BARN

  

Barn was owned by producer / manager Chas Chandler, who started out as bass player with the Animals.  It was involved in management, publishing and record production for several years before it progressed to being a label, which it did in 1976.  'Music Week' of the 15th of May of that year reported that the company had signed a long-term distribution deal with Polydor; when its singles started appearing they were numbered in a 2014-100 numerical series.  Its next mention came in the issue of the 3rd of September 1977, when it was announced that Mike Hayes, formerly label manager at Elektra (q.v.) had been appointed managing director.   There seems to have been a slight hiatus at the start of 1979; then 'MW' of the 14th of April said that Barn had split with Polydor.  The issue of the 5th of May revealed that a sales / distribution agreement had been signed with Pinnacle, and that the label was to be relaunched 'after a period of inactivity'.  With the move to Pinnacle, catalogue numbers changed to the BARN-000s; pressing of the few singles that I have seen in the vinyl has been by Pye or Lyntone.  Despite the move, Barn's days were numbered.  Less than a year later came the news that Chandler was launching a new label, 'Six Of The Best', which would concentrate on six-track 12" EPs; according to 'MW' (1st of March 1980) all the Barn artists were being transferred to it.  In the event 'Six Of The Best' seems not to have lasted very long, and by the middle of the year it had been replaced by a revamped Cheapskate label (q.v.).
Polydor-era Barn labels were injection moulded, and came in two different designs: the first, with its large name and logo (1), was replaced on 2014-106 and subseqent issues by a rather less flamboyant one (2).  Pinnacle-era labels were paper (3), and the singles came in a company sleeve (4).  Barn boasted several artists who had known chart success.   Slade (managed by Chandler) were first and foremost of them; they actually had a couple of minor hits on the label ('Gypsy Roadhog', 2014-105; and 'My Baby Left Me', 2014-114), but by that time, 1977, their glory days were more or less over.  Medicine Head put out a couple of singles and an album ('Two Man Band') on Barn, and Chandler's reunited Original Animals also appeared on it, as did Punk band the Depressions / D.Ps, but despite the potential there were no other hits.






Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.