How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 (48 page)

O
ne of the smaller labels that suffered from the disintegration of Rough Trade was Fire Records, a guitar label with a strong release schedule, to which Dave Barker, who was now working there as A&R, had brought Spacemen 3 and the Pastels. ‘There was a drawing on the wall in the Fire office,’ says Barker, ‘saying “Everything’ll be all right, when the Spacemen album comes out”. It took so long coming out that
Recurring
was a brilliant title for the album.’

Barker had been busy establishing contacts in the American underground and had been given his own imprint, Paperhouse, by Fire’s owner, Clive Solomon. Paperhouse releases were often stylish or esoteric (or both) and included a series of wigged-out records by Half Japanese, many of which had been produced by one of the underground’s busiest men, Kramer, and featured a friend of Sonic Youth, Don Fleming, multitasking on guitar, bass or keyboards. ‘I became pals with Don Fleming because B.A.L.L., Kramer’s band, came over to the UK and were booked by Russell Warby,’ Barker recalls. ‘The first time I met Russell, I kipped on his floor in Nottingham with B.A.L.L. and the Walking Seeds, so this scene was opening up and it was suddenly this thing. Nirvana had stayed there the first time on his floor as well. Russell definitely opened some of that up.’

Russell Warby was one of the handful of promoters in the UK whom visiting American bands could call upon to arrange a tour; barely in his twenties, he had started booking concerts in
his native Nottingham with mixed results. ‘I’d missed a college course by a year,’ he says. ‘Then by promoting shows I discovered I was a terrible promoter and all I did was lose money by backing horses that I really fancied and nobody else did. Then I got introduced to some Dutch people who handled the Sub Pop bands and I decided to start calling myself an agent.’

The bands that Warby promoted, recording for Sub Pop, K Records and Shimmy Disc along with countless other American labels, were the generation that had formed in the wake of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Big Black and Butthole Surfers and had drawn inspiration from those bands’ networking and self-reliance. Many of them had been given a leg-up on to the first rung of the touring ladder by opening for Sonic Youth. The next stage of Sonic Youth’s career, which many were assuming would involve them leaving the independent system, was Paul Smith’s major preoccupation. Smith was also trying to establish an American base for Blast First and clarify his position with his flagship band. Consequently few of Sonic Youth’s support acts managed to make an impression on him. ‘I didn’t really have much to do with Russell,’ says Smith. ‘I remember him phoning up to say he was working with this band, Nirvana, and seeing them play somewhere in America with Sonic Youth, and all I can remember is, they wouldn’t get off the couch to do their sound check.’

Warby booked a series of Sub Pop tours into the UK and Europe featuring Mudhoney, Tad and Nirvana in riots of volume and exuberant unprofessionalism, and, in the case of Nirvana, a raucous pop noise. ‘The early shows were so exciting and the band was so fantastic. They really were so much better than anyone else,’ says Warby. ‘Then Nirvana came back to the UK and they did their second John Peel session, which was the covers one, which was tremendous, and you knew – you heard the demos around that time of
Nevermind
– that something
pretty exciting was going on. When they came over on that trip they were completely skint. They’d been taken out to dinner by all these labels but they had no money.’

One of many bands from the American underground being courted by the majors, Nirvana were still, in their own heads, a band slowly building on their reputation for phenomenal live shows and a melodic sensibility that many of their peers lacked. The band’s contact with the record industry was little more than an informal relationship with their record label and two or three semi-professional friends like Warby who could book them a regular run of shows at home and abroad. ‘I tried to get them a manager here when they were in the UK,’ says Warby, ‘but they wanted to meet the Pixies’ manager, so we set up a meeting with Ken Goes. I rang him up and said, “Well, you’ve had the demos for
Nevermind
, and you’ve heard the Peel session, what do you think?” and he said to me something along the lines of, “I can’t see what sets this band apart from 100,000 other bands in America.”’

In America the Pixies were released on Elektra, a division of Warners, which was considered by those in the know to be in the running for Sonic Youth. ‘I was talking to the majors,’ says Paul Smith. ‘The band weren’t talking to the majors, I was talking to the majors for them. Around the time of
Evol
I said, “You will get signed by a major,” and them just laughing hysterically and saying, “Paul, you’re so great, you’re so fucked up, you actually believe that might turn out to be true.”’

Sonic Youth’s last album for Blast First had been
Daydream Nation
; the release was not without problems. The band’s American label SST had run into further cash-flow difficulties and the band had asked Smith to supervise
Daydream
’s American release. For Smith, handling
Daydream Nation
in the States was a crucial first step in building a structure for Blast First
America. ‘With
Daydream
coming out on Blast First in America, we didn’t do an incredible job, but we were doing the job that needed to be done, and we were spending the advertising dollars – $60,000, I seem to remember, nothing crazy, but $60,000 to a penny more than SST would have spent. We were in there with radio stations, we were doing the thing. The day it came out the phone rang in my apartment and it was Ahmet Ertegun and he was, “I’ve always loved the band.”’

Daydream Nation
had been part-distributed by Enigma, a company financed by the major MCA. While Sonic Youth had not fully signed to a major, they had left the underground for the halfway house of major-label distribution. Now in a holding pattern, the band realised their next move would almost inevitably involve signing to a major. Their relationship with Smith was one dear to all involved, but it remained a confused one that lacked any formal or legally binding management or record company agreement. As Blast First’s biggest-selling band, Sonic Youth were, after the critical and commercial success of
Daydream Nation
, in a stronger position than their record label. As Smith fielded calls from moguls like Ehtegun, communication between the band and Smith grew increasingly erratic and strained as both parties began weighing up options.

‘What I had wanted to do was have Blast First become something more of the model of Some Bizzare,’ says Smith, ‘in a way that we could engage with the big machine, and we’d protect the band. Obviously it didn’t work out that way, so there were things like us having dinner with Ahmet.’

Sonic Youth’s diary began to fill with a round of meetings and appointments with the major labels. Once word was out that the band were ready to sign they had no shortage of courtiers. Many of the majors had staff in A&R and media departments who were long-term fans of the band and realised that the value of signing
the totemic Sonic Youth went beyond merely releasing the band’s music. If any band could survive the transition from the indie network, with all its unwritten moral codes and behavioural tics, it was Sonic Youth. The band’s measured career approach, its intelligence and, above all, its endless underground connections, if safely housed and ring-fenced by the right company, could act as a shining example of the way forward for their peer group. Any major label that could create a working relationship with America’s hottest underground guitar band would soon earn a coveted reputation.

In entering discussions with major labels, Sonic Youth had to endure the strained and ridiculous power politics of the corporate entertainment industry. The band were welcomed into the
glasslined
suites of Manhattan to witness boardroom dynamics to their full effect. Smith was still acting as the band’s semi-official representative and attended the meetings, as did, in a sign of the group’s sense of purpose, an entertainment lawyer. ‘CBS Black Tower is across the road from Grubman, Indursky & Schindler,’ says Smith, ‘who were then the second-largest media lawyers in America and Allen Grubman was in the meeting we had with CBS. It was the most ludicrous Spinal Tap meeting I’ve ever been to. The band were absolutely useless and had nothing to say to anybody. The whole fuss around Tommy Mottola … Tommy’s on the third floor … was just ridiculous. He had this black-
and-white
check jacket on, this mullet haircut, and he came in the room, sat behind the desk and did his little swing around and went, “There’s a button underneath this desk that I could press and make you superstars and I, Tommy Mottola, I’m pressing that button right now.”’

Tommy Mottola was the late Eighties corporate American music executive incarnate, a protégé of Walter Yetnikoff, the man who had overseen the success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller
and helped the music industry threaten Hollywood as America’s most rampant and lucrative creative power base. Mottola had made his name by handling the career of Hall & Oates and exploiting such opportunities as producing the world’s first branded tour, a partnership with his charges and Beech Nut chewing gum. He was now attempting to talk turkey with Sonic Youth, a band who had just been on the road with a band called Rapeman. ‘Sonic Youth all sat on a couch, with their faces going, “What?”,’ says Smith. ‘I was sat in a chair looking at Mottola, who said, “Do we have any questions?” The fantastic dumb silence that only musicians can do followed and I said, “Well, for the band, I know it’s really important that they have artistic control.” I said, “I know Bill Nelson, a friend, an artist I respect, and he was on CBS and CBS remixed his album without his permission and put it out and that would be something that wouldn’t work for these guys.” It was like something out of
The West Wing
. Mottola went, “Er, er, that would have been before my time,” and the CBS executives all passed the buck on responding, and we shuffled out.’

Once the meeting had finished Grubman called his colleague Richard Grabel on his way back to his offices. Grabel, a former New York correspondent for
NME
turned entertainment lawyer, was starting to take clients based on his in-depth knowledge of independent labels and was set to handle Sonic Youth’s account at Grubman, Indursky & Schindler. According to Smith, at least, it was Sonic Youth’s decision to hire a professional legal team that saw his involvement in their career terminated. ‘Allen Grubman goes to Grabel, “Who the fuck was the English guy who embarrassed my friend in front of me,”’ says Smith. ‘“Get the fuck rid of him,” and within days of that I was gone.’

Sonic Youth declined Mottola’s advances but signed instead to Geffen, one of the smaller majors, in a deal brokered by Grabel
which contained the much-coveted clause of ‘full creative control’.

‘Anybody who’s worked with bands will know that a band with no ambition isn’t really that much fucking use to you if you’re a record company,’ says Smith. ‘The ones that have no ambition – it doesn’t matter how fantastic they are, they’ll probably never make it, so you want the ambition and Sonic Youth always represented a level of ambition, and they saw their chance, and they took it.’

On the tour for
Goo
, Sonic Youth’s first album for Geffen, the band stuck firmly to their roots and hand-picked their support acts. For the UK leg a new band from Glasgow, Teenage Fanclub, was invited to open for Sonic Youth. Teenage Fanclub had just released their debut,
A Catholic Educatio
n, on Paperhouse.

‘I was talking to Stephen Pastel,’ says Barker, ‘who said, “My mate Norman’s got a new band. They were gonna be called Superdrug, but now they’re called Teenage Fanclub and they’re really great, you know,” all this stuff. Stephen, bless him for ever, is really magnanimous. Most people in bands are like, “Oh, no one’s any fuckin’ good but me.” He’s never been like that ever, and he never will be.’

Teenage Fanclub members included Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, who had been in the Boy Hairdressers and were veterans of Splash One. Blake had played briefly in both the Pastels and the Vaselines. Rather than drawing influence from My Bloody Valentine, like most of their contemporaries, Teenage Fanclub had a loose, melodic sound that wasn’t afraid to rock and, unlike the shoegazers, the band had an easy onstage charm and confidence.

‘I got a tape, then Norman rang to say they were playing a gig,’ says Barker. ‘But when I saw them, I mean, it was just magic. I really saw something. There were fifteen people there. They came onstage. Norman said, “Hello, we’re Teenage Fanclub, and
we are Glasgow’s top singers by the way.” They’d spent £2,000 recording the first record and I said, “Well, we’ll give you that back for a fucking kick-off.” And Clive said, “What did you want to say that for?” Because it was a one-off deal, it wasn’t five albums, whatever, but that was his attitude.’

Barker’s A&R colleague at Fire was Dave Bedford, who was in the process of finalising the release of
Separations
by Pulp. The Sheffield band had already left Fire, only to re-sign to the label in a series of complicated legal actions which spoke volumes about the way Clive Solomon ran the company.

‘There are a lot of people that would say Clive’s a crook,’ says Bedford. ‘I’d have to say, he’s not, he’s just done what the contracts said but the contracts the bands signed were horrible.’

Fire was distributed by Pinnacle and had been earmarked by George Kimpton-Howe as a label that was going places. When Kimpton-Howe took up the position of MD at Rough Trade he was determined to take Fire with him. He made Solomon an offer of free office space in Seven Sisters Road with the added incentive of a large advance and use of the warehouse; within a matter of months, Rough Trade had been put into administration.

‘Clive liked it because it was a big offer with a warehouse and office thrown in rent-free,’ says Bedford. ‘As it happened it was the worst move he ever made. I saw no reason to move, but then it was money up front. It was a stupid deal through the new Rough Trade, and no wonder they went bankrupt.’