Rough Trade Records Story
From a west London record shop to the label behind The Smiths and The Libertines, the ups and downs of a British independent institution.
Photo: Ewan-M / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Rough Trade began as a record shop opened by Geoff Travis on Kensington Park Road in London's Ladbroke Grove in February 1976, and grew into a label, a distribution network and an enduring independent name. In the decades since, it has weathered growth, disputes and reinvention to remain a cornerstone of British independent music.
From shop to label and network
Geoff Travis opened the first Rough Trade record shop on 23 February 1976, on Kensington Park Road in the Ladbroke Grove area of west London. The shop quickly turned into a base for getting independent records into circulation, and Travis was instrumental in founding the independent distribution network known as the Cartel.
In 1978, two years after opening, Rough Trade moved from selling and distributing records into running a label. The first Rough Trade release was "Paris Maquis" by the French punk band Métal Urbain, catalogue number RT001. The catalogue soon expanded to include artists such as The Fall, The Raincoats, Scritti Politti and The Go-Betweens, and the label became one of the main homes of post-punk. In 1982 the shop and the label went their separate ways: three shop staff bought the business and moved it round the corner to Talbot Road.
The Smiths, strain and collapse
In May 1983 The Smiths released their first single, "Hand in Glove", on Rough Trade, and they stayed with the label for all their studio albums. The relationship was not easy. In 1986 the band were courted by EMI, and Rough Trade took out an injunction preventing new Smiths material from appearing on any other label, which delayed the release of The Queen Is Dead. The band were finally allowed to move to EMI after one more album for Rough Trade.
The rise wasn't without stumbles. By 1991 the distribution side was overtrading and short of cash, and that year Rough Trade went bankrupt. The label carried on for a while under new financing, but Travis soon left.
Revival and the name today
The label was relaunched in 2000 by Travis and Jeannette Lee, formerly of Public Image Ltd, who reacquired the name, with Sanctuary as a minority partner. The new Rough Trade signed The Strokes and The Libertines and went on to release records by Babyshambles and Belle and Sebastian. In 2007 the label became part of the independent Beggars Group.
The shops grew again too. Rough Trade East opened off Brick Lane in 2007, a New York shop followed in Brooklyn in 2013, and branches have opened in other British cities including Bristol and Nottingham. Shop and label remain separate businesses with a shared history. For anyone exploring British independent music, the label's late-1970s and early-1980s catalogue is a reliable way into post-punk and indie, and a visit to one of the shops is still a way to hear what is new.
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