By all accounts, Apple had been a fiasco, so it is surprising that other bands such as ELP (Manticore) & Moody Blues (Threshold) also started their own labels. Does anyone know what happened to Manticore ? They had recruited such successsful artists as PFM, Banco & Pete Sinfield, so it is surprising that ELP's Works then appeared on Atlantic. If more prog bands had successfully developed their own labels, could they have better weathered the storms of the late '70s ?
Don't know much about those, but I assume that Neal Morse's Radiant Records does fairly well.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
I suspect it would have gone the other way...it would have hastened some of their demises. Ugly reality: many (most?) bands are much better musicians than business professionals. There are a handful of exceptions but for the most part, the money invested in founding and maintaining a label would likely have resulted in more losses than gains.
Just my own $0.02 based on personal opinion though...
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One exception could be Fairport Convention, who successfully ran Woodworm Records for over 20 years.
Don't forget Marillion and Racket Records, which has been good for them.
Didn't the Grateful Dead run their own record company for a time (with mixed results)? Now I guess they do again, though it seems to be with the cooperation of or owned by Rhino Records?
I was kind of thinking mostly of the 70's bands, rather than the ones that started labels later on like DGM, Racket. But you're right...they've done well.
Also...Racket and DGM (and I assume the Grateful Dead one you mentioned) were pretty much for the band, and maybe a few tangental releases. Stuff like Manticore and IC (Klaus Schulze-related label) was all about the band and signing lots of OTHER bands too. That was the kind of approach that IMHO didn't work so well. I could have said that more clearly, to be frank...
If you're actually reading this then chances are you already have my last album but if NOT and you're curious:
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Members of IQ created Giant Electric Pea, which is still going strong.
Elton John's Rocket Records had a bunch of artists in the 70's and early 80's. He has released is own records sporadically on the label over the years. I think he is the only one on the label if it even still exists.
Yeah, back in the mid 70's, after they got sick of Warners lack of quality control (Bob Weir once claimed he put one of the Warners era albums on his turntable, a brand new copy, and the needle zipped through the entire LP side without playing a single note), so they started their own label. And it wasn't just that they had their own imprint, at least initially, they also did their own distribution, operating autonomously for whatever corporate concerns that, let's say The Beatles had to do with during the Apple Records era (Apple was actually distributed by EMI). Talk is made that they initially wanted to sell the records using ice cream trucks, but whether that was ever a serious business plan, or if it was just a joke or a PR prank, I'm not sure.Originally Posted by JKL2000
Anyhow, I think Wake Of The Flood and From The Mars Hotel were released that way. But the Dead had a lot of financial hardships during that time period, which included operating the Wall Of Sound PA system on a nightly basis on tour, as well as the subsequent decision to produce a concert movie, meant that eventually the band needed to be bailed out. So United Artists took over distribution (I believe my copy of Wake Of The Flood has a U/A sticker on it, so it must have been a later repressing...or possibly a pirate). But then even that didn't save the label, and it eventually went down for the 10 count in 1976. The band subsequently signed to Arista, which initiated a further lengthy string of "WTF?!" decisions, though at least there was some kind of coporate logic to it, and it did eventually (after 10 years) produce a hit single.
The other side of the Dead deal was they had a second label, Round Records, which was producing various solo projects by the band members. I think that's how Old And In The Way was initially released, as well as Jerry's second and third solo albums. Round Records also released the brilliant Seastones album, by a keyboardist/composer/MIT grad named Ned Lagin, with assistance from Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, David Crosby, Grace Slick, and I forget who else. Seastones is a great electronic music album, and it's always wished Ned had continued recording after his association with the Dead ended.
The Strawbs have Witchwood Records that seems to be a continuing venture. I suppose they have enough fans (myself, included) that will buy whatever they put out (though not so sure about the tangential artists that are also on the label who are more hardcore British folkies).
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Weren't Manticore albums distributed by Atlantic? DJM (Dick James) and Bronze (Bron's) were distributed by Island.
Member since Wednesday 09.09.09
I have a promo copy of this album pressed in QUAD. Agree, it's pretty cool-sounding electronic shiit.
One thing I often see people say in interviews who have done this and signed other artists- they became viewed as the 'suits' they themselves had little time for.
That label seems to have been used for distribution purposes as well. For instance Cliff Richard and Neil Sedaka (the latter in particular) had big success on that label in the US yet they weren't released on Rocket over here in the UK.
Reprise Records started off as being Frank Sinatra's label. There was certainly no rock music on it in those days.
Not in 1960, when Mr. Sinatra founded the label, no there was no rock music. But in 1963, he sold the label back to Warners (though he continued to record for Reprise until 1981), and I think from that point on, it became more diversified.
Don't forget Chrysalis, which was Ian Anderson and Terry Ellis's label. They had a successful run.
Terry Ellis being the record company twerp who got punched by Pat Benatar during a meeting.
Ha, really, never heard that one! That's funny Because she's the first artist I thought of for some reason as being on that label besides Tull...
For the first couple of years, yes. Manticore then moved over to Motown, weirdly enough.
Chrysalis was founded by Chris Wright and Terry Ellis ("Chris-Ellis"). Tull was initially their biggest asset, but the label never belonged to the band.
It was mentioned on Behind The Music. Apparently, her relationship with Chrysalis was a bit contentious because I guess Ellis (or one of his henchmen, anyway) wanted to "sex up" her image. There was one ad where they airbrushed out the dress she was wearing, so should we appear to be naked (though the photo cropped just below the neckline, so you could see "anything" anyway), and they also put out promo materials that suggested she had done porn (which she hadn't). Apparently, they had a meeting where this matter was discussed, and according to Pat, it ended with her slugging him.
Ellis claims that didn't happen, but I can absolutely believe it did. Pat's a Brooklyn girl, and you don't mention with Brooklyn women. And Ellis comes off as the kind of guy who would lie about something like that so that people wouldn't think he's a pussy.
Wow, I had to read the wiki... I've been under the mistaken impression for years that IA had a stake in the label, but apparently not, although the label was clearly specifically created as a home for him and Tull so maybe it still counts as far as the thread is concerned...
I think the Grateful Dead came the closest of any band of the classic rock era to being truly independent. At one point, they even owned a record pressing plant, but they got tired of having to have meetings about why records weren't in stores in Schenectady and stuff like that and eventually closed the label as a viable record company. Of course, plenty of punk/post-punk bands had truly indie labels (local boys Black Flag's SST being a prime example), but they weren't dealing with stuff on a scale the Dead were.
Surprised no one mentioned Swan Song, Led Zeppelin's label. It was run by Peter Grant and Danny Goldberg. They were distributed by Atlantic, but at one point they released the first four Bad Company albums, Pretty Things Silk Torpedo and other records. It was closed in 1983, per Wikipedia, now it's just a Zeppelin imprint.
Manticore released some PFM albums, the Peter Sinfield solo album and a few other things. It was bizarre to see them distributed by Motown at one point. Greg Lake has mentioned how much he disliked being a record label boss.
As much as musicians rightly bitch and moan about the major record labels, there's a reason that in the mid-50's > 90's that major labels, for all their many well-documented faults, were so successful: they had corporate backing for the most part so access to money was never a problem, they made sure that record stores in Schenectady always had product, they had promotional budgets (very important in the pre-Internet days), they could provide tour support.
Oh, and lots and lots of drugs.
BTW, if you're interested in the in's and out's of record labels, this series of articles by the producer Tom Werman (Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent, many others) is a great read:
http://popdose.com/author/tom-werman/
...or you could love
I think that band or artist labels were almost always affiliated with a major label distributor for distribution and promotion, excepting indie artists in localised regions. As to Artists with labels, Zappa had Discreet and Barking Pumpkin, Led Zeppelin had Swan Song.
I was reading a Greg Kihn interview today and here is part of the story on Beserkley Records (Kihn, Jonathan Richman, Rubinoos amongst the acts on the label) ; Greg: Four unknown bands, all dropped by their record companies, throw their money together and start a tiny independent record company, cut a sampler, Beserkley Chartbusters Vol 1, and defy million-to-one odds and have a bunch of hit records.
Herb Alpert of A&M
Giant Electric Pea WAS going strong until the IQ "fans" started stealing their albums. For that insidious activity to push Martin Orford out of the music business, well, I hope whoever the shoe fits is proud of themselves.
Wait, what?! How were they stealing the albums? Just shoplifting them out of shops or what? And what did Orford have to do with it?Giant Electric Pea WAS going strong until the IQ "fans" started stealing their albums. For that insidious activity to push Martin Orford out of the music business, well, I hope whoever the shoe fits is proud of themselves.
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