by Martin Aston
For that reason, Ivo had surrendered a tentative interest in the jazz-tinged ‘O’rang’, formed by ex-Talk Talk members Paul Webb and Lee Harris. Cliff Walton had tried to get Ivo interested in Seefeel, whose intricate, experimental and electronically tweaked sound had its roots in the post-rock scene developing around Insides, Bark Psychosis and Disco Inferno. This was the logical progression from shoegaze, but Ivo wasn’t in the mood to respond, despite the ambient qualities of the music. Seefeel signed to Too Pure, and Ivo was to let Insides go for a second time.
Guernica came to a premature end with a limited edition of Clear Skin, Insides’ 38-minute minimalist fusion that Ivo had intended to release on 4AD before he knowingly contravened Guernica’s one-off policy. There was also a vinyl-only remix version that turned out to be particularly popular with Italian house DJs. ‘It raised our expectations for the future,’ says Julian Tardo. ‘But Ivo called to say that he’d thought of all the options, and that he’d taken too much on, and that someone always suffers.’
Insides felt rejected all over again. ‘We told NME we were pissed off that 4AD wasn’t going to take us on, or words to that effect,’ Tardo recalls. ‘Someone from the label said, “What the fuck did you say that for?” But it had been a year since Euphoria and things weren’t going anywhere. In retrospect, we were creatively spent. And no other label was beating down our door.’§
‘Guernica suffered from not releasing enough records and realising its potential,’ says Richard Hermitage. But Ivo’s LA base made it impractical to front a label that wasn’t releasing records in America, and would involve multiple relationships. Ivo had to inform two prospective Guernica bands that the offer was withdrawn: Portland in Oregon’s Pell Mell, whose cool, tempered twang would have sounded great while driving through the desert, eventually had their Interstate album released by Geffen, while the album by Germany’s Rossburger Report, a guitar-chestra of up to fifteen players that included ex-Xmal Deutschland members Manuela Rickers and Peter Bellendir, is still unreleased.
The upside followed the down, with the first Throwing Muses single in two and a half years, having been delayed by Hips And Makers. ‘Bright Yellow Gun’ was the first recording to feature bassist Bernard Georges, who slotted effortlessly into the band. It had been a rude comedown for the band’s rhythm section: George had been gainfully employed by a bicycle repair shop, while David Narcizo had been working in an antiques shop. But besides raising children (her second son, Ryder, was now three), Hersh had continued to write with the same furious commitment, and a Muses album was due early in 1995.
The hope was that 4AD, and Ivo, could similarly rescue themselves, and keep moving forward. The label had survived Martin Mills’ court case and The Cartel’s bankruptcy, and the loss of Cocteau Twins and Pixies. Belly, The Breeders and Dead Can Dance were all stars with some of the best music the individual songwriters had ever released. The rich, sad, folk strains of Red House Painters, Heidi Berry and Lisa Germano made for the best downbeat response to Britpop imaginable. Could they, and 4AD, maintain it? Was there even more to come?
As things stood, it might be a while before Ivo could return to work with the kind of A&R force that he had been. In the meantime, Cliff Walton recalls, there was not even a business plan in place. Were Richard Hermitage and Robin Hurley waiting for their prince to return to lead them on? It seems the last thing he was capable of doing.
‘After a while, it became obvious that Ivo wasn’t coming back, and people in the office slowly started to accept it,’ says Simon Harper. ‘A lot of our licensees were upset and shocked. Many of them had worked with Ivo since the beginning, and for some Ivo was 4AD. I tried to put a positive spin on it but our partners around the world weren’t buying it. Even Martin Mills, the master of spin, was struggling to be his usual upbeat self.’
Once upon a time, 4AD had been able to advance via a series of spontaneous decisions, happy accidents. Now the competition was fierce, from the major labels and other independents, such as the insurgent Creation with Oasis leading their pack. Meanwhile, Ivo – a man who had created a label in his own image, based on his intuitive love of music, and who had used music as a source of excitement, comfort and empathy – didn’t even want to listen to music, let alone leave his house.
* Colin Wallace recalls that one of the cassettes that he returned was from Antony Hegarty. ‘He told me that I’d rejected his demo. I said I was really sorry, and he said, “Don’t be sorry, you sent back a really sweet hand-written letter, which was really touching, and I kept it. It was one of the few letters I did get back”.’
† Ivo, who owned the painting by Cathy Fenwick used for the cover of Inconsiderate Bitch, also paid extra to have it used on Happiness, and subsequently gifted it to Germano, which he regretted, he says, ‘Because I love the painting! I also gave the Livonia print to Warren. It seemed right for the artists to have the work.’
‡ Lush had reaped some extra-curricular benefits, by visiting Tim Carr on holiday in the Thai island of Koh Samui. Ivo used the Thai expression, mai pen rai – which translates to ‘that’s life’ or ‘no worries’ – for a 4AD promo sampler for the US market. Mai Pen Rai was extravagantly produced in cardboard with a letter-pressed insert available in eight different colours. Mai Pen Rai also became highly prized among collectors because it included a Matt Johnson track from Burning Blue Soul (4AD was about to reissue the album on CD) and a hidden track of Dance Chapter’s ‘Anonymity’.
§ Insides eventually talked to Acid Jazz and Warp but they didn’t release a new album – the sweeter, R&B-influenced Sweet Tip – until 2000, on the 3rd Stone label.
chapter 19 – 1995
Fuck You Tiger, We’re Goin’ South
(AD5001–TAD5017)
In 1995, Will Oldham, under the alias Palace Music (and later Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), and Bill Callahan, as Smog, had released their first significant albums (Viva Lost Blues and Wild Love respectively). The likes of Wilco and The Jayhawks were also tapping the roots of American folk and country, albeit framed by a more fleshed-out Seventies rock sound. To document this progression, in January 1995 the US music trade title Gavin Report published a chart under the name, Americana: ‘music that honors and is derived from the traditions of American roots music,’ ran the editorial.
This musical and spiritual retreat was exactly where Ivo had found himself, expressed through the sound of Red House Painters, Heidi Berry and Lisa Germano, as Ivo looked inward, ignoring what was behind alt rock’s passage into the pages of Vogue or who the major labels were splurging excessive budgets on. This was where Ivo had once found himself, a young record retail manager exploring Tim Buckley, Emmylou Harris and other folk and country rock pioneers when everyone around him was consuming rock of the heavy, progressive and glam variety. Trying to run a record company was causing Ivo irreparable harm, but running a record label was easy.
The gulf between the two ideals was again made blatant by the progress of The Wolfgang Press, as they edged ever-nearer to the mainstream. The trio’s problem wasn’t so much the music as the approach. Their new album Funky Little Demons had been ready for nine months, since spring 1994, but Warners’ scheduling had interfered, and though it had kept the catalogue number signifying a 1994 release (wedged between Dead Can Dance and Lisa Germano albums), it had been put back to January 1995.
The new single ‘Goin’ South’ appeared first, on 9 January. Promoted by several remixes and an expensive video set in Las Vegas that resuscitated the masked JFK and Jackie O figures from the ‘Kansas’ video, it charted in the UK at a depressing 117. In the States, it only reached 33 on the Alternative Modern Rock chart – 31 places lower than ‘A Girl Like You’ had despite a similarly slinky groove and a durable chorus. ‘If I had 10 per cent of what 4AD spent on remixes and videos,’ says Ivo, ‘I’d be a wealthy man.’
Funky Little Demons followed two weeks later. ‘The title was inspired by children and babies,’ says Mick Allen. ‘It was personal for me, and in a b
roader sense, also how the songs could be seen.’ Yet the playful air belied the truth of its creation; Mark Cox had left the band after the album had been finished, even before the All Virgos Are Mad event. It was as if Allen had known what would happen. The term ‘going south’ is slang for ‘a worse or inferior position … a decreased value’.
In the album track ‘11 Years’, Allen sang, ‘11 years of faking it/ Same clothes empty songs/ Believing it like most.’ ‘That’s very tongue in cheek, though, very hammy,’ says Allen. ‘Like, Why the fuck am I still doing this? Why I am here? But Elvis Presley has more right to sing that than me.’
Ivo: ‘I hope “11 Years” wasn’t about me!’
The album cover featured a typographical grid overlaid on the image of a tree. ‘To signify past and present, like the music is a concoction of the latest technology with the roots of music,’ says Allen. But this sign of strength masked the fact that the making of the album had severed the longest-serving alliance on 4AD, between Allen and Cox – and it had happened over a familiar bugbear: money.
The root of the problem was a hit single, but it wasn’t even the band’s own. Of all people to recognise The Wolfgang Press’s way around a tune and to commission them to write a song for them, you would not have bet on Tom Jones, the trouper with the biggest lungs in showbiz, a singer and performer much admired by his peer Elvis Presley. It turned out that Jones had been scouting for songs and was sent a sampler of songs by Love and Rockets: ‘“A Girl Like You” was the next song on the tape,’ says Allen. Jones had given the Wolfgang Press track a typically belting treatment for his album The Lead And How to Swing It and had asked the band to write a new song specifically for his new album. Inside 36 hours, says Allen, they had written ‘Show Me (Some Devotion)’.
With this unexpected endorsement, the trio had begun to record an album, continuing their course towards a transparent commerciality with the now-customary field of guests (among them Dif Juz guitarist David Curtis and former Rema-Rema/Mass comrade Gary Asquith). ‘Derek The Confessor’ pointed to a new, relaxed warmth, ‘So Long Dead’ was an angrier Wolfgang Press than they’d expressed for a while, and the electric piano triggering ‘Christianity’ was one of their most nagging riffs. But there was too much overworked, even bland, material, for example ‘She’s So Soft’,which milked the rhythm of T. Rex’s glam classic ‘Get It On’. The record sounded jaded, and the band knew it.
‘Funky Little Demons was a big mistake,’ Mick Allen concludes. ‘It went against what we were about, because we’d lost our way. Heads were turned. Mine was, anyway. Once you start thinking too much about what other people think of you, you lose the plot.’
‘None of us were focused on what the sound should be,’ adds Andrew Gray. ‘We were all off at tangents.’
‘Queer had taken ages to make, and I was surprised when they decided to go through it all again,’ says Ivo. Funky Little Demons had been a nightmare to make too. ‘The ideas didn’t flow easily but musically, it mostly sounded joyous and lyrically Mick’s observation of personal relationships was easier to follow than usual.’
The difference between Queer’s unqualified success and Funky Little Demons’ failure was that the band had secured its own studio, partly through ‘A Girl Like You’ royalties. Freed up from the limitations of studio expense and bookings, they spent the best part of two years working on an album; to free up the creative block, producer Drostan Madden suggested each member demo three tracks at home. Gray says only he and Allen completed the task. ‘Mark found it hard to work on his own, and he returned with some electronics that didn’t go anywhere. And we were now under time and pressure to finish the album.’
Allen: ‘Mark’s confidence was shot too as he felt he wasn’t given much support from us. We weren’t the greatest at instilling confidence. But we were all big boys and we should have been able to come up with something.’
Strangely, the album’s sole single writing credit was Cox’s ambient instrumental ‘New Glass’, which sat awkwardly on a Wolfgang Press record. Allen says he should take part of the blame for the lack of direction. ‘I was the driving force before but I’d started a family [with 4AD office manager Janice Chaplin], which had diverted my attention. Foolishly, I let Mark and Andrew steer things. It felt like we were carrying Mark, which actually had been going on for a while. It might sound ruthless but that’s how it worked. The balance had shifted.’
‘We’d always divided profits three ways, but some tracks were completely Mick or me,’ Gray explains. ‘In the end, we said that the publishing should be split according to the writing. Mark then said he’d leave.’
‘Queer was the album we were always trying to make, which might explain why it all then fell apart,’ Cox suggests. ‘Tom Jones was the catalyst. People around us got excited, thinking we’d be millionaires, which turned into, “I wrote that song”, after years of sharing everything. People have to treat me as an equal or I’m out of there. The Wolfgang Press was like an old married trio; we’d row over the milk, but we were solid on basic life morals, or so I thought. I’m aware of the others’ complaints, but I believe strength comes from the ability to compromise.’
Cox even suggests that Ivo could have held the band together. ‘Someone needed to get in the middle of us. But I’d watched Ivo, the youngest of eight, who didn’t have children himself, except that he had a hundred children, all members of 4AD bands. Having since toured with Brendan [Perry] and Robin [Guthrie], seeing how the tour manager herded us around like spoilt children, I’m not surprised that Ivo burned out. He had to deal with all that fallout after this beautiful, harmonious growth.’
Ivo: ‘The morning after the pivotal moment when I effectively had a breakdown, Mark had called to tell me he’d left; he was really upset, broken-hearted, confused and angry. We must have spoken for an hour, but he didn’t realise that I was crying the whole time, because I was dealing with my own confusion.’
The Wolfgang Press had played All Virgos Are Mad, with David Curtis taking over Cox’s keyboard parts. Cox did turn up in LA, to support Ivo and catch up with friends, but only after Allen and Gray had left town. The band continued to tour, but rumours swirled about them being dropped from 4AD. Andrew Gray had married an American and already elected to live in the States, and with Allen focused on his family in London, The Wolfgang Press officially went on sabbatical. A promo video was made for ‘Christianity’ but the track was only ever released as a promo. More money wasted, then. And would a song named after a mass religion, with provocative punk Mick Allen pulling crucifixion poses in the video, be supported anyway by an American corporation such as Warners?
Six months later, 4AD confirmed the band had been dropped following Warners’ similar decision. ‘We looked at the huge debt The Wolfgang Press had,’ says Ivo. ‘An American licensee was the only way it could now be financially viable, because it wasn’t cheap to run offices in LA as well as London. It wasn’t common for an English independent label to have such a set-up.’
The biggest flaw in the long-term contracts that 4AD were offering was the built-in option for the label to secure further albums, but only through paying increasingly bigger advances to the artist. ‘It was becoming prohibitive, and one by one Warners wasn’t interested in picking up those options,’ Ivo recalls. ‘It was almost like a domino effect.’
It seemed the odds were always stacked against The Wolfgang Press: never fashionable, never the new kids in town given their history with Rema-Rema and Mass, never supported by radio. When the band’s publishing deal was also not renewed, the band was effectively cut adrift. Allen and Gray haven’t recorded a note together since. Or spoken to Cox. ‘I’ve held out a hand but they don’t engage,’ Cox says. ‘We were so close for so long, like brothers. It felt like I’d been written out of the will.’
‘I didn’t like the fact Mark felt we’d been unreasonable,’ says Allen. ‘I might have been paranoid, but I also felt he used his friendship with Ivo to some effect, the fact that Ma
rk was out in the cold, before we were dropped.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Gray counters. ‘I think Ivo saw us as a democracy, a family that had feuds, a family where you have to pull your weight, and if you don’t, people will tell you so. It blew his vision of us. Remember, it was Mick and Mark right back at the start.’
What happened with The Wolfgang Press epitomised what had gone wrong at 4AD: commerce over commitment, money over art. Ivo’s reaction reflected this, proving Allen was right to be paranoid, though not because of Cox.
‘In many ways, what happened to The Wolfgang Press was the final straw,’ says Ivo (and not for the first time – Tanya Donelly recalls Ivo saying much the same thing about Belly). ‘These people I’d admired for so long for their principled approach as much as for their music were making the cardinal error of tearing apart the trust, respect and equality that made them so dear to me and unique to themselves. We let them go because it was no longer financially viable, but I was influenced by the way Mick and Andrew treated Mark.’
That left Dead Can Dance as the longest-serving 4AD personnel, followed by Throwing Muses. Both bands had negotiated potentially fatal family splits, and survived, all the stronger for it.
After the pain-free launch of Hersh’s Hips And Makers, the Muses’ first album as a trio, University, flexed its sinewy power-trio muscle over fourteen tracks and 48 minutes with a cohesion they hadn’t achieved since 1987’s House Tornado. But nothing in the Donelly era had had a wah-wah guitar snaking through (‘No Place In Hell’). There were delicate interludes, such as ‘Calm Down, Come Down’ and an acoustic ‘Crabtown’, introduced by Hersh’s unabashed giggle. Hersh’s two sons Dylan and Ryder, alongside Hips And Makers producer Lenny Kaye, sang on the title track, while ‘Snakeface’ had backing vocals by New Orleans engineer Tina Shoemaker, who was to work with Hersh on many of her following records. Another little family had begun to grow.