by Martin Aston
Cocteau Twins was the next in line to benefit from 4AD’s increasing presence in the States. Having taken time out to build a recording studio, the trio had recorded an album without any limitation of any kind, except their own exacting standards. There had been time for Elizabeth Fraser to fall pregnant, and for the band to hire its first manager, Raymond Coffer, who had negotiated a new long-term contract with 4AD.
As Ivo has pointed out, if Robin Guthrie had truly felt undermined by 4AD’s ‘conniving and thieving’, Cocteau Twins should never have re-signed a long-term deal with 4AD. Yet the new contract did give the band larger advances and an improved royalty rate.
Coffer was a former chartered accountant with a background in intellectual property law through running a soccer merchandising company. A friend of Bauhaus’ David J, Coffer had entered band management with Love and Rockets and then Xymox. He had been recommended to Cocteau Twins by the band’s American booking agent Marc Geiger after, Guthrie claims, they discovered a £100,000 bill (the details are not divulged) that he manages to blame on 4AD. ‘They allowed us to accrue it without any help in terms of management or accountancy,’ he says.
When Cocteau Twins played Amsterdam in 1986, Guthrie had contacted Xymox’s Ronny Moorings, less out of friendship than necessity. According to Moorings, ‘Robin needed some “energy powder”.’ He assumed that, because Moorings lived in Amsterdam, he’d know where to get it. ‘And indeed, I did,’ he says. ‘Before their soundcheck, Robin asked all sorts of questions about Raymond. He was interested in getting management as he did not get along with Ivo anymore. I heard him shout at Ivo on the phone a few times and he seemed very agitated.’
The punk rocker in Guthrie had initially baulked at the idea of Coffer. ‘I took one look at him and thought, “No fucking way, he’s from another planet”. But a real businessman is what we needed. He said, “You know why you’re in trouble; look at the difference between what your record company is making and what they’re giving you. You can do so much better.” Ivo would be the first to admit he wasn’t much of a businessman, and he should have had someone else look after our business. We couldn’t articulate what we needed in business anyway.’
Cocteau Twins had spent seven years without a manager. ‘You wonder now how that’s possible,’ says Simon Raymonde. Ivo’s experience of managers meant that he had never encouraged artists to find one, finding that they got in the way, especially the likes of Coffer. ‘Raymond wasn’t someone who expressed a musical opinion or had any musical preferences,’ Ivo claims. ‘He was hired to be a businessman.’
Cocteau Twins had earned money; that much was clear from the band’s brand new twenty-four-track studio, a huge step up for their operations. ‘Any money we got, we spent on equipment, never on ourselves, so we could make better records,’ says Raymonde. Whether from the band or his other production work, Guthrie was also able to fund an increasingly expensive cocaine habit. Brimming with confidence from both sources, he had assembled a new album, Blue Bell Knoll, Cocteau Twins’ first full band album since Treasure three years earlier, that showed another creative leap: more relaxed, subtle, grown up. It was obvious from the first few notes of the opening title track, with a harpsichord or synth equivalent behind Elizabeth Fraser’s simmering glossolalia, a lattice of tiny details over two minutes and twenty seconds that suddenly unfurled into a hair-raising burst of colour.
‘Blue Bell Knoll,’ Guthrie says, ‘is where things finally gelled with Simon.’ The bassist puts this down to the fact he was also playing more piano, ‘and being more confident in the band, because I’d been around longer’.
Ivo also saw a marked change in Fraser. ‘It’s got her best singing since she discovered her higher range,’ he says. ‘“Carolyn’s Fingers” is absolutely beautiful, and still gives me the shivers.’ Curiously, the track wasn’t released as a single in the UK, only by Capitol in the US, with a video that showcased Fraser’s bird-like demeanour, head bobbing and eyes darting, looking anywhere except into the camera as her wondrous vocal escaped from her mouth.
‘Cico Buff’ – released as a US-only promo single with an accompanying video – was more evidence of a newfound accord, applying some of the restraint imbibed from Victorialand and The Moon And The Melodies to the baroque architecture of Treasure. Guthrie was right: as his personal life got more ragged, so the music got calmer. ‘Suckling The Mender’ and ‘Spooning Good Singing Gum’ were an altogether different Cocteaus, slim and dreamy, and on ‘For Phoebe Still A Baby’, the slow lullaby could have been written for the couple’s unborn child. Enchanting melodies and elaborate titles (‘A Kissed Out Red Floatboat’, ‘Ella Megalast Burls Forever’) tumbled out.
With a second five-album contract in hand, Coffer had taken Blue Bell Knoll around the US majors and Ivo and Martin Mills negotiated a licensing deal with EMI subsidiary offshoot Capitol. The label was resolutely mainstream – its idea of alternative was Duran Duran and The Motels. But they’d signed Canadian electronic act Skinny Puppy and there was a new A&R team, including Claudia Stanton. ‘She did the right thing by wooing Robin and Liz,’ says Ivo. ‘She hung out with them in England, bought them cuddly toys and befriended them.’
One problem with licensing deals was the risk of losing control, over artwork, promotions material, and the needs of the artists. With The Wolfgang Press, Ultra Vivid Scene and Pixies, Ivo had begun dealing with people working for independent labels that should understand what he was looking for, but Cocteau Twins involved one of the majors. At least Ivo had someone who would represent him and his exacting standards: 4AD’s first US employee on the payroll, Sheri Hood.
Promoting not just 4AD releases at press and radio for Thirsty Ear, Hood had become frustrated with aspects of the job. ‘I’d gotten into trouble for being too honest with some of the major labels,’ she says. ‘I was always on the artist’s side.’ Hood had decided to leave, and, she says, ‘Ivo’s response was that 4AD would leave too. I was stunned that someone would take a chance on me just because I was excited about music.’
Hood now lives in Portland where she makes wine, comfortably removed from the music industry that initially enthralled and eventually infuriated her. It’s clear why Ivo was so supportive of Hood and wanted her input. ‘Ivo and I are very different people in many ways but we share an affinity with being alone, and not dealing with all the bullshit,’ she says. ‘Dealing with major labels meant this huge disconnect, and it could be a waste of time and energy, knowing that this was the real world.’
Hood’s involvement with 4AD began when her parents returned from London with a pair of Doctor Marten boots and the first Dead Can Dance album for her. ‘I wasn’t a true 4AD fanatic but I loved the label for its sense of purity and truth. Working with Ivo taught me a work and life ethic, and I still believe art is for art’s sake, and though it’s beautiful when it happens, no one should expect to make money from it.’
Hood was given a desk in Rough Trade’s New York office before progressing to a 4AD cubbyhole of her own, single-handedly running promotions, retail and video for the label, beginning with Come On Pilgrim. With Dead Can Dance finally touring the States in 1987 and the various licensing deals in place, Hood found herself on a mission. ‘I had to explain to people what 4AD was about, and I was a little overzealous about how particular we would still be with licensees,’ she says. ‘Major labels were used to running with stuff, but we wanted to stay involved with marketing and promotion and presentation, like if the licensee wanted to make a Frisbee with the artist’s name on it. We might have quelled some enthusiasm, but we needed to keep the 4AD aesthetic, to make people understand why it was special, and worth the extra effort to run things by us. And that was hard. Toes were stepped on.’
Robin Guthrie would have admired Hood’s principled stand, being himself more than happy to step on toes. With the exquisite creation that was Blue Bell Knoll as the bone of contention, Guthrie had won his ongoing tussle with Oliver over the artwork, insisting that he use Juergen
Teller’s photo of a hand of the band’s friend Carolyn (hence ‘Carolyn’s Fingers’). Not even Chris Bigg was involved, with Oliver handing over the design to Paul West, like Bigg another former student with a dissertation on sleeve design. The vinyl version of Blue Bell Knoll was a special three-part gatefold sleeve, ‘which we’d never allowed anyone to do before because it was so very 1970s,’ says Ivo (something that hadn’t stopped him making Filigree & Shadow a double album). ‘But we didn’t want to stop Robin doing stuff. We were bending over backwards to please him. Robin was going through a very difficult stage and was very difficult to deal with. The mood had changed.’
After all that had gone on, Ivo says that he still hadn’t realised the full extent of Guthrie’s unhappiness, as it was never expressed to him: ‘I knew from the first time that I laid eyes on him, sitting on the pavement outside the tube station, that this quick-witted man had some chips on his shoulder. But Robin was amusing too, and none of us took the other side of him seriously as it was always balanced with something tender and real. I feel guilty now at having enabled him to get away with that meanness, because as long as it wasn’t directed at me, or those close to me, nothing was said. It now appears that he was saying really cruel things about me after all.’
Having the band’s finances on a more secure and rewarding level, Guthrie simply transferred his aggression to the fact that Ivo was now ignoring Cocteau Twins in preference to Pixies. Never mind that the Cocteaus had taken 1987 off and disappeared. But all the money in the world wasn’t going to cure Guthrie’s self-esteem issues – now with added feelings of abandonment to complicate matters. Raymond Coffer’s role thus came into sharper focus.
Simon Raymonde: ‘My dad was to die in 1990 and Robin’s had when Robin was fifteen, and Liz’s at some point in the Eighties. So we were all yearning for a father figure. We had all looked up to Ivo – people would call him Uncle Ivo, which I now get with my bands. What appealed about Raymond was he was cuddly, and wise, very much like an uncle, and understanding about all the issues. He loved our music, and he liked us. And he was totally apart from the music scene, so he could be objective. But Raymond set the cat among the pigeons, as he and Ivo didn’t see eye to eye at all.’
‘Maybe I was too busy running a record company to hang out with them socially,’ Ivo concedes. ‘I was in the studio, and going to America. It could be argued that, with the Cocteaus having been the absolute centre of attention, there was now another band that, if you thought of 4AD, you now thought of Pixies in place of them. It happened so damn quickly. But the Cocteaus did feel unloved, and less of a priority.’
‘By Blue Bell Knoll, the rot had set in, because Ivo stopped looking after us,’ Guthrie claims. ‘We weren’t the first band to feel it; you’re darlings for a while, and then that goes. But we were very aware of not being supported, of being taken for granted, of being a cash cow. Our ambitions were on a different page to Ivo, who had ambitions for 4AD. He was looking at other labels – Rough Trade had The Smiths, Factory had New Order, Mute had Depeche Mode, and he wanted similar success. He had to find money-makers for his label. His focus moved away on to something more malleable with overseas bands. Before, we’d been welcomed in the office, but then we’d turn up, to be told that people were busy. The respect we once had went out the window.’
Guthrie says he was angered by what he saw as The Wolfgang Press draining the coffers. He claims 4AD never advertised Blue Bell Knoll because Ivo felt that the album would sell anyway. ‘Yet other bands got full-page ads,’ he complains. ‘4AD put so much money behind Pixies, and poured stupid amounts into The Wolfgang Press, fifty or sixty thousand pounds, to make an album, while we weren’t getting anything like that because we’d made ourselves as self-sufficient as possible. In any case, Mick Allen’s attitude, always angry at everything, would have stopped them from having hits.’
Simon Raymonde took a contrary position. In his eyes, 4AD’s American contingent ‘was a breath of fresh air, because it got 4AD away from the niche that they’d got stuck in’.
At least the two bands respected one other. Charles Thompson liked the ‘mystery’ of Cocteau Twins. Guthrie says he liked Pixies’ energy. ‘But not,’ he adds, ‘their stop-start weirdness. Lovely people, though!’
Charles Thompson had an experience of what he calls ‘the first hint of darkness in this whole record business’ at a dinner attended by Pixies, Cocteau Twins and 4AD’s top brass. ‘Ivo was at one end of the table and Robin at the other. Ivo said something about money and Robin immediately followed up with some snide comment that was obviously aimed at Ivo, that the rest of us didn’t understand, that implied he wasn’t getting what he was due. Ivo gracefully didn’t rise to the bait. It didn’t make me feel paranoid; I think I thought that there was a rosy side to all this and we also felt in good hands with our accountant and manager.
‘But I realised this happy 4AD family was not so happy. But to be fair to 4AD, as I found out, they were a lot better than other labels in that department. They weren’t perfect, but no one was.’
Tanya Donelly had realised much the same. ‘I’d thought, what an amazing, big happy family we’d fallen into. A year later, what a big dysfunctional family we’d fallen into … what a bunch of hothouse flowers! I’m sure we all acted like divas. It was a complicated structure, being in a band, working with a label, all sharing a love of music, with fragile trusts. It’s quite a lot to navigate emotionally. Every band I’ve ever been part of involved siblings, and families, which sets an atmosphere.’
Without tension, argument and axes to grind, with no issues of dependency, abandonment or addiction, Dead Can Dance had made similar headway to Cocteau Twins; and they had continued to thrive creatively even when Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard’s rocky domestic scenario threatened to capsize everything they had.
Perry had also built a home studio, funded by a £10,000 advance from 4AD to record their fourth album. Royalties had started to arrive, enabling regular trips to the supermarket – ‘still on our bikes, though,’ Perry smiles. If London was opening up to the duo, new influences from Europe continued to seep in, this time mostly indigenous folk music from Hungary and Ireland. Gerrard continued her open-throated odyssey, proudly leading off the new album The Serpent’s Egg with the spectacular ‘The Host Of The Seraphim’. ‘That’s my favourite ever piece that Lisa sang,’ says Ivo. ‘And the album as a whole was wonderful. Maybe it was down to the balance between Lisa and Brendan.’
Gerrard’s progress slightly tipped the balance on The Serpent’s Egg. ‘Song Of Sophia’ was another Bulgarian-influenced epic, and her take on Hungarian folk lament ‘The Writing On My Father’s Hand’ even had decipherable lyrics. Perry delivered two of his strongest ballads, ‘Severance’ and the processional ‘Ulysses’. It was an epic way to round off 1988, which Ivo cites as his favourite single year of 4AD releases.
There was one crowning glory to come: Pixies’ Surfer Rosa was voted album of the year by the writers of Melody Maker and Sounds. NME, which had awarded the album nine and a half out of ten at the time, put it at number 10 in its annual list, with rap giants Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions … on top. Both albums are now recognised as being seminal influences on artists and audiences alike; in Pixies’ case, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was paying close attention, as was a teenage Polly Jean Harvey, to name but two. In America, Spin named Pixies the magazine’s musicians of the year.
Both the title and the subject matter of the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke – which followed US hardcore band Sonic Youth on tour with its various grungy disciples such as Nirvana – would come from an American perspective: Britain had succumbed to punk a full fourteen years earlier. But although it would be Sonic Youth that encouraged Nirvana to sign to Geffen, Pixies would more closely influence the sound of Nirvana’s Nevermind, seeding the revolution in the States from Pixies’ adopted base in south London. By the end of 1988, punk and new wave had already mostly been and gone in Britain, to be repla
ced by a sprawling hybrid of influences, such as Sixties pop, Eighties dance and the new offspring of Robin Guthrie, making beautiful noise, such as the newly fêted My Bloody Valentine.
The scene in both countries echoed those of the Sixties, when artists were unafraid to strike out in any direction. Having admired Elektra Records’ unique imagination and diversity, Ivo and 4AD had finally arrived at much the same place – and they had Vaughan Oliver’s bold tendencies as well. M/A/R/R/S may have provided a momentary crisis, but it had been successfully countered by Pixies’ runaway success.
* Only Throwing Muses’ ‘Mania’ and a new Pixies song, ‘Hey’, were subsequently released, on a seven-inch flexi given away with the weekly Sounds magazine.
† When I interviewed The Sundays in 1990 after the release of their debut album Reading, Writing And Arithmetic, the band denied they were opposed to signing to 4AD, only that they were concerned that 4AD had Pixies. ‘One Little Indian were interested too,’ said David Gavurin. ‘We couldn’t make our minds up. It’s hard without hindsight. It partly helped that Rough Trade were nearer to where we lived, down the road.’
‡ Coincidentally, at the same time Kurt Ralske signed to 4AD The Only Ones guitarist John Perry approached Ivo on his and singer/songwriter Peter Perrett’s behalf. ‘I was a huge The Only Ones fan,’ Ivo recalls. ‘John was trying to get things going for them and was really enthusiastic. I financed some demos but they just managed to add a bit to two songs already demoed and roughly sketch a couple more. It was clearly going to be a long road with no guarantee that anything would get finished. It was such a shame because Peter seemed very sweet but very lost. He had a childlike look in his eyes, just like Lee Perry had had.’