Stiff in New York

Rip It Up, Issue 60, 1 July 1982, Page 14

Stiff in New York

SoHo short for South of Houston St— is the artists' quarter of New York. Lower than Greenwich Village on a Manhattan map, it is where the city's painters and sculptors inhabit airy lofts and work on crazy-quilt rooftops. Down on the street level there's all the horror of urban blight: stripped-down burnt-out converted cars, semi-trucks thundering down one-way streets and chicken wire stretched over every available door, window or grill. The flailing American arm of Stiff Records is a tenant in the area. Out of cramped mid-town offices, it's now spread all over the fifth floor of the SoHo warehouse it shares with a Chinese laundry and other disparate spirits. Loud with music, painted white and peopled by as many Cockney accents in mini skirts as work permits would allow, it looks a long leap from Wellington's Courtenay Place for its manager, expatriate New Zealander Bruce Kirkland.

Then bearded, chubby and laid back, Kirkland left New Zealand around the end of 1977. A law graduate who was even admitted to the Bar of the High Court, he had never practised the profession but instead had worked four years in Wellington as the director of the New Zealand Students' Arts Council. Up until then it had been mostly a culturally-inclined body, but Kirkland turned it on to rock'n'roll. He toured New Zealand bands most notably Split Enz and Hello Sailor and brought overseas acts Flo and Eddie, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and others to the students. Plans to take it one step further by setting up an entrepreneurial company were shot down by the students themselves and Kirkland, feeling he'd reached his threshold, quit the job and the country. In Australia, he worked for the touring department of EvansGudinski, owners of Mushroom Records, and leamt the mechanics of moving acts around a continent. Then Graham Parker and the Rumour turned up on his bill. Not only did they strike Kirkland as the "best bloody rock'n'roll band I'd ever seen", but they were managed by Stiff boss Dave Robinson. When they returned to England, Kirkland, at Robinson's bidding, went too. "At first I was the Stiff house pet Robinson used me for all sorts of things," remembers Kirkland. Only two weeks in the country, he took the infamous Wreckless Eric on a national tour. "I thought it would be chaotic but Eric was fine and the organization, a piece of cake."

Next Kirkland became a troubleshooter for the international department. He spent most of his time travelling around Europe ironing out kinks in the Stiff distribution network.

Established outside the perimeters of conventional record company wisdom, Stiff not only records its acts, but often manages them too. Kirkland cosily describes the company as a family, and from among the siblings he picked Lene Lovich for foster care. He toured England, Europe and the USA with her several times.

"In each country I took up a different job her tour manager in Spain, her lawyer in France, bodyguard in Italy. And I still have a lot to do with Lene," says the man who won her the covetted re-opening show at celebrity watering hole, Studio 54. A year ago the Stiff bosses decided that the American side of business needed some attention. Several years before CBS had taken over distribution when hopes of the British "new wave" sweeping America had been high. In fact, Kirkland's initial visit to the country had been in those halcyon days: "My first impression of the States had been from limos and luxury hotel rooms on a promo tour with Lene."

As with all the British acts of that time, none of Stiff's family was adopted by the American public. By 1980, CBS was taking up fewer and fewer options on Stiff product and the likelihood of breaking into the all-important market was diminishing fast.

Kirkland was glad to be sent to New York to set up an office. "This place suits my equilibrium," he says and to all appearances he's now slim, shaves daily, works out at a gym and can do lots more than just walk and chew gum at the same time he's right. "Also, from working in Australia I'm more familiar with its kind of radio system than I was in Britain, and that's very important here."

Kirkland believes radio programming is the dividing line between Stiff in England and America. "In England the company has become a Top 40 hit machine. There's Jona Lewie of course. Then with Alvin Stardust, Dave Stewart and Madness, Stiff had three songs on the English Top 40 at once."

"More, that is inconceivable. Mainstream American radio is completely beyond our reach. It's money not talent that buys hits here."

Rather than work up a hernia trying to pull FM radio out of the heavy rock swamp, Kirkland is

heading Stiff America in a new direction: "Basically we're trying to get into black radio. It's now becoming possible to get" white dance, music programmed on black stations. Some of. them are even calling themselves urban contemporary to avoid racial labelling, and there's much more funk than just rhythm and blues." . Struggling in America, English independents Chrysalis, Island and Stiff are all on matey terms, Kirkland has a vague notion of pooling resources ' in New York. "It's the obvious way of breaking your material here getting yourself a radio station and playing your own records." . • Until then he is restricted to getting his acts' records played in clubs, videos onto cable television and bodies onto tours. Understating his case rather, Kirkland calls it a pioneering situation, Apparently devoted to his job he has just moved his wife and two kids to a store front apartment in Little Italy to be closer to the office ' Kirkland states he still hasn't found His'"career". Now over 30, he maintains he's just playing around.'’.^lilGMiSfejj|[r The rock'n'roll industry he says has no special magic for him. In truth, it's all business. "I'd have done as well in politics or professional sport." Louise Chunn 3j.-