by Martin Aston
Jeff Keibel, whose comprehensive websites show an obsessive loyalty to 4AD, admits even he was initially tested by The Paladins. ‘Many 4AD fans on the 4AD mailing list disowned or pretended Million Mile Club did not exist, but it was a learning experience for me. I wasn’t ever a genuine blues fan yet I got what Ivo must have got when he heard this band play live, the sheer power and conviction.’
Robin Hurley also had trouble accepting The Paladins. ‘They were an odd signing,’ he concurs. ‘I asked Ivo, what do we do with this? He got angry, and said, “Tell everyone to fucking work it, I’ve signed them”. A lot of the London office thought that was it for Ivo. I had more history with him back from the beginning, when he’d say, “If I like something, I think others will as well”. So that’s how we treated it.’
The gulf between Ivo and 4AD’s new A&R man was made abundantly clear early on in Lewis Jamieson’s new role. In Ivo’s mind, without the right aesthetic vision, 4AD didn’t have a reason to exist. After Scheer, he was getting used to people questioning his choices. ‘When we had signed Tarnation, there was enormous confusion – why had we signed a country band?’ Ivo recalls. ‘I didn’t care if we weren’t being obvious. If I’d followed those parameters, I would never have released a Birthday Party record.’
Jamieson was more of a commercially minded pragmatist. Seeing more cutbacks in the company, ‘money that was spent on The Paladins should have gone towards people’s wages,’ he says.
The Paladins would have been trumped as 4AD’s most unexpected part of the catalogue if Ivo had managed to license a compilation, Bad Boy, by a Fifties doo-wop troupe from New York. One of Brandi’s favourites, The Jive Bombers were best known for their 1957 hit ‘Bad Boy’ that had been rediscovered via John Waters’ hit film Cry-Baby – Brandi and Ivo would listen to the album (on the Australian reissues label Raven) on night-time drives around LA. Ivo particularly liked singer Clarence Palmer’s strange and wonderful affectation, often scat-singing repeated syllables at the end of a word (‘I’m a bad boy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoy’). The album was even allocated a 4AD catalogue number, but the rights owner, Nippon Columbia – coincidentally 4AD’s Japanese distributor – responded to Ivo’s offer with the news that it would reissue the album instead (which never happened).
Another bone of contention between 4AD’s boss and its youth spokesman was a band that, both artistically and commercially, could have given 4AD a noticeable boost, without pandering to Britpop or any other trend. The Scottish band Belle and Sebastian were a wonderful source of wistful and erudite folk-pop that quickly attracted a similarly fervent fan base as The Smiths, fusing the delicacy of Johnny Marr and Nick Drake. Jamieson had sent Ivo the band’s debut album Tigermilk, which had been posted to Alma Road by the album’s producer, former Associates member Alan Rankine.
‘Tigermilk was brilliant,’ recalls Jamieson. ‘I’d usually play a customary 90 seconds of a track before dismissing it, but 37 minutes later, I was thinking I’d found our next signing. For a man who put out Air Miami records, Ivo didn’t mind a bit of “twee”. But he said, “It sounds like The Smiths, I still hate The Smiths, you can’t sign them”.’
Ivo: ‘I can’t remember talking to Lewis about Belle and Sebastian. The first time I ever heard them was reading reviews that compared them to Nick Drake. This was during a kind of overnight success for Drake after Pink Moon had been used in a VW commercial. I was intrigued but I listened sceptically, and I reacted negatively because I couldn’t understand the lazy comparison to Nick Drake, someone whose music was dear to my heart. Belle and Sebastian didn’t make me think of The Smiths either. But Lewis is right that I wouldn’t have wanted to sign them to 4AD. Peculiarly out of context, I became a fan of some of Belle and Sebastian’s earlier music after being seduced by their artwork once it was produced in fabulous Japanese replica sleeves.’
‘Any indie label that was working properly would have signed that band,’ Jamieson contends. ‘Other people in the office got it, but it just got scuppered before I could do anything. Had Ivo gone for it, it would have been a cheap and easy deal as their album was already made, so we wouldn’t have had to invest much money. It was such an odd situation to be in, as A&R for a label that belonged to a man I didn’t meet until a year later.’
Jamieson says he should have flown to America to meet Ivo, but surely the onus was on 4AD’s management to pair them up and unify a strategy that included fellow A&R man Colin Wallace. But Ivo led A&R, and he was in retreat: not even Robin Hurley decided to intervene.
‘I felt a horrible conflict between the man that owned its vision and a music scene that had changed massively since he was last in it,’ says Jamieson. ‘The way 4AD had always sold records on the basis of its name had started to tail off as Britpop took hold, because the agenda for what constituted an indie band had changed, from interesting music that sold to a sub-culture of people, like Ultra Vivid Scene or His Name Is Alive, to how high you were in the charts and whether your record got on [BBC] Radio 1’s B list. NME and radio liked 4AD but I felt they were interested in bigger things and that 4AD had been edged out: For example, Creation had Oasis, Teenage Fanclub and The Boo Radleys, who were all British. And 4AD needed to sell records here as it was a gateway to Europe. But we couldn’t sign acts that appealed to a UK market that also made sense economically.’
The label combined three of its current young bands for an American tour. After the last of thirty-three British dates that had stretched across three months, Lush had just eight days’ break before joining Mojave 3 and Scheer for twenty-eight dates in North America, starting in April. Ivo playfully named the tour Shaving The Pavement after a comment made by Mark Cox when he noticed a splodge of shaving foam at his feet; however, the bands quickly rechristened it Shagging The Pavement after Scheer’s Audrey Gallagher and Neal Calderwood’s newly minted relationship was reputedly one of several dalliances that took place during the six weeks on the road. ‘The atmosphere was more hanging out, getting drunk and passing out, and less, you’ve got to break America,’ says Emma Anderson.
But only two weeks after the Shaving/Shagging tour was over, Lush was back in the States for a series of radio-sponsored festivals prior to a Japanese tour. It wasn’t at the punishing level of The Paladins, but then The Paladins didn’t also have to zig-zag overseas with media duties at every stop as Lush did. One US show on the mini-tour was the KROQ Weenie Roast at LA’s Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, with Lush and new hip-hop superstars the Fugees on either side of a revolving stage. Another in blazing sunshine at a show in Hartford, Connecticut, where Miki Berenyi was repeatedly soaked by bottles of water chucked by an overheated crowd. ‘She couldn’t go near the microphone,’ says Anderson. ‘This massive boot came towards me and I ducked and put my guitar down and walked off. What was the point? It wasn’t helping sell records. The radio station called us pussies … That was the turning point for me. I hated the rest of the band and they hated me.’
Finally, one of 4AD’s more enduring partnerships had begun to crack. ‘Miki and Emma were like a rather strange, old bickering couple, though they were both beautiful and magnetic to watch,’ recalls Simon Harper. Berenyi admits they’d had rivalries over songs, and it was clear that Anderson preferred the confines of the studio while Berenyi preferred the buzz of the stage. Manager Peter Felstead’s machinations only widened the gulf. ‘Peter started to behave like Howard Gough, dazzled by the prospect of making it in America,’ says Berenyi. ‘Emma couldn’t stand him. I understood why, but we didn’t have any choice, and so I went the other way, giving Peter the benefit of the doubt, which caused a big rift with Emma and we stopped talking.’
Anderson wanted to avoid returning to America: ‘We were doing well in the UK, so why not tour here again?’ she says. ‘Even though our last UK tour had been very hard because 4AD hadn’t given us enough tour support. Our support band, Coast, was staying at the Hilton hotel while we’d have a guest house with no heating and black dust coming out of the taps.’
Germano had already released her third album for 4AD. Excerpts From A Love Circus was another of her vulnerable gems, fitting in alongside the downbeat constituents of college-radio playlists such as Low, Codeine and Red House Painters. There were occasional signs of a less desperate frame of mind with the positively carefree ‘I Love A Snot’, the gypsy violin and breezy rhythm of the lead single ‘Small Head’, and sampled purrs from her cats Dorothy and Miamo-Tutti (whose names ended up in some of the song titles). But ‘Lovesick’ felt as disturbing as Geek The Girl’s ‘… A Psychopath’, aimed at a figure who was, ‘not my Yoko Ono’.
But Ivo visited Germano at her home in Bloomington, showing he could engage when he still felt a bond to an artist. ‘Ivo was there for me this time,’ says Germano. ‘He stayed with me, and we went for rides and hikes, and we talked about the songs.’
‘People thought Geek The Girl was a bit difficult and bleak but, for me, Excerpts … was like an open wound,’ says Ivo. Perhaps that explains why he didn’t talk Germano out of including the sound of cat purrs. ‘Tracks like “We Suck”, “Baby On A Plane” and “Messages From Sophia” were all beautiful but Lisa was in an unhappy place. There’s an on-the-edge-of-drunk feel to a lot of it. But this was the start of Lisa crafting her individuality in a sonic sense, which reminded me of Warren Defever’s original approach. There was a lot of deconstruction possibly as a distraction from what she was singing about. I admire Lisa because she considered herself normal and average, and not one of the “cool” or smart people at 4AD, whoever they were. And yet she was making this cool, crazily imaginative music that came from her soul.’
Many years later, Ivo was furious to hear that Jamieson had, in his mind, bullied Germano on to the stage, and felt guilty that, in his absence, she was subject to a much more abrasive style of artist management. But then Ivo was not able to be around for several artists that had depended on him. Warren Defever was another. He no longer needed mentoring or remixing, but without this most sympathetic and empathic of label champions, he was exposed to the ‘new’ 4AD style, and having to work within the Warners system.
According to Defever, ‘I signed a new long-term contract for five albums, starting with Stars On ESP, knowing that there was no one in charge anymore and that the LA and London offices didn’t seem to communicate well. I felt I had a duty and a loyalty to commit to 4AD because of everything they had done for me, even though it was clear that things were going to be very different. Missed release dates, year-long delays, deleted catalogue titles, mixed-up catalogue numbers, poor promotion, dishonesty, accounting errors, late payments, broken promises … it was run in complete opposition to the way 4AD had been run in London.
‘It got weird fast. Ivo assured me the LA office would put together a contract that solidified the terms that we currently worked under, with no new demands or additional pressures. This was not the case. I got a strictly scheduled recording plan with smaller advances than we were currently getting and none of the previous details of our working relationship were maintained. It sucked. I signed it. I regret it.’
At least musically everything was moving ahead without a single hitch. Defever had spent over three years recording a fourth album, with time allocated to production work for Tarnation and Liquorice and family affairs to attend to, such as the death of his mother. And Defever only needed his imagination, not big budgets, to record great albums.
The low maintenance joy that was His Name Is Alive’s Stars On ESP kept 4AD’s freak flag flying with Defever’s usual gamut of strange currencies. Defever had a concept this time – a compilation of imagined singles on the experimental Sixties label ESP-Disk, best known for psych-folk mavericks like Pearls Before Swine, with his cut-up technique mirroring the turning of a radio dial between stations. He’d also found a way to get around samples that needed clearing: he would simply record his own version. For example, lead single ‘Universal Frequencies’ (the moustached man on the back cover was Vaughan Oliver, on his wedding day) was ‘a sequel’ to The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’. Of the three different arrangements of ‘This World Is Not My Home’, ‘I Can’t Live In This World Anymore’ was a clear Big Star homage, while Ivo had suggested Defever do a gospel arrangement, which became ‘Last One’. It was another unique testament to Defever, 4AD’s resident sonic boffin.
Ivo: ‘Warren had developed into one of the most interesting producers and sound manipulators, with such an ear for accuracy. Listening to Stars On ESP now makes total sense in terms of his continued evolution away from his earliest work.’
Five co-writes showed Defever was increasingly open to collaborators, such as Mark Kozelek on the slow, sombre ‘Across The Street’. Defever had also been recording with former Pale Saint Ian Masters. ‘Ian sang high, choirboy style, without being overly precious or nice, and his lyrics were beautiful and crazy,’ says Defever. After Masters had played bass for His Name Is Alive’s 13 Year Itch show, Ivo suggested the pair should record together. Masters duly flew to Michigan where an album was finished over the course of a month. ‘Without Ivo’s support or enthusiasm,’ says Defever, ‘4AD just let it go.’
In return, Lewis Jamieson felt equally let down by Defever, who, like Lisa Germano, wasn’t a stage natural. ‘Stars On ESP was marvellous, and it could have pushed His Name Is Alive beyond the cult world. But we needed him to tour.’ Defever agreed, and HNIA flew over to play shows, but Jamieson recalls him turning up at Alma Road. ‘Warren said he didn’t feel he could do the rest of the tour. I was furious. Why spend money on a band that doesn’t want to do this job? I was expecting support from the office but people said they could see Warren’s point. If I’d been older and wiser, I’d have questioned if he’d really wanted to be bigger. I know 4AD, and especially me, were criticised for trying to make the label into something that it wasn’t designed to be. With hindsight, I was trying to compete with Creation, and His Name Is Alive brought that into sharp relief.’
It was all so much easier when a band could be self-sufficient, not undone by paranoia, neglect or fear. So it was timely that Dead Can Dance should reappear now, a duo out of time and place, in their own universe, unbothered by the need for remixes, formats or management.
In this uncertain commercial climate, a stunning new Dead Can Dance album to emulate Into The Labyrinth’s half-million sales could mean salvation for 4AD. As ever, Brendan Perry was eager to incorporate new influences. With his brother Andrew, Perry had been hosting percussion workshops at his Quivvy Church studio in Ireland, and the new Dead Can Dance album Spiritchaser was a stab at transcendental Afro-Latin rhythm. Lisa Gerrard’s vocal incantations were in support, but lengthy trance-inducing mantras such as ‘Song Of The Stars’ and ‘Indus’ were more National Geographic than KROQ. Spiritchaser topped Billboard’s World Music charts, but it was the first Dead Can Dance album that lost some of the duo’s ability to transcend their pool of influences.
The truth was, the periods of living and working apart had grown progressively longer; Gerrard was busy with motherhood and her own recordings, and the task of reuniting to restore the alchemical connection with Perry had been that much harder. ‘Spiritchaser was a bit stuffy and repetitive and I was constantly waiting for something to
happen in the songs,’ says Ivo. ‘But when I saw them live in Santa Fe, it turned into a monster. They should have recorded the album after touring.’
Colleen Maloney admits that even though Pixies had brought in the most profit for 4AD, Dead Can Dance was promoted as the label’s biggest act to shock people into paying attention. ‘They’d sell out gigs in seconds. They wouldn’t do much press so they retained a great sense of mystery, which made people even more eager when they were available. But with Brendan and Lisa not getting on anymore, it was hard to make it work.’
Perry admits that tensions were running high after the tour. Despite this, he and Gerrard did begin to record another album, which was eventually abandoned. ‘We’ve always endeavoured to make every album sound unique in its own way,’ he says. ‘But the need to explore new territory brings its own stress. After Spiritchaser, we lost direction and out of frustration, turned on each other.’
The last of 4AD’s old guard had finally crumbled and the pair finally surrendered and went their own way. ‘We had a huge fight,’ Gerrard recalls. ‘We’d done that over the years, but this time we decided we just couldn’t cope with each other anymore. The thing is, it’s always to do with passion, and impatience, and a conflict. It’s not that we didn’t love or like each other or not want to work together. But it just became impossible.’
Heidi Berry was also about to record her last album for 4AD, showing how the turnaround of artists was that much faster, and more mercenary, than it had been in the Eighties when the likes of Dead Can Dance could be supported.
Berry had recorded her third consecutive ‘bloody beautiful record’, as Ivo put it – though the album had been finished for a year because he kept trying to improve it. ‘I spent an unacceptably long time thinking about that album,’ Ivo admits, ‘but I really hoped that we could break Heidi in America, to have adequate success that would spread elsewhere. But it took me for ever to decide on anything, even what the single should be. I kept thinking something else needed to happen, like another track should be recorded, and this went on for months. But it was eventually released pretty much as is.’