It’s a good thing that Geoff Travis has never tried to use his record company moguldom to blag into a party, because no one would believe he’s the man who signed The Smiths, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Arcade Fire, The Libertines, The Strokes, Antony & The Johnsons and countless others during an industry career that now spans four decades.
Softly spoken and bereft of both ponytail and Phil Collins satin tour jacket, his main qualification for running the Rough Trade Empire is that he’s a hopeless music fan.
Like many great British rock ‘n’ roll stories, we wouldn't be sat here if it wasn't for punk.
“You couldn’t have picked a better year to start an independent record shop than 1976,” the Cambridge graduate agrees. “We did our best to mess things up by originally basing ourselves in Neasden where there was zero passing trade, but then we moved to Jimi Hendrix’s old stamping ground, Kensington Park Road, and the characters descended! Billy Idol, Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons would be skulking out front while Mark P was in the back stapling together copies of Sniffin’ Glue. We had Patti Smith come in trying to score drugs, and David Bowie standing at the counter and getting a minder to buy him the latest Cabaret Voltaire single. Another regular was Steve Jones from the Pistols who’d try and sell you the records he’d just nicked – it was pretty eventful!”
Despite its Lilliputian size – never mind cats, you’d have been hard-pressed to swing a vertically challenged mouse in there – Rough Trade managed to host some now legendary instores.
“Half of London squeezed into the shop to see The Ramones, while there was almost nobody there for Talking Heads who loved it because there was no promotional paraphernalia to engage in, and they were able to do some record shopping afterwards,” Travis fondly reminisces.
Asked whether they were in any way modeled on the by then thriving Virgin Records, Geoff shakes his head and says, “No, Richard’s nothing to do with music. He wasn’t a fan, but was wise enough to leave the signing of acts to people who were. My role model was City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco, which I’d been in and loved because you could spend all day there without being harassed to buy something. The nature of the place beguiled you, and you became interested in what they were selling. I wanted a place that was the opposite of a Wimpy Bar where the lights were so bright and brazen you left after 30 seconds.”
A late ‘70s label owner he does regard as something of a kindred spirit is Belfast’s very own one-eyed bandit, Terri Hooley.
“Terri was a big part of our lives ‘cause we’d forever be ringing him up and ordering Good Vibrations records. Rudi’s ‘Big Time’ and Protex’s ‘Don’t Ring Me Up’ were both major sellers, and of course he did the first pressings of The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’.”
Which Rough Trade shifted by the truckload after John Peel played it twice in a row on his late night BBC Radio One show. There must have been a lot of buttering Peely up in those days.
“Actually no, there wasn’t. The beauty of John Peel is that you didn’t have to take him out for a Chinese meal or play golf with him in order to get your record played. He knew his own mind when it came to music and didn’t need to be plugged. You’d imagine that’s how all DJs should be, but sadly not.
“I remember the electrifying effect him playing ‘Suspect Device’ by Stiff Little Fingers had,” Geoff continues. “We went from selling two copies a day to two hundred. Not having been to Belfast I didn’t understand it fully, but I knew it was something new and exciting. So much so that SLF’s Inflammable Material was the first album we put out on the Rough Trade record label. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Ireland, which I put down to being a massive fan of early Van Morrison and reading Ulysses five times!”
Indeed, Rough Trade has at various stages been home to The Virgin Prunes, Microdisney, Stars Of Heaven, David Kitt, Cara Dillon and Hal. While the likes of Stiff Little Fingers kept the cash registers ticking over, it was the arrival in May 1983 of The Smiths that turned Rough Trade Records into a major player.
“I was making tea one Friday afternoon at our warehouse when Johnny Marr came up to me and put into my hand a cassette of ‘Hand In Glove’, which the boys had already recorded at 10CC’s Strawberry North studio. He had his young Keith Richard thing going on and said, ‘This is not just another tape’ and because he had the look I took him seriously and over the weekend played it at about 20 times.”
Did he recognise the band’s hit potential straight away?
“Sort of! I didn’t really understand it. ‘Hand In Glove’ is quite a difficult record – not in terms of being avant garde, but because you couldn’t dissect it and say, ‘There’s a bit of The Byrds, that’s Love…’ You couldn’t really make out the words either, but it was a fascinating piece of work and I rang them on Monday and said, ‘Let’s get this cut.’ They came down on Tuesday morning, which was the first time I’d met Morrissey, and we cut the single at Porky’s Mastering Rooms in time-honoured tradition and that was The Smiths’ debut single. The nice thing about the punk era is that you could do things quickly without the need for a 60-page contract. ‘You’re our kind of people, let’s do it.’ I just think they were delighted to have something coming out after having some demos turned down by EMI.’”
There were more tingles down the spine two years later when Geoff happened upon The Jesus & The Mary Chain.
“Actually it was Alan McGee who did the happening upon, and me that signed them to the label I was running at the time for Warners, Blanco Y Negro,” he admits. “The first time I saw them was at The Ambulance Station in South London where they came on stage, stared at the floor and for 15 minutes created the most glorious cacophony you’ve ever heard. It was so good that I hardly cared when I got back to my car and found that the windows had been smashed in!
“Alan McGee took me up to East Kilbride to meet them. The four lads sat in a line on Jim Reid’s sofa saying nothing whilst I made my pitch, which was pretty intimidating. I wasn’t sure how I’d done ‘til McGee said, ‘Foregone conclusion, they love all your records.’
“The Smiths, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Strokes, The Libertines, Arcade Fire, Antony & The Johnsons… these are great artists who I’m very fortunate to have been involved with.”
Even if some of them ended up turning into walking pharmacy cabinets?
“I assume you’re referring to The Libertines,” he chuckles. “A woman called Bani, who’d had some experience in the Warners legal department, decided they’d be right for Rough Trade and persuaded our A&R man James Endeacott to go and see them at what’s now the Rhythm Factory in Bethnal Green. He was so blown away that he got myself and my partner, Jeanette Lee, to go and see them two days later in rehearsal and they were magical. Meeting Carl and Peter then was like meeting Morecambe & Wise reincarnated as two young rock stars. They’d go on the tube and sing songs to entertain the carriage. The way they lived their life was complete lunacy, but for a while manageable.
“I’m very proud of that first Libertines album, even though they vetoed my choice of producer! Bernard Butler produced ‘What A Waster’ and to my mind did a brilliant job, but Bani and their publishing chief decided they didn’t like it and put the kibosh on Bernard doing the album, which I think is a shame. Jeanette came up with the idea of Mick Jones, and that worked because Peter respected him and The Clash.”
At what point did Geoff realise that youthful exuberance was turning into something darker?
“Well, the second album was very difficult to make because Peter’s attention span was already getting a bit like Syd Barrett’s,” he rues. “It’s somewhat of a miracle that it got finished, really. There’s a new Babyshambles album in the can apparently, so let’s pray his songwriting talent hasn’t completely gone and that he can reinvigorate his art.”
Regrets? Geoff Travis has a few, starting with the time that the Stone Roses slipped through his fingers.
“Really, we got completely stitched up by their manager,” he groans. “We paid for their first recording, ‘Elephant Stone’, to be done at Zomba Studios in Willesden by Peter Hook. If Peter had done a better job it wouldn’t have been remixed, and if it hadn’t been remixed there wouldn’t have been a chance for their engineer to tell the Zomba bosses what was going on under their noses.
“It was bad for Rough Trade and – he said arrogantly – bad for the Stone Roses because if they’d been with us they wouldn’t have had that dispute with Zomba, and been distracted from what they were meant to be doing, which was making great records.”
It’s not generally known, but during the ‘80s Rough Trade came tantalisingly close to signing both Roger McGuinn and Prince.
“I brought Roger, who was absolutely charming, over to London and listened in awe as he played me ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ on his 12-string. Unfortunately the new songs that followed were just dreadful! I also made phone calls to try and sign Bob Dylan and John Fogerty – both non-starters – and Prince who it looked like we had for a while. Warner Brothers only put his first three albums out in the States, so I got on to his management to see whether I could licence the fourth. They were very excited about this, but referred me back to Warners’ UK M.D. who said, ‘We’re getting a new record from them in two weeks, which you can do if it turns out to be no good.’ The record in question was 1999 and they hung on to it!”
Often overlooked amidst all the other things he’s done is that Travis was the Cranberries’ manager at the height of their stadium-filling fame. How was that?
“Absolutely fine until Dolores got married and she dumped us, simple as that,” he states baldly. “I’d have to say that after that, her career went down the tubes. Although we felt we were treated very badly, we enjoyed working with the Cranberries and, well, love conquers all doesn’t it?”