by Martin Aston
The Kraftwerk sample aside, Queer was The Wolfgang Press’s New York album, from De La Soul’s influence to the presence of street-smart singer/poet Annie ‘Anxiety’ Bandez (a starlet in her own right, she had recently married Dif Juz guitarist Dave Curtis) on ‘The Birdie Song’, and The Velvet Underground samples (‘Waiting For The Man’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’) on ‘Birmingham’ (which more likely referenced the town in Alabama than the British city). It felt like three British men on a tooled-up trip to Manhattan, an aural sample of simmering tarmac, taxi horns and midnight games. Queer is both Cox and Gray’s favourite Wolfgang Press album (Allen prefers the preceding Bird Wood Cage). ‘We spent years figuring out how to realise our ideas, and finally captured them,’ says Cox. Ivo agrees: ‘They were finally making the music that they were hearing in their heads.’
Which made ‘Time’, a Martyn Young remix of the album track ‘A Question Of Time’, a strange choice for a single, sounding more like the old-fashioned, swarthy Wolfgang Press, with Andrew Gray’s snaky ‘Shaft’-style guitar and his old In Camera bandmate David Steiner’s ominous snatches of spoken word. ‘Time’ turned out to be a taster as it was followed only six weeks later by the album’s cover of American songwriter Randy Newman’s ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’. The distance between the trio’s stiff cover of ‘Respect’ and this lithe and funky version showed how far they’d come, and the way the team had made digital rhythms swing should have made Martyn Young envious.
Could Newman’s classic paranoid fable be the crossover hit The Wolfgang Press needed, and deserved? After all, it had been a number 1 US single in 1970 for AOR giants Three Dog Night. It didn’t even reach the UK top 75 for The Wolfgang Press, despite at least five ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’ versions available, including one on the free limited edition twelve-inch of Martyn Young remixes packaged with Queer, which was partly motivated by Ivo’s plan to coax Young back into working again. It sounded like he was having fun; his remix of ‘Sucker’ (on the album, more rhythmic grind than mellifluous melody) added a mammoth boom-box beat. But didn’t Mick Allen dislike remixes? Maybe this was his contradictory nature in full flow. ‘Time’ had also been available in five versions. On top of the samples (unlike Colourbox and M/A/R/R/S, 4AD was now having to seek permission and pay up), this was both expensive and, frankly, a bit desperate, like a major label flogging its wares.
‘With The Wolfgang Press, we clearly went with the method of launching a band with two singles and an expectation of hits,’ says Ivo. ‘At that point, the route to success was the indie charts and The Chart Show on TV, which could get you into the real charts. So we played the format game in case things took off. With Howard’s TV and radio connections, there was a good chance we might get some exposure, but it was very half-hearted. I was in charge, so it was my fault.’
Ivo admits that The Wolfgang Press campaign was when he started to really not enjoy what 4AD was doing. ‘We had the best of intentions, to expand the popularity of our friends and charges under long-term contracts. The singles and EPs we released were fantastic and stood up in their own right, but they were tools, and expensive tools at that. They weren’t the artefact, the legacy, the work.’
In light of Queer’s influences, America could be a viable way out of the cul-de-sac that The Wolfgang Press were in at home. 4AD artists didn’t have to sound American to see the opportunities in the world’s largest marketplace. And with American labels feasting on 4AD with licensing deals, the structure was in place. But having artists with an increasing number of licensees was tricky to co-ordinate, from Capitol (Cocteau Twins) and Reprise (Lush) to Columbia (Ultra Vivid Scene), Elektra (Pixies) and Rough Trade America (The Breeders, The Wolfgang Press), as Sheri Hood had discovered. When offers came in to sign a licensing deal for the entire label, it was too good not to investigate first.
In a Mexican restaurant on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, two British ex-pats sit reminiscing about their time representing 4AD in the USA. Both still sound as English as the day they swapped continents – Robin Hurley in the late Eighties, Chris Staley in the mid-Nineties.
Staley had been the first to join 4AD, in 1990. In 1986, he was working for British exporters Windsong. Mindful of Ivo’s interest in Bulgarian voices, Staley had sent him some recordings of Russian choral singing, which Ivo had sampled for This Mortal Coil’s ‘Acid Bitter And Sad’ and the pair had struck up a phone friendship. Staley was working at Mute when Ivo offered him a job, handling 4AD’s video production, which quickly evolved into overall production duties, freeing up Ivo from liaising with The Cartel’s hub of regional distributors.
Hurley had been running Nine Mile, the Midlands member of The Cartel. Ordering stock from 4AD, Hurley had also struck up a friendship with Ivo. In 1988, Hurley’s business nous and even-tempered charm had made him the ideal candidate to launch Rough Trade’s new US operation, first from San Francisco and then New York.
As the main instigator of UK independence, first with a shop, then a label and finally a distribution company, Geoff Travis at Rough Trade was a tireless pioneer. Like Ivo, Travis had found the business side tricky – and coping with the success and personal issues of its flagship band The Smiths was a full-time job in itself. Rough Trade was a much larger operation than 4AD too, and beset with financial worries. The cost of expanding into the States was draining resources from Rough Trade Inc, which had already written off £1m from a bad debt. A move to new London premises with a new and inefficient computer system costing £700,000 crippled them further, as did a sizeable tax bill that Rough Trade Germany was suddenly presented with.
At a crisis meeting at the suitably depressing site of a motorway service station, Cartel members were asked to use the company exclusively, but there was not enough faith in the operation; 4AD, among others, was also using The Cartel’s rival Pinnacle for UK distribution. In 1991, The Cartel soon filed for bankruptcy, owing the likes of Mute and 4AD – the biggest creditors – a substantial amount of money. After the Mills–Austin court case, 4AD’s survival was under threat again, but a financial arrangement with the auditors allowed the label to keep trading, and both 4AD and Mute were both eventually repaid by the company that took over, run by Pinnacle MD Steve Mason. Rough Trade America was one of the casualties. Robin Hurley was out of a job, but Ivo swiftly moved to ask him to run 4AD’s US operation alongside Sheri Hood, because 4AD itself was going to sign a licensing deal.
As Ivo recalls, ‘It was a nightmare working with different majors. Every time, you had to go through the process of explaining who, and what, 4AD was, and to dozens of people, all these departments within each major label, to ensure that things like the 4AD logo were on every press release or photo.’
‘The Breeders never got any money for Pod,’ recalls Kim Deal. ‘We were told that the money Rough Trade America made [by licensing Pod] was reinvested in Butthole Surfers’ [album] piouhgd, and then the label went bankrupt. When Robin [Hurley] joined 4AD, I asked if he was going to bankrupt this place too!’
One suitable licensee could end the time-consuming task of finding empathic partners for individual 4AD artists, letting Ivo get back to the role that suited him best: handling the music. But in terms of the diplomacy and the experience to guide 4AD to find the best label in the States, Ivo could see that Sheri Hood was not the right person. Enter Robin Hurley.
Hood knew Hurley from dealing with Rough Trade America; now they would be equals. Four months after Hurley joined, Hood quit. ‘I’d seen Rough Trade step up to play the game, to be more visible by spending money, and I thought that wasn’t the way to do things,’ she says. ‘Grass roots are still very important for artists. Also, I couldn’t see a place for myself in the new 4AD set-up. I enjoyed working with the bands but I’d felt so much resistance from the majors.’
Ivo: ‘Sheri had represented the label so fearlessly. The bands and 4AD were in safe hands with her when it came to aesthetic over exploitation. But this confused some people at the majors. She could be
confrontational and did upset people, and herself, in the process. Like me, she wasn’t cut out to explain herself to these people. Robin was far more pragmatic and flexible. And I needed someone who could get along with them.’
The main offer for 4AD came from Warners, driven by its new A&R man, former Capitol Records employee Tim Carr. ‘I’d already fallen in love with Lush, and then Pale Saints,’ he says, ‘so I told Ivo, “You saw that I came after you with Cocteau Twins and Lush; have you thought of putting all your eggs in one basket?”’
Hurley met with every American major label, but Warners still proved to be the best option, with industry veterans Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker at the helm. Ostin had run the esteemed Verve label, where he’d signed Ivo’s beloved The Mothers of Invention as well as The Velvet Underground. Then Frank Sinatra had hired him to run Reprise where he worked with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young – a peerless CV. Waronker had produced numerous sessions with the likes of Randy Newman, Rickie Lee Jones and James Taylor, and had helped Ostin build Warners’ reputation as a musician’s label. R.E.M., for example, had chosen Warners for its first major label deal.
It also helped that the son of Warners’ in-house producer Ted Templeman was a huge 4AD fan. Warners employees Steven Baker and Jeff Gold were equally committed fans, with Tim Carr the active cheerleader. Carr says he saw Warners president Waronker as the main draw for Ivo, and paints an image of a consummate music professional that put music first, like Ivo. ‘Lenny wouldn’t move while he was listening to a record,’ Carr recalls. ‘He’d have his head in his hands, and his eyes closed, tapping his foot, and he’d say, “Who’s the artist in the group?” Ivo fell instantly in love with Lenny, and with me as the point man, 4AD could accept the deal.’
Ivo was also considering an offer from American Recordings, the label founded by Rick Rubin, the former co-founder of the pioneering rap label Def Jam. Rubin’s current roster spanned Slayer, The Black Crowes and Andrew Dice Clay, which didn’t seem to fit with 4AD, but Rubin’s right-hand man Marc Geiger was a 4AD obsessive. American Recordings was also distributed by Warners, so as far as Geiger was concerned, 4AD would get the best of both worlds.
As a student, Geiger had run the independent record store Assorted Vinyl on the university campus in San Diego. He later became a booking agent for tour specialists Triad, snapping up New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Smiths in their infancy, and had won huge respect from every UK independent for his knowledge, enthusiasm and efficiency.
Out of all of those labels, says Geiger, 4AD was his favourite. ‘My tastes had dark sensibilities – I was a prog rock kid, which was very unfashionable at that time, and also of southern Californian goth, which was treated as a joke in Britain,’ he explains. ‘A lot of what Ivo did mixed up all of that. 4AD not only had the world’s best A&R man, they had the best graphic artist in Vaughan. They held their ground over what they believed and they didn’t follow any trend other than personal taste. Ivo saw things earlier than others, looked deep into the artists and the music. There were only three or four acts on 4AD that I didn’t absolutely love. I didn’t get His Name Is Alive, and maybe Pale Saints. But once you have that many goals or home runs, it’s clear that the bands are incredible but that the guy anointing them is the real talent.’
Wanting more personal input into the cultural growth of the alternative scene, Geiger had already assisted Perry Farrell in creating the Lollapalooza festival, conceived as a farewell tour for his band Jane’s Addiction. Seeing ‘how record companies were having more influence in music’, he had just moved into A&R with American Recording, licensing The Jesus and Mary Chain and British Eighties psych rock loon Julian Cope, but 4AD was the deal he truly desired. ‘In my head,’ Geiger recalls, ‘there was no other person in the picture for the licensing deal besides me. I loved 4AD, and Ivo, and I wanted to help.’
As he had with Capitol, Ivo doubted the wisdom of a deal based on one individual. ‘If Marc left American, who would champion the likes of The Wolfgang Press? Warners was the best option.’
Warners’ offer was built on a two-tier system. Tier A was reserved for the more commercial releases, such as The Wolfgang Press, which would be distributed through the main Warners distribution network. Tier B was for 4AD’s more esoteric artists, such as His Name Is Alive, through the Alternative Distribution Alliance that Warners co-owned.
But into which tier would Spirea X fit?
The Scottish trio was proof that 4AD was building a mini-wave of neo-psychedelia. Spirea X’s frontline was Jim Beattie and his co-singer/girlfriend Judith Boyle, but unlike Pale Saints and Lush, Beattie was no ingénue, having co-founded Primal Scream with his school friend Bobby Gillespie. Like Ivo, Beattie had been a Byrds and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd fanatic; Spirea X also performed a cover of ‘Signed D.C.’ by west coast legends Love. Primal Scream had been signed to Creation, run by another school friend, Alan McGee, who had got his break by signing The Jesus and Mary Chain (Gillespie was their drummer at the time). Primal Scream’s jangly Sixties revivalism had ridden the C86 wave before they’d hardened up with a pseudo-Rolling Stones raunch on the 1988 album Sonic Flower Groove, released on McGee’s second label Elevation, a pseudo-indie funded by Warners UK.
The inflated cost of the album and the apathy of its reviews inflamed band dissent, and Beattie had quit. He took his new band name from the B-side of Primal Scream’s 1986 single ‘Crystal Crescent’: ‘Spirea X’ was a surf-rocking instrumental in a Pixies fashion. A new demo, ‘Spirea Rising’, followed suit, which had snared Ivo’s interest alongside the Byrds-influenced ‘Chlorine Dream’ that was eventually re-recorded for its 4AD debut. The band’s follow-up single ‘Speed Reaction’ aped the same Sixties west coast pop dream.
There was enough promise in Spirea X’s streamlined, shimmery pop/rock sound to suit both 4AD and Warners, but there were caveats. ‘I couldn’t sing to save my life, and to sing and play at the same time made it worse,’ Beattie confesses. Ivo agrees: ‘They weren’t at all good live, but on record, it worked beautifully. And remember, Lush’s initial live form didn’t get in their way. And Kurt wasn’t great live until after the third Ultra Vivid Scene album.’
It didn’t matter that Beattie also wasn’t the first 4AD signing since the former Wire members to have got his start elsewhere; he was the first to sound like he’d taken his influences from a current trend. Just as Primal Scream had absorbed (with great success) acid house influences, Spirea X singles rode the same beats lifted from James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ that typified many indie rock bands of the time, such as The Stone Roses and The Charlatans. In other words, Spirea X was an unusual signing for 4AD. Still, Beattie recalls, the advance for the one-album deal was ‘hefty’ especially for a band signed on the strength of two demos. But 4AD could afford it, and Ivo’s gut instinct hadn’t let him down yet.
Times had clearly changed, as Beattie is the first signing to praise a 4AD contract. He says it was just two pages long. ‘We were used to sixty-page contracts, with everything itemised like, “We’ll rip you off here, here and here”. This one had short clauses: “We will release records, this is the advance, you have total artistic control, you don’t have to work with Vaughan, you can record where you want”. I now teach music industry law, and I always use 4AD as an example of how simple contracts should be.’
4AD’s commitment extended to the artwork. The neon logo centrepiece that featured on Spirea X’s covers cost nearly £17,000 to make. ‘A huge thing, at huge cost, for a band that we had signed for one album,’ says Ivo. ‘How bonkers we were! It looked great, though.’
It had been Beattie’s idea, inspired by the neon sign on Big Star’s first album. ‘Ivo let Vaughan get carried away,’ says Beattie. ‘Vaughan being Vaughan, he took it twenty steps too far. It had three different mirror backgrounds and about forty coils, which took two engineers to set up. I asked if I could take it on the road, and Ivo laughed and said, “If you can get it on the train!” It
was about sixteen foot high.’
Oliver, Beattie claims, was a lunatic: ‘On Friday afternoons, the art department liked to get out their heads. At one of the early meetings about “Chlorine Dream”, Vaughan suddenly disappeared, and all of a sudden, on this really sunny day, it went dark, because Vaughan had spread himself across the office’s glass roof, naked. He was hammering on it, out of his head on Ecstasy.’
It seems that the cause of Oliver’s spontaneous and speedy reaction was Beattie himself. ‘Jim was difficult and annoying,’ Chris Bigg recalls. ‘Everything had to be referenced to look like something else, like a Daz logo, or pop art. And he was obsessed with The Byrds. Vaughan just got so fed up, he took his clothes off and slid down the roof. On his front!’
The logo made for some inspired artwork; the music proved to be less spectacular. Ivo thought Spirea X’s debut album Fireblade Skies ‘was disappointingly inconsistent’. And, he adds, ‘it didn’t flow beautifully. But I did like “Chlorine Dream”, “Spirea Rising” and “Signed DC” enormously.’
Spirea X felt like a misstep – a snap judgement that lacked Ivo’s usual intuition and care. But for someone distracted by the Cartel and Cocteau Twins disasters, Throwing Muses’ hiatus, Pixies on a plateau, The Wolfgang Press ignored, the impending Warners deal and his own encroaching depression, the simple rhythms, chiming guitars and evocative melodies with the flavours of yesteryear would have been a suitable comfort.