subsequent to punk and new wave. Many of Sire’s bands were ones Stein had personally signed, though by the early 1990s other A&R ears played an active role. When I asked him via email about the early 1990s at Sire, Stein replied, “Risa Morley was prime mover in getting me to sign Aphex Twin.”
Morley began as a department assistant, then became an assistant to Stein, which meant traveling to England frequently, during which time she became a habitué of the club scene, especially in London, and a regular at the record store Rough Trade, where Warner had a corporate account.
Morley joked, when I interviewed her at length on the phone in mid-2013, about how different communication was in the time before email became widespread and before cellphones. She told a funny story about needing information on a release by Mute, and even though her boss, Stein, and Mute’s head, Daniel Miller, were old friends (Depeche Mode was on both labels simultaneously), the best way to get release information in those days before caller ID was to call the label and claim to be from a record store. “This is before cellphones,” she said, “before the Internet. You had to be like a private investigator to find anything out.”
She recalled being at MIDEM, the major European music industry conference, and trying to locate Warp’s Rob Mitchell, but instead speaking with a representative of R&S, which had released the earlier Aphex Twin work: “I was talking to the R&S lawyer and he said, ‘Call Rob Mitchell. He is waiting for your call at Warp.’ I called Rob and he was like, ‘Don’t talk with the R&S lawyer [laughs]—Richard is ours, you know.’”
While Morley’s pushing for Aphex Twin carried weight, it did not hurt her effort that Aphex Twin had strong support as well from Alan McGee, a founder of the label Creation. McGee played a formidable role in the careers of such bands as Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Oasis, and Stein admired him. Morley been told by a Creation colleague that McGee had once said, “If there is one thing I wish we would have gotten, was I wish we could have signed Aphex Twin.”
Stein was more receptive than Morley had imagined: “I thought he was going to be, like, What is this? He said, ‘Set something up. Let’s go to England next week.’ Aphex Twin was playing—I think Brixton Academy?—maybe he was playing with the Orb. Me and Seymour went to the show. We were maybe a third of the way from the stage and it was insane. I looked at Seymour and thought he is going to kill me for taking him here, he’s going to think I am insane, and he leans over and says, ‘I get it. Let’s do it.’”
Doing it is often easier said than done. Major labels still had enormous power in the early 1990s, but nascent web technology, genre fractioning, and the rise of independent labels, among other forces, were beginning to chip away at the corporate structure of the music industry. In England, signing to a major label did not mean as much as it did in the United States. Morley said she would often dissuade young English bands that expressed interest in jumping ship: “We’d be like, you really don’t want to be on Sire for the UK, because it’s not cool. It’s going to be you and Enya.” The initial Sire/Warp conversations were more with Mitchell than with Beckett, by Morley’s recollection, and between a legacy with the Ramones and the weight of a major US corporation, there were clear benefits to the fledgling moguls. “They were very shrewd,” she said, intending it as a compliment, “and he [Mitchell] came in saying ‘This is a very special artist, he’s our artist, I’m not selling him to Warners.’”
Eventually Morley and Stein met directly with Aphex Twin. “Richard came in for a meeting,” said Morley. “That was a little further along. Rob didn’t want us to meet Richard. Richard was very elusive. No one could meet him. No one could talk with him.” But
Morley began as a department assistant, then became an assistant to Stein, which meant traveling to England frequently, during which time she became a habitué of the club scene, especially in London, and a regular at the record store Rough Trade, where Warner had a corporate account.
Morley joked, when I interviewed her at length on the phone in mid-2013, about how different communication was in the time before email became widespread and before cellphones. She told a funny story about needing information on a release by Mute, and even though her boss, Stein, and Mute’s head, Daniel Miller, were old friends (Depeche Mode was on both labels simultaneously), the best way to get release information in those days before caller ID was to call the label and claim to be from a record store. “This is before cellphones,” she said, “before the Internet. You had to be like a private investigator to find anything out.”
She recalled being at MIDEM, the major European music industry conference, and trying to locate Warp’s Rob Mitchell, but instead speaking with a representative of R&S, which had released the earlier Aphex Twin work: “I was talking to the R&S lawyer and he said, ‘Call Rob Mitchell. He is waiting for your call at Warp.’ I called Rob and he was like, ‘Don’t talk with the R&S lawyer [laughs]—Richard is ours, you know.’”
While Morley’s pushing for Aphex Twin carried weight, it did not hurt her effort that Aphex Twin had strong support as well from Alan McGee, a founder of the label Creation. McGee played a formidable role in the careers of such bands as Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Oasis, and Stein admired him. Morley been told by a Creation colleague that McGee had once said, “If there is one thing I wish we would have gotten, was I wish we could have signed Aphex Twin.”
Stein was more receptive than Morley had imagined: “I thought he was going to be, like, What is this? He said, ‘Set something up. Let’s go to England next week.’ Aphex Twin was playing—I think Brixton Academy?—maybe he was playing with the Orb. Me and Seymour went to the show. We were maybe a third of the way from the stage and it was insane. I looked at Seymour and thought he is going to kill me for taking him here, he’s going to think I am insane, and he leans over and says, ‘I get it. Let’s do it.’”
Doing it is often easier said than done. Major labels still had enormous power in the early 1990s, but nascent web technology, genre fractioning, and the rise of independent labels, among other forces, were beginning to chip away at the corporate structure of the music industry. In England, signing to a major label did not mean as much as it did in the United States. Morley said she would often dissuade young English bands that expressed interest in jumping ship: “We’d be like, you really don’t want to be on Sire for the UK, because it’s not cool. It’s going to be you and Enya.” The initial Sire/Warp conversations were more with Mitchell than with Beckett, by Morley’s recollection, and between a legacy with the Ramones and the weight of a major US corporation, there were clear benefits to the fledgling moguls. “They were very shrewd,” she said, intending it as a compliment, “and he [Mitchell] came in saying ‘This is a very special artist, he’s our artist, I’m not selling him to Warners.’”
Eventually Morley and Stein met directly with Aphex Twin. “Richard came in for a meeting,” said Morley. “That was a little further along. Rob didn’t want us to meet Richard. Richard was very elusive. No one could meet him. No one could talk with him.” But
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