Michael Zilkha (born 1954) is a British-born
Oxford graduate of Iraqi descent, the son of
Selim Zilkha, former owner of
Mothercare, a major UK retail company, and the stepson of
Cabinet member
Lord Lever. In the mid-1970s, Zilkha worked in the New York publishing industry and was a contributor to the
Village Voice.
Michel Esteban (b. 1951) studied art in Paris and at the
School of Visual Arts in New York, before returning to Paris in 1975 and opening the shop Harry Cover (a pun on "haricots verts"), which specialised in current rock music merchandise from the US and UK. The basement shop quickly became the rehearsal place for Parisian new wave bands. Between 1975 and 1976, Esteban published
Rock News, which covered the birth of the
punk rock movement in London, New York and Paris. In 1977 he published
Patti Smith's books
Witt and
The Night, and
Lizzy Mercier Descloux's first book
Desiderata. In 1977, Esteban signed French new wave band
Marie et les Garçons, and asked
John Cale—whom he had met through
Patti Smith—to produce them. Cale produced the single "Re Bop" in New York, and when he decided to start a record label with Jane Friedman he asked Esteban to help. Cale later introduced Esteban to Zilkha, and they first established
SPY Records to release singles produced by Cale, including records by Harry Toledo, the Necessaries,
Lester Bangs, Model Citizens, and
Bob Neuwirth. – gave ZE worldwide exposure through the label's licensing deal with
Island Records. Within a short time, ZE Records became one of the more hip labels of its time, signing up such new talent as
James White and the Blacks,
Was (Not Was),
Kid Creole and the Coconuts,
Lydia Lunch,
Lizzy Mercier Descloux,
Cristina,
The Waitresses,
Bill Laswell's Material and
Richard Strange, together with more established performers including
John Cale and
Suicide."At their most inspired, the artists on ZE found some middle ground between immensely accessible
disco-pop and the avant-garde, without ever falling down the middle of the road. Music that appealed to Highlights-reading six year olds as well as their Village Voice-reading parents wasn't particularly common back then (surely there are no modern-day parallels); and it's just one of the voids that the ZE label filled, fostered by a very direct collision between the novelty of pop and the possibilities of artful experimentation." The label's success and influence peaked around 1981-82. Esteban left New York in 1982, and ZE Records closed down in 1984. Esteban continued to work with Lizzy Mercier Descloux, and with
Lio, as well as other artists. He restarted the ZE label in 2003 in
France to record new artists, including
Glasgow band Michael Dracula, as well as to reissue old material. == List of ZE recording artists ==