I meet Geoff Rickly for breakfast because neither of us are young men anymore. He resembles a boyish John Cale, a veneer of overnight stubble on his cheeks and chin a hint to his actual age (37). Our respective partners, both New York City food media types, had suggested the buzzed-about bagelry Sadelle’s down in Soho. While neither of our better halves are present, the frontman for bands including United Nations and the recently-reunited post-hardcore act Thursday insists on bringing his partner Liza a sticky bun, one of the standout items mentioned in the restaurant’s Times review.
Martin Shkreli does not join us, but he is there in regrettable spirit. Only a few days prior, Rickly had met with a pro-bono bankruptcy lawyer in the hopes of closing the chapter of his life that involved the now-infamous ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and, by a seemingly mile-long extension, his shenanigans surrounding the inflated pricing of Daraprim. It came to light last September that the drug, sometimes prescribed to a HIV positive subset as well as cancer patients, had gone from $13.50 to $750 per tablet following its acquirement by Turing.
Rickly’s connection to Shkreli had been Collect Records, a vanity label founded in 2009, operated by the former and financed by the latter. Its roster included Cities Aviv, Creepoid, Wax Idols, and other acts broadly ranging from post-punk to experimental hip-hop. In the media-fueled wake of Shkreli’s Daraprim scandal, his patronage of Collect was soon sussed out, which wasn’t all that surprising given Shkreli’s penchant for tweeting about his adventures with Rickly and his general music fandom. (Shkreli, it’s worth mentioning, met Rickly after paying $10,000 for a guitar Rickly had used to write Thursday’s 2001 album, Full Collapse. Shkreli is also the person who shelled out $2 million to buy the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin last year.)
Having its angel investor rightfully demonized in the press left Collect, and Rickly, vulnerable. At the time Rickly was touring Europe with No Devotion, his maximalist rock band formed with members of Lostprophets. He made statements and gave interviews from abroad, an ocean away from Collect’s office, small staff, and biggest investor. Rickly expresseddisapproval of Shkreli’s actions, indicating that he would formally cut ties between the label and the former hedge fund manager. Days later, as if Rickly needed more bad luck, he was drugged and robbed during a tour stop in Hamburg.
Once home in New York, things deteriorated quickly at Collect. Planned releases from the Hotelier and Nothing stalled, and prospective ones from Touche Amore and My Chemical Romance evaporated. A few acts made statements suggesting they’d be exiting the label. Others reached out to express support for Rickly and, quite reasonably, concern about the future of their own projects with Collect.
It’s on the predictably wrong side of absurd how some prosperous pipsqueak’s vulgar drug dealings took down a modestly subversive record label. Yet the collapse of Collect Records was more than the collateral damage of an embattled millionaire, certainly to Rickly. It was the unnaturally abrupt end of a once-hopeful social experiment, one that—as laughable as it sounds now—was intended to be a triumph of the creative over the commercial. By the time Rickly met with a lawyer to properly dissolve the business, his advice was alarmingly simple: “You’re small enough to just stop doing stuff. Just stop doing stuff.”
Idleness doesn’t suit Rickly. A vexed creative, he describes Thursday as having been a 15-year long “day job.” Since the demise of Collect, he’s stayed within the business, working for a London-based music PR firm Brace Yourself out of their New York offices. With the first shows back with his most successful band underway, he reflects on the turbulent time leading up to Thursday’s return.
The Martin that I know bears no resemblance to the Martin that the press has come to know. I knew him as a pretty shy kid who would suddenly start talking about science and get really wrapped up in it. When he would talk about the things he wanted to do, there was a lot of lofty talk: “We’re going to cure this and we’re going to do this because big companies don’t care, all they care about it profit so we’re gonna do this.” There was a certain idealism that I believed, and a lot of people told me I must be the most naive man on the face of the Earth. But I just think you couldn’t have met him and thought anything else other than this is like a pretty awkward kid who somehow managed to take that world by storm.
We would talk about bands. He brought me the Hotelier. I didn’t know them, they were sort of a buzzy band already. But he was super into them. He was always like you’re not signing enough bands. For me, the situation was so good that I didn’t want to lose it. I probably should have pressured him to put more money into each band.
I thought there was a chance that he could start to be too much. I sort of had an exit plan. I had some graphs and metrics that said in like three years we were going to start to make a profit and go into millions of dollars a year by five years. I could get out by then, pay him back everything I owe him, have it be a good relationship but be my own company.
When the Collect thing happened, I had so many jobs doing so many things. I was so drained all the time that I felt like I really wasn’t getting anything done. So when the opportunity came to start Collect, how could I say no? I could focus all of my energy on younger bands and in my spare time do my art. That was just like a no brainer for me at the time. I was at such a desperate moment to sell my guitar because I needed to make rent. I wasn’t in any position to turn down anything, let alone a great offer.
I found out what happened with Martin when I got off a plane in Germany, the week the No Devotion record came out. I was standing in line at Customs, and the third story down on the news was about Martin. I thought, “We are so fucked.” Even if nobody found out that Collect was a part of what he was doing, I knew that I knew and all our artists knew. I also knew that we were so deep in debt with him that if he pulled out, it wasn’t even a question of whether we could pay him back. It was a question of whether we could even keep going. He always put forward just enough money for the next quarter. That’s the funny thing. I had like $25,000 of personal debt with Collect, because there was always something I couldn’t afford, even with all the money he had.
He’s a busy guy, and during this he was obviously very busy. His sister works for one of his companies and is pretty dependable. So I called her and was like, “You gotta get him off social media, you gotta do it, trust me, this could blow over or be the worst thing to happen to your family.” By the time I talked to him, it had gotten so bad that he was like, “You need to cut ties with me, you need to throw me under the bus.” Really strongly worded.
Immediately the first thing that happened was some major labels swooped in and offered me A&R positions. I think ultimately they wanted to buy the label for a penny. I didn’t want that to happen because I sort of thought I could save this. I knew a few other investors and it looked really good that first week. As he stayed in the news cycle, it just didn’t go away. And our connection to it didn’t go away.
I met with the Hotelier about their record, which is so good. I thought, “This is the record that could save our label, it’s so good. There’s this one song on it that’s so much better than the rest of the record that we finally have a single—a real single.” And they were like, “We can’t do it.” That meeting, I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach. And I didn’t feel like they were betraying me. I just felt like I was understanding there’s no saving it. This is it. This is done.
A few of bands, as the label collapsed on itself, there were unfulfilled promises in their contracts. That’s the only real regret that I have. Some of these bands I really wanted to help. I had offered to buy Wax Idols a van at a certain point, and they didn’t need it that month. The next month they needed it and I didn’t have any money. The bands on Collect almost deserve more support because of all this. They put their faith in me and my team and never saw this coming.
I wanna see how Martin’s doing. He’s had a hard time with it too, undoubtedly. I don’t hear from him very often because I’ve been very honest with him about how I feel about the things that he’s done. This is something that nearly broke me down, but I got through it. I hope the Pitchforks and everybody are like, “After overcoming this, blah blah blah…” I hope that’s what they say!
We have to be awesome when we play. I had this dream last night about playing onstage with Thursday. I went to jump off the drums, which is something I used to do, and I saw Tucker [Rule, Thursday drummer] had this giant stack of balanced cups with his cymbal at the top. It fell over and we had to stop the song. He was like, “I’m not gonna play without those cups!” There’s a metaphor somewhere in there for my anxieties for the future.