THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
How the battling bros of ’80s UK indie survived the Psychocandy shitstorm to prove doubters wrong on Darklands: “We thought, Let’s make an album about the songs.”
By the time of their second album Darklands in August 1987, THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN had moved on from the feedback-riven, riot-packed 15-minute shows that went with acid-bath debut Psychocandy. Now, via hanging with Bananarama, playing the home of the Oscars and finding one member in jail in Canada, they emancipated their songwriting and found absolution. “It fulfilled the prophecy that we always talked about,” they say.
“It got us on Top Of The Pops.”
Jim Reid: Coming off the Psychocandy album, people were saying we should split up – “Before you ruin it,” like you couldn’t top Psychocandy. What was the idea of the Mary Chain at that point? Funny looking geezers from Scotland, falling about the stage while making a racket and knocking the shit out of each other in a 15-minute set. We thought people didn’t talk enough about the songs. So, let’s make an album about the songs…
William Reid: The feedback threw a shadow over the songwriting, which we thought was our strongest point.
Geoff Travis: We wanted the best bands on Blanco Y Negro [Travis’s label, a subsidiary of WEA]. The Mary Chain fit that billing. They
were a gang. The best bands are often a gang, with their own signals and internal language. They didn’t have a manager at this point [the band had sacked Creation Records’ Alan McGee from the role in 1986], but they were self-sufficient. They’re very intelligent people.
JR: We had a good relationship with Geoff and Jeannette [Lee]. Jeannette had been involved with PiL – we loved the first three PiL albums. We were signed to Blanco Y Negro which went through Warners, and it wouldn’t have worked if Geoff and Jeannette hadn’t been there. The Warners bunch were these twits in Armani, who were into Simply Red. They hated our music.
Jeannette Lee: When I joined Geoff at Rough Trade and Blanco in 1987, the JAMC were the most exciting thing for me by a million miles. They were known for being difficult, uncompromising, suspicious, awkward, all of which drew me to them even more.
JR: We’d wanted Bobby [Gillespie, the Mary Chain’s stand-up drummer who left to front Primal Scream] to be in the band, but he couldn’t be in two bands. We first encountered John [Moore] at the Scala cinema, at a screening of [1970 gallows comedy] Entertaining Mr Sloane. There was this guy who looked like us. We didn’t say anything – just glared at each other.
John Moore: I was obsessed with The Jesus And Mary Chain. I read in the music press that they needed a new drummer. I knew it was going to be me. My first gig, at Nottingham Rock City, was fantastic, like walking out into a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, into this red light, people chucking stuff at you, all the faces crammed in. As they moved towards Darklands I was promoted sideways, to guitar, because they were no longer using real drums. It wasn’t even a drum machine they were using live, it was drums on C30 cassette tapes, played on a Tascam 4-track home studio, to 5,000 people in Brixton Academy.
Douglas Hart: The songs for Darklands were – are – the best set of songs [William and Jim] had ever written. Nine Million Rainy Days was a surprise, almost a traditional ballad. William was getting into Kris Kristofferson. You can hear a bit of [Kristofferson’s] Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again).
JR: John Loder [recording engineer on Psychocandy] and [producer/mixer] Bill Price both worked on Darklands. We were interested in Bill’s history – the Pistols, The Clash. He had great stories… Engelbert Humperdinck and Brian Jones having a fight while Bill was taking his first acid trip (laughs). There were some things in the process that remained a constant. We always wrote the songs on acoustic guitars, for instance.
WR: All of a sudden there were 15-hour days in the studio, tours. It’s not what my body’s used to because I’m a total lazy bastard.
JM: I play on one song on Darklands. William got me to play one single power chord on Down On Me, so I could say I play on the album.
GT: William writes most of the music and words, but he’s reliant on Jim to deliver it. It’s a very interesting relationship. I remember Jim saying to me, “You’ve got to realise that William is a great guitar player.” As if this was something that would never have occurred to anyone. Jim has a touch of honey in his voice in a way that not many men do. He does have a kind of feminine quality to him, which we thought was great. It was a golden time for them. It felt like they could do no wrong.
Mick Houghton: Darklands is my favourite Mary Chain album. I remember the Melody Maker review of the third Velvets album which said they’d “gone soft rock”. There was a similar feeling about Darklands – it wasn’t what people wanted or expected from them.
Laurence Verfaillie: For Jim and William recording was always a painful experience.
A lot of anxiety. They were very secure about the quality of their music, but insecure as people.
JM: When I had my own band [John Moore And The Expressway], I used to take Jim to [West End club] the Limelight, because I could get free tickets and free drinks. One night we were talking to Bananarama at the Limelight and [after] there was a photo in the papers. I got chastised for that – it wasn’t right for the Mary Chain to appear in the Daily Mirror with Bananarama.
JR: With April Skies we had a proper hit [Number 8 in the UK]. But even after we had the hit, it didn’t earn us any respect at all with Warners. The sleeve was from a bad film called The Jesus Trip. We saw a VHS and that image [stylised crucifixion scene] was on the cover.
DH: The crucifixion image is also in our video for Kill Surf City [April Skies B-side]. You can see the bit from The Jesus Trip cut into footage of an American flag being riddled with bullets. That was from an NRA TV ad that we’d seen on the Clive James show or something. When we split with Alan he said, “If it wasn’t for me The Jesus And Mary Chain would still be in East Kilbride taping adverts off the telly.” That sounded great to us (laughs).
JR: The album was well received. It went gold. The second single [Happy When It Rains, a UK Number 25 hit in August ’87], there’s maybe
“I USED TO GET PRETTY
FUCKED-UP TO PLAY SHOWS.” Jim Reid
a touch of Springsteen there, but that wasn’t intentional. I like Bruce Springsteen, and so does William. We were into The Velvet Underground, but William had liked the Bay City Rollers. I quite liked them too. The Ramones were big Bay City Rollers fans – that all makes sense. The UK shows [in September ’87] were good.
David Evans: When I was guitar tech I remember a smashed dressing room in Copenhagen – too much speed and drink and all these smashed mirrors. I played guitar live after John left. We never had a single rehearsal before my first gig. I knew the songs. Look down, chug from A to D and back again, with attitude. At a festival in Finland, William got so drunk he could hardly stand, let alone play. It was decided they’d keep him really low in the mix and I’d be playing all the main guitar parts. Oh, OK!
JR: I remember meeting [Cocteau Twin] Robin Guthrie just before we went to America [touring Darklands in October/November]. He said, “Don’t go to America with a drum machine, you’ll get lynched.” He was right. Everybody was like, “Where’s Bor-by? Where’s the drummer?” In general America seemed to get the Mary Chain, but we did have problems getting radio play, because of the name, and we were selling T-shirts saying Jesus Fuck… A venue owner in Texas wanted to put sticky tape across [the T-shirts]. But, to our surprise, he put the tape across the word ‘Jesus’.
We did get religious nuts at the shows as well, like in New Orleans, with placards.
DH: Live it felt very powerful. By Darklands I had up to four strings on my bass. Before then I often had just two. Sometimes we’d do two shows, one an underage show. I heard that Beck came to one of the matinee shows in Los Angeles. There was a great show at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where they’d had the Oscars in the golden period, and where they also made the concert films T.A.M.I. and The Big T.N.T. Show, where you had Bo Diddley, the Stones, Tina Turner. [In East Kilbride] we used to sit up taping that stuff on VHS tapes.
JR: I used to get pretty fucked-up to play shows. I’m a shy human being and to go on stage… I felt inadequate.
I had the idea the Mary Chain frontman should be Iggy Pop or someone like that. The only way I could get close was to get absolutely rat-arsed. That led to me going to jail [in Toronto]… after 45 minutes of listening to some wanker shout everything at me, I just whacked him over the head the with a mikestand. It was an idiotic thing to do, but he wasn’t badly injured. [Jail] was scary. I was this skinny kid wearing leather trousers, thrown into the drunk tank with a load of lumberjacks.
JM: If you’re in a rock band and you’re going to get arrested it may as well be in Toronto, like Keith Richards (laughs).
LV: Jim and William were never malicious people. They are straight as you get. You know the game paper, scissors, stone? When they had to decide who was going to do something, they used to play that over the phone, and they could trust one another not to lie… I remember being on tour in the US and Jim doing a phone interview before a date in Detroit, and him saying how much he loved The Stooges. But because of Jim’s thick Scottish accent the journalist didn’t understand. When we got to Detroit the article said, “I love the Bee Gees.” Jim was mortified.
MH: They hated doing interviews, but they were always on time and there were never any no-shows, which I got with a lot of people I worked with.
JR: I can’t remember that [calling John Lydon the ”Les Dawson of punk” in interviews]. I used to slag off everybody just to get a reaction. There are things I said about people I really admire, where I wish I’d kept my big fucking mouth shut.
DH: From the outset, brought up on T.Rex and Roxy Music, we’d say we were gonna be on Top Of The Pops. Alan [McGee] would love that, but he’d also roll his eyes like we were insane. But it came to pass. The Darklands album fulfilled the prophecy that we always talked about – it got us on Top Of The Pops. JR: The album was mission accomplished. As with any record there are bits you might change, but when I listen [to Darklands] I remember the reasons it was made. I think it still sounds fresh.
The Jesus And Mary Chain have a live album forthcoming, recorded during the Darklands period.The band tour the UK and Europe in March and April.