Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD - Martin Aston

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talent’. Bauhaus were undeniably talented, but Murphy had a habit of shining a torch under his chin as he prowled across the stage. This was fine by Kent: ‘I wanted more than people just standing there on stage, and Peter was already one of the best frontmen,’ he says. Murphy relishes the memory of a Small Wonder label night at London’s Camden Palace, ‘me in a black knitted curtain and jockstrap,’ he recalls. ‘We scared the fuck out of everyone that night, all these alternative über-hippies moaning about everything. After punk, everybody ran out of things to moan about.’

      Actually, the opposite was true. Post-punk had plenty of targets to kick against in 1980 and its bristling monochrome was a suitable soundtrack to the economic and social depression of an era presided over by the hate figure of Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher: tax increases, budget cuts, worker strikes, nuclear paranoia, Cold War scare-mongering and record post-war levels of inflation (22 per cent) and unemployment (two million). But goth bands didn’t articulate social injustice or political turmoil. This version of disaffection and dread was more Cabaret, an escape from the gloom, with lots of black nail varnish. Bauhaus’ ‘Dark Entries’, for example, was inspired by the decadent anti-hero of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. ‘A story of great narcissism and esoteric interior,’ says Murphy. ‘A rock star’s story.’

      Axis’ founders didn’t appear driven by causes or campaigns either. Ivo didn’t favour political agitators such as The Clash or Gang of Four, but more the open-ended oblique strategies of Wire or the acid psychodrama of Liverpool’s Echo & The Bunnymen. In fact, Ivo felt that the name Axis had unwanted political connotations. ‘Peter [Kent] may have been thinking of Hendrix but, for me, Axis related to [Nazi] Germany, like Factory and Joy Division. It was a stupid name.’

      It was a stroke of fortune that the label was forced into changing its name before the imprint, or the association, stuck. An existing Axis in, of all countries, Germany, read about the launch of the UK version in the trade paper Music Week; the owners allowed all the remaining stock on the UK label to be sold before they had to find a new name. ‘4AD was grasped out of the air in desperation,’ says Ivo.

      A flyer that freelance designer Mark Robertson had laid out to promote the launch of Axis worked on the concept of a new decade and a new mission. In descending order down the page was written:

      1980 FORWARD

      1980 FWD

      1984 AD

      4AD

      ‘What I loved about 4AD was that it meant nothing,’ Ivo recalls. ‘No ideology, no polemic, no attitude. In other words, just music.’

       1980 Forward

      (BAD5–BAD19)

      Conditioned by the pre-punk era of beautiful artwork and hi-fi, Ivo also embarked on raising the quality of the packaging and sound after judging the production company that Peter Kent had employed for Axis: ‘They were among the worst-sounding vinyl I’d ever heard, in really poor-quality sleeves.’

      This spirit of rebirth was to be reinforced by 4AD’s official debut release. Ivo had been doing his round of the Beggars Banquet shops and had returned to Hogarth Road: ‘Peter was behind the counter with all of Rema-Rema. When I heard their music, I knew it was a sea change for 4AD.’

      On the seventh floor of a council-block flat overlooking the hectic thoroughfare of Kilburn in north-west London, Mark Cox not only remembers the first time he met Ivo, but the last – the pair remain friends thirty-three years on, and he is the only former 4AD musician who visits Ivo in Lamy. But then Cox knows all about staying the long course. He’s lived in this flat for three decades, and recently tackled the contents of a cupboard for the first time in two of them, where he discovered a Rema-Rema cassette that brought on a rush of nostalgia. ‘We only ever released one EP, you see,’ he sighs. One of the potentially great post-punk bands was over before it had even begun.

      Cox grew up further out, in London’s leafy and stiflingly conservative suburb of Ruislip, near the famous public school of Harrow. Cox himself ditched his educational opportunities at another public school in the area, snubbing the exam that could have led to university qualification. Two weeks into an apprenticeship in carpentry and joinery, he was on tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees, American punks The Heartbreakers, and Harrow’s own punk ingénues The Models.

      At school, Cox had found himself at odds with his schoolmates’ preference for hard rock, preferring Seventies funk and Jamaican dub, and like most every proto-punk, Bowie and Roxy Music. While fending off the attention of bullies for his skinhead haircut, he had bravely ventured into the still-underground society of London’s gay nightlife, whose liberated clubbers had thrown the nascent punk scene a vital lifeline. ‘You could wear different clothes, dye your hair and wear make-up there,’ Cox recalls. ‘And everyone was having a good time.’

      Cox first met Susan Ballion, the newly christened Siouxsie Sioux, at Bangs nightclub, and seen, up close, John Lydon/Johnny Rotten at Club Louise. But he’d actually befriended Marco Pirroni, who’d played guitar in the impromptu stage debut of the original Banshees and then started The Models with singer Cliff Fox, bassist Mick Allen and drummer Terry Day. Cox was employed as The Models’ roadie – he owned a car while the rest of the gang couldn’t even drive – and even occasionally become a fifth Model on stage, in his words, ‘making noise on a synthesiser over their pretty songs’.

      Released in 1977, the band’s sole single ‘Freeze’ was poppy enough, but its bristling, scuffed energy was far from pretty. There was evidently more ambition than two-minute bites such as ‘Freeze’. As Cox recalls, ‘Marco showed me you didn’t need to go to college for ten years to play music. I discovered Eno and his exploration of sound. I became interested in rhythm, frequency and vibration.’

      When Mick Allen introduced his friend Gary Asquith

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