Andrew
Lauder
Q and A by Ian Fraser
(Edited
highlights of this interview were originally published
in Terrascopædia
magazine issue 22, March 2024)
Each
of us can probably point to one or more rec ord
labels whose output played a pivotal and lasting role in
our musical education. For many of a certain age, one
such label was United Artists (UA), one of the best,
most authentic UK semi-independent imprints of the early
and mid 1970s and which nurtured many of the acts that
underpin the ethos of Ptolemaic Terrascope. Indeed
without certain key releases by UA it may be that
Terrascope would not have happened in the first place.
And
for that we can thank Andrew Lauder, A and R man
extraordinaire and surely one of the most single
important people in alternative rock music history.
Terrascope was pleased to speak at length with Andrew
(who, these days, lives in France), following the
publication of ‘Happy Trails - Andrew Lauder’s Charmed
Life and High Times in the Record Business’. This
compelling memoire details Lauder’s early years working
in Denmark Street, then still Britain’s Tin Pan Alley,
in the mid 1960s, his tenure with Liberty in the late
1960s, United Artists in the 1970s, through to his time
with Radar Records and beyond.
Co-written
with Mick Houghton (PR supremo to the likes of KLF,
Teardrop Explodes, Julian Cope and Echo and the Bunnymen
- yet more names that make your scribe salivate), ‘Happy
Trails...’ reads like a Boys Own compendium of
counter-cultural derring-do and jolly japes, underpinned
by what seems like almost impossible good fortune and a
sense of being in the right place at the right time. I
was reminded of the Robert Duvall character ‘Kilgore’ in
Apocalyse Now, destined to sail through everything
thrown at him without so much as a scratch.
Andrew
Lauder
(AL): [LAUGHS] Yes, I think so, pretty much! That’ll
do.
Lauder
went from being his school’s ‘answer to the Beatles’ (to
quote his House master) to a budding Andrew Loog Oldham
(they went to the same alma mater) in the space of a
chapter break. At what point did he realise that the
business end and not the performance aspect of music
would be his calling?
AL:
I think basically when I got to London and managed to
get to all the clubs. Working on Denmark Street I was
only five minutes’ walk from the Marquee, Flamingo,
Studio 51, 100 Club and so on. I realised that these
guys were in a different class and were better than I
was ever going to be. Having got my first job I soon
came to the conclusion that I was better off being
around these people and helping them to make records
rather than doing it myself.
Denmark
Street has seen significant change over the years and
especially recently.
AL:
I visited there back in May when I attended the book
launch and if I hadn’t remembered the street numbers I
wouldn’t have recognised anything. It was all a bit
depressing and should have been a bit more preserved,
really, especially given its long history and
contribution to music publishing from before the
Second World War.
As
a 17 year-old invoice clerk I was in awe of so many
people I used to bump into there, the Kinks, David
Jones who became Bowie, and who I didn’t much get on
with. I think he turned into a much nicer bloke after
he became successful but on the way up he was a bit
like Marc Bolan upsetting people like John Peel. I
guess that it was that determined attitude that
eventually got them what they wanted.
While
Andrew recalls in enviable detail his early working life
in and around London’s Tin Pan Alley, his blues and
Mod-related gigging experiences and wheeler dealing,
there is little or no mention of UFO and the psychedelic
London scene of ’66/67.
(AL)
Actually
I was really up for it. I’d go to Indica Bookshop [on
Charing Cross Road] in my lunch breaks. This would
have been, I suppose, 1966. They had ESP discs and I
quickly became familiar with the first couple of Fugs
albums. Then I started hearing about the bands that
were popping up around London and the early Pink Floyd
gigs at UFO. I probably didn’t go that often because
from May 1967 I got the job with Liberty and from then
on most of the gigs I went to were with Ray Williams,
head of A and R, with whom I shared a flat. So I was
probably going to fewer gigs because by then we were
working on the bands that we’d signed and
getting records out and that took up more and more of
my time. Therefore I guess that period didn’t impact
on me quite as much as ’65 and seeing the Yardbirds
and The Who .
To
the chase, then. Many older Terrascope readers will have
cut their musical teeth on a fantastic Liberty/UA
sampler entitled ’All Good Clean Fun’. This doesn’t seem
to feature in the book. Was this to downplay its
significance?
(AL)
Not
at all, we’d already put out two samplers called
‘Gutbucket’ and ‘Son of Gutbucket’ and then all of a
sudden we had a much bigger catalogue. And so I
thought we’d probably get away with doing a special
package, which became ‘All Good Clean Fun’. The
envelope sleeve thing was quite cheap to do. It was
just one piece of card, folded. We’d done it with Can
on ‘Tago Mago’ and I thought, well, that was a good
way of producing a double album inexpensively. It was
also a chance to feature some of the American acts we
had as well as the stuff I’d been signing.
So
no,
I spent a lot of time on that, including the cover,
which was from a Boys’ Own annual from, I think 1895.
Originally it depicted a boy sitting in a railway
carriage reading a ’Boys’ Own’ paper. However this was
at the time of the Oz ‘School Kids’ issue and the
trial, and I had this idea of making it contemporary
by changing the Boys’ Own into a copy of Oz. There was
an antique place near where I lived called ‘The
Lacquer Chest’ in Kensington Church Street and they
had lots of old magazines and post cards, mostly
Victorian, and I thought it would be good to use that
for the packaging of ‘All Good Clean Fun’. So, I
probably spent more time on this one than the previous
two compilations.
I
was really happy with ‘All Good Clean Fun’. The
problem was when we were doing the book we couldn’t
put everything in otherwise it would have been like
War and Peace! It would have been so big that people
wouldn’t want to read it’.
It
later got the obligatory extended CD reissue. One would
hope that Lauder was involved in that.
(AL)
No,
in fact the guy who did it only contacted me when it
was all put together and he cursed himself, because
aside from the If track, and which I didn’t much care
for, I’d been involved in all the other material that
they featured. He realised just in time for me to
contribute to the liner notes, but I enjoyed it and I
think EMI did a good job.
A
character who is mentioned frequently throughout this
section of ‘Happy Trails’ is Doug Smith of Clearwater
Productions and who managed bands like Hawkwind, who
would become one of UA’s flagship bands and would help
shape Liberty and UA’s reputation as a home for new
underground bands .
![](../images/Clearwater.jpg)
(AL)
My
friendship with Doug Smith was really important,
actually. My friend Wayne [Bardell] and I did High
Tide together and then Wayne joined with the two other
guys, Richard Thomas and Doug and they had a joint
office where Doug lived in Notting Hill Gate. I
started spending a lot of time with Doug because I’d
just split up with a girlfriend and found myself at a
loss. I’d go around to his and have a smoke and listen
to records - I was listening to a great pile of
records every week which, as head of A and R was a
reasonable thing to be doing. Larry Wallis had a band
called The Entire Sioux Nation which Clearwater
handled and they had Trees (who were already signed to
CBS) and High Tide and pretty soon Hawkwind came along
.So it was a fun place to go and several nights a week
I’d trot over there (it wasn’t far from where I
lived).
We
became really good friends and the first American trip
we did together, which was supposed to be a holiday,
brought back so much work for United Artists that they
ended up reimbursing us for the trip. Doug and I are
still good friends and we often keep in touch. He’s
living in Spain now.
Ironically,
Andrew’s label was called United Artists and yet it
often seemed to attract bands who couldn’t maintain the
same line-up for two consecutive albums. At times it
must have seemed like cat herding. Did this help or
hinder creativity and was it ‘good for business’?
AL
- Gosh yes, with Hawkwind you had people coming and
going all the time like Bob Calvert and there were two
drummers at one point and a succession of bass
players. I think Lemmy was their fourth bassist since
I’d signed the band. I don’t think that constant
regeneration was necessarily good for business but
there wasn’t anything you could really do about it.
Man,
of
course, were the obvious example, it didn’t really
stop. My own favourite line-up was the two
guitars, bass and drums - Deke [Leonard] and Micky
[Jones], Terry [Williams] and Martin Ace. We really
thought we were getting somewhere with that line-up
after Greasy Truckers and then that was the biggest
change Will [Youatt] and Phil [Ryan] came in, Deke was
gone. It turned into a slightly different thing but it
worked and it built on the momentum of ‘Greasy
Truckers’ and ‘Live at the Padget Rooms’ which of
course was the album
that charted. I didn’t know Phil before he joined
although I knew of him through Eyes of Blue and his
work with Pete Brown and I didn’t know Will either,
but we got on great. There was no problem at all and
the impetus didn’t really stop despite the changes of
personnel
and format. I still missed that two guitars, bass and
drums, but the gigs were great and the audience grew.
I wouldn’t have chosen that as a way of doing it but
it didn’t do any harm. After that it grew into what
was almost half Help Yourself. Malcolm Morley, Ken
Whaley and Deke had become very good friends and I
just learned to accept the situation. Seeing them
socially also meant I’d get prior warning of more
changes.
Lauder
mentions in the book that his initial impression of Man
was coloured by their previous output about which you
admit to having been a bit sniffy. Yet he took a leap of
faith by signing them without seeing them play. What
prompted this inspirational leap of blind faith?
AL:
The truth is I can’t remember. My earliest memory of
actually seeing them was at Rockfield Studios, but I
think I’d heard about them so much and I had a good
relation with the guys in Germany, where Man played a
lot and were popular (they’d even had a hit there) and
all the reports that I was getting back were saying
how fantastic they were. I was getting on with Barrie
[Marshall] the manager and who was obviously
determined to make them successful but I really can’t
remember how I committed to them, but I’m pleased that
I did. Terry Williams was new to the band and made one
hell of a difference I think, and he and Martin Ace
played really well together. It was that gig at the
Roundhouse that made all the difference. I thought
they would make
an impression, but like a lot of people there I had no
idea that they were that good.
That
Roundhouse gig was of course the ‘Greasy Truckers
Party’, a gloriously
chaotic fundraiser and which was captured for posterity
on a double album release of the same name.
AL:
We knew it was probably going to be a bit chaotic as
we were
due an hour with no power because it was the time of
the three-day week. We did our best to cope with it
and we thought what are we going to do with the
audience? We had some emergency lighting and we’d got
a couple of acoustic acts, but what we didn’t realise
was that the Police would make us clear the building.
So everybody had to go out and hang around outside but
then when they came back in so did loads of extra
people because no one
had arranged any pass-outs, and we ended up with an
additional 500 or so people in there. It was very
full! But we got away with it and nobody lost
interest, and trooped off. I think Man had played
early on and probably Brinsley Schwarz. At that time
Hawkwind
would have been the big draw so everybody wanted to
see them on the other side of the power cut. The way
it worked out was pretty good apart from what happened
to the other group, Byzantium, who couldn’t play.
Mention
of which prompts the question what did happen to
Byzantium?
(AL):
They were already
signed with A & M at the time. I can’t say I ever
saw them play live and it was regrettable that they
drew the short straw, but I was determined that Man
should play and that was my ‘part of the deal’. I
don’t think they lasted too much longer after that.
Staying
with Man, Andrew speaks warmly in the book of their tour
with John Cipollina from which the wonderful live album
‘Maximum Darkness’ emerged (again live at the
Roundhouse). Was there any truth in the story that ‘Cip’
was on less than sparkling form and that his album parts
had to be overdubbed by Micky Jones?
AL:
I think only one track. The problem he was having was
that he played with a tremolo arm so much and it does
bugger up the tuning of the guitar. We were in the
studio listening to the recording and it was rocking
along except for that one bit, which Micky touched up
because he was able to imitate Cipollina perfectly.
Micky was a fabulous guitarist who never played the
same thing twice, I mean he and Deke were very
different players and I loved the two of them
together. But I’m pretty sure it was only the one
track that had to be worked on and that this thing
about guitar parts being re-recorded wholesale has
become overblown.
![](../images/MickyJonesofManbyMWd.jpg)
What,
then, prevented Help Yourself from achieving the same
commercial success and cult status as stable mates
Hawkwind and Man (they were no more transient in terms
of personnel or chaotic, surely)?
AL:
They probably weren’t built for the road. I’m thinking
particularly of Malcolm. Whereas the Man band was more
or less designed to get in a van and travel and were
hardy, Help Yourself were a bit more fragile. They
found it hard work, and Malcolm suffered fits of
depression which probably held them back. We tried to
compensate by working around that to some extent, but
they are probably more highly regarded by people now
than they were at the time. Listening to that box set
that came out makes you realise that they were really
good and they were lovely people, and John Eichler who
managed them was great. Malcolm in fact was at the
book launch in May. Somebody told me he was there but
I was in the middle of signing books and by the time I
was able to go looking for him everyone had gone and
so I didn’t see him unfortunately.
Andrew
put out and impressive, some might say foolhardy number
of releases by splinter acts peeling away from the
mothership for
example Iceberg, Neutrons and Clive John out of Man and
Robert Calvert’s solo LPs. This must have been
commercially and reputationally risky even by the
standards of the day. How did he manage to justify so
many tangential projects and did nobody say ‘Andrew,
Clive John for god’s sake! What are you thinking?!’
AL:
Er, no, to be honest. Martin Davis was the managing
director and he just let me get on with it. I’ve no
idea what Clive John’s album sold, probably not a
great deal, but there again I liked Clive and he’d
been in the Man band so I thought ‘why not?’ It wasn’t
expensive and the thing is I always had something
successful on the go. Creedence Clearwater Revival
helped because they were always having hits and The
Groundhogs and Hawkwind were becoming successful which
allowed me to indulge a little. I kind of got left
alone by Martin who was very supportive, probably
because I was right more often than I was wrong.
![](../images/DownHomerRhythmKingsLc.jpg)
Photo:
the cast of the Ernie Graham solo album, featuring
members of Help Yourself and Brinsley Schwarz, plus
manager John Eichler (back row, right hand side). Hand
annotation by Richard Treece (back row, left hand
side)
So
was being given carte blanche simply a reflection of
your impressive track record or a sign of more
benevolent times?
AL:
Probably a bit of both, I would say. We weren’t
spending huge amounts of money in the studio,
especially in the early days. Take the first Hawkwind
album. Other than ‘Hurry on Sundown’ and the b-side
[‘Mirror of Illusion’] we did it all in one go in an
afternoon and then Dick Taylor finished it off in a
couple of days. It was only later when we would spend
a bit more, maybe take a couple of weeks, and we’d use
Rockfield where the rates weren’t particularly
expensive and you’d come away with a finished record.
With Man we probably didn’t spend much until later on
either. But with bands like Hawkwind and Man they used
to develop their material live so that by the time
they went into studio they pretty much had it down as
opposed to having to learn material during studio
time, all of which helped.
Given
that the book mentions that Andrew lost much of his
enthusiasm for Hawkwind after they dismissed Lemmy, did
he regret that Motorhead slipped through the net?
AL:
Oh yes I do, yeah. That was definitely the one that
got away. I was too quick off the mark in a way. I was
talking to Lemmy about doing something and he said he
wanted the nastiest, loudest rock ‘n roll band in the
world. Lucas Fox from Warsaw PAKT came in on drums and
I was really happy that [guitarist] Larry Wallis, whom
I knew from Shagrat and Pink Fairies, was involved.
That was the first Motorhead.
Doug
Smith
was managing them and Dave Edmunds agreed to produce
an album so it was all coming together. Doug got them
a few support dates with Blue Oyster Cult, I think,
and it was all stacking up nicely, and I got the
artwork done, which was the beginning of the famous
logo. They went to Rockfield and after the first week
I thought I’d go down and see how things were going.
Dave played me four tracks, which sounded great. But
then he said ‘I can’t go on, I haven’t slept for a
week’. He had gone a funny shade of green! Also, I
found out later that he was being pressured by
Swansong records, and particularly Peter Grant [Led
Zeppelin’s legendary intimidating manager] to get his
own album done.
The
next
problem was that with a residential studio like
Rockfield you’re stuck there. You can’t just hand
studio time to someone else who needs it like say in
London. Even allowing for the great relationship I had
(and still have) with owner Kingsley Ward if you have
studio time booked you have to pay for it. A friend of
mine, Fritz Fryer, had been guitarist with the Four
Pennies in the 1960s and his wife was cook at
Rockfield. Fritz had recently started producing and so
I prevailed upon him to finish off the album, which he
did.
But
then
there was pressure from Dave Brock on Doug Smith. Dave
was leader of Hawkwind and he wasn’t happy about Doug
managing a new group with Lemmy, who had recently been
kicked out of Hawkwind. That put Doug in a difficult
situation because at that time Hawkwind was where the
money was coming from to pay the bills. Later Doug
would solve the problem by getting my friend Wayne in
so he could truthfully say that someone else was
looking after Motorhead. However, in the meantime I
had an album produced by different people, no manager
and to cap it all Lemmy went and changed the group.
Out were Larry and Lucas and in came Fast Eddie and
Philthy Animal, which left me with a redundant album
by a band that no longer existed. Lemmy was coming in
every other day asking for money and I was thinking
‘I’m going to end up managing them as well as all the
other stuff I have going on’. So I just let them go
and I promised that as long as I was there I wouldn’t
put the album out. Of course after I left the guys who
came in after me released it.
So
yes
I regret not making it work with Lemmy and I had to
watch them get successful, initially through some good
friends of mine, Ted and Roger at Chiswick, who
released their Motorhead single and somehow stumped up
the money to finish off the album featuring the
current band. But yeah, I was in there too early with
Motorhead.
Speaking
of getting in early, Andrew was an early champion of
Kosmische or Krautrock , pre-empting a movement that has
proved to have an enduring appeal and perhaps spotting
something that others may have missed or simply not have
been aware of.
(AL):
There
were two very good guys in Germany. One was Siegfried
Loch, who used to produce a lot of stuff for Star Club
like The Searchers before they signed to Pye and who
I’d known from various festivals. He employed a guy
called Gerhard Augustin who became my opposite number
in German Liberty, and we got on really well. We liked
the same music and were interested in the same things.
He’d signed Amon Duul II and finished off the first
album - ‘Phallus Dei’- which he sent it to me. I
thought ‘who the hell are these guys’? Anyway I agreed
with Gerhard that they were interesting and so I put
it out. It didn’t sell very many copies but it got a
bit of mention in International Times and the
underground press.
At
that
point, just before ‘Yeti’, they said ‘we’ve found
another group but we need you to be convinced about
this otherwise they won’t sign’. That turned out to be
Can. It was important to them not just to get a
release in the UK but be promoted. Ultimately they
wanted to get to America and the easiest way of doing
that was via some success in the UK, rather than what
happened in Germany. They’d pressed up some copies of
their first album themselves on their own label. Those
arrived via a very unlikely source, namely Abi Ofarim
of ‘Cinderella Rockefella’ fame and who in the very
early days had got involved in the group. He was in
Martin’s office and I got this call to come down
because Abi had this package and I thought ‘what the
hell’s he doing here’. So he gave me a copy of the
first album and Holger Czukay’s ‘Canaxis’ record. I
thanked him very much, went off to a lunch
appointment, came back later, put it on and was
completely blown away. I thought ‘got we’ve got to do
this’. So I was involved in the signing but strictly
speaking didn’t set it up. But we agreed to work on it
as though it was one of our groups. That’s how highly
we thought of it.
Neu
was
from a different source and that happened a bit later
and purely because it appealed to me. That was from a
label called Brain.
Was
Lauder surprised that, as well as lasting significance,
its stock seems to have risen with the passing of time?
(AL):
Yeah,
Can are practically godlike now. I thought it was
really important at the time. I played it to Andy
Dunkley the DJ who was a friend of mine and who worked
at Simon Stables record shop in Portobello Road and he
said ‘I’ve got a big festival this weekend you’ve got
to lend it to me’ and I thought ‘hang on I haven’t
even signed them yet’! So he loved it but not
everybody got it, some found it too difficult so it
was a bit ‘Marmite’ originally. But the people who
loved it thought it was the best. Looking back I think
the UA releases were the best, I never really cared
for the Virgin stuff in the same way.
On
which subject did it ever irk that Richard Branson and
Virgin Records are often credited with ‘breaking’ German
bands in the UK even though UA was first to the pass?
(AL):
Erm,
no, not particularly. I think that was to do with
Faust [Virgin
famously
released Faust’s third album, ‘The Faust Tapes’, for the
price of a single, resulting in healthy sales of 60,000
in the UK].
It didn’t really bother me, I knew those guys as well.
With
the likes of Hawkwind, Man and Groundhogs running out of
road in the mid-70s, and Brinsley Schwarz never really
taking off, was ‘pub rock’ and the Feelgoods seen as
UA’s - and rock’s - future?
(AL):
Brinsleys
probably did better than people imagine. They were big
in Holland for instance. Not that it
was a huge market, but when you totted up the album
sales it sort of validated making the next one. I was
convinced at some stage that Nick [Lowe] was going to
have a hit and I really loved the band, you know.
Those records still sound good because there were no
dated effects on them. It was a case of just setting
up and playing.
![](../images/BrinsleySchwarznb.jpg)
It
was
Nick who told me about Dr Feelgood. I was putting
together my two ‘hobby’ albums of beat groups. EMI
were going to give me two Pirates tracks which were
pretty rare. They were on the single that didn’t
really sell and Johnny Kidd wasn’t on it because he
had a bad throat. Nick asked me what I was up to and I
told him this and he said ‘funnily enough I saw a band
called Dr Feelgood a couple of nights ago and they
reminded me of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’. Nick told
me that he wasn’t going to say they were the next big
thing but that they’d be right up my street. A couple
of nights later I saw them play The Kensington and I
completely fell for it even before I heard them play,
just seeing these characters. They were brilliant. I
was looking around the room worried that there might
be other A and R guys there because I just had to sign
them.
It
was
exactly what was needed because things were getting a
bit boring, what with Focus and ELP and all these
groups I couldn’t stand, with mountains of keyboards
and which felt a bit like going to a classical music
concert. We’d lost the plot. The Feelgoods reminded me
of what had got me hooked in the first place and what
we needed to get back to. I just knew they were going
to be successful. Bear in mind that we’d also helped
to create that pub rock thing of which the Brinsleys
had cottoned onto pretty quickly. We were getting fed
up with paying tour support for bigger groups, playing
to a half empty room and towards a PA and lights that
we were only getting half use of. So we started this
little agency called Iron Horse, me and Martyn Smith
and we started booking bands into pubs. Pubs had
always been important, but it was usually in the back
room, not the actual bar where you could buy your pint
and stand there and watch the band, like the
Kensington and Tally-Ho. It became a conscious thing
to book venues like that, and that scene led to the
Feelgoods.
United
Artists struck gold with the ‘punk/not punk’ Stranglers
and also Buzzcocks just as Andrew and Martin Davis were
about to leave to help set up Radar Records at the end
of 1977, and which would go on to have big success with
Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello. Did he know that change
was afoot?
(AL):
I
certainly didn’t have an inkling that everything was
going to change either when we signed The Stranglers
or Buzzcocks. It was a few months afterwards that we
got wind of conversations between the American branch
and EMI about acquiring UA in America. Neither Martin
Davis nor I wanted to work for a corporation after
having had so much freedom. We’d done very well by
breaking acts, which the likes of Warner Brothers
weren’t doing. We always managed to have something
happening, so that when the older bands came to an end
the Feelgoods kicked in and as they got big then along
came The Stranglers. And I’d keep myself busy putting
out things like Mike Wilhelm records through Zig-Zag
even though they weren’t going to sell. You couldn’t
do that as part of a corporation.
Surely
UA offered inducements to try and get Lauder to stay?
(AL):
No,
not at all! I had been offered loads of jobs over the
years with CBS and on three occasions by Richard
Branson at Virgin, but there was always something,
like the Feelgoods, that I didn’t want to be separated
from. I was enjoying it too much and had a good
relationship with Martin Davis. It was unique. There
wasn’t another label quite like it. We weren’t huge we
were a sort of ‘mini-major’, not independent but
working independently of the American company, the
best of both worlds. I did get offered was the
managing director of Arista at exactly that time that
we struck the Radar deal, but the latter was too
attractive given that all we really had to do was
bring in four new acts a year and WEA would handle the
marketing and all that.
It
was
the right decision to leave when we did as we’d have
been sucked into the parent company. In fact The
Stranglers went around to UA’s office a short time
later only to find out that it had been closed and to
be told that they were part of EMI now. We did try and
take the Buzzcocks with us because, unlike The
Stranglers who were by then established, they were
still finding their feet a bit and had turned down
more money from CBS to sign with us because they
wanted to go with the guy who’d signed Can [LAUGHS]. I
felt a bit bad that we had to leave them behind.
Aside
from creeping corporatism what, fundamentally, changed
in the industry between Andrew joining Liberty and
hanging up his spurs?
(AL):
Lawyers
became more and more involved! Some of them would push
up the deal. We’d say to a band well what do you need?
A van, a backline a couple of guitars and something to
live on and we’d work out a deal based on what was
needed. And it worked fine as you had sensible
managers like Chris [Fenwick] who managed the
Feelgoods and Dai [Davies] who handled Brinsley
Schwarz and The Stranglers who knew what was needed
and that became the advance. It didn’t feel right to
be involved in competitive bidding with other labels.
But then some lawyers started rowing themselves into
the deal. You’d put in a reasonable first draft of the
contract and it would come back covered in red ink and
with pages ripped out and you knew as soon as certain
names were mentioned as being involved that it was
going to be a horror story. That’s how they’d justify
their fee and it made it hard work. It became much
more of a business as it grew. Between 1967 and 1977
in particular album sales went through the roof and it
became big business and probably less fun as a result.
To
any A and R aspirant reading your book, what advice
would Andrew hand down to them or does that world even
exist anymore?
(AL):
God
knows how you’d go about it now. I don’t even know
nowadays whether I’d be attracted to it. There are
more and more artists putting out their own records or
working with micro-labels. It requires less and less
leadership and involvement from big record companies.
Is
that a good or a bad thing?
(AL):
It
may be a bit of a shame in one respect. If you’re
starting out then unless you’ve a very clear blueprint
of what you want to do and how you want to do it then
you’d probably benefit from a bit of help from someone
who can give some advice on matters of production or
track running order. I mean it’s their record after
all and if they want to go their own way so be it but
having that sort of constructive relationship is
useful, I think.
Time
has a way of thinning out the old address book and sadly
the number of ‘absent friends’ is mounting (we’ve lost
main Groundhog Tony McPhee, Tony Hill of High Tide and
Hawkwind’s Nik
Turner within the last year, as well as Helps manager
and Hope & Anchor landlord John Eichler). Did Lauder
keep in touch with anyone from those days at United
Artists and who get a mention in the book?
(AL):
Yes,
I kept in contact with pretty much everybody who was
still around! I mentioned Doug [Smith] earlier, Martin
Davis of course and Dai Davies. I’d seen Tony McPhee a
few times during my time at Silvertone through my
association there with John Lee Hooker. I’d first met
John Lee through Tony. It was going to see John Lee
back in the 60s at the Flamingo that I realised how
good Tony was and I really wanted to do something with
him. So I saw him quite often over the years.
Nik
Turner I probably spoke to most out of the Hawkwind
guys, apart from Lemmy. I’m still in touch with Ken
[Pustelnik] from the Groundhogs. As regards Brinsley
Schwarz, I saw Nick [Lowe] in May when he came to the
book launch - in fact we’ve had a long standing
working relationship - and I’m still in contact with
Ian Gomm and Bob Andrews.
Lucas
Fox
is living in Paris and is putting together a book
about the early days of Motorhead, which was an
eventful time! We speak every couple of weeks or so.
Irmin Schmidt from Can lives in France and we speak
now and again. I’m in touch with Sparko [John Sparkes,
Dr Feelgood bassist] still and until recently of
course with Wilko [Johnson].The Man guys I stayed
friendly with for a long time although there aren’t
many of them left, now. I was particularly close to
Deke, who used to spend a lot more time in London than
the others and was very close to John Eichler the
manager of Help Yourself, who went on to run the Hope
and Anchor.
Jean-Jacques
Brunel
from the Stranglers is one of my best friends. In fact
I saw him last Saturday. The Stranglers played a free
concert in another village near me and where he lives.
In fact the whole thing has a unique family atmosphere
even to the extent that Jean-Jacques’ landlord when
the Stranglers were starting out was Wilko!
Looking
back was there anything Andrew regretted or might have
done differently during his UA stint?
(AL):
In
the early days I probably put too many records out as
a result of which some things, like Gypsy, got a bit
lost. Same with Reg King from The Action and Cochise,
who were another one that got away. They were another
Clearwater act and who had trouble holding down a
stable line-up. I was reminded of them only
yesterday as I was signing a copy of the book for BJ
Cole who was in the band. BJ is in fact very friendly
with JJ from the Stranglers. I wasn’t even aware they
knew each other, but it seems they met in my office at
UA! Small world and
it’s nice that relationships have continued from those
days.
Anyway,
later
on we got better at concentrating on particular acts
to ensure they fulfilled potential, like the Feelgoods
and The Stranglers.
In
retrospect
I think I’d have used better quality card like Island
did for their sleeves and which was much more
expensive but held their colour better. I did learn to
stick my oar in with the artwork and advertising,
though. Too often in record companies you’d get this
hand-off between A and R and marketing which resulted
in some god awful sleeve or promotional materia l
that the band really hated. Hawkwind was easy because
they used Barney Bubbles, and with others it gave me
the chance to work with people like Rick Griffin,
which for a collector of psychedelic art like myself,
was great.
The
Lauder approach to the roster comes across in the book
as one of supportiveness and of indulgence of his
charges.
(AL):
I
think it helped a lot that I was able to put out
records that I wanted to by people that I liked and
the same with their management. It was my deliberate
policy to work with people with whom I felt
comfortable. I thought, well, I’m going to be spending
a lot of time with these people and I don’t want to be
constantly living in dread of the phone ringing. So
that stopped me from working with certain acts. I
never had that trouble with the likes of Man who were
all great characters and very funny. Help Yourself and
the Feelgoods the same. Their managers were pretty
much part of the band and cared about them. Even The
Groundhogs, until the Mafia took over!
I wasn’t happy how that ended. Looking back it
was the beginning of the end I suppose.
The
things
you thought would be successful but they weren’t, that
was probably due to my heart not being in it which
meant I subconsciously didn’t go the extra mile. But
overall it helped that the people working for the
company got on well. There was no competition or
resentment of each other’s involvement. It just
happened fortuitously that way.
We’re
all meant to love our children equally but if Andrew
were to leave everything to just one of his Liberty/UA
charges who would it be and why?
(AL):
Oh
boy, that’s a difficult one! I still love so many, the
Brinsleys, Man, Helps and Feelgoods...I’m great
friends with JJ from The Stranglers. I couldn’t really
say, I have such great memories and fondness for these
and indeed others like Hawkwind, The Groundhogs, the
list goes on. So no, I can’t pick just one.
Andrew
Lauder, a gentleman, a true inspiration and the founder
of a legacy for which he is the deserving recipient of
Terrascope’s undying gratitude. In any just society he
would be awarded a blue plaque and within his lifetime.
What it would say is anyone’s guess, but something along
the lines of ‘Andrew
Lauder worked, lived and loved life here [dates]. It was
fun and I got lucky!’ might do it. Make it a big one,
then.
‘Happy
Trails
- Andrew Lauder’s Charmed Life and High Times in the
Record Business’ by Andrew Lauder and Mick Houghton
and published by White Rabbit is currently available
now in hard back White
Rabbit Books
Ian
Fraser
August 2023
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