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- [00:00]
A
For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities and expanding access to care. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org. This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. When someone asks Simon Raymond what he does for a living, sometimes he tells them he's a publisher. But the problem is he isn't. Well, well, there's a tiny bit of truth to it, but Simon Raymond's story is so much more. He's a former member of the hugely popular band the Cocteau Twins. And more importantly, Simon runs a record label, Bella Union, which produce groups like Fleet Foxes. He has just published a memoir about his time in the music business when he comes to genetically, his father for an earlier path in the music industry as Dusty Springfield's arranger. The book is called In One Ear, the Cocteau Twins, Iva Rainwind and me. Simon Raymond joins me now to talk about it. Simon, welcome to all of it.
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B
Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
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A
And we had quite a discussion of your last name because your mom liked to say you're Raymond.
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B
Yes, she loved it. I mean, she's not one of us anymore, but she liked the sounded posher, you know, sounded like she was, you know, doing slightly better than she was. Me and my brother prefer, you know, the more street version of Raymond.
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A
All right, your dad is right there in the title of your book. He was a professional songwriter and arranger. He worked at Dusty Springfield and other artists growing up. What do you remember about music in your household?
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B
Well, you'd think I'd have a cavalcade of stories about that, given what he did for a living. But I think I was just a bit too young to really truly appreciate it. Like when Dusty had her first hit, I was two, you know, so I missed out on a lot of it. I mean, I suppose when the Walker Brothers hits the Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, make it easy on yourself. I was a little bit older and my sisters were in love with Scott Walker, so I knew it was a thing. I knew music was what he did and grew up knowing, of course. But when punk happened in the UK in 1976, I was 14. And that for me was like, okay, here I go, you know, So I was straight in there and sort of what my dad did and what my parents were doing was of very little interest to me at that time.
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A
What did punk mean to you when you were 14?
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B
Oh, pretty much everything. Yeah, it changed my life. No Doubt about that, because it was all the things that my brothers and sisters. Music wasn't, you know, it wasn't safe, it wasn't clean, it wasn't, you know, organized and melodic. It was sort of chaos and I think I just sort of needed that. At that time I was away at a boarding school, so I, I sort of very regimented. Strict, very strict kind of life and then this sort of movement. I would say it wasn't really just the music and I loved the music for a minute there, but I think it was more about the culture, you know, the hanging out, the politics, the social aspect of it. Clothes as well. The clothes were important. The hairstyles, I'm sure people will comment on that. So I think that was my entry point into music. And that's what I. What fired me up really. And my dad's stuff, I didn't really get that until much, much, much later. Probably till well after he died.
- [03:33]
A
Yeah, that was interesting. In your book you wrote that you really didn't see a connection between your music and your musical career and your dad's. And you said, I now feel like bridges I can actually follow, tracing paths of both of our lives and finding them converge. That was towards the end of the book. Why do you think that wasn't accessible to you until recently?
- [03:58]
B
Because I was too self obsessed, I think, with my. Yeah, with my own career and. And you know, just as you go through life, of course you are starting to learn more about yourself and your family and start thinking, huh, you know, that's a peculiar relationship I've had with that person or this person. And you start questioning it and you start wanting to know more and wanting to try and make sense of why things weren't how you thought they should be. So I think when I got to about 40, my dad died in like 89, so. So, you know, I was only in my 20s when he died. So when I got to about 40, I started looking into his career a lot deeper. I mean, I knew, I always knew the hits, I always knew the dusty stuff and the David Bowie thing. And I was like, wow, he's. He was amazing. So. But I just sort of put him up here, you know, right at the top and I wasn't really in the frame and I think when I finished the book I was like, I wouldn't say I'm close to it, but I said, I'm just, I'm more in the game with him there. You know, I feel like an equal in some ways.
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A
You're in his universe.
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B
Yes, I mean his universe rather than just like a speck on a speck on the ocean.
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A
You said that he only saw you play with the Cocteau Twins once.
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B
Yes, he did. And he, he. I was excited because it was a really prestigious venue. It was a place called the Royal Albert hall, you know, one of the UK's iconic venues. And it felt really special to play there, him and my mum along. And I asked him afterwards, I said, what did you think? Kind of all excited. And he said, yes, yes, it was interesting.
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A
Oh no. Oh no. The parent, the parental. Interesting.
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B
Yeah. And I definitely felt quite crushed by that.
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A
My guest is Simon Raymond. The name of his memoir is In One Ear. In One Ear. This is related to the fact that you've lost hearing, some hearing in one of your ears.
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B
Correct.
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A
First of all, first of all, how is your health?
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B
My health is okay.
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A
Okay. What happened with your ear?
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B
Yeah, I mean, to cut, to tell the story as quick as I can because it does open the book and it's. I like the way it opens the book because it's sort of, it's like, oh my gosh moment. You know, reading something like that is quite shocking. And for me it was shocking too. So I needed to sort of get that across. I was producing a record by a band and my hearing started going in one ear and I. It felt like when you go swimming and your ear blocks up with water, you know, and you have to so shake your head and the water comes out, or in my case doesn't. So I went and had a hearing test. When the record had finished, the hearing test was not great, but he asked me to go immediately for an MRI scan. Had a scan immediately. I'm in the doctor's room looking at my brain up on the wall in one of those cool X ray boxes, light boxes, and there is this whopping great tumor in the middle of my brain. Well, not in the middle actually, just down here on the right hand side next to my ear. So it's a tumor called an acoustic neuroma, quite romantically to do with. I was like, oh, that sounds fun because it's musical, isn't it? He went, yes, but no.
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A
Yes, but yes, no.
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B
So then I had to sort of go through the like, well, okay, what do I do? And. And the book sort of details the choices I had to make at that moment and where I went with it and where I didn't go with it. And yes, I'll never get the hearing back, but it is a slow growing tumor. Very, very slow Growing. I mean, I used to have three monthly MRIs, and now I have them twice a year, once every two years. So they're at that point where they're like, it's not really doing anything. You're good to go. So don't fret about it. So I don't fret about it.
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A
Did it change the way you do your job at all?
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B
No, not really. I mean, obviously initially I was sort of upset because I thought, oh, well, that's ruined my career. Yeah, I mean, you know, you need. I need to be able to listen to music and play music. What the heck am I going to do? So I definitely was concerned about it, but I talked to a load of people about it, loads of doctors and. And clever people who just said, you don't need. You only need one ear. You only need one to tell whether something's any good. And I was like, yeah, that's absolutely right. So I didn't let it bother me. I just got up the next morning and just like, crack on. Not going to let it stress me out. It's inconvenient at times. You know, if I'm walking down the street with my wife, you know, and she's on my right side, I can't really hear a word she's saying. So we try and remember when we sit down, the cinema that she's on on my left, you know, you sort of have to think about everything you do. And certainly I did resist talking about it during, you know, because of the music business. And I felt, yes, maybe discussing it, letting people know that I had this hearing problem would. Would influence them not to give me a job or not to think that I was any good at signing bands. So I. I know that's. That's daft, but I definitely kind of is. Well, I. Well, maybe I just sort of thought my authenticity as a musician was in. Was gonna. Would be in question. So I didn't go there. But then when I wrote the book, I thought, well, now's the time, girl.
- [09:27]
A
We are talking with musician and music industry veteran Simon Raymond about his new memoir, in One Ear. Cocteau Twins, is it? Ivor Ivor, Ivor. Ivor Raymond and me. Cocteau Twins. How did you meet?
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B
How did I meet them? I was. My very first job, best job I've had, probably, apart from this one. It was working in a little record shop called Beggars Banquet. Now Beggars Banquet owns all these labels like 4ad, Excel and Situation 2. And I was working in the record shop my first Ever job you had to walk through the record shop to be able to get to the record label upstairs. One morning, some people turned up at the door very early, before anyone at the record label was in at work. I opened the door. It was these. This band come down from Scotland to deliver their cassette, a very first cassette, to the record label upstairs. I said I'd pass it on because they weren't in yet. And that was our first meeting. So, sort of unwittingly, I am the sort of messenger carrying this odyssey up to the boss, you know. And then we sort of kept in touch over the next year or two, became friends. They were fans of my little band, I was fans of their band. And then, you know, just one thing led to another and I. They call me up and asked me if I'd like to join their band. It's detailed in the book. I mean, don't have time to go into the full, like, how it all happened, but.
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A
Well, that's what people go by, the book.
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B
Yes, exactly.
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A
So you're with Robin Guthrie, Liz Frazier, and you had three golden rules when you're writing. No demos, no writing songs before recording sessions, and no leaving music unfinished after a recording session. How did these rules help you work and how did it help you develop the sound?
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B
Yeah, I mean, listen, when. When. When we signed the deal and the record company were like, so when should we book the studio time? When do you want to go and make the record? Have you got songs? We just was like, yeah, we've got songs. We didn't have any. We had nothing. And I was kind of terrified by that. But. But Robin seemed to be completely queen. Don't worry about it, it's cool. We'll just go in and wing it. So I was like, okay. I trusted him. So we went in the studio with literally nothing. And we had three weeks to make the Treasure album. And I'd never been in the studio with them before. I mean, I barely spent, you know, more than just fleeting moments with them. So it was quite peculiar because they're a couple and they're very close. Very, very sort of, you know, together in their own little world. And I definitely felt like a bit. A bit of an outsider, I suppose. Took me. It took me a good couple of years to get to get over that bit. So it was strange being in the studio. But, you know, once we picked up our instruments and started writing music, in improvising this music in the way we did it just felt the most natural thing in the world. And I still write in exactly that. I don't ever write anything in advance.
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A
Oh, really? To this day, yeah.
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B
I love it. I think it's really exciting and really fun. Of course, it's going to be a bit hit and miss because some days you're going to go in and you're going to be rubbish, you know, because that's what humans are like. You don't always going to be on your top game. But I like the fact that, especially these days with computers. Just press undo and it's all gone.
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A
Well, let's play. Let's play Pearly Dew Drops. Should we?
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B
Honestly, it's your show.
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A
All right, let's do it.
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B
So this is one of the first songs we ever wrote together.
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A
Yeah, on the spot. On the spot, Yeah.
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B
I know it seems weird. Believe me, the more I listen to it, the more I think about it. I know it's weird, it just works. But what we discussed was, what tempo, what rough tempo should it be? Because you have to start with the drum beat, right? You have to start with a beat because otherwise how are you gonna play along to anything? So we start a beat, record it for three minutes until we got bored, press stop, and then plug a couple of guitars in and the bass, and then we just. Oh, that's good. I'll keep doing that. No, I like that. And I'll play. Yeah, that's good. And then an hour later. That sounds all right. This is very strange, isn't it? I tell them a lot of the bands that I work with now because they're like, you know, oh, we've got to go away and demo. And I'm like, no, don't do it. Don't do that. Just try winging it.
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A
How was it for you, considering that Frasier and Guthrie at one point were dating?
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B
How was it for me?
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A
Yeah. In the band?
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B
Well, I mean, after a while, it just is. It sort of becomes normal. You spend that much time with people and, you know, I was spending way more time with them than I was, you know, with my own. With my own partner, you know. It just is. When a band becomes successful, you know, you're way on tour an awful lot, so you're in a van with a bunch of people and it just seems totally normal. Because, remember, I'm super young at this point. I mean, I'm still in. Just in my. In my late teens, early 20s. So I think this is all exciting and new. I haven't got to the point where I'm feeling at all stressed by it. But, you know, as things changed and as the band got more and more successful, their relationship began to suffer. Other things came into play, like sort of, you know, stuff that we don't need to go into. And, you know, then of course things got very complicated and ultimately the band couldn't continue past a certain point. What is incredible though, I should say is that we made two albums after they had broken up as a couple, which, you know, I do look back at that and think that was quite a feat. Yeah, you know, would you want to be in a band with.
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A
No.
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B
No.
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A
We're talking to musician and music industry veteran Simon Raymond about his new memoir, In One Ear. You start the music label Bella Union in part because of your. Your frustrations.
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B
I suppose that is true. I mean, we decided to start the label not because we wanted to run a record label, I can tell you that for certain, because we didn't like record labels and there was never a plan to have a record label. The plan was to put out our own music without anyone else interfering. And, you know, usually when you work with record labs that, hey, you know, can we come down and hang out and listen to the music? And we were all like, no, because we just want to get on with it ourselves. Just leave us alone. So having your own label, label means you don't ever have to invite anybody down to the studio. That was really the thinking. It was quite naive, of course, but then we broke up and we had no, no bands.
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A
So many I knew artists were sort of the same vintage who signed to major like a record labels like Capital and then just regretted it, like immediately regretted being part of that machine.
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B
Oh, totally. Well, we were on Capitol actually in the US and to be fair, they were actually really nice to work with. It was that when we signed to the major label in the UK after leaving 4 AD after having Las Vegas. Yeah, that was definitely was horrible. Literally within three months where we were sort of their priority new signing. Once they'd sort of had a few conversations with us and realized how awkward and obnoxious we could be, they. They just dropped us like a stone, you know, they did not want to speak to us and it was very hard to maneuver our way through. But such is life, right On Bella.
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A
Union, your first solo release album was Blame Someone Else. Let's listen to A Little Bit of Muscle and want.
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B
Good Lord, I should have acted like a son. Made out of my trouble lives.
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A
And.
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B
Made our for you and I upon.
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A
You.
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B
I should have spread.
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A
What did you want to say?
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B
What's the cough button?
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A
That's if you cough it, it. It makes your microphone go soft.
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B
Oh, cool as. That's pretty cool. I heard of one of those in Life.
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A
As you listen to that with 2020 hindsight, what comes to mind?
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B
That I shouldn't have released it?
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A
Yeah. Why?
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B
I'm just being stupid. I don't know. It's like, I, I don't. I'm not. You know, when you wearing. When you sing, after you've been in a band with one of the greatest singers of all time, you know, you really are inviting, you know, an anvil to drop on your head. Really. It's like. I knew it wasn't a good idea, but I sort of couldn't help myself. I needed to sort of, I don't know, get over the band breaking up and start afresh. I don't know. As part of that stuff, I don't even really know. It was because we started a label, we needed to put something out, and I knew it would sell some copies from fans that would buy it regardless of what it sounded like, you know, that's what I really thought.
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A
When you started Bella Union, when you thought about it and you thought, I'm gonna make this work, what was one of the first things you did to make Bella Union work as a record label?
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B
Yeah, well, to be honest, first year or two, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was literally stumbling from one thing to the next, just making it all up so long. Because, you know, on the other side, you work with a label, you get all these people in your team just sort of there. I had to build that team without knowing who to speak to first. So I did take me a while to kind of relax into it. But what I knew I didn't want to do was, was have contracts that were as restrictive as the label that I had come from. And that was definitely a big thing. And I stuck to that all the way. Maybe I've stuck it. Maybe I've stuck to it to the detriment of our sort of, you know, assets, if you like. The equity of the label is definitely not as strong as 4 ads would be because they own everything forever. I don't. But I believe in it. You know what I mean? I think it's ethically and I. I ethically correct. And that's what I feel. I. I did. And I think the bands like it. I'm an artist friendly kind of guy.
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A
Speaking of artist friendly kind of guy who's out there that you're listening to now and you think that person has it, that person has talent, that person is charismatic.
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B
Yes, there's. Blimey, there's, there's so many, aren't there? I mean, depending on what sort of genre you're, you're discussing. I mean, obviously I manage a bands with my wife. We, we, that's what we do, right? We find young bands and we, we nurture them and try and develop them. So we've got a bunch coming out next year. Young Brighton band called Congratulations, who'll be heading over to the US in March for their first ever tour, which is unusual right now because it's almost impossible for young bands from the UK to come to America to tour, I would say, you know. Yeah, almost impossible because you got visas that cost roughly $2,000 per person. A five piece band, well, there's $10,000 before you've even got on the plane. Then you've got to get on the.
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A
Plane and then they've got to sleep somewhere.
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B
You've got to get a van, you've got to get some gas in the van. You've got to have someone to drive you. I mean, we're talking 25 to $30,000 before you've played one note. Now, I don't know how much you guys know about this business, but no one's paying you $30,000 to play your first shows in America, okay? So the books are not even remotely close to being balanced. So yes, you can make some T shirts, yes, you can take some vinyl, but if you're only playing to 100 people in a, in a, in a club in Austin and 100 people in a club in, in New York, that, that ain't gonna, that ain't gonna cut it.
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A
Well, we'll keep our fingers crossed for congratulations. Is that who we should be listening to?
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B
I hope they're not listening.
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A
My guest has been Simon Ramon. The name of his book is in our ear. We're gonna go out on one of your favorite songs, your favorite Cocteau Twins track. It's called Watchlar. Thank you so much for being with us.
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B
You're very welcome. It's my pleas.
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A
And that is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.
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B
On the next Brian Lehrer show. Call your senator and call your MTA chair. It's our monthly call your senator segment. My questions and yours for New Jersey Senator Andy Kemm. And we'll have the chair and CEO of the mta, Jano Lieber, who will answer my mass transit questions and yours as the Mamdani era begins and Governor Hochul runs for reelection. The Brian Lehrer show, weekdays at 10am on WNYC.
- [24:20]
A
WNYC is supported by American Art Marketing, presenting Art and Design and Fashion Salon, a curated showcase of fine art, contemporary design and original fashion. This weekend at Wall hall. More@AmericanArtMarketing.com this is WNYC FM HD and AM New York.
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B
The who's down and who Newville were making their list, but some didn't know. Walmart has the best brands for their gifts. What about toys?
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A
Do they have brands kids have been wanting all year? Yep, Barbie, Tonys and Lego gifts that will make them all cheerful. Do you mean they have all the brands I adore? They have Nintendo, Nespresso, Apple and more.
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B
What a bad so the who answered questions from friends till they were blue. Each one listened and shouted from Walmart? Who knew? Shop gifts from top brands for everyone on your list. In the Walmart app, extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery.