Chiswick Records

First up What was the music scene like around 1975/76 and what sort of music were you selling/ going to see? We get given the impression that music was full of either Genesis or pub bands playing R&B on a circuit to nowhere.

Roger Armstrong: It was the tail end of what is now known as Pub Rock. This was a lot broader than people imagined. It was not just a bunch of stoned hippies playing country rock, but incorporated Dr Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe a short lived band called 707 and of course the Count Bishops, which was where we came in.

At the shop Ted Carroll (one of my business partners) had found out that the New York dolls first album was available in France as was one of The Stooges albums + I think the MC5 Back in the USA. We were buying cut-outs of the rest of that kind of stuff and the Flamin’ Groovies were very big. The US/NY punk scene had just kicked off and so The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads Television et al were playing Dingwalls, the Roundhouse etc.

But the tuff R&B of Feelgoods and the Bishops was really what was worth going to see on a regular basis. Amphetamine sulphate music had returned for the first time since the ‘60s. There was also a big rock and roll scene. Some of the kids who came into the shop called it Graffiti Rock after the movie American Graffiti. They wore baseball jackets and sneakers and were tolerated by the teddy boys. Shakin’ Stevens was around on the scene (indeed the Sex Pistols were due to play a concert on the same bill as him …Punk77), but the really authentic band was Crazy Cavan & the Rhythm Rockers.

We sold rock and roll and rockabilly, northern soul, blues R’n’B – anything with an edge really. The late 70s was really the beginning of the whole tribal thing in music in the UK. Not just mods and rockers, but also punks, hippies, soul boys etc etc and we catered for nearly all of them. Generally Rock On market stall was a good place to hang out on a Saturday and pick up on some good music. Only occasionally did a teddy boy try to set fire to a punks bum flap and then we would throw him out!

Chiswick Records & Punk Rock

How did you get into punk ?
It sort of arrived on our doorstep. We had cut the 101ers single and though it might not seem that adventurous now, it was a record that paved the way for punk. Malcolm invited Ted and I to go see his new band at some gig in Chelsea. Basically it was about a dozen drunk students, Malcolm, Vivien, Ted maybe Bernie and a couple of others and me, with John taunting the students and getting beer cans thrown at him – most impressive. Before that one night at Upstairs at Ronnies Malcolm had already bent my ear about whether the lead singer of the Count Bishops, Mike Spenser would be right for his new band. Fuck off Malcolm we’re making a record with them.

The idea of getting into punk never occurred to us at the time. There were a bunch of bands and me and my friends went out to see them. We knew a lot of the musicians and so went to support them. It wasn’t a case of getting into them, they were just there and we went to see them, sometimes recorded them and were generally out to enjoy ourselves. I was already pushing 30 so it was my 2^nd childhood – and last given that next up were the new romantics!

I also heard that the Pistols might have signed for Chiswick but viewed you as too small. What’s the story? Were the Count Bishops really rivals for the Pistols?

Neither Malcolm with the Pistols or Bernie with The Clash (or for that matter Andy with Generation X) ever had any intention of signing with an independent label. We just did not have the money or the muscle and we couldn’t be wound up the way the majors could. The Pistols weren’t going to come round a spew up over our carpets – wasn’t worth it they were messy enough anyway and they would have been told to fuck off. They (Malcolm) needed something to rail against and Ted and I did not fit the bill. We nearly signed The Jam. The day before we had a meeting set up with Paul and his dad/manager John, Chris Parry at Polydor heard that Bernie had shafted him and taken The Clash to CBS, so he rang The Jam and said they had a deal and they blew us out. Probably just as well all round.

Looking at their roster they had signed a lot of these highly charged R& B acts. As punk broke the rush for the bands came, the majors cherry picked the best made a few balls ups and in the wake of Chiswick’s example formed their own record labels for one offs etc. Basically I see that Chiswick just released stuff they liked.

Chiswick Records – Making It

Like Lee Woods of Raw records you started with a stall / record shop. What made you make the leap to starting a record label ?

I think more than anything we were inspired by the people who ran independent record labels in the US from the 40s to the 60s – King, Stax, Sun, Aladdin. Imperial etc etc. Ted and I were sold on the romance of making a record and just selling it however it could be sold. Ted would drive around in his battered Peugeot selling records out of the trunk to shops on our first release – The Count Bishops EP (Speedball 976). There had been very few British independent labels before us.

There was Island and Virgin run by guys who were well off from the start, and there was RAK and UK run by successful producers, but not much in the way of a street based operation with absolutely no money. As the Desperate Bicycle’s first single said – ‘It was easy it was cheap go and do it’. I think that up to then everyone had assumed that making and pressing a record required a lot of money, whereas the truth has always been that promoting a record into the charts is the thing that costs money.

Lastly. Lee Wood said he never understood basically the freebie side of the business & promotion . How did you find this running a small label ? What sort of promotion did you give singles?

Well we used it to full advantage I think. We were among the first to use coloured vinyl and invented the multiple picture sleeve with the four Damned shots on Love Song. Basically you had to give records away to the chart return shops to make sure that they had them in stock. Then a team of housewives would go in and buy them up. Friendly dealers might be encouraged to put in the extra sales in exchange for a consideration. It was all dreadfully corrupt, but at least everyone was being dreadfully corrupt. It was viewed as a bit of a game. I would say however that you couldn’t hype an absolute turkey and make it stick. The record had to have some appeal to some section of the populace or the act had to have a genuine following. It was not unknown to co-opt fan clubs into buying up singles from chart shops.

What was your best selling punk single and worst?

Best selling punk single was probably Love Song and I haven’t a clue what the worst seller was. Somewhere in the bowels of the accounts the figure is there. Punk sold pretty well, it was some of the pop stuff we did that turkeyed out.

In the early ‘80s we got out of the pop end of things. Partly we didn’t have a clue about the kind of records that were becoming hits and partly the introduction of the video seemed to really up the cost of hyping to beyond a joke. It got to the point where you would lose money on even a hit single and just hoped to sell enough albums or break the act in America. Really the odds lengthened at that point and we retired to re-issue land where we have been happily ever since.

Chiswick Records was the first independent record label with their Count Bishops release in 1975 almost a full year before Stiff Records and their first release. The label reflected the zeitgeist of the change in music from what was termed as pub rock (101ers, Count Bishops, Gorillas) to the emerging punk bands like Skrewdriver, Johnny Moped, Rings and Radiators From Space and later the reformed Damned.

As Roger says, Chiswick wasn’t afraid to play with formats to make records more collectible and customers buy different versions. From the saucy stockings and suspenders of the Radio Stars Dirty Pictures single, to the 6″, 10″ and 7″ formats of the Count Bishop’s I Want Candy which helped them into the charts and saw them on national television on Top Of The Pops. Chiswick repeated this with the reformed Damned and four different picture covers for Love Song which again charted. Elsewhere they plugged away with acts like the Radio Stars, their own rockabilly signing Whirlwind and doo wop band Rocky Sharpe and The Replays. The latter having two chart hits, with Rama Lama Ding Dong in 1978 and Imagination in 1979.

As Roger Armstrong of Chiswick Records says elsewhere on this site the challenge and cost wasn’t the producing the records it was the getting them into the charts – so a poor-performing release or releases could be catastrophic for a small label. In fact the label had a major challenge in 1978 when they couldn’t afford to release the second Radiators’ second album due to cash flow problems that were resolved by them having a hit single later.

The selected list below shows the breadth and quantity of releases from Chiswick. For a full detailed list check out the excellent 45CAT site

The Count Bishops Speedball EP  Chiswick NS1
The 101’ers Keys To Your Heart / 5 Star Rock’n’Roll Petrol Chiswick NS2
The Gorillas Gatecrasher / Gorilla Got Me  Chiswick  NS8
Radio Stars Dirty Pictures / Sail Away  Chiswick  NS9
Radiators From Space Television Screen / Love Detective  Chiswick NS10
Skrewdriver You’re So Dumb / Better Off Crazy Chiswick NS11
Motorhead Motorhead / City Kids Chiswick NS13
The Rings I Want To Be Free / Automobile Chiswick NS14
Johnny Moped No-One / Incendiary Device  Chiswick NS15
Radio Stars There Are No Russians In Russia NS17
Johnny Moped Darling Let’s Have Another Baby NS27
Skrewdriver Anti-Social / 19th Nervous Breakdown  Chiswick NS18
Johnny & The Self Abusers Saints & Sinners / Dead Vandals NS22
Radio Stars Nervous Wreck NS23
Radiators Million Dollar Hero (In A Five And Ten Cents Store)/ NS29
Riff Raff I Wanna Be A Cosmonaut/ SW34
The Drug Addix The Drug Addix Make A Record SW39
Johnny Moped Little Queenie NS41
Radio Stars Radio Stars CHIS102
The Damned Love Song CHIS112
The Radiators Let’s Talk About The Weather CHIS113
Radiators Kitty Ricketts CHIS115
The Damned Smash It Up CIS116
The Nips Gabrielle CHIS119
The Damned I Just Can’t Be Happy Today CHIS120

It could be argued that the strength of independent record labels to disrupt the existing music machine was the ability to make and get singles out very quickly and cheaply to satisfy demand. The challenge came with both promoting those singles to a wider audience and albums. Bands were often not developed enough and the outlay from a label (studio and promotion) was a lot more to be recouped. A lot of the smaller bands never made it to the album stage so it’s no surprise they didn’t release many.

Out of the below, over a three year period, only The Radiators (TV Tube Heart) and Skrewdriver (1977) Johnny Moped Cycledelic (1978) and The Damned Machine Gun Etiquette (1979) were punk and TV Tube Heart stalled following the fatal stabbing of an audience member during one of their gigs and caused the band to almost fold and Skrewdriver’s All Skrewed Up released on 45rpm (traditionally single speed) had their contract terminated post Roger Armstrong witnessing the violence at one of their gigs and shelving their next single Street Fighter.