Copyright
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First published in Great Britain by The Friday Project 2013
Copyright © Martin Aston 2013
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Source ISBN: 9780007489619
Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007522019
Version: 2015-12-03
ALSO BY MARTIN ASTON
Björkgraphy
Pulp
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my two families in London, Mum, David, Penny, Katie, Vicki and Christopher, Louis, Tess, and in Michigan, Mom Clum, Doug and family, Liz and family, Nate and Bruce, Mindy and Tom.
Many thanks to everyone I interviewed for the book, but especially Miki Berenyi, Mark Cox, Nigel Grierson, Robin Guthrie, Kristin Hersh, Robin Hurley, Matt Johnson, Brendan Perry, Simon Raymonde, Chris Staley and Anka Wolbert. Special thanks to John Grant and John-Mark Lapham, for sound and vision.
Thanks to my nearest-and-dearest: Brenda and Trish, Kurt, Mark, Pixie, Eloise and James, Sara, Will and Harriet, Merle and Gary, Joanna MLNOV, Laura, Yael, Meir and family, Duncan, Amanda, Madeleine, Mary Pat, Gordon, Catherine and Arvo, Nicole, Angela, Hop, Sarah
and Foster, Cat my foxymoron, Dr John and Michael, Kat, Peter, Gabby and Trixie, Emma, Jessica and family, Clare and Antoine, Yas, Lauren and Sam, Jesper, Christine and Naomi, David, Yvette and family, Christina, Olivia and Bif, Patrick and Karl, Justin, Lisa and family, Cushla, Felicity, Dean and Britta, the Nervas, the Dutch, Jon and Patricia, Diana and Tim, cousin Jenny, Jim Fouratt, Steve, Mr Stroopy Mumblepants and Spencer, Bob and Jeff, Pat, John, Lynn, Siuin, Debbie, Jude, Sigrid, Amy, Laurence, Miriam and Viva, Jane, Richard, Huw and Dan, Edori and family, Susie and Mark, Lisa, and my Nunhead pals (Karolina, Lukasz, Hugo and Hannah, Claire, Andrew and Eva, John and Katrina, Carolyn, Jeremy and Max).
Thanks also to Tony Bacon, Ralf Henneking, James Nice, LightBrigade PR, José Enrique Plata Manjarrés and Andy Pearce, and to anyone I have inadvertently missed out, and also not credited for quotes, which Ive done my upmost to do.
I finally want to thank Tim Carr, one of the insightful people I talked to for this book, and one of 4ADs greatest supporters, in memoriam.
Dedication
To Moray, in memoriam. I hope you are grooving in your home disco, reading, writing and meditating, looking forward to tralaalaa oclock.
Epigraph
(George, 2013)
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Also by Martin Aston
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
1 Did I Dream You Dreamed About Me?
2 Piper at the Gates of Oundle
3 1980 Forward
4 Art of Darkness
5 The Other Otherness
6 The Family That Plays Together
7 Dreams Made Flesh, but Itll End in Tears
8 The Art Shit Tour and Other Stories
9 Le Mystère des Delicate Cutters
10 Chains Changed
11 To Suggest is to Create; to Describe is to Destroy
12 With Your Feet in the Air and Your Head on the Ground
13 An Ultra Vivid Beautiful Noise
14 Heaven, Las Vegas and Bust
15 Fool the World
16 A Tiny Little Speck in a Brobdingnag World
17 America Dreaming, on Such a Winters Day
18 All Virgos are Mad, Some More than Others
19 Fuck You Tiger, Were Goin South
20 Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
21 As Close as Two Coats of Paint on a Windswept Wall
22 Smiles OK, a Last Gasp
23 Everything Must Go
24 Full of Dust and Guitars
25 Facing the Other Way
List of Illustrations
Illustrations Insert
About the Publisher
Introduction
True, the story of 4AD doesnt feature a TV presenter-cum-entrepreneur who starts a record label whose most iconic frontman commits suicide and initiates a Che Guevara-style cult; nor does it involve the decision to invest heavily in a nightclub that goes
on to become an epicentre of the biggest dance music boom in UK history, rejuvenating both youth and drug culture, the combined legacy of which soon enough bankrupts said label.
That would be the suspenseful saga of Manchesters Factory Records, 4ADs principal peer in the world of pioneering, inventive and maverick independent labels. For both labels, the visual aesthetic was as crucial as the music, yet, in many ways, south Londons 4AD, formed in 1980, was the anti-Factory: its spearhead, Ivo Watts-Russell, was more of a recluse than a media-savvy self-promoter, and 4AD had no recognisable ties to the zeitgeist nor to any cultural trend, in fact. All of that, Ivo felt, was irrelevant; only the artefact mattered the music and its exquisite packaging. In the mid-Eighties there were constant references to the 4AD sound: a beautiful, dark, insular style. If the 2002 fictionalised film about Factory Records was called 24 Hour Party People, what might a film about 4AD be titled Eight Hours Chilling, and Then Bed?