“The truth is not perfect: Robin Guthrie on the Cocteau Twins’ major label years”
- Sonic Cathedral
- 31-May 2020
“Sometimes when I have to go back and look at that part of my life I get quite upset at the way other people tell the story, because I just can’t relate to it at all. I am constantly surprised by the ever-changing narrative of the story of my band.”
Robin Guthrie is talking about the Cocteau Twins’ difficult departure from 4AD and their subsequent switch to the major label Fontana in the early ’90s, which outwardly seemed odd—to many they were 4AD—but to the band simply felt like a continuation. “I find it difficult to make a demarcation line between the 4AD stuff and the non-4AD stuff because that’s a label, that’s not the band,” emphasises Guthrie. “We were on our journey doing one thing to the next and the next. There was this idea that by going to a major we had changed, but Four-Calendar Café was just the natural follow-up to Heaven or Las Vegas.”
“Perhaps in the earlier days there was a more pronounced evolution between the records than there was in the later ones,” he concedes. “Maybe I was not as experimental; I was trying to hone the best of the ideas that we’d had, so perhaps the later records are more refined. I always tried to shake up the way that we made records, like going to different studios and things like that. I think, perhaps, we didn’t shake things up enough.”
There were other things going on at that time that were affecting the Cocteau Twins more than a change of labels, however, namely drug addiction and the breakdown of Guthrie and Liz Fraser’s 13-year relationship. “For the first half of the making of Four-Calendar Café I was in quite a dark place and then I got coaxed into going into rehab for the first time by our manager,” Guthrie reveals. “Eventually I got clean, but I really regret talking about it in interviews because not only did it make a lurid story for the media, but it took the focus away from my work. I was perhaps a little naïve to think that this episode in my life wouldn’t forever after follow me around like a bad smell. The irony is that although I had stopped taking drugs — that was the whole point — most people in my immediate environment hadn’t, which, given that we continued to work together for another five years, was sometimes a little challenging.”
With his new-found sobriety, Guthrie tried to “let go and not be a control freak,” opening up the band as more of a democracy. “It made me take my eye off the ball a little bit, when it came to being in control of what was happening. We had a particular way that we worked, but everybody was trying to work the machine differently and I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, you want to try something different? Go ahead,’ and that ended up with those two EPs [1995’s Twinlights and Otherness], which, for me, seem to lack most of the essence of Cocteau Twins. Quite honestly, I’m a little embarrassed by those records, that they say Cocteau Twins on them. I think it all worked really well when I was a more single-minded producer and less so when I wasn’t.”
Apart from the personal and lifestyle changes that led the band to make decisions they perhaps wouldn’t have previously, the biggest change with the move to a major was the sheer amount of people they had to please. “Managers, record companies, agents, everybody wanted to have a say — whereas in the earlier years it was really just Liz and I,” Guthrie explains. “All of a sudden, there’s A&R people you’ve got to keep happy and management people you’ve got to keep happy; things were no longer as focused because there were too many other people to feed. Not necessarily financially, but egos to feed. Everybody will get on board with a project if you make them feel valued, which is something I never really knew. I had to learn how to be diplomatic with people from record companies, which tended to grate a little — hence ‘Robin being difficult.’ However, I wish I’d been a bit more difficult and a bit more selfish. Part of me becoming less difficult was actually just me saying yes to people — and that was the start of the end.
“So, while many of the B-sides and extra tracks are a bit of a mess, the actual work that’s in both Four-Calendar Café and Milk & Kisses is really, really worthy. ‘Evangeline,’ ‘Pur,’ ‘Serpentskirt,’ ‘Calfskin Smack’ and ‘Treasure Hiding’ are among my favourites.”
We’ve asked other musicians, fans and associates to choose their favourites from this era, which stands up really well a quarter of a century on from the dramas that were tearing the band apart at the time. A critical reappraisal was long overdue before 2018’s Treasure Hiding boxset helped to shift the focus back to the music. As Guthrie concludes, ruefully: “I’d very much like to be able to look back at all of that stuff and feel proud of it.” ▣
What other musicians had to say about Cocteau Twins’ music from their Fontana era
We asked a number of famous Cocteau Twins fans (not to mention former members of the band) for their favourites from the band’s Fontana years and here they are.
Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins): “‘It’s not easy for me to listen to our music as it brings back so many feelings, but we used to close our shows with ‘Pur’ and I think the euphoric feel to the end of the song used to send people home happy, which is always a positive thing.”
Anton Jakovljevic (Lowtide): “Cocteau Twins always knew how to close out an album. ‘Pur’ is no exception. When the guitar solo hits, it still shakes me.”
Stan Raymonde (Opposite Number Records): “‘Evangeline’ features a simple but gorgeous bassline, Robin at his beguiling best and those heartbreaking vocals that we all know so well.”
Dean Wareham: “I toured opening for the Cocteau Twins twice, first (on the final Galaxie 500 tour) in 1991, and then, exactly three years later, with Luna. That was a more sober affair and, for the first time, you could make out what Liz was singing. Some of them (‘Bluebeard’) seemed directed at Robin, how could they not be?”
Emma Anderson (Lush): “The band’s music did not change dramatically because of the label change and why should it have? In my mind it was a seamless transition. I love ‘Summerhead,’ it’s probably one of my most played songs of theirs.”
Joar Andersén (Echo Ladies): “I always loved ‘Summerhead.’ It captures the feeling of an entire season in just one song.”
Cian O’Neill (Tallies): “On ‘Know Who You Are At Every Age,’ when Liz sings “I’m not real,” it sounds like she really isn’t.”
Jamie Windless (Winter Gardens): “The melody of ‘Frosty The Snowman’ makes it seem like they wrote it.”
Matilda Bogren (Echo Ladies): “The Otherness EP version of ‘Feet Like Fins’ has that big soundwall that never stops.”
Mark Peters: “Something that never gets mentioned is the almost classical musicality in their compositions. Echoing selections from Górecki’s Symphony No.3 and Canteloube’s Songs Of The Auvergne, there’s an anxious magic in ‘Need-Fire,’ from the Judge Dredd soundtrack.”
Ulrich Schnauss: “There are a few hidden gems in the Cocteaus’ catalogue that temporarily abandon the classic Guthrie guitar tone. ‘Alice’ does so to an unforgettably moving degree.”
Paula García (Sobrenadar): “‘Serpentskirt’ gives me goosebumps from those first guitar notes to the end. But the bridge is the reason why I keep coming back to it, that vocal line is so beautiful.”
Mattis Andersson (Echo Ladies): “The small crash at the beginning of ‘Serpentskirt’ always gets me. It’s a song where it feels like the bass takes the lead, it sets the feel for the whole song.”
Daniel Land: “”Intimacy’s when we’re in the same place at the same time/Dealing honestly with how we feel and who we really are”. I can’t express how much these words meant to the isolated young gay I was when I first heard ‘Half-Gifts.’”
Stephen Patman (Chapterhouse): “On ‘Seekers Who Are Lovers’ Liz is almost singing like Joni Mitchell in the verses and the yearning, emotional depth of the song is more than equal to my earlier favourites of ‘Musette And Drums’ and ‘Persephone’.”
Pat Nevin (former Chelsea, Everton and Tranmere footballer): “The BBC session version of ‘Seekers Who Are Lovers.’ It caught how good they could be live, even if Robin always underlined that they were predominantly a studio band.” ▣
