Read How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 for Free Online

mainstream.’
    ‘You go to meet A&R departments and there are people who don’t even know why they’re interested,’ says Boon. ‘Morris Oberstein, the chairman of CBS, called me and I had to hold the phone a yard away from my ear: “How come you’re doing that? Why are you signing to United Artists? They’re just a tiny little company, you should be talking to us.” I just said, “We did talk to you, you weren’t interested.”’
    The interest in Buzzcocks had come scattershot from the music industry. Boon and the band were as confused by the record companies’ motives as the companies were by a Mancunian band who waved aside their customary advances of fame and fortune. Andrew Lauder was the only A&R man the band met who seemed to appreciate the context in which the Buzzcocks had placed themselves. As enormous fans of Can, whom Lauder had signed to United Artists, the band were intrigued by what he had to offer, especially if it included lurid tales of Can’s studio experiments and alleged (and highly tenuous) connections with the Red Army Faction.
    ‘Andrew seemed to be more interested in music than business,’ says Boon. ‘He could seduce you with his stories of working with the original Charlatans, and anyone with any wit liked Can and Neu! United Artists was this funny little label that had had Beefheart and the Groundhogs, a fairly unique catalogue.’ Having found Lauder sympathetic and agreeing to sign to United Artists, Buzzcocks felt the inevitable charges of ‘sell-out’ directed their way. ‘People’s response in the community was, “Why have they done that?”’ says Boon. ‘From that early wave, Buzzcocks had done something else from within to start with, and some people were very disappointed.’
    ‘Richard was more like a member of the group,’ says Lauder.‘He wasn’t like a commercial manager thinking, “Well, if this doesn’t work I’ll go and sign another band.”’
    To that end Lauder understood that, although they were from a different generation, Buzzcocks had a similar attitude to the first generation of acts on United Artists and he was amenable to the band including full artistic control in their contract. ‘We had a clause,’ says Boon, ‘which ends up being meaningless really, about controlling your artistic direction – but when things stop selling, which they did, then suddenly all the other clauses in the contract come out.’
    As Buzzcocks embarked on the path of career pop stars as fully-fledged members of the recording industry, Spiral Scratch ’s legacy ensured that there was an incipient, viable alternative cottage industry left in its wake. Boon now found he was managing a band on international tours and dealing with the corporate entertainment business, and he was as bewildered as anyone at what Spiral Scratch had achieved. ‘It just felt weird,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I thought it was some kind of art prank, not business, and then it became business and I’m still not very good at business.’
    Buzzcocks and Boon had unwittingly started a ‘record company ’ by releasing Spiral Scratch . Some of their contemporaries were having similar, if slightly more refined, ideas. Bob Last was a twenty-year-old Edinburgh architecture student drawn to some of the emerging concepts of the day, principally the discussions taking place around art and design and in particular the emerging practices in architectural history. ‘I actually never had any interest in the music industry per se whatsoever,’ he says. What interested Last was what is now called ‘branding’ and the power of identity in the market place. ‘I had the political, cultural and theoretical kind of background from which emerged the popular form of postmodernism,’ he says, ‘the one that firstemerged in terms of architecture with Charles Jencks, then, in terms of popular culture, in Peter York.’
    York’s series of articles for Harpers & Quee n magazine were