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were these bands? What was their story?

      Ivo’s introduction to major label culture had not been auspicious. A&M in America was already licensing Bauhaus from Beggars Banquet, so Ivo had accompanied Martin Mills to a meeting. ‘Martin introduced me as 4AD, Bauhaus’ original label, and the A&M guy said, “Listen to the radio, get an idea of what works here or doesn’t.” It turns out he thought I was Kevin Haskins. I gave him copies of “Breakdown” and by the time I’d got to the airport, Martin had paged me to say A&M told him they had to license “Breakdown”. Yet they never again licensed anything by Colourbox.’

      A&M would have clocked a cool-Britannia take on American influences – a winning combination. But neither A&M nor 4AD had any success with ‘Breakdown’, though the twelve-inch mixes went down well in the clubs, where the edits came into their own. After a period that might be kindly referred to as ‘research’, Gary Asquith and Danny Briottet were to begin their own dance project, mixing hip-hop, sampling and electro as Renegade Soundwave, with Mick Allen and Mark Cox closing ranks as a duo to become The Wolfgang Press, named after German actor Wolfgang Preiss. ‘We added “The” to the front, which conjured up an image, something massive, a big machine,’ says Allen. ‘I thought it was funny.’

      Ivo had agreed to go halves on funding new Allen/Cox demos, and on the evidence of two songs, ‘Prostitute’ and ‘Complete And Utter’, asked for more. It was partly an altruistic act, and one of faith: ‘I liked Mick and Mark so much, I wanted to support them,’ Ivo says. ‘They were the only people ever on 4AD I worked with that wasn’t just based on enjoying their music.’

      Mark Cox: ‘I never asked Ivo how many records Mass had sold. He was slightly frustrated, almost dismayed, that we had no ambition and were still asserting our right to be free. Compare that to Modern English – they had a dream that Ivo could relate to, but he wasn’t sure what to do with us. We weren’t interested in playing live, and we lived in short-life housing with no phone, so things could take days or weeks to happen.’

      Mick Allen: ‘Rightly or wrongly, we were left to our own devices because Ivo had confidence in us. I wanted to make music that you hadn’t heard before, although drawing from the past. I was aware of PiL, the bass and the drums and the simplicity and the space, and I think we achieved that.’

      The PiL comparison was to dog them: NME claimed The Wolfgang Press’s debut album The Burden Of Mules could be marketed as a collection of PiL studio out-takes. But freed from accommodating a guitarist at the start, Allen and Cox had begun to explore a wider remit, sometimes gravitating towards a mutant funk that unfolded through a shifting landscape, as though Mass had opened the doors and let in some light and air. But the mood was still oppressive, such as the opening and typically provocative ‘Prostitute’ (‘Prostitute/ Spice of life’) with Allen’s slightly creepy delivery, while the title track – too closely – tracked the ‘death disco’ aura of PiL. ‘Complete And Utter’ wore more urban-tribal colours but ‘Slow As A Child’ was six minutes of unsettling and shifting ambience, and ‘Journalists’ (a soft target, though Allen says his lyric was aimed at anyone in his path) and the ten-minute finale ‘On The Hill’ were as uncomfortably intense as the Mass album.

      Ivo still wasn’t won over. ‘It’s a very difficult record and I didn’t like it deeply at all. Like Mark said about Labour Of Love, it had great ideas, badly executed.’

      Cox: ‘We were still determined not to be produced, or to be open to guidance in case it meant compromise. But we still didn’t know how to achieve our aims.’ Even so, the duo had agreed with Ivo’s suggestion to add some guitar, and to use In Camera’s Andrew Gray – they had all met when Mass and In Camera had shared bills in London and Manchester – whose oblique approach fitted their own better than Marco Pirroni or Gary Asquith’s heavier style. Dif Juz drummer Richie Thomas and In Camera’s David Scinto (on drums, not vocals) also chipped in.

      Gray also signed up for a handful of Wolfgang Press shows, supporting Xmal Deutschland. Allen says it was a frustrating experience: ‘We were not easy listening. It affirmed what we were doing was either bad or unheard.’ Gray soon stepped down. ‘The crowds wanted a particular industrial punk sound, and I didn’t. I’d become more interested in photography at that point.’

      Ivo: ‘My take on Mass, The Burden Of Mules and the first live experience of The Wolfgang Press is that people were scared away from them for life. It was impenetrable to some, a different type of music.’

      While the nocturnal sounding The Wolfgang Press had been recording an album during the cheaper night shift at west London’s Alvic Studios, Modern English had been taking the daylight shift for parts of After The Snow’s pop levity. The band hadn’t had much success in Britain but the album had been licensed to America by Warners subsidiary Sire. Seymour Stein, the label’s savvy and experienced MD, claims to have been the first to re-appropriate the cinematic term ‘New Wave’ for the new breed of bands after he’d felt that the punk rock tag was putting people off before they’d even heard the music. He had signed the Ramones, Talking Heads and The Pretenders, and after snapping up an unknown local singer called Madonna, he had turned his attentions back to the UK and added Modern English to his stable of UK licensees (The Undertones, Depeche Mode, Echo & The Bunnymen), to be joined by The Smiths.

      Stein was especially keen on Modern English’s ‘I Melt With You’. ‘I knew within the first eight bars that it was a smash, it was so infectious and strong,’ he recalls. ‘I also knew I had to grab the band there and then, without hearing any other songs, or someone else would take them. Other things Ivo signed were too experimental for me, though you could always expect the unexpected from 4AD.’

      Ivo’s A&R ears weren’t attuned to unearthing or spotting hits, though his brother Perry Watts-Russell – now working as the manager of the fast-rising LA band Berlin – says he’d instantly recognised the value of ‘I Melt With You’. ‘It struck me as really catchy and a definite hit, which didn’t sound much like 4AD but could take 4AD into a different space.’

      Modern English had played just a handful of US dates in 1981, and when After The Snow was initially on import, Sire had licensed ‘I Melt With You’ at the end of 1982, becoming the first 4AD track to be licensed in America. Sire followed it by licensing the album in early 1983 when the band returned for an east coast tour. But the breakthrough turned out not to be via a show, or even radio, but a film soundtrack. Stein secured ‘I Melt With You’ a spot in what became that spring’s rom-com film smash Valley Girl, and MTV began rotating the video despite its alarming absence of merit. American audiences simply saw Modern English on a par with Duran Duran, without any of the post-punk image baggage that might have been hindering them in the UK. ‘It all went haywire from there, in a Beatles and Stones way, with all the trappings that went with it,’ says Robbie Grey. ‘We played Spring Break in Florida to thousands of kids going bananas.’

      Ivo: ‘I had the bizarre experience of seeing Modern English one afternoon, with screaming girls throwing cuddly toys at them. The band’s name moved to the top of the film poster when “I Melt With You” kept selling.’

      The single reached 78 in the national US charts in 1983, with After The Snow making number 70 and also selling half a million. But the breakthrough could, and should, have been even greater. ‘Warners didn’t open their cheque book to help move things to the next level,’ says Ivo, ‘such as the top 40. “I Melt With You” is still one of the most played songs ever on American radio.’

      For Modern English, the joy of popularity was tempered by the reality of where they’d landed. ‘We played San Diego baseball stadium to 60,000 people, with Tom Petty top of the bill,’ recalls Mick Conroy. ‘The change was immense and the pressure got insane. Ivo hooked us up with an American manager, Will Botwin, who gave us practice amps, and said to start writing the next album, between gigs. It was so different to 4AD’s approach.’

      That didn’t stop 4AD from joining in marketing the band, with a view to breaking them further. As Sire did in America, 4AD released ‘Someone’s Calling’ in the UK, its first attempt to take a single from a preceding

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