Beggars Banquets first expansion was as a short-lived concert promotions company. We saw the opportunity for artists that people didnt know there was demand for, says Mills, beginning with German ambient space-rockers Tangerine Dream in 1975 at Londons grand Royal Albert Hall. Only a year later, Mills says he saw a palpable shift in audience expectations while promoting the proto-new wave of Graham Parker, whose support band The Damned was the first punk band to release a single. Punk turned our world upside down. No one wanted the kind of shows in theatre venues that wed been promoting. People wanted grotty little places, so we stopped.
A Beggars Banquet record label came next. The Fulham branch turned its basement into a rehearsal space for punk bands, one being London-based The Lurkers. A shop named after a Rolling Stones album was now primed to put rock dinosaurs such as the Stones to the sword. Fulham branch manager Mike Stone had doubled up as The Lurkers manager. Every label had a punk band now, and no one was interested in the band, says Mills. So we released the first Lurkers single [Shadows] ourselves. We had no clue how to, but we found a recording studio and a pressing plant in a music directory and we got distribution from President, who manufactured styluses.
John Peel was an instant convert to punk, including The Lurkers, who sold a very healthy 15,000 copies of Shadows on the new Beggars Banquet label. The profits funded Streets, the first compilation of independently released punk tracks. That sold 25,000, as did The Lurkers debut album Fulham Fallout.
Nick Austin spearheaded the talent-spotting A&R process. Hed have ten ideas, and one was good, the rest embarrassing, says Steve Webbon. Subsequent Beggars Banquet acts such as Duffo, The Doll and Ivor Biggun (the alias of Robert Doc Cox, BBC TV journalist turned novelty songsmith) were fluff compared to what Rough Trade and Manchesters Factory Records were developing. We were a rag-bag in the early days, Mills agrees. A lot was off-message for punk. But our fourth release was Tubeway Army, after their bassist walked into the shop with a tape.
Tubeway Army, marshalled by its mercurial frontman and Berlin-era Bowie clone Gary Numan, would catapult Beggars Banquet into another league, with a number 1 single within a year. But Numans demands for expensive equipment for the bands first album, and other label expenses, stretched the companys cash flow, and Mills says that only Ivor Bigguns rugby-song innuendos (1978s The Winkers Song had reached number 22 on the UK national chart) staved off near bankruptcy. Mills and Austin were businessmen, not idealists, so when they had to find a new distributor (the current operators Island had had to withdraw due to a licensing deal with EMI), they got into bed with the major label Warners. The licence deal meant that Beggars Banquet wasnt eligible for the new independent label
chart that would launch in 1980, but it did inject £100,000 of funds. It was an absolutely insane figure, says Mills. How could Warners expect to be repaid?
The answer to repaying Warners was Tubeway Armys bewitching, synthesised Are Friends Electric? and its parent album Replicas, which both topped the UK national chart in 1979. So did Numans solo album The Pleasure Principle, released just four months later. The Faustian deal effectively meant that Beggars Banquet became a satellite operation of Warners, even sharing some staff. Wed become something we hadnt intended to be, says Mills. One reason we [later] started 4AD was that it could be what Beggars Banquet had wanted to be: an underground label, and not fragmented like wed become.
While working in the shop, Ivo had only been a part-convert to the punk revolution. I liked some of The Clashs singles but their debut album was so badly recorded, it didnt interest me at all. But Id seen Blondie and Ramones live, and I quickly came to enjoy punks energy and melody. But I didnt need punk to wipe away progressive rock. Id been listening to what people saw as embarrassing and obscure country rock no one was interested in Emmylou Harris or Gram Parsons back then. But I just loved voices, like Emmylou, Gram and Tim [Buckley].
Of the new breed, Ivo preferred the darker, artier, and more progressive American bands such as Chrome, Pere Ubu and Television, who had very little in common with punks political snarl and fashion accoutrements. Steve Webbon, however, appeared to more fully embrace the sound of punk and its attendant lifestyle. Those customers that were still into the minutiae of country rock were very dull, he recalls. And that music had become more mainstream and bland. I spent the Seventies on speed: uppers, blues, black bombers. It must have been wearing for Ivo.
Ivo had been forced to take charge on those days when Webbon disappeared to drug binge or during his periods of recovery. Ivo himself dipped into another torpid period of indecision. Being behind the shop counter, with these children coming in every night, their hair changed and wearing safety pins, was exciting, but it got pretty boring too. So I left again.