“Beggars Banquet boss Martin Mills was the guy responsible for signing (Death) Cult and a very important figure in the history of the band… and here we are together getting some quality time back in 1989.
It's fair to say that things were going very well for us then and in many ways we were probably Beggars only "hard rock" band at that time… which, as I’m sure you all know, was very much what was happening in that era. So, a mutually beneficial relationship for sure.
The key thing with Martin, and the Beggars’ philosophy, was to leave the "artist" to do the creative stuff, and they just helped out as and when they were needed.
That included getting the band licensed to other labels around the world (Beggars had yet to open in NYC) which allowed us artistic control.
A possible downside was we got slightly less in terms of royalties (not that we cared much back then) as the pie got an additional slice taken out.
I often wondered much later if the labels who Beggars licensed us to actually promoted us as hard as bands they had signed directly (therefore profiting more from the sales)... I suppose I’ll never know!”
Billy – January 2026