Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  ‘With hindsight, I made a massive mistake not supporting Colourbox over M/A/R/R/S,’ says Ivo. ‘I didn’t know what success would mean – I had no concept of “Pump Up The Volume” selling so many copies, of which A.R. Kane got half of the profits. My sales forecast had been ten thousand! Being friends with Rudy and Alex wasn’t remotely important, but Colourbox and Ray were. Ray called me a cunt, and said I wasn’t supporting them. But then he managed a band that never played live, or did much, and all of a sudden there’s potential huge success.

  ‘If there’s one redeeming feature to all this, it was proving that Rough Trade Distribution could have a number 1 single. It was also a concrete way of saying thank you to [Rough Trade’s] Richard Scott and Geoff Travis for the unbelievable support they had given 4AD, especially early on. Without them, many labels would never have had the opportunity to start or to have the ability to continue.’

  Conroy was followed out the door by A.R. Kane. ‘Things got nasty after Ivo put a contract on the table and said we had to sign,’ says Tambala. ‘Alex signed, but I wanted to read it first, and I found they were trying to cut us out of the deal. My parting conversation with Ivo was him saying that if I didn’t sign, he wouldn’t put A.R. Kane’s next single out. I told him to fuck off and put the phone down – end of our 4AD story. We were taking a risk, but there’s only so much crap you can take. Ivo’s angle was that Colourbox had been on 4AD and in the industry longer than us, and so deserved more than us. I spoke to a lawyer, who spoke to theirs, and a deal was struck where we got five times more in terms of the royalties Ivo was trying to pay us.’

  Ivo: ‘I’m not sure what contract Rudy is referring to. There was already a signed M/A/R/R/S contract for “Pump Up The Volume” and “Anitina” and I certainly didn’t want to work with them again, so I didn’t want a new contract. It made no financial difference to me, or 4th & Broadway in America, whether “Anitina” was on the American version. The lawyers finally agreed how to split the US royalties, with A.R. Kane getting a fifth as there were four versions of “Pump Up The Volume” and one of “Anitina”.’

  Encouraged by Conroy, Colourbox decided that they should also leave 4AD. Conroy played off two major labels, Polygram and EMI: ‘I negotiated one of the best deals I could have got, about two million pounds for M/A/R/R/S and Colourbox. We were still contracted to 4AD, but Ivo wouldn’t let us go for nothing, which felt like blood money. I credit him with being patient with Colourbox but it really soured things.’

  Adding insult to injury, A.R. Kane had put an injunction on Colourbox over the use of the name M/A/R/R/S, and to ensure any version of ‘Pump Up The Volume’ would have ‘Anitina’ on the B-side. ‘Until that was sorted,’ Young says, ‘none of the money from “Pump Up The Volume” could be released. We couldn’t even do remixes as M/A/R/R/S without them. On the publishing side too, they tried to get as much as they could, which hinged on that B-side. So we had to settle with them too.’

  ‘It became all about the money,’ Conroy declares. ‘M/A/R/R/S was outside of Colourbox’s original deal, and we felt it was a collaboration gone too far. A.R. Kane got a £30,000 publishing deal on the strength of that B-side! We looked after Dave Dorrell and CJ Mackintosh too. It felt like we were being royally shafted.’

  ‘If we hadn’t fallen out with everyone, [M/A/R/R/S] would have gone on to do a load more, and that’s sad,’ Tambala concludes. ‘[Subsequent UK number one acts] Bomb The Bass and S-Express came on the tail end of “Pump Up The Volume”, which was miles ahead of them. But they slew the goose that laid the golden egg. It was absolute greed. If they’d really been M/A/R/R/S on their own, why didn’t they make another M/A/R/R/S record? Because Martyn had burnt out.’

  The Young brothers were also legally unable to be M/A/R/R/S without A.R. Kane’s permission. Tambala and Ayuli knew that M/A/R/R/S was dead in the water, and with a publishing deal and pride intact, the duo’s next move was to send new demos to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade, who responded favourably with the offer of an album. ‘After everything that had happened,’ Ivo says, ‘Geoff phoned to say A.R. Kane was calling, and what should he do? Which made me feel even worse not calling Derek Birkett to begin with! I told Geoff to do whatever he wanted. For me, Alex and Rudy’s personalities had got in the way of enjoying the music that they might make.’

  Now all Martyn and Steve Young had to do was sign a deal that Ray Conroy had negotiated. ‘And they could leave as extremely wealthy people,’ says Conroy. ‘But they decided not to. When a massive cheque for M/A/R/R/S finally arrived, Martyn spent it all on a studio, taking over Cocteau Twins’ old studio in Acton after they moved out – where he proceeded to not make another record!’

  ‘Ray’s ambitions were so much greater than either Martyn or Steve’s, which didn’t do them any favours,’ Ivo says. In 1985, he had attended a meeting that Conroy had organised with Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, hoping Island, who owned Colourbox’s publishing, would license them in America. ‘But CBS [now Sony] had wanted to license Colourbox for the world,’ Ivo explains. ‘I told Martyn that I wanted nothing to do with CBS but that Colourbox was free to go. It wasn’t the first time that I’d told them either. Martyn and Steve probably would have enjoyed a large advance that we couldn’t afford, for Colourbox or anyone else, but they were comfortable on 4AD. It hurts that Ray complains that Colourbox was tied up for ever by a 4AD contract. We had done at least two separate one-off contracts to test the waters before they signed anything long term.’

  This was borne out by Martyn Young’s decision to stay with 4AD, ‘even though, in the end,’ he says, ‘we didn’t do any more music. Ivo lived around the corner from me, so we’d see each other occasionally and talk.’

  Ivo managed to coax Young into remixing some tracks for The Wolfgang Press, and he later produced a cover of The Isley Brothers’ soul classic ‘Harvest For The World’ for the Liverpool band The Christians (released on Island) and remixed West African star Mory Kanté’s ‘Yeke Yeke’, but it was a tiny return for someone with the technical skills of the Youngs. But this was his choice. ‘I turned down other things because I didn’t like the offers,’ he recalls. ‘I became disillusioned after “Pump Up The Volume”. It made me question if I ever wanted to do music in the first place. Would I have to go through the same shit again?’

  Ivo might have been asking himself the same question as Young. The aftermath of the M/A/R/R/S debacle, on top of the ongoing tension around Cocteau Twins, was leaving profound and potentially damaging traces. ‘I put a shield around my heart and didn’t let people in because of what happened with friends and relationships that I had valued,’ he admits. ‘Before, I was the good guy in the white hat, and afterwards I was the baddie in the black hat. I never felt different inside because of my motivations, and because people were enjoying the fruits of our labours at 4AD, I couldn’t be all bad. But I felt I was being judged in a different, suspicious manner. It deeply affected me and I see it as the first sign of depression starting to take over. It wasn’t healthy to separate myself from such intense feelings, positive or negative, from that era, but it was easier to push them away.’

  One positive result from the M/A/R/R/S scenario was that the public profile of 4AD was forever removed from the re-peddled cliché of goth, despite NME’s initial, risible review of ‘Pump Up The Volume’ as, ‘more dark offerings from the goth label 4AD’. This was retracted and the record re-reviewed after the mistake was pointed out.

  A second boon was the arrival of Simon Harper, ostensibly to take Ray Conroy’s place, but whose job soon encompassed running 4AD’s international department, liaising with licensees. As Ivo’s friend and confidant, Harper became a much more integrated part of 4AD than Conroy was ever likely to be.

  Harper had worked for Rough Trade Distribution for five years, handling labels such as Mute, Creation and 4AD. ‘Ivo and I had got to know each other pretty well when M/A/R/R/S was all going off, juggling all that stock, and through the injunction,’ recalls Harpe
r. ‘Our relationship blossomed through adversity and hilarity.’

  Ivo: ‘I fell in love with Simon during that awful M/A/R/R/S period! In terms of physically managing our first hit single, he seemed like the only one that understood the kind of pressure I was experiencing, because he was experiencing it himself in terms of getting stock out there, feeding this insane machine. He was a great sounding board. Martin Mills was also solid as a rock.’

  After the storm, came the calm, even if the lull was only to last for one single. Instead of the usual guitar/bass configuration, Brighton’s Frazier Chorus harnessed flutes, clarinets and strings behind singer-songwriter Tim Freeman’s fey, breathy delivery. Fans of Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, they had sent a demo to 4AD. ‘Our wildest dreams of appearing on the label were nothing more than optimistic fantasy,’ says Freeman. ‘So hearing from Ivo was, to put it mildly, unexpected. Chris Bigg had noticed from our demo that we were from Brighton, same as him, and his curiosity led him to play “Sloppy Heart” while Ivo was in the office.’

  ‘Frazier Chorus were old school,’ Ivo says. ‘I liked “Sloppy Heart” very much, and I also chose the two B-sides [‘Typical’ and ‘Storm’]. As a demo, I had played “Sloppy Heart” on a bullet train to Osaka to Robin Guthrie, who said it was a great song, but a pity that The Velvet Underground had already written it! They went into the studio to specifically record the EP knowing there wouldn’t be another record with 4AD, as I didn’t feel quite the same about their other songs. It was clean, tidy and honest on both sides.’

  The folk-pastoral ‘Sloppy Heart’ was as much an aberration – and a commercial contender – in 4AD’s catalogue as ‘Pump Up The Volume’. Likewise, the artwork, a simple design of a woman in a print dress that could have doubled as the cover of a womenswear catalogue. But it wasn’t a hit (neither would Virgin’s marketing budgets get Frazier Chorus’s next six singles any higher than 51 in the UK national chart).

  ‘Sloppy Heart’ was ultimately more memorable as the bridge between 4AD’s most successful single in ‘Pump Up The Volume’ and the band that rocked the label off its comfortable axis even more than M/A/R/R/S: the Pixies, who would have the same effect on the whole of alternative rock – as well as rock mainstream.

  ‘Nineteen eighty-seven was a very good year to arrive at 4AD,’ Simon Harper recalls. ‘Cocteau Twins were established, the label’s profile had risen on the back of M/A/R/R/S, and after Throwing Muses, Pixies exploded very quickly.’

  ‘Name someone who has had more influence over the flow of modern rock – where noise and rhythm meet mystery and beauty – over the last twenty-five years,’ online site BlogTalkRadio asked in 2012. The answer was a man they described as an ‘Alt Rock Demigod’, who has referred to himself over time as Black Francis and Frank Black. He now lives in Los Angeles, but in 1986, he was plain Charles Thompson, born and bred in Boston, Massachusetts.

  ‘I have mostly pleasant memories about 4AD,’ says Thompson. ‘And those that weren’t, time has put them into perspective.’

  Thompson, the main creative force behind Pixies, who adopted the alias of Black Francis in the spirit of punk rock idol Iggy Pop, says his life was changed at the age of six: ‘I heard loud sounds coming from a basement on my street, which turned out to be drums. I was afraid but I knew I wanted to have something to do with that.’ His mother’s folk records (Donovan’s Greatest Hits was a favourite), The Beatles and new wave developed Thompson’s love of song: fed by both noise and melody. Pixies’ unique dynamic range would chop merrily between quiet and loud. The band’s musicianship was equally both electrifyingly taut and gleefully unpolished. ‘I wasn’t the best player but I knew from bands like the Violent Femmes that it wasn’t only about prowess,’ he says. ‘Boston has a huge student population, so there were lots of people about flying their flag of independence.’

  One of them was Joey Santiago, Thompson’s next-door neighbour at Amherst’s University of Massachusetts. Born in Manila, capital of the Philippines, and raised in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Santiago had absorbed his older brother’s Beatles, Velvet Underground and Hendrix records, which chimed with Thompson’s love of melody and noise. ‘Out of boredom,’ recalls Santiago, the pair turned to surf music: ‘It didn’t have any lyrics but it conjured up these images through the song titles, like “Link Wray Rumble” and “Run Chicken Run”.’

  When Thompson returned from six months studying Spanish in Puerto Rico, he persuaded Santiago to start a band. They placed a hilarious classified ad: ‘Band seeks bassist into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul & Mary’.

  Kim Deal would have known both trios – the former hardcore rockers and the latter winsome folkies. Even though she played guitar and had never played bass, Deal still applied for the post, and was the only one to do so. ‘Kim wasn’t just cool and enthusiastic,’ says Santiago, ‘she was perfect because we wanted a female bassist who could sing harmonies.’

  Kim Deal and her twin sister Kelley came from Dayton, Ohio. Kim recalls them, aged four, singing along to their mother’s tape of her singing ‘Second Hand Rose’: ‘Mum sounded like a real hillbilly! Dad had a guitar, a microphone and sheet music, and we soon learnt “King Of The Road”. Later, we started making up our own songs.’

  Kim strummed guitar; Kelley, inspired by Karen Carpenter, played drums. As precocious teens, they’d both experimented with drugs, ‘but then so did everyone else,’ insists Kelley. Legally underage, they’d played covers sets in local bars and truck-stop restaurants. ‘It was great, because the old drunks would buy us sloe gin fizzes,’ remembers Kim. ‘We covered Hank Willlams, Everly Brothers, Delaney and Bonnie, blues songs. But I was scared to death too. It took ages for me to figure out how to sing into a microphone.’

  The sisters’ musical evolution needed outside assistance. ‘Punk rock passed Dayton by,’ says Kim. ‘Still has, I think. But this friend of Kelley’s on the west coast was sending her mix tapes, stuff like Elvis Costello, The Specials, rockabilly.’

  In 1983, Kelley moved to LA to work as a program analyst for Hughes Aircraft while Kim stayed in Dayton, taking cleaning jobs. Two years later, Kim and new husband John Murphy moved to his home town of Boston. While working as a doctor’s receptionist – maybe that’s where she perfected her ebullient charm and Cheshire Cat smile – Deal replied to Thompson and Santiago’s advert. Once on board, she suggested Kelley for the post of drummer. ‘I hadn’t touched drums in ages,’ says Kelley. ‘I flew in and we tried some songs, but I knew I could fake lots of things, just not drums. I think Charles would have dug a girl drummer but Pixies were exactly what they needed to be.’

  Dave Lovering, born in Burlington, Massachusetts and John Murphy’s work mate at a branch of RadioShack electronics stores, got the job instead. Like Throwing Muses’ David Narcizo, Lovering had been a member of his school marching band. He’d studied electronic engineering at Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology, followed by the RadioShack job. The completed band just needed a name. Santiago suggested Pixies – they all enjoyed the idea of being ‘mischievous little elves’, he says. They got to work on Thompson’s songs, as savage and unusual as they were mischievous, and lyrically surreal. ‘I thought we were too strange to sell records,’ Santiago recalls. ‘All I knew was I was having fun, and it was better than school.’

  Pixies started playing around Massachusetts. ‘It wasn’t about big commercial success and mainstream moves, more these scrappy little bands pressing up records in their basement and touring,’ says Thompson. ‘To this day, Pixies aren’t good at the flash.’

  None of Pixies had heard of 4AD, which speaks either of the label’s select appeal or the band’s restricted knowledge. Thompson had been a Birthday Party fan but hadn’t noticed the band’s records were on 4AD, but he was a regular at the local club Spit: ‘It had a goth and a gay night that played that big, booming, British-based stuff, so I would have heard 4AD by osmosis,’ he says. ‘But we did know this hip band, Throwing Muses, and this producer, Gary Smith, who was i
nto them and then us as well. We went on tour, and in Ohio, Tim Anstaett [of Offense Newsletter fame], 4AD fan numero uno, picked us up, and his car licence plate read “4AD”. It was my first realisation that 4AD itself had fans, its own concept and sub-culture.’

  Santiago: ‘Our dream had been to sign to a label overseas because we didn’t want to be seen as a local band. Before we had a manager, we sent a demo to New Rose in France, but they’d rejected us. We were happy when one Boston club advertised us as, “Pixies from England”.’

  Gary Smith introduced Pixies to Ken Goes, who began managing them alongside Throwing Muses. When Ivo visited the latter in Newport, Goes gave him a cassette of seventeen Pixies demos, which Kim says was recorded in a three-day rush, fuelled by nothing more than Jolt Cola.

  Ivo flew to New York: ‘My first memory of Pixies was walking around playing the tape on my Walkman, enjoying Joey’s guitar on “Vamos”, a great, wild sound. But the impact faded over seventeen tracks and some songs weren’t their greatest. On “Here Comes Your Man”, Charles’s voice was almost like Willy DeVille. Plus I was still nervous about getting involved with another band managed by Ken, and an American band, because of the frustration of taking a major like Sire into consideration.’

  Deborah Edgely saw how the 4AD office had a different atmosphere: less precious, more combative. ‘M/A/R/R/S did feel like a sea change, but that was as much to do with the people we were associated with,’ she says. ‘Howard, for example, loved to party, and he was very good at it. He injected oomph into a label that had been fairly backward in looking forward. Ivo was always reticent, but I encouraged him to be more embracing.’