Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  “Mute maestro Daniel Miller has a notoriously sweet tooth,” read the review, “one that’s balanced by a taste for bitter extremes.… Due to their extremely shy natures the four have chosen to be chaperoned by producer Miller, whom they refer to as Uncle Daniel.… Depeche Mode come from Basildon. (Sentence Of The Week—Ed.) They are bass synth player Andrew Fletcher, an insurance man; David Gahan, lead vocalist, electronic percussionist and trainee window dresser; the silent Martin Gore, synthesist and banker; and Vincent Clarke, writer, synthesist and otherwise unemployed.”

  It was about 2:00 A.M., but alarm bells were ringing. I knew enough about Daniel Miller to know that if he was taking that giant leap from artist to producer, this new group had to be exceptional. The other detail that gave me the heebie-jeebies was the date of the article. I’d just picked up whatever was next to my bed, but when I examined the cover, this copy of NME was three weeks old—an eternity in A&R time. So, at 10:00 A.M. English time, I called my man in London, Paul McNally, to find out if Depeche Mode’s American rights had been signed. He called me back saying that no, America was still up for grabs and that Depeche Mode were playing that night in some nightclub in Essex, about an hour east of London. I called up British Airways and booked a seat on the next Concorde—eight grand, an obscene amount of cash in those days, but I smelled something cooking.

  With the five-hour time difference, it was already almost evening in England when my flight landed. Paul was waiting in arrivals and drove us straight to Basildon, a dead suburb where we had to ask directions to the concrete box of a discotheque called Sweeney’s. In the crowd of about two hundred kids, I saw Daniel Miller standing behind the mixing desk; he was the gig’s soundman. There wasn’t even a dressing room, and the boys were getting changed in a stairwell, where I dropped by to say hello. This was their local nightclub, they hadn’t even put out a single yet, and here I was, in their teenage eyes a powerful record executive who’d just flown in from New York by Concorde. God knows what they were thinking.

  They got up and launched into what I can only describe as an electronic cabaret show. At that time, there were a few synth acts out, notably Gary Numan, who’d hit the big time with his 1980 smash “Cars.” There was Visage, OMD, and others, but any time I’d seen any of these so-called new romantics in concert, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Synthesizers created impressive soundscapes on record, but keeping a crowd bopping for over an hour is a very different business. To my delight, Depeche Mode weren’t standing around looking enigmatic in heavy makeup; they had bubbling rhythms, singable tunes, and a dancing singer who put in the effort to entertain his crowd. I looked around and thought, If all these Essex kids are dancing like this all night, then surely Depeche Mode could be big all over England.

  Of course, there’s only so much you can take in when you see a band for the first time, especially when you’ve just stepped off a plane and haven’t slept in two days. I’d love to be able to say that I had visions of Depeche Mode selling out football stadiums across the world. I didn’t. I mean, you really couldn’t. They were four teenagers poking synths in a dump in the English suburbs. Getting on Top of the Pops was probably the sum total of their own wildest fantasies. Truth is, when I booked that plane ticket, I was banking on Daniel Miller. Deep down, I just knew he and his Mute label were headed for major success. Sometimes it’s bands, sometimes it’s the people behind them, and if you’re very lucky, it’s both.

  Sire signed another of his groups, Fad Gadget, and later that summer, I stumbled on another gem from the same electro scene. As a freelance producer, Daniel Miller had just produced the first single of an underground group called Soft Cell. It wasn’t Daniel who played me their subsequent stuff, because Soft Cell were signed to a UK indie called Some Bizarre, which in turn had an exclusive deal with Polydor. From Polydor’s London office, we received a promo copy of “Tainted Love,” which I knew was a potential smash. Polydor’s UK boss Roger Ames and I went way back, so, with my A&R kid, Michael Rosenblatt, I flew straight back to London. “Say nothing,” I told Michael, who was only twenty-four and eager to learn. “Don’t let him know I want the album.”

  When we sat down with Roger Ames in a London restaurant, I had a gut feeling Polydor’s office in New York had already passed on Soft Cell. If there was one thing you could count on, it was Polydor’s New York staffers turning their noses up at wacky English pop. So, I kept ordering wine to get Roger as pliant as possible.

  “I think ‘Tainted Love’ could work in the States,” I told him. “But it’s risky. Would you take ten thousand for the single?”

  “Well, we don’t really want to license the single, Seymour. Would you not take the whole album for fifteen?”

  “Oh, all right, Roger. It’s gonna be tough, but we’ll do our best with the album.”

  I kept a straight face knowing this verbal agreement needed to be signed immediately. Soft Cell were being managed by a larger-than-life Cockney character by the name of Steve-O, who I knew was not lacking in connections and brass neck. It was a mystery that Soft Cell hadn’t yet been shopped to every American major, so, before we got up and stumbled out of the restaurant, I scrawled the basic deal terms on a napkin and made Roger Ames sign. This rather curious-looking tissue paper was duly delivered to Polydor’s contracts man, John Kennedy, who apparently cracked up laughing.

  I’d landed a bargain, but to be fair, £15,000 wasn’t nothing in 1981 for an unproven group, especially considering what it was. Soft Cell’s singer, Marc Almond, was absolutely the gayest Englishman I’d ever seen, which is saying something. It didn’t make a difference if he was on- or offstage, he minced about in leather costumes, wearing this dirty grin like he’d just stepped out of the toilet of an S&M bar. I loved him. He was one of those “I yam what I yam” characters but with a unique voice that made everything he sang his own, including, “Tainted Love,” which was originally a 1964 hit for Gloria Jones. The title of Soft Cell’s album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret was no exaggeration either. It was brilliantly filthy party music but with really romping, singable tunes.

  We suddenly had three electro groups in the pipeline—Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, and Soft Cell—which, as you can imagine, weren’t the easiest signatures to explain out in Burbank. In 1981, the American market was still chewing on adult-oriented rock, and these new acts probably wouldn’t have flown had they not been such reasonable signings. Luckily, it all came together exactly at the right time, about six months before the likes of Human League and Eurythmics blew up and suddenly the whole UK electro scene became big business in America. By the time the various albums were finished and release slots allocated, we’d be surfing what many Americans incorrectly term new wave—that second, early-eighties wave of synthesizers and funny hair that purists prefer to call synth pop or electro.

  Meanwhile, in the Bahamas, the Talking Heads plot was thickening. By midsummer 1981, Island released a second and even bigger Tom Tom Club twelve-inch, “Genius of Love,” which hit even harder than “Wordy Rappinghood.” All summer, New York couldn’t get enough of this sunny tune, and I mean everyone from the downtown clubs all the way up to the Bronx, where a then unknown group called Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five looped the main hook and rapped over it, earning Chris and Tina an official place in early hip-hop history.

  Of course, I hadn’t signed Tom Tom Club, so when one hundred thousand copies of “Genius of Love” were imported into America from Island’s main office in London, I was officially King Dumbo, standing there with his dick in his hand. I’m sure Chris Blackwell was having a good laugh at my expense. Fortunately, Tom Tom Club still had a whole album ready to go, and so Gary Kurfirst came back to me tut-tutting, “If you want a piece of the action, Seymour, you’re going to have to cough up a lot more now!” I bowed my head, wagged my tail, and dug into my pocket.

  With Gary Kurfirst acting as broker, Chris Blackwell and I agreed to a territorial split on the album and the twelve inches, which, I’m happy to say, worked ou
t for the best. The album was a huge hit, earning Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth a well-deserved gold disc. With proper Warner promotion and distribution, “Genius of Love” even got a second lease of life, breaking into the American Top 40 the following spring.

  Best of all, I think it’s fair to say that Chris and Tina’s unexpected success helped glue Humpty Dumpty back together again. Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts had been hailed by critics and musicians as groundbreaking, which it most definitely was, but sales were a fraction of Tom Tom Club’s. That didn’t bother me, but it sure as hell altered the team dynamics between the members of Talking Heads. Especially after November 1981, when David Byrne’s Catherine Wheel project was released to relative indifference. It sold something like ten thousand copies, a big disappointment, although it did contain some beautiful moments, like “What a Day That Was,” a song with a stunning chorus that would be revamped into one of the highlights of future Talking Heads shows. The weakness of The Catherine Wheel wasn’t the writing; it was the flat sound.

  The jury will be out for years to come on all this. I’d bet that David Byrne did not at first enjoy Tom Tom Club’s commercial success, but he got over it and found a renewed faith in his old bandmates. What is undeniable is that for the next few years, he would put his solo ambitions on standby and throw all his chips into Talking Heads. Their manager, Gary Kurfurst, came out stronger, too. He’d calmly handled a messy situation and earned everyone’s respect, mine included. Never again would anyone make the mistake of assuming Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth were just a rhythm section. Jerry Harrison’s versatility was another integral part of whatever magic sauce made Talking Heads taste so good. Songs definitely are the core ingredient, but in the crazy science of bands, a lot of what we can’t define comes down to the chemistry of the people involved.

  In November 1981, right beside David Byrne’s Catherine Wheel, we put out Depeche Mode’s debut album Speak & Spell, which created a nice little stir. Those four boys from Basildon had written some great pop songs, but with Daniel Miller working the boards, they also had a sound and chemistry that oozed through the vinyl. There were some hot numbers like “New Life,” but the single had to be “Just Can’t Get Enough,” which we put out as a seven-inch with an alternate six-minute twelve-inch mix for the clubbers. Combined sales got Depeche Mode straight onto Billboard’s club chart—still a niche thing, but they were flashing on radars and getting the hip kids dancing.

  Soft Cell, however, blew up massively. We put out Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret in that big November 1981 batch expecting action, but “Tainted Love” got hammered on Top 40 radio. It peaked at number eight on the Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for something ridiculous like forty-three weeks, totally unexpected for such a dirty English joke. Yes, sir, Yanks in places like Colorado and Texas were buying this ass-spanking piece of vinyl. There really is no business like show business.

  I adored another song off that record, “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” which was admittedly more of a slow burner, but its stunning chorus sent shivers down my spine. I tried everything to make it a hit, including knocking on the door of my old friend Bill Wardlow at Billboard, who’d been so helpful keeping “Tainted Love” in the charts for so long. He was gay and loved them as much as I did, but sadly, Soft Cell’s elusive follow-up wasn’t to be. I loved the song so much that a couple of years later, after the success of “Take on Me” by Aha, I suggested to my friend Andrew Wickham, who discovered the band and brought them to Warner Brothers, that the band might consider doing “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.” As far as I know they never recorded it.

  There was another band I helped in that year who weren’t even mine. Island had signed an Irish post-punk group called U2 who were making some noise in Britain and wanted to tour the States. Island had such a small U.S. operation, Warner was handling most of their local marketing, but U2 were so far down the pecking order that I did what I could to help out. It was their manager, Paul McGuinness, who I first met in 1981. He was in New York, staying with a friend of his, Michael Deeny, an Irish manager and accountant who’d I’d previously crossed paths with when he was handling an Irish band called Horslips that I’d wanted to sign in the seventies. I just happened to be having dinner in some restaurant when a bottle of champagne arrived from another table. It was from Michael Deeny and Paul McGuinness, who invited me back to their place to continue the festivities.

  I don’t think Paul McGuinness had a dime in those, but I’d heard U2’s debut album, Boy, and thought they definitely had something. So, as a simple favor, I talked Warner into giving U2 tour support, not a huge amount of money but enough to get them driving around, playing whatever slots they could find. I can’t claim any part in U2’s success. They worked hard for what they eventually got. I’m happy nonetheless that my phone calls provided a few drops of oil in the wheels of destiny. Syd Nathan made calls for me when I was their age and desperate. Now it was my turn to pay back life. That’s how it’s always worked and always will.

  I know I made mistakes along the way, but with so many fireworks going off in all directions, Sire had become the hippest label in New York. As new clubs kept opening and MTV grew in popularity, a whole new generation of punky-haired teenagers proved to be our most loyal and excited customers. Damn it, kids were growing up with that Sire logo spinning through their teenage years, and of all the little things I treasured most, that thought made me the happiest. If you’ve been a rebel or an outcast yourself, you’ll understand the privilege of being able to pour sonic medicine back into the school yards and unhappy bedrooms that made you who you are. We’re not actually doing it for the money. Money is how we keep doing it, but not why.

  I hate to toot my own horn, but just look at the amount of hits, creepers, and dance floor stompers on Sire’s catalog in those years. And I haven’t even mentioned all the underground classics I signed that didn’t always make the American charts but which have stood the test of time. Stuff like “One Step Beyond” by Madness, “Mirror in the Bathroom” by the English Beat, “I Melt with You” by Modern English, “Ça Plane Pour Moi” by Plastic Bertrand, “Moskow Diskow” by Telex, “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, “Don’t Go” and “Situation” by Yaz, an offshoot of Depeche Mode. And what about Kid Creole and the Coconuts, that new-wave salsa group that began stirring in 1981? I licensed Kid Creole and the Coconuts at their hottest moment in 1982, but we unfortunately never managed to break them onto American radio, a personal regret, but, my God, songs like “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” and “Stool Pigeon” were surely among the very hottest records of that whole downtown scene.

  Much has been written about CBGB in the late seventies, but the early eighties in downtown New York also deserves history’s full attention. Even some of David Bowie’s best songs, like “Ashes to Ashes,” “Fashion,” and “Let’s Dance,” fed straight off that funky downtown sound. I was hitting forty and couldn’t dance, so I can’t say I experienced the party like the club kids. I was just one of the talent hunters leaning up against a wall in Danceteria, admiring how Mark Kamins mixed up all these records so effortlessly. There was nothing new about playing punk, reggae, and krautrock back to back—the Brits had been doing it for years. In Danceteria, however, you’d get all the UK sounds remixed into something new, plus Brazilian, African, Indian, early hip-hop, Detroit techno, sounds you couldn’t even place on any map.

  I know Lady Luck was smiling my way, but I took to that globalist period like a duck to water. What gave me an edge was all those years traveling, listening to foreign pop music, and making contacts all over the world. I could pick up all the little references and, just as importantly, locate the sources. The beauty of the Warner joint venture in those first years was that I could sign almost whatever I liked. No matter how obscure or indie the music was, the records would still get major company distribution. Of course, not even Warner could turn every slice of vinyl into a hit—nobody can—but at very worst, almost every record reached the
desks of radio stations, local newspapers, and TV channels. Everything got its shot.

  The early eighties were magical years, blindly pushing the late seventies into a whole new world order and not even realizing the lasting effect all these sounds and global ideas were having on the next batch of kids coming up. It was like the whole music world had been spinning leisurely at 33 RPM throughout the couch-bound seventies. The combined forces of punk, disco, and new wave had pushed everything up to 45 RPM. Without me and others in my line of work, it was waiting to happen anyway. I’m nonetheless proud that Sire was part of that urgently needed explosion of big-city energy that got kids out and shook things up.

  7. BORDERLINE

  Musically, I had every reason to be happy. As an entrepreneur, however, I hadn’t expected to feel such profound regret when I lost all ownership of the label. As I soon discovered, seller’s remorse was a common affliction among dispossessed indies. And believe me, it’s a slow killer.

  Jerry Wexler in particular was sick with regret for years after he talked Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun into selling their label. Against Ahmet’s better judgment, they voted to sell Atlantic and got $17 million, which seemed like a king’s ransom in 1967. First, they had to split their winnings into four parts because Herb Abrahamson’s ex-wife Miriam Bienstock was also a stockholder. Then, the year after selling, they enjoyed a bumper harvest of smash hits, clocking up a record $40 million in turnover. From there, Atlantic kept growing so big that their sale price became a complete embarrassment.

  Tell me about it. It was the same general story for every indie that sold out. You got scared and panicked, never imagining just how much money you would make your new owner. And as the album market kept growing, the regret tended to get worse with time, especially once the compact disc arrived and retail prices doubled. That’s the whole point of the two-tranche deal I’d walked into. For a few years, you enjoyed the best of both worlds—half-indie, half-major—which had you planting seeds furiously with their money, wrongly thinking the harvest would be half yours, too. By the time those seeds sprouted and began budding, the whole orchard was theirs.