid-1990s, after escaping London and the music business. Though Edgely’s current job running a nursery school might, in some ways, echo that of looking after musicians, there are far fewer phone calls after midnight. In any case, her two sons keep her extremely busy.

  Edgely first met Ivo at a Bauhaus show. She was dating the band’s drummer Kevin Haskins while both were studying at Northampton College; she was taking a foundation course in art. ‘We were Jam fans, travelling around the country to see them,’ Edgely recalls. ‘I suppose we were mods. Kevin had a mohair suit and winklepickers and I had a lamé suit.’

  With Edgely moving to Kingston for a fine art degree and Haskins’ tour commitments, their relationship fizzled out. Ivo later bumped into her at The Camden Palace; they had a couple of dates, ‘but things didn’t click,’ Ivo says. ‘That influenced my decision to hire her – because we wouldn’t then get involved.’

  Edgely was planning a course in theatre design, but following lunch with Ivo and her flatmate Stella (then Pete Murphy’s girlfriend), she changed her mind. ‘I don’t think Ivo even offered me a job, but just said, What about working with me? He needed help, and didn’t have anyone else.’

  Ivo: ‘I was spending a lot of time in the studio, and physically packing AND unpacking boxes. And occasionally I needed letters typed. I needed an assistant.’

  One of Edgely’s first tasks was to write a press release for Modern English’s Ricochet Days: ‘I didn’t know what press was all about, though my sister had always bought the NME,’ she admits. Slowly, she took on more press duties, as Ivo increasingly felt that Sue Johns, an associate of Chris Carr’s who was handling press for both Beggars Banquet and 4AD, was underachieving. ‘I never got back to doing my own art but I don’t regret what happened,’ Edgely says.

  Initially, she and Ivo shared a desk and chair, ‘which might have something to do with the fact things quickly got sparky between us,’ she says. ‘One day as we were driving, Ivo said, Deb, I have to tell you something, I’m in love with you, let’s go to the mountains in Switzerland. It was a real outpour! We were too busy to go away, but suddenly we were living together. And on a mission with 4AD.’

  Thirty years after Edgely joined 4AD, Vaughan Oliver was able to tell her that he was initially jealous of her presence. ‘Beforehand, it had just been Ivo and I, and Deb took his time and attention. I never quite clicked with her at the time. But I was also in my own world. I just wanted to make the best record sleeves ever.’

  The family atmosphere at 4AD was further underlined by the addition of a new rehearsal studio in the Alma Road basement. ‘[It was] like a youth club for musicians,’ says Mick Conroy. ‘There was no daytime television in those days, or the money to do much, so we’d just hang out in the studio, making noise and talking to others.’

  Modern English needed to rehearse as they’d returned from America with no songs, ‘just bits of music,’ Conroy admits. Their level of success meant the band was prematurely thrown into recording, again with Hugh Jones, who recalls the sessions without much fondness. ‘They’d done something absurd like a hundred shows in eighty-two days. They were better musically this time around but it was a much harder record to make. We stitched bits together and got it organised, but their management was always looking for another “I Melt With You”, so the mood was fraught.’

  It wasn’t just the band’s management. While visiting Warners’ LA office, Perry Watts-Russell overheard a conversation where an executive was suggesting Modern English put ‘I Melt With You’ on their next album as well, ‘so they could have another crack at it,’ he says. The idea was mercifully nixed, and a new single, ‘Chapter 12’, was released instead, a passable facsimile of ‘I Melt With You’ that subsequently ended up on the album Ricochet Days. ‘It was a more produced and thought-through album than After The Snow, and not as raw,’ says Robbie Grey, but in reality, it was a passable facsimile in itself, sounding more forced and less intuitive. If Ivo says he was a fan of the album, it wasn’t enough to prolong his relationship with Modern English.

  Robbie Grey’s lyric for ‘Breaking Away’ had already identified a need for change, and on returning from America, the band’s original core sacked drummer Richard [Brown] and keyboardist Stephen Walker. ‘We’d shifted gears musically and they couldn’t keep up,’ Grey says. A streamlined Modern English had demoed ‘Breaking Away’ as a potential single with a new producer, Alan Shacklock, who had form with the much rockier ‘Welsh U2’ The Alarm. ‘He changed the song completely and turned it into a pastiche of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”,’ says Ivo. ‘It was awful.’

  Grey: ‘We were miffed that Ivo didn’t want to release “Breaking Away”. Sire said it would sign us worldwide, so encouraged by our manager, we told Ivo things had run their course. He didn’t say, please don’t leave!’

  Ivo: ‘Ricochet Days didn’t make any more impact in the UK than After The Snow, and everything with Modern English was focused in America and having hits. Of course things had to develop and grow, but that wasn’t where 4AD was going. It wasn’t a betrayal to let them go. I knew Sire would pick up their option.’

  Grey: ‘Afterwards, I felt like we were people that Ivo used to know. But we were probably an expensive band to have on 4AD. To get on MTV, you needed £20,000 for a video and that was a large outlay for what was still a small independent label. And though people have had hang-ups about 4AD over money, Ivo had been quick to put us on a weekly wage, a hundred quid a week, when we’d started to do well. It had really taken off for us in America so it seemed a natural progression to sign direct to Sire. Our publisher [Beggars Banquet’s sister company Momentum] was pushing for more sales too. I think Ivo thought it wasn’t a bad thing for us to sell lots of records. And for the next two years, we were a very big band in America.’

  Commercial success meant the band had to sacrifice their sanity. ‘We slogged our way across America, without a hit single this time, and got seriously frazzled,’ recalls Mick Conroy. ‘And incredibly poor. We never received royalties from 4AD until the end of the Eighties.’

  Contrary to the behaviour of typical record executives, Ivo had passed on 4AD’s two biggest money-spinners Bauhaus and Modern English. Discussions regarding promo videos, choice of singles and chart strategies were not how he wished to spend his day. That didn’t mean Ivo didn’t try and help his bands do their best, and to have a chance to realise commercial as well as creative ambitions. His attention turned back to Colourbox, though this was going to be a tricky project
as the trio was determined not to play live. ‘I didn’t think we could carry it off,’ Martyn Young admits. ‘Nowadays, people sequence all the music, but at the time, we’d have felt a fraud.’

  Young admits that Colourbox was suffering from songwriter’s block, both in general and to suit Lorita Grahame’s voice. ‘I really like songs, I just don’t think I’m good at it,’ Young shrugs. ‘We were more concerned with production and messing around in the studio, so we began to consider cover versions.’

  After enjoying U-Roy’s lilting ‘Say You’ on one of Ivo’s reggae compilations, Colourbox recorded a version at Palladium for a single, where Jon Turner’s watchful approach allowed Martyn, like Robin Guthrie before him, to gain valuable production experience. This new ‘Say You’, minus fiddly edits, added clarity and a bounce to Colourbox’s rhythmic stash, and was the band’s first UK independent top 10 hit and helped secure a second BBC Radio 1 session for the Kid Jensen evening show that preceded John Peel’s slot.

  The paucity of songwriting was laid bare: all four Jensen session tracks were covers of pop legends, such as Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look Of Love’ and a horrible throwaway version of Dion’s ‘The Wanderer’ sung like a pub entertainer by manager Ray Conroy. By this point, Young admits, he and Ian Robbins were working separately instead of as a team, and when Robbins chose to take a holiday over recording the session, he was out for good.

  As Cocteau Twins had found, a reduced core unit helped to focus creativity. Three months later, the A-side of new seven-inch single showed a change of tack. ‘Punch’ was Colourbox’s first direct, upbeat pop song, though the track only reached 15 in the independent charts; it was as if Colourbox fans – and 4AD collectors – didn’t want anything remotely cheery. There was little to celebrate either in the B-side support: ‘Keep On Pushing’ made another appearance and ‘Shadows In The Room’ was a drum track in search of a song. Altogether, it seemed a waste of Lorita Grahame. The soul/funk root of ‘Punch’ was also spoilt by the kind of production bluster that typified the Eighties, for which Martyn Young blames producer Bob Carter: ‘He wanted to play everything himself, so it wasn’t a nice experience. We didn’t even like what he did and the samples were clichéd. But we had to release it as money had been spent.’