Ivo and Peter were a good double act, recalls Robbie Grey, lead singer for Modern English, one of 4ADs crucial early signings. They were similar in their background too, neither working class, so straight away you were dealing with art college types.
Steve Webbon: Peter was great. Very tall, dry sense of humour. And he had all these connections. He wasnt as into music as Ivo, he was more into the scene. Hed go to gigs while Ivo would more listen to your tape.
Ivo: Peter was so important to 4AD from the start. Most of the early stuff was his discovery. While I was running around servicing the other shops, he was the go-getter. He knew people. I liked everything enough to say yes, but I didnt know what I was doing.
One part of the plan was for Axis to play a feeder role for the Beggars Banquet label, so that those artists with commercial ambition could make use of Beggars distribution deal with Warners. Another idea was to launch Axis with four seven-inch singles on the same day: To make a statement, and to establish an imprint, says Ivo. Other independent labels at that point, such as Factory, were imprints. It meant something.
Factorys first release, A Factory Sampler, had featured four bands, including Joy Division and Sheffields electronic pioneers Cabaret Voltaire. Axis first quartet, simultaneously released on the first business day of 1980, wasnt quite as hefty. Nor did it include Brian Brain, which would have instantly given the label a newsworthy angle, or another mooted suggestion, Temporary Title, a south London band that used to rehearse in Beggars Fulham basement, whose singer Lea Anderson was a floating Saturday shop assistant across the various Beggars Banquet shops. Instead, out of the pile of demos emerged three unknown entities, The Fast Set, Shox and Bearz, and one band that had released a single on east London independent Small
Wonder: Bauhaus, who was to save Axis from the most underwhelming beginning.
The single given the honour of catalogue number AXIS 1 was The Fast Sets Junction One. London-based keyboardist David Knight was the proud owner of a VCS3 synth, popularised by Eno, whose demo was played in the Earls Court shop by his friend Brad Day who worked there on Saturdays. Peter Kent said if I wanted to record an electronic version of a glam rock track, hed release it on this new label, recalls Knight. The Human League had covered Gary Glitters Rock And Roll, and there were lots of other post-modern, semi-ironic interpretations around. I knew T. Rexs Children Of The Revolution had only two chords, which suited me. Peter put me in a studio to record it, but he needed another track, which I knocked out on the spot, which became the A-side. I dont know why.
At very short notice, Knight and three cohorts played a show at Kents request. Budding film director John Maybury (best known for his 1998 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil) projected super-8 images on to them and named them The Fast Set, because the quartet were so immobile on stage. Maybury also designed the cover of Junction One. The Fast Sets synth-pop had a bit of early Human Leagues sketchy pop but not its vision or charm. For starters, I was no singer, says Knight. My vocals were appalling!
AXIS 2 and AXIS 4 were demos that had been posted to the Hogarth Road shop. Shes My Girl was by Bearz, a quartet from the south-west of England that wasnt even a band, says bassist Dave Gunstone. The singer John Goddard and I had an idea to make a record we liked the new wave sound, but we didnt even have songs before we booked the studio. We found a drummer, Mark Willis, and David Lord produced us and played keyboards. I was a signwriter for shops and vans then and you can hear Im not a musician. But Ivo called to say he was interested in signing us. We went up to see him and Peter to be in the office with Gary Numan gold discs on the walls, it was dream come true.
They called themselves The Bears until Ivo (who says it would have been Peter Kent) pointed out other bands had already used the name, so he said stick a z on the end, says Gunstone. Neo-psychedelic vocals over an attractively lumpy melody (NME) and nostalgia pop (Peter Kent) are fair appraisals of the song, given the dinky Sixties beat-pop and Seventies bubblegum mix, while the B-side Girls Will Do was tauter new wave.
Shox were also hopeful of a stab at success via the new wave conceit of a misspelt name though the photo on the cover of vocalist Jacqui Brookes and instrumentalists John Pethers and Mike Atkinson in one bed was horribly old school. The most prominent British weekly music paper, New Music Express (NME) also approved of No Turning Back: Fresh and naturally home-made, like The Human League once upon a time. Peter Kents comment, I have no memory of it whatsoever, also hits the mark.
AXIS 3, Dark Entries, was an altogether different story. Peter Kent recalls being in the Rough Trade shop. I was buying singles for Beggars Banquet, and Geoff Travis was there, playing some demos. I heard him say he didnt like it, and I said, Excuse me? Geoff said I could take it. The energy was unbelievable, and the sound was so different from everything else around. Forty-eight hours later, I was in Northampton to meet Bauhaus.