Stairway to Heavenly Recordings

Sarah Cracknell - Saint Etienne
The first time I went to the Heavenly office it seemed very industrious and important. I'm shy, so it took me a while to get to know everyone, but once I did I knew that Heavenly was a very special label run by people who cared a hell of a lot about what they were doing. At Heavenly, music always comes first. They can take unconventional bands like The Rockingbirds or The Magic Numbers and can make it work. As Saint Etienne, we've been on a few labels, including Sub Pop and Beggars Banquet but Heavenly will always be our spiritual home. Heavenly's an honourable label. It's about hearing something you love and wanting to share it with as many people as possible. It's about believing in magic. I had my arse pinched by Paul Weller at the Albany [London, venue for The Heavenly Sunday Social], a massive cheeky grin on his face.

Ed Simons - Chemical Brothers
Tom and I had just met everyone at Heavenly at the start of 1994. One of the things that inspired us all to do a club was a party at Jeff's flat [Jeff Barrett, one of the label's two founders] after a Saint Etienne gig. We all bonded over a load of brilliant records he was playing. The first night of the club [The Heavenly Sunday Social] was pretty quiet and they were mostly people we knew. The third week there was a queue right round the pub. It ran for 13 weeks but it was an amazing time for us. It was the first time we'd had our own club, we were making Exit Planet Dust, it was a really hot summer – 1994. The best thing about it all was the people I met, people I've been friends with now for 14 years.

Beth Orton
I first heard of Heavenly when friends, The Rockingbirds, signed. Later, they got hold of a demo I did. On my second meeting with Jeff, he played me Laura Nyro's "Stoney End". I burst into tears and he was fine with it. I felt I was home safe. I never met so many people who loved to dance as much as I did. I got caught dancing on the bar at the Albany a few times.

I remember Tash, who used to work in the Heavenly office, telling me she wanted to do an acoustic night. Although I had spent three years in a studio with William Orbit, I had never sung live, other than a cover of a Judds song. So we started doing weekly Wednesdays at The Crown and Two Chairmen on Dean Street. I learnt to sit and play my humble offerings in the raw. When I think of Heavenly, I think of an absolute love of music.

Jimi Goodwin - Doves
We had just finished recording Lost Souls and were still on Rob's Records [Rob Gretton's label]. It was an exciting but uncertain time. We'd finally made the record we wanted to make but found ourselves on the circuit touting our wares.

We were talking to various labels. After being with Rob for years and that total freedom and stoned anarchy, who were we going to trust? I recall us meeting Jeff and Martin [Kelly, the other founder of Heavenly] behind The Briton's Protection in Manchester in the summer of 1998.

We were trying to be stand-offish but failing because we're nice polite boys. We went in thinking, "What are these cats going to say about the record... Hang on, these dudes know their onions... they get us..."

Romeo Stodart - The Magic Numbers
We'd been together for just over a year, gigging in London. I was also playing bass in Absentee. Abstentee's drummer, Jon, was really good friends with Martin and Jeff. He kept saying that I should send stuff to them. When Martin and Jeff came into the dressing room after a gig at the Water Rats, they said the magic words that every band dreams of hearing: "We love you guys, do you want to make a record?" I was pinching Michelle, going "Did you hear that?"

Very quickly after signing with Heavenly, it felt like something was happening. With every gig, you could tell that there was a real vibe. The most brilliant thing was that people learnt the words from going to the gigs. We'd be playing then I'd realise that people were singing along.

James Dean Bradfield - Manic Street Preachers
We were worried. Here were two people from a proper record company coming to see us in the Rock Garden, a pay-to-play venue. They were holding the elixir of life and here's us, a dodgy punk band from Wales. It was clearly going to be a hard sell.

The first thing we did for Heavenly was "Motown Junk". It's the exact point where we started to believe we could be the band we wanted to be, that people from London could see past Slough and over the Severn. In those early days, every band on the label seemed so different. They were going from white urban scuzz funk to bucolic soundscape pop to punk.

There was such a strange mixture of people there, people like Tim Burgess, Oasis, Tricky, Paul Weller. It seemed like a new gateway out of the whole Manchester thing, the last real "scene".

Ed Harcourt
Heavenly is an extended family for me. It has cultish elements but its tentacles stray into mainstream culture. I love it that Heavenly can release an album that goes to No 1 but then put out obscure reissues because of a love that's purely about music. And partying. I think the best was at an EMI conference with Martin and Jeff and John Leahy and Tony Wadsworth from the label. We were in a hotel and I was playing the piano very loud and the concierge told us he'd received 30 complaints. Martin screamed "There's always room for one more!", before falling asleep on the piano.

Forever Heavenly, a festival celebrating 18 years of the Heavenly Recordings label, runs from today until Sunday at the Southbank Centre, London SE1 (0871 663 2500)