Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  Those days, when music could be appreciated without being filtered through the demands of the workplace (anyone lucky enough to work in the industry they love will be confronted by how it taints that love) would have seemed very preferable to the shenanigans of business in the post-Lollapalooza world.

  Another change was the way major labels on both sides of the Atlantic were now picking off any potentially credible alternative sound, and forming faux-indie offshoots, such as Dedicated (RCA), but using independent distributors such as Pinnacle. Could artists resist bigger major-label advances, or see artists that clearly didn’t deserve them take them instead? Unrest’s Imperial f.f.r.r. had triggered interest from Atlantic and Elektra but fortunately Mark Robinson was committed to the independent aesthetic, preferring to stick with his own Teen-Beat label in America and Ivo’s offer to shift from Guernica (it being a one-off shop) to 4AD for the rest of the world. ‘The deal was for much less money than we’d get with a major,’ Robinson recalls, ‘but 4AD were super-nice people, their office wasn’t overwhelming, and we would get packaging by v23!’

  Robinson was so used to running things that Unrest had completed a new album without consulting Ivo, who had only asked for some songs to be remixed for radio. He hadn’t needed to be involved: ‘There are great things on Perfect Teeth,’ Ivo says. ‘They did feel like American indie favourites.’

  Colleen Maloney: ‘[Melody Maker’s] Everett True wrote that Unrest had sold out by signing to 4AD, implying we were EMI. Come on, get a grip! The band would like to sell records! 4AD was never indier-than-thou.’

  Like Warren Defever, Robinson enjoyed playing around with form and credits. 4AD released a seven-inch single ‘Isabel’ (the B-side ‘Wharton Hockey Club’ was 101 seconds of ear-piercing electronic squeals) and the Isabel Bishop EP, but none of the combined six extra tracks appeared on Perfect Teeth, which explored every facet of Unrest’s encyclopaedic pop – elegant, abrasive, reverential. Teen-Beat released the album in a numbered limited edition box containing six seven-inch singles, five on coloured vinyl. Robinson also designed the typeface for the band logo, leaving v23’s Chris Bigg to design an extravagant sixteen-page booklet. ‘I was probably too involved,’ Robinson reflects. ‘Hopefully, I wasn’t too annoying.’

  In keeping with the indie aesthetic, ‘Cath Carroll’, a frenetic rush of spindly guitars, was released after Perfect Teeth, with two more new B-sides. Robinson liked to pen tributes: ‘Isabel’ was for renowned American painter and graphic designer Isabel Bishop, while Carroll had been a busy fixture on Manchester’s early-Eighties post-punk scene, co-founding the City Fun fanzine, befriending a young Morrissey, contributing to the NME under the pen name Myrna Minkoff, and recording as Miaow for Factory Records.

  Carroll’s crossover with 4AD was ironic as Ivo was convinced (then and now) that it had been Carroll who had penned the NME’s savage dismissal of Filigree & Shadow (in fact, 4AD’s archives reveal the culprit to have been Sean O’Hagan). Ivo wasn’t too bitter at the time, however: it was he that had recommended Unrest use late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s monochrome portrait of Carroll (in her Miaow years) for the cover of Perfect Teeth.

  Using a host of photographers, rather than relying on Nigel Grierson, showed many different facets of 4AD, though in fairness, Grierson’s portfolio did this too, beside the impressionistic experiments associated with Cocteau Twins. Vaughan Oliver’s intention to keep expanding the remit had meant he’d only used Simon Larbalestier once – for Red House Painters’ Down Colorful Hill – following the Pixies series. The sepia image of an abandoned rollercoaster for Red House Painters’ forthcoming debut album looked like another Larbalestier shot, but it had come from a photographic agency. Instead, Larbalestier’s image of a Venus flytrap plant adorned Heidi Berry’s second 4AD album. The sepia tone Oliver gave both album covers effectively united Berry and Kozelek – the Sandy Denny and Nick Drake of 4AD.

  Ivo had simultaneously compiled the track listings for both albums in his Clapham Common flat, while feeling ‘single and sad, gradually piecing them together’. Red House Painters preceded Heidi Berry by two months: Ivo had trusted Mark Kozelek to produce the Red House Painters sessions himself, which the singer admits wasn’t easy. ‘It was a nightmare, because the initial excitement of recording twenty-three songs became, “one down, twenty-two to go”,’ says Kozelek. ‘And I was nervous that people were now paying attention, but Ivo made helpful suggestions and never demanded anything. If we went over budget, we went over budget.’

  And over budget they went. The band had begun to tackle Kozelek’s backlog of songs, and by the end of the session had 120 minutes on tape, enough for a triple album. Ivo suggested a double, 4AD’s first outside of This Mortal Coil. Red House Painters included several of Kozelek’s very best songs: ‘Rollercoaster’, ‘Katy Song’, ‘Mistress’ and a pensive, virtually solo ‘Take Me Out’, which is Ivo’s all-time favourite track on 4AD. With a devastating key change towards the end, which fades out at the usual snail’s pace, the singer’s emotions still trapped and unresolved, the lyric would have nailed Ivo’s own predicament: ‘That sound coming from those holes/ A voice that soars/ And takes my wounds with it/ To levels unknown/ If only you could take me out instead of back in/ To a relationship I don’t understand/ If only you could take me out instead of back in/ To myself that’s dying within.’

  ‘The line “A voice that soars and takes my wounds with it” always made me think of both Elizabeth Fraser and Tim Buckley,’ says Ivo. ‘And the chorus of “Take Me Out” could also apply to 4AD and me looking to someone for rescue.’

  The music hit new heights of serene self-pity, and live too the tension could be overbearing. At a solo Kozelek show at London’s Borderline, as the singer addressed the crowd with a back story, a voice in the crowd heckled, ‘Now I know why she left you!’

  On Heidi Berry, Hugh Jones was the perfect, painstaking producer, coaxing the best from a singer more generous with her wistful and bittersweet notes than Mark Kozelek was in his blanketing despair – even if the album’s opening line was Berry singing, ‘I walk through the graveyard/ And a late snow is on the ground.’

  The musicianship on Heidi Berry was extraordinary, with her brother Christopher Berry on acoustic guitar/string arrangements and guests including former boyfriend Pete Astor and the legendary Danny Thompson, plucking the double bass, as he’d once done during Tim Buckley’s London stage debut in 1968. The ensemble shaped originals such as ‘Little Fox’ and a tender version of Canadian sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s compassionate ballad ‘Heart Like A Wheel’, expanding the elastic flow and timbre of those fabulous Seventies folk rock records.

  Buoyed by what was at their disposal, 4AD and Warners even had a crack at a Berry single with ‘The Moon And The Sun’, a more upbeat model of rootsy British fusion. If Ivo found Warners’ handling of The Wolfgang Press to be lacking, the major label seemed on board – though Berry found she was expected to play the game. She had been offered a choice between being an A or B tier release, ‘to be handled by the Warners machine, or solely by 4AD,’ Berry recalls. ‘B was ideal but my ego said A, so I took that.’ Her LA show ‘had a nice English vibe’, she says. ‘But after, a Warners guy with a crowd around him handed me some felt tip pens and a roll of posters and said I was to sign, like I was a performing monkey. He said that he’d be right back, and left. Ivo would never have done that. When we met up, Robin [Hurley] said, “You know Heidi, there are lots of nice people at Warners”, and Ivo snorted, looked at me and said, “Robin is right”. He’d become distanced from it all.’

  Marc Geiger would have classified Berry as one of the artists that looked down their noses at others, but hawking oneself to sell more records was in another dimension to the artists that Ivo valued. A much more 4AD-friendly live event, one that lived on in the memory of everyone who attended, was staged two weeks after Berry’s album was released. For The 13 Year Itch, 4AD chose London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, an auste
re black box of a room but with excellent acoustics and sight lines. Kristin Hersh, making her solo UK debut, headlined the week’s opening night, supported by the Meriel Barham-fronted Pale Saints. Subsequent nights included the novelty sight of a His Name Is Alive performance, supporting Unrest and with former Pale Saint Ian Masters in the band.

  Warren Defever punctured his retiring image by being the week’s stage compère: ‘He was hilarious,’ says Ivo. A Guernica night showcased Bettie Serveert and Underground Lovers, while forthcoming Guernica signings, Insides, supported Red House Painters and were the unannounced guests the next evening behind The Wolfgang Press and headliners The Breeders, who were previewing their forthcoming album. On the closing night, Heidi Berry supported Brendan Perry, also making his solo stage debut.†

  Limited to 2,000 copies, The 13 Year Itch compilation was released on the opening day, 13 July. The thirteen tracks, unique to the album, ranged from demos – notably Hersh’s solo offering ‘Your Ghost’ – with live versions, remixes, and Perry’s effortlessly lovely rendition of Tim Buckley’s ‘Happy Time’. Melody Maker, six years after its Lonely Is An Eyesore cover, repeated the honour with a photo of Miki Berenyi, Kristen Hersh, Mark Kozelek and a 4AD birthday cake. Someone evidently thought this was a celebration.

  Vaughan Oliver provided a provocative image, a photo (taken by Bournemouth University student Tony Gibson) of a topless, blindfolded woman wearing gloves (a familiar Oliver motif). ‘[She was] vulnerable and denied her senses,’ he explains. ‘It was a perverse turn to represent the label this way, with all the festivities. And it didn’t look typical of our work.’ Turn the sleeve on its side and you can see a faint image of former Stock, Aitken Waterman popsicle Kylie Minogue, ‘her head tipped back with her mouth open,’ Oliver says. ‘I liked the hidden secret.’

  Ivo, meanwhile, had asked Chris Bigg to design the commemorative T-shirt with the word, ‘shuffle’ in brackets after the title, ‘as in, “to shuffle off this mortal coil”,’ Ivo explains. ‘It was a cry for help. I thought it was obvious I was having a real problem, but it didn’t occur to anyone else.’

  ‘We knew something of Ivo’s issues, but I didn’t know him well enough to ask,’ says Colleen Maloney. Discussions of intimate feelings would have gone against the grain, though during the week, Kim Deal recalls noticing an exhaustion overtaking everyone involved. ‘Imagine how it must have been, every day, around all those bands,’ she adds. It would have been an especially sensitive occasion with Deborah Edgely attending some of the shows, as did Ivo’s new love Brandi Machado, the woman who he had met the previous year at Lollapalooza.

  Back in LA, Ivo laid the groundwork for a permanent move by renting an apartment, 15 minutes from 4AD’s LA office in the Fairfax district, and Brandi moved in. ‘I thought she was extremely good for Ivo at that stage,’ says Simon Harper. ‘Young, opinionated and honest. They were a good combination.’

  Ivo: ‘Brandi cheered me up, but it was confusing. She was confused by me. I realise that I should have quit 4AD right then. I’m glad I didn’t because of a couple of records we released after that, but I was done. I was exhausted and disillusioned. I guess I could have got a lot of money for 4AD then too. But I didn’t let it into my head. And it carried on and I struggled until I went crazy. But I loved that week of shows. I loved the fact we sold out every night before people knew who was playing.’

  No one was more surprised that Ivo and Brandi had become an item than Miki Berenyi. ‘When we first met Ivo, he was very English and proper, like a public schoolboy, not like most people we knew in the industry, which is what we liked about him,’ she explains. ‘He’d arrive just before we played a show and leave right after. The next thing you know, he’s in LA, and shagging someone who had been going out with someone in our band! One of the side effects of being reserved and enigmatic is that people have their own ideas about what goes on behind the façade. I thought Ivo’s shell harboured deep wells of wisdom and profundity and it was a shock to realise that he could be as shallow as the rest of us and as susceptible to a mid-life crisis!’

  Over in London, Vaughan Oliver was watching his friend from both near and far and being forced to accept the changes. ‘Ivo didn’t explain stuff that he was experiencing, and I didn’t pry,’ he recalls. ‘The move was what he wanted, so I couldn’t argue with it. But I missed him, and the effect of not having that person around, that someone that everyone listened to, that enigma in the upstairs office, was traumatic.’

  Heading the London office in Ivo’s absence, Simon Harper was also conscious of the shift. ‘I thought it would be good for Ivo, but that it could well become a problem over time, with artists, and certain managers, very concerned. But I’d talk to Ivo every day when he was away, and we’d fax too, so we were at least communicating.’

  The timing of the new album from The Breeders, taking the focus off the internal anxieties of the label and back on to the music, cannot be underestimated. The record proved to be an exceptional diversion, and an even bigger hit than Belly’s Star.

  Co-producer Mark Freegard recalls how exhausted the band had been after finishing the album, yet its sound and mood was exhilarating and mostly upbeat, warm and oozing like the ‘Cannonball’ bass intro. A lyrical snippet from the track donated the album’s title: Last Splash. With an equally addictive chorus hook and Kim’s vocal approximating a loudhailer, ‘Cannonball’ struck the same balance between left-field adventure and pop accessibility as ‘Monkey’s Gone To Heaven’. When it was released as a single three weeks before the album, MTV’s Buzz Bin programmers were instantly on the phone. Kim Deal could make cookies after all.

  ‘Cannonball’ was backed by a cover of Aerosmith’s ‘Lord Of The Thighs’, sung by Wiggs with deadpan detachment, tapping Kim Deal’s fondness for dumb American rock. But Kim had cracked the mainstream herself. ‘At the end of mixing Last Splash,’ recalls Freegard, ‘Ivo came in to listen, and he said, “Mark, this is going to be the most successful 4AD record ever”. I was staggered that he’d say that, but he was right.’

  It would have been interesting to see the reception if Vaughan Oliver had got his way over ‘Cannonball’; for the back cover he’d suggested the image of a singular testicle ‘pushed through a piece of card to ensure its loneliness’, as Oliver wrote on a fax to the band, alongside a drawing of said testicle. ‘We tried it today and it looked super.’ Well, it was one interpretation of a cannonball. ‘For the back of Safari,’ Kim recalls, ‘Vaughan had wanted the texture to be an areola. I said, “Can we not have naughty bits?”’

  Oliver’s front cover design, of a fur-covered American football helmet, effectively captured the wolf in sheep’s clothing that was The Breeders. With a video co-directed by Kim Deal’s pal (and Sonic Youth bassist) Kim Gordon and the fast-rising Spike Jonze, ‘Cannonball’ topped Billboard’s Modern Rock chart and entered the Billboard’s national top 50 – Pixies had never achieved that, for all the acclaim and influence. In the UK, the single only reached 44, but Last Splash reached the top five. The album was the only time 4AD commissioned a billboard advert, the album cover’s vibrant red heart splashed with blood visible on the flyover into Hammersmith, photographed by the appropriatedly named Bournemouth University student Jason Love.

  Last Splash wasn’t only about ‘Cannonball’ or the second, relatively gentler single ‘Divine Hammer’, or the third, heavyweight ‘Saints’. There was a breath of style, from grungy sludge (‘Roi’) to breezy country rock (‘Drivin’ On 9’, originally by US alt-folk band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, whose violinist Carrie Bradley had become a regular Breeders contributor) to Pixies-style turbulence (‘No Aloha’). The album shot past 500,000 sales towards the million mark. Again, Pixies had never had such success.

  Following Star and Last Splash, 4AD’s purple patch continued with a Dead Can Dance album, Into The Labyrinth, which would go on to sell half a million copies in America and provide Warners with its first bankable return on its 4AD investment. Like The Breeders’, Per
ry and Gerrard’s album had crossed over by way of a radio hit, showing that Warners could have tried much harder with The Wolfgang Press.

  The fact that Lisa Gerrard – now living back in Australia, in the rural outskirts of Gippsland, Victoria – and Brendan Perry were living so far apart didn’t stop them from scaling a creative peak. Into The Labyrinth unfolded over 55 minutes of diverse influences, with earthier ethnic strands taking over from more medieval settings, and with every single note played by the duo for the first time. ‘Everything blossomed to the point that we took on our signature shape,’ says Gerrard. ‘The album opened up the most doors for us too.’

  No one expected Perry’s stately ‘The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove’ to become a radio hit after being surprisingly picked up by LA’s influential KROQ, but Warners had done its job. MTV was also on board after Tim Carr had taken one of the station’s influential programmers to see Dead Can Dance: ‘She couldn’t believe a band this artistic and non-MTV had such a huge, young audience. She said she’d never felt more square, and was so glad I’d asked her to come.’

  ‘The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove’ was Perry’s self-portrait, taking its title from an episode of the British Sixties James Bond-inspired Danger Man, while ‘The Carnival Is Over’ and ‘Tell Me About The Forest’ quoted from Joy Division lyrics (‘The Eternal’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ respectively). Even this rarefied collection didn’t really belong in the world of Lollapalooza and MTV, and the album made no concessions. The title Into The Labyrinth referred to the legend of the Minotaur, one of several allusions to Greek mythology. ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’ was an eighteenth-century Irish folk ballad, which Gerrard sang as if she and not Perry had the Irish roots, while the source of her ‘Yulunga (Spirit Dance)’ was Aboriginal Australia; she was rewarded when the National Geographic TV channel used the track as incidental music for a year.