How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 (53 page)

Dead Can Dance, an Australian duo, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, had relocated to London where they had been treated sniffily by the UK press and been dismissed as Cocteau Twins copyists or world music Goths. Outside the UK they were one of 4AD’s most commercial propositions.

‘I remember Lisa saying she didn’t know what 4AD was or
who the Cocteau Twins were,’ says Ivo. ‘When they played, it was opera houses. They were by far the most respected band that had been on 4AD outside of UK.’ Hurley was sensing that within Warners feelings had improved and the perception was that 4AD were only ever one release away from striking gold. With the right single an act could cross over into the frontline alternative market, where, post-
Nevermind
, bands like Belly were being lined up for multiplatinum sales and regulars in MTV’s Buzz Bin.

‘We were on the cusp of breaking beyond critical acclaim and playing the Roxy to something much bigger,’ says Hurley. ‘When Lush got offered Lollapalooza, we thought that would be the breakthrough. The LP did 125k and was in the days when modern rock radio really did sell records, and we were so close at that point.’

Neither Lush nor Belly managed to connect to a wider audience in the hoped-for manner. ‘Luck is always what you need,’ says Hurley. ‘If someone at MTV had suddenly loved Lush – who knows?’

In Watts-Russell’s absence Martin Mills had gradually become more involved in the behind-the-scenes running of 4AD and was included in the negotiations with Warners. Mills had dealt with Warners himself on various licensing deals with Beggars, and knew that the company was a music-led label and that the Burbank offices took their West Coast heritage of critical and commercial artist-led success seriously. There remained, however, a vague sense of incongruity about how a UK independent as distinctive as 4AD could be embedded within the Warners system.

‘You could get untold riches through licensing artists in America’, says Mills, ‘but those deals put pressure on you and made you spend money to give them the tools that they needed – and 4AD got badly caught in that trap with Warners.’

For Watts-Russell, who was by now starting to lose whatever interest he had in the Warners deal altogether, the reality of having to interact with what he viewed as the corporate mind-set, however sympathetic to his artists, was one he had encountered before. The frustrations of having to, as he saw it, play the game, merely accelerated his feelings about quitting. ‘One of the first big Warner Brothers meetings I walked into was to discuss the Wolfgang Press,’ he says. ‘The track “A Girl Like You” was at that point of transition to whatever they called it, modern rock radio or whatever. And they turned me down. Here I am with the same goddam people making the same stupid decisions. Terrible.’

On his return visits to London, Watts-Russell was feeling equally frustrated. He had assumed a transatlantic arrangement with the London office would allow him to retain an overview of the label, while letting him to remain at first remove. Instead he was finding the quality control that he had made his benchmark was slipping. He began to gain a reputation for being
quick-tempered
and uncommunicative when in the office, his natural reticence exacerbated by the fact that he was almost always jet-lagged. On one visit he listened through to some new Lush recordings and found the results unimpressive. ‘I remember having a rare blazing row with Miki [Berenyi],’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Mike Hedges had produced it in France, in another one of those studios that’s got the desk that did
Sergeant Pepper
, I mean how many of them are there? And it was absolutely awful. Somebody had said, “Don’t just point out the negatives.” Miki said, “Fuck off, it’s not your fucking record, it’s ours.” My point was, “Yes, it’s your record and it’s my label and I’m as proud about my label as you are about your records.”’

Of all his relationships with his artists, the one between Watts-Russell and the Cocteau Twins had always been the most intense, and initially, the most rewarding. Things had soured
after
Victorialand
, a record the Cocteau Twins had made as a duo. A combination of the shyness of all involved, and the way in which drugs had replaced the shyness with a passive-aggressive power struggle, had led to an ongoing and volatile dialogue between the band and Watts-Russell.

‘I wasn’t as closely involved beyond
Victorialand
,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘Whether he was or he wasn’t taking a whole bunch of drugs, Robin became impossible. This chap called Raymond Coffer started to manage them on
Blue Bell Knoll
and he was really useless. We’d make plans on what should and could be done and Raymond would go away and then nothing would happen. One didn’t really even want to talk to Robin, because he was being so unpleasant. It just got worse and worse.’

Watts-Russell had grown so disillusioned with the situation that he felt he had no choice but to make a decision that would have once seemed incomprehensible – he let the Cocteau Twins go. ‘I wasn’t prepared to be the bad record-company guy that they hate,’ he says, ‘and to be bad-mouthed all the time. We met at the lawyers. We got Raymond over there early one morning and I told him the Cocteau Twins were free to find another label; and Raymond couldn’t stop the smile from appearing on his face.’

For Colin Wallace, who had left Grangemouth with Fraser and Guthrie and had remained their confidant throughout their career, Watts-Russell’s decision hadn’t come as a surprise. ‘It just broke down so badly,’ he says. ‘I remember Elizabeth having a shouting match with Ivo on the phone because Robin had broken down in tears after a conversation they’d had together, and I remember her launching at Ivo and I thought, fucking hell, Elizabeth never did this kind of thing.’

The timing of the end of their relationship was loaded with significance for the Cocteau Twins and Watts-Russell; despite
their grievances, and Guthrie’s perceived lack of commercial success, the band had just released their strongest-selling album,
Heaven or Las Vegas
. It was also one of their finest records. The songs featured tender, decipherable lyrics from Fraser that celebrated the birth of her and Guthrie’s first child. Fraser’s voice soared over some of their most melodic and rapturous arrangements, although they had been recorded in a mood of vitriol and blame.

Despite the fact he was no longer welcome or involved in the recording process, or any other aspect of their career,
Heaven or Las Vegas
holds a dear place in Watts-Russell’s heart. ‘I think it’s the best record we ever put out,’ he says. ‘For all those people who love to think I manipulate and stick my finger in and control, it’s a record I had absolutely nothing to do with, zero, and I love that record.’

The full extent of the upheaval he and the band had undergone finally caught up with Watts-Russell on his way to see the band play the album live. ‘They were playing at the Town & Country,’ he says, ‘and a couple of their fans – you can imagine what hardcore original Cocteau twins fans were like – spotted me and ran over and started asking me all these questions about Robin and Liz all this personal stuff. I realised I had no idea what had happened since I’d last seen these people. I just burst into tears and had to leave before they even came on. It all felt like a lie.’

Along with the toxic rancour of Watts-Russell’s and the Cocteau Twins’ relationship, Wallace was also aware that, in the absence of its founder, changes were taking place at the company that were going to alter the nature of 4AD permanently.

‘First of all this guy Richard Hermitage, who had been involved with the Pale Saints, was brought in,’ says Wallace. ‘He gave us all this stuff about cutting costs and the next day he turns up in a seventeen-grand car. That was the beginning of the end. Ivo was
like, “This is a big mistake, big, big mistake.” Then Robin Hurley was brought in, and Robin had a very, very tough job. Martin Mills said that 4AD is being run like a Rolls-Royce on the budget of Lada and people started being fired left, right and centre.’

*

Throughout the label’s history Watts-Russell had always remained a loyal listener to the John Peel show. One evening the visceral sound of a strong female voice on the programme left him smitten and energised in a way he hadn’t been for several years. Instead of hearing something he’d found in the lonely pile of demo tapes in the office, Watts-Russell had been seduced by the debut single ‘Dress’ by PJ Harvey, an act already at the start of a momentous run of activity that would result in their debut entering the charts at no. 11 six months later. Both the album and single were released on a tiny London start-up label, Too Pure, at whose Sausage Machine club PJ Harvey had made their London debut.

‘The single was out and had been played by Peel, who had started the buzz,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘That trio was so exciting and I really wanted to work with them. I realised that she was on Too Pure, and that this album was recorded and was going to come out on Too Pure, but that she was maybe going to respond to all the interest around her.’

For one of the few times in his career Watts-Russell was attempting to sign a band that had generated significant interest from other, more mainstream, parts of the industry and knew he would soon find himself in a bidding war. ‘There was a period of a week or two where she played three shows, and by the third one the entire world was there, and I was right there with them. It was my suggestion that she put the demos out with the album because I just thought they were fantastic. It was really through Too Pure that my approaches happened. And I effectively ended
up buying half of the company in the hope that Polly would stay with them.’

Watts-Russell paid for an equal shareholding in Too Pure in the hope that, by bringing the label into the 4AD/Beggars system PJ Harvey would remain with the label that had discovered her. Instead the band signed with a major, Island, where they enjoyed healthy sales and continual critical recognition. It was only the second time that Watts-Russell had been turned down by an artist. ‘My first experience of trying to sign something where there was interest from somewhere else – and there was huge interest – was the Sundays,’ he says. ‘There had been some glowing Falcon review and at the next gig everybody was there. This was a new world to me, not one I was familiar with at all, having to think about other people’s opinions or to care what anyone else thought. The Sundays could have easily been on 4AD. They made the decision to go with The Smiths’ label, knowing they’d be a priority there.’

In both cases the sense of rejection added to Watts-Russell’s low self-esteem. ‘I was astonished at what I felt like when we were turned down by Polly Harvey,’ he says, ‘like a jilted lover or something. I was feeling something complex, with relationships deteriorating.’

The most complex of all the relationships that were
deteriorating
was Watts-Russell’s relationship with his own record label. His decision to move to America had allowed him to escape the bureaucracy and pressures of running a more business-focused company, but it hadn’t altered the fact that he ultimately carried the responsibilities of 4AD. The intensity with which he had created and run the label was being replaced by an equally strong sense of disillusionment. ‘Things were still being run and passed through and by me,’ he says, ‘but I didn’t have the strength to direct things in the way we should
have done. I just thought, what the fuck are we doing that’s any different to what any major is doing? We were having more of an injection of money than we’d ever had from the guaranteed advances from Warner Brothers, but what had we got to offset that? A whole office of people in America, an office of people in England – a double record company – and I soon realised that those advances were all the money we were ever going to see. None of those records were selling enough to ever recoup.’

Over in the LA sunshine Hurley was trying to keep Warners interested. At Burbank the Warners executives were starting to grow concerned that their key asset at 4AD – Watts-Russell’s world-class A&R instincts – was no longer as prominent a component of the deal. ‘Ivo tried with Guernica,’ says Hurley. ‘It didn’t really work that well. The people he gave A&R duties to in London signed things like Sheer and GusGus – both things Ivo would not have signed. But to his great credit Ivo would come up to Warners with me and we’d play them Sheer and say, “If such and such can do well, why can’t this do just as well?.” And the Warners people were scratching their heads by this point.’

For someone with such refined and individual taste as
Watts-Russell
, allowing other members of staff to sign bands to his label was a magnanimous gesture. It was also suggestive of how little real interest he was sustaining in the company. The staff in the London office did not really know what the situation was, whether Watts-Russell was still in overall charge or whether they were to take their lead from whoever had been appointed as subordinate label manager.

‘When he first moved to the States, it was unclear to a lot of people in the office how involved he was going to be and that obviously caused some problems and confusion,’ says Harper. ‘I think the writing was on the wall as to how long Ivo would have anything to do with the label.’

While the staff of 4AD were aware that Watts-Russell’s emigration was a result of his desire for a change of location, very few people realised the extent of his unhappiness and disillusion. Apart from Hurley and Harper, only Martin Mills, the person who had suggested he start a label over fifteen years earlier, was aware of the decision Watts-Russell was considering – how to bring an end his involvement with 4AD. His eventual choice was to sell to Mills, but it was one he would spend more than a year dwelling on before making.

‘We had a contractual arrangement that, if one of us wanted to leave, we had to offer the other half to each other first,’ says Watts-Russell. ‘I had to look at different options. I could just stop it as a label but remain a co-owner and run it as a catalogue thing. I could have said, “Fuck it, it’s not working without me. I’m going back to England,” and I wanted to be in America.’