Daniel Miller

Dave Henderson’s contributions to the alternative music scene are almost too many to count. At Sounds, he advocated for electronic and industrial acts; providing vital exposure to the nascent scene. An accidental label boss, he released the storied Elephant Table compilation. He put his hand to designing record covers and knocked out a few songs himself. “Compiled by Dave Henderson” is a common inscription on CD sleeves and box sets across the decades.

We caught Henderson a few years back for an interview but lost track of the recording (London phone thieves, step forward). Rediscovered, it provides a potted history of alternative music in Britain, which runs alongside the career of the legendary Wild Planet columnist.

What was your introduction to the music scene?

Well, I suppose the first thing was that I was at art college in Camberwell, and Derek Jarman saw my show, and he invited me to make some costumes for Jubilee. Then I ended up working on the set with Kenny Morris, who was also at Camberwell. He was the drummer of the band Cheese, at the time. So, we were trying to make a set in this warehouse, and I was making clothes. I made that Union Jack dress that Jordan wore.

I kind of met lots of people there. In fact, I was interviewing Toyah the other day for something else, and she was recalling that fateful meeting and how haphazard the whole thing was. But it was the exciting thing to do, obviously. From there, I went to do an MA in screen printing, which I never finished because I joined a band, which was the Disco Zombies – in Leicester, this was. And it was a really interesting scene. So I had a fanzine and I was in a band. There were lots of bands there, and it was a time where there were great records coming out every week, and we were kind of spoiled for music. So it was very exciting.

How did you end up at Sounds?

I came back down to London with the band, and then I started a record label called Dining Out Records. Because I’d done screen-printing, I screen-printed all the sleeves in my flat – and made myself pretty ill from doing it. But that’s kind of how it was – very DIY. So that’s kind of how I met more people. Through that, I met 23 Skidoo, Last Few Days – which was Dan Landin (Stan Bingo), the Throbbing Gristle roadie. They all lived around the corner from me, and they were a lot younger. Well, not a lot younger. About five years. They were just leaving school at the time. I put on a lot of gigs with 23 Skidoo and their friends, the Mysterons, Last Few Days – and, through that, I met Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle – all the usual suspects, really.

You’re describing a scene or a milieu of people.

Yeah. There was a place called the London Filmmakers Cooperative in Gloucester Avenue; and part of it was, also, they would have “weird music,” as they called it. So, you’d have somebody doing a bit of performance art, and then This Heat playing, or Throbbing Gristle played. We played there. Lots of different people played. I met loads of people at the door and out the window. All those kind of people who were all doing DIY stuff, From that, because I got bored of having no money, I got a job. Then I got a job on Sounds, being the production editor. I kept saying, you should write about this person or that person? They said, why don’t you just go and do it? So I ended up writing about all these people whom I was meeting anyway.

The articles you wrote brought together a number of strands that, pre-internet, were hard to connect.

It was a time when getting something through the postbox was really exciting. You would write to these people. I met a lot of people through Gary at Third Mind – the Rising from the Red Sand thing.

Gary Levermore.

I still know Gary to this day. I still know most of these people. He introduced me to lots of stuff, and then I went off and did features for Sounds on Attrition. I went to Coventry, basically, and did three bands in Coventry. And I went to Sheffield and did three or four bands there. I was forever interviewing Cabaret Voltaire, just because they were my favourite band. And then, because you met this person, they would say, oh have you heard this person? So you would start to build up this network of people, and they would just send you stuff. They would come into the office at Sounds, because nobody had written about them before, so that was quite weird. Graeme Revell from SPK would come in, and we’d go for a cup of tea.

As I wrote about stuff, because it was about mail order and everything came with a little address – oh, you can get this cassette from Martin Bowes in Coventry – then people would start sending me stuff. It just got weirder and weirder. You’d just have people like Laibach who would come in the office. I’d get a phone call saying, there’s some people in military uniforms out here to see you. You’d get that a lot. Lydia Lunch came in and gave me a hard time about some review I’d written. Davy Allen from The Arrows came in, because it was in Covent Garden; it was quite easy to access, so a lot of people just turned up.

It seems so strange now that people were putting out their addresses. You were able to put postal addresses in your article so people could write off and get a tape.

Yeah, it was invariably people’s home address. Very few people paid the £20 for a PO Box in those days. When I’d go up to interview people, you’d actually go to that address. I’d be going to see In the Nursery in Sheffield, for instance. And they lived in two rooms in the student quarter of Sheffield. I’ll never forget it. Most of the space was taken up by this electric chair which they built as an art piece. There’s one that was in art college. And they’d obviously started, then realised, this is gonna be really big, so there’s very little else in the house.

They were all like-minded people. They were all wanting to do something, and they were outside the mainstream. So it was very inspiring to go and sit with those people. It still is, when you talk to them these days. They’re all a bit older and bit more tongue in cheek humor these days.

What about the records? Because you turned very quickly your interest in developing taste into what the Elephant Table compilation, first of all, which was like Rising from the Red Sand that way. Spreading the Word.

Yeah. Gary did Rising from the Red Sand, but I did the Elephant Table album. I was designing stuff for Illuminated Records and they said, well, why don’t you do a compilation of all this stuff? It sounds interesting. I did that, and we made up some label name. It was Xtract or something. And then we did Three Minute Symphonies afterwards, which was just asking people: if you’ve got three minutes, how would you deliver your message? All conceptual kind of nonsense, really.

I was kind of doing artwork for Illuminated, and then they tried to sign Last Few Days. But they signed Skidoo and they signed Portion Control, and they sounded very significant. They did that great Robert Anton Wilson album about the Illuminati.

Who were the Illuminated people?

This guy called Keith Bagley. I was in a band by then called Worldbackwards, and he let us do an album. He asked us to do an album, which we recorded at Blackwing at the same time when Depeche Mode were there. And through Portion Control we met Depeche Mode. It was all kind of incestuous, really, but interesting.

Illuminated had Portion Control and 400 Blows.

Yeah. I knew Andrew [Beer] really well, so I introduced him to Keith, and they signed them up. Similarly with Skidoo and the guy that Keith worked with, Angus [Robertson], who used to be at Island Records. When Skidoo wanted to have brass on their record, they said, oh, wouldn’t it be great to have Aswad’s brass section? And Angus said, yeah, well, I know them. So, it was all kind of chance, I suppose.

Did you come across John Fryer at Blackwing?

Yeah, John Fryer actually produced our record – Flesh by Worldbackwards. It says Eric Radcliffe on it, because we had to produce the artwork before we actually recorded it. But Eric was busy doing something else at the time. So John did it.

What else did you do as a label?

I had Dead Man’s Curve, which is another record label I did. Red Rhino funded it, which was very nice of them. I did Smegma and Blistering Moments and people like that – some of which is incredibly rare now. People are always asking me for Blistering Moments, for instance. Thinking Plague has been reissued on CD.

So I had that label, and then it was a kind of another step to do something a little bit different. So I did that Total Beat Factor thing, just beause people were sending me tapes all the time. I just edited it together and probably didn’t tell everybody I was doing it, but everybody was fine. I can’t recall. But anyway, I knew Portion Control really well. They were constantly coming around my house when I lived in London, and they just had lots of stuff they wanted to put out. I did all the sleeves for them and what have you.

Which were some of the sleeves for Portion Control?

Purge – that was the first one I did for them. And then I did all the next few. And because I worked for Illuminated, as well, I did Sex Gang Children, 400 Blows, and lots of different things. Some of them just let you get on with it. Some of them wanted to be really involved. It was different. But Portion Control was very much, you do it. We did that live album [Live in Europe] with them.

Your work as a writer moved on a bit. What was the progression?

I went to a dance music music magazine very briefly, and then I got offered a job on a magazine called Raw, which was a heavy metal magazine. It was money, so it was a job. It was a really good way to see the world, to be honest. So, I took that job as the editor. I had learned a bit writing for it. I wasn’t really writing very much. And then, because grunge had happened, I was saying – and there was one other guy on the magazine saying – we should write about Nirvana. We should write about all these different people – Dinosaur Jr. So, again, I started writing about those guys. Then I got asked to go on the Lollapalooza tour – the first one with Nine Inch Nails. So I went to Boston. It was that funny kind of tour where everybody traveled together and we’re all in the same hotel. I knew Living Colour at the time. So, it’s kind of a lot of people who I knew.

Then I was with Nine Inch Nails; but I met Jane’s Addiction, and it was just amazing. The whole thing was amazing, for sure. I wrote about that, and then I guess I saw the world. I went off on tour with The Black Crowes and Megadeth in Hawaii – all those kind of things. Places I’d never have afforded to go to at the time.

So, I ended up at Raw. The people who owned Raw bought Kerrang. I ended up doing Raw and Kerrang, managing all the people and not writing anymore. Then I did Select; then I did Q; and then I did Mojo. In fact, they launched Mojo when I was there. That was designed for me, because I was getting older at the time. I worked with all of those magazines, and then we made them into radio stations and TV and all that kind of stuff. That was just a whole other nightmare. But it was really interesting to meet all those guys and promote things that I really like – like Daniel’s label [Mute] – and force people to listen to Nick Cave before everybody wanted to listen to Nick Cave.

What are your memories of working with Portion Control?

The thing about Portion Control is, they’re just really nice guys. And they were all chefs. That’s why they are called Portion Control. They worked at the government building next to the Houses of Parliament. They’re just really funny guys. It’s quite stark what they do musically, sometimes, but they’ve got a really good sense of humor. They were forever doing ridiculous things just beause they lived in this ridiculous house in South London which was condemned and the floor was on an angle. I went around for dinner, one time, because they were good chefs. It must have been me and my girlfriend. The floor was actually on a slope. And the only thing of interest in the room was an arcade machine, which they had stolen from somewhere because they were into computer games really early on.

I did a record with them as well at some point. They were being incredibly creative, but they were hopeless at managing themselves. I managed them for a little while; and it was really difficult to do, because they’re not a commercial entity. At that time, it was a different kind of market with the major labels, so they were never really gonna get signed.

And then Tom Watkins, who managed Bros and discovered the Pet Shop Boys, really liked them. He said, I’ll manage them. And I thought, well, you’re better at it than me, because I don’t know what I’m doing. And at the same time, Dave Balfe, who’s in Teardrop Explodes, had started Food Records. He wanted to manage them and sign them to Food. We went to Dave’s flat in Islington, and he had a little studio in there. They didn’t hit it off for some reason; so they went with Tom Watkins.

Unfortunately, he’s died now, but he gave them some money. This is typical Portion Control. He gave them some money. He said, go out and buy yourself some clothes. Look for an image. It was about 300 quid – a lot of money at the time. And they came back and said, well, we couldn’t find anything we liked.

And it was quite a monumental. It felt like the end of an era ’cause there was a lot of people there and there were church protests outside. It was on a Sunday, as Lyceum jigsaws were in those days.

Then he wanted to change their name to Art. You had to completely sell your soul, change your name, and dress like idiots to sign to a major label. And they just said, forget it. They did make some money from Illuminated. They bought a house. They were those kind of guys. They bought a house in the middle of nowhere, up towards Cambridge. But that’s what they wanted to do. They all lived together, but one of them fell out.

A proper job, John [Whybrow] has got. I don’t know if I should tell you this – it would ruin the myth – but he works for a catering company that cater for a lot of schools. He manages that company. The last time I met him, we went for a coffee – it was probably about three or four years ago. And he says yeah, I’m doing this. I’m really busy. I can only meet at certain times. There’s only so much they could do. And they didn’t even see each other when they were recording at that time. I don’t know if they do now. He would just send some files off to Dean [Piavani].

The way it is now, everyone’s a duo and they just drop files.

Well, back in the DIY days, that was quite a novelty. There was a lot of getting a Portastudio tape and doing your track and then sending it off to somebody and then sending it back. Yeah, everybody does it now.

The other factor with that music, as you were curating it for people in the paper and on a record, was that it was very international. So you might have Chris and Cosey here, but then you had Neubauten in Berlin.

Neubauten was based in London for quite a while. But there wasn’t really a London scene, to be honest, because everybody lived all over the place. You know, Attrition didn’t like coming to town. Nocturnal Emissions lived on their farm – and they didn’t like coming to town. Gen and Sleazy were in London and Chris and Cosey lived in Wood Green. But most people lived out of town and there weren’t really gigs where everybody played. There was that big gig at the Lyceum with Throbbing Gristle, Z’ev, Non, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA – that was it.

And it just felt like the end of an era. Throbbing Gristle wanted to play first, and they just did “Discipline” for about 25 minutes or something with Gen banging a tea tray on his head. Very exciting. But yeah, there wasn’t really a London scene. People were from all over the place. I suppose people congregated at the Sounds office because, when they came to London, that was something – you could always go for a cup of tea around the corner.

Was there a rivalry with the other papers? So with NME and Melody Maker, were you looking at them and trying to do something different?

I didn’t really know anybody on the other papers. I kind of liaised with Biba Kopf afterwards. I only met him through Daniel [Miller] later on, I think. I can’t remember. But, yeah, it was years later. There was always a rivalry, at the time, because those papers were selling 150,000 each, probably, at that time. They were big sellers.

Things have changed a lot since those days – it is also evident in the charts. How do you see the changes?

I read an article about hauntology the other week, from 2009, about how the past is the present and there is no future, which is the theory behind hauntology. And you kind of see it, really. There are very few modern bands that you think, well, they’re really good or they’re really interesting – they’re doing something challenging.

I run a stage at Glastonbury and we have a lot of different things on. We’ve had Elbow on, before they were famous, and Florence and the Machine – but last year there were some punky kind of things, like Amyl and the Sniffers. But there’s nobody who’s doing something to make you think, wow, that’s really different. The Cool Greenhouse may be quite interesting. The blokes who are now Piglet – they were called something else. They were cool. I saw them at Green Man and that was quite amazing. That was like old DIY. In fact, if you look on YouTube for Gentle Stranger, there’s them playing at the Windmill, or somewhere like that in South London.

One thing I’m curious about, having written about bands for such a long time, is what happens with artists who have been young and creative now that they’re older and creative. Do you think the media and audiences lose interest?

Not with the older artists I’m dealing with. It’s all that kind of nostalgia thing. Mojo lives off it. It’s the only magazine that’s surviving. Everything else is closed or on hiatus at the moment, for sure, and has been for a year. But that is a magazine that’s still selling, so that kind of nostalgia thing – that hauntology thing – works. It’s comforting to go back to those things that you kind of recognise.

You make a good point. The journalism has been cut back so much because the advertising isn’t there.

And everybody’s got an opinion now. You go on TripAdvisor, or you go on whatever – any of those sites – there’s about 300 people got an opinion. Well, I don’t really care, but people will follow that information. It’s not like when I was at Sounds. People queued up to get those magazines every week because Dave McCulloch would say something about something, or Garry Bushell. Edwin Pouncey [Savage Pencil] was a classic. Edwin used to sit next to me and you knew, when he said, you’ve got to hear the Meat Puppets, you’ve got to hear this. Sandy Robertson was on the other side. He was tight with Throbbing Gristle at the start. Sandy had a bit more flowery commitment to music, but it’s not like that anymore.

People are generally lazy, aren’t they? So Spotify playlists are a curse. They are terrible. You’ve really got to work hard to find things that are interesting and different. Or you’re lucky, I suppose, if people send you things. Simon Fisher Turner, for instance, sends a thing out every week via Touch, which is him recording something in Notting Hill, where he lives, and then putting a bit of music on it. He’s just done a great album with his kids [Savage Songs of Brutality and Food].

He prompted the John Cage tribute thing that Mute did – the 4′ 33′ compilation for STUMM433.

That’s how Simon’s mind works. Everything seems to have a creative possibility. He’s great. I went for a cup of tea with him before lockdown, because he lives in Nottingham. It’s on my way to work, really. He’s always got some new idea. But his new album’s great. It’s Isabella, it’s his two kids, and he’s done the music behind it. But it’s really good.

He did a lot of stuff with Colin Lloyd-Tucker. Simon’s worked with loads of people. He was a pop star when he was 16, on Jonathan King’s label. He did the first tabloid journalism exposing Britt Ekland, when he went out with Britt Ekland. So, yeah, he’s a character. He’s a great guy. I’ve known Simon for a long time. He’s a very funny man. And he’s been in loads of films as well.

He’s always doing loads of stuff. I’ve done quite a few things with him where he’s come and played. I did a thing for Empire – film soundtracks – and him and Phil Hartnoll from Orbital did something. We did a party in Cannes, and he came and played. Simon’s been around a long time – like me.

From that generation, are there people still going that you’re following musically? You mentioned Martin Bowes and Attrition. He’s still putting stuff out.

Yeah, I see he’s putting stuff out. I spoke via email to Nigel of Nocturnal Emissions. He’s still doing stuff. I did something with Paul Haslinger the other week. Well, probably a couple of months ago now. It’s a guy who’s been in Tangerine Dream. He’s big mates with Brian Lustmord, in the States. He was telling me that Graeme Revell’s gone back to Australia now. So, great. Me and somebody else can get some work in the films now.

When you look at the people who are scoring a lot of the big movies, they are names you recognize. They’re Nine Inch Nails, Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo, Graeme Revell. So, the guy who used to have a flamethrower on stage and swing big chains at the audience is now doing film scores.

Yeah, well he did that. He was very early on with the sampling thing and he did that album of the insect musicians. That was all borrowed from the British Library.

What’s in the future for you then?

Well, who knows? I’m doing a lot of art projects at the moment. But then, out of that, somebody was saying, oh, you had a cassette label – which I did, years and years ago – probably 1979 or something. And he said, you should reissue some of those things. You should reissue the Worldbackwards album. And you should reissue Blistering Moments, which is on Dead Man’s Curve. And I thought, yeah, I might as well. So I’m gonna do a cassette label and do some nice cassettes with nice packaging and see what happens.