Interview: 13th Floor MusicTalk with Dave Robinson of Stiff Records Part 2

Here it is, the second installment of our 13th Floor interview with former Stiff Records owner Dave Robinson where he discusses running Stiff, then moving on to Island Record where he was overseeing the release of the Bob Marley album, Legend.

From there its talk about songwriters and what Dave thinks of the current state of the music biz. Plus more Stiff talk and his new band Hardwicke Circus. Plenty to take in as we touch on Ian Drury, John Prine and Lemmy!

Watch the interview or read the transcription below:

M: I’m curious, I mean, you got the feeling from the Stiff records and looking at the labels that it was kind of a lark, but let’s face it, that period of music at that time was probably the defining period for what happened afterwards. There was before punk and after punk, or whatever you want to call it. Were you aware of that at the time? Did you think you were in the middle of something that was big and important and new?

D: I’ve always disliked major record labels and Stiff, when we got it going, when John Peel started playing it and people started banging on the door looking for the records, so instead of pressing five hundred, we started pressing five thousand. At that time, our basic motive was to irritate the majors. That was how we got from week to week. If the majors were irritated we were happy, we knew we were on the right track. So that was a great momentum. Tuesday was chart day in the British record industry, and so the chart would come out on Tuesday morning and the record companies would then have a marketing meeting Tuesday afternoon, and every record company had a marketing meeting on Tuesday afternoon and so we did stuff as much as possible that they would have to talk about us and what we were doing rather than what they were doing. At one point I’m told that a guy called Ed Bicknell, who was the manager of Dire Straits At that time the CD had just entered the fray and they were the biggest band since fried bread and Ed came in holding a Wreckless Eric picture bag and said what the fuck is going on here? Here’s this guy Wreckless Eric, who’s ever heard of him? He’s in a four page bag here, look at this picture bag. And Dire Straits my band, your biggest band, look at the bag they’re in, a house bag, a one colour throw away, blah, blah, blah. That was the kind of stuff we loved to provoke.

M: So eventually, Stiff itself got sucked up by the majors anyway. How did you deal with that?

D: It didn’t happen really during my time. I mean, the big label, the big indie label that I followed a lot of was Island, Chris Blackwell’s Island. And it came to pass that he wanted me to come and run his record label so he badgered me for ages. He was potentially a friend of mine, I mean, a big acquaintance anyway, and I didn’t want to. Stiff was doing great and I didn’t really want to do anything else but he hassled me and eventually he wanted to buy half the company and that was a bit of an incentive at the time and what I didn’t know is that they had no money at all. They were totally insolvent.

M: Really?

D: Yeah, he wanted a new face on the block to keep his creditors at bay and most of his creditors were my creditors but I’d paid the bills, he hadn’t for a while. When I heard that I thought, I really should have paid more attention. It never occurred to me that Island would be poorer than Stiff, I mean, Stiff was doing very well but anyway, I’ve always liked a challenge, it’s one of the problems in my life and I thought, I’ll have a go. You know, Bob Marley, U2, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and I did get to do Legend, that album, so that’s good on my CV forever although I don’t get a royalty as I was a house member at the time, I was a paid member running Island. It’s about forty million now.

M: That’s not bad.

D: It goes up 2.2 two million every year, that’s with no marketing. It’s such a good record, he’s so thoughtful.

M: Well I know, this is way before I came to New Zealand, but Bob Marley and the Wailers played a show here I think in ‘79 and people still are talking about it, he had a big impression on everybody in the country who was vaguely interested in music at the time, it was pretty impressive. Every year when the date comes around people talk about it and reminisce.

D: Well he was fantastic, but you’ve got to remember that when he died, he didn’t have any money at all. He had very little income and Blackwell to his credit, paid for his medical treatments because he went around the world trying to find kind of a cure. He didn’t really believe Bob that Jah would desert him. He felt he was a prophet and that Jah was just testing him and that he would come to the fore and rescue him from whatever. But incredible songwriter and that’s been, this is a theory of mine, I’ve signed songwriters that’s been my motive and that’s the thing that interests me, people who write songs hopefully about what’s happening. Folk music to me, The Beatles were folk music of Liverpool, so I’m interested in social music that reflects the lives we come from.

M: Talk about songwriters, you’ve got Elvis Costello, Bob Marley, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe. It’s just endless.

D: Ian Drury.

M: Ian Drury yeah. I was just wondering if you had something that really connects with you, as far as all those people that you worked with back in that day.

D: John Prine, God rest him, he had a line in a song which I think is something and it’s always pushed me on, the line that said, ‘Then one of us said something that neither of us knew’. And I thought that is the poetry of the new, of our time, the songwriter. The songwriters are the poets and the fact that in a lot of cases they’re singers as well, that was the basis of Stiff. So we weren’t looking for oil paintings and we weren’t looking for young girls with pornographic instincts; we were looking for songwriters of any kind.

M: It’s interesting cause when people talk about punk, you don’t really think that song writing is a major part of that, but if you listen to those songs, they’re amazing. I mean, the first three Elvis Costello albums, you can’t find three better first three albums anywhere you know? I don’t care who they’re looking at. And Nick Lowe and Graham Parker.

D: Well, The Damned were fantastic. The Damned at the time that people like Malcom McLaren saw there was an opportunity to open some doors and the record companies are just rooting around and being terrified by the fact that here was this terrible music and the public were buying it and they couldn’t understand what was good about it or bad about it. In those days, we used to say at Stiff, be careful walking past major record companies, there’s a lot of A &R men falling off the building. So yes, punk again had its social reasons. John Peel was in the same instinct too there was a movement. There was a movement during the middle seventies where a lot of interesting people seemed to be on the same page and seemed to want to change what was, up until then, the status quo.

M: You guys even had Motorhead on the label.

D: We had Lemmy, yes. Lemmy was great yeah. I was very fond of Lemmy.

M: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So what do you think of the music business these days?

D: Well, the music business is the music business and it’s always been, it’s now the record business really. The music is something entirely different. There’s very little music in the record business because the people who are running it if you think about it, they’re of a certain age, certain persuasion, they’re mainly American or the major record companies are controlled in America and it’s a never ending thing where we are supposed to judge the quality of things by the amount of money it makes. And we’re supposed to like people because they’re making more money and whatever. I’ve never been in that kind of area. I’ve literally been interested in the idea of how good it is. If you play it, how many people are paying attention you know. Will you play it twenty, forty years from now and will it make sense? Will it be any good? I thought pop was…we had slogans for everything at Stiff and pop was called ‘pushing out product’. For example, a star was a person that nobody told the truth to. That kind of anti-major record company attitude sustained all of us including the artists, including the songwriters. And everyone mucked in. Stiff was a family type business, everybody mucked in, everybody put records in sleeves, put stickers on things, put cartons on the van. It was that kind of, it was us against the world and that’s the only way forward really.

M: And you got that feeling, I mean even I did, being thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, that when these records came, it came from someplace that was like how you explained it and made it even more exciting. Well good luck with the Hardwicke Circus. We’ll see what happens, if those guys are getting into the studio and get out on the road hopefully and rock out a little bit.

D: They’re gonna make a great record. And the lock down in England has had, I hope, is percolating some really good music somewhere and that it will all come out in due course cause live music is pretty destined for the dumper for the next few months, for a while. So I hope Marty you’re gonna like the concert that I sent you enough to show it.

M: Yup, yup.

D: Plug in that. They’re really good and we will come to New Zealand eventually because New Zealand is fantastic. I went there with Graham Parker, I think it was 1978? We came to New Zealand, it was ‘78 actually and it was August and we had a great time and I’ve always thought New Zealand was that kind of insular kind of attitude that is showing the world right now what’s what.

M: Yep, absolutely. Ok, well I’ll let you go. Thank you very much for taking so much time talking to me, I could go on forever myself.

D: Well, it is another head, another red and another story inevitably. Each record had some build up and fall down and all the usual. It’s very good Marty.

M: Ok, very good hopefully we’ll see you here sometime soon.