His subsequent expulsion from
school alongside two other boys made the news in Peterborough. Our familys position in society in that part of rural England stretched back two hundred years, says Perry. It was a traumatic, life-affecting experience for Ivo and he was treated as a pariah. Maybe it drove him towards music being even more of a saviour.
The clouds silver lining turned out to be the offer of a place at a nearby technical college where the class system, peer pressure and school uniforms didnt apply, and girls were everywhere. Ivo persisted with buying records with odd-job cash, guided by John Peels tastes; his next pivotal discovery was the Los Angeles quartet Spirit, led by prodigious teenager Randy California, a peer and friend of Jimi Hendrix who specialised in an infinite sustain guitar technique, by aligning guitar feedback with the note that creates it. Ivo recommends the delicately searing solo in Uncle Jack from 1968s debut album Spirit: I still get the same tingling feeling as when I first heard it.
The doors of perception swung open to the sound of The Nices keyboard-heavy The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack and Deep Purples proto-heavy Shades Of Deep Purple, and especially The Mothers of Inventions heavy satire Were Only In It For The Money, which Ivo found more intriguing and challenging than Hendrix. For starters, chief Mother Frank Zappa mocked not only the establishments corporatisation of youth culture but the hippie dream too, hard to take for dreamers such as Ivo. Zappa claimed both sides were prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness.
More crucially, the album was assembled like a collage, an anarchic and operatic meld of jazz, classical and rock that consistently changed tack. All these noises and whispers, the chop-ups and talking It proved to be incredibly influential on me, how something that cropped up in one song reappeared in another seven tracks later, Ivo recalls. It made me think about how an album could be assembled. And if that kind of record can become normal, it suggests one is really open to pretty much anything in music. And that was me set. I had this ongoing relationship with whatever was contained within a twelve-inch-square sleeve. Thats what I lived for.
Ivo soon got to see The Mothers of Invention on stage. Other formative concert experiences were psychedelic seers King Crimson and Pink Floyd. To Ivo, Syd Barrett was the personification of cool, and even once Barretts fragile eggshell mind had broken, like the acid Humpty Dumpty, he believed fully in Floyds subsequent journey to the outer reaches of space rock. The realisation that music could be a journey sent Ivo on his own quest to unearth music of an equivalent mindset.
A recommendation to investigate the burgeoning acid rock scene over on Americas west coast introduced Ivo to traditional folk/country roots, through Buffalo Springfields newly liberated frontman Neil Young and the collective jamming of The Grateful Dead. I was exposed to more than the electric guitar individuality that English bands had, he recalls. And it wasnt long till Ivo was exposed to acid itself, experiencing his first hallucination in Ketterings Wimpy hamburger bar in the company of his friend (and future heavy metal producer) Max Norman. Ivos parents allowed Maxs band to rehearse in a cottage on the family estate; Ivo acted like their roadie: Id bash away at the drums, but I never dreamt of picking up a guitar or learning an instrument. I was the only one of the eight kids to not have piano lessons, though musically none of us were remotely gifted.
In 1972, when they were eighteen, Max and Ivo hatched a plan to move to London, which failed after one day when the friend they hoped to stay with turned them away. A month later, Ivo returned alone. Drawn to High Street Kensington because of its popular hippie market, he spotted a shop on Kensington Church Street called Normans with Floyds Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (already five years old) in the window. It was run by a father and daughter partnership. The place was shabby and out of time but it still appealed to me, so I asked if they had a job going. By the time Id got home, the father had called, saying I could help on the record side. I think his plan was to train me to run the shop with his daughter.
Ivo and two college friends subsequently moved into a basement flat in nearby Earls Court, stricken by damp and frogs in the kitchen, but theres no place like home. Behind the counter, that was my territory, Ivo says, just as behind my desk at 4AD later on. But I was still incredibly shy.
Six months later, Ivo had had enough of Normans. The stock was limited and wed get asked for a Steely Dan album but we didnt have
a clue because it was only on import. It was a road to nowhere. In an early and risky show of self-determination, he left Normans and moved in with his sister Tessas boyfriend in the nondescript outer west London suburb of Hanwell. One day, exploring the busier streets of nearby Ealing, he found a branch of Musicland, a more clued-in record retailer. After boosting his credibility by asking for the album Alone Together by [Traffics] Dave Mason, he asked the manager, Mike Smith, for a job. Smith happened to need an assistant, but he accurately predicted Ivo would be managing his own Musicland branch within two months.