didn’t know what press was all about, though my sister had always bought the NME,’ she admits. Slowly, she took on more press duties, as Ivo increasingly felt that Sue Johns, an associate of Chris Carr’s who was handling press for both Beggars Banquet and 4AD, was underachieving. ‘I never got back to doing my own art but I don’t regret what happened,’ Edgely says.
Initially, she and Ivo shared a desk and chair, ‘which might have something to do with the fact things quickly got sparky between us,’ she says. ‘One day as we were driving, Ivo said, Deb, I have to tell you something, I’m in love with you, let’s go to the mountains in Switzerland. It was a real outpour! We were too busy to go away, but suddenly we were living together. And on a mission with 4AD.’
Thirty years after Edgely joined 4AD, Vaughan Oliver was able to tell her that he was initially jealous of her presence. ‘Beforehand, it had just been Ivo and I, and Deb took his time and attention. I never quite clicked with her at the time. But I was also in my own world. I just wanted to make the best record sleeves ever.’
The family atmosphere at 4AD was further underlined by the addition of a new rehearsal studio in the Alma Road basement. ‘[It was] like a youth club for musicians,’ says Mick Conroy. ‘There was no daytime television in those days, or the money to do much, so we’d just hang out in the studio, making noise and talking to others.’
Modern English needed to rehearse as they’d returned from America with no songs, ‘just bits of music,’ Conroy admits. Their level of success meant the band was prematurely thrown into recording, again with Hugh Jones, who recalls the sessions without much fondness. ‘They’d done something absurd like a hundred shows in eighty-two days. They were better musically this time around but it was a much harder record to make. We stitched bits together and got it organised, but their management was always looking for another “I Melt With You”, so the mood was fraught.’
It wasn’t just the band’s management. While visiting Warners’ LA office, Perry Watts-Russell overheard a conversation where an executive was suggesting Modern English put ‘I Melt With You’ on their next album as well, ‘so they could have another crack at it,’ he says. The idea was mercifully nixed, and a new single, ‘Chapter 12’, was released instead, a passable facsimile of ‘I Melt With You’ that subsequently ended up on the album Ricochet Days. ‘It was a more produced and thought-through album than After The Snow, and not as raw,’ says Robbie Grey, but in reality, it was a passable facsimile in itself, sounding more forced and less intuitive. If Ivo says he was a fan of the album, it wasn’t enough to prolong his relationship with Modern English.
Robbie Grey’s lyric for ‘Breaking Away’ had already identified a need for change, and on returning from America, the band’s original core sacked drummer Richard [Brown] and keyboardist Stephen Walker. ‘We’d shifted gears musically and they couldn’t keep up,’ Grey says. A streamlined Modern English had demoed ‘Breaking Away’ as a potential single with a new producer, Alan Shacklock, who had form with the much rockier ‘Welsh U2’ The Alarm. ‘He changed the song completely and turned it into a pastiche of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”,’ says Ivo. ‘It was awful.’
Grey: ‘We were miffed that Ivo didn’t want to release “Breaking Away”. Sire said it would sign us worldwide, so encouraged by our manager, we told Ivo things had run their course. He didn’t say, please don’t leave!’
Ivo: ‘Ricochet Days didn’t make any more impact in the UK than After The Snow, and everything with Modern English was focused in America and having hits. Of course things had to develop and grow, but that wasn’t where 4AD was going. It wasn’t a betrayal to let them go. I knew Sire would pick up their option.’
Grey: ‘Afterwards, I felt like we were people that Ivo used to know. But we were probably an expensive band to have on 4AD. To get on MTV, you needed £20,000 for a video and that was a large outlay for what was still a small independent label. And though people have had hang-ups about 4AD over money, Ivo had been quick to put us on a weekly wage, a hundred quid a week, when we’d started to do well. It had really taken off for us in America so it seemed a natural progression to sign direct to Sire. Our publisher [Beggars Banquet’s sister company Momentum] was pushing for more sales too. I think Ivo thought it wasn’t a bad thing for us to sell lots of records. And for the next two years, we were a very big band in America.’
Commercial success meant the band had to sacrifice their sanity. ‘We slogged our way across America, without a hit single this time, and got seriously frazzled,’ recalls Mick Conroy. ‘And incredibly poor. We never received royalties from 4AD until the end of the Eighties.’
Contrary to the behaviour of typical record executives, Ivo had passed on 4AD’s two biggest money-spinners Bauhaus and Modern English. Discussions regarding promo videos, choice of singles and chart strategies were not how he wished to spend his day. That didn’t mean Ivo didn’t try and help his bands do their best, and to have a chance to realise commercial as well as creative ambitions. His attention turned back to Colourbox, though this was going to be a tricky project as the trio was determined not to play live. ‘I didn’t think we could carry it off,’ Martyn Young admits. ‘Nowadays, people sequence all the music, but at the time, we’d have felt a fraud.’
Young admits that Colourbox was suffering from songwriter’s block, both in general and to suit Lorita Grahame’s voice. ‘I really like songs, I just don’t think I’m good at it,’ Young shrugs. ‘We were more concerned with production and messing around in the studio, so we began to consider cover versions.’
After enjoying U-Roy’s lilting ‘Say You’ on one of Ivo’s reggae compilations, Colourbox recorded a version at Palladium for a single, where Jon Turner’s watchful approach allowed Martyn, like Robin Guthrie before him, to gain valuable production experience. This new ‘Say You’, minus fiddly edits, added clarity and a bounce to Colourbox’s rhythmic stash, and was the band’s first UK independent top 10 hit and helped secure a second BBC Radio 1 session for the Kid Jensen evening show that preceded John Peel’s slot.
The paucity of songwriting was laid bare: all four Jensen session tracks were covers of pop legends, such as Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look Of Love’ and a horrible throwaway version of Dion’s ‘The Wanderer’ sung like a pub entertainer by manager Ray Conroy. By this point, Young admits, he and Ian Robbins were working separately instead of as a team, and when Robbins chose to take a holiday over recording the session, he was out for good.
As Cocteau Twins had found, a reduced core unit helped to focus creativity. Three months later, the A-side of new seven-inch single showed a change of tack. ‘Punch’ was Colourbox’s first direct, upbeat pop song, though the track only reached 15 in the independent charts; it was as if Colourbox fans – and 4AD collectors – didn’t want anything remotely cheery. There was little to celebrate either in the B-side support: ‘Keep On Pushing’ made another appearance and ‘Shadows In The Room’ was a drum track in search of a song. Altogether, it seemed a waste of Lorita Grahame. The soul/funk root of ‘Punch’ was also spoilt by the kind of production bluster that typified the Eighties, for which Martyn Young blames producer Bob Carter: ‘He wanted to play everything himself, so it wasn’t a nice experience. We didn’t even like what he did and the samples were clichéd. But we had to release it as money had been spent.’
Colourbox’s presence on 4AD is always wheeled out as proof that Ivo wasn’t only driven to release music that fitted compilations entitled Dark Paths – what Bradford Cox, of current 4AD signing Deerhunter, calls, ‘hyper-ethereal, borderline-goth’. But as Ivo’s first signing in over a year showed, he also wasn’t to be deterred from proceeding down the path if the music inspired. And the band’s name alone, Dead Can Dance, seemed like the very last word in goth.
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