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SOUNDS - 4/3/89

Rock ‘n’ Roll refuge


New Rose is arguably the last great rock ‘n’ roll record label -both discovering new talent and providing impetus for down-at-heel legends like Alex Chilton and Roky Erickson. In this two week Retro special, Grahame Bent talks to founder Patrick Mathé, and David Cavanagh compiles the album discographies of New Rose and sister label Fan Club.double 10 in.

February 3, 1959 has been immortalised in popular legend as ‘the day the music died’.
And last week, New Rose, a label with rock ‘n’ roll close to its heart, released ‘Everyday is a Holly Day’ -a compilation of Buddy Holly songs recorded by their artists, to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in a plane crash en route for Fargo, North Dakota.

New Rose is the dream of two undying enthusiasts - Patrick Mathé, a jovial, cigar-chewing entrepreneur, and his right hand man, Louis Thevenon. The first record Patrick ever bought was Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’, while for Louis - child of a different generation - it was Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s out’.

Patrick : " Quite apart from it being the 30th anniversary of Buddy’s death, it was time to remind the people of the real thing in music. After all, he’s the guy who introduced me to rock ‘n’ roll - I still remember the day I bought a copy of ‘Peggy Sue’ a couple of days after I heard it on the radio. Things like that change your life... "

The New Rose story started when Patrick managed Music Box - one of the first independent record stores in Paris - at the height of the punk-new wave explosion in ’77. Louis, one of the Music Box’s best customers, asked Patrick if he could help out behind the counter. Shortly afterwards, Patrick left to open his own store, and Louis followed a couple of months later.

Taking their name from The Damned’s epochal debut 45, they opened for business in March 1980. " We didn’t really have any precise idea about how and when we’d start the label. Then one day, we read that The Saints had been fired from EMI and that Chris Bailey was busking in the London Underground.
" Since we were both big Saints fans, we thought we’d try and get in touch to see if we could do something together. So, we wrote to Giovanni Dadomo of Sounds and asked if he knew where Chris Bailey was and, to our great surprise, Chris called us ten days later. And that’s how it all started - it was almost a dream. "
With an album and a single by The Saints under their belts, they decided to cast their net wider. Their next contact came via The Count, who put them in touch with Willie ‘Loco’ Alexander. Willie, late of The Boom Boom Band, had found himself consigned to virtual oblivion after being dropped by MCA.
From then, the lucky breaks came thick and fast. But not everybody shared New Rose’s belief in the commercial viability of the music. Patrick has framed on his office wall, a rejection note from RCA (New Rose’s distributors in the early days), passing on the distribution rights to The Gun Club’s ‘Fire of Love’, claiming they " couldn’t do anything with it ". Needless to say, the album has gone on to become one of the label’s most consistent sellers.

" We just thought it’d be good to have the letter as a memento. I love to read it everyday - it means independents will always have a future. "

With some artists, such as the Lyres and The Slickee Boys, the initial contacts came through one-off licensing deals.

In other cases, the bands simply contacted the label themselves as happened with The Cramps, The Primevals, Chris D and Sky Saxon. But by far the most idiosyncratic method of expansion has been New Rose’s family network.

" I think the story of the label goes likes this... We meet a band who knows a band and so on... Lots of our bands know each other and have either a direct or indirect connection with each other - it’s one big family tree "

A perfect example, which Patrick fondly refers to as " the Memphis connection ", came into being after they finally touched base with the then contractless Alex Chilton, after several years of fruitless searching. Once the relationship was established, Alex put the label in touch with Tav Falco.

Tav, for his part, put them in touch with Mudboy And The Neutrons via James ‘Luther’ Dickinson, Memphis guitar maverick Charlie Feathers and Panther Burns’ companion artistes, The Hellcats. Suddenly, there was a ready made cluster of New Rose acts centred on Memphis.

The latest additions are The Brewers and The Country Rockers - the latter a formidable Memphis trio featuring Gaius ‘Ringo’ Farnham, a 77-year-old drummer who doubles as a grocer, and Sam Baird, a 68-year-old guitarist who, so the story goes, have been playing the same joint in Memphis every Saturday night for the past 20 years.

CDIn their brief existence, New Rose has provided a haven for some of the greatest neglected names of American rock ‘n’ roll. Whenever people of the calibre of Willie Alexander, Alex Chilton, Tav Falco, Johnny Thunders and Roky Erickson have hit hard times, New Rose have bailed them out. And although he’s modest about the label’s achievements, Patrick doesn’t mind being seen as a rock ‘n’ roll samaritan.

" America’s sitting on a musical goldmine and, most of the time, they just ignore it. People like Alex, Willie and Tav are great artists, and it doesn’t matter that the record business has turned its back on them.

" To me, the relationships between the people involved are as important are any music that’s being produced. We’re not just here to release records and watch the cash roll in. Sure, we’re a company and we’re working with people who have to make a living, but the business side of things isn’t the only thing in life. "

You could be forgiven for thinking the label’s an elite rock ‘n’ roll social club with Patrick as honorary secretary. He spends about three hours on the phone to America every day.

" I love calling my artists, even if we don’t have anything happening at the time. It’s like a movie when you can talk to Chris Bailey, Bo Diddley and Robert Gordon all in one evening.

" Maybe we’re a little old-fashioned compared to the modern ways of the record business. One thing that really upset me was an interview with some guy from The Cartel saying, Oh yeah, Red Rhino have gone bankrupt - that’s very sad, but we’ve grown up now; it’s not like the old days where you could just release a record whenever you felt like it. To me, that’s not how an independent label should talk.

" If, one morning,, we get a great tape in the mail, two or three months later there’s a record. That’s the kind of luxury we enjoy and so far it’s worked well enough. We’ve survived and been able to expand so, in a way, we must be right about what we’re doing. "

New Rose has had a well-developed sense of identity for some time. In Britain, at least, it has some image of a rock ‘n’ roll label, but not in the trad, retro sense of labels like Ace or Chiswick. Arguably, it has matured into the definitive ‘80s rock ‘n’ roll label.

" It’s obvious that we love rock ‘n’ roll, but we’re not a narrow-minded nostalgia label. France is a pretty good place for us to be based but there are no magical havens for rock ‘n’ roll anywhere. We have to suffer Madonna and Michael Jackson like anywhere else, but we don’t have the kind of press that builds up a band then knocks them down again within six months. "

New Rose have always looked for new ways to present their material - paying more attention to artwork and packaging than is typical of your average indie label, and setting up sister label Fan Club to deal with material of more ‘historical’ interest.

‘Everyday is A Holly Day’ arrives as the latest in what’s become a tradition of in-house compilations, and an Eddie Cochran tribute along the same lines is planned for release in April, 1990 - the 30th anniversary of his death. And, what do you know -‘Something Else’ was the second single Patrick bought, way back in ’61.

[thanks to Andy for picking out this from his archives. Andy's the webmaster of Kid Congo Powers site]

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