Geoff Travis’ name is, of course, synonymous with Rough Trade. He founded the original West London record shop and the iconic label and distributor. He still runs Rough Trade Records, now under the protective umbrella of the Beggars Group, and the management arm, in partnership with Jeannette Lee.
But he’s has no involvement in Rough Trade Publishing since it rose from the ashes of Rough Trade’s receivership in 1991. Now, however, he and Lee are back at the publishing company as senior directors of UK A&R, as part of the deal that saw Bank Robber Industries’ publishing arm House Of Hassle acquire RTP. Under the deal, Rough Trade and House Of Hassle have merged and will continue under the Rough Trade name. Bank Robber founder and House Of Hassle co-founder Lyle Hansen will oversee global operations, while original RTP co-founder Cathi Gibson remains as MD, heading up the UK business.
As Music Week meets Travis and Gibson at Rough Trade’s West London HQ – Lee is keeping her customary low profile – it’s clear that Travis is relishing the role. He may joke that he and Lee’s roles are “ambassadorial” and that they’ll be “wheeled out like Bobby Charlton on public occasions” but he’s clearly relishing the chance to exercise his legendary A&R skills in a different sector to his usual recorded music hunting ground.
And so the man who signed The Smiths – and countless more of your favourite bands – sits down with Music Week to discuss the differences between publishing and recorded music A&R, why he’s glad to be back in the business – and tell us about the time he almost signed Prince…
How does it feel to be back involved with Rough Trade Publishing?
It feels really nice. It’s been really interesting to have Cathi and Pete [Walmsley, late RTP co-founder] when he was there, being Rough Trade Publishing in a parallel life to us. The guiding principle has always been: as long as the branches of Rough Trade are acting in a civilised and moral way and doing good things, that’s great. Other companies wouldn’t allow you to exist in that way, it’d have to be much more legal or people would be fighting, but that’s always been the case. It’s very nice that the family of Rough Trade activities could come back to here.
Have you taken an interest over the years?
Yeah, we’ve always taken a distant view of what Cathi’s been doing. We’ve had different publishing situations with different people over the years, we signed The Jesus And Mary Chain and Spiritualized, but it’s never been something we’ve done whole-heartedly because we’ve always done the label as our main thing, and the management company. But when you read all the showbiz books, people always say publishing is where the money is!
How did you hear about the sale?
Cathi came in to see us to tell us about the Bank Robber situation, which sparked the thought that it would be really nice to work together with Cathi and be involved. We didn’t expect it. Cathi didn’t have any legal need to get our blessing but the fact that she did tells you everything about the way that she acts. It was very serendipitous. I’ve been talking to Gandhar [Savur, RTP chief strategic officer/SVP of legal affairs] in New York because he is a lawyer for Mark Kozelek. When we were negotiating a contract, he was very easy to talk to – which is not always the case with lawyers! So that was another mark it was meant to be…
You and Jeannette have a lot of other stuff going on. So what’s your motivation to get involved in music publishing?
Being in the Beggars system [with Rough Trade Records] is great, we’re very happy with that. But one of the things we’ve had to learn over the years is, we have to do less, put out fewer records and do them better. Less is more, but part of the way Rough Trade has always operated is that we like to be a light on something that excited us and just do it quickly. Having the publishing company gives us a chance to work with a wider range of artists and less worry. That’s what appeals to us – all we really care about is working with interesting people and seeing if we can help them along the way.
You have a strong track record in recorded music A&R – is publishing A&R different?
I don’t know, we’re going to find out! When we’ve had publishing arrangements in the past, we’ve tended to work with people and then hand them over to the label, so it’ll be interesting to see. When Jeannette worked with Duffy, she was developing for five years, doing that very old-fashioned 1950s A&R of, There’s a singer, now what do we do? That’s a whole different kind of A&R to what we normally do, where we usually work with people who are 100% fully formed. That’s an interesting challenge. Think of someone like Clare Maguire who started off with so much promise and has made a good record again recently, but has had maybe five-six years of having a pretty tough time. Someone like that, we could probably be of value to. We like to think that we can help people to develop and timing is everything in this business. If you strike too soon, it doesn’t work and that can be the end of you as an artist, and that seems tragic if you really are a good artist. So we hope to bring our experience to bear.
Will you be signing songwriters as well as artists??
We’ve always been in situations where we’ve put people with the writers and that’ll probably continue to happen. You always dream of finding someone that can write great songs. We’re obviously not that interested in the high end of manufactured pop. We’re not suddenly going to change our whole modus operandi and try and compete with Linda Perry, but there are occasions when that can be appropriate. We like a lot more music than people probably imagine, we’re not really snobs, we’re not like, It has to be ‘indie-schmindie’! We love popular things, well, some of them anyway. And things we like sometimes get popular – we help to make them popular. It’s quite exciting because you always want to learn when you work, you always want to be in a situation where you’re doing new things.
Will you be competing hard with other companies for signings??
We’re not going to be competing from a financial standpoint. But, when we sign our artists to the labels, they are usually people who understand the heritage of the label and want to be associated with that. I think it’s the same thing with publishing. There aren’t many places like this left. There are also more artists than there are structures for them to fit into these days.
Do you have an ideal RTP signing in mind?
I don’t think there is a ‘one size fits all’ [approach]. We tried to sign Prince once with Rough Trade Records. Warner Brothers didn’t release the first album [in the UK], they didn’t release Dirty Mind outside of America, even though it was probably the best album of the year. They didn’t release the Controversy album and we phoned up management and said, What’s going on here? This is amazing, can we do anything? And he said, Would you like to do a composite of the first three albums, our greatest hits to date? And we said, Yeah we’d love to do that. He said, The only problem is, we’ve just got to deliver this new album to Warners and if they pass, we will do that with you. Unfortunately that new album turned out to be 1999 and they actually released it. So Prince would have been a good signing… I imagine we might just sign someone we just really like. It might take a year or two for what they do to come to fruition. Who knows?
How is it going to work with all the other things that you do?
Again, I don’t really know yet, but there’s definitely space to work with a few good things. I suppose, in the back of your mind, you always want to find someone you think’s going to be good enough to be on the label [as well]. But sometimes it’s just nice to work with people, you come across people that you can’t work with on the label but you can help in some way. It’s just a matter of trying to increase your pool of people that you can learn from and have a proper relationship with, that’s the interesting part.
The Rough Trade approach has clearly endured over the decades – and across different sectors of the business. So, what’s the secret?
We’re lucky; we can just do what the hell we like and luckily other people agree with us sometimes… Not all the time! But the way in which independent record companies work… if you read the history, most of them are just shysters really, and what happened in the late ‘70s and ‘80s with the new generation of people, myself and Daniel [Miller, Mute Records], Martin Mills [Beggars] and Iain McNay [Cherry Red], all the people like that, there was a completely different philosophy about how you should deal with artists. That’s very important to us, and that endures, the artists appreciate it. When people say bad things about record companies, we just don’t want to be included.
Is there still a bright future for the indies?
Yes. Having AIM and Merlin is important. The independent sector is a significant part of the industry these days in a way it probably wasn’t in the past. It’s much stronger because of those organisations.
And where do you want RTP to be in five years?
We just want to work with the next generation of Jonathan Richmans, Jarvis Cockers and Kevin Shieldses… although that would be difficult!