Book celebrates 30 years of Heavenly Recordings

His own association with one of Britain’s most cherished indie labels began in 1994 when he joined its staff as a press officer, and although he no longer works in its London office, the relationship continues today.

“Pretty much all of my adult life has been tied up with Heavenly and Heavenly-related things,” he says. “I still run a bar with Jeff (Barrett, the label’s founder and guiding light), The Social in central London, and I still run Caught By the River with him, which is a nature website, although I don’t actually work for the label. So for me, lots of the stories (in the book) were things I’d lived through or were just ingrained anyway.

“It was quite nice to be able to send it to my parents and say, ‘you know what I’ve been doing all these years – I had to write a book to explain it to you’.”

Heavenly’s story is inevitably intertwined with Barrett’s rise from humble roots through jobs on market stalls, record stores and distributors, then press work for indie labels, before founding one of his own in 1990.

“What was really inspiring about it was it’s basically the story of a working-class kid from Nottingham who has a series of lucky breaks that he helped engineer,” says Turner.

“Each break takes him to the next level, he goes from working at HMV to working in Bristol, which opens other doors that lead to him working at Creation which then leads to him becoming a press officer for Factory, working for New Order and the (Happy) Mondays, then the guy at Revolver (distributors) offered him a record deal. All these things were like dominos falling in a row. It’s hard to think how that could happen now, the music industry is very different.”

From the start, Barrett was determined that Heavenly should operate as a community. Its roster has ranged from Saint Etienne, Manic Street Preachers, Doves and Beth Orton to up-and-coming artists such as Halifax’s The Orielles and Todmorden’s Working Men’s Club.

In 2017 it released five albums by the Australian psychedelic band King Gizzard and the Lizard. As a label, Turner says: “It continues to think on its feet, to be creative, that principle from Jeff definitely goes right the way through.”

At Heavenly’s office, which was then in Soho, “everyone was welcome”. Turner recalls Paul Weller and journalist Paolo Hewitt kicking a football around as he was working. “We used to love it when new music would come in, say a Doves record like Black White Town, and you knew it was significant, you knew it was something that you wanted people to hear, so you’d just ring all your mates, that might be people at the NME or Q or who worked in record shops or who you went to the pub with and you’d be playing them all these tracks. Having that community has always been there.”

In the book, Turner says that the label’s signings were driven by “passion rather than saleability”. “It is a business model,” he chuckles. “We always had the belief that if you loved something and that you were that passionate about it, you’d find other people who were. That’s one of Jeff’s great skills – he started out as a PR man, that’s when things really kicked off for him, he was doing press for the Mondays, New Order, The KLF, House of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream. He was used to selling things to people, but not in a way that you’re selling c**p, you know who is going to like this thing so you focus on them. In terms of passion if you can sell that across to a music press writer or a radio presenter then you’ve done your job, you’ve got someone else passionate about it then they push it forward.

“The things that have really worked on Heavenly are where passion has been the driving force. It’s not really ever been driven by market forces. A band like Northern Uproar came along around the time of Britpop, they were a 16 or 17-year-old punk rock band really, they didn’t sound like Oasis but they kind of got lumped in with that. It wasn’t like we were looking for the next this or that, that’s never really been on the cards. Someone like Beth Orton – the idea of signing a folk singer who had vaguely electronic tinges to her music in 1997, that was about as deeply unfashionable as we could do. Of course things turn around and within ten years we’ve got the Green Man Festival which is exactly that – folk music and electronic music. Now you look at the 6 Music playlist and the kind of thing that Beth was doing is pretty much the backbone of a lot of it, but at the time you’re driven not only by the passion but the fact that a lot of people listen to it and say, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing’. That’s always been a motivator.”

Of all the tales in the book, Turner points to The Social as a personal favourite. “That really was a coming of age thing, I was working at the label when we started the club and it was one of those moments where all the plans interlined. Jeff and Martin (Kelly) who ran the label had been through clubbing and they weren’t convinced that’s what we should do, I was younger and was a bit like, ‘let’s try it’ and so we did. It was utter chaos but so much fun.

“My other personal favourite was The Vines who were a band I actually signed. They were signed in America but I brought them in, they were my project, and the first year of that band was insane. It was a year after The Strokes and The White Stripes had broken and The Vines were the next wave of new guitar music, and the speed and ferocity that it took off. There were lots of people who didn’t like them, so we kind of drew battle lines, but it was such good fun, watching this band from the side of the stage at Reading Festival in a tent full of people going bananas. You just don’t get those moments very often where you’re clinging on to this thing that’s going off like a rocket.”

Latterly the label has forged a productive relationship with Hebden Bridge Trades Club, where it staged its 25th anniversary celebration in 2015 (a 30th anniversary weekender was also planned there before Covid struck). It has also signed Calder Valley bands The Orielles and Working Men’s Club. “Jeff has got a real knack for signing bands that are not the obvious things that major labels would be diving on straight away, which is brilliant. It will guarantee their longevity by not having to be part of this corporate machine,” Turner notes.

The book ends with a dedication to the DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, who died in February. Turner says his loss was keenly felt by the Heavenly family, with whom he had a long relationship. “Andrew was one of Jeff’s best friends,” he explains. “Jeff used to manage him. When I first started at Heavenly he was this brilliant bloke who would come round the office, he had this incredibly acerbic wit – I found myself on the receiving end of it a few times. But Andrew was somebody who I used to go out to watch DJ-ing as a fan, so I was always a little bit in awe of him. He was always around Heavenly, even after Jeff stopped managing him, he would always do DJ gigs with us. We did Caught By The River festival at Port Eliot in Cornwall and every year he’d play and he’d only need a hotel room for a couple of nights, he didn’t want any money, and he used to play The Social for us all the time. He’d just come down with a load of old rockabilly records or some dub just for cab fare. He was a perfect friend who was up for being part of the family and the community, he wasn’t in any way egotistical about what he did.

“Towards the end of his life he did remixes of lots of the newer wave of bands on Heavenly and it really felt he was as much a part of the family when he died as he had been from the start.”

Believe in Magic is out now on White Rabbit Books, priced £30. heavenlyrecordings.com