How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 (51 page)

McGee and Abbott were spending as much time as possible in LA, where they became a two-man party crew, regularly holding all-night sessions in their hotel suites before emerging into the sunlight at lunchtime. Once the day’s business meetings had been attended to, they would move on to the Viper Room on Sunset and start all over again. For one such West Coast visit, McGee planned a trip with Green, who was seldom seen
anywhere other than at his desk, where, day in, day out, he bravely tried to manage the realities of Creation’s cash flow.

‘The Fanclub are playing in Los Angeles, this thing at Fairfax High School,’ says Barker. ‘Alan’s going over, and I said, “Well, Dick should fuckin’ come as well.” Dick never used to go anywhere much. I said, “Dick, come on, fuckin, let’s have a party, you know.” So, anyway, we go for the weekend. Swervedriver were playing the next night. So this was like a mad weekend – we’re staying at this Chateau Marmont. Alan slept on the floor, ’cause he was off his nut on a fuckin’ E or something. But we went to see the Fanclub and Kurt and Courtney were there and they come on the tour bus. The next night we go to see Swervedriver and they’re playing with Soundgarden and someone had said Slash from Guns N’ Roses was in the Soundgarden room. I was pissed, so I went up to Soundgarden’s manager, who I knew, and said, “Is that right, Slash is in?” She says, “Yeah yeah.” I said, “Listen, I’m with McGee and all that, it’s gonna be a crack …. can I just go in and say hi to Slash? I won’t be an arsehole.”’

Walking into the Soundgarden dressing room, where he found a leather-trousered and top-hatted Slash tuning up for the encore, Barker introduced himself with a quick ‘Slash – Barker’ and shot the breeze with the accommodating guitarist who was taken with Barker’s avuncular manner.

‘I go back out and I say to McGee, “Oh, I just met Slash,”’ says Barker. ‘McGee’s all, “No fuckin’ way!”, all this business. We get back to London – somehow he was with me when I met Slash! “Me and Barker, hanging out with Slash in Hollywood.” This is Alan for you, you know. It’s so Alan, but at the same time it’s good. It’s so funny, “Yeah, me and Barker hanging out with Slash, yeah, he was stripped to the waist.” He’s doing the whole story.’

Teenage Fanclub were in Hollywood promoting
Bandwagonesque
, their second album, that had been released
by Geffen in the States and, following
Nevermind
, had exceeded all sales expectations. ‘I had no idea about
Bandwagonesque
,’ says McGee ‘not a fucking clue. I think I signed them for twenty grand or something, and I think I was half in the money with Gary Gersh. It was forty grand to record it with Don Fleming. I honestly thought I was putting out a 15 to 20,000-selling indie album.’

The commercial success in America of
Bandwagonesque
, following on quickly from the reception of
Screamadelica
and
Loveless
, enhanced McGee and his label’s reputation. The American industry, all too aware of the state of Creation’s finances, was starting to take a serious interest in whatever McGee might next have to offer. The lunchtime LA meetings were being reciprocated in the more workaday surroundings of Hackney.

‘Danny Goldberg and somebody else came over for this meeting,’ says Abbott. ‘They were stopping at the Dorchester and they didn’t take a car for some reason. Danny had been in the
Wall Street Journa
l literally a few days before with this “Nirvana shipped 100 million dollars’ worth – rock ’n’ roll’s back”. They get on the Tube then walk up through Bethnal Green which was like the Bronx then – crack smokers out in daylight – they turn up. “Fuck … man … where is this place? We’ve been accosted four times.” We’re in the bunker and this lad, Tony, our
carpenter-cum
-odd-job man, fucking started this bandsaw up while we were having this meeting … lchhhhhhhhhhhhhh and McGee’s going, “Fucking Tony, we’re having a fucking meeting, man.” Of course, these guys are used to sitting in gilded-cage boardrooms which you can’t see the end of the table of, and loving it, going, “This is indie music – they’re putting shelves up.”’

While McGee was, for the moment, loath to enter into negotiation with any British labels, he delighted at being wined
and dined on the West Coast and took a series of exploratory meetings with the great and the good of Los Angeles. Geffen, by then and remarkably for a major, was perceived as one of the hottest record companies and its owner David Geffen assumed he and Alan McGee would be a natural, maverick fit.

‘At the beginning of ’92 I was at the Ivy restaurant in LA,’ says McGee, ‘and David Geffen goes, “How much?” My lawyer John Kennedy had always said, “Just think of a figure and double it,” and I went, “Six million,” and he went, “Dollars or pounds?” and I went, “Pounds,” and Geffen started fucking convulsing, I thought, people choke on their food and die – fuck, I’m actually going to kill him! He kind of half spat it out. I nearly fucking cancelled David Geffen, that would’ve been one of my only real punk rock moments!’

However much McGee enjoyed the playful theatre of power lunches in LA, his diet of cocaine and Jack Daniel’s meant that any negotiations often disintegrated into blurred hostility. ‘I couldn’t give a fuck,’ says McGee. ‘I was like, “Stick your millions up your arse, either give me them or don’t give me them, fuck you.” The disrespect level was quite high with Creation. I’m not proud of that, ’cause some really nice people get told to fuck off sometimes, but that was just the nature of the beast at the time.’

Back in the offices Green and Kyllo were holding a more subdued but equally necessary series of conversations about how best to manage Creation’s future. ‘The financial pressures got bigger and we knew some kind of big step was going to have to take place,’ says Kyllo, ‘but we never knew what it was going to be.’ One idea that came up was a joining of forces between Creation, Mute and the Beggars Group, whose combined market share might give them a competitive advantage. Sire were also considering a long-term licensing deal.

‘Seymour was one of those people, like Bill Drummond, who
would come in every now and then,’ says Kyllo, ‘but the meeting always became very social.’
*

McGee had had a minor falling-out with Stein around the Jesus and Mary Chain when Stein had introduced McGee to Lou Reed in a manner that had made McGee flinch. As Stein started enquiring about the availability of the American rights to My Bloody Valentine, McGee had failed to return his calls. In a display that speaks volumes about his staying power, Stein rang McGee over fifty times. McGee would take the calls only to inform Stein that he was turning his offers down. In the end McGee finally accepted a generous offer from Stein, both parties having revealed an understanding of the power play that defines a real hustler, and subsequently impressing one another.

For Green and Kyllo, who were running Creation’s back room and permanently reliant on McGee’s ability to return from the States with a major-label cash injection, The President’s
passive-aggressive
working methods would often yield results. ‘Alan had that ability of making those kind of moguls feel good about what they’re doing, in ways that other people hadn’t figured out,’ says Kyllo. ‘It’s partly by playing games and partly it’s a lot of psychology and, I don’t know how conscious Alan was of the psychology he was using, but it worked.’

There was also an element of reverse psychology to McGee’s behaviour as his ongoing love of fuck-the-majors rock ’n’ roll meant that any band that signed to Creation did so in the spirit of an ‘us against the world’ evangelism. ‘We never really used it to our own advantage with the bands and the deals we did,’ says Kyllo. ‘Alan was so impatient. He’d say, “Let’s just get them,” and
so we ended up being very generous with the bands.’

Whatever his state or the state of Creation’s finances, McGee realised he was at the peak of a moment that was fulfilling his dreams, of running a label that would equal the late Sixties output of Elektra and Atlantic. Within the space of two months Creation had released
Loveless
,
Screamadelica
and
Bandwagonesque
: as high a watermark of albums as any British independent had achieved, and the afterglow was carrying him and Creation through.

‘I knew, as much drugs as I was on at the time, I knew, in October 1991, I was never going to get any better,’ says McGee. ‘I’d just put out
Screamadelica
, I’d just put out
Bandwagonesque
and
Loveless
and I knew that these were three classic records … and I knew that it was never going to get any better than that … If you’re talking about a moment in time … I knew that that was a moment … and it was really unspoiled.’

While the strength of Creation’s releases was irrefutable, the label’s inability to achieve the sales that McGee felt his bands warranted was continuing to be a concern. The international sales of
Bandwagonesque
would be stand out in stark relief compared to what Geffen had achieved for the record in America. ‘The chart positions on Teenage Fanclub and the Scream, and the structure we had with indie companies, was rubbish,’ says McGee. ‘We needed a major at that point. I was beginning to realise that, at that time in the music business, you needed major distribution. We were releasing these records that kids are now calling classics and they weren’t selling.’

*

To the artists not included directly in McGee’s day-to-day thinking, Creation was becoming a more and more remote place, which operated with something resembling a siege mentality as the creditors would ring constantly and the inner circle of bon
viveurs and rock ’n’ roll animals made merry in the bunker.

Nick Currie had released four Momus albums on Creation and had grown used to managing his own affairs, with only a cursory A&R relationship with the label. His sixth LP,
Voyager
, was also one of his most immediate. ‘Alan summoned me down to the bunker once. He liked
Voyager
but he liked it way too late – I mean, like literally months after it had come out, he brought me into the office to play me my own record. He called me in and he said, “Nick this is really great.” He sat me down and he just dropped the needle on to the record and played the whole of side one, and I just sat there thinking, what is he doing? I know this record, I made this record like a year ago. But he’d just discovered it. His enthusiasm could be rekindled, possibly depending on his chemical state at the time.’

Amid the chaos and permanent fragility of Creation’s finances, the label had always somehow managed to pay its artists their royalties, something that bred a huge amount of loyalty between the bands and the label. For the bands high in the Creation
pecking
order it enhanced the feeling of us vs them on which McGee thrived; for artists like Currie, it had allowed him to release records and enjoy an uninterrupted, if rather frugal, career.

Currie had long grown used to dealing directly with Dick Green for discussing the nuts-and-bolts administrative side of his record deal and noticed that the long-suffering junior partner was looking a little more chipper than usual. ‘Dick would have what looked like several copies of the bible on his desk, and it would be the Creation Sony deal, and he would say, “This is going to be good for you, Nick. It’s going to be good for everybody on the label.” I had a sort of sinking feeling at that point that it wasn’t going to be good for me and it certainly would bring all sorts of conditions to bear that wouldn’t help what I do, because I deal with transgression and difficulty and all the rest of it, and at that
point things were just horrifically bureaucratic but at the same time completely scatty and Alan was going AWOL.’

As McGee was about to enter negotiations with Sony, the years of hedonism were starting to take their toll. As well as becoming increasingly absent from the office, he had made a few uncharacteristic signings. ‘It was a funny phase going there,’ says Barker. ‘They had this band, Medalark Eleven, from Manchester. I don’t know why he signed them. Baggy was dead. He said it himself, “I’ve signed a fuckin’ baggy group, I don’t fuckin’ know.”’

Six months or so after McGee had been depressed by the sales figures of
Screamadelica
and
Bandwagonesque
, Sony bought a 49 per cent stake in Creation for £2.5 million. In exchange Sony acquired half a near-bankrupt record label and the rights to some of its artists internationally. In the mind of the Sony executives, the prize asset they had secured was the A&R skills of Alan McGee.

Nick Currie’s views on the Sony deal would prove prescient, but not in the manner he had originally thought. His ties with the label were severed because of an incident involving his Bangladeshi partner, Shazna, whom he had extricated from a forced marriage. ‘I did this thing which was a little bit too rock ’n’ roll for Creation at the time. When we eloped together, the ex-fiancé of Shazna appeared with her brothers at Creation demanding my address so they could reclaim Shazna, who didn’t want to be reclaimed at all. Alan phoned me up, it was the last time Alan phoned me up, he said, “Listen, we had these extremely scary people coming into the office demanding your address and we didn’t give it to them, but this just can’t happen and we were seriously thinking of getting in the very heavy drug people that Primal Scream deal with to protect the office and the staff. So sorry, but we’re not going to work with you any more.”’

Tim Abbott was one of the members of staff involved
in placating what was threatening to be something of an international incident. ‘These dudes came looking for Momus with machetes,’ says Abbott, ‘saying, “He sleeps here.” “No,” I said, “no he doesn’t.”’

Although an unwanted visit from irate sword-bearing strangers was enough to make everyone sit up and take notice, the behaviour at the Creation offices remained far from the industry standard. Despite the cash injection from Sony, the label was still operating in almost permanent chaos. ‘Things were getting crazy by then,’ says Kyllo. ‘Alan was struggling to keep it together, things were degenerating.’