by Martin Aston
Ivo recalls his shock when he’d talked to Acland before the LA date of the Shaving The Pavement tour. ‘Chris was one of the most relaxed, funny, gregarious individuals you could meet, who always made you feel comfortable. But here he was, confused and down. He told me, “Everybody’s become friends on this tour, and I don’t need any new friends, I have enough”. It was such an odd thing to say.’
Berenyi: ‘I know Chris was exhausted, but we all were. He had other stuff going on, like he’d turned thirty and he’d split with his girlfriend, and he was down about not having money or his own place to live. I’d known Chris since we were nineteen or so, and he’d always be having a great time. Sometimes he could be unapproachable, but he’d return home, recharge his batteries and things would be fine again.’
Exactly a month after Acland returned to his native Lake District, and ten days after 4AD released Topolino, an album of Lush B-sides for the Japanese market, his body was discovered in the garden of his parents’ house; he’d hanged himself on a tree. ‘No one had an inkling of what would happen,’ says Ivo.
The shock was devastating for everyone who knew Acland, but especially Berenyi, who’d been closer to the drummer than anyone. ‘We’d been students together, shared a house, I’d been his girlfriend and we’d been best mates for over a decade. He was one of the few reliably positive, consistently fun things about Lush. I still can’t figure out why he killed himself. I understand people get depressed, and there was a history of depression in his family, but Chris wasn’t bipolar.’
Acland had started taking the anti-depressant Prozac. ‘Maybe he was diagnosed the wrong stuff,’ Berenyi says. ‘He told me he wasn’t sleeping, and he’d been prescribed sleeping pills, but wasn’t taking them as he associated it with taking drugs. I don’t want to put it down to any drug, because that wasn’t his weakness, though I thought Chris got into coke during that time, which pissed me off, because he could be slow one night and racing through the set the next night. I gave him a pep talk and said he should talk to someone as he hated talking to his mates. I phoned after the weekend, and his mum thought he’d gone out … he was dead by then. He’d made a very quick decision, and for such an unselfish person, it was the worst, most selfish thing he could have done. It was such an unspeakable, crushing waste.’
Acland’s extreme reaction was proof that depression could take an unexplainable grip on the mind; Ivo knew that more than most. ‘Ivo told me, “I could see me killing myself, or I could see you, but never in a million years could I imagine Chris would be the one”,’ says Tim Carr. ‘The Chris I knew never had a dark thought in his head.’
Ivo: ‘That last time I saw Chris he was about to turn thirty. I confessed I’d found it a really tricky birthday but things got better. We laughed a lot about growing old. But something had happened with him. I think his apparent first bout of serious depression was just too much. With no prior experience, he just needed to make it stop. It’s also possible that the anti-depressants made things worse.’
The funeral in the Lake District united 4AD personnel past and present, including Ivo, Robin Guthrie and Howard Gough, in a gathering of profound sorrow where grievances could be set aside. When the dust had settled, it was Miki Berenyi and not Emma Anderson who decided she couldn’t go on.
‘For me, Chris was the glue that held things together, the core of the band more than me and Emma. Without Chris, Emma and I would have torn each other apart ages ago. We had respect for each other and we got on, but were at each other’s throats too, and it was Chris and Phil that made it fun. I think even if Chris hadn’t died, we’d eventually have had a blinding row and split up, but because of Chris, we had to be supportive of each other. And yet the problems were still there underneath.’†
As Marc Geiger had once pointed out, there did seem a pattern among Ivo’s signings, of romantic relationships undermining the stability of bands. But there was another pattern – too many of the artists that Ivo signed, the shy and sensitive, the vulnerable and moody, simply buckled under the strain of success, or striving for it. Not even a seemingly brash Charles Thompson enjoyed the fruits of his labours. You’d have to go back to 4AD’s earliest days, of Bauhaus and The Birthday Party, to find a predominance of artists that really thrived on attention.
Not even Belly could survive the unworkable marriage of its line-up during the making of second album King, but a much-needed spirit of rebirth came at the end of 4AD’s most traumatic year – due to Chris Acland’s death, the end of Dead Can Dance and Lush, the departure of Heidi Berry – with Tanya Donelly’s new solo guise. She toured North America with a dream team of Throwing Muses drummer David Narcizo and bassist – and new husband – Dean Fisher, who joined her (alongside former Pixies drummer Dave Lovering) at Gary Smith’s Fort Apache studio. The Sliding & Diving EP made King look like a bad dream. ‘Bum’ and ‘Human’ had more in common with and were as energetic as the current Throwing Muses, ‘Restless’ would have suited Gram Parsons, and ‘Swoon’ was well named. Donelly had come home.
Ivo was attempting to do the same. After the pursuit of one photographer, Tina Modotti, had inadvertently led to Tom Baril, so Baril had introduced Ivo to his picture framer Randolph Laub. Ivo took his small collection of photographs to Laub’s home outside of Santa Fe in New Mexico to be framed: ‘When I received them back,’ says Ivo, ‘each was mindblowing, in beautiful black matt, half-inch deep, just extraordinary. By giving Randolph complete freedom, I felt a correlation with the way that I’d worked with musicians and Vaughan.’
Ivo had wanted to visit Santa Fe ever since his brother Perry had shown him a photograph from his own trip. ‘I immediately fell in love with the scenery,’ he says, and an image, like a photograph in soft focus, grew in his mind of a place of rest and restoration, away from the big city and big business, to own land and build a house in the desert landscape.
In the early summer of 1996, Ivo had rented a house outside of Santa Fe for a month. When Dead Can Dance played in town, he had taken Gerrard and Perry to a plot of desert land he was thinking of buying. ‘Ever since I’d been on holiday in Majorca with Vaughan, I’d been trying to re-create the peace and tranquillity of that trip. It was the most calm I’d ever felt in my life.’
Seeing Dead Can Dance’s show that night only reinforced Ivo’s feelings for the region. As he recalls, ‘They played an outdoor auditorium in Santa Fe at the Native American Indian school. There was a blue moon that night, and you could see straight across to Colorado, and electrical storms in the distance … it was astonishing.’
The only thing was, the only way Ivo could pay for this dream was by selling his London flat, cutting off another tie with his home country, and to the past.
* Berry subsequently recorded with Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook, ‘but nothing happened,’ she says. Nooten blames Brook’s schedule and the cost of living in London: ‘I moved back to Amsterdam and began work as an in-house producer in a dance/ambient-oriented studio. But I loved working with Heidi, and the material was gorgeous, ambient neo-classical material with her sulky voice on top.’ A more complete and satisfying collaborator was former Kitchens of Distinction singer/bassist Patrick Fitzgerald, in a contemporary folk rock setting under the group alias Lost Girls. One track, ‘Needle’s Eye’, was released in 1998 as a single and included on 4AD’s 2001 Berry compilation Pomegranate. The remainder of the sessions sadly remain unreleased.
† Seventeen years after Lush’s split, Miki Berenyi has yet to initiate any music of her own. ‘I thought about it for a while,’ she says. ‘[Her partner] Moose would love to do some music together, but I always did feel I was a bit of a chancer with music and that I’d never do as well as I did with Lush. And I didn’t want to make a pale shadow. I got a job, I have kids … and music to me is hard work! It can’t just be the odd evening, it’s either full on or nothing.’ She has sung on three projects, by invitation: The Rentals 1999 album Seven More Minutes, a remix of a Flat 7 track by Robin Guthrie, and the debut a
lbum by Seinking Ships, Museum Quality Capture.
chapter 21 – 1997
As Close as Two Coats of Paint on a Windswept Wall
(TAD7000–BAD7012)
Dipping in and out of 4AD business, liaising with Ivo on occasion as two music fans and industry veterans, guitarist Michael Brook had the luxury of sizing up the label from a distance. ‘Ivo just wasn’t feeling the kind of enthusiasm and hunger that he had about music, which was part of why 4AD worked, and it wouldn’t work if he didn’t feel that way,’ Brook recalls. ‘In a way, 4AD was more like a band history than a label. It starts with a lot of excitement, and success builds, but it’s usually finite.’
Since 1992’s Cobalt Blue and its … Aquarium companion album, Brook had had one track, ‘Diffusing’, included on the All Virgos Are Mad compilation and taken part in the live counterpart. He’d subsequently collaborated with the esteemed Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for the Real World label, and on a combined project with David Sylvian and King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp while pursuing solo projects. Ivo agreed that 4AD should release his specially commissioned soundtrack to actor Kevin Spacey’s directorial debut Albino Alligator. ‘We all liked the film,’ says Ivo, ‘and 4AD seemed an appropriate outlet considering our connection with Michael.’
Brook’s soundtrack was rich in film noir menace and edgy jazz, for a story of two petty criminals in New Orleans that take hostages, culminating in a police siege. The film itself concluded with a humid arrangement of American composers Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen’s ‘Ill Wind’, sung by Michael Stipe and venerated jazz veteran Jimmy Scott over the closing credits.
Like Cobalt Blue, the soundtrack album was a lovely boutique venture, but no money-spinner. With Ivo unable to muster enthusiasm for music that might sell enough records to keep the label afloat, as his choices in 4AD’s early years had, then – unless Tanya Donelly could repeat Belly’s success or Kim Deal could bring The Breeders back around – GusGus might be 4AD’s only hope for recovery. The presence of the Icelandic band also felt like a doorway to a possible future rather than a reliance on the past. Warner Bros was on side this time: ‘GusGus weren’t just a typically alternative band, they had club potential, and the potential for having hits,’ says Steven Baker. ‘And it showed 4AD was branching out.’
Warners championed Tarnation too, to the point that responsibility for the band had been taken over by Reprise – ‘the artist development portion of the company,’ according to the band’s singer Paula Frazer. Ivo believes that, on the surface, 4AD appeared to be functioning as it used to: ‘We were trying to break artists like GusGus and Tanya Donelly; and Heidi Berry, Dead Can Dance and Lisa Germano had all had beautiful and intense campaigns.’ He sees v23 as playing its part of giving the appearance of normality: ‘From the visual reinvention of Lush, through Scheer and GusGus, the breadth of stylistic approach and the volume of work was staggering, especially when you see GusGus’ campaign – seven- and twelve-inch singles, CDs, street and store posters … If you knew nothing about 4AD, the artwork alone from this era was enough to convert you. This work, as much as the defining Cocteau Twins or Pixies sleeves, should have the same significance within the graphic design world.’
Even the least obvious contenders for formatting were getting the treatment, so Tarnation’s new lead single ‘You’ll Understand’ came in a CD and limited edition double seven-inch version with a limited edition seven-inch of ‘There’s Someone’. Both came from the band’s forthcoming second album Mirador, recorded with a new line-up since the Gentle Creatures band had already splintered. ‘Tarnation was my vision, but the other members wanted more of a partnership, and with four cooks the music was getting very diluted,’ says Frazer.
Mutual friends had introduced her to the San Francisco trio Broken Horse. ‘They were kinda Birthday Party stuff with a western swing and upright bass,’ says Frazer, though Mirador was much more in tune with Nick Cave’s brooding and measured Bad Seeds than the earlier band’s chaotic drama. Broken Horse guitarist Alex Oropeza and drummer Yuma Joe Byrnes joined Tarnation; Frazer thought bassist Bill Cuevas’s style was ‘too busy’ and so hired Jamie Meagan, formerly of Irish pop-punks Puppy Love Bomb, who Frazer was dating. ‘The new Tarnation had a darker, edgier, alternative retro sound, which I loved,’ she says.
Mirador was a bold step on from Gentle Creatures, a sultry gem that ranged from the tougher crust of ‘Like A Ghost’ and ‘Christine’ to shoring up the prairie ballads on ‘Idly’ and ‘Destiny’. But if Frazer and Reprise saw progress, Ivo wasn’t feeling it. ‘Paula had her new band and went off into this swampy, sub-Kid Congo and Bad Seeds area that I felt was musically unoriginal and didn’t suit her voice. Certain Virgo characteristics were peaking within me – nothing sounded good or essential, let alone perfect. I probably wouldn’t have chosen to do a second album with Tarnation but our European licensees also really liked the band, and Simon [Harper] wanted a smooth flow of releases from bands we’d already worked with.’
It was a double disappointment for Ivo as he’d reached out to Frazer soon after the release of Gentle Creatures about a new collaborative venture. ‘I gave Paula a couple of songs to think about how she might sing them, but I never got any feedback. It was such a shame because, like Elizabeth [Fraser], Lisa [Gerrard] and Kristin [Hersh], her voice might have helped redefine the label.’
That task was instead falling to GusGus. Ivo finally met the band when he was in London for one of his very rare visits to Alma Road. ‘A handful of them were there, and I said hello to Hafdis, one of the singers,’ Ivo recalls. ‘She said, “Hello, what do you do?” It was indicative of my invisibility and how comfortable they must have felt there without me, which I took as a good sign.’
A bad sign was Ivo’s reactions during an informal gathering that Ivo organised at the Alma pub. ‘Ivo asked everyone to be very honest, and to say if we thought there were any bands that he shouldn’t have signed,’ says Colleen Maloney. ‘Everyone was quiet, and Ivo said, “No, honestly, be blunt”, and Lewis said something to the effect that he hadn’t liked Lisa Germano’s last album.At which point Ivo exploded, saying, “How dare you, Lisa’s amazing …” Lewis was faced with the impossible task of being expected to sign commercially minded acts but with the aesthetics of a man he never got to spend enough time with.’
Jamieson recalls a conversation with Ivo regarding their current favourites. ‘Ivo said the new Low record, and I said Portishead and Massive Attack. We were clearly so unalike in our tastes.’
The pair had to be united for a meeting with Emma Anderson. Lush had split after the death of Chris Acland, but while Miki Berenyi had decided to lie low, Anderson had chosen to carry on, and 4AD had funded some new demos. ‘Ivo and Lewis came to visit to break it to me gently,’ she recalls. ‘Lewis said they were really good songs, but Ivo said, “Not for us”, so they dropped all of Lush. Our publishers dropped us too. We were on our own.’
GusGus still felt like a place where Jamieson and Ivo could conceivably overlap, and the band’s visual side also chimed with 4AD’s design identity. A variety of stills and original images gave v23 the necessary material to inspire some of the team’s best artwork of the era, with a sumptuous twenty-page booklet for the GusGus debut 4AD album, Polydistortion.
Of course, the industry climate demanded more than great artwork, or even great music. The lead single ‘Believe’ came in three CD versions plus vinyl and radio promos and the album had exhausting single/double/limited edition permutations. The credited tracks (the unlisted ‘Polybackwards’ was an ambient epilogue) had been drawn from the band’s original Icelandic album remixed for the 4AD version, to bring out the strengths of an hour-long odyssey of electronic dance, from sleek techno to lounge sophistication, Nordic funk to skewed pop.
GusGus began to build sizeable fan bases in the trend-setting cities of New York and LA, which The Wolfgang Press had never managed. But inexplicably, ‘Believe’ only reached 154 in the UK national charts,
a significant failure after ‘Polyesterday’. The album reached 130. Something was very wrong. 4AD staffer Cliff Walton thinks that the label’s reputation had diminished: ‘4AD wasn’t mainstream enough anymore, so we couldn’t cross over a band like GusGus, despite the big buzz about them. But they were arty and eccentric, and didn’t play by the rules, which made them more fun to work on.’
This scenario was even more inexplicable as the band’s press profile had been sky-high after a very expensive media trip to Iceland. ‘It was insane,’ recalls Tim Hall, who 4AD had employed in 1996 to run the new website and mail order department. ‘We took about forty press, radio and TV people to a hydro-electric plant where we had a huge meal and a nice hotel for two nights, all for one concert.’
Lewis Jamieson: ‘It really disappointed and frustrated me that we couldn’t convert all these cool points into sales. On “Believe”, we just couldn’t get singles away. This was still the height of Britpop and 4AD was culturally out of step. The indie label identity that [BBC] Radio 1 preferred was personified by Creation, the feeling of being part of a wave that was sweeping the UK. Everyone was metaphorically out having fun in the [affects Liam Gallagher’s Mancunian accent] sunshiiine and 4AD didn’t really do fun. GusGus got loads of style and music press but radio didn’t respond. I think we relied on the label to get us going and 4AD didn’t have that networking power anymore.’
‘Despite the fact we utilised great pluggers, club promotion people and had great national and regional press, Radio 1 had the perception that 4AD was an albums label,’ says Simon Harper. ‘We were also dealing with a non-UK resident act. It’s fine to have shitloads of press around the release and tour cycle, but the media window tends to close quickly for developing bands when they leave the country. Being available at short notice for radio or TV and just by being present in the public’s field of vision can be a real asset.’