Cherry Red began life in 1971 as Cherry Red Promotions, when Richard Jones, Will Atkinson and Iain McNay began organizing gigs in their home town of Great Malvern. With the advent of Punk, which they loved, they decided to start their own record label; it received its first mention in 'Music Week' in the issue of the 27th of May 1978, which described it as a new company from the Midlands started by Atkinson and Jones and based at 3 Adelade House, Wells Road. The article said that Cherry Red's products were to be distributed by Lugton and Rough Trade as well as by the company itself, but the plans must have been changed; an advert for the first (maxi) single in 'MW' of the 1st of July says that it was available through Spartan (q.v.). A couple of months later 'MW' of the 9th of September revealed that McNay, who had been general manager of Magnet Records (q.v.) for eighteen months, had left his job to work full-time on the new venture and had become a director and the majority shareholder on the 1st of that month. As an aside, the article mentioned that Spartan was to distribute all Cherry Red releases.
Getting records pressed turned out to be a problem: 'MW' of the 4th of November 1978 claimed that because 7" presses in the UK were currently full to capacity the company was switching to cassette singles, with its second release, 'Howard Hughes' b/w 'China's Eternal' by The Tights, due to be issued in that form as SCP-CHERRY-2. There's no sign of that cassette online, so the step may not have been taken; the single seems only to exist in 7" vinyl form as CHERRY-2. The problem remained, however, but Cherry Red found a temporary solution by getting the next three singles made in France - several other independents did the same. By the time the third single came out the company had moved to premises in Kingston Road, London SW19. The final mention of Cherry Red in 'MW' of the '70s came when the issue of the 9th of December 1978 broke the news that a longterm distribution deal had been signed with Spartan.
Unlike most other independents from those days Cherry Red flourished, thanks in part to an adventurous release schedule - they went to the trouble of tracking down and releasing promising material from the USA, such as albums from the Runaways and the Dead Kennedys. The company continued on through the '80s, ploughing its own unique furrow; in the '90s, however, it changed direction and started concentrating on reissues. It has built up an extensive catalogue of rare Punk / New Wave / Independent product, and has ventured into other areas of music such as Glam Pop, and it currently has a website here. In the '70s, Cherry Red singles rarely had the same kind of labels from one issue to another, and some were specific to the band; the four shown above are merely examples. Picture sleeves were used, and catalogue numbers of singles were in a CHERRY-0 series. The third scan appears by courtesy of James Denholm, the fourth of Sam Mauger. The discography below only covers the 1970s.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.