Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  Our seven years together had been a war zone. When we fought side by side, we always won, and when we didn’t have a common enemy, we turned on each other. How many times did I sneak out to see the Ramones, Richard Hell, or the Dead Boys just to get some peace and quiet from Linda’s high-volume personality? I swear to God, it was pure relief to just stand on my own in Max’s or CBGB, going deaf in the distortion as people bounced around spitting on each other. Never mind. Life’s no bed of roses. We both knew that. We’d soldier on as always.

  6. THIS AIN’T NO PARTY

  There’s a song for every chapter in your life, and for Linda, our break up was Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” which she played over and over like it had been personally written from her to me. Thing was, that whole party scene would not survive.

  According to music business mythology, Disco Demolition Night supposedly signed disco’s death certificate. It was an event in Chicago in the summer of 1979 organized by a pair of rock radio jocks who hated disco so much, they invited baseball fans to burn disco records before a White Sox game against the Detroit Tigers. Thousands converged on the stadium and sparked a bonfire of the vanities that degenerated into a riot.

  * * *

  As much as I love a good story, this was a minor news item that has since been parodied and exaggerated out of all proportion. Since when did the record business ever care about Christian rockers in the Midwest? I mean seriously, apart from selling them our AOR dreck? Remember in the midsixties when John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ? Far greater numbers started burning Beatles records in bizarre scenes all over the country. It never stopped the Beatles selling records by the shipload. If anything, it strengthened their image.

  Disco died and was reincarnated exactly where it was born: in the clubs of New York City. Studio 54 was where the record moguls, the disco stars, and Billboard’s chart fixer Bill Wardlow hung out. So, the party was over, literally, when the cops raided Studio 54 in December 1978 and nailed its owners on tax evasion. You had to feel very sorry for Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager actually winding up in jail. I can only presume they’d refused entry to a mayor’s wife or a police chief’s mistress.

  It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because by then, the Jerry Halls were sick of standing out in the cold trying to fight their way in. The rock star brigade had already migrated to Trax, a rockier joint on Seventy-Second Street and Columbus Avenue. Meanwhile, all the creative energy was heating up downtown, where the younger art crowd lived. CBGB was still going strong, and I remained loyal to the end, but of the new places, the place I loved most was the Mudd Club, opened in 1978 on White Street in Tribeca. It was a bar with a stage for bands, a deejay room upstairs for parties, and a gallery area for exhibitions. For a while, the Mudd Club was the place where you’d bump into the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Klaus Nomi, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and various other superheroes of the artistic world.

  On 36 West Sixty-Second Street, there was also Hurrah, which had opened in 1976 and was the first to use giant video screens, way ahead of MTV. The biggest new place, however, was Danceteria on Thirty-Eighth Street, which had three floors—one for live gigs, a big dance floor, and a top floor for exhibitions and performance art. Opened in 1979, Danceteria attracted more of a younger, fashion crowd, but its main deejay, Mark Kamins, fast became New York’s hottest mixer-upper of improbable sounds. I was approaching forty and traveling a lot, so I wasn’t exactly hanging out, but I’d head down to all these places to check out bands and look around. Influences were coming in from all angles, but it was clear punk and disco were mixing up and evolving into something new. What that was, nobody had yet invented a name for.

  Of all the people in my circle, those most plugged into the downtown scene were Talking Heads, who were so hot, they didn’t have to follow any fashions—the hip crowd was busy chasing after them. Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth had moved out to Long Island City, just a fifteen-minute drive into town, so when they weren’t on tour, they’d party all night moving around between these clubs, looking at bands, getting invited into the deejay booths, and misbehaving as musicians their age might do. As the sun came up over the Williamsburg Bridge, Chris would drive them home in some frazzled states, thankfully never crashing their new Honda Prelude into any early-morning milk trucks.

  Their apartment was a three-thousand-square-foot space in a brownstone factory on the corner of Vernon Avenue and Forty-Fourth Drive. It had been converted into several artist lofts but still had the old freight elevator, which opened straight onto the street, a small luxury if you’re constantly lugging drum kits and amplifiers. It was the perfect HQ for rehearsals and huge parties, of which there were many. Their circle of friends included the B-52’s, Brian Eno, Debbie Harry, Seymour Avigdor, new-wave composer Arthur Russell, writer Albert Goldman, actress Karen Allen, photographer Lynn Goldsmith, even David Lee Roth. Danceteria deejay Mark Kamins often entertained those parties, just pulling stuff out of Chris and Tina’s record collection.

  They didn’t even have to worry about making noise—only its quality. Upstairs was inhabited by trumpeter Don Cherry, jazz royalty and probably the number-one pioneer of world fusions in those days. His band at the time included tabla master Trilok Gurtu and various jazz rockers from Lou Reed’s band. When Don Cherry heard Chris and Tina rehearsing in the afternoons, he’d sometimes pop downstairs with his donso ngoni, a stringed instrument from Mali, on which he’d pluck rhythmic melodies inspired from West Africa. Even his kids, Neneh and Eagle-Eye, who also lived upstairs, were budding young musicians. Across from the Cherry home was the Modern Lovers’ bass player, Ernie Brooks. Next door was Tina’s older brother Yann and his girlfriend, Julia MacFarlane, both pioneer architects who worked from home, designing I. M. Pei projects for the Louvre and elsewhere.

  It made sense that Talking Heads would record their third album, Fear of Music, in Chris and Tina’s loft. The producer was again Brian Eno, by now living permanently in New York following his Berlin period with David Bowie, who had also just moved to New York. Their plan was to park a mobile studio truck on the street below, where Eno’s machines were wired up to the musicians on the third floor. And because they were listening to so much African music, a bunch of fast groovers grew out of those sessions, some of which even picked up sirens and traffic noise from the street below. Tracks like “I Zimbra,” “Life During Wartime,” and “Cities” got heavy action on the dance floors of Danceteria, Hurrah, and the Mudd Club. In fact, while recording the album, Talking Heads tested out some of these new songs on the stage of the Mudd Club.

  We released Fear of Music in the summer of 1979, and although Talking Heads were still too radical to get major-league rotation on Top 40 radio, the album got glowing reviews in New York and London. That’s really when the critics started raving unanimously about David Byrne as an important voice of the times. Musically also, Talking Heads were probably the hippest sound around, not that they or any of us inside Sire quite realized the effect they were having on producers, club deejays, and other bands. I think even they were too busy to notice it themselves. Some things take a few years to sink in.

  Inside Sire, I’m happy to say we were too busy ourselves basking in the sunshine of our latest smash hit, “Pop Muzik” by M, a fabulous pop art record I’d snatched in London before any Americans heard it. It first blew up in London and then all over continental Europe, but success doesn’t get any higher than number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and in November 1979, that’s right where we stood, top of the world, looking down on Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.” As old-school disco began to lose its sparkle, new wave was still going strong.

  I had another silver bullet already loaded in the barrel. In purely A&R terms, the Pretenders were a fine example of how the best discoveries sometimes fall into your lap just by getting out, failing at first, but accidentally making new contacts that lead to something better. Back in 1977, I was at a Generation X sh
ow where I saw a familiar face hovering around looking very interested. His name was Dave Hill, the A&R man for ABC’s brief attempt at a London branch called Anchor Records. It was such a disaster label that after about a year, Anchor was referred to in the English music business as Wanker, but because ABC was my distributor at the time, I joined forces with Dave to improve our chances of bagging Generation X. The plan was that I’d take their North American rights and Anchor would get the UK. In our efforts to charm the band, we even met Billy Idol’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Broad. All, alas to no avail. Chrysalis won the contest, which in hindsight, turned out to be the right choice. Terry Ellis and Chris Wright did a good job with Generation X and later made Billy Idol an international pop star.

  When Wanker folded shortly afterward, Dave Hill did what most redundant A&R men do: he started managing a band he’d been eyeing up but couldn’t sign. So, he telephoned me in late 1978 and explained, “I’m managing this really great band. I know your taste, and you’re going to like them. The lead singer is actually an American girl; you might know her in fact—Chrissie Hynde? She writes for NME [New Musical Express].”

  “Don’t tell me she’s a writer and wants to be a singer.” I laughed. I had nothing against writers, but whatever it was about the late seventies, an alarming number of music journalists suddenly wanted to be punk stars. It was both a constant nightmare and a running joke for Linda, who had to befriend all these journalists to get the Ramones into the press. Unfortunately, she kept having to fend off their bullshit demos and schemes to get famous.

  “No, this girl is different,” said Dave, who was no fool. “She always wanted to be a singer, but to continue living in England, she had to get an office job. Forget I even mentioned NME. You’ll like her. I know you will.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll come and see her.”

  In early February 1979, I first saw her group perform to fewer than a hundred people at the Moonlight Club in London’s West Hampstead neighborhood. The location alone struck me because it was the exact same place underneath the Railway Hotel, just down the road from Decca’s studios, where Mike Vernon took me in the midsixties. Back then, it was a mainly jazz and blues haunt called the Klooks Kleek, where many famous concerts were recorded by running a line up the street into Decca. I always followed my gut instincts, and just by walking into this refurbished venue, I sensed imminent magic. Sure enough, when the Pretenders stepped up, I was completely knocked off my feet.

  There was an edgy confidence about them and lots of interesting songs that hit you first listen. To sign them, I had to do a label deal with Dave Hill, who had the good sense to set up his own little indie, Real Records, to which he’d signed the Pretenders before shopping them to me. It wasn’t cheap, but even Warner knew we were onto a surefire hit and coughed up the money without any moaning.

  Being an American exile in London, Chrissie Hynde was naturally very excited about her little career suddenly gearing up for a major-league homecoming. While the ink was still wet, she called into my apartment on Gloucester Place and suggested we go out for a walk.

  “Do you know the rooftop on that building?” she asked, pointing at the building beside mine.

  “No. Why?”

  “You don’t know it? Wow, it’s one of my favorite spots in London.” She beamed, like it was all an amazing coincidence. “I go up all the time. I walk in, and nobody says anything. C’mon, follow me. You’ve got to see this.” She led me through a door and into an elevator. Getting out at the top floor, I followed her up another flight of stairs, which opened onto this spectacular rooftop garden overlooking London. “I come here to think and work on my lyrics,” she said. “I really love this place.”

  I instantly liked Chrissie Hynde. She was from Akron, Ohio, and had witnessed London’s punk scene from the inside, first working for fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who was of course Malcolm McLaren’s girlfriend and partner in the clothes store where so much of the Sex Pistols story began. After a few false starts in other bands and then a job in the NME that she never fit into, Chrissie found the perfect guitarist and collaborator in James Honeyman-Scott, who had a bright, jangling style of his own. They were a powerful duo backed by a tight drummer, Martin Chambers, and a hard-hitting bassist, Pete Farndon.

  Technically capable singers are two for a buck, but what Chrissie Hynde naturally possessed was a unique-sounding voice and a gift for songwriting. She was a tough young lady who’d been living on her wits for a long time, but she also had a very sensitive, thoughtful side, and I think that mix of hard and soft gave her songs depth and personality. At the time, she was romantically involved with the Kinks’ front man, Ray Davies, who wrote “Stop Your Sobbing,” which the Pretenders covered. Everyone at Sire and Warner, however, agreed that “Brass in Pocket” was the obvious single, so we splashed out on a video, which was uncommon in those days, especially for an unknown act. In early 1980, “Brass in Pocket” broke into Billboard’s top twenty, ensuring the self-titled debut album was a hit.

  All this was Sire’s first sustained run of mainstream chart success that seemed to confirm our arrival into the major league. We’d been able to sell hip albums before, but always having something in the singles charts was new. The opening of Sire’s London office on Floral Street in mid-1979 partly explains this bumper harvest. I’d bought the building myself, knowing that Sire urgently needed a physical presence in London, which was clearly going through an exceptionally creative period. As well as my main man Paul McNally, I hired two loyal staffers, Maxine Conroy and Geraldine Oakley, who collectively formed the backbone of my small English operation, which I have to say really did punch far above its weight. Maxine, although English, had worked for me in New York but met Paul Conroy when she picked up the Madness tapes and artwork from our joint venture deal with Stiff Records. After their marriage, she moved back to London.

  New sounds were coming in from all corners of Britain, so much so, a new genre term even popped up in 1979. Although ska was an old Jamaican word, a new-wave British variety suddenly burst onto the scene, thanks in large part to an indie label called 2 Tone Records. It was founded by Jerry Dammers, the piano-playing creative force behind the Coventry group the Specials. They self-released the Specials through 2 Tone and quickly scooped up Madness, the Selecter, and the Beat, all brilliant bands who could write songs and play knockout live shows. My favorites were Madness and the Beat, who I went after while London’s labels all trampled over each other in the stampede to sign the Specials.

  Getting Madness was nonetheless a bit of a tussle. The hottest of London’s new-wave independents was probably Stiff Records whose boss, Dave Robinson, saw Madness at his own wedding and was as determined to sign them. They’d actually been booked by Paul McNally, so I almost got Madness for the world, but to avoid a major fight, I worked out a compromise with Dave Robinson, whereby I’d get North America and he’d get the UK and most of the rest of the world. The band agreed, and we all lived happily ever after.

  The dark horse, however, proved to be the Beat, who nobody gave much attention to. They actually got signed from 2 Tone to Arista’s London office by a talented A&R man named Tarquin Gotch. Fortunately for me, he didn’t make a strong enough case to Arista’s head office in New York, who foolishly passed. I pounced on their North American rights and enjoyed both commercial success and many happy memories with the Beat, who we had to rebaptize the English Beat to avoid confusion with another group. We got them touring with Talking Heads and the Pretenders, almost double bills that never failed to blow away audiences everywhere they played. I really did enjoy that whole new-wave ska scene. Just a few bands made some of the hippest party music ever recorded.

  There was another pioneer act I signed that year that I count among the brightest lights on my A&R résumé. I first saw Echo and the Bunnymen in August 1979, at the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road, just three guys with guitars performing a few songs as warm-up for Joy Division. Their singer and songwriter, Ian McCulloch, was a twenty
-year-old baby face, but there was already something of an old soul about his voice and lyrics. From the first song, I was hypnotized by the kid’s strange power. With their drum machine, heavy echoes, and dark guitars, their sound made you think of Suicide mixed with something of the Velvet Underground, but they also evoked a northern English mysticism of their own that really sucked you in.

  They were from Liverpool and were nothing like the Beatles, of course, but the spookiness of songs like “Pictures on My Wall” captured the brooding I’d felt so strongly on my visits. Liverpool in the late 1970s was not the majestic metropolis it had once been. In its day, Liverpool, which was the home of Cunard and the White Star Lines, rivaled London. Although no longer true by the time I came there in the seventies many of its beautiful old buildings, and the great bands and clubs that had become famous in the 1960s, were still around. I was fascinated by this enchanting city, which is a town of great character and humor. As a Brooklynite, I understood their mix of old religion and blue-collar attitude. Lou Reed and Alan Vega were both Brooklyn Jews like myself, so whatever holy spirits Echo and the Bunnymen were trying to evoke, they were close relatives to the ones I’d grown up with.

  Straight after the show, I met the band and their two managers, Bill Drummond and David Balfe. Not only did I want to sign Echo and the Bunnymen, I was actually the only hunter on their tail. I knew that was probably only a matter of days, because they were already getting high-profile gigs and were about to play on John Peel’s radio show on BBC Radio 1. At the same venue that night, I saw the great Teardrop Explodes, who I would have loved to sign as well, but with Mo breathing down my neck, I knew I’d be lucky to get Echo and the Bunnymen. After the gig, I stopped by the new office on Floral Street and telephoned Burbank. Unfortunately, I got bounced around until my good intentions came down with a thud on David Berman’s desk.