Facing the Other Way Page 9

  ‘The Birthday Party started to swing it for 4AD,’ says Chris Carr. ‘One by one, through word of mouth, journalists got on board.’ With John Peel already on side, Ivo recalls, ‘Birthday Party gigs started getting very well attended, very quickly. And the more frenzied audiences became, the more frenzied Nick Cave became.’

  The band and singer alike were being driven on an axis of disgust, keeping itself one step removed from the UK scene the band despised. They might have been secretly impressed by the jazz/dub/punk verve of Bristol’s The Pop Group, but frequent comparisons to the Bristol band had annoyed Nick Cave so much that he studiously avoided mentioning them in interviews. He referred to Joy Division as ‘corny’, only talking up Manchester’s ratchety punks The Fall and California’s rockabilly malcontents The Cramps, whose singer Lux Interior had mastered the unhinged, confrontational performance. Mick Harvey admits he’d enjoyed Rema-Rema and Mass, but says that though he liked Bauhaus as people, ‘I just didn’t get them musically. Being preposterous was part of their charm, but Peter running around with a light under his face, I was just laughing. You couldn’t take them seriously.’

  Nevertheless, The Birthday Party had a pragmatic core and set off on tour around the UK with Bauhaus in June. The Haskin brothers’ testimony to their rakish support band’s penchant for alcoholic breakfasts confirmed the Australians were willing to act out the fantasies implied by their songs, as each city and town was taken on as an enemy to be conquered. Yet in Cambridge, the support act joined the headliners for a show of solidarity during the encore of ‘Fever’.

  ‘It was good exposure for us,’ says Harvey. ‘Some of the audiences hated us – they just wanted to see Bauhaus – but others got us. By the end of 1981, we’d gone from playing to 300 people to 1,500. 4AD was helping on a daily basis, though not so much with funds, which Ivo didn’t have. We ran things ourselves as we’d done back home.’

  But Ivo willingly offered friendship. Mick Harvey wasn’t spending his down time trying to score, unlike some other Birthday Party members, and he and his girlfriend Katy happened to live around the corner from Ivo’s west London flat in Acton, not far from the old Ealing shop, so they would periodically visit him and girlfriend, Lynnette Turner. It gave Harvey the opportunity more than most to see Ivo from a closer and more personal angle. ‘He had an underlying sensitivity that was inscrutable to me,’ Harvey recalls. ‘Australians tend to blurt stuff out, but the English tend to not let on about what they think or feel, until you get to know them well, and sometimes not even then. Ivo was very forthcoming about ideas, but you could sense something in there that bothered him, that nagged away, that he found difficult to put somewhere. The depressive tendencies, I could sense, were being covered with him getting on with everything and by his enthusiasm. He was very earnest and it was obvious how incredibly important the music was to him. It defined him.’

  The Birthday Party only needed 4AD as a production house, while bands such as Modern English needed mentoring. As the youngest in a big family, perhaps Ivo enjoyed adopting the older, wiser role in a relationship, and he was far more knowledgeable about music than Modern English, even though he couldn’t play a note. But Ivo didn’t feel qualified to bring out a musicality in a band the way a producer could, and so following a Peel session for the band, he paired them with Ken Thomas, who had midwifed two Wire albums and similarly quintessential post-punk landmarks by The Au Pairs and Clock DVA.

  Ivo joined the band for part of the fortnight’s session at Jacob’s residential studios in Surrey – confirming a budget beyond previous 4AD releases. He didn’t try and impose himself. ‘You got carte blanche with Ivo,’ recalls Robbie Grey. ‘He let us roll and evolve.’ Mick Conroy recalls Ivo would say what he liked and what he didn’t. ‘“Grief”, for example, sounded amazing, but apparently not at nine minutes, so he suggested we shorten and restructure it. He wasn’t a person who’d say, “Play G minor after E, play that section four times, move on to the middle eight”. But none of us were amazing musicians anyway.’

  Ivo, however, thought the album had the same problem as Bauhaus’ debut; it didn’t capture the energy via the spontaneity of the Peel session. In Modern English’s case, he blames the lack of budget available to hire an engineer familiar with the studio, as he saw that Ken Thomas was unfamiliar with the mixing desk: ‘It wasn’t entirely Ken’s fault by any means,’ he adds.

  Teething problems, at least at this stage, were not going to bring a band down, and in any case, the album was recorded mostly live, to keep the desired level of urgency, most notably on the opening ‘Sixteen Days’, which bravely began with an experimental stretch of guitar and sampled voices (about the only audible words were ‘atomic bomb’), and ‘A Viable Commercial’. But with four songs around the six-minute mark, more trimming would have helped, as the band’s dedication to mood building rarely led anywhere. More melodic ingenuity would have helped too: ‘Move In Light’ had the best, perhaps only true hook, to counteract the densely packed arrangements.

  That The Birthday Party’s Prayers On Fire was 4AD’s first album of 1981, and it was already April, showed that Ivo – without Peter Kent’s speedy momentum – was pacing himself. But at least the finished Modern English debut album, Mesh & Lace, was scheduled for the same month. Perhaps The Birthday Party had warmed up NME writer Andy Gill, as Mesh & Lace was also favourably reviewed by him, and in the same issue as Prayers On Fire. After establishing that Modern English ‘exist in the twilight zone of Joy Division and Wire – a limbo of sorts as both bands are now effectively extinct’, he acknowledged it was ‘a worthwhile place to be … in some respects, this is the modern, English sound, Eighties dark power stung with a certain austerity’.

  Gill also nailed where 4AD had positioned itself by claiming the band had ‘an edge of sincerity which sets Modern English apart from the new gloom merchants’. He summarised Mesh & Lace as, ‘not an essential album by any means, but certainly one of the more interesting offerings at the moment’, adding, ‘And if we must have groups deeply rooted in the Joy Division sound … then I’d just as soon have Modern English as any other.’

  If the sound wasn’t uniquely arresting, the cover of Mesh & Lace certainly was. The full-frontal male nude tooting a long horn on the cover of Bauhaus’ In The Flat Field showed 4AD was prepared to be provocative: it’s impossible to imagine such an image in this paranoid age of sex-ploitation. Modern English’s cover star was again male, but partially clothed this time, in a kind of toga, with blurred hand movements that inferred the motion of masturbation to anyone with even a limited imagination, especially, as Robbie Grey admitted, the dangling fish ‘represented fertility’.

  In a converted south-east London warehouse very near the Thames River in Greenwich where Nigel Grierson combines home and work, images that will be included in a forthcoming book of photographs line the walls. But though Grierson is also plotting a 4AD-themed book, there is no visible evidence of his role in creating the label’s visual portfolio, alongside his former partner-in-crime Vaughan Oliver.

  Grierson also hails from County Durham, and was one year below Oliver at Ferryhill Grammar School. The pair had bonded over music (‘a Jonathan Richman album sealed our special friendship,’ says Grierson), literature (he introduced Oliver to the novelist Samuel Beckett; Oliver later christened his first son Beckett) and sleeve design. Grierson followed Oliver to study graphic design at Newcastle Polytechnic, where the pair bonded further over anatomy books – ‘old books, intriguing images, strange, static forms’ – and collaborated on projects. For example, a photographic series of the nude figure in nature, influenced by American photographers Bill Brandt and Wynn Bullock, but featuring the pair’s own bodies: ‘We couldn’t get any girls to pose naked!’ Grierson grins. ‘But the masculine figures gave the work another edge.’

  After college, Grierson secured a work placement at album art specialists Hipgnosis, where he was mentored by co-founder Storm Thorgerson. ‘Storm was an inspiration, though he
was heading in a more conceptual, less impressionistic direction than my own work was beginning to take,’ says Grierson. But while Oliver took full-time work, Grierson changed tack to a photography degree at London’s Royal College of Art; he later took a film degree but photography remained his preferred medium. At the RCA, he conceived of images ‘from the viewpoint of imagination over reproduction, more concerned with the inner world, in my head. The work Vaughan and I did was all about the “feel”, and an abstraction, reflecting the feel of the music itself. An “idea” often recedes into relative insignificance in the finished cover.’

  Visual influences that Grierson and Oliver shared included vintage Polish poster design, artist – and Gilbert and Lewis collaborator – Russell Mills, and the Quay brothers Stephen and Timothy, who, Grierson feels, were ‘purveyors of the dark and intriguing’. He recalls, ‘We were a generation of people brought up on monster movies, and Hammer horror films on TV every Friday night, which I’m sure had a profound effect on our childish imaginations that manifested in the dark, macabre yet romantic feel of much of Eighties popular culture – and not just goths.’

  Grierson’s approach to music took the same course, as his tastes shifted from rock to country and swing, ‘forever searching for something new’, before punk and post-punk was fully embraced, especially Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Germanic atmosphere’. A few months after moving to London, Grierson had met Ivo at Oliver’s suggestion. Grierson instantly approved of 4AD’s core roster, bands like Modern English. ‘And I must have ended up seeing The Birthday Party ten times – they were the best thing I’d ever heard, so hostile and breathtaking, especially live.’

  Ivo used two of Grierson’s photographs for the front and back of the Sort Sol single but the sleeve for Mesh & Lace was the first venture under a new partnership that Oliver and Grierson christened 23 Envelope. ‘It was in opposition to the egotistical way advertising agencies used a list of surnames,’ Oliver explains. ‘23 Envelope was more fun, a lyrical bit of nonsense, which also suggested a studio with a number of people and a broad palate of approaches. I didn’t want to get known for a certain style. How naïve we were!’

  Mesh & Lace’s surreal composition benefited from Modern English giving Grierson the same freedom as Ivo had given the band. ‘To describe the image as sexual is too blunt,’ Grierson argues. ‘I agree the fish is a phallic suggestion, but the lace is simply feminine, and I was into [British figurative painter] Francis Bacon and movement in photos. So there’s this slightly strange context and a whole bunch of influences.’

  It would have been interesting – if not a ramping up of the homo-erotica – if Oliver had managed to see through his original idea for the album’s working title, Five Sided Figure. ‘Vaughan had this drawing of a fifty-pence coin with five blokes around it with their knobs hanging out on the table,’ Mick Conroy recalls. ‘I don’t think we’d have gone with it!’

  Ivo remains unconvinced by the finished cover. ‘I don’t think Nigel would argue that it worked. But 23 Envelope’s work was done on faith, and my ignorance. Vaughan and Nigel brought character and taught me how to look at things, to position things, and to contrast between fonts. But at that point, besides Modern English, all the artists 4AD worked with were doing their own artwork.’

  What might 23 Envelope have imagined, for example, for the B.C. Gilbert/G. Lewis seven-inch single ‘Ends With The Sea’? The duo’s chosen seascape, the water flattened and calm at the edge of the sand, was restful but a far too literal interpretation. Just like the pair’s Cupol intro ‘Like This For Ages’, the new single was more of a song than soundscape, its nagging little melody buffeted by some electronic undertows, which converged to a mantra for the flipside ‘Hung Up To Dry While Building An Arch’.

  ‘Ends With The Sea’ was a reworking of ‘Anchor’ from the duo’s improvised Peel session. ‘We asked Ivo, “Can we make a single? We have this top song”,’ recalls Lewis. ‘But we couldn’t recapture it in the studio.’ This was becoming a pattern for post-punk artists, whose energies and ideas were more suited to short, sharp turnarounds, not deliberation. The single turned out to be the ex-Wire men’s 4AD swansong, as Gilbert and Lewis began a project with Mute Records’ founder Daniel Miller, and gravitated towards his label, but Ivo values their short residency at 4AD. ‘It’s easy to dismiss those works as just doodling, but they were a really important part of the freedom people had, after punk, to experiment. Bruce and Graham showed a lot of bravery.’

  Mass was a classic illustration of this ingrained liberation. Peter Kent’s last task at 4AD had been to organise the band’s debut album, Labour Of Love, recorded at The Coach House studio owned by Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. ‘Mass took a very loose approach to recording and there was a lot of improvisation,’ Kent recalls. But not, it seems, to positive effect. ‘There were a couple of good tracks but overall the album was disappointing.’

  ‘A collection of great ideas but poorly executed,’ is Mark Cox’s similar conclusion. ‘Part was down to our attitude that we wouldn’t be produced, or let anyone in. Wally Brill, who had produced the Rema-Rema EP, took his name off it after an awful row.’

  There was certainly no middle ground with Labour Of Love. Its shivering, dank and claustrophobic aura was the fulcrum of 4AD’s ‘dark and intense’ origins, a take-no-prisoners expression of borderline madness, from the opening ten-minute track’s musical embodiment of howling rain and fog. Mick Allen’s first declaration, which arrived four minutes in, was, ‘help is on its way’.

  ‘Mass frightened people,’ claims Chris Carr. ‘We had some press support early on from the greatcoat brigade, writers like Paul Morley, but it was too heavy for general consumption.’

  Even so, the NME ignored Labour Of Love for four months, and then accused Mass of being one of the countless Joy Division imitators: ‘They parade angst, guilt and all the other seven deadly sins and just leave it at that: a charade … this album represents one emotion, one dimension, one colour, that of greyness.’

  The album only struck a chord in America. Punk/new wave authority Trouser Press Guide called it: ‘dark and cacophonous, an angry, intense slab of post-punk gloom that is best left to its own (de)vices’. On its eventual CD release in 2006, the website Head Heritage claimed Labour Of Love was ‘the Holy Grail of British Post-Punk’, but also highlighted why Mass were hard to swallow: ‘… drums sounding like things being thrown downstairs, and a bitter and plaintive Cockney vocal by Michael Allen barely masking severe disappointment and contempt.’

  According to Cox, ‘something dark and serious lay at our core. It wasn’t encouraging. Gary told me his relationship with Mick was often tense, and went off to Berlin and sort of didn’t come back. And Danny followed Gary.’

  ‘Mick and I were both stubborn, and things had started to fracture and stagnate,’ says Gary Asquith. ‘Looking back, I still held a lot of disappointment with Rema-Rema, which had been the most important stage of my sordid career so far. Mark was desperately hanging on to Mick, and it felt like time to go our separate ways, to see what happened. Berlin had a great little club scene, and I was hanging out with this all-girl group, Malaria.’

  Back in London, says Cox, ‘Mick and I were still making sounds, but the energy fell apart. Mick needed to stop smoking spliff, which he eventually did. But he had a bad acid trip, which I think left a bit of a legacy.’

  The night of his LSD misdemeanour, Allen had turned up at Ivo’s home, showing that even a renegade such as Allen trusted in Ivo’s company. ‘He was a strange, sometimes awkward, shy fellow,’ Allen recalls, ‘but I liked him. I saw Ivo as an older brother, and we’d talk about music in the same way, though I’d take the piss out of what he listened to! He was obviously from a certain background, and we were working class, but we connected.’

  Mass’ unencumbered liberty was mirrored by 4AD’s next release, the most esoteric to date: an instrumental album, snappily titled Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish, from a vocalist by tra
de – Gilbert and Lewis’ former Wire sparring partner, Colin Newman.

  Newman had been raised in the thrills-free province of Newbury, 60 miles west of London, and attended art school in the marginally more engaging city of Winchester and near to the capital in Watford, which had London pretensions without its credibility. Newman thought he’d be an illustrator, but admits, ‘I wasn’t very good. I was at art school to join a band.’ After being asked to sing in an end-of-term performance by the college audio-visual technician, Bruce Gilbert, Newman had found his vocation, adding pop nous and oblique lyricism to the Wire formula.

  When the band had fractured, Wire’s manager Mike Thorne had approached Martin Mills at Beggars Banquet, who used some of the Gary Numan profits to fund Newman’s album A–Z. Newman didn’t arrive at 4AD via his Wire bandmates or even Beggars, but after meeting Peter Kent at a party. Kent had, in turn, introduced Newman to Ivo, knowing they’d have much in common: both were the same age (twenty-seven), they both loved Spirit and the late British folk rock singer-songwriter Nick Drake – to Newman’s surprise, ‘as I thought nobody else knew him then’. The musical conversation had turned to an instrumental record that Newman had in mind, and Ivo was happy to have another Wire representative on board. ‘I liked Colin, and I’d loved A–Z, which to me was the great lost fourth Wire album. And I thought he would do something good again. And he did.’

  On Newman’s side, Ivo felt he’d benefit from having access to the independent charts. ‘That was one of his lines,’ Newman recalls, ‘and I’m sure it was true. But that wasn’t why I made the record. I wanted to do an alternative to a “song” record.’

  Newman recorded all twelve impressionistic tracks – titled ‘Fish One’ to ‘Fish 12’ – of Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish by himself (except for ‘Fish Nine’, which featured Wire drummer Robert Gotobed). ‘It was ahead of its time,’ he feels. ‘People would later do the same with sequencers and sampler, fiddling with varispeeds, flying stuff in off different tapes, building music by layers and extemporised in the studio.’