12 MusicWeek 07.09.12 THEBIGINTERVIEWSIMONRAYMONDE


and I did find that enormously frustrating. I felt we were letting the artist down a little bit. Then our distributor Pinnacle went bust [in


2008] and we really were up shit creek because they owed us loads of money – and then V2 went bust who were our licensing partner in Europe. We could have gone bankrupt at any point around then. I was like: “Is this really worth it anymore?”, sweating my bollocks off just to make it work. We were just really lucky that [distributor] Co-


Op, which had been part of V2, got bought by Universal. That has worked out incredibly well. And would you believe in the same week, the week it nearly all went wrong, I found Fleet Foxes. That’s this business for you: you’re on the floor,


you think it’s over, and then five minutes later something amazing happens; something as simple as hearing a great piece of music.


Co-Op played a role in giving you the investment and infrastructure you needed to make Fleet Foxes a huge success. How did you deal with that sudden commercial explosion? There’s nothing nicer than watching artists you’re trying to help do well. There aren’t too many debut albums that sell a couple of million records. I realised it was a phenomenon and it was highly unlikely to ever happen again. There was almost a chemical reaction to the


band. It became a bit of a monster in a way for Robin [Pecknold] to deal with. The attention and analysing that comes with being successful – it turned him off a little bit and he’s having a bit of quiet time at the moment. But obviously the first couple of years were quite a thrilling ride. We’d never had a hit record before, we’d never


been on the Radio 1 playlist before. It was like: “What are these? These are great!” I don’t remember any arguments or raised voices in two years. It was an absolute joy from start to finish.


Are there any particular Bella Union records other than the 2007 Midlake album which you thought deserved a wider audience? All of them! Sometimes I have this childish view that every record we sign will sell a million records. Probably Lift to Experience [The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads, 2001,


pictured]: that was the first time I thought, “Wow this is just a groundbreaking record.” The press reaction to it was incredible, although most reviews started with, “This is on the Cocteau Twins’ boutique label Bella Union,” which used to drive me mental. It got a five-star review in Uncut, a really brilliantly-written piece, but the band broke up after a year or so later.


Is it odd being from an era where selling tens of thousands of albums in a week was unspectacular? That’d get you in the Top Five now… If you think too much about the differences in numbers from then to now, you’d give up. That’s why I say to everyone, “Numbers are not really what it’s all about. If you start looking every week to see how many you’ve sold, you’re not really in the music business – well, you’re in the major label business.” I don’t want to be in that business. Everything we


do should be about the music. I know that sounds corny but if you put out great things and you make


WHY I LOVE BELLA UNION


VINCENT CLERY-MELIN GM, CO-OP MUSIC “I believe Simon is one of the last music visionaries in the business today, much like Ivo Watts-Russell at 4AD some years ago. He has managed to build a culture and an aesthetic for his label, based


almost exclusively on impeccable taste for great music, despite the hard realities of the music business today. If signing to an independent still means something culturally to artists, it’s thanks to labels such as Bella Union.”


LAURENCE BELL FOUNDER, DOMINO “Bella Union is a label that always follows its own heart and releases what it loves. That’s a good way to operate I reckon. Hats off to them.”


BELOW Bella ringers: The Bella Union team, from left: Duncan Jordan (head of press), Anika Mottershaw (label assistant), Luke Jarvis (Online PR) and Mark Byrne (label manager / A&R)


www.musicweek.com


“That’s the music business for you: you’re on the floor, you think it’s over, and then something amazing happens; something as simple as hearing a great piece of music” SIMON RAYMONDE


them look really good, I have to believe that people will buy them.


What do you make of Spotify and a culture of instant musical gratification? I understand how the model came to be, but it’s like putting a thimble under Niagara, you can’t stop this shit happening. The argument is that it’s obviously better than everybody just getting everything for free, but I’m not sure that that’s actually what’s happening right now. From my experience, the people that download


music for free are actually the ones that end up spending the most money on it – the reason they are downloading it for free is to find out if they want to buy it and make an educated decision. I don’t like Spotify, but do I accept that is better than nothing? Kind of, but I’m not 100% sure. I think in a year or two’s time we might be crying: “What have we all done!?” People are getting lazier and lazier. The more you


give them a reason to sit on their fat arses and do nothing but push buttons on the computer, I mean… We should destroy the internet [laughs]. Maybe the music industry should type ‘Google’ into Google or something.


You won the only Music Week Award in 2012 voted for by music retailers… That meant a lot to me. My only other job apart from this one was working in a record shop. I still love retail. I go to Rough Trade and I buy a lot of vinyl every week – that’s what I listen to at home. I wouldn’t dream of getting a Spotify account at home because I would just feel dirty.


Rough Trade were talking about expanding across the UK in a recent Music Week… I wish they would. If we look at music retail history in the UK, why didn’t those shops succeed? It wasn’t because there was something wrong with the music industry, it was because they were selling shit stuff badly. I worked at Our Price after I worked for Beggars Banquet record store in Earl’s Court and initially it was a really great chain. Then it got taken


over and became like McDonalds. We were even told by the area managers not to go out into the shop – to stay behind the counter. All those shops went out of business because they were run by complete fools.


You say you don’t sign artists thinking you’re going to make money – but isn’t that what some artists want? Well, they won’t come to me then – unless they think progress and development are the key to making lots of money, which of course they are.


I look at Beach House (above) as the perfect model. They knew they weren’t the finished product on their first album. They have grown brilliantly and with great grace. They didn’t expect to sell a million records on album No.1 and neither did we – we sold 2,000, and maybe 3,000 of the second. They could easily have gone elsewhere at that


point. We only had a two album deal. They could have gone to 4AD or anyone else who was knocking at the door, and I know there were plenty. But they liked us as people and saw we were trying our best. And then on Teen Dream, it just clicked. Most labels want to see success pretty much from the first single. I’m more about making three or four albums and seeing how we’re getting on.


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