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20.07.12 MusicWeek 13


with this philosophy of not wanting to work with a major and I turned down some fantastic deals. People say, “You must really regret it.” I suppose I


regret not having the money but I don’t regret being employed for two years by a major and then being told to fuck off and my life’s work just binned. We always resisted that until we found our right level. Pinnacle going bankrupt hurt us a little bit.


Being an indie and having the distribution networks collapse every five or six years can hurt but we’ve gone back to Backs and Shellshock. I was with Backs when I started in the early Eighties and we found that they’re pretty safe and pretty good. There aren’t that many indie distributors out there anymore. There’s PIAS or there’s SRD or Shellshock, who are pretty good for us.


What was it about your time at Stiff that contributed to your attitude towards the majors? Stiff Records had a very DIY ethos, which came out of punk and that’s how I started. But the difference with Stiff was that, while they were an indie and they were very punk, they were having hit after hit after hit. I’d gone into this company that was the coolest most successful company in the world at the time in the mid-Eighties. Then they did some kind of tie-up with Island


Records. I just remember that being the point at which it all started to go wrong at Stiff because the indie culture is very different to the major culture. I could see this change in the indies over the


years where the record men – people like Marshall Chess in the States or Stiff ’s old boss Dave Robinson over here – were gradually becoming marginalised in favour of accountants and lawyers and I’m afraid an accountant or a lawyer wouldn’t know a decent record if it bit them on the arse. Record men have always been integral in this


industry because when the wrong people are in charge of developing talent the industry becomes pretty stale. It’s rather like the situation we’re in at the


moment with so much corporate pop around, I think it smothers the shoots of creativity, which have to go right back underground to the latest street scene or whatever. Then it finds its strength again and I think that’s the strength of the indie. In the old days a little scene had two years to


develop underground. Jungle had six months before the majors came in and threw loads of money on it and they all wonder why it goes wrong. It’s because they don’t give it enough time to


develop. That’s the major culture: get it, package it, get as many different things that sound exactly the same as it as possible, flood the market and you’ll hit your margin. It works for them and that’s fine, that’s their


business model but it’s not particularly mine. We can’t afford that anyway, we can only sign two bands a year and try and do it properly.


That will work for certain artists as well… And you get to make your own creative decisions. That’s the most important thing to a young band. Take a choice: here’s 150 grand on the table and we’ll make you [a global superstar] or here’s three years, not very much money at all but go and work on your craft, learn how to write songs properly. That’s the benefit an indie will give. Eventually a


major will come and buy the band anyway, if they’re any good. So the indie gets paid, the artist gets paid


and they’ve had three years of development. That’s what we did with Jamiroquai. He was too


big for Acid Jazz in terms of his attitude, outlook and expenditure in terms of what he wanted to do. We knew that we would never be able to pay the costs. His first single cost me £45,000 to record whereas the first Brand New Heavies album, which sold a million, cost £7,000 to record. Suddenly there’s two of us in an office and I’ve


got Jay saying, “Right, I want James Brown’s brass section on this record tomorrow.” So we knew that we had to do a deal with a major for Jay but we wanted to make sure that he’d established himself in terms of his creative direction. When we first signed him, nobody else wanted him, everyone said, “He’s rubbish,” if you can believe that. It took me two years to place him with a major and even then they only got him by accident.


Would you say you were able to take more of a risk than perhaps a major might? If you’re in A&R at a major you know full well that on your say so they’re going to spend a million pounds. If you make that wrong call, you’ve wasted a million pounds of your company’s money. You can develop a band on an indie for two


grand properly and get it up to two levels. At a major it’s all or nothing, you’ll see two thousand or 200,000. At an indie you’ve got a chance of building


“Jamiroquai’s first single cost me £45,000 to record whereas the first Brand New Heavies album, which sold a million, cost £7,000 to record....” EDDIE PILLER


PICTURED Piller’s players: The Brand New Heavies (above left), James Taylor Quartet (above right), The Janice Graham Band (left)


and breaking over time. That’s why the best indies get touted by the majors, because they do the hard work. Majors find it hard to break bands, indies find it hard to sell decent quantities.


What’s going on for the 25th anniversary? We’ve got loads of things going on. Probably the most important thing – and we haven’t confirmed it yet because I’m not 100% sure it’s going to happen – is Gilles Peterson and myself are going to hopefully be doing a party towards Christmas. We haven’t DJ’d together in the UK for over 20 years Gilles has agreed, we just have to find the venue


now, which believe me we’re looking for. We’ve got a couple of gigs at 229 on Great


Portland Street, where we’re showcasing the contemporary Acid Jazz bands like Matt Berry - the actor-come-folk singer - and The Janice Graham Band, our new Manchester band that are doing very well and a few DJs. We’ve got an Acid Jazz All-Stars gig, an


exhibition of artwork and photos and a rare mod series of unreleased music from the Sixties including books, EPs, boxsets and CDs, which is having its own riverboat party. We’re doing lots of things spread from August to December.


What are the plans for the label moving forward? I think it depends on what happens to the retail sector of our industry. HMV is vital to the music business. It’s been in a


strange place in the last few months: everyone in the industry knows it needs to survive but there seems to be a lack of desire from consumers to go into record shops and look at things. So HMV is complementing its music output with hardware. I think that if HMV is broken up or goes completely, it’s going to be really difficult. Amazon has contributed to that to a degree by


undercutting physical retail and direct-to-consumer is becoming more important. So, artistically we’re going to continue to do


what we do, which is a nice mix across the board but in terms of the practicality of distribution, marketing and sales, it really depends on what happens to retail over the next few months.


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