Industry position: co-head of Aussie label 'Ivy League' and artist-manager

Location of interview: London, UK

Little hype nor underground-utterances can truly depict the level of success achieved from Australia's Ivy League record-label and attached management-company, Winterman & Goldstein, in the past twelve months.

Responsible for the promoting of one of the world's most important bands of recent times - and, potentially, for years ahead - in the guise of The Vines, and now working behind the hotly-tipped likes of the synth-fuelled hysteria of Rocket Science and rising rockers Jet, the three-man team behind the enterprise have simultaneously helped focus well-earnt recognition on to the southern-hemisphere, whilst introducing a wave of new-talent to global music-audiences... So, surely, it's all part of some grand master-plan..? Not quite.

'It is essentially three friends behind it, and it started out simply because we were always into music, and had played in bands... Not good ones, mind,' laughs Andy Kelly, one of the trio behind the imprints, in between appointments within London's swish Trafalgar Square Hilton. 'My other two partners, Andy and Pete, started a management-company to manage their own bands, and they called it Winterman and Goldstein, basically to sound tough; when you ring up from your bedroom and say it's someone from Winterman and Goldstein, it makes it slightly stronger.'

These days, Kelly is consistently at the front-line of The Vines' activities, flying everywhere with the quartet to oversee affairs, whilst running endeavours back home via a trusty email-inbox and spare moments left alone to himself. He claims to be extraordinarily tired on his last evening in the UK before a fly-back to Oz the following day, and awaits the final, sell-out night of his present act's triple-whammy of shows at the capital's Shepherd's Bush Empire, yet seems remarkably and admirably astute throughout the course of the meeting. Reflecting on his past to date often provides surreal moments to reminisce - his acknowledgement of how so much has happened in a generally short space of time surprising even him.

'I was working in record-shops, and then I worked at a couple of record-labels, in their sales-departments, working on promotions and things like that,' he recalls, regarding the last decade. 'And, after a year of them doing their thing, Andy and Pete then started managing another couple of bands - Youth Group and 78 Saab - who we thought were amazing. But, at the time in '97, there was no way they were going to get signed; this was maybe down to their styles of music, and the conservatism involved in many labels... In hindsight, the music was possibly a bit too indie for some tastes, a bit retro... But, when any new band starts out, the trick is you've got to realise that it's going to develop; if it's a really good band, you should be able to hear that pretty early on. When we began working with acts such as that, when they started out, they may not have been the best live bands, but they were really good song-writers, and you could tell they were gonna get better with time.

'So we decided we should put their records out, because all three of us had talked about having a label for some time. I quit my job of then, and (laughs) went on the dole for it. I had faith in it, but not in the sense that we knew or thought it would be hugely successful; it's like anyone that's passionate about music - you don't necessarily question why you're doing it, you just do it.

'I think we knew enough from my playing in bands and working in record-labels to know what we didn't like about how things worked, and just really wanted to be in the situation to work with stuff we liked,' he continues. 'It's always inevitable in a lot of record-labels that you're going to be working on utter shit, and I think that's what brought me down in the end, like having to go to radio and present them with crap and never say, 'Oh, I love this,' but find a way of putting it forward where you didn't have to give your own opinion.'

'Pete's really fantastic; he's a music-lawyer, so he's the smart one, and is great at business, and accounting. But, on top of that, he has actually got great ideas, and is incredibly persistent - he just sets himself a task and does it.

'Andy, my other partner is an amazing guy; he's just so enthusiastic, and has really infectious enthusiasm. He was the one that heard The Vines for the first time and chased them. He also has so much faith in stuff, and is great at spotting talent.'

'If any one of the three of us wasn't there, it wouldn't be as good, and if Pete wasn't there, we wouldn't have a business, because Andy and I would be running around going, 'Oh my God, look at that band!'

It's almost a laughably simple origination-point; far from the crying shame of suits attempting to patronise musical-audiences by dishing out legions of the norm, why not release produce whose focal interests lay within a challenging song-writing sensibility, and where image is secondary to content? Clearly, it's a back-to-basics concept that's gradually paying off.

Yet, without attempting to sound patronising, what with the typecast of rock-music being dominated and highlighted by American and British artists, how do the runnings of their own creation compare in their native country to the perhaps more commercialised, overseas regions?

'Mostly judging from my experience with The Vines,' Andy ponders, 'the record-company at home, EMI, have been fantastic. But, previously, Ivy League had had a deal through EMI, but that wasn't quite correct, because we were right at the bottom of the pile, so it can differ; at the moment, I've got a really rosy view of it, because The Vines are a number-one priority, but when we were a little label being distributed by them, it was really difficult... It's good to experience both ends and hard times, you know... We've had really tough times when we've had to go back to work for a year in order to keep the label and the management-company going... We just didn't have any money at some points, and couldn't afford to pay ourselves quite often.

'That's the other thing about starting a label - you've got to realise that you're not going to get rich straight away, if at all. You just have to do it because you love it, and the good thing about that is that you can always find a way around a problem, you're just driven by your passion... You may not be able to pay your phone-bill, but you still find a way of pushing forward the music you really like.

'I think the main thing with the label is to encourage people with their ideas, and not telling them what to do or whatever... We guide people, as I think some bands get into trouble by over-thinking about things outside of music... I mean, while it's smart and good to be aware of how the business works, if you can be with good people, good management and a good label, then you should be able to work on good songs; there's nothing I hate more than when bands say, 'Oh, do you think that one would work on radio better than this one?' They shouldn't worry about that - they should just write songs, record, do whatever they're happy with.'

From your own personal viewpoint, has the high standard of music from your locale - which is now being promoted quite extensively by the music-press - always been lurking within such nearby vicinity?

'Yeah,' Andy proclaims assuredly, 'I think there's always been great bands, but the zeitgeist, or whatever you want to call it, has just happened to come around at this point. I mean, The Datsuns, for example, who I think are a magnificent band, have been doing the same thing for five years - and they were as great then as they are now. But I think, two years ago, they'd be struggling to get a deal with an indie-label - and that's why they started Hellsquad, because it was all about, 'Well, fuck it - if no else is gonna do it, then we'll do it, and we'll make sure we have control...' The fact that they wouldn't have got an indie-deal two years ago wasn't a reflection on how good they were, it's just that it wasn't fashionable at the time.

'Now this whole 'nu-rock' thing has come around, I think there's a lot of bands in the Antipodes that could benefit from it... There have always been great song-writers and musicians, but it's just coming to light now. It's distance, too - it's so far away from other places and, over there, it's difficult to get a sense of what to do! Over here and in America, it's easier to know how to take your music to other places.'

And you have to take his words seriously - for Kelly is now a man with familiarity to the global-field... Yes, mainly due to his involvement with that band that rhymes with Heinz. Though how did the connection first come about?

'I have to give full credit to Andy,' he opens. 'We both heard their track 'In the Jungle', a demo-version of it, on a little, community radio-station, and they did an interview as well. I was in the office when I heard it, and Andy was in the car at night one time; I remember thinking, 'That's pretty good,' and it kind of reminded me of a couple of mid-80s Australian bands. The next day, Andy came into work and said, 'Did you hear that band, The Vines?' I was like, 'I did, you know,' and he was just like, 'It was really good!' He then said, 'I'm gonna find out who they are,' and then went to find out about them... It was an interesting one, because we'd never heard the name before, they never usually seemed to play - and that is really unusual in Sydney or Australia; bands always play live - that's just what they do.

'He rang the station, but no-one seemed to know who they were and he finally got a contact for the guy who did the interview, and it turns out this person was a friend of Ryan's (now a guitarist of the band). Andy finally got Craig's (lead-singer) number and called him, but he never answered. Then Andy got his address and wrote him a letter1, just saying, 'We really liked the song, have you got any more, etc.' I can't remember if Craig rang back or just sent a letter himself1, but we ended up with a demo that was just awesome, and found out that they hardly ever played live.

'Then, all of a sudden, they lined up a rare show to support a band in Sydney in a venue called the Lansdowne. It was a Tuesday night and there were about twenty people there. Prior to that, I remember them sending us a photo of them1 that was really odd - Patrick was wearing shorts and they just looked... Funny. It didn't do them justice. So, we walked in and I was like, 'Oh God, what do you think this is gonna be like?' But, fifteen seconds later, as soon as they were on, it was like a movie - I just looked at Andy and said, 'Holy fuck, this is amazing...' It was just really shambolic and incredible. I looked at Craig and thought, 'Who is this guy - why have I never seen them before?' I felt like I was watching the Sex Pistols, as if I'd just walked in on something special. And we had.

'After that, we just chatted with them and we met them again, and asked if they had any other recordings; they said no, but then returned several days later, knocked on the office-door with a cassette1 and said, 'Oh, we've done a couple more songs,' so we took that, but didn't play it 'til they left, because you should never play people's own songs in front of them... The first song on it was 'Get Free', and there were about another three songs, I think, also including 'Sun Child'. Everyone was silent whilst we played it, and each person was thinking, 'Does everyone think this is as good as I believe it is?' And, then, we put it on again, and we were just amazed again... The recording was so great, too... Really raw, and everything was distorted, and the songs just shone out.

'It just went from there; we thought the band could be successful anywhere in the world - not just Australia, but everywhere. They kept recording demos and were so creative - all of these songs just kept getting produced. They were unlike any other band we'd worked with.'

It's the success-story everyone dreams of, but - rewardingly - Andy's not the man that will consequentially don a pair of Ray-Ban's and walk the earth as if it was laid out solely for him; he's the first to admit the aforementioned troubles of cracking into the industry and that, even within times of difficulty, the threesome's joint love of music was the persevering factor that spurred them on... It proves that ethics even in a syndrome as consistently cold as record-commerce can lead to a gleaming path.

'I like the idea of a label having identity,' raises Andy on his aspirations for Ivy League. 'That's why I think Heavenly are great in the UK: it's a brand, it's kind of eclectic, but there's something about all the artists on all of it that have an integrity... When we started it, it was just a way of putting out music that we thought was good - it's so simple, but whatever criteria can you run a label on? We never wanted to sign or put something out on the basis that we think it could sell, because major-labels can do that - and good luck to them.

'We're getting a new distributor and a label-deal, but it's kind of unfair to put bands out while we're so busy with The Vines. Having said that, 78 Saab have just finished their second album, and Youth Group have started theirs. We've also signed another new band called Neon, who are a three-piece and have a classic rock sound - like Cheap Trick, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, and are just really melodic and have a glam-thing going on, like T-Rex; they also did some shows recently with The Vines... Aside from that, we're pretty lucky, as we're also co-managing Jet with their original manager in Australia.

'At the moment, it is just a really good time, where you think, 'Wow - stuff that I like is really popular? That's odd... And other people like The White Stripes and The Strokes, too?!' It's just a special time, but you shouldn't get bogged down in this idea of what nu-rock is; me, Pete and Andy fortunately like a whole load of different styles... I really want, for instance, to put out some acoustic music, some really mellow stuff, but you can't just go out looking for something like that - you just hope to hear some singer of band or something of the sort. Otherwise, what we generally deal with is traditional - we really like melody, whether it's in rock or folk, and I think all of our bands have that.'

Hazard a guess for us where movements are heading next...

'Well, I just want us to always work with bands that we love, and to make it possible for our bands to make a living from music and to develop creatively,' he defines rigidly. 'We want them to be able to be as freely creative as they can, and to sell records.

'This Vines experience has been really good; from a musical point-of-view, we've all learnt so much from the band because they're really unusual people in the sense that they are really true artists, just interested in making music... They'd be the same people, even if they were still at home making those songs on a four-track. So, for their musical-vision to be recognised around the world to a degree, that has been a good learning-curve, a chance to think, 'You know, we should be able to help other bands have careers in Australia and around the world as well,' or at least be in the position to get people to hear the music.

'So, yeah,' finalises Andy, 'we want to be an international concern, and that doesn't mean ignoring Australia - quite the opposite; we want people to enjoy what comes from the country and it to be recognised everywhere - not just because it's Australian... But because it's good.'

They're most definitely going the right way about that. A likely force to be reckoned with in the imminent and long-term future, it seems that this is the beginning of a long and deeply engaging affair between Ivy League, Winterman & Goldstein and an unsuspecting victim we can emblazon 'the music-industry'... Prepare for your record-collections to be blown away.