Naked ambition led to Saul taking his place in the history of Britpop
Jewish Telegraph, October 2020
THE music industry has changed beyond recognition for record label boss Saul Galpern.
And Glasgow-born Saul’s achievements at the helm of Nude Records over almost 30 years could even see him be forgiven for discovering Simply Red.
As well as giving Mick Hucknall’s band the base from which they went on to sell millions of albums, Saul also discovered Britpop legends Suede; gave Supergrass their sound; and missed out on signing Arctic Monkeys.
Life for 60-year-old Saul began in Newlands, Glasgow, before he moved to the more Jewish areas of the city in Whitecraigs and Newton Mearns with parents Barney and Letty and sister Ann.
His father died 15 years ago, but his mother is now 96 — and still reading the Jewish Telegraph.
In his youth, Saul — whose uncle Myer was the first Jewish provost of Glasgow — was a regular at Glasgow Maccabi.
“I used to love going there,” Saul told me. “Meeting up a couple of nights a week with my friends to play table tennis and football and meet girls.”
After a stint at Langside College, Saul decided to take his chances by heading to London to work in the music industry.
“Growing up, I was collecting records from a very early age,” he said.
“My father was in the furniture business and I wasn’t prepared to go straight into that. I was more into music. I knew that I wanted to be part of that industry.
“I worked at an independent record store and that became a record label.
“I was always interested in the making of records and the whole story behind them.
“I suppose it was inevitable that I was going to move into the label side of things, but initially it was retail.”
But it wasn’t an immediate success story for Saul . . . especially when the friend who had travelled from Glasgow with him landed a job at Virgin Records.
“I was so upset about it,” he said. “It took me a while to get something. Initially I was working at places like the Savoy Hotel and trying to make ends meet.
“Eventually I got a job at Bonaparte Records, which was a bit like Rough Trade, independently-minded, and it used to put adverts on the back of NME, which is a bit like what Amazon is now.
“As well as the mail order department, they had a record shop as well. So from there, they formed a label, and I went straight into that.”
The first group Saul worked with was The Au Pairs, “a cult agit pop band”.
Their first album in 1981, Playing with a Different Sex, is considered a classic.
What Saul learned early on is that it’s best to keep a small roster of acts — something he continued when he founded Nude Records.
“It is about quality not quantity,” he told me.
And quality was in abundance with the next act Saul worked with . . . The Fall at Kamera Records.
“They were incredibly influential,” he said. “Even now, there are bands breaking through inspired by The Fall, guitar bands like Fontaines DC and Idles.”
After working at various labels, Saul headed to major companies, working for Island Records and RCA Records, among others.
And then came his big discovery, Simply Red.
“It’s funny that whenever they do these documentaries about Manchester, Simply Red are always missing, yet they were probably the biggest-selling band,” Saul said.
“When you first saw them, you would have gone wow. It was like a big kind of white soul thing going on. Hucknall had an incredible, unique voice.
“That first album has something about it. But when it comes to third and fourth albums, it was what I call ‘chicken in the basket’ music.”
Saul, though, fell victim to corporate changes and found himself out of work.
“I was like I’m not going to let that happen again; I’m not going to work for the man anymore,” he said.
“I just took some time out and came up with Nude Records, which was quite unique.
“There hadn’t been any independent labels who had come since the results of the first waves in the 1970s and early 80s.
“We set the tone for a new wave of independent labels, who would work with majors.
“We stayed independent. We owned the rights, we did everything ourselves, but internationally, we used the muscle of a major label, which hadn’t really been done too much up to that point.
“So we were one of the first through the door to do that, around 1992 and did a deal with Sony. So they had the rights outside the UK to release our product. And also they gave us some funding.
“It was good to attract artists that way.”
Everything changed for Saul with the first band he signed to Nude — Suede.
“I didn’t expect things to blow up as quickly as they did,” Saul said.
“But I was fortunate enough to find Suede and fortunate enough that literally within the first two months of discovering them — the power of the press back was massive — they were put on the cover of Melody Maker and it blew the whole thing up.
“They were a cult band, but in a funny kind of way. I always called them the biggest underground band in the country.
“I just thought if we could do 15,000 to 20,000 records and be like a really cool, cult band . . .
“I wasn’t expecting more than that.
“But it just all happened so quickly. And they were the band to kickstart Britpop. Winning the Mercury Music Prize, number one albums, top five, top 10 singles. So it was a wonderful time.
“I thought they were visually and musically very strong. (singer) Brett Anderson had an incredible sense of where he was going with the band. He was managing the band and I was kind of managing him.”
He added: “We got so much press. The number of front covers they had . . . 60 front covers or something in the first year.”
The debut album in 1993, named simply Suede, became the fastest selling album for 10 years in its first week sales.
The following year, Suede released Dog Man Star, but then guitarist Bernard Butler quit the band.
“The success for me was the third album, Coming Up (1996), because that was after Bernard left, and people thought that would be when it’s going to crash down.
“But Coming Up was our biggest album; we had five top 10 singles from that album.
“Obviously, Suede were the biggest band and it was always hard to establish another band alongside them.
“But we had some other great things and bands like Geneva, Black Box Recorder and Lowgold all had top 30 successes. Other bands came along, who did okay.”
He added: “We were trying to keep our overheads down and everything. But we had some other great things and top 30 successes, and other bands came along, who did okay.”
While working with Suede, Saul came across The Jennifers, consisting of vocalist Gaz Coombes, guitarist Nic Goffey, drummer Danny Goffey and bassist Andy Davies.
Three of the names will be familiar as they later found success as Supergrass, for which Saul claims credit.
“They were like 15, 16,” he recalled. “I saw them play and thought they were great and put their first single out, Just Got Back Today, in 1992.
“But the Suede thing was blowing up so much that I realised I’ve got to make this work.
“So the single came out, nothing was happening. I said we need another track, but nothing happened.
“They had a naive manager who was really hard and needed a lot of managing. And I just couldn’t really deal with him.
“I went to up to meet the band in Oxford about a month later and all they were doing was sitting around smoking spliff.
“And I was like, ‘Come on guys, you got to get this together’. I just had the feeling they were really not bothered about it.
“I said listen to these two artists, The Clash and David Bowie, and go away and write some songs.
“Months and months went by and they reformed as Supergrass and their first single came out, and it sounded like The Clash and David Bowie.”
The timing of Nude Records was perfect for Saul as it coincided with the birth of Britpop, which came to a head with the Blur v Oasis chart battle in 1995.
“It’s probably the last time that you had that kind of wave of music that the whole country identified with as a culture, something with a title on it,” Saul said.
“I’m not an Oasis fan, but I accept they had decent songs. And the other four main Britpop bands were Blur, Pulp, Suede and Elastica.
“Everybody else pales into insignificance; they were also-ran.”
One of Saul’s biggest regrets is missing out on Arctic Monkeys.
“I was the first person to see them and I wanted to sign them,” he said.
“It was a weird old time around 2005, there was a kind of a crash going on in the industry with the emergence of the internet.
“I’d heard something very early on about Arctic Monkeys and went to see them. It was literally, 10 people in the room, if that. No industry were there and I was keen to do something.
“But time was not on our side. If we could get it done really quickly, it would be great. But as these things are, things move slowly, lawyers and all kinds of stuff get involved before you know it. And then you’re hoping for that piece of luck where you can just get over the line.
“But unfortunately, something happened where it just got out. And then there was another gig and two gigs later, people started coming. And then there was the whole MySpace thing building up.
“It was annoying, because we tried to do it, but it got too competitive, it became impossible.
“It’s a bit like having a girlfriend. You’re the first love, then somebody else comes along. So I think maybe sometimes being too early, could be a bad thing.
“They ended up signing to Domino who, ironically, were the last label to contact them.
“It had gone on for so long that they actually didn’t know what to do.
“They had all these offers on the table, from the likes of Sony and Parlophone, and apparently Domino rang up and they said, ‘No, we’re not interested because we’ve already spoken to 20 labels. We don’t want to speak to anybody else’.
“I think he pleaded with them to meet and the rest is history.
“Maybe that’s the lesson: try to be the last person in the door.”
Saul was hit by tragedy in 1997 while working with former The Associates singer Billy Mackenzie.
Nude had been preparing to release Dundee-born Billy’s solo album Beyond the Sun, when he died from an overdose of paracetamol and prescription medication.
“I’d known Billy for a long, long time, just by being around London in the 1980s,” Saul recalled.
“And I spent a few nights with him back in the day when I used to really party and go to clubs and stuff. And Billy was a friend of a friend and I used to see him a lot.
“It just came up again in the 90s. I went round to his flat in Kensington and he hadn’t done anything for years and he’d been forgotten about.
“He played us all these songs and I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing. Let’s put this out’.
“So he went to record an album with former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde, who owns Bella Union Records.
“Unfortunately, he took his life in the middle of us about to release the album. So it was a horrible situation.
“But he was an amazing, fantastic guy, obviously a bit wayward. He was a bit of a character.
“He had lots of anxieties and emotions going on. And he was very close to his mother. I think it really hurt him badly when he lost her.
“Mental health nowadays has become such a big issue, but back then nobody really knew what it was.”
Saul added: “I do a radio show. I play a whole collection of different things and talk about the connections between each song and the history and the background for people.
“But the only thing I’ve ever played from Nude is Billy McKenzie, because they are absolutely beautiful songs.”
Saul describes his role at Nude as being “not too close to the band”.
He said: “The artists go away and probably slag off the record label, they never do it to your face.
“They can sack the manager, but they can’t sack the record label.
“For me, it’s about finding talent, people who can actually write songs and have a vision.
“So all the musical side, I always left to the artists.
“Obviously, I had my input of what I thought worked and didn’t work and decisions on tracks we should go with.
“You have to employ the right people around you to put things together like helping the artists to make the right artwork and the right videos.
“And make sure you’ve got the right people doing the press. Of course, now, it’s all online and about streaming and artists are very much in control, as they should be.
“So it’s about having the right team around you that you can trust and rely on.”
Many stories have been written about Creation Records in the 1990s, then the home of Oasis.
Its owner Alan McGee partied hard, along with the rest of his staff, but Nude Records were the slightly more sensible relatives.
“I know Alan pretty well. He’s a friend of mine, obviously also from Glasgow,” Saul said.
“We weren’t a destructive label from that point of view. We had good fun, and many legendary nights.
“For a while, I thought it was cool to hang around with the bands.
“And then I reached a point, especially with Nude in the middle of the 90s, where I took a step back, where I didn’t think it’s cool to be seen with the band at 2.30 in the morning, because they’re probably looking at you going, ‘Why are you still here?’.
“You have to know the parameters. We’re the label, we’re not the band.”
After a short hiatus, the label returned briefly in 2005 via a deal with V2 which saw the release of the compilation album, Future’s Burning, which featured Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight among others.
In 2016, Saul re-established Nude with a new marketing and distribution deal.
“I always go back to it because it’s my first love and I really enjoy doing the label side,” he said.
“I’ve gone into management a couple of times, which has its pros and cons. I was managing an American band, Mona, for a while, who had a ridiculous deal from Universal.
“I started doing the publishing because we always had a bit of publishing as well.
“Then the label came round naturally again.”
This week, Nude released the latest album, Snapshot, by Juanita Stein — who was interviewed in the Jewish Telegraph last week.
And Saul is full of praise for Wovoka Gentle, “an experimental electronic poppy thing”, who have a “beautiful album” coming out next year.
He added: “I’m working with Icelandic singer Heidrunna as well, which is more of a consultancy kind of thing at the moment, not quite a Nude thing.
“I’m always still looking for incredible talent. But, of course, it’s a challenging time.
“So it takes longer now, and you have to think very differently out of the box with the way the industry works and adapt to the changes in the market.
“Obviously with no live gigs, that’s a problem in terms of the types of artists that we sign.
“There are live stream events happening globally, which is kind of interesting. So lots of new innovations and things going to help going forward.”
We discussed the new Fish album, Weltschmerz, which the Scottish singer has released without a record label and is packaging from his own home with wife Simone and a small team of helpers.
“Because he’s got a fanbase, he can plug into that,” Saul said.
“And maybe he can make more money by not having a label, but, at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily work for everybody.
“I’m not sure it really is a great strategy not having a label. If you know that you just want to get to a certain level, that’s fine, I get it.
“But if you haven’t got the international structure, infrastructure, in place, and you haven’t got someone doing press internationally or radio internationally, or, you know, there’s all kinds of things that have to be thought about, the whole administration side, it is quite a lot of work.
“So I still think having a partner with a label is important.
“Maybe with someone like Fish, he couldn’t find the right partner to do it with.”
But Saul is amazed at how big the nostalgia side of the market has grown.
The past few weeks have seen major labels releasing deluxe box-sets of acts like Prince, The Replacements and Lou Reed.
“It really is a massive side of the industry,” Saul told me.
“But how many times can you regurgitate the same thing again with the packaging. People seem to do it every couple of years.
“If you’re a massive label, like Sony or a Universal, it’s all about quantity. They don’t need to do a lot of them to make it work.”
Saul has mixed views on streaming services like Spotify.
“It’s great in some ways,” he said. “If you look at it from a financial point of view, you can see how it works, like a million streams is around £4,000.
“You need to be getting into the hundred millions before you start seeing something.
“We live in the click generation. No one has the time or patience to sit down and listen to a whole album.
“So we try to adapt to changes and be forward thinking.”
He added: “I’ve never seen so many changes in the last five years in the industry.
“It’s just unrecognisable from what it was in the 90s.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if another format comes at some point. I don’t think we’ve come to the end of formats and technology.”
Saul was a regular visitor to Glasgow to see his mother, but since Covid-19 hit, he’s only been back north of the border once.
“It’s tough,” he said. “I’d like to go up there more, but my mother is at a certain age and has carers looking after her.”
Just days after I spoke to Saul, there was a momentous occasion for him to celebrate — his beloved Rangers beat rivals Celtic 2–0 in the Old Firm Derby.
“As you can imagine I am in blue heaven,” he told me by email.
“They’ve had it too easy for too long. I think we have a much better squad now and the Steven Gerrard factor is immense.
“Hopefully this is the year we return to the top.”
A sentiment that could also apply to Nude Records.
