Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  4AD had already published calendars and poster sets, but a fine art book was big leap. However, Ivo was adamant that it was the future, a new imprint that would have the quality of 4AD’s packaging and the integrity that the label originally stood for. It was an upbeat end to 1995, a year that had begun shakily, with the fracturing of The Wolfgang Press, and Belly and The Breeders’ enforced hiatus, but a year which also included the arrival of Tarnation and Mojave 3 to give 4AD a fresh identity and stronger roots for the foreseeable future.

  The year concluded with another positive note: a festive EP from Kristin Hersh. The Holy Single included the message, ‘Happy Holidays from all of us’, with cover versions of Big Star’s ‘Jesus Christ’, Christian hymn ‘Amazing Grace’, Dude’s ‘Sinkhole’ (only previously recorded on the original Throwing Muses Doghouse cassette) and ‘Can The Circle Be Unbroken’, an adaptation of a Christian hymn that pleaded with the Lord for a place of heavenly rest for the narrator’s deceased mother. Maybe the universe was listening and 4AD would get over its malaise, with a recovered Ivo back in the frame. Maybe Scheer would be 4AD’s surprise rescue package. Maybe the circle would remain unbroken. Maybe.

  * The fact that Mark Kozelek has subsequently recorded entire albums of covers (by disparate sources such as AC/DC, John Denver and Modest Mouse), both under his own name and that of Sun Kil Moon – the band successor to Red House Painters – shows that he was not to be dissuaded from his new direction. At the same time, Kozelek has studiously taught himself to play more classical nylon-stringed guitar, supporting Ivo’s view that American artists are always more self-improving than their British counterparts. Ivo maintains he has liked everything that Kozelek has recorded since they parted ways, saying, ‘I still have an enormous soft spot for him.’

  † Simple Machines’ annual guide to ‘indie’ was later transferred online as the Future of Music Coalition, embracing the new digital world that had opened up for artists. Jenny Toomey was awarded a grant for such work from the Ford Foundation, where she now works as a program officer for media rights and access in internet policy. She in turn gives grants to organisations that are ‘fighting to ensure people have access to the internet as a right, and how to establish the rules of the internet, such as privacy and competition’.

  ‡ Nigel Grierson concentrated on music videos (and TV commercials) in the Nineties, including The Beloved (‘Sun Rising’), Robert Plant (‘29 Palms’), David Sylvian (‘Orpheus’) and Rain Tree Crow (‘Black Water’). Some drew on what Grierson calls his street photography, which he was developing at the same time as album sleeves at 4AD: ‘I wanted videos to feel like turning the pages of a good photographic book – no continuity cuts, more stream of consciousness. It was partly a reaction against the narrative nonsense of videos in the first half of the Eighties. It was also pointless doing stuff that people would say looked like 4AD. Nevertheless, certain obsessions re-emerged in spite of myself’ – water being the predominant reoccurring image.

  chapter 20 – 1996

  Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

  (BAD6001–BAD6019)

  Ivo recalls Martin Mills flying out to visit him. ‘It was one of my darkest periods, when I was trying to understand the source of what was causing me so much sadness and confusion and my loss of connection to music, my career and my company. I turned to self-help books, meditation, yoga, everything. I told Martin about one self-help book after another and he said, “Have you thought of reading a novel?” In other words, get out of your head.’

  Ivo was still unable to explain how depression had overtaken his life, despite dedicated bouts of research: ‘I’d read several well-intentioned authors, on meditation, mindfulness and cognitive therapy.’

  Wrapped up in dog-world and books, from self-help to photography, preferring the internet to people (besides Brandi), Ivo was increasingly distanced from 4AD. ‘People didn’t expect me at the office, or at gigs, and Robin stood in for me everywhere,’ he says. ‘But he didn’t have the authority to sign bands. I just felt so awful for 4AD employees, being the boss who never turned up. And music would scare me by releasing too many emotions. It’s embarrassing given how much I love [Duluth, Minnesota sadcore trio] Low now, but I remember Robin playing them to me and not being able to respond. Not connecting to music made me sadder. I’d spend a lot of time watching daytime TV, which is common among people with serious depression.’

  Ivo did manage to find some respite with Brandi and with their Shar Pei dogs, Friday and Otis. His unconditional love of dogs turned into a mission when Brandi, while out walking Otis, found two abandoned adult dogs. Avoiding the dog shelter – ‘it was full of terrified dogs and smelt like a death camp,’ says Ivo – they adopted one (v23’s Paul McMenamin took the other) and named him Rudy, after which Ivo and Brandi began to foster dogs from the shelter.

  If Ivo was content communing with dogs, the staff and the artists in his care at 4AD might also have benefited from more nurturing. ‘Like footballers and boxers, artists need a good manager, as security, in which they can express themselves and focus on what they do,’ Nigel Grierson suggests. ‘Ivo was that figure within 4AD, which gave a context for a lot of creative work, even when people had arguments, and few of those places exist.’

  Lush, who had been concentrating on a third album throughout 1995 – they had only played seven shows all year – had felt the estrangement more than most, suffering from self-confidence issues after the chart downturn and mixed reviews of Split.

  ‘We did feel let down, because Ivo just vanished,’ says Miki Berenyi. ‘If he’d just told us that he was having a breakdown, it would have been fine! There were rumours about what had happened, a lot of drugs, which didn’t make me very sympathetic at a time when we really needed him. And when he told me about the therapy that he’d had, because of his chilled exterior, it seemed like he was toying with things rather than coming apart at the seams.’

  Lush’s isolation had been compounded by the departure of Tim Carr from Warners/Reprise and also that of manager Howard Gough. ‘There’s someone I never need speak to again,’ says Berenyi. ‘Even as far back as Lollapalooza, we’d pressed him on the accounts, and discovered he’d sometimes double-charged us. The music industry is geared towards ripping musicians off, full stop … Howard said we should be grateful that he didn’t take a cut of our tour money, which booking agents already did.’

  Gough’s departure was precipitated by a dinner that had been arranged to talk over Lush’s forthcoming plans in the wake of Split – Robin Hurley had even flown over; given The Breeders’ state of inactivity, Lush was now 4AD’s best chance of hit records. ‘Howard turned up, completely trashed, offering drugs, slagging off 4AD’s bands but trying to be matey with 4AD because he used to work there,’ Emma Anderson recalls. ‘The next day, Simon Harper said that if we carried on working with Howard, it was over with 4AD. Suddenly Howard said he didn’t want to manage us anymore. He decided to get in there first.’

  In the search for Gough’s replacement, ‘Warners suggested an American and Emma rightly said we didn’t want an American always pulling us over there,’ says Berenyi. ‘The focus on America was making Emma turn the other way, saying it wasn’t why she’d formed Lush, that Europe was more our sensibility. Robin Guthrie said that [Cocteau manager] Ray Coffer was brilliant, that he’d sorted out their holiday and stuff, but we didn’t need a babysitter.’

  Lush eventually chose The Boo Radleys’ manager Peter Felstead. ‘He was a bit dull and pedestrian, but also a relief after Howard’s craziness,’ says Berenyi. ‘And 4AD thought they could do business with Peter.’

  Seven years on from Lush’s Falcon show, the band didn’t need knocking into shape, and Hurley agreed to let the band’s live sound engineer Pete Bartlett produce the album: ‘He knew us better than anyone,’ says Anderson. Without the drama that had marred the recording of Spooky and Split – ‘the mood was chipper,’ says Berenyi – Bartlett got the desired results, with much less reliance on effects
, to match the three-minute charge of the new tracks.

  The first song that Berenyi had written for the album was ‘Ladykillers’. ‘I thought, right, if anyone thinks I’m incapable of writing a good song, I’ll show you. I put everything in – handclaps, simpler harmonies, sudden stops … even if my effort came out as dark and antagonistic.’

  Berenyi had written pop songs before, for example ‘Hypocrite’, but nothing of the dynamic zip and intelligence of ‘Ladykillers’, with its sharp putdown of misplaced machismo that you’d have expected more from her former band The Baby Machines. Anderson’s response was the ironic submission of ‘Single Girl’, a brilliantly bittersweet two minutes and 35 seconds with a marked Sixties lilt. ‘It was us finally saying, we are quite good, we can do this, we don’t have to cower and be embarrassed,’ says Berenyi. ‘We felt brasher, more upbeat.’

  v23 joined in with a playful, enigma-stripping campaign, at odds with the Jim Friedman abstract Polaroids of Lush’s early records or the singular objects (lemons, twigs, a bottle, a lampshade) used for the Split releases. Vaughan Oliver conceived of a series of spontaneously created street scenes of passers-by collared into holding up a large circular sign brandishing the band’s name. ‘Single Girl’ became the lead single, and 4AD went to town on the formats, with two CDs and a seven-inch version necessitating seven new B-sides. A radio promo fronted by the exquisitely moody album cut ‘Last Night’ spanned six remixes. The machine had to be fed, no matter what the cost to physical and creative resources.

  The upshot was 4AD’s highest UK singles chart entry, at 21, and, at long last, an appearance on BBC TV’S Top of the Pops. Usually, that would have the knock-on effect of pushing a single up the chart, but this didn’t happen. ‘Ladykillers’, which followed with indecent haste just six weeks later, even before an album was released, came in the same twin CD edition (and seven extra B-sides this time), charted at 22, but a second Top of the Pops appearance didn’t send this further up the charts either. Lush’s third album, Lovelife, followed a week later, reaching an encouraging number 8, but still finishing up one place lower than Spooky. Lush couldn’t emulate those Britpop bands that were scoring top-three hits, but then Britpop was largely the domain of boisterous boy fans. Among the female-fronted bands defined as Britpop (Sleeper and Echobelly, among them), only Elastica sold more than a fraction of Blur, Pulp and Oasis’s platinum units.

  Did the UK press, still chipping away at Lush with relish, have anything to do with it? ‘We were tapping the zeitgeist of Britpop, supposedly,’ says Berenyi. Critics cited the presence of Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker, though he’d only been invited to duet on the playful ‘Ciao!’ after Chris Acland had reneged on a plan to make his vocal debut. But Lush had shared bills with Elastica and Blur, and Anderson admits there was an element of truth to the charge: ‘It was like, everyone’s having a bloody hit, let’s have a go too.’

  Not being a fan of anything that could be described as playful or jaunty, Ivo wasn’t keen on ‘Ciao!’ or Jarvis Cocker. ‘But I was no longer involved in making decisions. Everybody just got on with it. But finally, a group I was involved with was in a position to get on Top of the Pops, and would actually say yes! I’ve still not seen the footage.’

  This shows how interested Ivo was in the fruits of success. His complete detachment from Scheer since selling them to Warners demonstrated how out of touch he had become with 4AD’s daily motions, or even the urgent need to sell records. Maybe the Irish band stood a better chance than Lush. Hard rock and heavy metal culture made even less room for women, but Scheer had grunge appeal, with Audrey Gallagher the potential poster girl to follow Shirley Manson of the new rock arrivistes Garbage. In theory, all 4AD needed was Warners’ muscle and the right record.

  Scheer’s debut album Infliction was trailed by two singles in quick suggestion: a battering ‘Shéa’ and ‘Wish You Were Dead’, which really did resemble a turbo-charged Cranberries song, with Gallagher’s undulating Irish vocal, expressing much darker sentiments in tune with Shirley – and Marilyn – Manson. A further turbo-charged PJ Harvey might have made something like the bluesy ‘Howling Boy’, and a more measured ‘In Your Head’ showed co-guitarists Paddy Leyden and Neal Calderwood understood the art of dynamics. But Gallagher’s melodies often played a secondary role to the guitars, except in the unexpectedly tender acoustic finale ‘Goodbye’. A whole album of those would have thrilled 4AD, Ivo and all its dedicated fans.

  After the band played St Louis, Missouri, WestNet writer Lee Graham Bridges judged Scheer, ‘catchy, energetic, and a good listen … neither terribly boring nor incredibly interesting … a glittering, beautifully rough act in concert but standard rock stars on record.’ A full commitment to tour-slogging across America might be the key. There were just a couple of hitches: both 4AD’s London office and Warners had their doubts about the band.

  ‘Scheer was a really good Irish rock band signed to the wrong label,’ says 4AD PR Colleen Maloney. ‘We had no experience of that kind of mainstream rock, unlike Beggars Banquet, where they should have been signed. The band needed a lot of guidance and we were grasping at the unknown.’

  ‘4AD prioritised Scheer, and we took it seriously, but it also didn’t seem like it was something we could succeed with,’ says Warners president Steven Baker. ‘It was 4AD’s stab at working with a more conventional alternative rock band, and just because the band had a harder sound than other 4AD artists of the period, it didn’t mean they would be more successful. Scheer had to stand out among other groups working with that sound, and in the end, they just didn’t. One advantage of a big company like Warners is the ability of individuals to stand up for an artist that they think deserve to be prioritised in some way, and Scheer never received that vote of confidence from anyone.’

  But the confusion over Scheer was nothing next to the jaw-dropping impact of 4AD’s next album. Ivo had continued to enjoy watching San Diego’s The Paladins, blues rock purveyors of good-time, hi-octane vibes. ‘They were completely outside of anything to do with work, a total release,’ says Ivo. Bringing them into the workplace was a risk but Ivo’s keenness to release a Paladins album came from that place of pure emotional instinct, the tingle.

  Ivo was also smitten with Paladins frontman Dave Gonzalez. ‘He was the most hard-working, genuine musician I’d met, in love with everything to do with music. Dave was obsessed with the Fifties – the trucks in the yard, a Wurlitzer in the living room, the real deal. His uncle sold me my Dodge truck.’

  The band had reached the stage where the trio’s songs were stretching out to ten minutes with guitar solos. But while Red House Painters epics were exhausting, The Paladins’ ten-minute tours de force such as ‘Big Mary’ and ‘One Step’ were driven by a constant blast of adrenalin. ‘It was like watching a power trio with an upright bass,’ Ivo recalls. ‘I just wanted to capture this moment in time, just out of the pure love of doing it, and I thought it could help the band. Not because it was on 4AD, but that they didn’t have any other outlet at the time. And it didn’t cost much to do.’

  Gonzalez is now based in Austin, but on the day we spoke, he was in Green Bay, Wisconsin where his current band Stone River Boys was headlining the local casino. He recalls that The Paladins had, incredibly, played more than three hundred shows a year, for twenty years. They’d started as a rockabilly outfit at the dawn of that genre’s revival in the early Eighties, a brand of rebel music that had more in common with punk than the mainstream. The Paladins had even supported Bauhaus in 1982, and Gonzalez had heard of Pixies and Cocteau Twins.

  By the early Nineties, The Paladins had added honky-tonk country, blues and rock, which they’d honed to perfection. Ivo’s initial phone call, Gonzalez says, came out of the blue. ‘He said how much he liked us, and he could name some of our songs! But he only wanted me to recommend some of my favourite blues guitarists. I told him [Fleetwood Mac’s] Peter Green, who was awesome. There was also Jimmy Vaughan, and an older American guy called Hollywood Fats, who
once sat in with The Paladins, and was a mentor to me. We just talked about music, for a year or so, before Ivo said he’d like to make a record with us. I wasn’t expecting it, not from a guy who had pop hits on 4AD, who wanted to hear about other kinds of music to what was on his label. I couldn’t believe he wanted to help us.’

  Gonzalez initially said that he’d like to make a country music record, like early Willie Nelson. ‘Ivo said, “No, you’re a great blues guitarist, and I even know the seven songs I want on the album”.’ Gonzalez had many more he wanted to record, but they compromised on ten tracks, and picked the best versions from a dozen recorded shows.

  Million Mile Club – named in honour of the distances the band’s van had travelled over the years – was a scorcher. Gonzalez says the association with 4AD and Warners raised The Paladins’ profile for years to come, enabling them to tour Europe and Australia. It did exactly what Ivo wanted, except entice Warners to lend its support. ‘Warners didn’t feel it like he did,’ says Gonzalez. ‘We weren’t like anything that was on the radio. It frustrated Ivo that he couldn’t get them to accept the records that he was giving them.’

  So much for Steven Baker’s claim that Warners was lucky to have Ivo. But 4AD was a victim of Ivo’s delicate sensibilities and Warners simply had no channel to market The Paladins. At least Ivo could call the shots in the UK, and the band flew over to do promotion in Europe.

  Nothing divided 4AD’s newly expanded A&R team more than The Paladins. ‘They were amongst the most pure and satisfying projects that I ever worked on,’ says Ivo. ‘The Paladins was a real head-in-hands moment for me,’ recalls 4AD’s newest A&R man Lewis Jamieson. ‘Of course Ivo can put what he likes out on 4AD, but what could it add to the label, artistically or commercially?’