Interview: 13th Floor MusicTalk with Dave Robinson of Stiff Records (Part 1)

If you are of a certain age and got into punk in the late 70s, you no doubt had a few Stiff Records – on the roster – Elvis Costello, The Damned, Nick Lowe, even Motorhead. The co-founder of the label was Dave Robinson. Still active in the music biz he is busy promoting a new band he’s hot on called  Hardwicke Circus, a straight-up hard rocking band.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda connected with him and found out there is a whole lot more to Dave Robinson than just Stiff Records. So much so, that we’ve had to split the interview into two parts.

Here is part one where Dave talks about beginning his career by photographing The Beatles in The Cavern Club, working with Van Morrison, forming Stiff Records with Jake Rivera, creating Fake News with Elvis Costello and plugging The Members in New Zealand. There’s also some talk of the new band, Hardwicke Circus to get you warmed up.

Watch the interview, revel in Dave Robinson’s glorious past, then come back for more tomorrow.

Or read a transcription below:

M: I was hoping, well we’re gonna talk about this new band that you’re working with, and then I thought maybe we’d touch on the past a little bit if that’s ok with you?

D: Ok then Marty, fire away.

M: The band is what, Hardwicke Circus?

D: Hardwicke Circus from Carlisle in Cumbria which is about as far North as you can get before Scotland.

M: Very good. And where did you come across these guys? Or how did you come across them?

D: My son actually, my young son Milo a rising photographer has discovered them totally by chance. He was on his way to get some really decent fish and chips in Camden town and heard some music coming from a pub that he knew not to have music so to speak so he drifted in there and saw this very young band playing in the middle of the floor with no…the pub didn’t normally have music and he was slightly fascinated and found out that they had arrived that day and convinced the landlord to let them play so he thought they were pretty at it and dragged me the following night to another venue they were playing and I thought they had something. And that is three years ago so we’ve been working ever since. My son wanted to manage them and wanted me to be their kind of figurehead in the background doing nothing. He then, his photography career took off.

M: You end up with the band.

D: Exactly. Story of my life …..

M: I’m sure it was. And what was it about the band that made you think there was something there?

D: Young, very enthusiastic, couple of good songs, good looking young singer, very good young drummer who was about nineteen at the time and just something fresh. Although they were playing music I was familiar with, it seemed very fresh and let’s face it, I didn’t plan to…I’d retired more or less from the music industry because I hadn’t planned to meet a lot of computer programmers. I didn’t sign up for computer programmers, I signed up for players and singers. So here we had this band and they had been very enthusiastic, they’ve really improved, they’ve really come on, they’ve really worked and so it’s been a pleasure.

M: It doesn’t look like they have many computer programmers among them, it’s guitars and drums and basses and stuff so good solid rock ‘n’ roll.

D: Yes, it does seem a little old school nowadays but musicians are an interesting bunch and the theory is that they play their instruments yes.

M: Are they familiar with your past and your legacy? People you’ve worked with?

D: Yeah, I think they read up on me. Google is a great refresher and they thought that a lot of the bands I was involved in, they liked so it fitted.

M: They’ve had at least one album out.

D: No they haven’t, the first album they will record this month in July produced by a gentlemen called Alan Winstanley and Alan is the other half of Langer/Winstanley who did Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Morrissey, huge line of hits and I’ve dragged him out of retirement in Portugal. He’s coming to the UK to do this album because he’s really taken with their material and really likes the band.

M: Cool. Is he gonna be able to travel from Portugal to the UK do you think?

D: That is the only slight kind of maybe. We’re told that Boris, our Boris, will open the doors on the fourth of July but who knows.

M: What kind of audience, what kind of crowd goes to see these guys? Is it young people?

D: Yeah, they have a young crowd but at the same time, they plan to board with Southside Johnny, Alabama 3 and some of that audience is continuing to come to see them so they have a mixture of people who really like the older rock ‘n’ roll with young people who are discovering the new rock ‘n’ roll.

M: Gotcha. And is there much other new rock ‘n’ roll happening around?

D: Not a huge amount I have to admit. They’re standing out now, uniquely because there’s not a lot of it around. Mostly nowadays I’m told by promoters who say have you got your CD? Because most bands arrive with some backing tracks and then do  a kind of show in front. I don’t quite understand it to be absolutely honest.

M: I’m right with you on that one.

D: It seems to be fascinating, it seems to be something that yeah, I thought isn’t actually why I came out tonight. I got a couple of pints and I’m gonna see a really good band and it’s gonna be exciting. But however, I’m not knocking it, I’m kind of avoiding it.

M: Well hopefully the band will get in the studio in July and things will happen for them. So you’re managing the band, have you got a plan laid out after the album is recorded?

D: Well, we were heading for South by Southwest, we had a very big number of American labels that were interested in seeing the band, whether that would go further who knows, but they were interested in seeing them and then, very short notice the cancellation.

M: We had a lot of local artists here in New Zealand that were planning on making the big trip over to South by Southwest and it all went down the toilet so it’s kind of a bummer for everyone concerned I think.

D: It was a big blow. Aside from that, getting the finance together to drag a band across to Austin, I think we’ve recovered not a quarter of what was actually spent there, cause all up front payments of airlines and whatever.

M: That’s a shame. Now you mentioned your son is a photographer, and from what I read and I didn’t know it, you started out kind of as a photographer as well, shooting the Beatles in the Cavern Club? Is that possible?

D: Yes it is true. How it occurred ,I got a job in London, left Dublin where I lived, headed for the big city as we all do, and I got a job with a magazine called Rave magazine and they were slightly pop, there was quite a few, New Musical Express, Melody Maker were all coming up at that time. But they were kind of a glossy, slightly glossy mag colour, had some colour in it, and they sent me off to do bands of Liverpool. So I went to The Cavern and they had a lunchtime session there so I had two days in Liverpool and it so happened that that lunchtime session that the Beatles played, but they were a small band then, they were a local…it was like one of their first gigs and I remember them but I don’t particularly notice them. I remember thinking Paul McCartney looked pretty good.

M: And he still does.

D: And he still does. Well also he was very friendly, he was also a natural PR man, and he saw Rave magazine so ‘hello Dave and how are you?’ So he was great. John Lennon was pretty surly and I filmed, I think I did pictures for about eight bands in Liverpool and they were one of them. So when I say I filmed the Beatles at the Cavern, it was by the way rather than the main feature.

M: Do you still have the photos?

D: Unfortunately not. My mother did a bit of a tidy up after I left but Paul McCartney is a close friend now. I had a band do support on a Wings tour through a series of coincidences which is what makes the rock ‘n’ roll world go round, as a manager anyway. And I’m quite close with him and have been for a long time. Nice guy, very together, love him.

M: I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone who’s seen the Beatles at the Cavern Club so I’m just stunned. And my understanding is that you kind of floated around the scene and worked with Van Morrison a little bit around that time as well, or a little bit later?

D: I opened the first Beat Club in Dublin following on from the clubs I was seeing in London. Ireland’s several years behind the times at that time, maybe twenty.

M: It’s like New Zealand.

D: it could easily be. I’m sure there’s a lot of similar carry on. Anyway, people in the cities in Dublin went to tennis clubs for their meet the girls kind of situation and the bands were cover bands. They just did the charts and whatever. So there wasn’t like groups playing in clubs a la rock ‘n’ roll so I started that at a club called Sound City and so Van Morrison, who I’d photographed in London for Rave Magazine, so I knew him from Belfast, I looked after a local band called The People who were from Belfast and Van arrived, he’d just got rid of his manager, a guy called Philip Solomon, and had dumped his band because he found his band were living off his earnings.

M: I get the feeling you don’t want to piss off Van.

D: Well, he arrived at the club and knew me but he’d come back to Belfast which is not a town you return to with your tail between your legs, you arrive in glory in a limo or you don’t go back. Anyway, he had gone back and he’d got really pissed off by people’s comments, came to Dublin, played that night in the club with some very small, little band who didn’t know what was happening and Van Morrison suddenly got up with them with a harmonica and lifted them several gears into the air and suddenly they were a really happening event for about fifteen minutes and he had nowhere to stay so he came and stayed in my flat. He ruined my entire social life. It only took him a month and everyone I knew, he’s a difficult flatmate shall we say.

M: I can imagine. I’m curious, I had a friend of mine, you may know him, Kim Fowley and he told me some stories about working with Van around that time as well, are you familiar with that?

D: Yes, I knew Kim well.

M: I thought you might.

D: Everyone met Kim in LA, and, yeah, Van was, is a genius. Van is an incredible person but he is a Northern Irish chap from Belfast and he is fairly taciturn shall we say. He doesn’t believe in small talk or getting on with people, if they like him that’s ok, but don’t hang around too long. So Bert Berns was hassling him from America. He’s the producer and writer of Here Comes The Night and a few other of his hits, and he was really hassling, so Van said well you should talk to me. I had no experience of managing a group at the time, a big group. So I said to him, look, this guy, he’s offering you money, he’s offering you a place to stay, he’s produced two hits that we all think are great and you had, why not go? And he said well why don’t you come with me? At this point I knew Van didn’t like passengers of any kind and I thought I might be a passenger, so I declined. Also I got my flat back.

M: That’s good.

D: It was a plus all round, yeah. That was my first handling of Van’s affairs. I’ve managed him twice since over the years. I’ve done some of his business and he hasn’t changed much.

M: I’d imagine not.

D: Except there is one interesting comment. When he got knighted, which he was very pleased about, when he got knighted, his staff used to murmur as he passed by, ‘here comes the knight, here comes the knight’.

M: No, no, that’s fantastic. Now I know you did a lot of other stuff between that time and the stuff with Stiff records, but for me, that’s how I know you from Stiff, because I was just the right age when all those records started coming out in England and I was working in a record store in upstate New York and we lived for when the next batch of imports would come in and the whole punk thing so I have to ask you, and I went and found my Nick Lowe Pink Fairies and the Damned. So, I’m curious about the relationship between you and Jake Riviera and what made you think that something was happening there that you could work with?

D: Jake, kind of. I mean, it’s always very difficult to tell the story accurately but we all re-design history a little bit. Jake kind of was a year or two behind me in age, well a few years behind me but he was kind of following…my career in London at the time was to open a lot of pubs up to rock ‘n’ roll music and to get the landlords who were mainly Irish and they didn’t mind what the music was as long as there was a lot of people in front of the bar, they were happy. So I got the chance to get away from the prog-rock is the music of the moment, high heeled boots and the funny haircuts and satin trousers and things and long songs in the key of E. So I thought it should be New Orleans and it should be Louisiana, it should be  short and sharp and Tamla Motown. So I convinced a lot of the young bands that that was the style they should assume. Some of them were doing it already. Jake was in the mix there, managing a couple of…I managed Brinsley Schwarz with Nick Lowe on bass and so they were the leaders. They were a really good band, I mean their playing ability is fantastic. And Jake had a band called The Chilly Willlies which I don’t know if they were Hot Peppers, Chilly Willie and the Red Hot Peppers perhaps, Chilly Willie anyway, they were more country, they were more country style and I believe from talking to them that Jake harassed them, harangued them, he was quite a tough geezer and he harangued them into wanting to be more like the Brinsleys who were pulling big crowds and playing more interesting music so they were brow beaten by their manager into that area. So I was aware of him and he went to America to tour manage the Feelgoods first tour. You know, off his own game and he saw a lot of labels. He saw a lot of labels in these little towns in America, got used to the idea of radio stations in each town, a beer, a brewery in each town, he got used to the American way. I’d been there with Hendrix quite a bit earlier and so he came back really gushing about the idea. The Feelgoods just kind of wanted him for that tour so he was kind of broke and had a lot of ideas. He’s also a very sharp guy, I mean, very quick. So I met him in a pub and we talked and I said I’ve got all this tape from recording at the Hope and Anchor, I’ve got all his pub circuit,.I’ve got all these various musicians that I really like. I had a management company, I said why don’t you come in as a partner and we’ll have a record company as a hobby, as a on the side? That’s actually how it occurred. He was very bright, very, very good. He’d worked in an advertising agency for a while, he was a very sharp dresser, sharp geezer and we did very well for a period, however, we’re both got very strong personalities and he felt his was stronger than mine which, you know, one of those stories and eventually he just one day told me he was leaving and I said, ‘well when’?

M: Right, fair enough.

D: So, we had to very quickly dissolve our partnership to make it work.

M: Did you have a vision of what you wanted Stiff Records to be like? Did you talk about it  or did you just sign bands?

D: We had a lot of material. We had a lot of tapes, we had a lot of stuff. I had an eight track studio which I’d put together in a well-known pub, the Hope and Anchor in Islington, and I recorded all the bands live every night. So I also recorded Graham Parker and various other people who came, Elvis Costello, then known as Declan MacManus, who I said you got any more songs like that? Because he was in a band called Flip City which were pretty terrible but he stood out as an entity and he played their song, I said you got any songs? He said yeah, I’ve got a few. So he came up to the studio after the show was over at midnight and he recorded thirty eight songs by the morning and that became the basis of his first four or five albums.

M: I remember when this came out (holds up early Elvis Costello single on Stiff) and we were all punk rockers, hanging out, working in a record store and we saw this geeky guy with the glasses and we were like, this the biggest joke it has to be, this can’t be serious you know? And then listened to the album and of course, we realised what we were dealing with.

D: Well, we had this great album by him. We’d changed his name to his agreement. I was amazed by that, I was amazed. Jake and I came up with the idea and I came up with the glasses. Cause we had this great album but we weren’t getting anywhere with it at all. We were playing it to record companies, playing to radio and nobody was getting it and were going what’s wrong with these people? This album is fucking incredible! And I couldn’t get arrested at the time. So we change his name and we sent him down, there was a conference, a music conference for CBS, who is now Sony, in London in Park Lane, which is the main drag, which is the main drag, fifth avenue of London, and thing about Elvis is that he was very good with a brief. If you gave him a brief, he would stick to it, very unlike a lot of nowadays kind of…so we said whatever happens, don’t stop playing. Play outside the hotel, when they’re going in and out just keep playing your album, with the little amplifier and don’t stop no matter what happens, the police come or whatever, keep playing that’s the key. So he’s playing away and it turned out a lot of the executives were noticing him. A few people stopped, Americans thinking what’s this busking? They weren’t really, we’re in Park Lane and I then called the West End police station with a slightly Irish accent and said there’s a geezer outside this hotel with an amplifier playing stuff, I don’t know what he’s doing but he’s very suspicious, I’ve just walking past there and it looked a bit iffy. I didn’t make any un-towards statements, but just Irished a bit. So they came to move him, they came with a wagon to move him, and he wouldn’t stop playing despite what they said, so they arrested him. I then got a call at the record company,. I think we had, Jake and I had one other employee at the time, a girl on the switchboard, which involved one line, and so the police called me and said we’ve got this guy, he says his name is Elvis Costello and that he works for your record label and I said, I’ve never heard of him what a strange name. So they kept him in and I knew what would happen, he’d be taken up in front of the beak in the morning for disturbing the peace or something innocent. So a friend of mine was on the ITV. TV news and I alerted him that this musician was gonna be in the court at 10 o’clock and that he’d been arrested for there was some doubt as to whether he might be some terrorist kind of individual. So my friend sent a news thing down so we hit the news, he was let go and fined twenty pounds, but we hit the news lunchtime and six and ten o’clock that night and that started the rush to find out what his music was like. So that album was sitting around, was recorded for a couple of months with a band called Clover, an American band from Marin County. Huey Lewis was the harmonica player.

M: I have their album back here somewhere.

D: There you go, John McFee on guitar and there was no harmonica on the album, on Elvis’ album unfortunately, but Huey was in the band and that started an interest. There was also a DJ that you may be familiar with called John Peel.

M: Oh yeah, I’ve heard of him.

D: John was the reason why an awful lot of music in England actually occurred, punk whatever, he was the first person to play stuff always before anyone else. He liked music, he liked interesting music, he like anybody’s music if they were driven by it and he was remarkable. He adopted Stiff, our hobby label, he adopted So It Goes by Nick Lowe, he played that to death and people…

M: Here’s old Nick (holds up Nick Lowe’s Bowi single on Stiff)

D: There’s Nick. Look at him, he looks great. He’s got white hair now.

M: I love the Bowi, cause there was the Low album right?

D: Yes. So that was the happening at the time. National radio had one DJ late at night that played esoteric kind of I suppose AOR music that was like the San Francisco labels, radio stations, all came from that period. Here we had it in England and he would play stuff if you liked it, it was interesting. He didn’t play U2 and he never played Queen.

M: Got to draw a line somewhere.

D: Well he also didn’t play Bruce Springsteen which I think was a bit of a shame but he didn’t like the advertising, ‘the future of rock ‘n’ roll’, that the record label.

M: Yeah, that’ll put somebody off definitely.

D: Yeah, well that out him right off.

M: I think I was the same way with Bruce, because I went to college in upstate New York and everybody was from Long Island and they were heavy Bruce fans and it was like this is the first two albums where I was kinda like, oh you know, I can take it or leave it. And then Born To Run came out and I happened ti lock into a show of Bruce and the E Street Band just as it started and I remember opening the door to the place and just being hit with this energy and just going, ‘Ok, now I get it’ . I was just like woah.

D: Well the first two albums were very average really in hindsight and Born To Run was the door opener and that’s what every band needs, that’s what you need. You look around as a manager and you’re looki ng for that track that may open the door. New Zealand, very quickly I would say The Members, The Members were very big in New Zealand, actually they were only big in New Zealand.

M: Hey, well you know.

D: It came from a guy called, I think Bob Jameson, whether his name was Bob, anyway, he was the MD at EMI and in those days, EMI would send their young up and comers around the world to run the colony record company when EMI were a serious record label and they would run for six months, would do work in various areas. He was in New Zealand and I only discovered this on a tennis court about a year ago, he was the licensee for Stiff in New Zealand and it turned out that all the albums that he was promised for the fourth quarter, the big quarter, the Christmas bang, weren’t finished. So he had no actual product so the only thing, he was rooting around and there was one little release on Stiff called The Members Solitary Confinement and he thought put the entire weight of EMI behind this album and it was a huge record in New Zealand only.

M: I love it.

D: It is a great story. I was at a very drunken party and then little New Zealand guy who ran a big piece of Barclays Bank in London, big piece, he said to me, are you from Stiff? I said yes, he said Solitary Confinement, and it turned out that that was the label of his youth. and he was very drunk at the time but he hung on my coat tail for the rest of the party shouting He’s Stiff! Throughout the night, he was a great PR.man. Anyway that is a great example. New Zealand was good for Stiff. They like the kind of ethos and they like the kind of style.