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The story behind the legendary heavy metal label.
Part I [1982-1986]
I founded MAUSOLEUM RECORDS in the Winter of 1982, a few weeks after I had been fired from my job as marketing manager at INELCO, a record company later acquired by ARCADE and recently purchased by ROADRUNNER RECORDS. Never mind I had chalked up a record breaking 13 gold discs for them during the 19 months I held the post – that's another story for another day. In the early 80s INELCO in fact distributed ROADRUNNER. In those days the label was predominantly successful with punk as in the DEAD KENNEDYS, and electronic avant-garde music as in KLAUS SCHULZE. One day I actually gently nudged owner CEES WESSELS to release the first TWISTED SISTER album, so I perhaps unknowingly created a future competitor for my then yet-to-be-born MAUSOLEUM heavy metal label. But I've always like WESSELS, so I never lost any sleep over it.
Besides working at INELCO I also ran a music production company, in loose partnership with STONNE HOLMGREN and LEO "ROCKSTONE" FELSENSTEIN, two friends who owned a wholesale business and also had an interest in a studio located in back of a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. In 1979 LEO had already produced the first KILLER album: "READY FOR HELL" and thanks to my friend JEAN-MARIE SOHIE, the marketing manager at WARNER MUSIC, we got a deal with WEA, as it was known in those days. Besides JEAN-MARIE and HERMAN SCHUEREMANS (who later went on to fame and fortune as head honcho behind the TORHOUT-WERCHTER rock festivals) nobody really gave a rat’s ass about hard rock at WARNER'S in those days, but JEAN-MARIE had been very successful with VAN HALEN and AC/DC, so I suppose they let him have his way – and we got the deal. Through EMI we had already released DANGER, a band from the south of Belgium. MARC YSAYE, drummer with prog-rock outfit MACHIAVEL - one of Belgium's more successful rock and roll stories - had produced their eponymous album. In 1981 we released the second KILLER record: "WALL OF SOUND" and also a WHITE HEAT album, both on LARK RECORDS, one of the INELCO Imprints. By then I worked there so it was convenient to have everything under one roof.
One day in the Summer of 1982 PAUL MARIO DAY walked through my door – everybody was always turning up unannounced because I had an office with a street level window, so you could immediately see if I was in or not. PAUL had been the lead vocalists with heavy rock act MORE, who were signed to ATLANTIC In the UK, one of the WARNER labels. Visiting friends and fans in Belgium – where MORE had been doing well – PAUL called on the local WEA offices searching for a deal for his new band; WILDFIRE. HERMAN "SHERMAN" SCHUEREMANS immediately told PAUL "if it’s loud and heavy your best bet is to go see ALFIE", and directed him to my office on the other side of the canal. That same building is now the home of RADIO CONTACT, one of the more influential top-forty stations in the country, so very different sounds reverberate off those walls today. PAUL and I immediately hit it off in a grand way, and by the end of the afternoon we had hammered out a deal. A couple of weeks later – I always suspected he was still in the process of putting his band together, and having a record-deal helped him do just that – WILDFIRE arrived in Brussels. Five musicians and JOHN McGOWAN, the producer, all stuffed in the most minuscule museum-quality Honda van you'd ever seen. I put them up in a bed-and-breakfast dive, and the next day they started recording their first album, BRUTE FORCE AND IGNORANCE, at SHIVA, a studio in a crumbling building near the main railway station in Brussels, owned by my close friend JACK MAUER. I still love that album! It was the beginning of a splendid relationship with a band of exceptionally talented musicians and very good people.
So to cut a long story short, by the end of the evening, and several bottles of fine red wine later, LEO had convinced me to set up a heavy metal label. The next day, not yet fully recovered from an awful hangover (cause otherwise I probably would have decided to call it something else) I came up with the name MAUSOLEUM. My art school background finally paying off – I personally designed the red blood-dripping logo, while sitting at a table in the bar of the LAMBERMONT Hotel where I used to live in those days after my marriage to MARIE-LOUISE went down the toilet and my girlfriend MYRIAM ran back to her mommy and daddy – but that again is another soap opera altogether. And so dear reader, MAUSOLEUM was born.
In January 1983 I went to MIDEM, the annual music convention for professionals in Cannes, in the south of France, and signed UNDERDOG, a band from the Cologne area in Germany, produced by the eccentric ALEX GIETZ (his dress code was more Sherlock Holmes than leather and studs). A couple of years later ALEX also produced OSTROGOTH'S sadly underrated third album: "TOO HOT". That week I also inked a deal with Italian band VANDIUM. Returning from France I moved into a back room at STONNE and LEO’S wholesale operation in Antwerp, and prepared the initial releases as well as the formation of a proper limited company. Finally, in April, we released WILDFIRE, UNDERDOG and VANADIUM, and, I believe almost simultaneously, re-released the first two KILLER albums, the WHITE HEAT record and the DANGER long player. MAUSOLEUM was an instant success. WILDFIRE became a critically acclaimed album, and sold well, and the two KILLER albums – which had previously not been generally available outside the Benelux – also sold like the proverbial hotcakes.
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