Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  Oliver says he had to be careful about imposing himself. ‘Their [a band’s] work was the centre of it, so you didn’t want to take a line of conversation outside of what they were doing. It’s more the ideas of their work, in the lyrics and music. If I did bring my influences, it was intuitive. Photographers would show me their work but I might wait two years until a piece of music came in that suited a particular photo. If anything, my skill was about putting the right photograph with music, and then I would put the commission into the hands of the photographer, to explore whatever they were into at the time, and I wouldn’t instruct them. That’s an unusual way of art directing.’

  In general, so was the idea of an in-house designer, with only Factory and ECM having the same arrangement. (In the 1950s, Blue Note mostly used artist Reid Miles, but others too, including an as-yet undiscovered Andy Warhol. In German jazz label ECM’s case, the artists were predominantly instrumentalists who didn’t have the same hang-ups about profile.) Oliver concedes that the artist’s identity could be subsumed by that of 4AD, or as BBC TV’s youth culture show Rapido put it, ‘be absorbed into a unified 4AD graphic mush’.

  Robin Guthrie was a prime critic of that approach, and of what he read as Oliver’s arrogance. He describes the way the designer treated Dif Juz’s Extractions as ‘abominable’, adding, ‘Dave Curtis did a beautiful sculpture, like a rock face, with gold leaf inside and the letters Dif Juz to look like nuggets. Instead of taking the picture of the actual work, Vaughan shot the artwork and included the baseboard. The band hated it, but their opinion wasn’t respected even though Dave knew a lot about art.’

  Oliver says that if there was some shared insight into the creative process, some knowledge of art theory or history, the collaboration could be very productive. Xymox’s Anka Wolbert, for example, had worked in design and screen-printing and she had supplied images and ideas. A further discussion with Oliver had led to a screenprint of caged puppets by Oliver’s former tutor Terry Dowling for the cover of Clan Of Xymox. Oliver only really had problems when the likes of Brendan Perry and Mick Allen resisted collaboration and then supplied sub-standard work. For example, he calls The Wolfgang Press sleeves of the mid-Eighties, ‘a huge disappointment’. ‘Perry had learnt stuff himself, but had no context, Oliver says. ‘Education in a real way gives you context.’

  Perhaps Oliver wasn’t free of blame. In the 1985 BBC TV documentary 23 Envelope Presents, Oliver was asked why the band wasn’t happy: ‘Graphic design is about communication and we’re not graphic designers, so we aren’t very good at communication,’ he replied.

  Perhaps that was Guthrie’s complaint – that Oliver saw himself as an artist too. He and Oliver certainly butted heads over Cocteau Twins artwork. ‘The hoops that we had to jump through to get where we did with Robin,’ says Oliver. ‘He’d say, “No, that’s not us”, but he’d never offer a positive alternative. All we wanted to do was reflect their music.’ One Oliver concept that Guthrie did adore was for Aikea-Guinea. The piece of Japanese rag paper screenprinted with a gold font in a grey box was inspired by the Chanel perfume logo, the colours purposely unaligned with the PMT camera to give added texture and relief.

  But when Oliver chose an image by British photographer Simon Larbalestier for the cover of Come On Pilgrim, it felt like another leap of imagination, just like Pixies music. It mirrored a leap from Grierson’s expanding homage to Tarkovsky’s Stalker to David Lynch’s more brutal Eraserhead. Oliver admits that, by this point in 23 Envelope’s collaborative venture, he was feeling restricted by Grierson: ‘His working methods, his going back and forth. At times, I felt the relationship was stifling, like how many more times can you go back to a pool of water? And Nigel was becoming increasingly frustrated with me. He wondered why I was leading things.’

  The answer, says Oliver, was that he was 4AD staff and Grierson was freelance. ‘Nigel would say, “Why are bands always coming to you?” Because that was my job and the office was a meeting place for bands. Nigel was still studying and, anyway, he didn’t want to be employed. But he wanted to be equal, which I thought we were, to a degree. For example, he would art direct projects like This Mortal Coil. In the beginning, we’d hidden behind the 23 Envelope name that had blurred the boundaries of our disciplines, but over time, Nigel wanted more credit. At the same time, it was a huge relief to work with different photographers.’

  Grierson: ‘There was a power struggle between us. I started asking for credit on some of the photos, which I didn’t see any issue with, as in, “Design by Vaughan Oliver, photography by Nigel Grierson”. It was a reaction to Vaughan manipulating the situation to suit himself. He was in the 4AD office taking phone calls that concerned both of us, including commissions outside of 4AD. If it was to do with design, he’d do it himself, and if photography, he’d do it with me, so everything I did had him involved. Vaughan was always in more of a position of power.’

  This was also the period that Chris Bigg became a full-time member of staff at 4AD. ‘I was incredibly fortunate to work with Chris,’ says Oliver. ‘He’d confirm my ideas and finish my sentences. He didn’t ask many questions of me but he confirmed where we wanted to go. He enhanced my confidence. He also brought something wonderful and personable to the design table, which enhanced our work together. It was a different kind of energy, a neurotic approach to typography, a very clean and lyrical approach to his calligraphy. And in terms of how he talked to bands, and got information out of them. He had a different way of working than me; he’s a selfless character that allows people to come towards him and give them space, and I learnt a lot from that, in life as well as work.’

  It surely was not a coincidence that Bigg’s arrival clashed with the breakdown of communication within 23 Envelope, a relationship summed up by a photo of Oliver and Grierson wearing the same outsized hat. ‘They were the funniest couple of people, like a precursor to [comedians] Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer,’ says Bigg. ‘But I never got to the bottom of what went on between them, and I was with Vaughan 24 hours a day for all those years. Vaughan has a big ego, Nigel too, though his was more unusual and self-destructive.’

  Grierson maintains that the fall-out had begun once he’d completed the Lonely Is An Eyesore assignment and started shooting videos for bands outside of 4AD. ‘Vaughan said something about keeping the 23 Envelope name for projects he’d do with other people, such as, “sleeve by 23 Envelope and photo by Simon Larbalestier”, which didn’t seem right. Vaughan didn’t like the idea of using a different name, so the vibe was maybe that we shouldn’t work together, which we didn’t, for about a year.’

  The pair did collaborate on David Sylvian’s album Secrets Of The Beehive, released by Virgin Records in October 1987. But Grierson was conspicuously absent from 4AD artwork. Oliver himself went freelance at the end of 1987. ‘I’d asked Ivo if I could become a director of 4AD, as I was so much a part of everything. But neither Ivo nor Martin went for it; they said that a director had to put money into the label, which I didn’t have.’

  Ivo doesn’t recall this request or suggesting that Oliver needed to inject funds: ‘I thought Vaughan just wanted to become part-owner, which was not a decision that I could make alone. For years after, at the end of a night, the subject, and his disappointment in me, would inevitably reappear.’

  Oliver: ‘Ivo said he’d give me freelance status and I’d be kept on a nice, fancy retainer at 4AD, and I could do outside work using the facilities of the office, which was a fantastic deal. It suited me financially and creatively.’

  In 1985, the BBC documentary 23 Envelope Presents had talked up the collaborative spirit of the venture. By 1989, a four-minute feature by Rapido on Oliver didn’t even mention Grierson’s former contributions; neither would SNUB TV’s piece in 1990, when Oliver staged his first exhibition. In 1987, 23 Envelope was quietly retired, and Oliver’s new enterprise was given the more personal title of v23.

  However, as Bigg points out, the tension surrounding the art department didn’t e
nd there. ‘Ivo’s big beef with Vaughan was wondering why something he was working on was late, and blaming his freelance work,’ says Bigg. For all the freedom that Oliver had enjoyed, the art of business began to increasingly interfere in the business of art.

  chapter 12 – 1988

  With Your Feet in the Air and Your Head on the Ground

  (CAD801–CAD810)

  Vaughan Oliver’s newly liberated freelance status was temporarily expanded thanks to the short joint European tour of Throwing Muses and The Wolfgang Press where he projected slides behind the bands on stage. 4AD’s newest recruit Simon Harper came along, driving them in Ivo’s old BMW.

  4AD’s European trip briefly extended to the east for the second licensed volume of Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares. ‘It wasn’t quite as beautiful as the first,’ Ivo contends. ‘I turned down volume three because it was the scraps, but it got licensed [to Warners] and the name still lives on.’

  However, in 1988 4AD was less about the ecstatic aura of old rural Bulgaria and more about the ecstatic buzz of modern urban America. The double whammy of having Throwing Muses and Pixies on the label was a thrilling way to kickstart a closer relationship with the States, and a side effect was that it encouraged more demos to be sent from across the Atlantic. To celebrate the union, Throwing Muses’ second album, House Tornado, and Pixies’ debut album, Surfer Rosa, were released on the same day: 21 March.

  In their continuing search for an honest reflection of their sound, the Muses had turned to Doghouse Cassette and Purple Tapes producer Gary Smith: ‘We should have worked with him all along,’ reckons Kristin Hersh. David Narcizo remembers how Smith raised their comfort and confidence levels: ‘Gary made us feel part of the process. We still felt we didn’t truly capture our ideas until later, but the songs survived.’

  ‘With tracks like “Colder” and “River” … House Tornado was a great album,’ says Ivo. The title was Hersh’s acknowledgement of the contradictions of domesticity, a rare feminist statement for the label even if the lyrics weren’t recognisably political. Sonically, the album was more indicative of the band’s energy than The Fat Skier, denser and more insular than Throwing Muses but equally electrifying. The band also made peace with their artwork. Sire’s under-designed choice of cover featured a black-and-white band photo with album and band name in red type. Vaughan Oliver was still determined to portray some representation of the music that wasn’t like the abstract paint splotches (by Hersh’s dad Dude) reconstructed as a child-like scribble on The Fat Skier cover. ‘Finally,’ says Narcizo, ‘Vaughan said he’d found us the perfect person, who was Shinro Ohtake.’ The young Japanese artist’s multi-coloured scrapbooks of drawings and found images fused the surreal with the all too real, the twin properties of Hersh’s songs.

  This negotiated arrangement was the opposite of Pixies’ relationship to artwork; they were simply intrigued to see what Oliver would conceive next. For a singer-songwriter, Charles Thomspon was unusually open to suggestion: the suggestion of a producer for Surfer Rosa even came via Colin Wallace, 4AD’s new warehouse manager.

  Wallace had progressed from Cocteau Twins’ driver to driver-for-hire for any 4AD artist in need. When he was busted for possession of hashish while helping Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser move house, he decided he needed more stability and accepted Ivo’s offer to run the warehouse. He joined just before ‘Pump Up The Volume’ had exploded, a real test of his abilities that he passed with flying colours. He settled down, taking on the additional role of casually dealing drugs to interested parties at work when the need arose. One of Wallace’s favourite bands was Big Black, the pummelling hardcore trio fronted by the uncompromising, freely argumentative bassist-vocalist Steve Albini: ‘I loved Steve’s production sound,’ says Wallace. ‘I don’t know why I thought it would work with Pixies.’

  The band, and Ivo, agreed, and Albini and Pixies were in Boston’s Q Division studio by December 1987. Albini reported that they’d finished the album in a week but used up their allotted booking time to see what else might happen. Albini’s trademark anti-production style – he insisted on being credited as ‘recorded by’ in the style of an engineer – nevertheless gave Pixies a wicked, heavyweight bottom end for extra brunt, which gave songs such as ‘Where Is My Mind?’ and ‘Cactus’ the feeling of a juggernaut.

  Ivo’s first reaction to Surfer Rosa was that it sounded ‘incredibly raw’. The album also didn’t sound like any other American rock band, due to Pixies’ meld of offbeat influences and the way Albini had recorded them. Thompson’s innate sense of musical drama was heightened by a fascination with internal dysfunction: song titles included ‘Break My Body’ and ‘Broken Face’, two of the four songs the band had revamped from The Purple Tape alongside ‘I’m Amazed’ and a second stab at Purple Tape cut ‘Vamos’ after the Come On Pilgrim version, with Thompson regaling in both Spanish and English. ‘Vamos’ was Joey Santiago’s showpiece, with dizzying runs and tyre-squealing turns.

  If Kim Deal’s bass played the album’s anchoring role, her lead vocal on ‘Gigantic’ helped transform it into the album’s most euphoric turn. Deal’s precocious delivery made the most of Thompson’s ode to voyeurism and sexual prowess, a mood that Oliver’s cover for Surfer Rosa made explicit – a Simon Larbalestier photo of a topless flamenco dancer posing next to a crucifix. The figure was Oliver’s idea – ‘it’s about debasing a Spanish tradition in the flamenco,’ he says – with Larbalestier adding the cross. Deal initially didn’t like the bared breasts on show, thinking it encouraged people to sexualise her own role in the band, but the image was quintessential Pixies: lustful, provocative and subversive. Thompson’s parents were, after all, committed Pentecostal churchgoers.

  It turned out that Albini wasn’t as on side as people might have thought. He described Surfer Rosa to Forced Exposure magazine in 1991 as, ‘patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rocks’. About Pixies, he said, ‘Their willingness to be “guided” by their manager, their record company and their producers is unparalleled. Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings.’

  ‘If a band was desperate to be successful,’ Ivo retorts, ‘it wouldn’t be an obvious choice to work with Albini to make your debut album.’ Albini later apologised for his comments. Ivo, however, was spared his savagery; Albini thought 4AD’s boss was ‘a good guy’ who had Pixies’ ‘best interests at heart’.

  Ivo may have conceived the title Come On Pilgrim, and he compiled the track listing for both albums, but Surfer Rosa was Thompson’s title (from his lyric to ‘Oh My Golly!’: ‘besando chichando con surfer rosa’, which translates as, ‘kissing, fucking with surfer rosa’). ‘Ivo’s suggestions and Vaughan’s artwork, no problem, it was all coming from a good place,’ says Thompson. ‘It wasn’t that we couldn’t form our own opinions or that we didn’t care or we were scared of disagreement. We just trusted 4AD.’ End of controversy.

  Surfer Rosa would spend sixty weeks in the UK independent charts, though it only peaked at number 2 even when Pixies joined Throwing Muses for a UK and European tour in May. ‘That was the most exciting time to be working at 4AD,’ Ivo recalls. ‘The Muses were at their musical peak, just phenomenal every night I saw them, likewise Pixies. As mental as audiences were for Pixies, the Muses rose to the challenge. The audiences sang along to both bands’ songs. It was both incredible and intimate.’

  Deborah Edgely’s abiding memory is of Throwing Muses: ‘Their fingers bleeding from playing their guitars so busily and passionately, this noise coming out of these little girls, Leslie in all her glory and beauty, dripping with rhythm, and Dave, the drummer boy. The venue in Birmingham was this little, low-slung Sixties disco, which had a stage riser, and when Pixies played, the place went absolutely mental, and the riser came to pieces. Dave Narcizo was hanging off the edge of it, trying to stop Dave Lovering’s drums from slipping between the gaps, and then they swapped when the Muses played.’
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  The band’s shared memory is of one tour bus – chaperoned by 4AD’s resident tour-managing couple Chaz and Shirley Banks – having the atmosphere of kids on a summer holiday, except that when they got into town, there would be screaming, capacity crowds to greet them. Santiago recalls getting ‘shitfaced’ in Frankfurt and being chased around a lamppost – for reasons unknown – by an incensed fan. In Greece, he handed out Pixies T-shirts to anyone within sight. ‘But we were the only ones drinking,’ he notes. ‘The Muses kept it straight. They were intellectuals. Well, they read books.’

  Throwing Muses weren’t party animals, but the band’s lack of hi-jinks had more underlying reasons. As the more established band, they’d begun the tour as headliners, but their complex mosaic of songs was less conducive to crowd pogoing than Pixies’ boundless rock’n’roll; subsequent record sales and crowd reactions meant that, as the tour continued across Europe, it made sense for Pixies to headline instead.

  ‘The tour was awesome and also complicated,’ says Narcizo. ‘We all got along really well, and shared a cornucopia of experiences. Though we could play up the loud side of ourselves, we were different to Pixies and not everyone appreciated that. I honestly didn’t have a problem with Pixies headlining, but it was awkward at times, not between bands but within our band. The Muses was Kristin’s baby and she struggled with it.’

  Hersh remembers things differently: ‘It’s true that to follow Pixies, it’s hard for audiences to get down and listen to subtleties when they want to crash some more. But it was such a great high to see a band that you love before you play yourself. We were tiny, goofy babies who’d sing folk songs in the van about being far away from home. My big problem was that being away from my baby tore me up. Charles was a great friend then. We’d walk in botanical gardens and he’d let me be sad where I had to be happy for everyone else. That Pixies got more attention than us was actually a relief. It meant I had the afternoon off or had more time for my songs. Pixies were driven and ambitious; they wanted to be rock stars. I guess Tanya was too, though I didn’t know it at the time.’