Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  Cherry 4, meanwhile, was a one-off single by Staa Marx, winners of the annual Melody Maker Rock Contest. The pre-eminent artist on the label’s early roster, however, was former Mott The Hoople keyboard player and industry veteran Morgan Fisher. “I knew we would never survive financially from just selling 4,000 singles as we did with The Tights,” recalls McNay. “It wouldn’t pay any wages. You might just pay your costs and get your money back, but you’re not going to make money out of it. So at the back of my mind I had ideas for albums. I came across the Morgan Fisher album that became ARED 1, our first, through a guy I became friendly with called Maurice Bacon, who was the drummer in John Otway’s band. He was living in the same house as Oliver Mills, who was helping me with A&R a little bit. Oliver was involved with The Photos, whom we came very close to signing before they went to Epic.”

  Fisher had recorded a prog rock album (under the simple billing ‘Morgan’) for a major label in 1972, which had ultimately been shelved. Six years later, “a cheerful chap called Iain McNay strolls up and says, ‘I’ve just started an independent label and I’d like The Sleeper Wakes to be our first album release,’ referring to said dust-covered LP. ‘So you want to release my prog album at the height of the punk era? Go ahead – be my guest!’” McNay’s unlikely enthusiasm was enough for Fisher to “throw in my lot with them”.

  McNay hit upon the idea of a compilation of independent singles for the label’s second album release. “There were all these labels putting out singles, obviously us, Rough Trade, Industrial, etc. So we did a compilation. It was fairly easy to put together – kind of like K-Tel or Ronco, who put out mainly TV advertised compilations with all the big hits. So, I thought, these are not hits from ‘77, ‘78 and ‘79, but they had sold pretty well, and it seemed a good idea to do a collection of them. I remember sitting in a cafe in Oxford Street waiting to collect a tape from Genesis P.Orridge. Throbbing Gristle were on the compilation, and I’d spoken to Genesis on the phone and said I needed a title, and it was his idea to call it Business Unusual. That record did really well, selling several thousand very quickly.”

  Meanwhile, Morgan Fisher was busying himself setting up his own in-house studio, or perhaps in-bedroom studio might be a more appropriate description. “Iain magnanimously gave me carte blanche,” he continues, “meaning he would release anything I recorded at zero expense in my newly created four-track home studio. And thus, following my first Cherry Red single, a corny ballad-piano version of my chum John Otway’s ‘Geneva’ (backed with three excerpts from my solo prog album Ivories), the Hybrid Kid was born. Pipe Studios was a tiny bedsit in Linden Gardens, Notting Hill, London W8 (fifth floor, no lift), with a bed that folded up into the wall. I could just squeeze in a four-track tape deck and a tiny mixer, and managed to produce the first Hybrid Kids LP at a total cost of 25 quid.”

  The concept of the Hybrid Kids was to take a familiar song and re-record it in a totally different arrangement. “Iain loved the idea and we succeeded in perpetrating the hoax on BBC Radio, until I finally blew the gaff because I wanted to announce, ‘This is me, folks – all me own work!’ But it was fun coming up with all those names. The Burtons came from the high-street tailors where I had my first mod suit made in 1966. Jah Wurzel came from Jah Wobble. I tried to do a serious rap/dub version of ‘Wuthering Heights’ the way the illustrious bassist might have done. I was completely inept at this and, in complete nutter ignorance of the fact that ‘Wuthering Heights’ is based in Yorkshire, descended into a scrumpy-ish Cornwall accent. ‘Owt on the woild and windy mooooors..”

  While Morgan Fisher’s mischievous ego (and alter egos) provided the cornerstone of the label’s early output, the reissue of the Hollywood Brats (Cherry 6) ‘Then He Kissed Me’ was a further example of McNay’s jackdaw A&R mentality. In fact, he’d nearly worked with the band during his time at Bell until Clive Davis took the label over as it became Arista. “Clive Davis said something like, ‘Don’t be stupid, this isn’t what we want to do on Bell Records,’ so it never got released,” McNay, for whom opportunities are frequently delayed rather than lost, recalls. “So I knew of the band from then. I’d seen them play a couple of times at a club in Piccadilly. That was kind of the coincidence. I was nervous about putting the album out as I didn’t know how it would sell. And that was my first deal with Caroline Exports, the export company owned by Richard Branson. Dave Loader was the managing director, Richard Bishop the buyer and Brian Leafe looked after production. They were all later involved in Armageddon Records. I was very friendly with Richard Bishop and he said, ‘Why don’t we do a deal on the Hollywood Brats?’ He thought it would export quite well. He said, ‘You give us an exclusive three-month export period at a decent price and we’ll guarantee to buy 1,000 albums.’ I thought, that’s great. That will cover the cost of doing the album. I knew I couldn’t lose money on it.”

  The Runaways were the label’s second American artists, signed after McNay had seen them support The Stranglers at the Roundhouse. Once again, it was a demonstration of his willingness to look at something that others had deemed past its sell by date. “I was quite a fan and someone told me they were having trouble getting their latest album released in the UK. And Now The Runaways was their last album before they broke up – they were managed by Toby Mamis and Peter Leeds, who also managed Blondie. This was after they’d broken up with [famed svengali] Kim Fowley. So I rang up and got hold of Toby, and said I’d really like to do it. He was great. We paid $5,000 advance for the UK rights, and when it came out, we did different coloured vinyl on the album, and again it did really well on export. But pretty much the band was all falling apart by that point.”

  Their willingness to sign with Cherry Red arose partially from recognition of McNay’s work with Bell. “I was a big fan, as was Joan, of the whole glam and glitter scene,” says Mamis. “And Bell Records had so many of those bands. There was reassurance from us that he knew what he was doing because he came from Bell, oddly enough. I was in London with Joan, recording three songs with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of The Sex Pistols. And I think I invited Iain to the studio to talk about the Runaways album that had never been released in England. And he had a lot of energy and it was a no-brainer to say sure, let’s get it out there.” Released in September 1978, And Now… failed to reach the charts in Europe or America, but it did prove to be the label’s first consistent seller.

  Assiduous scouting for low-risk investments was one plank of Cherry Red’s foundations. Another was that it was the first independent label to cotton on to the benefits of developing a publishing arm. A number of deals were struck across the independent spectrum, often with artists who were completely oblivious to the potential income stream. “A painless publishing deal can be yours!!!!!” trilled the advert which appeared in Zig Zag’s small labels catalogue. “Don’t sign away YOUR publishing until you’ve talked to the boys at… Cherry Red!” Interested parties were directed to Theo Chalmers at the company’s Kensington Gardens Square address.

  “I knew nothing about publishing,” McNay reflects. “At my last day at Magnet, I spent a couple of hours with a guy called Grant Goodchild who ran Magnet Music, their publishing arm, and he explained the principles. But when I started all I had were basic contracts. I knew what MCPS was, PRS was, but that was it, I had to learn it all. The funny thing is, the fact that I knew hardly anything, but I knew something, got me off to a great start.

  Because none of the independents had publishing. I think Mute’s publishing was a guy called Rob Buckle, who had a company called Sonic Music. He was quite smart and he got involved with Daniel Miller right at the beginning and signed Daniel’s publishing and administration and looked after Depeche Mode’s publishing and everything else. But there was no-one else. Rough Trade Publishing came along a few years later. So we got all kinds of publishing deals in the early days because there was no competition. And I wasn’t necessarily pushing that hard because I was still a one-man company, but I was picking up publishing when I could
.”

  Also, in December 1979, McNay hit on the idea of an independent music chart. There had been numerous informal attempts to document the growth of independent music previously, including Sounds ad-hoc (and not always regular) New Wave chart that began in 1977. But these tended to take their findings from a single shop or outlet, as well as punk or new wave records issued on major labels. McNay had contacts at Record Business magazine, and the first independent chart was printed there in January 1980, compiled by Barry Lazell. The premise was simple; that the records had to be independently manufactured, distributed and marketed without recourse to the machinery of the majors. That distinction ruled out the larger independents, like A&M, Chrysalis, Island and Virgin, who by that time had all accepted distribution support or more. The result was an oasis of recognition for the likes of Rough Trade and Cherry Red, but also Factory, Mute, Small Wonder, Postcard, Crass, and the innumerable one-off cottage industry labels. There were advantages in providing a clear picture of success at a lower-rung in the music industry. Labels were able to compare their fortunes, while it also served as a useful publicity tool and serviced the labels themselves by allowing foreign licensees to see what was hot in the market. It also allowed record shops who might lack expertise an idea of which records to stock.

  Another of McNay’s innovations was the licensing deal he signed with Bristol’s Heartbeat Records, run by Simon Edwards, in 1979. “That was simply a practical thing. Simon had put the first single out by The Europeans, and I financed the second one, by the Glaxo Babies, which he didn’t really have the money for.” Indeed, this was one of the first P&D – production and distribution deals – that would later become a feature of the independent sector. “Iain McNay at that time seemed not too different to me,” reflects Edwards, “in that he was running the business from his home, though his obvious pedigree from previous jobs within the industry put him way ahead of anywhere I was. He certainly showed an interest in what I was trying to create down in Bristol, and was suitably impressed by The Glaxo Babies and others as I waded through my pile of demos and ideas. What I needed was the financial backing to set the label up, to be able to take bands into the studio to record demos and singles, and to commission a graphics wizard for artwork for sleeves and promotional material, while I did all the co-ordination and general leaping about. Iain seemed sympathetic to my cause and offered me a production deal, whereby Cherry Red would finance my recording costs and manufacturing, then pay me a percentage on sales once the costs had been recouped. Manna from heaven for me at the time, as it gave me my freedom to pick and choose which bands I thought would work well within the label.”

  Cherry Red’s own breakthrough success was another American signing, Dead Kennedys. ‘California Uber Alles’ was released in June 1979 on the band’s own Alternative Tentacles label, and a tour of America’s east coast was booked, but proved a disaster. “We lost our shirt on the flights,” recalls guitarist East Bay Ray. “When I got back, Bob Last called me and said he wanted to put ‘California’ out on Fast Product in Edinburgh.” The record was released to widespread acclaim among what was rapidly becoming a moribund UK punk scene.

  “I was obviously aware of the band because they had ‘California Uber Alles’ out through Fast,” recalls McNay, “and I really liked it. I hadn’t thought beyond that. One day I got a call from a guy called Chris Gilbert. I’d had some dealings with him because he managed Andrew Matheson of the Hollywood Brats. ‘My partner Bill Gilliam has just taken on the management of a band called Dead Kennedys. They’re looking for someone to do an album, would you be interested?’ I said I would. Chris invited me up for a meeting and introduced me to Bill. We got on fine, and he explained the band wanted $10,000 to do the album. I said I’m definitely interested and went off to think about it. I didn’t have the $10,000 at that stage, because Cherry Red was in a formative period. We’d put out the Runaways album and that had done well for us, and a fair amount of singles and other albums. But we’d had nothing that had sold more than a few thousand. So I was wondering how I was going to get this $10,000, but I didn’t tell Bill that. My only other reservation; I liked the name Dead Kennedys, because it was controversial, but I wondered whether that was going to block me too much for radio play or anything else. So I mused and then decided I was fine with the name and I’d get beyond that OK. I was having lunch one day with the Caroline buyer Richard Bishop, and chatting about my dilemma, that I had an opportunity with Dead Kennedys, but I didn’t have the money to pay them what they wanted. Richard said, ‘Maybe there’s a deal where we give you the money, and you give us a good price on export, and a three-month exclusive, which means during that time you wouldn’t sell to any other exporter.’ I thought, that’s not a bad idea. So we ended up doing the deal and Caroline gave me the $10,000 and I gave them this special price on export for three months, exclusive.”

  Not only was the album an immediate success, but the next single, ‘Holiday In Cambodia’, became one of the best-loved punk singles of all time. “I remember Iain saying that he had the opportunity to release the Dead Kennedys album,” recalls Richard Jones, “and what did I think about that? And I hadn’t heard ‘Holiday In Cambodia’ but I was familiar with ‘California Uber Alles’ on Fast. And without even hearing ‘Holiday In Cambodia’, I said, you have to do that, it’s a no-brainer. Buying the album was a master stroke.”

  It was McNay’s intention to have Dead Kennedys’ cover of ‘Viva Las Vegas’ released as the follow-up. “I thought we could get daytime Radio 1 on that. Obviously, Peel had played ‘Cambodia’ and I think Mike Read played it as well. I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to extend it – we wouldn’t have got the breakfast show, but we would have got late afternoon shows for ‘Viva Las Vegas’. I was very keen on this and even scheduled it. Then Biafra said no, he didn’t want to release it. I said fair enough, but we’d got partly down the line on that, and even organised a plugger to work on it. I thought we could have had a Top 40 hit with that track and broken the band to a whole different audience, but it wasn’t to be.”

  Instead a remixed version of ‘Kill The Poor’ was released. “‘Kill The Poor’ was just yanked off the album and a different mix thrown on the single,” Biafra affirms, “to derail Iain McNay’s scheme to release ‘Viva Las Vegas’ as a novelty single, confine us to that and move on to another project. We said no, it’s going to be ‘Kill The Poor’, and you’re not putting ‘In-Sight’ out as a flexidisc, or yanking ‘Viva Last Vegas’ and putting it on as the b-side, whether you like it or not.” Despite that, one of McNay’s other ideas did work perfectly. “What we did for ‘Kill The Poor’ was a series of adverts in the music papers,” says McNay. “Shortly before the single came out, there had been the annual Conservative Party conference. Thatcher was elected leader. I took a picture of their platform at the Conservative Party conference. I got our art director to change ‘Conservative Party’ to ‘Kill The Poor’. So I ran a series of ads which had the Conservative Party shadow cabinet with ‘Kill The Poor’ above it, advertising the new single. I thought if the magazines and newspapers see the advert in advance, they won’t let me run it. So I found out what their deadlines were and delivered it a few minutes before, so it would be hard to pull. We got it in all the magazines and weeklies. We did get taken to an advertising complaints tribunal. But all they said, three months later, was ‘don’t run that advert again’, which of course we had no intention of doing.”

  It wasn’t McNay’s only Tory-baiting gesture. The release of ‘The Compassion And Humanity Of Margaret Thatcher’ is illustrative here. “What inspired us was that Stiff Records put out an album called The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan which was a blank album,” McNay recalls. “And I thought it was a good idea but a waste of vinyl, because you couldn’t do anything with it. So I had this idea of doing ‘The Compassion and Humanity of Margaret Thatcher’. And what we did at the time was release a cassette and a videotape, and they were both blank, obviously. Because she didn’t
have any compassion or humanity, that was my feeling at the time. And in those days, a blank cassette or videotape was of some use, because obviously you could re-use them. And they both sold several hundred copies when they came out.” The concept represents the essence of McNay to a tee. The idea may not have been wholly original, but it had legs, and it also underlines his stolid aversion to any kind of wasteful excess.

  ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’, the final single Dead Kennedys recorded for Cherry Red, was, of course, even more controversial. Bearers of the t-shirt with accompanying slogan were legendarily arrested in three continents. In fact, it’s become something of an urban myth – scour any town in the UK and you will inevitably find some middle-aged punk claiming the honour. “It was the first Top 40 single with the word ‘fuck’ in it,” says McNay. “The day it charted, they used to have the countdown on Radio 1 of the Top 40. I rang up the producer and said, ‘why don’t you play the b-side – that has no swear words?’ I knew they wouldn’t play the a-side. In the end all that happened, they said, ‘at number 36 there’s a record by a band calling themselves Dead Kennedys’ – predictable but disappointing.”

  When McNay declined to further investigate the American (pre-hardcore) punk scene for fear of stereotyping the label, Biafra was vocal in his disappointment. He believes Cherry Red could have helped a clutch of truly great bands, whom he would eventually release through Alternative Tentacles, get records out. Asked about this now, McNay is philosophical. “Biafra is possibly completely correct. It’s very hard to say.” But his reasons for not taking that route – that he didn’t want the label to become genre-specific – betray another motif that remains to this day. The label is in love with branding itself ‘eclectic’, often misapplying the adjective. Punk, for Biafra, was a way of life and intrinsic to his philosophy and worldview. McNay was a fan of punk, and grateful for the opportunities it afforded him, but not locked into its discourse to the same degree.