12 MusicWeek 20.07.12 THEBIGINTERVIEWEDDIE PILLER ALL THAT ACID JAZZ
Eddie Piller looks back on 25 years of his genre- defining label
LABELS BY TOM PAKINKIS
A
cid Jazz’s dwellings in a Bethnal Green cellar are probably the best indicator of the label’s enduring indie philosophy
while its poster-plastered walls and vinyl-heavy shelves tell tales of its 25-year history. But the label’s achievements over the past two
decades are by no means as humble as its surroundings. Acid Jazz co-founder Eddie Piller talks to Music Week about the label’s origins, its Stateside invasion in the Nineties and why he never cashed in on a major label deal...
What was the intention behind Acid Jazz when it was first set up? The whole thing started as a bit of a joke. I was managing a band called The James Taylor Quartet, who had just been signed to Polydor and I was mates with Gilles Peterson. We saw our scene – the rare groove and jazz scene, for want of a better word – growing over a year-long period. Then Acid House came along. We were on
this holiday in Ibiza where it was discovered by the British DJ fraternity. We thought it’d be good to get the atmosphere and excitement of Acid House into our jazz scene. So we decided to set up a label. Our main producer Chris Bangs, who’s
produced Paul Weller and Galliano, came up with the name Acid Jazz. We said, “Yeah great. It’ll be fun and we’ll release three records and then we’ll go off and do something else.” I’d already had two indie labels and I’d worked at Stiff but Gilles was new to records, he was a Radio London DJ around that time. So we set up this little label. We did one
seven-inch with a dinked American jukebox hole, an American address on the press release and all that, as if it was an American record. Someone from New York sent out all the promos and it got reviewed as an American record but it was Galliano doing this jazz rap. We sold 15,000 copies out of the back of a van
in three months. Having done indie labels I realised that was a lot with no distribution, just a van service. It gradually began to build up a head of steam and after a year and a half I couldn’t really stop doing it. After about two years Gilles decided he’d had
enough of the independent way of life and had been approached by a major. I didn’t want to work with a major because I’d already experienced the Stiff and Island relationship, and I felt it wasn’t very good for an indie to be partners with a major. So he left and went to set up Talkin’ Loud and
I carried on with Acid Jazz. We divided the roster between us. He got Galliano and The Young Disciples and I got The Brand New Heavies and
BELOW Silver celebration: Acid Jazz founder Eddie Piller is celebrating the label’s 25th Anniversary with a number of gigs, exhibitions and showcases from August
A Man Called Adam who eventually went on to become Leftfield. We had the glory years from around 1990-94
where it was literally the biggest genre in the world. We completely cracked America in a way that even Britpop didn’t: Jamiroquai was the biggest selling UK-signed artist of the Nineties. That all went off and then I gradually started to
get a bit bored of it in the mid-Ninetiess so I decided to do something different. So I bought a derelict nightclub in Hoxton Square, which we called The Blue Note. I A&R’d it like it was a record label and I don’t think anyone had really done that before. When that became too big I decided to
concentrate on Acid Jazz again and I’ve been doing that since about 2000. Over the last three or four years we’ve been building almost exponentially in spite of the fact that everything else seems to have been crashing.
What kind of opportunities were you getting in the US during the label’s peak? It was a bit weird because we were seen as the most fashionable thing in the United States. Not just in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles - we were properly lionised. It was the weirdest thing: one day I’m DJing
to 60 people in a pub on Hackney Road, the next I’m DJing at Sylvester Stallone’s birthday party in Los Angeles. I found it an odd experience but obviously it’s great to be the eye of the whirlwind.
“It was the weirdest thing: one day I’m DJing to 60 people in a pub on Hackney Road, the next I’m DJing at Sylvester Stallone’s birthday party in LA....” EDDIE PILLER
To what extent has the goal of the label changed since you started? The goal has always been the same: to run an indie label, to have fun and not to sell out to the majors, because of my Stiff Records upbringing. We’re an indie label –
sometimes we’re in fashion, sometimes we’re not. 25 years is a long time, you can’t be in fashion for all of that time.
What was coming back to the label like? How much work was there to be done?
Musically, it was particularly unfashionable. We never stopped releasing records but at the time I had a team of 30, of which two were working on Acid Jazz and the rest were working on various other things. It wasn’t a priority for a number of years but we never stopped it. We did a couple of releases around that time,
one of which was the jazz funk album made by the members of Jamiroquai, Primal Scream and The Brand New Heavies – all the peripheral members of those bands and that ended up selling shit loads. That gave me the confidence to continue but
we realised we had to look in different areas artistically because you can’t sustain a single-genre label for 25 years. It’s just impossible. We’ve always had a big, wide spread, which is part of Acid Jazz. Since 2000 we’ve been a bit more diverse in
terms of A&R product but we’ve always continued to sign things, we’ve always had a bit of success – sometimes a lot of success and sometimes abject failure. On the whole we’re doing okay compared to most indies. During the Nineties I was approached by every
single major wanting to buy the label but because I’d worked at Stiff – and it’s rather a stupid attitude – but if you grew up during punk rock you became inculcated
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