For those of you who enjoyed my Sarah Records article, here is the complete, unedited interview transcript with founder Clare Wadd.
1. Both you and Matt Haynes were involved with the fanzine scene, Matt also
with Sha-La-La - from the information I have read - but what inspired you
to leap forward into setting up the label?
I guess it was a combination of Matt & I meeting each other & the number of
great bands around we wanted to get involved with. I'd done a Sea Urchins
flexidisc with the last issue of my fanzine, Kvatch, and Sha-la-la had done
a Sea Urchins flexi around the same time, they'd also done an Orchids flexi,
neither band had record deal - and it just seemed so obvious for us to set a
record label up together.
2. Was the promotional side of things (posters, flyers, inserts etc) and
sleeve design entirely down to you and Matt, or were there any
helping-hands?
The bands did get a fair amount of input in the posters and sleeves, and in
the labels on their albums - although the labels on the singles and the
later inserts were all us. Some of the sleeves were completely us - the
Springfields first single was one, and we had a lot of input with Brighter,
for instance - but other bands had very clear ideas about what they wanted.
There weren't any other helping hands though - we were fairly antisocial and
lacking in friends really, and most of the bands weren't Bristol-based so
there wasn't like a gang of people around us helping with stuff, it was
really just the two of us, quite insular really.
3. Obviously the Sea Urchins were 'Sarah 1'. How did you go from there to
the burgeoning roster the catalogue grew into?
Well, we already knew the Orchids, and Harvey had sent "Anorak City" to Matt
in Sha-la-la days, so we had a bit of a list of bands at the outset. But
that said, we had no idea how Sarah 1 would go, so whilst we had dreams of
running a proper label - maybe a series of 10 singles - we really did just
put a record out, and then put another record out, and it grew from there.
I was still at university and Matt was on the dole, so it started as a hobby
and turned into a business. It was very organic, the way it grew - though
we had always intended to stop at 50 rather than 100, but were having too
much fun.
4. My dad said to me that your distinctive sleeve designs 'gave Sarah a
face'. There's certainly a cohesive feel to the catalogue; how did that
style come about?
To be honest it was largely financial! Full colour printing is 4 colours,
which means four printing plates & 4 proofs (same cost regardless of how
many copies you're printing) - whereas if you just use one or two colours,
your costs come down, particularly for small runs. Technology has changed
that to some degree, it's amazing to think what we used to spend on
typesetting for instance... Full colour photos would have been really
expensive for us because of the high quality scans, but now that sort of
thing is much more affordable.
I think what it did though, was make us figure out how to do some very
inventive things within quite strict design constraints - it probably helped
that a lot of the bands were Factory fans, we didn't do much slapping a
photo with a band name above or below. A lot of it sprang from the sort of
design we'd done for fanzines, high contrast photocopies (from photocopying
repeatedly until all the grey disappears etc.) - the technology has moved on
so much it's hard to think we used to have to do manual paste-ups to print
from back then.
5. The label had a rocky relationship with the music press to say the
least; why do you think they had such an attitude towards the label?
Largely because we weren't in London, so they didn't know us, so it wasn't
awkward to have a go at us because they weren't going to have to talk to us
at a gig next day. And it was such a male industry, much more so than now,
and I was an equal partner not the traditional girlfriend who helped out -
I've just been reading the Caitlin Moran book, which really reminded me
about how male it all was. And we were trying to make political and
feminist points with the wrong kind of music, not your typical noisy-punchy
political pop, but understated and gentle pop, and that confused them too.
Of course the journalists who did like us found themselves out on a limb
too, having to defend themselves, you can understand why they might not have
wanted to bother.
6. The fact that so much of the music press made Sarah synonymous with
'twee' still baffles me. Riling against sexism across the press and PR, and
the embracing of capitalism of the industry, do you think that has changed
in the last 25 years?
Me too! I think the label name and my involvement, the fact we,
particularly me, were so young (in retrospect) made it easy to patronise us.
Some people really embraced the "twee" label, but we never did and none of
our bands ever did really (most of them hated it), it always seemed to be
about not wanting to grow up, pretending to be a child, that never appealed
to us - we were interested in the big-wide grown up world, politics, the
rights and wrongs of the world, fighting wrongs and so on. A lot of the
music was quite trebley, not the most plush most expensive recordings, which
made it easy to have a go I guess. I guess we were just never on the
zeitgeist really.
7. I have to ask it: Was there ever a feeling with the more popular bands -
the Field Mice or Brighter, for example - where you thought 'they should be
conquering the world'?
Yes, of course. We thought all of the bands and all of the records we put
out were brilliant, and sometimes it was hard to know why everybody else
didn't think so too - we always wanted to sell as many records as possible,
not to be stuck in some niche.
8. Personally, I would argue that most if not 'big' record labels are just
bankers and PR people, but is there still room for labels in the 21st
century of 'recording in the bedroom'?
I think there is - though what form they will take in the future is hard to
know, and where the overlap will lie between labels and managers is hard to
say too. Bands are becoming more in charge of their own destinies, as the
means of production have moved into their hands rather than needing large
capital input - but I think there will always be a place for some kind of
label, virtual or otherwise, as a marketing device and means of directing
people to new music they might like, and as a sort of musical editor.
9. I have to commend your (and indeed Matt's) integrity in not re-releasing
the catalogue on CD; what are your reasons behind that - was it to preserve
the feelings surrounding those original releases?
A mixture of reasons - we have a real pop aesthetic / sentiment, & endless
reissues & re-runs aren't really a part of that. Things should have their
time and then end, not just be endlessly repeated. & we've never wanted to
do things with the catalogue the bands haven't wanted us to do. That said a
lot of the catalogue is available for download - we were finding other
people we're offering MP3s of it for sale, so we had to act - and there
seemed no good reason to keep it unavailable once Itunes was out there.
But again, economics comes into it - the catalogue is large enough that to
reissue it all on CD & keep it available would be hugely expensive, and we'd
struggle to store it all too.
10. For me, the music released by the Sarah artists is timeless; do you
still listen back to them with the same attachment you had?
Yes, absolutely. It's funny though, it's always so different listening to
our releases than other records - the level of attachment and the emotions
wrapped up in them are so huge. I guess if I'm honest too, as with all
music, some things have sound more "timeless" and have stood the test of
time better than other - and they're not always the things you thought would
at the time. Some things sound very much of their time, others more
contemporary - it's hard to believe we started the label nearly 25 years ago
too.
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