Dezember 2008

MARTIN GOLDSCHMIDT

By the time you read this I may have been sacked by Cooking Vinyl, my record company. Well, maybe not, but the point is that even if I was, it would not change the fact that Martin Goldschmidt, boss of CV and me are good friends and have been for many years now.

I’ve known some exotic record company bosses in my time, from the mysterious Nick Mobbs at Automatic Records (he’s the guy that signed the Sex Pistols to EMI) to Michael (‘Lord’)Levy, screw-loose maniac boss of Magnet Records, to the truly legendary Tony ‘Strat’ Stratton Smith, boss of Charisma. Martin is a very different kind of bloke – well, to be fair, for better or worse ALL these people are – ‘different’.

When I first started looking for a record deal after my long enforced lay-off in the aftermath of Doll By Doll, I was letting record companies hear the recordings that eventually formed the mainstay of my classic album THE MYSTERY OF LOVE IS GREATER THAN THE MYSTERY OF DEATH. Reactions were highly varied: Muff Winwood (brother of Steve) at Sony thought it was great stuff and wanted to talk. Funny things put you off, like how about that same time Muff did an interview in which he declared that guitar music was finished – forever. Even little ol’ me could see that that couldn’t be right, so it made you wonder....At this time ex Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey was heading up A and R (artiste and repertoire – the bastards that sign you up)at some impressive company, can’t remember who, and I sent the music to him. He sent me back an abusive standard letter with phrases in it like ‘Sorry! – no Top Of The Pops for you this week!’ I could see how it was funny if you were issuing the letter, but not many folk on the receiving end would have managed a wry chuckle. Years earlier Stiff Records used to send out a hilarious rejection letter which was completely over the top, about how any good ideas you had they would steal and give to other artists that they HAD signed – you really can’t paraphrase it – it was a masterpiece. Feargal’s letter was a pale depressing stab at that kind of knockabout humour. A couple of years later Martin Goldschmidt and me saw Feargal and his mates having a very quiet drink in a pub just after he’d been sacked by the same company. A record of mine had just charted in Germany – I felt a little better.

Me and Martin met quite a few times to talk about working together – in restaurants, pubs and cafes. He was honest about the company being at a low ebb because of the unexpected collapse of the distribution company CV used - in which money owed to CV was lost. But he also talked about a relationship of longevity in which, although I may never sell wild amounts of records (unless something went badly wrong) I WOULD be doing what I wanted to do as an artist with minimal interference from the record company. At this time I had no intention of getting back on stage as a live performer, and Martin talked to me carefully over a long period about how I was probably wrong to think like this, and how it was a trauma which I had to overcome, for myself as much as the company’s ability to sell the records. He was right of course, and I finally got my head round this during a performance at a music business trade fair in Berlin, playing a show in a club called Quasimodo, now one of my most beloved of all venues. Try keeping me off the stage these days....

There was an interesting moment when I actually signed on the dotted line and became a Cooking Vinyl artist. We shook hands, Martin smiled a secret smile, looked me in the eyes and said very quietly ‘Gotcha’...

Since then we’ve had a laugh together (a few tears as well – it’s all part of growing up) in all sorts of nooks and crannies of the world. We went to Midem once (highly regarded music fair in Cannes) and had a high old time carousing in restaurants well into the night with a changing but exotic entourage. After the event Martin took me skiing in the alps behind Cannes at a ski venue called Isola 2000. There was a wonderful moment on the journey up to it, where Martin played me a new Pere Ubu he was about to release. The minibus journey was up a horrible series of hairpin bends. At the top the record came to an end and Martin asked me what I thought. I got out of the vehicle and was violently sick – motion sickness, not the music of David Thomas, but that wasn’t clear as I stood doubled over, dazed and panting in the snow. One night after dinner and a hard day’s skiing on Martin’s part (I sat in the sun for the duration drinking rose and writing masterpieces) a gentleman made the unfortunate mistake of extolling the virtues of nuclear power. In another life Martin was a leading light in CND – his argument on this score is permanently marshalled and overwhelming – I’ve rarely heard such a tour de force of reasoned vitriol.

We’ve had frozen margarita headaches together at South By South West in Austin, Texas, got plastered in the afternoon with Ian Rankin in Edinburgh, and had fierce differences of opinion that lasted too long, but we’ve never spoken to each other disrespectfully, and if we were going to, we would have done it by now. He was there for me as a friend when I went through an awful relationship breakup, and he makes me see him once a season for a ‘career health-check’. He has an ability to say insightful things which really help that he then doesn’t remember saying at all. Once, when talking about album budgets, not just mine, more generally, he said ‘recording continues till someone says stop’ – a real beauty.

I also give him my considered opinion on an array of matters and can always tell when what I’ve said has hit home. He stops what he is doing and sits silently staring into the mid-distance for a while. I find something to do in the meantime – we tend to be in a lovely Iranian cafe in Acton when this happens, so I fiddle with my napkin until Martin has found the mental compartment into which to insert my remark. He is a proper businessman and doesn’t take shit. Many is the person who has thought him to be not much more than amiable and easy-going and found out the hard way just how wrong they have got this. Some years back I was in his home in Maida Vale, London – he had recently been sued by a ‘famous person who shall remain nameless’ and had countersued – and won. I complimented him on his beautiful new wooden floors all through the house.

Referring to his recent victory in court he said – ‘Yes, (person who shall remain nameless) paid for them’.