Episode 114: Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins) on 25 years of Bella Union records

The James McMahon Music Podcast

The Autumns, Beach House, The Dears – fucking love The Dears, Dirty Three, Emmy the Great, Fionn Regan Howling Bells, John Grant, Lanterns on the Lake, Laura Veirs, Lift to Experience, Midlake, The Walkman…
For the last 25 years, Bella Union have been responsible for bringing me some of the best music I’ve ever heard. And before that, the label’s owner, Simon Raymonde, in tandem with Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie in the immortal Cocteau Twins, was responsible for bringing me even more. I can’t imagine what my listening habits would look like without Simon and without Bella Union, and so I’m delighted to speak to him on this episode about all of the above and more.
We talk about the band Simon is currently managing – the brilliant Big Joanie – how Bella Union came to be, his thoughts on the legacy of his old band the Cocteau Twins, his feelings on where the record business finds itself in 2023, his forthcoming memoir, and his posthumous relationship with his father, the late, great Ivor Raymonde. How great? I mean, he wrote the Dusty Springfield song 'I Only Want to Be with You'!
It's a corker of an episode, this one…

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