by Martin Aston
Best also recalls Kristin Hersh, ‘very unhappy, in bits, crying after an interview’. But the most searing memory of his tenure at 4AD was of a Cocteau Twins press trip, where Melody Maker had flown to Las Vegas to write a cover story. ‘Robin came over and said, “What are you doing here, to do press? What fucking press? No one told me”, and walked off. Liz said, “I can’t talk to him, you have to”. Their manager wasn’t around either. Robin then agreed to do the interview after the show. Well, Robin hated the show and then said he wouldn’t do it. At 1am, he finally said, “I’ll do it if you give me $200”, so I did – we’d spent thousands so far anyway! Robin was such a difficult client. He could be affable, and funny, but also bitingly harsh.’
It was another press interview that finally forced Ivo’s hand, even though the Cocteau Twins’ contract stipulated that the band owed 4AD three more albums. ‘Everybody had seen Robin rip someone to shreds with words,’ Ivo recalls. ‘He didn’t mention Deborah by name, but his comment in an interview was obviously about her, and it was just unacceptable.’
A meeting was quickly called at 4AD’s lawyers between Martin Mills, Raymond Coffer and Ivo, who told the Cocteaus’ manager of his decision. ‘I can still see Coffer trying to stop himself from smiling,’ Ivo grimaces, ‘because he knew he could now go and get a load of money off a major label for the band.’
Simon Harper: ‘Friendship-versus-work can be a cloudy entity, and Ivo and Cocteau Twins’ personal and business relationship suffered. With all fairness to Ray Coffer, he tried to make the best of a bad lot. But it was an ironic own goal to hire Ray, who totally misunderstood the relationship between Ivo and Cocteau Twins and their true personalities, and he furthered the band’s perceived feeling of alienation, in part due to the fact that he’d barrel into meetings with an appallingly misguided sense of optimism about what he’d get his artists to do, regarding touring and promotion. He was trying to twist their arms into doing what he wanted them to do and not asking what they wanted.’
Guthrie: ‘On many occasions, Ivo made the right call, but he made a bad call on letting us go. We could have gone on indefinitely if he’d approached things differently. But he was so uninterested in us by then. We’d been so close before. We’d go on holiday together, to shows, we lived with him for months, and he let that all go because he got into something else.’
Guthrie also insists that denying v23 the chance to design the Heaven Or Las Vegas cover (Paul West again took over) contributed to the problem. ‘That was wrong in Ivo’s eyes. That was me undermining his label. I know others didn’t use Vaughan but they hadn’t been mentored like we had. I think Ivo had given us so much that we had a sort of debt to him. As we slowly, but surely, grew in confidence and focus, he moved on to the next people he could play God with.’
One step removed, Simon Harper could see the problem: ‘It’s going to be tricky when a label is presented with young American bands who are so excited to be in Europe, and so optimistic with what they can achieve, to play music and be in such a lucky position. If I were a British band, I’d feel confused and possibly hurt, and scratch my head – are we doing something wrong, does the label not care? A huge factor was that Robin was a drug addict, and with that comes the consequences of addiction.’
‘When I heard they’d parted company with 4AD, I was so shocked,’ says Colin Wallace. ‘Ivo and Robin weren’t even talking by then. Maybe both sides were as stubborn as the other.’
In November, Cocteau Twins were on tour, and Ivo decided he would attend the London show at The Town & Country Club; after all, he still loved the band’s music and felt a deep attachment. ‘Over the years,’ he recalls, ‘there’d been a gaggle of extraordinarily dedicated Cocteaus fans who attended every gig. At the Town & Country, I was approached by a pair of them, who said, “Hi, Ivo, how are you, how are Robin and Liz, how’s Lucy?” And then they realised I couldn’t answer their questions. I hadn’t been involved in their lives for a couple of years. When the band started the first song, I had to leave, in tears. I felt I was living a lie. Here was this group that had meant the world to me – it demonstrates my love for their music because I remained pretty oblivious to the extent of Robin’s apparent longstanding mistrust of me for such a long time. They should’ve just come to me, called me a cunt and said they never wanted to work with me again. Now I was just this record company person that they didn’t get on with anymore, and that was not why I’d got involved with them, or with the business of music.’
Ivo baulks at the suggestion he could have approached them: ‘It might involve talking about feelings! I’d had to have had a bucketload of group therapy in order to do that. But it’s absurd to think now about the what-ifs.’
In the context of the split, the title of 4AD’s subsequent release was just too ironic – Lush’s new single ‘Sweetness And Light’. Guthrie had not been involved, with Tim Friese-Greene, the producer of (and collaborator with) the rarefied and elegant Talk Talk, taking charge. ‘We were so un-formed that we thought it would be good to try something else, to not get entrenched in one direction,’ Miki Berenyi explains. ‘And Tim had a different perspective.’
Friese-Greene was even more of a perfectionist than Guthrie, and spent six weeks with Lush recording just three tracks. ‘Robin had such a clear, sharp sound whereas Tim’s was more nebulous and suffered in comparison,’ Berenyi concludes. ‘But I’m glad we had the experience.’
Ivo wasn’t so sure. ‘I loved Talk Talk’s space and clarity, but “Sweetness And Light” sounded thin, distant and woolly, and so unrepresentative of Lush’s live sound. Yet it was a fantastic song, and the record served its purpose by accelerating the band’s popularity.’
A debut album would have sped up the process, but Lush was still lagging well behind Pale Saints, whose own album debut was almost a year old, with a new four-track EP ready to go. The difference between the album and Half-Life was the contribution of former Lush member Meriel Barham. Pale Saints needed a permanent second guitarist for live shows, and Berenyi, still feeling guilty over sacking Barham, ‘busted a gut’ to introduce her to Pale Saints: ‘I told them, she can sing, she can play, she can write!’
Ian Masters: ‘Meriel fitted in perfectly. We weren’t that proficient, and she was as able as any of us. She was a good songwriter too and she made it less of a lads’ band.’
The daughter of an armed serviceman, Barham had been born in Yorkshire and raised in Yemen, Singapore and Germany. She doesn’t recall any early musical epiphany, but says, ‘After I drifted in my late teens and early twenties, one day I heard myself announce to my mum that I was going to make music and that was absolutely what I wanted to do. My first song “Skin” was on the first Lush demo.’ She says Pale Saints was a better fit: ‘Guitar had always been my musical form of expression rather than vocals, so it was a natural move. I doodled experimental guitar-constructed soundscapes purely for enjoyment.’
Lush did eventually release an album, in December, but Gala was only a compilation of all their releases to date, plus the ‘Hey Hey Helen’ cover and an extended version of ‘Scarlet’. The album had been assembled for Warners subsidiary Reprise, whose A&R man Tim Carr had fallen heavily for Lush and set up a licensing deal.
Carr had also been involved in Cocteau Twins’ licensing deal by helping overcome Reprise’s traditional demand to own the global rights for an artist. ‘Before, 4AD had been just another label to me: I hadn’t got what it was all about,’ Carr admits. ‘But I flew Robin and Liz over to America, and I met Ivo too. It was like meeting the Samuel Beckett of the music industry – tall, gaunt, and the opposite of our goofy dress sense and too much hair mousse. And Cocteau Twins gave me chills each time I heard them. It was also a way to compete with Seymour Stein at Sire who was bringing everything else over from the UK. And I’d wanted to sign Throwing Muses but every record that mattered seemed to be on Sire.’
Ivo had been wary as he suspected Carr and/or fellow A&R source Claudia Stanton would leave Capit
ol long before Cocteau Twins ever left the label: ‘Otherwise Ivo said that he would just be signing with the building,’ says Carr. ‘He never acted like he was my friend, and he was always distrustful of America, the Madison Avenue business guys on the other side of the world. People thought Capitol was too big and monolithic.’
While Carr was on holiday in Thailand, Capitol did indeed have a major staff reshuffle, and after an extended absence, Carr returned and began working for Reprise. Warner’s head of creative services, Steven Baker, asked Carr if he was going to sign Lush, but Carr admits he hadn’t then heard of the band. ‘In my time away, I’d lost contact with everything, so I flew to England to see Lush play Glastonbury, and drove up with Howard Gough to see them in Leeds. I wanted to sign Pale Saints too. I flew Lush and Ivo to LA to meet Warners, which was a real record label, run by real music people, and it was the first time Ivo had met American label people he said he could trust.
‘After that, I was forever in England trying to license bands. On Beggars Banquet’s side of Alma Road, Martin [Mills] sat among a stack of albums higher than his head, like a college newspaper, and two doors over at 4AD, it was pristine, like a monk’s quarters – incredibly white, polished wood, and only Vaughan’s art on the walls. Everything was as clean and crisp and quixotic as their record covers.’
To onlookers, 4AD would have resembled a cohesive, composed, forward-moving operation, with an immediately identifiable image, rounded off by the wonder of Heaven Or Las Vegas. But insiders knew of the ructions that had seen the album’s creators, the label’s original flagship band, depart, and the new American vanguard, Pixies, dangerously divided. Yet out of ashes, phoenixes rise. With Ivo already in a new relationship and the shadow cast by Robin Guthrie now removed, there was a chance of a new era, personally and professionally, and an outbreak of renewed peace and happiness might reign again.
chapter 15 – 1991
Fool the World
(BAD1001–CAD1017)
In Ivo’s mind, the turning point of his disillusionment was discovering that running a record label had evolved into running a record company. But 4AD was unable to release music in a vacuum. There was the nature of relationships – between artist and label, artist and manager, label and manager, between band members, everyone with their own agenda, and complicated by the lure of filthy lucre. Money didn’t have to ruin everything: it could help move an artist out of a squat, or build their own studio for greater independence, or buy time to write and make the perfect record. However, in the independent music sector, where principles were treated as part of the art, and the business, money was often a corrupting force.
Outside of the hot house of egos, ambition and self-esteem issues, larger cultural and technological changes were afoot. Ecstasy and the less quantifiable desire for something more hedonistic and escapist after the often-bruising Eighties saw a new generation turn to clubbing as well as gigs. Sampling and the art of the remix attended to the needs of that crowd, while in America, grunge was providing a headbanging kind of freedom. The climate of 1991 was unrecognisable from that of, say, 1981, when 4AD could almost operate without such considerations, or even 1986 when Throwing Muses had first emerged.
The band was trying to steer a path that was as open, authentic and artistic, and the relationship between band and 4AD was uncomplicated and mutually beneficial. Yet in almost every other department, Kristin Hersh was struggling. The custody case over her son Dylan had forced her to share parental duties with his father, and her fevered mood swings had finally been diagnosed as bipolar disorder.
At least the business end was in better shape. The band had separated from manager Ken Goes after they’d suggested he handle the contractual side while Billy O’Connell act as the ‘people person’. ‘Ken was socially strange,’ says David Narcizo, ‘whereas Billy could sell you your own shoes. Ken freaked out when we suggested it. We weren’t sad to see him go.’ Part of the agreement was that the band couldn’t talk freely about Goes, who continued to manage Pixies.
They were much sadder to accept Leslie Langston’s resignation. ‘Leslie didn’t pursue the band as much as the rest of us, so it wasn’t a huge surprise,’ says Narcizo. Fred Abong, a friend in Newport, took over on bass, and joined the Muses in LA to record the band’s fourth album. Pixies was recording Bossanova in a nearby studio, and both bands stayed at the same apartment complex, swapping stories by the pool.
Perhaps the Californian heat was wilting these east coast kids, because as Bossanova was relatively undercooked, so was Throwing Muses’ The Real Ramona. While Pixies had settled down with Gil Norton, the Muses had been trying out yet another producer. On paper at least, Dennis Herring had seemed a good fit, having worked with folk-punk renegades Camper Van Beethoven.
‘I was trying to make a record with this evil producer and I swear Warners was trying to break up my band, telling me we needed Eighties drum sounds, even though this was the Nineties!’ says Hersh. ‘I didn’t even like them in the Eighties! Some guitar sounds got changed too. I love a lot of those songs but they were so flat without their sharp edges. I felt like I was sleepwalking, until I didn’t want any part of the band any longer.’
‘Red Shoes’, ‘Hook In Her Head’, ‘Two Step’ and Tanya Donelly’s ‘Honeychain’ were fine songs given a solid, unexceptional sound. Punchy lead single ‘Counting Backwards’ had the right momentum to match the way Hersh’s head would sway from side to side, steely eyes forward, as she sang on stage. Even when Hersh was melodically direct, serving up pizzas, Donelly was mining something sweeter, more like cookies. Her second Ramona song ‘Not Too Soon’ had a distinct Sixties Spector backbeat with a chorus that had been donated by, of all people, Hersh’s dad Dude. ‘Tanya wanted a hit,’ says Hersh. ‘And I was holding her back.’
‘Not Too Soon’ was the campaign’s second single; it couldn’t have been more radio-friendly, but it wasn’t even a small hit. ‘Pump Up The VoIume’ had proved that 4AD could physically shift units, and theoretically many more people were now aware of the label; they even had a committed radio plugger. So why did so many 4AD singles undersell? Perception counts for a lot, and 4AD’s carefully cultivated, curated image was the ‘manic depressive Motown’, as Sounds put it, the ‘by-word for melancholia’. Singles, as Motown boss Berry Gordy knew, were generally upbeat and celebratory missions to thrill, to make your feet move. 4AD was simply an albums label, serious and artful, and even if Pixies made great singles, Ivo tended to sign artists who didn’t practise the art of the standalone single; the lack of radio support seemed to say as much. Nothing 4AD released as a single after ‘Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’ was destined to stir the same interest as its long players.
Hersh was really against the idea of a blatant commercial lunge: ‘I’d rather be dead than suck in order to get a million people to listen to you,’ she says. It meant that Donelly’s ‘Gepetto’, her most gleefully charged melody yet, hadn’t even been recorded for Ramona. ‘Kristin couldn’t tolerate it,’ says Ivo. ‘That was the final straw for Tanya, so she started making her own demos.’
‘The only person I’d really talk to was Ivo,’ says Hersh, ‘He said, “Don’t you think Throwing Muses is essentially you and Dave?” Yup, but it didn’t matter. So we took time off. Dave got a day job, Billy was bartending, and I got pregnant again. Tanya was the only one who was still attracted to the music business. She knew my relationship to music was very intense, and it was obvious I had no place in the world of pop. First and foremost, she and I are friends and sisters, so we’d spend time playing with the baby instead of being in a band together, and I walked away from all the garbage.’
Donelly knew it was the right decision. ‘Dennis Herring told me that when Kristin or I were in the studio individually, things were very musical, but together, we totally sucked the music out! Being sisters, we were so careful with each other that things had become almost static. Once the tension went, things were fine and the next Muses tour was one of the happiest, because I kne
w it was over. Only after the fact did I realise what a rare situation we had as a band, with the kind of joy that we shared.’
Leslie Langston was recording demos too, which Ivo says were reggae-fied, and not something he wanted to pursue, ‘even though I believed she was the most natural, individual bassist I’d ever heard’. But Langston was all over 4AD’s next album – from The Wolfgang Press. As usual now, a new Wolfies album sounded more accessible and open; once they’d been closed off, now they had eleven guests, such as Dif Juz drummer Richie Thomas, chipping in. Langston was the most involved of all, playing keyboards on top of bass and co-writing ‘Fakes And Liars’. Mark Cox says Langston nearly joined full-time, ‘but we had this impenetrable funny-old-mates thing going on. I also think Leslie wanted a more equal contribution, which she hadn’t experienced with Kristin.’
But the greatest change was the use of computers and samples organised by producer Drostan Madden and programmer Rew. The key was the recent album 3 Feet High And Rising by the free-flowing American rappers De La Soul, whose ‘daisy age’ sound was the antithesis of angry old Wolfgang Press, but which the band had listened to relentlessly. ‘Honey Tree’, patched with the synth mantra from the opening of Kraftwerk’s ‘Europe Endless’, sounded light on its feet – happy even. ‘We were conscious of the darkness that we can put across to others, and being seen as po-faced, so we wanted people to realise that we made music because we loved making music,’ says Mick Allen.
But Allen’s choice of album title – Queer – showed that he didn’t think for a moment of changing face. He says he meant it in the original sense of the word, but he knew the double meaning. ‘Back then, queer was still an insult,’ says Cox. ‘Over dinner, Claudia Stanton from Capitol had told Mick that the most offensive thing you could say in America was “cunt”, so he started saying cunt all the time. The more I complained, the more he’d say it. His view was that if you’re going to take offence, look at yourself first. One of Mick’s enjoyable aspects was his love of contrary possibilities. He could say something, and then the opposite, both with the same total conviction.’