Facing the Other Way Page 8

  Peter Murphy: ‘We didn’t want to be consigned to an independent music ghetto, to be sub-Ivo kids; we wanted to be massive. Anyway, as 4AD progressed, Ivo started to magnetise the centre of what became known as 4AD, and then once Vaughan got a hold of the artwork, everyone looked the same to me. Fuck that!’

  David J: ‘We were crafting what we saw as dark pop singles, and live we put on a show, not traditional but theatrical, while Ivo was going more experimental and introverted. He had told me that Bauhaus was becoming too rock’n’roll for the label, and not obscure enough. Daniel and Peter would take the piss out of Ivo because the music and the sleeves were becoming too obscure, to the extreme, like an in-joke. We wanted to be on Top of the Pops and have hit singles – but on our own terms. So there was a natural parting of the ways When Ivo suggested we move to Beggars, we didn’t have to think twice.’

  Ivo: ‘Within a year, Bauhaus had released four singles, and an album, and gone from being spat on by Magazine fans to headlining [London venue] the Lyceum. They needed the push and resources available to them at Beggars. If we’d fought to keep Bauhaus, for me it would’ve involved far too much chatting with video makers and worrying what the next single would be.’ Ivo also counters David J’s claim he was keen on obscurity: ‘I can’t say I ever consciously looked for anything obscure, but I may well have been put off by something too mainstream.’

  4AD’s next release bridged the gap between obscurity and the mainstream, between Ivo and Peter Kent’s tastes and hopes. Ivo recalls Dance Chapter turning up at Hogarth Road, the week that Ian Curtis killed himself. Joy Division’s talisman was already a totemic leader, and the shock of his death was almost like the aftermath of the Che Guevara scenario, the loss of a spiritual leader. In the shop, Ivo recalls a girl sobbing at the counter after hearing the news. ‘Out of that, we got to wondering who would fill Ian’s shoes. Soon enough, Peter buzzed me from downstairs, saying, “Remember that conversation? Well, they’ve just walked in”.’

  ‘I read something on the internet along those lines, but that wasn’t verbalised to me,’ says Dance Chapter’s vocalist Cyrus Bruton. ‘Ian Curtis was Ian Curtis, and no one could step into those shoes. I never even entertained the idea.’

  Bruton currently lives in Berlin, with a community that follows the teachings of the late Indian spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He moved to Germany in 1985, between extended visits to India and, he says, ‘I never looked back.’ The same can be said of his short tenure as a singer, as he hasn’t made music for almost three decades, though he has DJed at various communes. His main concern, he says, is offering ‘public satsangs’, meaning spiritual teachings.

  Heralding from Leeds in Yorkshire, Dance Chapter was on a tour of London’s independent labels with their demo cassette when they walked into the shop. Born in Woking, south of London, to mixed-race parents, the young Cyrus, like Marx Cox and Graham Lewis before him, had primarily been a fan of black music swayed by punk rock and what he calls its ‘anyone-can-do-it rules’. ‘I wanted to be hands-on and form a band,’ he says. He soon joined forces with school friends Stuart Dunbar (bass), Andrew Jagger (guitar, later replaced by Steve Hadfield) and Jonnie Lawrence (drums). Choosing the name Dance Chapter showed Bruton was an unusually questioning teenager: ‘A chapter is a collective,’ he explains. ‘We were punk, but I wanted something more about dance and celebration.’

  Bruton says Dance Chapter, ‘were pretty focused, given we were four young men who liked to drink and take other things’. 4AD was a natural target: ‘They were one of the cutting-edge labels around and it already felt that was the level to reach.’

  The self-produced debut single ‘Anonymity’ is another buried treasure from 4AD’s early era, closer to Joy Division’s first incarnation Warsaw than the finished article, with a similarly tense, interlocking energy. Bruton was an unusually melodic singer, and his repeated lyric, ‘a piece of recognition is all I ask, bring me flowers’, was delivered with a palpable yearning. ‘We were striving for something that you want to get from the outside world,’ Bruton explains. ‘But if you can’t get it, then you can only give it to yourself. Even if it’s only flowers!’

  The B-side ‘New Dance’ revealed a more existential valediction. ‘I was speaking of knowing that falling down is the only way to truth,’ says Bruton. ‘That pain and insecurity is needed so an authentic expression can then come through. It was about vulnerability, and the need to find expression, to join together. People needed guidance, which wasn’t as forthcoming as it should have been.’

  This was the kind of poignant struggle and musical euphoria that could have had an impact on the same level as Ian Curtis and Joy Division – you could see what Peter Kent had meant when he first heard them. But Ivo was unconvinced. ‘Peter wasn’t right about the Joy Division bit,’ he says, ‘and I can’t say Dance Chapter were a great band because I only saw them play twice. But they had some gorgeous songs, and I loved Cyrus’s voice.’

  Perhaps if Kent had stuck around, he could have mentored the young and questioning Bruton. But as 4AD’s first year drew to a close, the risk of a split vision between 4AD’s two A&R sources – who might not truly believe in the other’s choices – was quashed when Kent decided he’d change tack.

  Neither Ivo nor Peter Kent remembers their relationship getting fractious, even though they were both hugely opinionated. ‘Ivo could be a little bit bitchy, and headstrong,’ Gary Asquith recalls, ‘and no one wanted to play second fiddle, least of all Peter.’ Asquith and Kent had become close friends in a short period of time. ‘Peter was a strange cat,’ Asquith contends. ‘Geminis I’ve known have their own agenda, and they never seem to be happy. He was a very curious person, but he didn’t know what he wanted, and he constantly moved on to the next thing. I think he found it hard to live with himself.’

  ‘My attention,’ Kent says, ‘was elsewhere than 4AD.’

  Besides promoting shows (such as his regular Rock Garden slot The Fake Club), Kent was tour-managing Bauhaus and doing some A&R for Beggars Banquet: his first signing there was the London jazz-funk band Freeez, who broke into the top 50 at the first attempt. But most importantly, Kent had met Billy MacKenzie at Heaven: ‘We’d gotten on like a house on fire, so I said I’d come and work with him and Alan.’

  Alan Rankine was MacKenzie’s creative foil in The Associates, one of the greatest bands of that era. Both men were sublimely gifted, precocious and fairly uncontrollable Scottish mavericks, and totally up Kent’s alley. Overtly Bowie-influenced (their 1979 debut single was a cover of ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, cannily released just six weeks after Bowie’s own version), they weren’t just dashingly handsome but fashion-conscious too. The pair had released an album, The Affectionate Punch, on Fiction, an offshoot of the major label Polydor, but they were open to new offers. The Associates’ increasing experimental daring, combined with an arch playfulness, would have considerably brightened up 4AD’s procession of brooding young men who, to paraphrase Ian Curtis, had ‘weight on their shoulders’.

  Steve Webbon: ‘Peter was exuberant and camp, mischievous, while Ivo aligned himself with the introverts, all the miserable ones!’

  Kent had certainly sensed the same schism. On tour with Bauhaus in the States for the first time, he had familiarised himself with the demi-monde underground scene. Back in London, he told Ivo he wanted to license two singles from Chicago’s Wax Trax label: the punk-trashy ‘Born To Be Cheap’ by Divine – People magazine’s ‘drag queen of the century’ and star of John Walters’ cult transgressive-trash films – and ‘Cold Life’ by Ministry, a new, edgy synth-pop band (yet to turn into fearsome industrial-metal). When Ivo resisted, ‘that’s when I realised we had a different idea of where 4AD was heading,’ Kent recalls. ‘I wanted us to be more eclectic and diverse. So I slipped away from 4AD.’§

  ‘I’m glad Peter didn’t stay,’ says Ivo. ‘Can you imagine Divine on 4AD? The best way to describe it is, I don’t like being around people but Peter thrived in those
situations, like being backstage after a show. He wanted everything at the label to grow, whereas I found anything beside the finished album was unnecessary. My head is filled with ecstatic memories of the live experience, but the part that’s always meant most is the one-on-one relationship between the listener and a recorded piece of work, the artefact that will stand for all time.

  ‘Some people, within bands and the music industry, thrive on the idea of being involved in rock’n’roll. Doesn’t [future Creation label MD] Alan McGee say the only reason he got into the music business was to get rich, take drugs and fuck women? I don’t even like being around people enough for that to have an appeal. I guess I was the nerdy one at home with headphones on scanning the album sleeve.’

  It all worked out neatly, as Bauhaus and Kent departed at the same time. 4AD’s first year of business concluded by it being made a limited company, no longer dependent on funds from the Beggars’ mothership after the release of In The Flat Field. There was one more 1980 release to come: In Camera’s IV Songs EP had been recorded at Blackwing with Eric Radcliffe assisted by junior engineer John Fryer, who captured a feeling of weighty oppression. The opening track ‘The Conversation’ (another film reference) was a particularly solemn instrumental, and the bass line of ‘Legion’ was another echo of Joy Division, just like ‘The Attic’ was an echo of Warsaw’s primitive dynamic, reduced by In Camera to an even starker, flatter sound.

  ‘The production values were nearer to our live sound; meatier drums and more avant-garde than the PiL and Banshees influences,’ suggests Andrew Gray. ‘We, and Ivo, were really happy with it.’

  IV Songs was more proof that Ivo was content to put out records that were committed, passionate and uncompromising, though, looking back, the cumulative effect of the catalogue – Red Atkins notwithstanding – was fifty shades of black. The gloom was claustrophobic. Where was the light and shade, the fuller spectrum of humanity? ‘Musically, that was the era,’ Ivo argues. ‘And to paraphrase [American pianist] Harold Budd, I was suspicious of anything that is enjoyed by the masses. I don’t think pop artists would have come to 4AD in any case.’

  Colin Newman, the next Wire member to strike a deal with Ivo, thought 4AD had its limitations at the beginning. ‘Everything was in black and white. And I didn’t think most of the records Ivo had released were that good. Cherry Red was a similar label: sketchy, a bit homemade, mawkish and interior-looking. Bauhaus was the exception.’

  ‘Back then, I didn’t know what I was doing on any level,’ Ivo admits. ‘Peter and I were learning what running a label involved. We were lucky that Bauhaus effectively funded the next year. I’ll always be proud to have released their records, and eternally grateful too, because without their speedy success, despite the British press, 4AD might have struggled to pay for albums the following year. It started a trend that continued for a decade; each year, I was lucky enough to start working with at least one key band or artist. One album a year did pretty well and allowed us to keep going.’

  Towards the end of 1980, Ivo did his first interview with Lynnette Turner, who ran the Station Alien fanzine. ‘She said, “I just want to get to you before anyone else does”. She knew something was stirring.’

  There was more stirring than just music: ‘Lynnette and I pretty much fell in love at that first meeting and ended up living together for the next two years,’ says Ivo. This came after another upturn in his life; Beggars had suggested that he should stop working in the shop and concentrate full-time on 4AD: ‘It was the first time I’d ever felt truly, giddily happy,’ he recalls.

  But with Ivo left in sole charge, without Peter Kent’s man-about-town demeanour and his greater potential for playfulness, how dark and personal might 4AD become?

  * Of all Axis’ lesser-known luminaries, Bearz producer and keyboard session player David Lord has done the best, as an engineer/producer for artists such as Peter Gabriel, Tears For Fears, Peter Hammill, Tori Amos and Goldfrapp. David ‘Fast Set’ Knight became a studio-based collaborator (and lover) of British singer-cum-performance artist Danielle Dax. However, Shox vocalist Jacqui Brookes fronted the synth-pop band Siam and released a solo album, Sob Stories, for major label MCA.

  † Kevin Haskins Dompe: ‘Peter Kent tour managed us when we got an offer to support Magazine. We didn’t know that Peter was gay, and he booked the band into gay bed and breakfasts around the UK. One had Playgirl centrefolds stuck on the walls! We had some funny interludes. All of us wore make-up then and flirted with our feminine side, so after the gig, with all our gear on, down in the bar … the clientele made some assumptions! There were bums pinched. Peter found it very funny.’

  ‡ Daniel Miller, who ran Mute Records, also regularly used Blackwing – from his electronic-pop pastiche Music For Parties under the alias Silicon Teens to sessions for his two most popular acts, Depeche Mode and Yazoo, whose debut album title Upstairs At Eric’s referred to Blackwing’s owner Eric Radcliffe.

  § Beggars Banquet gave Peter Kent financial backing to start a new label that he called Situation 2 (Bauhaus’ original management company was called Situation 1). The label’s first releases were an astounding run of Associates twelve-inch singles (later compiled on Fourth Drawer Down), one a month, for five months. ‘I can’t think of a better and more original introduction to a label than Peter releasing those Associates singles in that way,’ Ivo reckons. ‘It was crazy, because what would have happened if one was a hit? Would you release the next single?’ Kent ran Situation 2 for only a year before he started managing Associates and signed them to Warners. At the end of 1982, illness forced Kent to live a quieter life. He moved to Spain to open a restaurant, though he later worked for Brussels-based independent label/distributor Play It Again Sam before relocating to Chicago.

  chapter 4 – 1981

  Art of Darkness

  (AD101–CAD117)

  Axis had kicked into life in 1980 with four simultaneous singles, three of unknown origin. 4AD’s first complete year of operation, 1981, began in similar fashion, with three singles from two new bands, one so far unknown in the UK. Though the trio were not released on the same day, each seven-incher in its illuminating sleeve represented the same opportunity, as Ivo saw it, to ‘serve their own beautiful purpose. A record for a record’s sake.’

  And much like the original Axis offensive, with the exception of Bauhaus, and much of the Presage(s) collective, none of the singles by Sort Sol, Past Seven Days and My Captains reappeared on 4AD; none were re-pressed after selling out their initial pressing, and only Sort Sol survived to release another record. These false dawns remained immaterial to Ivo: ‘The fact that a record was coming out on 4AD meant that it was a success already, which was absolutely at the heart of what I wanted to do.’

  The first of the three was ‘Marble Station’, a sombre, glacial jewel by Copenhagen, Denmark’s Sort Sol (which translates as Black Sun), who had recorded two albums as The Sods before shedding its punk identity for something suitably post-punk. Ivo had heard their second album Under En Sort Sol and the band agreed to have his two favourite songs released as a single. The six-minute ‘Raindance’ by Sheffield’s Past Seven Days adopted an ominous backdrop of synths but represented a chink of light in 4AD’s assembled heart of darkness, coiled around a chattering quasi-funk rhythm guitar in the style of Factory label peer A Certain Ratio, and a matching, insistent vocal melody. The self-titled EP by Oxford quartet My Captains restored the generic setting of gloom, and was less exciting for it, while reinforcing the notion that 4AD’s core constituents might be reduced to, as the cliché had it, those shoulder-weighted interlopers in long raincoats with Camus novels under their arm.

  Stylistically, all three singles were reminiscent in some form of another band from Sheffield, The Comsat Angels, which had signed to Polydor in 1979. But the Comsats’ smouldering style eventually lasted for nine albums; Sort Sol never released another track in the UK; My Captains simply vanished; and Past Seven Days were, Ivo says, ‘lured away’ to Vir
gin offshoot Dindisc. However, there were potential perils in joining a major label – Dindisc founder Carol Wilson once said, ‘I never signed a band unless I thought they could be commercially successful.’ Soon enough, the band asked Ivo if they could return to 4AD. ‘I was a bit of a bitch and said, no, you went away,’ he admits.

  Yet just as The Birthday Party’s debut 4AD single ‘The Friend Catcher’ had followed Presage(s), so the band’s debut 4AD album Prayers On Fire swiftly counteracted the mood of short-term disappointment. The Birthday Party had started recording the album within a month of landing back in Melbourne at the tail end of 1980, and when they returned to London in March to headline The Moonlight Club (supported by My Captains), Ivo was shocked. ‘I wasn’t expecting an album, or how it sounded. Where had these Captain Beefheart influences come from?’

  Cave claimed his inspiration was, ‘the major disappointments we felt when we went to England’. There was a sense of a channelled energy for one of gleeful vitriol and anger; Rowland S. Howard’s guitars humped and splintered around Cave’s brattish authority, tackling religion and morality with a drug-induced fever; as they phrased it in ‘King Ink’, this was a world of, ‘sand and soot and dust and dirt’.

  Ivo may not have cared that 4AD’s releases weren’t making an indelible impression, or that the bands were often petering out, but if Bauhaus’ previous success had paid for the label’s next handful of releases, what might pay for 1981’s next batch? What he did have, finally, was a 4AD artefact that he could build into something – and how ironic that Ivo’s interest in The Birthday Party had been lit by that old-fashioned instrument, the Farfisa organ. The UK music press unreservedly embraced Prayers On Fire: ‘A celebratory, almost religious record, as in ritual, as in pray-era on fire, a combustible dervish dance, and another Great Debut of ’81,’ claimed NME’s Andy Gill.