Labelled with Love E-Book

Andy Bollen

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 478

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'… an instant classic and a required part of the library of anyone fascinated with the record business.' – Danny Goldberg, bestselling author of Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain Chess Records tested their acquisitions out on people waiting at a nearby bus stop: if the crowd were bopping, they had a hit. Sub Pop rejection letters start with the harsh, yet funny, 'Dear Loser'. Atlantic Records signed Led Zeppelin on Dusty Springfield's recommendation. Labelled with Love is an odyssey through your record collection and the world beyond it, from the Jazz Age to punk, the civil rights movement to Thatcherism, the Beatles to Britpop, and Ella Fitzgerald to The Ramones. Long-time music obsessive Andy Bollen tracks popular music through the influential labels that have shaped the last eighty years, chronicling each company with the passion of a fan but the eye of a satirist. This is an informative and revealing look at the leading labels, bands and music that rocked our worlds and shaped our lives.

Leseprobe

Cover illustration adapted from an image by iStockphoto/thenatchdl.

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Andy Bollen, 2024

The right of Andy Bollen to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 434 5

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

2 Tone Records

4AD

A&M

Alternative Tentacles

Amphetamine Reptile Records

Apple Records

Atlantic Records

Bella Union

Blue Note Records

Buddah Records

Capitol Records

Casablanca Records

Chess Records

Columbia Records

Creation Records

Def Jam Recordings

Deram

Domino Recording Company

Elektra Records

EMI

Factory Records

Fast Product

FatCat Records

Fontana

Food Records

Geffen Records

Harvest Records

Homestead Records

Hut Records

Immediate Records

Impulse! Records

IRS

Island Records

Kill Rock Stars

Merge Records

Motown

Mute Records

Ohr

Parlophone

Philadelphia International Records

Philles Records

Polydor Records

Postcard Records

RCA

Reprise

Rough Trade Records

Roulette Records

Sire Records

SST

Stax

Stiff Records

Sub Pop

Sun Records

Track Records

Trojan

Verve Records

Virgin Records

Warner Bros. Records

XL Recordings

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE I have worked with on this journey, from band members to record shop colleagues, and to all the TV, radio and newspaper people I’ve worked for – especially the editors and producers from the BBC and the Comedy Unit.

I’d also like to thank my wife Sharron in particular for her patience and good humour; Adrian Searle; Danny Goldberg; and Mark Beynon and Jezz Palmer at The History Press for all their work.

ANDY BOLLEN2024

INTRODUCTION

THIS IS A JOURNEY through your record collection. It is also a trip through the soundtrack and history of our lives. It’s about two world wars, the Jazz Age and the blues. It’s about the Great Migration when African Americans moved into industrial cities seeking work and filling the labour vacuum created by the First World War. It’s about the segregation era and the civil rights movement. It’s about the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. It’s the rise of fascism, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Korean War, the evolution of rock ’n’ roll, Elvis and the Vietnam War. It’s about gangsterism and the Mob, the death of innocence with JFK. It’s Beatlemania, the Swinging Sixties, peace and love. It’s race riots and fighting in the streets across Europe. It’s Nixon and Watergate. It’s about punk rock and Reagan, it’s about MTV and rap. It’s Thatcherism, the miners’ strike, the Berlin Wall and the internet, Nelson Mandela, Nirvana and New Labour. It’s also about influential people who understood what constituted great music and knew how to promote and sell it, and those who could not.

2 TONE RECORDS

Founder: Jerry Dammers

Influential: The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat

IF STAX WAS THE soundtrack to the civil rights movement in the USA, 2 Tone was the urban, working-class sound of the UK in political turmoil. Backdrop and context are crucial. Leading up to May 1979, when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, the preceding years saw race relations at crisis levels, the National Front was gaining traction, and immigrants were being attacked. After comments made by Eric Clapton, in 1976, along the lines that Enoch Powell was right, Britain had too many foreigners, a grassroots campaign led to the formation of Rock Against Racism.

FANORAK FACT

Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers were arrested and fined £400 each after neo-Nazis showed up at a Specials gig in Cambridge. Hall and Dammers had been trying to break up a riot between security guards and fans.

RAR teamed up with the Anti-Nazi League and embraced the energy and spirit of punk. On 30 April 1978, they gathered from each corner of the UK, marching from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park in London’s East End, culminating in an open-air gig headlined by Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson and The Clash. It was a triumph for multiculturalism over the far-right and a pivotal moment for 2 Tone.

Thatcher’s arrival in 1979, bringing along her belief that there was no such concept as society, ushered in a divisive period that presided over racial tension, riots in Brixton and Toxteth, the Falklands War, the Miners’ Strike, Murdoch taking on Fleet Street, a culture of ‘greed is good’, and privatisation.

When ska and blue beat aficionado Jerry Dammers, of The Specials, formed the label in 1979, the band had been subject to an intense bidding war. The clincher in their contract with Chrysalis Records was the guarantee of their own label. Chrysalis signed The Specials to a five-album deal with a promise to release ten singles per year on their new 2 Tone label. This opportunity helped Dammers achieve a long-held ambition: to create his version of Motown – in the West Midlands. Coventry, like Detroit, had been suffocated economically and was suffering mass unemployment through the decimation of its car industry.

Musically, the sound was perfect. The timing was better. 2 Tone arrived as punk became jaded, losing its edge, softening and evolving into a more commercial product for mainstream consumption. The music was an amphetamine rush, merging the second wave of ska, marrying the Jamaican influence of reggae with a hard-edged sound, particularly in live shows. Again, it embraced aspects of punk – the anger, energy and frustration – and channelled it to an audience craving something new.

When a region or country struggles economically, the prevalence of the Far Right spreads amongst the disenfranchised. The talk becomes racist, and populist and clichéd rhetoric is used to stoke the political malaise and influence the youth. As a white kid, you’re an easy target for these groups. Some refuse, they listen to records with their Black or white pal and form a band. Black and white, unite and fight.

FANORAK FACT

There’s a 2 Tone museum in Coventry. Pete Waterman, who owned a record shop in Coventry called Soul Hole, helped Dammers and the band in the very early days, with gigs, advice and mainly transport – Waterman had a van.

They ignored punk’s nihilism and will to destroy; 2 Tone wanted to fight for positivity, coming together and dancing. The central message was about unity. Even the artwork, the black and white, was a political statement, one of intent – bold and simple and cleverly executed.

The bands brought great English pop and political lyricism; the music was post-punk with a clever, new wave sound and twist. Jerry Dammers wanted the label to be socially aware, but it was also about fun: ‘I just wanted 2 Tone to be like a little club and if you liked the music you became part of it.’

For two years, from 1979, the 2 Tone label engulfed the charts. Its first release was a double A-side of The Special AKA’s ‘Gangsters’ and The Selecter’s ‘Selecter’. The first 5,000 singles were placed inside white sleeves and individually stamped with ‘THE SPECIAL A.K.A. GANGSTERS VS. THE SELECTER’. The record stayed on the charts for twelve weeks, peaking at number 6. In September 1979, Madness doffed their pork pie hats to their hero, Jamaican singer Prince Buster, with ‘The Prince’. The songwriter was a major influence on reggae, soul and Madness. (They later signed to Stiff Records and would go on to have a lengthy pop career.)

1980 dawned with The Special AKA live EP, which gave 2 Tone another anthem for doomed youth. ‘Too Much Too Young’ reached number 1. By November of the same year, The Specials, The Selecter and Madness appeared on the same edition of Top of the Pops. The Specials would split after their number 1 hit, the frenzied, unsettling, evocative ‘Ghost Town’. Released in June 1981, for many it was the soundtrack to a summer of riots. ‘Ghost Town’ spent ten weeks in the charts, three of them at number 1. It was a brilliant, distinctive-sounding song, at times jazz, underpinned with a powerful reggae bass, a haunted-house Hammond and a weird Middle Eastern feel.

We may be wrong-footed by the quirkiness of the song and the pop sound, yet the message accurately conveys the feeling of having Thatcher’s jackboot standing on your throat. It was more than a record on the radio. It mirrored what was happening across inner-city Britain and to society in general. It’s difficult to convey the level of confusion, mistrust and anger around at the time. If you were 13, the next few years were uncertain, bleak and worrying. ‘Ghost Town’ became a portent of what would unfold over the following three or four years. Dammers wrote ‘Ghost Town’ after playing in Glasgow. He told The Guardian:

I’d written it after visiting Glasgow on tour. Thatcher’s shopkeeper economics had closed vast swathes of industry. The recession and mass unemployment were so bad that people were on the streets selling household items, but the song could have been about anywhere in Britain.

Lack of diversification meant that the demise of the mining and steel industries ripped communities to shreds. It was a horrendous time and working-class towns and cities were hit hardest. In this scarred, embittered landscape, 2 Tone shone through. You lost yourself, escaping in songs like The Selecter’s ‘On My Radio’, The Beat’s ‘Tears of a Clown’ and The Specials’ ‘A Message to You, Rudy’.

In parallel with the strong, evocative music, the label’s branding and design were equally distinctive, giving 2 Tone a unique identity. Jerry Dammers, a former art school student, was obsessive about detail. He wanted an indie look: black and white, simple and striking. The chequered, two-tone black and white symbolised racial harmony. It was bold and stands the test of time.

The famous dancing rude boy image (named Walt Jabsco) was derived from a photo Jerry Dammers had of Peter Tosh from the cover of The Wailers’ debut 1965 album, The Wailing Wailers. The image was created by Dammers, Horace Panter and sleeve designers David Storey and John ‘Teflon’ Sims, who oversaw most of the label’s artwork.

Along with its energetic music, political message and multiculturalism, 2 Tone should also be applauded for its approach to gender equality, witnessed in Rhoda Dakar and Pauline Black. The label practised feminism when it seemed unfashionable. A strong, talented woman, Dakar led a seven-piece all-female ska band, The Bodysnatchers. The wonderful Pauline Black was singer with The Selecter and also an actress and writer.

FANORAK FACT

The name of the 2 Tone cartoon rude boy, Walt Jabsco, came randomly from a vintage bowling shirt Jerry Dammers was wearing when they needed a name.

The egalitarianism at Rough Trade was also evident at 2 Tone and, arguably, held both labels back. The Selecter and The Specials had fourteen members between them. Everyone had a vote and therefore a say on the label’s output and direction. Despite the best intentions and a sustained musical assault on the charts, it’s difficult for a business to function as a cooperative. In 2 Tone’s case, pressure from touring the USA caused the most collateral damage. The Specials appeared on Saturday Night Live, performing a no-nonsense, particularly fraught version of ‘Gangsters’. The pressure of touring was getting to them, as Jerry Dammers would later explain: ‘It was a laugh to start off with, it was great. But it ended in chaos, total chaos.’

With bands splintering off to do their own projects, in 1984, 2 Tone had a hit with the anti-apartheid anthem ‘Nelson Mandela’, written by Dammers, produced by Elvis Costello and performed by The Special AKA. Soon, 1980s pop culture would be seduced and consumed by Stock, Aitken and Waterman. The label stopped operating in 1986.

It’s testament to 2 Tone’s peak period (1979–81) that the movement the label created still has a resonance today. Original label pressings are coveted; the fashion, sound and ethos continue to be popular, inspiring bands such as No Doubt, Rancid, Bombskare and Young Fathers. The death of Terry Hall of The Specials was announced on 18 December 2022. He was 63 and passed away after a short illness.

PLAYLIST: MY TOP 5 ALBUMS

The Special AKA: In The Studio

The Selecter: Too Much Pressure

The Specials: The Specials

Various Artists: This Are 2 Tone

Rico Rodriguez: That Man Is Forward

4AD

Founders: Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent

Influential: The Pixies, The Breeders, Cocteau Twins

IT WAS 1977 AND, against the backdrop of punk, Martin Mills and Nick Austin set up Beggars Banquet. The label had evolved from a chain of five profitable record shops. Tubeway Army and Gary Numan hits funded a roster including The Associates, The Go-Betweens and The Cult. Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent were Beggars Banquet record store employees. Watts-Russell in particular had proven, from the shop floor up, that he had a clear understanding of what constituted a Beggars band. His boss, Martin Mills, was impressed by how he understood the embryonic post-punk scene and funded an imprint, as a testing ground for Beggars Banquet. In 1979, Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent started Axis, and after releasing four singles, they changed their name to 4AD.

The label existed as part of the Beggars Banquet Group. If bands did well, they would graduate to the main label. In 1980, they released two singles by Bauhaus, ‘Dark Entries’ and ‘Terror Couple Kill Colonel’, and the album In the Flat Field. Bauhaus moved to Beggars Banquet and, in late 1980, Watts-Russell and Kent gained full control of 4AD. Few record labels can lay claim to having been more enigmatic or influential.

4AD not only gave Beggars Banquet a run for its money but shook up the UK independent music scene. After a year, Kent sold his shares to Watts-Russell and set up Situation Two Records. Watts-Russell remained the sole owner of the label and went on to sign The Cocteau Twins, The Birthday Party, Wolfgang Press, Xmal Deutschland, Lush, The Pixies, Throwing Muses and The Breeders.

4AD not only created a record label; they conjured up a secret world, a parallel universe, set in a bewildering, maladjusted dreamscape. The artwork of 4AD sleeves had a distinctively stylised look. Designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson gave the albums a unique, idiosyncratic, haunted quality. Like works of art created in the psychiatric ward, these were the products of a fevered genius, paintings of great beauty and confusion, like Renoir on acid or Salvador Dali juggling on a unicycle. At the heart of Oliver’s work for 4AD is an introspective dislocation and it worked. The capricious visual connections hinted at something magical; these metaphorical hinterlands provoked the already bemused music fan into asking, ‘What on earth is going on here?’ Oliver got it.

The brief was to envisage what the music looked like. At 4AD, he was part of the process, given the music before release and allowed time to work on it. Image and sound were everything. Oliver himself was less pretentious: ‘I don’t see myself as an artist. I work with artists and collaborate with them, but then it becomes graphic design. It’s not art. I’m a graphic designer.’

At times, the artwork or graphic design was divorced from the music, yet the contradiction of image and sound, the distance, worked: the disturbed, otherworldly images and disparate elements gathered to create a cohesive image, like the Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand, The Breeders’ Mountain Battles and The Pixies’ Doolittle.

These covers only added to the strangeness; a dark, surreal quality worked in tandem with the off-kilter nature of the music. The artwork was as crucial to the label’s acts as the music inside. With the iconic sleeve art, you knew it was a 4AD act before you picked up an album. If ever a label was defined by its bands, branding and image, it was 4AD. I knew people who didn’t care about the music but who collected 4AD releases like art. At the time, I found their behaviour troubling; now it looks like it may have been astute.

Their roster of acts embraced post-punk, alternative rock, shoegaze and dreamadelica. They were cinematic, melodramatic, atmospheric, iridescent, ambient and shimmering. They were also clever. Ivo Watts-Russell formed This Mortal Coil, an in-house label supergroup. The idea of a notoriously reclusive guy wanting to form a supergroup was outlandish but it worked. The label ethos focused on artists over bosses; it wasn’t about execs but the artistic integrity of the bands. This is why Watts-Russell – being at the heart of and having to take centre stage in a supergroup – seemed so out of place.

One of the strangest artistic by-products of This Mortal Coil was being able to hear every word Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins sang on her hauntingly evocative rendition of Tim Buckley and Larry Beckett’s ‘Song to the Siren’. This Mortal Coil’s 1984 album, It’ll End in Tears, spoke to poetic girls with angular cheekbones, hung up on Sylvia Plath with a secret yearning to break out and dance to Kenny Loggins’ ‘Footloose’.

Watts-Russell made This Mortal Coil a lightning rod, a project which reflected his creative aesthetic and embodied the label’s ethereal sound. It encapsulated 4AD as an artistic force. The message was about invention, experimentation and embracing creative collaboration. The concept would be fluid, changing the performers and contributors while keeping the name. This Mortal Coil became the label’s statement of intent.

4AD highlights include The Breeders’ The Last Splash, with the honeyed, whiskey vocal of Kim Deal and her melodic bass line on ‘Cannonball’, Throwing Muses, and Tanya Donnelly’s later project, ‘Belly’. The Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas hit the spot the way only a bewildering symphony can. The Birthday Party released a couple of compilation albums: one of two EPs, Mutiny/The Bad Seed in 1983, and Hee Haw in 1989.

On their 1989 album, Doolittle, The Pixies perfectly captured the essence of 4AD – artwork, branding, the sound, the discordantly melodic and malfunctioning songs. Musically, it found the band perilously close to leaving the alternative independent underground for the bombast of stadium rock. I’m glad it didn’t work out. They appeared happy in the niche they had carved out for themselves: popular, much loved and consistently performing to theatre and arena level sell-out tours, festival favourites — yet not quite that REM mainstream superstardom. Without Doolittle, there would have been no Nirvana, or at least no band which sounded like they did in 1991. Doolittle and The Pixies inspired many people. The sound and artwork of In Utero by Nirvana was screaming out to be a 4AD record. It’s one for debate. In Utero looks and sounds like a 4AD record: the dislocated music, the album title, the subject matter and the artwork (Steve Albini produced The Breeders’ 1990 album, Pod). We can only imagine how Nirvana’s story would have unfolded on a smaller label with less pressure: artwork by Grierson, Oliver and Cobain. If Nirvana had been on 4AD, they would have been allowed time with less pressure for a follow-up to Nevermind.

FANORAK FACT

The Cocteau Twins were named after a song by Johnny and the Self Abusers who became Simple Minds.

The best music bosses are fuelled by instinct; their decisions are based on hunches and not made by board meetings. They sign a band because they love something about them. When bands are contracted for purely financial reasons, it misses the point. Every label owner has a blueprint for the type of group he or she likes. Some enjoy hearing boy-meets-girl-falls-in-love-ends-in-heartache songs while others prefer ‘Debaser’, as Black Francis of The Pixies goes left-field. Why not write a song based on the French surrealist film Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali? A film focusing on making art about nothing? In ‘Debaser’, Black tweaks the lyrics into French/English, ‘I am un Chien Andalusia’, while eulogising over the film, which is famous for a scene where an eyeball is sliced open. Most record company execs and bigwigs would call the doctor, turn around and walk out the door.

Such eclecticism made 4AD beloved by indie fans across the globe. Genius in art can nudge perilously close to mental illness. When, on Doolittle, The Pixies ask, ‘Where is My Mind?’ it summarises 4AD’s shtick perfectly and is, perhaps, too close to the bone.

The kind of mind that seeks out perversely individualistic bands, ones that swim against the mainstream, while managing all the pressures of running a label, must have limits of endurance. All labels inevitably take on the identity of the person at the top; there’s a brittle fragility central to 4AD’s identity. In 1994, Watts-Russell paid the price with a nervous breakdown, linked to depression, arguments with artists, and sheer consternation at the music industry. Watts-Russell believed his original vision for the label was under threat.

4AD captures the true personality of independent art. It’s the last chord of melody before the sorrowful darkness and the truncated, unresolved diminished minor chord before the crash into the abyss. It’s music for unhappy dreamers. From a business point of view, its branding was distinctive, yet also pragmatic enough to make money. Few would guess its biggest seller was 1987’s global smash, ‘Pump Up the Volume’ by M/A/R/R/S.

Watts-Russell left the label back in 1999, selling his half of 4AD to Beggars Banquet partner Martin Mills. In keeping with his perceived eccentricity, he headed off to the desert in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with his dogs. The current boss of 4AD, Simon Halliday, continues to prefer eclecticism. His approach chimes with the original owner’s vision. They have artists with a divergent, independent quality who can create music close to the mainstream yet just veer towards a slightly strange, off-centre sound. 4AD continues as part of the Beggars Group, with artists like Future Islands, The National, Bon Iver, Grimes, St Vincent, Camera Obscura and Deerhunter.

Vaughan Oliver died aged 62 in 2020. Writing in Design Week, Molly Long said: ‘Despite never writing a song or playing a note, Vaughan Oliver’s contribution to the alternative music subculture of the 1980s and 1990s was considerable and, to many, genre-defining.’

PLAYLIST: MY TOP 5 ALBUMS

The Breeders: The Last Splash

Cocteau Twins: Victorialand

Throwing Muses: House Tornado

The Pixies: Surfer Rosa

Birthday Party: Release the Bats

A&M

Founders: Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss

Influential: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, The Carpenters, The Police, Joe Cocker

A&M WAS FORMED BY Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962. The A was for Alpert and the M for Moss. They were originally called Carnival Records, but had to change after realising there were a few other labels with the same name. Alpert was the musician, Moss the promotions man. Their first release, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s ‘The Lonely Bull’, sold 700,000 copies. A&M went on to become one of the best independent artist-friendly record labels, leaving a great legacy.

Alpert was a trumpeter, bandleader and a popular artist. Despite his comparative youth, in 1957 he had co-written hits with his writing partner Rob Weerts for Keen Records and in 1960 had a deal as a solo vocalist for Dot Records. In September 2012, during an interview for the label’s fiftieth anniversary, Alpert told Rolling Stone, ‘I was on a major label for a year and a half, and I had a real “a-ha” experience. I didn’t like how artists were treated, and I filed that feeling away. I thought, “If I ever get a chance to have my own company, it’ll be a true artist label, and revolve around the artist.”’

Jerry Moss, from the East Coast, was schooled in radio work, looking after artists when he worked at the mainly Doo-wop label, Coed Records, based in the Brill Building, where he had learned the business. He was pivotal to a song called ‘16 Candles’ by the Crest, which became a hit. Realising that his salary working for one company did not equate to his efforts or hit rate, Moss followed his instincts and moved to Los Angeles where he worked as an independent promotions man for various West Coast labels, helping them break into the East Coast radio circuit. Desperate to work for himself, he set up a small publishing company, moved into production, got to know producers and met Alpert.

They quickly became friends. Having similar ambitions, they decided to join forces. Moss suggested they put $100 each into an account and see if his contacts and Alpert’s musicianship might come up with something. They recorded and released ‘Tell It to the Birds’, which received local radio airplay before Dot Records picked it up for $750; they sold 7,000 copies and suddenly had $2,000 in their account.

The pair then had their inspirational moment, at the bull ring. Both shared an interest in bullfighting, Moss in particular, because he had read and loved Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (a modernist novel about ex-pats travelling to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls) and Death in the Afternoon (non-fiction about the ritual and traditions of bullfighting). While attending bullfights, they heard Mariachi bands and came up with ‘The Lonely Bull’ by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

Due to the Tijuana Brass, they were considered an easy-listening label and were keen to broaden the roster. With the money generated from the sales of Tijuana Brass (over 13 million copies by 1966), they signed Sérgio Mendes. His fruitful relationship with A&M began with Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, yielding a hit single with ‘Mas Que Nada’. A further crop of huge-selling albums would follow from Mendes for many years.

FANORAK FACT

The famous Tijuana Brass that Herb Alpert fronted didn’t exist at the start. He doubled up the trumpet parts himself when recording. It wasn’t until he had hits with his singles and albums and had to tour that he formed the Tijuana Brass.

With funding from the Mendes hits, they were able to diversify, and started taking chances on artists like Joe Cocker. His live album, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, released in 1970, was a huge success, and soon they were directly trying to sign or license artists from the UK such as Humble Pie, Peter Frampton and Supertramp.

With A&M, we have the singular vision, mindset and instinct that saw them pick up and sign an artist like The Carpenters. In hindsight, with Richard Carpenter’s arrangements and skill as a musician and Karen’s wonderfully melancholic contralto, it would seem obvious. However, at the beginning of their career, The Carpenters had many false starts. They were considered unusual at the time and were also competing against heavy rock bands. Their polished sound and smooth production would be viewed, even then, as too safe.

Moss and Albert had the instinct to sign The Carpenters in April 1969. They stood by them in October of the same year, despite their debut album Offering’s lukewarm reception. The LP only produced one minor hit, a ballad version of The Beatles’ ‘Ticket to Ride’. The song reached number 54 on the Billboard charts, and the album sold 18,000, leaving A&M with a loss. Despite this, again they remained loyal; Alpert knew all they needed was a hit single and everything would click.

Burt Bacharach was a fan and invited the duo to open a charity gala concert where they played a medley of Bacharach and David songs. Alpert had Richard Carpenter rework ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’. A&M called it right and they had a hit, reaching number 1 and staying there for four weeks. After this breakthrough, Offering was reissued internationally in November 1970 as Ticket to Ride with a different cover, selling 250,000 copies. The Carpenters went on to have twelve Top 10 hits for the label, becoming global superstars. They were a great example of a label allowing artists to develop and breathe.

Cat Stevens, another artist with a unique style and a different take on the world, intelligent and articulate, was licensed from Island in the UK. The music business had changed and was about artists like The Carpenters, getting to know them as people, trusting them, and allowing them to develop at their own pace.

FANORAK FACT

‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police was the biggest-selling single of 1983. It was number 1 for eight weeks in the USA and four weeks in the UK.

A&M remind me of my brother’s Police albums and copying Stewart Copeland’s drumming. Later, my taste developed for some old-fashioned country rock, the albums of Gene Clark, particularly The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark, where former Byrd, Gene Clark and banjo player supreme, Doug Dillard, created a quiet, majestically low-key piece of brilliance, filled with glorious vocal harmonies. Their second release, Through the Morning, Through the Night, has more cover versions on it, yet is worth hunting down for a listen. Another A&M favourite is the man behind some of The Carpenters’ biggest hits, the excellent songwriter Paul Williams; some of his albums are spectacularly brilliant, especially Just an Old Fashioned Love Song and Life Goes On.

With A&M it was also about more than artistic freedom. You sensed they loved their job. When Wes Montgomery wanted to cover The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’, it was a left-of-centre move, yet his take on the tune is marvellous – a great insight into both the label and the jazz guitarist’s skilled pace and intricate interpretation. (Our friends from Blue Note and Impulse! show up in despatches: the song was recorded in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey with production by Creed Taylor.) This gives Montgomery’s work a familiar warmth and vibrancy. So, with A&M attention to detail was also vital.

That they started out pulling resources in Alpert’s small garage, with a piano, a two-track recording machine and a desk containing a phone with two extensions always endeared me to A&M. They ended up in Charlie Chaplin’s old studio in Hollywood. Jerry Moss once said that if A&M had a big year, it would share the profits with its staff and the artists on the label.

A&M, particularly the UK side, is also remembered for signing the Sex Pistols … then sacking them on 16 March 1977, after six days. As soon as it was released from its contract, A&M destroyed all 25,000 copies of the single ‘God Save the Queen’. However, a few were salvaged and those in circulation are coveted by record collectors around the world. They are now among the most collectable and expensive pieces of vinyl and it’s thought only nine remain. In 2015, an A&M copy of ‘God Save the Queen’ sold for £6,000.

FANORAK FACT

Jerry Moss found a hobby in horse racing, breeding and training a Kentucky Derby winner.

The Police signed to A&M in March 1978. Again, here was a different kind of act – a post-punk trio with great pop and rock songs underpinned with reggae rhythms, who would sell big. The band found fame and fortune thanks to a prolific run of hit albums between 1978 and 1983, Outlandos d’Amour, Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity. They had five number 1 singles in the UK: ‘Message in a Bottle’, ‘Walking on the Moon’, ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’, ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’, which also reached number 1 in the USA.

After selling A&M to PolyGram for $500 million, in 1989, Alpert and Moss stayed on as per their agreement for another four years. But they felt they had lost too much control: PolyGram changed the staff and hadn’t kept their word, so A&M sued. A&M now exist as part of the Universal Music Group.

It might have started with a distinct middle-of-the-road, grown-up flavour, but by the end of its journey, A&M had signed and released a broad roster of acts from The Police to Carol King, Bryan Adams to Soundgarden, Peter Frampton to Supertramp, Cheryl Crow to the Flying Burrito Brothers, Procol Harum to Wes Montgomery, and from Janet Jackson to Elkie Brooks. The label treated its artists well and they reciprocated by delivering great work. Like many of the other great labels before them, A&M believed in the music and trusted in the artists to deliver. What has it left for us? Well, it’s a wonderfully eclectic archive of over 600 albums, which has brought on an impossible headache when trying to decide my favourite five.

Jerry Moss passed away peacefully, aged 88, on 16 August 2023.

PLAYLIST: MY TOP 5 ALBUMS

Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin

Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs and Englishmen

The Police: Reggatta De Blanc

Paul Williams: Just an Old Fashioned Love Song

Dillard and Clark: The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark

ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES

Founders: Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray

Influential: Dead Kennedys, NoMeansNo

FORMED IN SAN FRANCISCO in 1979 by two members of the Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray, Alternative Tentacles was primarily an outlet to release their single, a satirical attack on ‘zen fascist’ senator Jerry Brown called ‘California Über Alles’. Jello Biafra, the Dead Kennedys’ frontman, was unrelenting and continues to be unique, with an absurdist approach to political activism. Alternative Tentacles would prove over time to be one of the most influential labels of the US punk scene.

Biafra was born Eric Reed Boucher in Boulder, Colorado in 1958. He changed his name to cause a reaction in 1978. It was the despairing juxtaposition of images: the starving people of Biafra and the consumerism of ‘plastic America’ with the Jell-O. He has been through it all, from obscenity lawsuits against the label to serious assault from baying punks accusing him of selling out. He is now a spoken-word artist and ran for the leadership of the Green Party of the USA, but it wasn’t quite ready for his prankster approach.

Throughout his career, Biafra stuck to his mantra, ‘Anything I can do to jar people’s brain sediment, I’ll do.’ And jar people’s minds he did. At the age of 21, he attracted media attention when he responded to a challenge from a friend and ran for mayor of San Francisco. His campaign highlights included a ban on cars within city limits and a law to make all businessmen wear clown suits from nine to five o’clock.

Eric’s father was a psychiatric social worker and his mother a librarian. Somehow, he seemed to benefit from both, assembling an understanding of the susceptibility of the human condition and inheriting great language skills, with a fascination for poetry and literature from an early age. A love of music was also born from his father’s eclectic record collection. As a kid, though, he struggled to mix at school, became insular and found his dreams and expectations were different from his peers. Biafra would explain years later, ‘My heroes in those days were Batman villains. My other friends wanted to be nurses and firemen, but I thought the Riddler and Penguin were much better role models.’

If the Sex Pistols and The Damned were moved to action by the insipid sound of prog rock, in Colorado, country rock moved young Jello to seek out record stores selling the MC5, The Stooges, Nazz and 13th Floor Elevators. In 1978, he enrolled at the University of California-Santa Cruz but left after two months. It wasn’t for him. Inspired by the sound and attitude of the bands he’d found in those record stores, he continued writing songs and poetry, and in the same year, formed the Dead Kennedys. After a week of solid rehearsals, they played their first show at San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens and quickly gained a strong following.

Surprisingly, though, the band struggled to gain any traction. ‘California Über Alles’ didn’t catch on in San Francisco but did in the UK after Bob Last of Fast Product in Edinburgh was given the record to listen to by New York promoter Jim Fouratt. It is seldom mentioned that the US West Coast explosion began on Scotland’s East Coast. Last brought out the single and the Dead Kennedys took off in the UK. Cherry Red released their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotten Vegetables in the UK and the IRS Records imprint, Faulty Products, released it in the USA. Alternative Tentacles would eventually release it too.

Alternative Tentacles was now the go-to hardcore punk label for bands like Bad Brains, Flipper and Black Flag. In 1981, Alternative Tentacles put out a compilation album featuring its bands, called Let Them Eat Jelly Beans, to introduce the label’s artists to a more welcoming European audience. As with the Ramones, audiences in the UK and the rest of Europe seemed to get it quicker. The press especially tuned into the quirkier, quivering voice of the Dead Kennedys’ crazed frontman; they were the US Sex Pistols, only more literate, more political and, well, more musical.

In 1986 the label became embroiled in a legal case, thanks to the Swiss artist H.R. Giger. His artwork, on a poster inserted in the fourth album Frankenchrist, led to the Dead Kennedys being up in court and on trial for obscenity. The band would win, eventually, but the collateral damage split the group and left Jello Biafra in sole charge of Alternative Tentacles. Instead of going into its shell and knowing it would upset and irritate the right-wing pro-censorship groups further, the label released Butthole Surfers’ mini-album Brown Reason to Live, then albums by The Crucifucks and The Dicks.

Jello Biafra hit the university lecture circuit and released the first of his eight spoken-word albums. Apart from the Dead Kennedys, there would be Bad Brains, TSOL, D.O.A. and 7 Seconds. The label would produce the weird and wonderful and the strange. A personal favourite of mine is MDC’s ‘John Wayne Was a Nazi’. There was one point – the pre-grunge period, the late 1980s – when it was conceivable that the label could have been regarded as a success. It released work by the brilliant NoMeansNo, The Beatnigs and Alice Donut.

In the 1990s, the punk magazine Maximum Rocknroll accused the label and Biafra of hypocrisy for using Caroline for distribution. The problem was that Caroline was owned by EMI. The magazine banned Alternative Tentacles adverts and reviews, but the backlash reached the point where Jello Biafra was seriously assaulted by a group of punk fans squealing and yelling ‘rich rock star’ during a gig in 1994.

From 1998 to 2001, Biafra was in court taking on his former bandmates after the label and Biafra were sued by his band, claiming they were owed $76,000 – a decade’s worth of album royalties. Biafra was no businessman and the oversight was blamed on an accounting error. In 2003, after an appeal, the label was forced to pay $200,000 in compensation and damages. The rights of the albums were returned to the band, which licensed them to Los Angeles label Manifesto Records. The decision was a crushing blow for Alternative Tentacles as the Dead Kennedys amounted to over 50 per cent of the label’s sales.

After that, Jello Biafra implored people not to buy the repackaged Dead Kennedys music on Manifesto. Biafra described losing the band as ‘like having your limbs blown off’. He took the situation badly: ‘I’ve used my own money to keep the label afloat. Now many of our label peers are down to one or two employees or pulling the plug altogether. That scares the living shit out of me in some ways, but I think we’re better equipped because we already know how to survive hard times.’ Biafra and Alternative Tentacles have since flourished with the owner as a campaigner, calling out bankers and trying to save the planet. The label’s biggest-selling acts are Leftover Crack and Pansy Division.

PLAYLIST: MY TOP 5 ALBUMS

Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotten Vegetables

NoMeansNo: Wrong

Jello Biafra & the Melvins: Never Breathe What You Can’t See

Pansy Division: That’s So Gay

Dead Kennedys: Plastic Surgery Disasters

AMPHETAMINE REPTILE RECORDS

Founder: Tom Hazelmyer

Influential: Helmet, Tar, Cows

AMPHETAMINE REPTILE RECORDS WAS formed in Washington state, in 1986, by Tom Hazelmyer (though its first release was not until 1988). He was born and raised in Michigan before, in 1980, his family upped sticks for Minneapolis. Here he worked by day in a foundry and performed by night with various punk bands. Growing bored with the underground punk scene, he took an unexpected leap (in our narrative at least) into the armed forces, when he enlisted in the Marines and was stationed close to Seattle in Washington state.

In the mid-1980s, his latest band, Halo of Flies (named after an Alice Cooper song), started to attract interest. They came close to securing a deal with a few major companies, but Hazelmyer felt it would be a better idea to set up his own label with the aim of releasing the band’s albums.

Hazelmyer’s is a dislocated All-American story. His tale is not all homemade lemonade and grandma’s apple pie (perhaps if the pie was pumped full of apples laced with cough syrup and a heavy crust of 1960s garage …). By now the label was based in Minneapolis and Amphetamine Reptile, or AmRep to their friends, were fast becoming a renowned label, particularly for those on the edge of town, artists and fans alike, who thrived on the periphery of the underground scene.

The first release sounded familiar. The revolutionary declaration, Dope-Guns-’N-Fucking in the Streets, was the rallying cry of the MC5 manager, John Sinclair. The compilation hit the sweet spot and included Halo of Flies, U-Men (he had helped them out on bass several times), The Thrown-Ups and Mudhoney. Five hundred copies were pressed, of which around nine were coloured vinyl. Mudhoney’s song ‘Twenty-Four’ was timed perfectly, before they started on the Sub Pop singles club as the Seattle label took off.

AmRep gained notoriety when it brought out Helmet’s Strap It On and sold 40,000 copies. Hazelmyer’s road to label boss was due to the situation he found himself in. Born in the mid-1960s, by the 1980s he found himself, pre-MTV and grunge, in a mix of noise rock, alternative metal and hardcore punk, just as Black Flag were splitting (for the first time). Things were so different before the internet. The weekly music press then was Sounds, Melody Maker and NME. It was here, mostly in Sounds, that you would find a nod to labels like Amphetamine Reptile in a singles or gig review; or perhaps you might hear something on a John Peel session on Radio 1.

As is often the way with such beautiful craziness, a person with good taste who is also no-nonsense can end up becoming boss by stepping up at the critical time. Wherever you find a scene, there’s always a subterranean version of it, an underground take on the fake. The label captured that crucial pre-grunge dirty punk energy and inventiveness of mid-to-late 1980s Seattle.

Musically, the label is somewhere between Melvins groove grunge, Mudhoney’s savage Stooges-fest and Helmet’s heavy rifferama. Then, it’s a hard left to the end of the dial for artists like Cows, Helios Creed, Servotron, Chokebore, Love 666 and Boss Hog. Categorising their artists is challenging, and that’s how Amphetamine Reptile like it. Hazelmyer loved the 1960s psychedelia of UK bands, especially The Creation. He also fed off the UK punk and then post-punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, The Damned, Joy Division, Gang of Four, Wire, Killing Joke, Birthday Party, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

I’ve always liked Hazelmyer, which is primarily down to knowing about the label through Helmet and later, in 1994, the Melvins who released their sixth album, Prick, while they were under contract to Atlantic Records and were called ƧИIV⅃ƎM (Melvins in mirror writing). To many, Hazelmyer is gruff, but under that persona lies someone who has an understanding of what he wants and the bands he likes. He is scary and argumentative and at times over the top, but I’m from Scotland where everyone is like that – people in bands, tour managers, soundmen and record shop bosses. Usually, they’re just creative people who understand the niche and become impatient when people don’t maintain their standards. Hazelmyer was a different kind of entrepreneur, driven and relentless, and wanted things done a certain way. He readily admits to being influenced by Homestead Records and by the attitude of UK label Stiff Records, and its willingness to have fun and be cheap and inventive with its marketing.

Like many of our label bosses, he started setting up an outlet to release his own band’s music, then one band he released changed the story. Helmet sold over 40,000 copies of their debut. Cows, who sounded like The Stooges, put on powerful and unpredictable live shows that were among the best around. Both received rave reviews. Hazelmyer claims it was all accidental, but if you do make records, unless you want to keep them in the loft and show them off at Christmas or at a party, you need to deal with the press, fanzines, promotion and distribution. It’s hard work but he was good at it, and then others asked him to do it for them and suddenly he was running a label.

If you hear about people like Dave Grohl picking up vinyl in a record shop, they always speak in hushed tones about labels like AmRep. That’s because the genuine guys who find themselves making it seriously big understand that the money’s good, but it can be kind of soulless when all you ever truly wanted was to make a single. The decent guys who find unimagined mainstream fame never forget they got into music in the first place to make a record. They would love to release limited edition vinyl on the current version of AmRep.

FANORAK FACT

Hazelmyer owns and runs a bar appropriately called ‘Grumpys’.

In 2015, Hazelmyer’s story was the subject of a great Eric Robel documentary called The Color of Noise. Some years later, in December 2022, speaking on the Veil of Sound podcast, Tom Hazelmyer explained why his label was always assumed to be a bigger operation than it was. ‘The perception always was that we were bigger than we were because we did shit right. Everyone thought we were this massive functioning thing, but it was just a bunch of efficient people up in the Midwest cranking it out and working really hard because we all loved what we were doing.’ If the label’s bands were touring, radio stations would play their records and record shops would carry the album they were promoting. They were professional. They had to be – only about five people were working there.

Hazelmyer puts his longevity down to doggedness, determination and stubbornness, and trying to prove wrong all those who wanted him to fail. He also takes great stock from the catastrophes that saw other labels crash and burn in unsuccessful business moves, while he was always focusing on one thing: making records. If you’ve ever been in a band, you’ll know that many people think it’s uncool to be overexcited to release a record. But once it’s out there, anything can happen.

In recent years, Hazelmyer appeared to have scaled back his work, both running his pub and heading the label, after a serious illness. He wasn’t quite shuffling off into semi-retirement, but he was stuck in Minneapolis and, until recently, releasing hand-carved limited edition vinyl – linocut artwork personally carved by Hazelmyer. But in 2022, he shocked everyone when he released Bad Mood Rising by the Melvins to critical acclaim.

Hazelmyer runs the label part-time now and loves it. The pace has changed and each project seems more like a pop-up company that is started and finished, its creation sent to a pressing plant and released. Things are more spontaneous. He’s no longer interested in running the label the way it was done in the 1990s. The record is made, put out, no dramas. Current information about AmRep on the label’s website is typical Hazelmyer – and funny: ‘Old-school NOISE label. Recently resurrected. We make small run art releases and other shenanigans; they are usually priced accordingly, get over it. Based in Minneapolis.’

PLAYLIST: MY TOP 5 ALBUMS

Cows: Daddy Has a Tail!

Boss Hog: Cold Hands

Love 666: Please Kill Yourself So I Can Rock

Helmet: Strap It On

God Bullies: Mama Womb Womb

APPLE RECORDS

Founders: The Beatles/EMI

Influential: Badfinger, James Taylor, Billy Preston

THE BEATLES LAUNCHED APPLE Records in January 1968. The idea was originally suggested by their manager Brian Epstein (who died in late August 1967). He wanted to create a tax-effective business structure. John Lennon was clear about the label’s intentions: Apple was a choice between paying tax to the government, or into a business. Like most of Epstein’s business ideas, it would prove fraught. Apple’s selection serves to remind us that every label, especially one with good intentions, requires a stringent fiscal strategy. At one point, the label was viewed as a soft touch and a creative free-for-all. Then, it was eventually turned around, spectacularly, by marketing the legacy of The Beatles.

John, Paul, George and Ringo threw off their Sgt. Pepper tunics and kaftans and donned city gents’ and bankers’ suits, and they looked happy enough at the launch. They announced Beatles Ltd was now officially changed to Apple Corps Limited, and registered as a trademark in forty-seven countries. Within a few weeks, they’d also registered Apple Electronics, Apple Films, Apple Music Publishing, Apple Records, Apple Retail, Apple Tailoring Civil and Theatrical, Apple Management, Apple Overseas and Apple Publicity. The Apple Building was based at number 3, Savile Row, in Mayfair, an area more associated with bespoke tailoring than rock ’n’ roll.

The move to form Apple, however, highlighted the underlying problems affecting the band. They were now keen to take control. Each was a strong individual with unique tastes in art, literature, film and politics. Apple Records mirrored that creative tension. Paul was left as the main driving force. John was busy with Yoko. The Beatles, creatively, were no longer a group; they were a splintered, troubled band.

This would be reflected in their ninth studio album The Beatles (White Album) recorded between May and October and released in November 1968. The majority of the songs on the White Album were written in Rishikesh, India between February and April of 1968 at the Maharishi’s Academy of Transcendental Meditation. Lennon and McCartney had met secretly during the retreat and worked together. Lennon wrote fourteen of the songs. Forty new songs were written and twenty-six recorded roughly and then demoed in Harrison’s Esher home, Kinfauns. When The Beatles assembled at EMI’s Abbey Road in May 1968, though, tensions were soon running high. John broke the band’s working policy of no girlfriends or wives by taking Yoko Ono to work, and the number of takes and creative differences became so bad that George Martin left for an unscheduled holiday. He was followed by engineer Geoff Emerick who quit mid-session, and Ringo left the band for two weeks and flew off to Sardinia.

In 2018, on the release of a fiftieth anniversary Super Deluxe edition of the White Album, Giles Martin explained that dozens of unheard tracks reveal a friendlier studio atmosphere. Martin told Forbes Magazine perhaps a more company-friendly Apple version of events. In the same way, November 2021’s Get Back documentary cast a different light on the recording process – it seems reports of tensions were over-egged. ‘After the time of Sgt. Pepper the group was essentially taking back control and becoming a band again,’ Martin elucidated. ‘It is said to be a fractious time where the band was pulling itself apart, but if you listen to the outtakes, it is definitely not that. As opposed to having a sort of “architect of sound” overlooking them, they wanted to build the music from the ground up.’

FANORAK FACT

Apple had a spoken word imprint called Zapple, run by Barry Miles. It planned to release a live UK performance of Lenny Bruce. It never happened.

Apple Records was a contradiction. It was viewed by many as a great artistic leap forward. The Beatles were taking control, taking care of business. If accounts in the book The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard DiLello are true, it was a crazy time, filled with the usual showbiz extravagance. There were so many hangers-on that the building was infiltrated with squatters, charlatans and every crackpot hippy under the sun.

The Beatles may have given the impression of a cultural utopia, but industry insiders viewed the project as EMI allowing the lads to let off steam and play grown-ups. This creative freedom would come at a cost. The trip was turning ugly. It created an atmosphere of backstabbing, paranoia and theft, which eventually saw the label dissolve into legal wrangles, while Apple crumbled in a sea of confusion.

After The Beatles split officially on 10 April 1970 (John allegedly told the others, unofficially, that he was leaving in September 1969), the label looked as though it existed to sue anyone and everyone. At one point, Apple Records announced the weekly legal writ instead of the week’s latest release. It sued its distributors, EMI and Capitol Records, over unpaid royalties. Apple Computers was sued over trademark violations.

Apple may have defined the spirit of the 1960s – liberating, expressive and experimental. It was a great idea, ruined by egotistical power trips. This is what happens when far-out hippy millionaires, too naive to run a business, own the keys to the kingdom. Apple HQ at Savile Row attracted a collection of freaks.

The label continues to have both an emotional pull and intrigue for Beatles fans. Despite the business side being disorganised, there was always the music. The music saved Apple from becoming a nostalgic, 1960s artefact. The eccentric cast of characters was astonishing – people like engineer and Lennon’s acid buddy, Magic Alex (Yannis Alexis Mardas), who spent over £300,000 on crazy inventions in Apple’s basement, building a seventy-two track recording studio and flying saucers. Even sensible guys like BP Fallon had two jobs at Apple. His official role as a publicist was to write biographies on Apple artists; the unofficial one, to test the quality of Paul’s grass from many suppliers, keen to serve the golden ticket. Then there was Chris Hodge, whom Ringo brought in as they shared a love of UFOs.

Undoubtedly, The Beatles’ initial rationale with Apple was well intentioned. They even ran an ad campaign inviting artists to send their demos and had an open submission policy. They were ahead of the game, trying to change the creative environment for artists. However, a combination of awful business practice, naivety and misplaced trust saw the venture becoming farcical. The Beatles’ inner sanctum was normally tight, with the same staff throughout their careers; business was always kept in-house. It would be a safe assumption that the project also went off-kilter due to recreational pharmaceuticals.

The label might best be distilled in a singular sketch from the mockumentary, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, where George Harrison (reporter) is interviewing Michael Palin (Eric Manchester) while behind him the contents of Rutle Corps HQ are being stolen mid-interview. The sketch depicts the public perception of the chaotic way Apple was run.

From an early age, Apple had a major effect on me. The label was one of the major driving forces behind my fascination with music and record labels. When I was 6, I had something of a musical epiphany when I realised the singer in Wings was the man from The Beatles. I had the Wings single ‘Hi, Hi, Hi’ b/w ‘C Moon’ (it was a New Zealand release; don’t ask me how we came to have it – theft no doubt). It had a full Granny Smith apple on the A-side and a half on the B-side. I thought the Apple Records logo, designed by Gene Mahon, was a work of genius. Somewhere else in my inherited suitcase of records from my Aunt Ellen was the first official Apple Records single, ‘Hey Jude’.

Paul McCartney placed Pete Asher as head of A&R. In Peter and Gordon, he had scored both a US and a UK number 1 with McCartney’s ‘A World Without Love’. He was now more interested in the recording, production and business side. Apple allowed each of The Beatles to nurture and mentor their own projects, which created an eclectic roster of talent. Each member of the band would actively be involved in the recording sessions.