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This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
# When I get to Warwick Avenue | 0:00:10 | 0:00:16 | |
# Meet me by the entrance of the tube | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
# We can talk things over little time... # | 0:00:21 | 0:00:26 | |
In March 2008, Duffy topped the UK singles and album charts. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:31 | |
Behind her success lies a management team with a 30-year history, | 0:00:31 | 0:00:36 | |
and a legendary status in the music business. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
We are saying the market place is a force of creation | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
and has very little to do | 0:00:47 | 0:00:48 | |
with the reality of what people might want, given the options. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
Rough Trade began life as a small but hip record shop. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:57 | |
From humble beginnings | 0:00:57 | 0:00:58 | |
it grew to drive and define a revolution in independent music, | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
as a bunch of radical idealists and maverick musicians | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
turned the record industry on its head. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:11 | |
If you were DIY, Rough Trade for the perfect label for you. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
Single handedly, really, Rough Trade | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
gave me back some kind of faith in the music industry because up | 0:01:18 | 0:01:22 | |
to then I just thought, it's a bunch of (BLEEP) crooks. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
But at the height of its success, Rough Trade went spectacularly bust. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:33 | |
It was a very black time and very hard time and I feel grateful | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
to have still be here today, really. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
Rough Trade fought its way back, and after three decades of | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
defiant independence finally made it to number one. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:48 | |
# Baby, you hurt me... # | 0:01:48 | 0:01:53 | |
The Rough Trade story began more than 30 years ago. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:13 | |
20th February, 1976. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
NEWSREEL: 'Then the second bomb | 0:02:17 | 0:02:18 | |
'in a furniture shop gutted the four-storey building.' | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
Britain was in the grip of an IRA bombing campaign. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
Labour has gone on spending our earnings and spending our savings... | 0:02:24 | 0:02:29 | |
A future prime minister was beginning to make her mark on Middle England, | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
where punk was yet to run amok, | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
and a young Cambridge graduate called Geoff Travis opened a new shop | 0:02:36 | 0:02:41 | |
at 202 Kensington Park Road, just off Ladbroke Grove in West London. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:45 | |
I have always bought records all my life, and, you know, I love music. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
And I was in the States for quite a long time. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
When I came back to London, | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
I didn't feel like there was anywhere I wanted | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
to so I thought, well, I'll have to start somewhere. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
After I finished university, | 0:03:08 | 0:03:10 | |
I went to visit an old girlfriend in Canada. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
We hitchhiked together from Chicago to San Francisco | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
and I bought lots of second-hand records from Salvation Army stores | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
25 cents, a dollar, and a friend said, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:21 | |
"What you going to do with all those records? | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
"Why don't you ship them back to London and start a record store?" | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
Geoff Travis named his shop Rough Trade, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
partly after an obscure Canadian band, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
partly after a trashy novel, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:39 | |
and began to offer his friends and customers, like minded, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
left wing music lovers such as Steve Montgomery, the chance to work there. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:48 | |
It was fun. You could listen to music all day. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:50 | |
We had a policy, if you wanted to hear a record, we'd play it for you. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:55 | |
Rough Trade sold obscure and challenging records by bands | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
such as American art rockers Pere Ubu. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
Its music policy and its communal vibe set it apart from conventional, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:17 | |
commercial record shops | 0:04:17 | 0:04:19 | |
and the middle of the road rock music that dominated the music business. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
I started the shop on the basis that a record shop could be something | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
a lot more than just a place where bought records, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
as though you were going into a chemist. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
We were very enamoured by the idea of City Lights bookshop | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
in San Francisco, where you could sit in the basement of the shop | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
and drink coffee and read poetry and you wouldn't be chucked out. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:42 | |
It was about an environment where you could just listen to music. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
It wasn't a faceless, mindless organisation | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
attempting to exploit the general public for as much money | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
from their pockets as you could get. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:57 | |
We were all pretty naive, all pretty innocent, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
but we figured we could change the world. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:03 | |
West London's new music store had a clear alternative agenda. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
And when punk rock exploded in the summer of '76, just a few months | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
after the shop's opening right on the doorstep of local heroes The Clash, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
it became a natural headquarters | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
for punk's revolt against mainstream music. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
When they released the Clash album, | 0:05:36 | 0:05:38 | |
it was an incredible number of albums we moved in one day. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
It was either a thousand or a couple of thousand. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
The record companies all wanted to give us accounts | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
because they saw the power that we wielded | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
although we didn't look at it as power. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
We just looked at it as, we're making this material accessible. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:59 | |
But the shop didn't stop at selling punk records. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
From mid-1976 on they carried the first issues of Punk magazine | 0:06:03 | 0:06:09 | |
from New York and Rough Trade was very important | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
in that it started to carry English fanzines | 0:06:12 | 0:06:14 | |
Mark Perry's Sniffing Glue, Sandy Robertson's White Stuff, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
Tony Dee's Ripped And Torn, and they carried my fanzine, | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
which was called London's Outrage. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
Punk's home-made fanzines were the first products of | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
a do it yourself attitude that would become key to Rough Trade's identity. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
But the shop's location, just off Ladbroke Grove, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
made it more than just a punk rock ghetto. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
I knew Ladbroke Grove because of spending time | 0:06:46 | 0:06:48 | |
at Vivienne Goldman's flat | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
at 145a Ladbroke Grove, above the betting shop, next to the chip shop. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
The area where the first Rough Trade store was is now a full | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
of boutiques and restaurants. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:58 | |
Back then it was rough. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:00 | |
It has always been a bohemian area of London. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:04 | |
It's had its history of the riots. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:06 | |
It has its history of its Rachmanite landlords. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
It has a huge West Indian community and it's just been a place | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
where it has been cheap to live. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:14 | |
And where a place is cheap to live, you find musicians. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
So, that was the right place for us to be, really. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
We weren't trying to have an upmarket shop. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
We just wanted to feel comfortable. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
It was full of squats! | 0:07:25 | 0:07:27 | |
And it full of music, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:29 | |
starting from the hippie era, with Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
and then, of course, with the Caribbean community. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
The Rastas were all coming to Rough Trade, | 0:07:36 | 0:07:39 | |
partly because of its location on the carnival route! | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
So, in the very heart of the West Indian community. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
In keeping with its location, Rough Trade deliberately forged | 0:07:45 | 0:07:49 | |
what seemed an unlikely alliance between punk and reggae. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
I came into Rough Trade as an outsider. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
To me, punk music was just spitting | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
and vomiting and people looking funny. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:01 | |
How do they say in football terms? I was tapped up! | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
I was tapped up! | 0:08:05 | 0:08:06 | |
I was working for a company driving around in my little Escort van. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:11 | |
We are coming down to Ladbroke Grove station. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
It's on the right hand side. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:16 | |
So, I went to Rough Trade, sold them some... | 0:08:16 | 0:08:18 | |
I can't remember what it was. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:20 | |
If it was a Lee Perry album or if it was a Culture album. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:26 | |
I went back and they said, can I have 50 of that! | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
Come on, darling. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:30 | |
The last thing you want | 0:08:30 | 0:08:31 | |
when you open a shop in a community is a tourist. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
It was very important we sold Jamaican music. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
They kept saying to you, come and work for us! | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
And I thought, well, no. I don't want to work for punks, you know? | 0:08:40 | 0:08:44 | |
And then, when I went to work there, | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
it was like, "Oh, you're in charge of reggae!" | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
The bohemian lifestyle and political activism of Ladbroke Grove, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
reggae's independent record scene and punk's rebellious | 0:08:56 | 0:09:00 | |
do it yourself attitude, gave Rough Trade a unique spirit. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:05 | |
In January 1977, | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
when a record by Manchester punk ban Buzzcocks appeared in the shop, | 0:09:08 | 0:09:13 | |
Rough Trade found itself in the right place at the right time | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
to make an impact far beyond that of a neighbourhood music store. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
# If I seem a little jittery | 0:09:22 | 0:09:24 | |
# I can't restrain myself | 0:09:24 | 0:09:25 | |
# I'm falling into fancy fragments Can't contain myself... # | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
That was my first encounter with Rough Trade. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:34 | |
We pressed a thousand copies of the seven inch | 0:09:34 | 0:09:37 | |
called Spiral Scratch. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:38 | |
Someone rang up, "Can we have a couple of hundred?" | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
What Spiral Scratch did is that it showed that you can make | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
a great record, fund it yourself, put it out on your own label, | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
and you could sell 15,000 copies. Bang! Go! | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
When Spiral Scratch was released in 1977, | 0:10:03 | 0:10:06 | |
the idea of putting out a single without the support | 0:10:06 | 0:10:09 | |
of an established record company was incredible. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
A handful of major record companies | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
controlled most of the power in the music industry. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
Rough Trade was to become the headquarters of a revolt against | 0:10:23 | 0:10:29 | |
this corporate monopoly by stocking records by bands inspired by the idea | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
that they could do it themselves. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
Bands like The Desperate Bicycles. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
Well, we made a record independently, basically | 0:10:38 | 0:10:42 | |
to show that anybody could go ahead and make a record. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:44 | |
You didn't need the backing of a large record company. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
Eager to empower others, The Desperate Bicycles | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
turned their record sleeves into instruction manuals. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:03 | |
The Desperate Bicycles were really the first to demystify a process | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
by giving the information on the record sleeve | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
and then a lot of other people followed. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
And when The Desperate Bicycles did it, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:21 | |
and when I found their record at Rough Trade, it was like, jeez! | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
This is it! | 0:11:25 | 0:11:26 | |
Who knew that you could actually ring up a pressing plant yourself | 0:11:26 | 0:11:32 | |
and say, "I want to press some records?" | 0:11:32 | 0:11:35 | |
I had grown up imagining that mere mortals couldn't do that. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
Inspired by this home-made revolution, Scritti Politti, | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
a band of communist intellectuals, were the next punk DIYers | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
through the Rough Trade door. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
I went in with our own, song in '78, which was called Skank Bloc Bologna. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:58 | |
That was on our own St Pancreas records, named after | 0:11:58 | 0:12:02 | |
the Young Communist Branch of the Young Communist League. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
We had a meeting in the back office with Geoff, | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
and then he said, "Oh, let's go and play it in the shop." | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
We played the demos in the shops while people were flicking through. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
And he is kind of doing his Geoff thing... | 0:12:15 | 0:12:20 | |
"Um hum, um hum." | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
And then he said, "We'll distribute it." | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
Scritti Politti took the Desperate Bicycles' cover design | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
one step further by printing the production | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
budget on the record sleeve, which was, of course, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:36 | |
made out of paper and assembled at home. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:39 | |
So, recording, £98. Blimey! | 0:12:40 | 0:12:44 | |
You had the up to date information, so you'd bang that information | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
on the back of the sleeve. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:48 | |
The main cost was the pressing. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
2,500 copies at 13p, done in Surrey. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
Mastering 40 quid. Labels £8. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
So, whoever picked that record up could then go ahead and do it. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
We just stamped these on the kitchen table. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:04 | |
And that was absolutely essentially important to the whole business of | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
bothering to make music and being in a band, as far as we were concerned. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
That way, the record business would change | 0:13:11 | 0:13:16 | |
because everyone would just be able to do it themselves. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
Activists like Scritti Politti, and their friends at Rough Trade, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
were the intellectual, political wing of punk. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
Anti-capitalist, democratic and determined to break | 0:13:25 | 0:13:30 | |
the stranglehold of the major labels. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
We were Marxists, so major record labels, given what they represented | 0:13:34 | 0:13:39 | |
at the time, would have just been the enemy. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
This is our first single was recorded in a rehearsal studio | 0:13:50 | 0:13:54 | |
on this cassette recorder on a built-in condenser microphone. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:58 | |
And our second single was recorded on a borrowed reel-to-reel recorder | 0:13:58 | 0:14:04 | |
at home in our front room. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:05 | |
Now anybody could make a record. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
And Geoff Travis had assembled a staff of like-minded music lovers, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
including local artist Shirley O'Loughlin | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
and avant-garde Texan musician Mayo Thompson who might sell it for them. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:23 | |
I would go through 20 tapes a day, 50 tapes a day. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
People writing in, sending in tapes, | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
wanting to be part of it. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:32 | |
Wanting to make their own world happen in some way. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
One review in NME, and one play on Radio 1. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
The mission was not Rough Trades all over the UK, or all over the world. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:44 | |
The mission was "Here you are, you can do it." | 0:14:44 | 0:14:49 | |
We pressed 1,000 records which cost about £300, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
of which we sold about 350, so we lost about £150. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:56 | |
We'd almost always take people's records, even if it was only a box. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:01 | |
If it was a phenomenal we'd take a lot more. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:03 | |
It was definitely worth doing. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:05 | |
< Can you say that again with more enthusiasm? | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
It was definitely worth doing. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
But selling a few independent records over the counter | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
was not going to change the world. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
In the '70s record distribution was entirely controlled | 0:15:16 | 0:15:21 | |
by major companies. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
Even early independent labels like Virgin and Island had no alternative | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
but to hand over their distribution to the likes of EMI or CBS. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:33 | |
But one man at Rough Trade was about to challenge this monopoly. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:39 | |
We started to get five, 10, 20 letters a day's saying, | 0:15:39 | 0:15:43 | |
"Can we buy this cos we can't buy it at a local shop?" | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
So it made sense to start | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
up a mail order. And when the mail order | 0:15:48 | 0:15:50 | |
had been going a few months shops were writing in and saying, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
"I can't get records from normal wholesalers, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
"can I buy any excess stock you have?" | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
It was like there was a huge vacuum and we were sucked into that. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:06 | |
Richard Scott joined Rough Trade in 1977 after managing | 0:16:06 | 0:16:11 | |
reggae band Third World. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
He began by offering mail-order accounts | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
to other independent shops around the country. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
Richard would go on to develop a much grander scheme that was | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
nothing short of revolutionary - independent nationwide distribution. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:28 | |
One day I was trying to put together some orders for some shops. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:39 | |
It was completely hopeless. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
At one of the shops that I'd been supplying was a shop in York. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
I phoned up Tony Kaye at Red Rhino and said | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
could he sell to shops in the North-East if I sent him the stock? | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
He said yes. We then quickly picked up other people in other | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
regions like Probe in Liverpool, Backs in Norwich, Fast in Edinburgh. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
A shop called Revolver in Bristol. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
It all came down to having control over what you're doing. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
Being independent. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
Not being subservient to a large multinational corporation. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:19 | |
We're saying the market place is a false creation and has very little | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
to do with the reality of what people might want given the options. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
We wanted to have a distribution network where the decisions about | 0:17:26 | 0:17:30 | |
who went into that network | 0:17:30 | 0:17:31 | |
was controlled about ourselves and no one else. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
It was born of frustration of mainstream culture being, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:38 | |
to our mind, boring and excluding interesting things. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
You had the idea that ordinary people would like it. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
At least they should have a chance to make up their own minds. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
Rough Trade had begun to open up a commercially viable market | 0:17:52 | 0:17:56 | |
for music overlooked or dismissed by major labels. | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
The shop could now offer experimental musicians like Daniel Miller | 0:18:00 | 0:18:05 | |
the chance to sell records nationwide. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
I'd been a huge fan off Krautrock and electronic music. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
I loved Kraftwerk and I loved punk. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
I'd been a frustrated musician all my life because I had music ideas | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
but could never really play. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
I thought I'm going to try and get a synthesiser and made a punk record. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
I can visualise it very clearly. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:37 | |
I went in the front door and thought, god, this place... | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
I didn't think of myself as being very cool and this place was | 0:18:40 | 0:18:43 | |
full of cool dudes and going to be very judgmental and everything. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:47 | |
I went to the back of the store and there was Geoff and Richard, | 0:18:47 | 0:18:50 | |
they were dealing with a customer. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
They said, "Hang on a second." | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
I was looking round and taking it all in. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
It was really exciting. | 0:18:56 | 0:18:57 | |
All these boxes of records with names of bands that I liked. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
Then we went back into the shop to have listen of the record. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:04 | |
This was a public airing of my first single, I was very freaked out. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:09 | |
As you can imagine, very nervous. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:11 | |
'TVOD. TVOD.' | 0:19:11 | 0:19:12 | |
They said, "How many do you want press?" | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
I said, "I'm going to press 500 and hope for the best." | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
They said, "Well, I think you should do 2,000, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
"we'd like to distribute it." I said, "OK, fine." | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
That was it really. It was as simple as that. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
'I don't need a TV screen.' | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
'I just stick the aerial into my skin | 0:19:31 | 0:19:35 | |
'and let the signal run through my veins...' | 0:19:35 | 0:19:39 | |
TVOD. And warm leatherette. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
Two of the most important tracks of the era. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
He went away, pressed a record up and started his own record label. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:47 | |
Mute Records. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:49 | |
Daniel Miller set up Mute Records in 1978. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
It would become one of the most important and successful | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
independent companies in Britain, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
selling millions of records by bands like Depeche Mode and Yazoo. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:06 | |
It was just one of many independent labels | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
using the Rough Trade distribution network. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
There'd be Dick Odell coming in who was managing The Slits | 0:20:13 | 0:20:18 | |
and Pop Group and had Wire records. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
There were people coming down from Postcard records. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:24 | |
Tony Wilson would come in at least once a month to talk about Factory, | 0:20:24 | 0:20:29 | |
because we were manufacturing and distributing their label. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
Just like... People just coming in all the time. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
Independent labels were beginning to make a significant impact on | 0:20:36 | 0:20:40 | |
the major companies' control of the music market. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
And so it seemed almost inevitable | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
that when a bunch of French punks wandered into the shop in 1978, | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
Rough Trade was prompted to become a record label in its own right. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:56 | |
We'd been distributing a record by this French group Metal Urbain. | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
I was behind the counter and they gave me a cassette | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
and they said, "We don't know what to do with it, can you help us?" | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
That was the eureka moment where I thought, well, | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
we could press this up and put it out ourselves. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
The Rough Trade label was born, and by the end of the year | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
it had released a dozen singles by an eclectic mix of post-punk artists | 0:21:19 | 0:21:25 | |
who found the label's attitude towards record contracts | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
typically subversive. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
Music industry orthodoxy dictated that record companies | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
offer new artists a cash advance, contractually binding them | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
for a number of albums, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:43 | |
for which they would receive a modest percentage of any sales profit. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
It was a notoriously exploitative arrangement. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:52 | |
Rough Trade had a much simpler deal. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
"Clause 1. | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
"Rough Trade and dot, dot, dot, dot | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
"agree to make records and sell them until either or both | 0:22:03 | 0:22:08 | |
"of the parties reasonably disagree with the arrangement. Clause two. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:13 | |
"We agree that once agreed recording, manufacturing | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
"and promotional costs | 0:22:17 | 0:22:18 | |
"have been deducted we will share the ensuing profit equally." | 0:22:18 | 0:22:23 | |
We knew that if we'd gone with a major one | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
it was a lot more complex negotiations. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
For us it was like, yeah, that makes sense. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
Costs get taken out, 50/50. It's all good. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
The way the music business approaches | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
the problem of dealing with someone that's making music | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
is, I think, delineated by the fact that they're going | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
to make some money out of this. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:53 | |
They are pushing to seeing it as a commodity that they have to sell. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:58 | |
We are very opposed to seeing any of the people that we deal with, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
any of the music that we sell simply as a commodity. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
You could say that really in business terms we were very naive. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:11 | |
Had we been interested in building an empire | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
we would have behaved very differently. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:15 | |
We would have signed artists a long-term deal. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
We would have made sure we had the copyrights for that copyright. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
We would have made sure that we had a publishing company. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
We never did any of those things. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:26 | |
We weren't interested in building an empire. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
We weren't trying to follow the capitalist model | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
of how do you accumulate wealth. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:34 | |
We weren't trying to be Virgin Records. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
Rough Trade's ethic was directly opposed to the conventions | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
of the music industry. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:43 | |
Here was a business collective that put principles before profit, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
run by a bunch of enthusiasts who wore their politics proudly. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
Politics was very special to us. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:55 | |
At the very early stage | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
it was decided that it was going to be an equal paying, | 0:23:57 | 0:24:02 | |
non-management structure. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
Rough Trade was kind of based upon the principles of | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
a kind of beat culture, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
kibbutz collective. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
Everyone was paid the same. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:13 | |
We had an environment where there was an equality of the sexes | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
and you felt you were participating in culture and building something. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:20 | |
You were just living in the present. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
For a brief moment in time | 0:24:23 | 0:24:27 | |
we encapsulated everything that was right about the human race. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:32 | |
I don't know how many of you out there are thinking | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
of joining pop groups. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
And when Rough Trade signed this bunch of Belfast punks in 1978, | 0:24:41 | 0:24:46 | |
they became not just an alternative ideological force, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
but genuine competitors in the commercial music world. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
# Take a look where you're living | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
# You got Army on the street | 0:24:57 | 0:24:59 | |
# And the RUC dog of repression | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
# Is barking at your feet | 0:25:01 | 0:25:03 | |
# Is this the kind of place you wanna live? | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
# Is this where you wanna be? | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
# Is this the only life we're gonna have? | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
# What we need... # | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
We started off, recorded our own first single. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
I got in touch with Rough Trade and they started to sell copies | 0:25:18 | 0:25:22 | |
of that single for us. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:24 | |
When it came to the second single they asked us could | 0:25:24 | 0:25:26 | |
they pay the costs and so forth and go into it in a joint venture. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:30 | |
At the moment we are considering just continuing that way | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
cos it's on a straight 50/50 partnership. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:35 | |
Goodnight! | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
Signing Stiff Little Fingers was a major coup for Rough Trade. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
Most successful punk bands, despite their anti-establishment roots, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:48 | |
were signed to major record companies. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
The Sex Pistols signed to EMI, famously ended up on Virgin. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:55 | |
The Clash signed to CBS. They were the two leaders really. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:59 | |
If we signed for CBS tomorrow | 0:25:59 | 0:26:01 | |
all the kids on the street would say what a sell-out. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
And the chances are very good our share of record sales would be | 0:26:05 | 0:26:10 | |
at most a half of what we are making at the moment. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
In February 1979 Rough Trade and Stiff Little Fingers' | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
first album was released. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
It went to number 14 in the charts, becoming the first independent album | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
in British music history to sell over 100,000 copies. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:28 | |
The day we made that record available I looked out the window | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
on Kensington Park Road and there were 20 taxis, 10 messenger bikes... | 0:26:33 | 0:26:38 | |
They were all there waiting for it. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
As soon as it was released... Off it went into the world. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
It was like woah, people do give a damn about this stuff. It's amazing. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
We were just in total chaos. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
I remember there were records flying in the front door | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
and flying out at the same time. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:56 | |
# Cos you started to shout out in the street... # | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
Stiff Little Fingers' album, Rough 1, was are their first album. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:08 | |
Miraculously it was hugely successful. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:10 | |
It sold 100,000 copies in virtually no time at all. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
And it put the label on the map and made us say to ourselves, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:19 | |
"You know what, this isn't that hard, is it?" | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
The Stiff Little Fingers album was a pay-off of for an idealism. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
The Clash didn't really need to go to CBS. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
Stiff Little Fingers proved that. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
100,000 copies, that generates a huge amount of turnover. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:40 | |
That in itself was the building blocks on which | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
the label was able to go forward. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:45 | |
That was the cash flow that enabled us to do other records. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
Hello, Mike, how are you? | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
Stiff Little Fingers' breakthrough | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
was a key moment for the independent sector. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
And it showed Rough Trade that one band's success | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
could fund a whole bunch of less commercial records, | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
as bands like The Raincoats happily discovered. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
When they phoned from Rough Trade saying the record is here. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
I just walked down and I just felt... | 0:28:12 | 0:28:13 | |
I was on top of the world... Completely. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
# This is just a fairy tale | 0:28:16 | 0:28:22 | |
# Happening in the supermarket... # | 0:28:22 | 0:28:30 | |
The Raincoats were not alone, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:33 | |
as the label began to build a roster of artists that fulfilled | 0:28:33 | 0:28:37 | |
the Rough Trade ethos of offering a diverse alternative | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
to mainstream music. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:42 | |
Metal Urbain, Dr Mix who were Metal Urbain's alter ego. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:50 | |
Essential Logic, Young Marble Giants, Scritti Politti. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
-The Fall... -Television Personalities. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:56 | |
-Ivor Cutler. -Swell Maps. -Pop Group. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:58 | |
-And then, of course, there were Kleenex. -Delta Five. -Slits. | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
The Electric Eels. Fantastic single. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
-Space Energy. -Robert Wyatt. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
James "Blood" Ulmer had worked with Ornette Coleman. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
Subway sect, of course, seems like such an important record. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
It's only one single. And there was all this electronic stuff. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:17 | |
Or they were doing the production and distribution for independent | 0:29:17 | 0:29:21 | |
record labels like Throbbing Gristle, Industrial Records | 0:29:21 | 0:29:24 | |
which at the time were selling absolutely pot loads of stuff. | 0:29:24 | 0:29:29 | |
# This is just a fairy tale... # | 0:29:29 | 0:29:33 | |
The variety that you find on major labels is just, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:36 | |
"Do you like this kind of music? | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
"What kind of party are you having?" | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
"Get you one of these, everything's gonna happen like that." | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
At Rough Trade you met a variety and range of people | 0:29:44 | 0:29:46 | |
who didn't have a look in in the mainstream industry, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:49 | |
and wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
if that's all there was to it. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
By 1979, while Rough Trade was starting to find its feet as a label, | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
Rough Trade Distribution was becoming a serious player | 0:30:00 | 0:30:04 | |
in the music business, | 0:30:04 | 0:30:06 | |
driving sales for a nationwide network | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
of increasingly successful independent labels. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:11 | |
Companies like 2 Tone, who'd signed The Specials. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:15 | |
# Why must you record my phone calls... | 0:30:16 | 0:30:21 | |
Here came somebody with something, who used Rough Trade distribution, | 0:30:21 | 0:30:26 | |
and they had that Al Capone single. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
I remember going down with the band to Island, who were pressing it, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:33 | |
coming back to the Rough Trade office with all the boxes. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
And then we all sat round with a rubber stamp, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
pressing these records just to go downstairs and get distributed. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:44 | |
Rough Trade realised that it could marshal its forces around something | 0:30:47 | 0:30:52 | |
and actually make it happen. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:53 | |
We sold 375,000 of those singles. | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
That was the shift, in my mind, to an understanding | 0:30:56 | 0:31:01 | |
that it could serve us on the entry in, | 0:31:01 | 0:31:03 | |
people came in with ideas, | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
and it could also serve us on the outgoing idea. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
"If you like that, no problem, we got it for you." | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
When Rough Trade began in 1976, | 0:31:11 | 0:31:13 | |
there were about a dozen independent labels in Britain. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:18 | |
By the end of the decade, there were over 800. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
Rough Trade distribution | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
was at the hub of this explosion of independent music, | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
and the label had redefined the politics of record production. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
The music industry would never be the same again. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:35 | |
'Stiff Little Fingers are about to embark on | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
'on a gruelling tour of the UK,' | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
but they are with us tonight, before they do that | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
with their single At The End. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:51 | |
# Back when I was younger they were talking at me | 0:31:51 | 0:31:56 | |
# Never listened to a word I said... # | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
In 1980, Rough Trade's socialist radicals moved into new offices | 0:31:59 | 0:32:03 | |
around the corner from the shop. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
They were just one of a growing movement of left-wing collectives | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
like City Limits Magazine, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
and activist groups like Rock Against Racism, that challenged the ideology | 0:32:11 | 0:32:15 | |
of Margaret Thatcher's recently elected Conservative government. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:19 | |
It was an era when moral values, respect for your fellow man, | 0:32:21 | 0:32:26 | |
an egalitarian sense of brotherhood and sisterhood came to the surface | 0:32:26 | 0:32:33 | |
in a corrupt, dog-eat-dog world. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
Rough Trade represented a serious alternative | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
to the cut-throat, corporate music industry. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
The shop had become a Mecca for independent music. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:46 | |
Richard Scott's distribution operation was expanding by the day. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:51 | |
Geoff Travis had released over 30 singles on the Rough Trade label, | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
and its debut album had smashed the chart monopoly of the major labels. | 0:32:55 | 0:33:00 | |
# And I'm running at the edge of the world | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
# They are criticising something they just can't understand... # | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
Rough Trade's biggest problem | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
was holding on to bands once they'd broken through. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
By the time Stiff Little Fingers made it to Top Of The Pops in 1980, | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
they were no longer a Rough Trade band. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
Stiff Little Fingers couldn't wait to sign to a major | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
straight after they'd made their Rough Trade record. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
Then it dawned on us we had a brain drain problem. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:31 | |
So there was always this anxiety about losing talent. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:37 | |
If we don't respond in some sense to the growth of our fans | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
by a certain amount of growth, | 0:33:40 | 0:33:41 | |
all it means is that we will be a nursery ground | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
for every major label that exists in this country. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
And it doesn't seem, in the long run, that's a very good idea | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
because all it means is you give the band | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
a chance to live out their ideals for a few years | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
and then they go and join a corporation | 0:33:56 | 0:33:58 | |
and whatever happens is up to them after that...will happen. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:02 | |
It's very debatable whether that's good or bad. We think it's bad. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
Rough Trade's principled refusal | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
to tie artists to conventional record deals | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
made the threat of losing its biggest bands ever-present. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:15 | |
Reconciling its alternative business ethic with the need to make a profit | 0:34:15 | 0:34:20 | |
would prove a major issue throughout the eighties. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
It was a decade that would also raise some difficult questions | 0:34:25 | 0:34:29 | |
about what kind of music Rough Trade should, or shouldn't, be releasing. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
A debate brought sharply into focus in 1981 | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
when one of the label's most radical artists | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
announced a drastic change in direction. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:42 | |
Really what happened is I started to have panic attacks. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:46 | |
I didn't realise that's what they were at the time. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
I ended up in hospital in Brighton. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
I hadn't spoken to my parents for very many years, | 0:34:52 | 0:34:55 | |
so they got in touch and took me back to Wales, where I was born, | 0:34:55 | 0:34:59 | |
and tried to help me get myself back together. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
And whilst I was there | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
I took the opportunity to take stock of what we were up to. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
I listened to lots of records that I hadn't really listened to before. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
Black American pop music. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:13 | |
So there was a discovery of black pop music and reading | 0:35:13 | 0:35:18 | |
lots of European thinkers, all of which ended up with me | 0:35:18 | 0:35:22 | |
deciding we should try and make pop music. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:26 | |
Making pop music meant swapping the low-tech, home-made aesthetic | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
that Scritti Politti had already pioneered on two Rough Trade EPs, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
for expensive studio production and a slick sound. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
Technically it was a new frontier. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:47 | |
I didn't know how to write a pop song | 0:35:47 | 0:35:49 | |
and I wanted to find out how you did it. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:51 | |
The resulting record was Scritti Politti's bid for chart success. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:56 | |
But not everybody approved. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:59 | |
# Sweetest girl in all the world | 0:35:59 | 0:36:03 | |
# Whose eyes are for you only... # | 0:36:03 | 0:36:07 | |
It was a significant moment, significant in as much as | 0:36:08 | 0:36:12 | |
there were lots of people at Rough Trade who kind of didn't like it. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:16 | |
At this time, there was a question of whether you liked | 0:36:17 | 0:36:20 | |
commercial musical not. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:21 | |
There was also a whole ideology going on within local culture | 0:36:21 | 0:36:26 | |
of independence versus mainstream, of non-commercial versus commercial. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:30 | |
I just thought this was shadow-boxing. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
I didn't see it as making much difference | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
to the balance of power in the world between rich and poor... | 0:36:36 | 0:36:40 | |
..What kind of records you made. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:44 | |
I just couldn't see the connection. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
But producing expensive, radio-friendly pop music, | 0:36:46 | 0:36:50 | |
seemed at odds with Rough Trade's alternative agenda. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
To some, this was tantamount to chasing hits and selling out. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:58 | |
The Sweetest Girl got £60,000. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
Here is a record company, Rough Trade, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
who is very careful with its budgeting. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
I don't know what it is, | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
it's like we really are going to take over the world. Damn! | 0:37:11 | 0:37:15 | |
I don't know if it's drinking too much of your own piss, | 0:37:15 | 0:37:18 | |
starting to believe your own publicity...or what. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:23 | |
I don't know. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:27 | |
That was the first evidence of a sort of cancer. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:31 | |
Evidence of people swimming uphill to try and compete in this industry | 0:37:31 | 0:37:38 | |
where we were doing all right, being an outsider. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:41 | |
It was this kind of moment of like, "Oh, no, we need to plug records, | 0:37:41 | 0:37:47 | |
"we need to sell lots of records, we need to make really polished music, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:52 | |
-"we need to have hits." -Well... | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
This is a very interesting charge. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
I just don't think that I've ever gone looking for a hit | 0:37:59 | 0:38:02 | |
in anything that I have ever thought about. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:05 | |
I think there's a very different thing when somebody makes a hit | 0:38:05 | 0:38:08 | |
and gives you a hit. | 0:38:08 | 0:38:10 | |
I think Scritti Politti's Sweetest Girl | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
is, without a shadow of a doubt, worthy of being a hit. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
The Sweetest Girl's highest chart position was 64 in 1981. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:22 | |
It wasn't a hit. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:23 | |
Undeterred, Rough Trade went on to sign | 0:38:26 | 0:38:28 | |
another more commercially focused band. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
Contemporaries of Orange Juice, | 0:38:32 | 0:38:33 | |
some three years ago on the Postcard label, | 0:38:33 | 0:38:36 | |
are now tasting the heady world of success on the Rough Trade label | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
with their first LP. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:40 | |
Could you please welcome to the studio, Aztec Camera. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
# Last summer We walked to the farm. # | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
They began to be these discussions going around the office | 0:38:49 | 0:38:53 | |
about we can disguise the socialist political agenda and make it pop, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:59 | |
so we can get kids singing along to pop records with this agenda, | 0:38:59 | 0:39:03 | |
that they were going to be able to push across to Top Of The Pops | 0:39:03 | 0:39:07 | |
or something, and began to be all this weird talk | 0:39:07 | 0:39:11 | |
about whether it would sell or not, which had never been their... | 0:39:11 | 0:39:15 | |
..their modus. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:19 | |
I think people forget that Stiff Little Fingers | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
was a big commercial success. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:23 | |
That we were distributing records that were hits. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
It was never part of the Rough Trade project | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
to shy away from the mainstream if the mainstream came to Rough Trade, | 0:39:28 | 0:39:32 | |
but we never went running after it. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:34 | |
# I hear your footsteps In the street... # | 0:39:35 | 0:39:37 | |
Three lads from Glasgow woke up this morning to find | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
that their single has leapt into the top 20, can you believe it? | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Aztec Camera. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
# Oblivious...# | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
When Aztec Camera did make it into the charts in 1983, | 0:39:53 | 0:39:58 | |
just like Stiff Little Fingers before them, they'd left Rough Trade. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:02 | |
# Next time I go to bed I'll pray like Aretha Franklin. # | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
And a year later, when Scritti Politti finally made the top ten, | 0:40:05 | 0:40:13 | |
they too had signed to a major. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:16 | |
It seemed that the label couldn't deliver a hit, | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
even if it had wanted one. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
We were still very young as a record company. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
We still had a huge amount to learn about selling records, | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
of sales forces, of sales teams, | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
of making deals with supermarkets, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:33 | |
as making sure that we were as competitive as the next person. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
But just as Scritti Politti left Rough Trade, | 0:40:37 | 0:40:41 | |
their guest keyboard player did, unexpectedly, crack the top 40. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
# Is it worth it? | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
One of the few songs inspired by the recent Falklands war | 0:40:50 | 0:40:54 | |
was called Ship Building. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
It was written by Elvis Costello and Clive Manger, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
and performed by Robert Wyatt. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
It won various critics' polls as the best single of last year, | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
and now it's been re-promoted by Rough Trade | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
in an effort to give it the success it deserves. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:08 | |
Geoff Travis signed Robert Wyatt | 0:41:08 | 0:41:10 | |
in an attempt to rescue an important artist from musical obscurity. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:15 | |
Hit records were not on the agenda. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
We were trying to earn a living. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:19 | |
I hadn't been in the wheelchair that long. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
I'd been in a wheelchair since ... | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
hospital in '73, put a record out in '74. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:29 | |
And I just got in a panic after a while. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
The record company I was officially with, I didn't want to be with. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
They didn't allow me to make any LPs for anybody else, | 0:41:36 | 0:41:39 | |
even though I couldn't make any for them either. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:41 | |
And Geoff said, "Let's make some singles then." | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
The great thing about making singles for Geoff | 0:41:45 | 0:41:48 | |
was that the commercial potential was ignored. Just as well. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:52 | |
Robert Wyatt took Shipbuilding, | 0:41:56 | 0:41:58 | |
an anti-war protest song, to number 36 in 1982. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
It displayed Rough Trade's political credentials, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
and chimed with the label's support for other left-wing campaigns. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:10 | |
It's almost as if the great unconscious of pop musicians | 0:42:10 | 0:42:15 | |
has slightly been pricked by a few things in the past few months, | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
and I think it's wonderful. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:19 | |
The charge that Rough Trade was only interested in chasing hits | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
was also at odds with a roster | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
that included Mark E. Smith's uncompromising band | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
of maverick Mancunians, The Fall. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:33 | |
Something to dance to. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:35 | |
I wasn't expecting Mark to have a hit. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
I was just expecting him to make great records. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
# Lousy celebrity makes record Smiles. # | 0:42:47 | 0:42:52 | |
Records by The Fall, Pere Ubu, Cabaret Voltaire and The Swell Maps | 0:42:52 | 0:42:58 | |
proved Rough Trade's commitment to challenging and alternative music. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
And even without hit records from the label, | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
Rough Trade's distribution turnover was huge. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
Ad-hoc arrangements with independent record stores had been formalised | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
into a sales network called the Cartel, | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
which supplied over 300 shops with records from over 500 labels. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:21 | |
But as some of these labels began to enjoy massive sales, | 0:43:23 | 0:43:28 | |
it became obvious that, in business terms, | 0:43:28 | 0:43:30 | |
Rough Trade's inexperienced staff were way out of their depth. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:34 | |
# And I watched that man to A stranger. # | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
We had no business experience in those days. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:45 | |
We had to make it up as we went along, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
and as a result of just the pure volume going through, | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
we actually ran into financial difficulties fairly regularly. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:56 | |
# New life, new life. # | 0:43:56 | 0:43:59 | |
I think the first problem arose out of the Joy Division record, | 0:43:59 | 0:44:05 | |
Unknown Pleasures. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:06 | |
They ran out of money before they could pay the factory. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:10 | |
A similar thing happened with Mute as well. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
Mute had two big records, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:14 | |
the first Depeche Mode record and then the first Yazoo record. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
# Complicating circulating New life, new life. # | 0:44:18 | 0:44:23 | |
And again the money wasn't managed very well | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
so when they came round to paying me, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
they'd already spent the money. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:30 | |
Following a series of cash flow crises, | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
Rough Trade brought in its first qualified accountant in 1982. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:38 | |
He found the company was close to going bust. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
A financial audit revealed that the company owed money | 0:44:41 | 0:44:45 | |
it simply didn't have. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:46 | |
The record label and distribution system | 0:44:46 | 0:44:49 | |
were Rough Trade's core activities. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
If they were to be saved, everything else would have to be sacrificed. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
That meant disposing of the shop. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:57 | |
You know, I don't know too much about that, I have to say. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:05 | |
I think I must have been distracted by something else, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:09 | |
because I can't remember being particularly party to discussions | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
about what was going to happen to the shop. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
So that's lost to me, in that difficult period. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:22 | |
We were called in to a meeting, | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
as I recall, sort of, individually, | 0:45:29 | 0:45:31 | |
and told that they were going to shut the shop. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
We felt kind of betrayed, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
and so we went back to Geoff and said, if we can | 0:45:40 | 0:45:44 | |
keep the name, can we carry on with the shop? | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
In December 1982, six years after opening, | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
the Rough Trade shop was sold to three of its staff. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
They kept the name and still run the shop today. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
Financial collapse, for now, had been averted. | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
But the crisis exposed a rift | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
between the label and Rough Trade's distribution arm. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
Geoff asked me to leave at that time, just completely out of | 0:46:13 | 0:46:18 | |
the blue, which came as a bit of a shock. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
But after talking to | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
others there, | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
I was then persuaded not to. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
Who asked him to leave? | 0:46:30 | 0:46:31 | |
< He said that you did. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:33 | |
Well ... yeah. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
Really I can't remember. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
I wonder what he did. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:40 | |
I think he was being more and more antagonistic, really. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:44 | |
But yeah. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:46 | |
He thought that I'd been personally responsible for some of the | 0:46:47 | 0:46:53 | |
worst losses. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
I could then never actually regard or deal with Geoff in the same way. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:02 | |
From that point on, | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
it seemed to me that the record label became completely | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
the domain of Geoff, | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
whereas the distribution was being masterminded by Richard. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:16 | |
The conflict between record label and distribution would never be resolved. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:21 | |
The communal vibe of Rough Trade's early days seemed a long way away. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:27 | |
Where before you could be relaxed and do your thing | 0:47:27 | 0:47:29 | |
and get through, now you had targets, | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
you had this to do, and if you didn't keep the targets, | 0:47:32 | 0:47:35 | |
they'd be asking why you hadn't kept your targets. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:37 | |
So there's a lot of pressure put on people. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
That mood of, you can kick back, I'll do it tomorrow, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
all that had gone. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:45 | |
And then you've got people started getting worried, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:48 | |
because of job security. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
If this wasn't selling, or this group didn't do their thing | 0:47:54 | 0:47:58 | |
or you know, didn't sell enough units. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:00 | |
And in Rough Trade we never talked about selling records as units. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:05 | |
Rough Trade's rapid growth had raised some difficult dilemmas. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:10 | |
Distribution demanded increased record sales | 0:48:10 | 0:48:12 | |
to drive its ever-expanding operation. | 0:48:12 | 0:48:15 | |
The record label needed commercial success, but fiercely guarded its | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
independent identity, built on the alternative credibility of its music. | 0:48:19 | 0:48:24 | |
The perfect solution to all of these problems came from | 0:48:27 | 0:48:30 | |
a pair of ambitious songwriters from Manchester. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
The only way that I could find any mental relaxation | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
is just simply go out and walk, | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
which can seem quite depressing to most people. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:44 | |
But for me it was perfect fuel, | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
because then I would go home and I would write furiously. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
And I found that | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
for me it was a brilliant outlet. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
It was the thing that helped. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:57 | |
But also you have to have a grain of hope, | 0:48:57 | 0:49:00 | |
which is a very difficult thing to have. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:02 | |
The first day that we were officially like a partnership, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
which was the second time we got together, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:08 | |
part of our get together was making this almost, like, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
mental wish list, if you like. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
And part of that conversation was, | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
we should sign to Rough Trade Records. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
On a Friday afternoon in April 1983, | 0:49:18 | 0:49:23 | |
Johnny Marr walked into the Rough Trade offices with a demo tape. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:28 | |
I said I wanted to see Geoff Travis | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
and I was kind of hustled out, really. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
But I kind of hung around, kind of pretending to be like | 0:49:35 | 0:49:40 | |
doing stuff with records. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:42 | |
And I was in there for an hour or two, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:45 | |
and then I saw Geoff come out of his office. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:48 | |
I think he was a little taken aback. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
I think I actually grabbed his sleeve | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
and stopped him, because he was trying to get away. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:57 | |
And I gave him this cassette, and I said, | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
"I'm from Manchester. This is my band, the Smiths." | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
And something along the lines of, | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
"You won't have heard anything like this before." | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
I took it home that weekend and listened to it about 20 times | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
and was really intrigued by it. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
# Hand in glove | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
# The sun shines out Of our behinds. # | 0:50:20 | 0:50:23 | |
You couldn't really make out the words, | 0:50:23 | 0:50:27 | |
but it was something wonderful. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:29 | |
To Geoff's absolute credit, he called first thing on Monday | 0:50:29 | 0:50:33 | |
and said "This is the best thing I've heard for ages, | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
"and I want to sign it to Rough Trade." | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
It was like, "Bullseye, that is what we are going to do." | 0:50:38 | 0:50:42 | |
# And if the people stare then the people stare. # | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
The Smiths and Rough Trade were a perfectly-timed marriage. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
The original impact of the post-punk, new wave | 0:50:50 | 0:50:53 | |
and New Romantic movements had passed. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:55 | |
It was time for something new. | 0:50:55 | 0:50:57 | |
That something was indie music. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
And it began with the Smiths. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
I grew up on the Smiths. They defined my teenage years completely. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:07 | |
So the first time I saw the name Rough Trade | 0:51:07 | 0:51:10 | |
was on the back of Hand In Glove, the first single. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:14 | |
I didn't know Geoff Travis or Rough Trade. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:18 | |
I didn't know anybody. I was a schoolboy. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
But the way I saw it was that it was a battle. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
It was alternative and independent, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
and to major record companies, that was a dirty word. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
They were the enemy. Rough Trade was the enemy. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
They were seen as just infiltrators, out to spoil the party. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
And groups like the Smiths were out to spoil the party | 0:51:36 | 0:51:38 | |
for Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet and all this kind of rubbish. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
It was just rubbish. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
Facing fierce competition, Rough Trade abandoned the principle of the | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
"no ties", 50-50 deal, and for the first time in its history, offered | 0:51:48 | 0:51:52 | |
the band a conventional record contract, | 0:51:52 | 0:51:55 | |
a long-term deal that guaranteed the label four albums. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:59 | |
The majors started inviting us to meetings and got interested in us. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:05 | |
But we didn't want to be on a major, | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
and Rough Trade didn't want to be majors. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
It was a really great partnership. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
Johnny puts the music down on a cassette, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
and he gives me the cassette, and I live with the cassette | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
for a few days, and I just wheedle words into the cassette. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
And then we just all get together | 0:52:24 | 0:52:26 | |
and it happens at the drop of a cassette. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
Rough Trade gave the Smiths independent credibility. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:34 | |
Morrissey and Marr put their new label into the charts at number 25, | 0:52:34 | 0:52:38 | |
with release number 136. | 0:52:38 | 0:52:40 | |
# A punctured bicycle On a hillside desolate. # | 0:52:40 | 0:52:47 | |
When This Charming Man came out, | 0:52:47 | 0:52:49 | |
it wasn't just that things were going the right direction. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
It was like the sun came out for the label and the band and the fans, | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
and fans of indie music. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:58 | |
# This Charming Man. # | 0:52:58 | 0:53:02 | |
There was a big difference between This Charming Man | 0:53:02 | 0:53:04 | |
and Club Tropicana. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:05 | |
You know, there was a big fucking difference to me. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:07 | |
It meant the world to me that I could explain what that difference | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
was to almost everybody that I met. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:13 | |
# I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear. # | 0:53:13 | 0:53:19 | |
What they made me recognise was that pop records were a great art form. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:25 | |
Three minutes could change your life completely. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
Or they could make you get out of the dreary existence you had, | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
and save you from it. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:34 | |
# A jumped-up country boy. # | 0:53:34 | 0:53:35 | |
To promote its first hit single, Rough Trade hired London Records, a | 0:53:35 | 0:53:40 | |
major label sales force, and mounted an expensive marketing campaign. | 0:53:40 | 0:53:45 | |
# I would go out tonight | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
# But I haven't got A stitch to wear. # | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
It was certainly unusual for Rough Trade to be spending | 0:53:52 | 0:53:57 | |
a lot of money on this blanket poster campaign. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
But it wasn't an issue of them sitting around going, | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
"Does it go against our principles?" | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
"We have got a record that demands a poster campaign. Fantastic. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:09 | |
It's all gonna come together." | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
They were still Rough Trade records. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
Doing things in an independent way, and they had a band who wanted to be | 0:54:14 | 0:54:19 | |
with them who were about to have this big run of singles. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
And they were high on the success they were about to have as a label, | 0:54:22 | 0:54:25 | |
and we were high on our success. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:27 | |
It was like a perfect kind of union at that time. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
A string of Smiths hits followed, | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
but there were internal murmurings of discontent | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
as Rough Trade's sales strategies began to mimic | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
the marketing machines of the major labels. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:43 | |
Their LP called The Smiths is coming out on February 24th, | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
and they have got a hit single called What Difference Does It Make? | 0:54:46 | 0:54:50 | |
You break a single the first week, and then the third week is crucial. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:57 | |
Does it drop, or does it go up to 36? | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
Here they are, the Smiths, this week's number 20. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:01 | |
What Difference Does It Make? | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
If it goes up to 36, you might break it. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:07 | |
# What difference does it make? # | 0:55:07 | 0:55:11 | |
You get a plugger. You get more professionals in, | 0:55:11 | 0:55:13 | |
more and more expertise. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:15 | |
You apply these devices to this thing | 0:55:15 | 0:55:17 | |
and try to make it happen in some terms. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:19 | |
-You start playing the game. -Number 23 this week, the Smiths. | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
# Would you like to marry me? And if You like, you can buy the ring. # | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
I can remember Geoff saying | 0:55:27 | 0:55:28 | |
to me one day that Morrissey was going to be the new Boy George. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
And I remember thinking, is that what I'm coming to work for? | 0:55:35 | 0:55:40 | |
Is that what really need? | 0:55:40 | 0:55:42 | |
I mean, I was astounded that there was that kind of change. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:48 | |
We only have one thing to say to that. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
Things had changed. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
I had appointments with a guy | 0:55:55 | 0:55:56 | |
who ran Virgin Records, and I was negotiating with him | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
about how many signed copies of Smiths records he was going to get, | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
who was going to get the T-shirts. | 0:56:02 | 0:56:04 | |
Suddenly we had licensing in Germany and Austria. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:06 | |
The GAS territories, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:10 | |
Suddenly, you know, it is in Japan. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
You got to satisfy Woolies, you got to satisfy Our Price, | 0:56:13 | 0:56:15 | |
you've got to satisfy Virgin. You've got to satisfy HMV. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
You are part of a machine. | 0:56:18 | 0:56:20 | |
# In my life. # | 0:56:20 | 0:56:23 | |
For the label, it was definitely a period of | 0:56:23 | 0:56:27 | |
re-evaluation internally. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
Because it was really quite dogmatic, | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
this collective democratic immovable model that it had set itself up as. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:42 | |
But it really needed to move forward, | 0:56:42 | 0:56:44 | |
and Geoff in particular I think wanted that, and knew that. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
They were the best group around. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:51 | |
They were making music, and even though it was strange, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
it was still hugely commercial. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:56 | |
I think if we were going to have any chance of keeping them, | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
and perhaps by now we had got fed up with losing | 0:56:59 | 0:57:01 | |
these artists, and thought, we need to do this job properly now. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:05 | |
Rough Trade was becoming more business-orientated. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
In 1984, Richard Scott secured the lease on a warehouse near | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
King's Cross, and the company left its spiritual home in West London. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:25 | |
This would be the new headquarters of a now global outfit | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
with offices throughout Europe and in America. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:31 | |
Rough Trade had never been so big or so profitable. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
Qualified professionals were recruited to manage its growth, and | 0:57:40 | 0:57:45 | |
they demanded changes to the business that meant sacrificing | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
many of Rough Trade's original collective values. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
I think that too much of the record industry is like the Civil Service, | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
where there's a fear of making a decision in case you make a mistake, | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
and if you make no decision then you can't make a mistake, | 0:58:06 | 0:58:09 | |
and you keep your job. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:10 | |
But that isn't not how rock and roll got started. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:13 | |
And suddenly it had gone from being me and a few other crazy people | 0:58:14 | 0:58:20 | |
into something that was about 40, 60, 80, 100 people. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:25 | |
It was a big organisation. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:27 | |
And with a big organisation came a board, which met to make decisions. | 0:58:27 | 0:58:34 | |
And an influx of a more professional middle management kind of creature. | 0:58:34 | 0:58:40 | |
Who spoke a kind of language which was just gobbledegook. | 0:58:40 | 0:58:43 | |
It was something that you learn from a book. | 0:58:43 | 0:58:45 | |
And that really was not helpful. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:47 | |
I was one of those people. | 0:58:49 | 0:58:51 | |
I was one of the middle managers that was brought in. | 0:58:51 | 0:58:53 | |
Still in that period where everybody was being paid the same salary. | 0:58:53 | 0:58:56 | |
£7,800. | 0:58:56 | 0:58:58 | |
And you really couldn't get people to come in and manage it for £7,800. | 0:58:59 | 0:59:03 | |
In 1987, Geoff Travis and a handful of the original staff | 0:59:03 | 0:59:08 | |
handed over control of Rough Trade to a management trust. | 0:59:08 | 0:59:12 | |
It meant the introduction of differential pay | 0:59:14 | 0:59:16 | |
and departmental structures. | 0:59:16 | 0:59:18 | |
A whole new way of working. | 0:59:18 | 0:59:21 | |
It was a very difficult transition. | 0:59:23 | 0:59:26 | |
And it was a hard transition for Geoff. | 0:59:26 | 0:59:28 | |
He was... | 0:59:28 | 0:59:30 | |
turning over something that he started to other people who, | 0:59:30 | 0:59:34 | |
in his mind, probably had no vested interest in music. | 0:59:34 | 0:59:39 | |
Couldn't care less about the music, which was as far removed from what | 0:59:41 | 0:59:45 | |
Rough Trade was when it first started. | 0:59:45 | 0:59:48 | |
But far from making Rough Trade a leaner outfit, | 0:59:48 | 0:59:51 | |
the new structure was bureaucratic and unwieldy, | 0:59:51 | 0:59:54 | |
and inflamed the ongoing rift between distribution | 0:59:54 | 0:59:57 | |
and the record label. | 0:59:57 | 0:59:59 | |
There's a power struggle really. | 0:59:59 | 1:00:01 | |
And my mistake was...that I was not interested in the power struggle. | 1:00:01 | 1:00:09 | |
And I was very quickly marginalised on the board, | 1:00:09 | 1:00:12 | |
so that anything I said, no one took very seriously. | 1:00:12 | 1:00:15 | |
And distribution went its own way. | 1:00:15 | 1:00:18 | |
By that time, there was a war | 1:00:18 | 1:00:19 | |
between distribution and the record company. | 1:00:19 | 1:00:22 | |
You couldn't guarantee you were gonna have a hit record, | 1:00:22 | 1:00:25 | |
so sometimes you're having a bad season, right, | 1:00:25 | 1:00:27 | |
but distribution's always there, increasing in power... | 1:00:27 | 1:00:31 | |
And then Rough Trade just gets to be another label, | 1:00:31 | 1:00:34 | |
which is served by the distribution company that it started. | 1:00:34 | 1:00:37 | |
# Panic on the streets of London | 1:00:37 | 1:00:41 | |
# Panic on the streets of Birmingham | 1:00:41 | 1:00:45 | |
# I wonder to myself... # | 1:00:45 | 1:00:49 | |
War was also brewing on another front. | 1:00:49 | 1:00:52 | |
Despite a number one album and six top 20 singles by 1986, | 1:00:52 | 1:00:56 | |
The Smiths' relationship with Rough Trade | 1:00:56 | 1:00:59 | |
was becoming increasingly antagonistic. | 1:00:59 | 1:01:02 | |
# But honey pie you're not safe here... # | 1:01:04 | 1:01:06 | |
Studio time was always at a minimum. For me, that was a bit of a problem. | 1:01:06 | 1:01:10 | |
Some records didn't arrive at some places on time occasionally. | 1:01:10 | 1:01:14 | |
There was some issue with That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, | 1:01:14 | 1:01:17 | |
where I think there weren't enough records pressed. | 1:01:17 | 1:01:20 | |
And the band had no manager, | 1:01:20 | 1:01:22 | |
so the two principal members of the group are dealing with the label. | 1:01:22 | 1:01:26 | |
And it's like any relationship, you are spending a lot of time together | 1:01:26 | 1:01:30 | |
and there's a lot of issues and a lot of things at stake. | 1:01:30 | 1:01:33 | |
So, like, things get blown out of proportion. | 1:01:33 | 1:01:36 | |
Rough Trade weren't exactly blameless, | 1:01:36 | 1:01:39 | |
but it wasn't like a catalogue of catastrophe or anything like that. | 1:01:39 | 1:01:44 | |
# Burn down the disco | 1:01:44 | 1:01:48 | |
# Hang the blessed DJ | 1:01:48 | 1:01:51 | |
# Because the music at the concert... # | 1:01:51 | 1:01:53 | |
Morrissey always used to say, "We're never on the radio." | 1:01:53 | 1:01:56 | |
And of course they were on the radio. | 1:01:56 | 1:01:58 | |
# Hang the DJ hang the DJ | 1:01:58 | 1:02:02 | |
# Hang the DJ... # | 1:02:02 | 1:02:04 | |
They did have a series of hit records. | 1:02:04 | 1:02:06 | |
But I think they just felt... | 1:02:06 | 1:02:08 | |
they should have more. | 1:02:08 | 1:02:10 | |
And I mean that's understandable, but irrational. | 1:02:10 | 1:02:13 | |
The Smiths were not making | 1:02:13 | 1:02:15 | |
anodyne pretty pop records for 14-year-old girls. | 1:02:15 | 1:02:19 | |
Therefore they're not gonna sell as many records as Duran Duran. | 1:02:19 | 1:02:22 | |
It's just a fact of life. | 1:02:22 | 1:02:24 | |
You have to get used to that, Morrissey. | 1:02:25 | 1:02:28 | |
# Sweetness sweetness | 1:02:28 | 1:02:30 | |
# I was only joking when I said by rights | 1:02:30 | 1:02:34 | |
# You should be bludgeoned in your bed... # | 1:02:34 | 1:02:37 | |
During the recording of the third album, The Queen Is Dead, in 1986, | 1:02:37 | 1:02:42 | |
The Smiths tried to sign to EMI. | 1:02:42 | 1:02:45 | |
Yet again, Rough Trade looked set to lose its biggest act. | 1:02:45 | 1:02:48 | |
But this time it had the protection of a contract. | 1:02:48 | 1:02:51 | |
We were stupid. | 1:02:54 | 1:02:57 | |
We had a couple of people around us who gave us incorrect | 1:02:57 | 1:03:00 | |
and bad advice. | 1:03:00 | 1:03:02 | |
And this lawyer saying, "Well, go and sign to someone else." | 1:03:02 | 1:03:05 | |
And shopping for a deal we didn't really have the rights to do that. | 1:03:05 | 1:03:08 | |
And Rough Trade said, "Hang on a minute, | 1:03:08 | 1:03:11 | |
"you owe us a couple more albums." So it caused this stand-off. | 1:03:11 | 1:03:14 | |
Then we were told, "This record you're working on | 1:03:14 | 1:03:17 | |
"will be injuncted." This lawyer told me that. | 1:03:17 | 1:03:19 | |
And that was a bit of a buzz killer, when you're trying to make a record. | 1:03:19 | 1:03:24 | |
Like, "Guess what, it's not going to come out." Right. | 1:03:24 | 1:03:29 | |
# I've got no right to take my place with the human race..." | 1:03:30 | 1:03:33 | |
Because they didn't have a manager, they lacked any kind of voice | 1:03:33 | 1:03:40 | |
that gave them some semblance of reality. | 1:03:40 | 1:03:42 | |
That's what destroyed them. | 1:03:42 | 1:03:44 | |
We didn't have a calming...organising presence. | 1:03:44 | 1:03:50 | |
And, um, that led to... | 1:03:50 | 1:03:54 | |
a lot of chaos and a lot of drama and a lot of neurosis. | 1:03:54 | 1:03:58 | |
And ultimately the band's demise. | 1:03:58 | 1:04:01 | |
But all of that drama and intensity went into the music. | 1:04:01 | 1:04:06 | |
You can hear it in the music. | 1:04:06 | 1:04:08 | |
The Queen Is Dead was released on Rough Trade. | 1:04:11 | 1:04:14 | |
But after the next record, The Smiths were free to leave. | 1:04:14 | 1:04:17 | |
Strangeways, Here We Come was to be their last release on Rough Trade. | 1:04:17 | 1:04:22 | |
But the band was falling apart. | 1:04:22 | 1:04:25 | |
And it would be their last album, full stop. | 1:04:25 | 1:04:28 | |
In the end, they signed to EMI and they never gave EMI a record. | 1:04:28 | 1:04:32 | |
# I am the son | 1:04:32 | 1:04:35 | |
# and the heir... # | 1:04:35 | 1:04:38 | |
The Smiths' departure was demoralising, | 1:04:38 | 1:04:40 | |
but income from their sales | 1:04:40 | 1:04:42 | |
continued to roll in long after they'd gone | 1:04:42 | 1:04:44 | |
and the future was far from bleak. | 1:04:44 | 1:04:47 | |
# Because we do it once do it twice | 1:04:47 | 1:04:50 | |
# Every single time will be twice as nice... # | 1:04:50 | 1:04:53 | |
By 1989, the label had its biggest roster of artists to date, | 1:04:53 | 1:04:57 | |
including The Woodentops and The Sundays, whose debut album | 1:04:57 | 1:05:01 | |
reached number four in the UK charts. | 1:05:01 | 1:05:04 | |
# England my country the home of the free | 1:05:04 | 1:05:08 | |
# Such miserable weather... # | 1:05:08 | 1:05:10 | |
But indie music was becoming mainstream, | 1:05:10 | 1:05:13 | |
as every major label rushed to sign | 1:05:13 | 1:05:15 | |
jangly, guitar-driven, Smiths sound-alikes. | 1:05:15 | 1:05:18 | |
The real independent spirit had shifted to an emerging scene | 1:05:20 | 1:05:24 | |
that was the most revolutionary musical movement since punk. | 1:05:24 | 1:05:27 | |
RAVE MUSIC BLARES | 1:05:27 | 1:05:29 | |
When the rave scene exploded at the end of the eighties, | 1:05:32 | 1:05:36 | |
Rough Trade Records seemed to have missed the boat. | 1:05:36 | 1:05:38 | |
But Rough Trade Distribution had embraced a new wave | 1:05:38 | 1:05:41 | |
of independent labels driving the dance music revolution | 1:05:41 | 1:05:46 | |
and its expansion continued apace. | 1:05:46 | 1:05:49 | |
# The notes will flow yo For the words I speak | 1:05:49 | 1:05:51 | |
# Rap is weak so I teach and I reach A positive vibe, a way of life... # | 1:05:51 | 1:05:55 | |
When I joined Rough Trade in that first year in '86, | 1:05:55 | 1:05:58 | |
it was something like an £8 million a year turnover. | 1:05:58 | 1:06:02 | |
Within three years it went to £25 million. | 1:06:02 | 1:06:05 | |
# What time is love?... # | 1:06:05 | 1:06:07 | |
By the end of the decade, | 1:06:07 | 1:06:08 | |
distribution accounted for 90 per cent | 1:06:08 | 1:06:11 | |
of Rough Trade's overall turnover of around 40 million. | 1:06:11 | 1:06:15 | |
In July 1990, the company once again moved to bigger premises. | 1:06:16 | 1:06:21 | |
But, despite its growth and professional management, | 1:06:21 | 1:06:24 | |
the move was just one of a series of disastrous decisions | 1:06:24 | 1:06:28 | |
and financial blunders which, combined with political in-fighting, | 1:06:28 | 1:06:32 | |
brought Rough Trade, at its financial peak, | 1:06:32 | 1:06:35 | |
crashing to the ground. | 1:06:35 | 1:06:38 | |
We moved to a building without disposing of the previous lease. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:42 | |
So we were paying for two buildings. You can't do that. | 1:06:42 | 1:06:46 | |
Distribution bought a computer for a quarter of a million pounds. | 1:06:46 | 1:06:49 | |
It didn't work. | 1:06:49 | 1:06:52 | |
They were unfortunate to be hit by some credit control issues | 1:06:52 | 1:06:55 | |
where other companies went bankrupt owing Rough Trade a lot of money. | 1:06:55 | 1:06:59 | |
From my point of view, the people from distribution just disappeared. | 1:06:59 | 1:07:02 | |
The senior sales people left because they could see... | 1:07:02 | 1:07:07 | |
no end to the arguments with Geoff. | 1:07:07 | 1:07:12 | |
And once they had gone, | 1:07:12 | 1:07:14 | |
the management structure ceased to exist. | 1:07:14 | 1:07:17 | |
It wasn't really anyone's fault, it just grew too big. | 1:07:17 | 1:07:20 | |
And there was a lack of collective will on the board | 1:07:20 | 1:07:23 | |
or an ability or experience to work together to solve these problems, | 1:07:23 | 1:07:27 | |
and that's what happened I think. | 1:07:27 | 1:07:29 | |
Geoff, I have read... | 1:07:29 | 1:07:31 | |
saying things about the bad management at the end. | 1:07:31 | 1:07:37 | |
Well, I mean, Geoff didn't even turn up to board meetings. | 1:07:37 | 1:07:42 | |
So the whole thing had fallen apart. | 1:07:42 | 1:07:45 | |
In the end, it was simple cash flow mismanagement | 1:07:48 | 1:07:51 | |
that sealed Rough Trade's fate. | 1:07:51 | 1:07:53 | |
They were having a huge amount of success, | 1:07:55 | 1:07:57 | |
all the money was going into the warehouse, | 1:07:57 | 1:08:00 | |
all the money was going into the software. | 1:08:00 | 1:08:03 | |
Geoff was releasing quite a lot of records at that time. | 1:08:03 | 1:08:06 | |
Cash flow projections were either incorrect or ignored, you know. | 1:08:06 | 1:08:12 | |
And they ran out of cash. | 1:08:12 | 1:08:14 | |
In December 1990, hamstrung by a series of unpaid distribution debts | 1:08:15 | 1:08:20 | |
and despite a record annual turnover, | 1:08:20 | 1:08:23 | |
Rough Trade's cash flow ground to a halt. | 1:08:23 | 1:08:27 | |
By March 1991, two-thirds of the staff had been axed, | 1:08:27 | 1:08:31 | |
the administrators were called in | 1:08:31 | 1:08:33 | |
and Rough Trade's assets were frozen. | 1:08:33 | 1:08:35 | |
I probably very nearly went under. | 1:08:37 | 1:08:39 | |
Because the pressure of it was really awful, day-to-day, | 1:08:39 | 1:08:43 | |
the responsibility. | 1:08:43 | 1:08:45 | |
It was a very, very difficult time. | 1:08:45 | 1:08:47 | |
A very black time and very hard time | 1:08:47 | 1:08:50 | |
and I feel grateful to still be here today really. | 1:08:50 | 1:08:53 | |
But it taught me a lot. | 1:08:55 | 1:08:57 | |
The company that sold its first record in February 1976 | 1:09:00 | 1:09:04 | |
ceased trading on June 1st 1991. | 1:09:04 | 1:09:08 | |
Its demise marked the end of an era - | 1:09:10 | 1:09:13 | |
15 years in which a bunch of idealistic hippies and punks | 1:09:13 | 1:09:16 | |
had written the rule book for the production and distribution | 1:09:16 | 1:09:20 | |
of independent music. | 1:09:20 | 1:09:22 | |
# Last night I dreamt | 1:09:24 | 1:09:27 | |
# That somebody loved me... # | 1:09:30 | 1:09:34 | |
The end of the '70s, beginning of the '80s, when we all started, | 1:09:36 | 1:09:39 | |
nobody knew what the fuck they were doing. | 1:09:39 | 1:09:42 | |
We didn't know how to deal with selling records overseas. | 1:09:42 | 1:09:45 | |
We didn't know that much about distribution, copyright, anything. | 1:09:45 | 1:09:49 | |
By the end of the '80s, people like Rough Trade, Factory, KLF, | 1:09:49 | 1:09:53 | |
Beggars had had big worldwide success with their artists, | 1:09:53 | 1:09:57 | |
not even just in the UK but worldwide. | 1:09:57 | 1:10:00 | |
And were very happy to share | 1:10:00 | 1:10:01 | |
any information they could with people who wanted it. | 1:10:01 | 1:10:04 | |
All the myths had been busted by that point. | 1:10:04 | 1:10:08 | |
Actually, the irony is that it was probably one of the most successful | 1:10:08 | 1:10:12 | |
periods of independent music, ever, | 1:10:12 | 1:10:15 | |
in Britain at the point at which Rough Trade went bust. | 1:10:15 | 1:10:18 | |
At their peak in the '80s, | 1:10:21 | 1:10:23 | |
independent labels commanded a 40 per cent share | 1:10:23 | 1:10:26 | |
of the record market. | 1:10:26 | 1:10:28 | |
Major record companies had begun setting up | 1:10:28 | 1:10:30 | |
their own in-house boutique labels, | 1:10:30 | 1:10:33 | |
branding them as apparently "independent", | 1:10:33 | 1:10:36 | |
and signing up indie bands who were now seen as mainstream artists, | 1:10:36 | 1:10:40 | |
releasing music once viewed as marginal and alternative. | 1:10:40 | 1:10:44 | |
Geoff Travis, Rough Trade and their independent allies | 1:10:49 | 1:10:52 | |
had radically reshaped the musical landscape. | 1:10:52 | 1:10:56 | |
Although the company had been dismantled, | 1:10:57 | 1:11:00 | |
its assets, including the name itself, stripped down and sold off, | 1:11:00 | 1:11:03 | |
the Rough Trade story was not over yet. | 1:11:03 | 1:11:07 | |
In 1991, Geoff Travis moved into an office | 1:11:21 | 1:11:25 | |
about half a mile from the original Rough Trade shop | 1:11:25 | 1:11:27 | |
with his new business partner, Jeannette Lee. | 1:11:27 | 1:11:31 | |
They would go on to revive and re-invent Rough Trade. | 1:11:31 | 1:11:35 | |
The formula with Geoff and myself is really quite simple. | 1:11:35 | 1:11:41 | |
If we get really excited about something, | 1:11:41 | 1:11:43 | |
we just totally go for it. | 1:11:43 | 1:11:46 | |
In the '80s Jeannette Lee had been part of Public Image Ltd, | 1:11:46 | 1:11:51 | |
the band formed by John Lydon after the demise of The Sex Pistols. | 1:11:51 | 1:11:55 | |
She had also worked with Geoff Travis at Rough Trade | 1:11:55 | 1:11:58 | |
for several years prior to the company's collapse. | 1:11:58 | 1:12:01 | |
Now they set to work on a number of new musical projects. | 1:12:01 | 1:12:05 | |
And one day in 1993 they met a troubled musician | 1:12:05 | 1:12:09 | |
who would draw them into the world of artist management. | 1:12:09 | 1:12:12 | |
We'd kind of got ourselves into a bit of a mess. | 1:12:15 | 1:12:18 | |
We had the remnants of an old record deal | 1:12:18 | 1:12:20 | |
with an unscrupulous independent label. | 1:12:20 | 1:12:23 | |
Island Records wanted to sign us, | 1:12:23 | 1:12:25 | |
but once they heard about all these complications and all this stuff, | 1:12:25 | 1:12:29 | |
they wouldn't come near us, wouldn't touch us with a barge pole. | 1:12:29 | 1:12:32 | |
A friend said, "Why don't you go and talk to Geoff Travis?" | 1:12:32 | 1:12:36 | |
He sat in this office and he told us his sorry tale. | 1:12:39 | 1:12:43 | |
We liked him and were very excited by it. | 1:12:43 | 1:12:45 | |
So we took on the task of managing them | 1:12:45 | 1:12:49 | |
and we spent a lot of time | 1:12:49 | 1:12:52 | |
disentangling the legal mess they were in | 1:12:52 | 1:12:54 | |
and effecting the sign to Island, and it all worked out. | 1:12:54 | 1:12:59 | |
Single-handedly, really, Rough Trade, Geoff and Jeannette | 1:13:01 | 1:13:04 | |
gave me back some kind of faith in the music industry. | 1:13:04 | 1:13:08 | |
Up to then I just thought, "It's a bunch of fucking crooks." | 1:13:08 | 1:13:11 | |
# She came from Greece She had a thirst for knowledge | 1:13:11 | 1:13:14 | |
# She studied sculpture at St Martin's College | 1:13:14 | 1:13:17 | |
# That's where I | 1:13:17 | 1:13:18 | |
# Caught her eye... # | 1:13:21 | 1:13:25 | |
Geoff and Jeannette had become an artist management team. | 1:13:25 | 1:13:29 | |
And, with Pulp signed to Island Records, they began to apply | 1:13:29 | 1:13:32 | |
their independent ethic to the world of major-label pop stardom. | 1:13:32 | 1:13:38 | |
# She said | 1:13:38 | 1:13:39 | |
# I wanna live like common people I wanna do... # | 1:13:39 | 1:13:43 | |
There was this thing in record companies, | 1:13:43 | 1:13:46 | |
maybe to justify their jobs, | 1:13:46 | 1:13:47 | |
they were always coming up with strategies | 1:13:47 | 1:13:49 | |
of how you got a good chart position or how you sustained | 1:13:49 | 1:13:54 | |
your chart position, like that spray you spray on your cock | 1:13:54 | 1:13:57 | |
to keep it hard. | 1:13:57 | 1:13:58 | |
And at the time when Common People was due to come out, | 1:13:58 | 1:14:01 | |
the big thing was format - split the format. | 1:14:01 | 1:14:04 | |
One CD comes out week one. | 1:14:04 | 1:14:07 | |
Week two, the other CD comes out. | 1:14:07 | 1:14:10 | |
You don't go in as high, | 1:14:10 | 1:14:11 | |
but you sustain and that's what's important. | 1:14:11 | 1:14:14 | |
# ..Live like common people... # | 1:14:14 | 1:14:16 | |
We'd waited over a decade to have a chance at some kind of pop stardom | 1:14:16 | 1:14:20 | |
and we said, "We're not really interested in sustaining. | 1:14:20 | 1:14:23 | |
"We just want to go in, full force. | 1:14:23 | 1:14:27 | |
"And if it fucks off the next week, fair enough, whatever." | 1:14:27 | 1:14:30 | |
# She just smiled and held my hand... # | 1:14:30 | 1:14:33 | |
If we'd been managed by anybody else, | 1:14:35 | 1:14:37 | |
I'm sure that wouldn't have happened, | 1:14:37 | 1:14:40 | |
but they backed us with that and we managed to get it through. | 1:14:40 | 1:14:44 | |
It was our finest hour. We went in the charts at number two. | 1:14:44 | 1:14:47 | |
# You'll never live like common people... # | 1:14:47 | 1:14:51 | |
From that point on is where Pulp's success story came from really. | 1:14:51 | 1:14:56 | |
# You'll never watch your life slide out of view... # | 1:14:56 | 1:15:00 | |
Beginning with Common People in 1995, | 1:15:00 | 1:15:04 | |
Pulp enjoyed a string of five consecutive Top Ten singles. | 1:15:04 | 1:15:08 | |
For Geoff and Jeannette, even after the achievements of The Smiths, | 1:15:08 | 1:15:12 | |
this was a new level of mainstream success. | 1:15:12 | 1:15:15 | |
In managing Pulp, we had to interact with a big major. | 1:15:17 | 1:15:21 | |
So we learnt how to play the game in a different way | 1:15:21 | 1:15:24 | |
and interact with people that were more mainstream | 1:15:24 | 1:15:28 | |
and make it successful. | 1:15:28 | 1:15:30 | |
I think we learnt a lot actually. | 1:15:30 | 1:15:32 | |
With Pulp, Geoff and Jeannette had a series of hit records. | 1:15:32 | 1:15:36 | |
What they didn't have was a record label, or even the Rough Trade name, | 1:15:36 | 1:15:41 | |
which had been sold along with the other assets | 1:15:41 | 1:15:43 | |
when the company folded. | 1:15:43 | 1:15:45 | |
But in 2001, at a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary | 1:15:47 | 1:15:52 | |
of the Rough Trade shop, | 1:15:52 | 1:15:53 | |
Geoff and Jeannette decided to bring Rough Trade Records back to life. | 1:15:53 | 1:15:57 | |
I think probably Geoff clicked into some kind of gear again that night. | 1:16:03 | 1:16:09 | |
He just thought, "This is worth doing again." | 1:16:09 | 1:16:11 | |
Everybody kept saying, | 1:16:13 | 1:16:15 | |
"Rough Trade it's a wonderful thing, a great thing." | 1:16:15 | 1:16:17 | |
It made us realise, | 1:16:17 | 1:16:19 | |
it dawned on us that it meant a lot to other people. | 1:16:19 | 1:16:23 | |
We decided that we would make another attempt | 1:16:23 | 1:16:27 | |
to buy the name back. | 1:16:27 | 1:16:28 | |
So we started, and the first thing we did was sign The Strokes. | 1:16:28 | 1:16:33 | |
MUSIC: "Last Nite" by The Strokes | 1:16:33 | 1:16:36 | |
The timing was perfect. By sheer coincidence, a few months earlier, | 1:16:37 | 1:16:43 | |
Geoff Travis had received a tape that would lead to New York | 1:16:43 | 1:16:46 | |
and quite possibly the best unsigned band on the planet. | 1:16:46 | 1:16:50 | |
# Last night she said Oh baby don't feel so down | 1:16:51 | 1:16:58 | |
# See it turned me off... # | 1:16:58 | 1:17:00 | |
They were playing around the New York club circuit. | 1:17:00 | 1:17:03 | |
They hadn't really played outside New York. | 1:17:03 | 1:17:05 | |
I was sending out their demo | 1:17:06 | 1:17:09 | |
to everybody just to try to get them gigs or some attention or some love. | 1:17:09 | 1:17:12 | |
Geoff comes in earlier than me. | 1:17:12 | 1:17:15 | |
OK, let's admit it. | 1:17:15 | 1:17:17 | |
I came in one morning and he was blasting out some music | 1:17:18 | 1:17:21 | |
and called me straight in to his office and said, "Listen to this!" | 1:17:21 | 1:17:25 | |
It was really exciting. | 1:17:25 | 1:17:27 | |
I posted it out and two days later, I walked in to work at 10am | 1:17:32 | 1:17:36 | |
and Geoff rings up, | 1:17:36 | 1:17:38 | |
"We'd like to put this out." | 1:17:38 | 1:17:40 | |
They didn't believe us or take us very seriously, | 1:17:40 | 1:17:42 | |
so we decided to go to New York to meet them. | 1:17:42 | 1:17:45 | |
# Last night she said | 1:17:45 | 1:17:49 | |
# Oh my baby don't feel so down... # | 1:17:49 | 1:17:52 | |
In September 2000, Geoff and Jeannette | 1:17:52 | 1:17:55 | |
arrived at an out-of-town bar to see the band | 1:17:55 | 1:17:57 | |
that would kick-start Rough Trade's future - The Strokes. | 1:17:57 | 1:18:02 | |
We were in a dump in New Jersey and we were like, | 1:18:02 | 1:18:06 | |
"Man, this is the place where we're gonna play for a label?" | 1:18:06 | 1:18:09 | |
There's no-one there, just a few friends and a few strangers. | 1:18:09 | 1:18:12 | |
There was nobody there. | 1:18:12 | 1:18:14 | |
Just a bunch of people who had gone out on a Saturday night for a drink. | 1:18:14 | 1:18:19 | |
# Last night she said Oh baby don't feel so down... # | 1:18:20 | 1:18:26 | |
We were both just completely dumbstruck at how... | 1:18:26 | 1:18:29 | |
absolutely perfectly formed and amazing they were. | 1:18:29 | 1:18:33 | |
It was just so exciting. | 1:18:33 | 1:18:36 | |
I got a feeling of exhilaration watching them | 1:18:36 | 1:18:38 | |
that I hadn't had since punk days. | 1:18:38 | 1:18:41 | |
We were just dumbstruck. We just looked at each other and were, like, | 1:18:41 | 1:18:46 | |
"We've got to make this happen." | 1:18:46 | 1:18:48 | |
Well, it's time for a brand new band from America | 1:18:52 | 1:18:54 | |
and they are tipped for great things. We agree. | 1:18:54 | 1:18:58 | |
These are The Strokes! | 1:18:58 | 1:18:59 | |
Making it happen meant putting out an EP, bringing the band to England | 1:19:01 | 1:19:06 | |
and employing all of the marketing skills | 1:19:06 | 1:19:08 | |
they'd learned while working with Pulp | 1:19:08 | 1:19:10 | |
to show The Strokes what Rough Trade was capable of. | 1:19:10 | 1:19:13 | |
The press and everything just lit fire with it. It was really wild. | 1:19:14 | 1:19:19 | |
We marketed The Strokes in a way | 1:19:22 | 1:19:25 | |
we hadn't marketed anyone else really to that point. | 1:19:25 | 1:19:28 | |
We realised that this was the time that we | 1:19:28 | 1:19:31 | |
had to do all that stuff that hadn't happened in the past. | 1:19:31 | 1:19:34 | |
# New York City cops New York City cops... # | 1:19:34 | 1:19:39 | |
Rough Trade had turned The Strokes from an anonymous bar band | 1:19:39 | 1:19:43 | |
into the hottest property of the year. | 1:19:43 | 1:19:44 | |
What they hadn't done was ask them to sign a record contract. | 1:19:44 | 1:19:48 | |
# ..they ain't too smart... # | 1:19:48 | 1:19:51 | |
We found ourselves in a situation where we loved this band, | 1:19:52 | 1:19:57 | |
we really wanted to work with them, but now everybody knows about them, | 1:19:57 | 1:20:01 | |
and everybody wants to sign them and everybody's got more money than us. | 1:20:01 | 1:20:04 | |
We didn't have to sign with them. | 1:20:04 | 1:20:06 | |
Everything sparked with them and all the labels came to the table | 1:20:06 | 1:20:09 | |
and were chasing the band, which was nice. | 1:20:09 | 1:20:11 | |
We could have went with anyone. | 1:20:11 | 1:20:13 | |
# ..One day we're gonna leave this town... # | 1:20:13 | 1:20:15 | |
You could say, from a business point of view, | 1:20:15 | 1:20:18 | |
the naive mistake is to bring them over to England, pay for a tour, | 1:20:18 | 1:20:23 | |
without having any futures with them. That's a crazy thing to do. | 1:20:23 | 1:20:26 | |
But that's the philosophy of, well, you don't know us, | 1:20:26 | 1:20:29 | |
we're gonna show you who we are. | 1:20:29 | 1:20:31 | |
Not many people do that. | 1:20:31 | 1:20:33 | |
It is the old, "These people are really stupid. | 1:20:34 | 1:20:38 | |
"They don't know how to run a business" | 1:20:38 | 1:20:40 | |
or it sells and that's what makes them different. | 1:20:40 | 1:20:43 | |
Geoff and Jeannette were building a leaner version of Rough Trade, | 1:20:43 | 1:20:47 | |
whose independent reputation, | 1:20:47 | 1:20:49 | |
combined with an uncharacteristically | 1:20:49 | 1:20:51 | |
slick marketing operation, would prove a winning formula. | 1:20:51 | 1:20:56 | |
The Strokes became the label's biggest signing since The Smiths, | 1:20:57 | 1:21:01 | |
revitalising an indie guitar band scene, | 1:21:01 | 1:21:04 | |
which after the Brit Pop explosion of the nineties, | 1:21:04 | 1:21:07 | |
had become stale and derivative. | 1:21:07 | 1:21:09 | |
# ..you gave me your address so I was so bold... # | 1:21:13 | 1:21:20 | |
Five months after releasing The Strokes' first album, | 1:21:20 | 1:21:23 | |
Rough Trade signed The Libertines, the edgiest English equivalent | 1:21:23 | 1:21:28 | |
to their New York label mates, and began to build a diverse | 1:21:28 | 1:21:31 | |
artists' roster based on Geoff and Jeannette's musical tastes. | 1:21:31 | 1:21:35 | |
The only thing that we really have is our own response to the music, | 1:21:46 | 1:21:50 | |
and to know that we think it's really special, it moves us. | 1:21:50 | 1:21:53 | |
And that is a rare thing. And that's it. | 1:21:53 | 1:21:56 | |
Records by The Libertines, British Sea Power, Belle & Sebastian, | 1:21:57 | 1:22:02 | |
Arcade Fire and Antony & The Johnsons | 1:22:02 | 1:22:05 | |
helped to re-establish Rough Trade's reputation | 1:22:05 | 1:22:08 | |
as an important independent label and even brought them the odd award. | 1:22:08 | 1:22:12 | |
But the biggest prize of all | 1:22:19 | 1:22:21 | |
would come from their artist management arm. | 1:22:21 | 1:22:23 | |
MUSIC: "Warwick Avenue" by Duffy | 1:22:23 | 1:22:26 | |
Rough Trade, Geoff and Jeannette, | 1:22:41 | 1:22:43 | |
have been managing Duffy for four years. | 1:22:43 | 1:22:46 | |
When they met, she was a musical novice with a great voice, | 1:22:46 | 1:22:49 | |
but seemed an unlikely addition to the Rough Trade roster. | 1:22:49 | 1:22:53 | |
I'm not gonna lie to you and pretend I was wise when it came to music. | 1:22:53 | 1:22:57 | |
I'm still not. | 1:22:57 | 1:22:59 | |
I only discovered Nick Cave about ten minutes ago downstairs. Massive! | 1:22:59 | 1:23:03 | |
Massive! This happens to me all the time. | 1:23:03 | 1:23:05 | |
I come in, Joy Division's playing, I fall in love with it... | 1:23:05 | 1:23:09 | |
I came into this hub of credibility | 1:23:09 | 1:23:12 | |
and didn't have a clue about anything. | 1:23:12 | 1:23:15 | |
And I just thought, I've never been anywhere so exciting in all my life. | 1:23:15 | 1:23:19 | |
Geoff and I both met her. | 1:23:19 | 1:23:20 | |
I made a real connection with her, I thought she had a great voice | 1:23:20 | 1:23:24 | |
and I really liked her as a character. | 1:23:24 | 1:23:26 | |
And I felt that she had something really special that was really worth | 1:23:26 | 1:23:31 | |
working with, but at that time, it wasn't quite right for me. | 1:23:31 | 1:23:36 | |
They kindly put me on a development deal. | 1:23:42 | 1:23:44 | |
They said, "We'll look after you for a little while, | 1:23:44 | 1:23:47 | |
"and see what you wanna do. | 1:23:47 | 1:23:48 | |
"No pressure, we're not going to make you do anything. | 1:23:48 | 1:23:51 | |
"We're not gonna tell you what we wanted to be. | 1:23:51 | 1:23:53 | |
"We'll give you a little bit of time and a little bit of space, | 1:23:53 | 1:23:57 | |
"to find out who you are as an artist." | 1:23:57 | 1:23:59 | |
That meant a fully funded apprenticeship for Duffy, | 1:24:01 | 1:24:04 | |
but no record releases, and no income for Rough Trade - | 1:24:04 | 1:24:08 | |
yet another alternative approach to music industry convention. | 1:24:08 | 1:24:13 | |
It was a risk. And it paid off. | 1:24:13 | 1:24:16 | |
It coincided completely with the music industry | 1:24:16 | 1:24:18 | |
being completely wrecked by Pop Idol and X-Factor | 1:24:18 | 1:24:21 | |
and all that kind of complete rubbish... | 1:24:21 | 1:24:25 | |
that completely patronises all the people out there who have | 1:24:25 | 1:24:28 | |
got technical ability and some kind of sense of humanity and soul | 1:24:28 | 1:24:33 | |
and aren't being given an opportunity to nurture it and create music, | 1:24:33 | 1:24:37 | |
because it's being nurtured into just cans of beans to put on a shelf. | 1:24:37 | 1:24:41 | |
MUSIC: "Mercy" by Duffy | 1:24:41 | 1:24:43 | |
She wasn't manipulated or cultivated like a Pop Idol person. | 1:24:46 | 1:24:53 | |
No-one held her hand and took her to a writing session and said to her, | 1:24:53 | 1:24:58 | |
"Write a song in the style of this." | 1:24:58 | 1:25:00 | |
She was just given time to develop. | 1:25:00 | 1:25:04 | |
What fascinates me about it is that what would happen if you took | 1:25:04 | 1:25:08 | |
somebody who could've been put into the situation, and could have | 1:25:08 | 1:25:12 | |
ended up a cabaret star, and was from a perfectly normal background | 1:25:12 | 1:25:15 | |
without a Rough Trade record collection, | 1:25:15 | 1:25:17 | |
but just had a pure heart and a pure enthusiasm | 1:25:17 | 1:25:20 | |
and tried to nurture something great out of it. | 1:25:20 | 1:25:24 | |
# You got me begging you for mercy | 1:25:24 | 1:25:28 | |
# Why won't you release me? | 1:25:28 | 1:25:32 | |
# You got me begging you for mercy | 1:25:32 | 1:25:35 | |
# Why won't you... # | 1:25:35 | 1:25:36 | |
What happened was that after nearly four years of development for Duffy, | 1:25:36 | 1:25:39 | |
and over thirty years of waiting for Rough Trade, | 1:25:39 | 1:25:43 | |
they were rewarded with their first number one single. | 1:25:43 | 1:25:48 | |
It is a dream to have something that's great that is also popular. | 1:25:51 | 1:25:55 | |
It was a great moment. Yeah. | 1:25:55 | 1:25:58 | |
30 years since Rough Trade released its first single, | 1:26:08 | 1:26:11 | |
it continues to attract a range of like-minded musicians | 1:26:11 | 1:26:15 | |
inspired by its past, | 1:26:15 | 1:26:17 | |
while Geoff and Jeannette focus firmly on its future. | 1:26:17 | 1:26:22 | |
# Tonight I wanna celebrate with you... # | 1:26:22 | 1:26:27 | |
This happens to be Rough Trade's 30th anniversary. | 1:26:27 | 1:26:29 | |
They were started in 1978, and 1978 is the year that our drummer, | 1:26:29 | 1:26:35 | |
Patrick Callaghan, and myself were born. | 1:26:35 | 1:26:37 | |
I believe that since the beginning of both of our lives, | 1:26:37 | 1:26:42 | |
we've been coming to meet at this moment in time. | 1:26:42 | 1:26:47 | |
# Let him go let him go let him go from me...# | 1:26:47 | 1:26:52 | |
There are bad labels and there are OK labels | 1:26:52 | 1:26:54 | |
and there are great labels, | 1:26:54 | 1:26:56 | |
and it was quite quickly evident which was which. | 1:26:56 | 1:27:00 | |
# There's a link between the stars I Think... # | 1:27:00 | 1:27:08 | |
The most exciting thing for me was when we signed, because I didn't | 1:27:08 | 1:27:11 | |
really realise that Jeanette was, like, part owner of Rough Trade. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:15 | |
I was kinda like, are you Jeanette Lee that was in Public Image Ltd? | 1:27:15 | 1:27:19 | |
She said, "I am indeed" and she poured me a glass of champagne. | 1:27:19 | 1:27:22 | |
And that was exciting. Rather than meeting someone in a suit, | 1:27:22 | 1:27:26 | |
you're meeting a person that played in Public Image Ltd. | 1:27:26 | 1:27:29 | |
And the guy who was in the room when they made the Raincoats album. | 1:27:29 | 1:27:32 | |
It's kind of a flattering that anybody's interested in the past | 1:27:32 | 1:27:36 | |
and what used to happen. | 1:27:36 | 1:27:38 | |
But it's not really much concern to us. | 1:27:38 | 1:27:41 | |
The important thing is to live in the present, the moment. | 1:27:41 | 1:27:44 | |
The only thing that's important is what happens now, what happens next. | 1:27:44 | 1:27:48 | |
And, you know, we've got in the pipeline so many good things | 1:27:48 | 1:27:53 | |
which you ultimately will be the judge of, when they come out. | 1:27:53 | 1:27:56 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:27:58 | 1:28:00 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 1:28:00 | 1:28:02 |