Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story

by Zoe Howe

  ‘I met them in town, and I think my girlfriend at the time worked in a bank, she was eighteen but looked younger, and the Reid brothers were quite impressed. They thought I had a schoolgirl girlfriend. “You’ve got a schoolie, yer dirty bastard!” And I was going, “She’s not, she works in the bank!” “Nah, she’s at school!” I don’t think they had girlfriends, you know. Douglas did.’

  The Mary Chain and Primal Scream were noticeable at the best of times, but they attracted even more attention when they started wallpapering Glasgow with Bobby’s arresting posters. ‘We were putting them up in broad daylight,’ Bobby laughs. ‘You’re supposed to do it at nighttime when nobody’s looking . . .’

  ‘At one point we were at the entrance of this cinema, down some steps by the fire door,’ recalls Douglas. ‘We were pasting these things up, and we looked round and there was this big gang of neds hanging around, real rough-looking guys. We were like, “Oh fuck. We’re never going to get out of here alive.” We carried on putting the posters up with wallpaper-paste and there was this long, silent pause. We didn’t want to look round. Eventually one of them punched his mate on the shoulder and said, “Ah Willy, look what they’re doing! They’re using that see-through paint.” See-through paint! Then they just went away.’

  The eleventh of October swung around, and after minimal rehearsal, and with East Kilbride groups Meat Whiplash and Ochre 5 in support, the Mary Chain and Primal Scream were ready to launch a full-scale musical attack on Glasgow. This would also be the first time that the Reids would have really seen Bobby performing live. ‘Jim watched us [Primal Scream] do “Nobody’s Scared” by Subway Sect at the sound-check,’ Bobby recalls, ‘and he came up to me and said, “You’re the best band in the world.” That was amazing. It was real validation because I didn’t know if we were any good.’

  Bobby played guitar in Primal Scream, and then, as he remembers it, ‘went off for ten minutes and then came back to play drums with the Mary Chain’. The sets were short and fierce, with Primal Scream and the Mary Chain each slipping in a Subway Sect cover (‘Ambition’, in the Mary Chain’s case). The Reids’ set was growing all the time; they still played Syd Barrett’s ‘Vegetable Man’ but they were becoming more assured in terms of performing their own material. Their progress was evident: the first Living Room gig had consisted of mostly covers but just four months later more originals were working their way in – ‘Taste The Floor’, ‘Inside Me’, ‘The Living End’ and ‘Barracuda’, as well as their regular opener ‘In A Hole’. Bobby’s presence also gave them confidence on stage, not just because he was so enthusiastic but because his drumming was just right.

  The Mary Chain had shifted into a new and powerful gear, and as the feedback howled around the waspish Jim Reid’s dark incantations, the audience were, whether they realised it or not, staring at a band whose debut single alone would soon crash into the pop and indie world like a well-aimed missile, ushering in change and burning up the dross. This was the future.

  Nearly two weeks later, The Jesus and Mary Chain were on their way back to London to stay with Alan McGee. They’d packed their bags for the Creation package tour, which was almost upon them, and were ready to record their first session for John Peel on 23 October, two nights before the tour. Trips to London meant, unfortunately, freezing nights trying to sleep, fully clothed, under one sleeping bag on the floor of Alan’s draughty Tottenham flat. There was no money for hotels – and besides, Alan could also take the opportunity to put the boys to work for the common cause of Creation. Many an evening would be spent folding record sleeves and putting them in plastic bags. Readers who own some of Creation’s early output on the original vinyl may well have a record that was packaged by hand by The Jesus and Mary Chain.

  The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Peel Session was due for transmission on 31 October, while the band would be away. They could have had no sense of what the combined effect of this broadcast, their pre-tour London gig and the release of their debut single, ‘Upside Down’ would be – not least because their session for Radio 1 was, the group felt, something of a disappointment.

  They weren’t allowed to play as they wished, and there was a distinct but not untypical lack of respect radiating from the jobsworth engineers (Peel was not present) at London’s iconic BBC Maida Vale Studios. This was the case, they would find, with all of their Peel Sessions to come; and of course the groups they had listened to themselves on Peel’s show had had similar experiences. (The Slits, for example, had to put up with the patronising ‘can’t-do’ attitude of various engineers, who tried to retune the band’s guitars and questioned their sound.)

  As William Reid put it in an interview with NME at the time, ‘It’s as if there’s a secret bible written just for sound men, saying what they can and cannot do.’ The irony was that the reason Peel featured certain bands on his show was that they were subversive, exciting and gleefully broke the rules. But then they had to abide by the rules once they reached Maida Vale to record for the man himself. Much of what Peel had heard and loved in the first place would be absent from the ultimate recording. Fortunately, though, enough of the group’s essence would shine through.

  Bobby Gillespie says: ‘Those sessions were a big thing for us. We’d listen to the programmes in 1978, 1979, 1980, maybe less so in 1981 because music was somewhere else then. But you’d hear bands like Subway Sect and the Psychedelic Furs, PiL, the early Banshees and The Slits, bands that didn’t necessarily have record deals but were buzz bands. You’d read about them in the music press and you’d think, “If I lived in London I’d go and see that band, they look cool.” You could hear them doing Peel sessions and tape them. So to do a Peel Session ourselves was like, Fuck, this is a real test, you know. Our heroes had done this and done it right, we had to do it right.’

  Despite the Mary Chain’s misgivings about the results, every session recorded by them for Peel would still be memorable, electrifying and unique. They just weren’t, to the Reids’ minds, as they might have been. Peel might have loved them, but life was not made easy for The Jesus and Mary Chain in those hallowed studios, and it didn’t help that they already had a reputation for drunkenness and having a blithe disregard for equipment.

  ‘John Peel was supportive right from the beginning,’ says Douglas. ‘It was a real thrill for us, going to Maida Vale. But it was difficult with the engineers. Our reputation would precede us and we’d go to places where people would be expecting these psychos, and we’d just be like, “Can I have a cup of tea, please?” Later on we might go mental when we’d had a few drinks, but, you know, outside of night-time when we were a bit drunk, we were nice people, we’re not really that bad. On the other hand, having a reputation like that gets you a long way. You don’t even have to do anything, just look at someone in a certain way.’

  The Jesus and Mary Chain’s sessions for Peel would differ from their trademark sound partly because William would usually record layers of feedback and, as Douglas puts it, ‘mix it like a symphony – you can’t do that on a Peel session.’ At least the engineers made a concession when, as a tribute to the Fire Engines, those godfathers of angular Scottish post-punk, the Mary Chain requested that one of their songs, which had a false start, should be left as it was.

  One producer working at Maida Vale was Dale ‘Buffin’ Griffin, former drummer with Mott The Hoople. ‘I think he had loads of kids like us coming in who didn’t know how to tune the drums or the guitars,’ Bobby admits. ‘It was very amateur, and I think that’s what John Peel liked about these bands. I don’t remember Dale Griffin being very encouraging. The Mary Chain obviously did not give a fuck.’

  Jim Reid says: ‘The Peel Sessions were the worst. You knew exactly what you wanted to do, but you’ve got these guys who don’t want you to do it. They actually don’t want you to do what you’re trying to do. It would be incredibly childish things like, we’d say, “Can we have the guitars up a bit?” And they’d go, “Yeah”, and they’d put them up, and you’d look ov
er there and you could see out of the corner of your eye that he’s putting it back down again. Or he’d slide it up here but be turning it back down with the thing at the top. Ridiculous.

  ‘That was always the way when you did any TV or radio. They’d be looking at us like, “Is your guitar broken?” You’d be explaining, “Look, I know this isn’t what you’re used to, but this is what we sound like, so just whack those guitars up as loud as you can.” “Right, squire.” Then you’d do your rehearsal and there’d be no guitars in it.’

  Their first Peel session, which consisted of the songs ‘In A Hole’, ‘You Trip Me Up’, future single ‘Never Understand’ and ‘Taste The Floor’, would have a far-reaching effect, however, as would their gig at the Three Johns the following night, on 24 October 1984, just hours before the band set off for Germany.

  Alan McGee had just mailed out press copies of ‘Upside Down’, packaged by hand by the Mary Chain in Alan’s spare room. The image of the Pollock-style, paint-splashed guitar on the cover would soon be capturing imaginations all over the country, including that of John Squire, later of the Stone Roses. ‘John Squire’s got this paint-spattered guitar because, to him, this paint-spattered guitar, that was the sound of the Mary Chain,’ Bobby explains.

  ‘Upside Down’, a veritable psychotic breakdown on vinyl, was landing on desks across London on the very day of the Three Johns gig. Timing was everything, and Alan’s aim was to ensure that as many eminent members of the music press as possible were present at the Three Johns while the single was fresh in their minds. NME writer Neil Taylor was just about to leave Carnaby Street for the night when the then Live Pages editor, Mat Snow, approached, ‘Upside Down’ in hand.

  ‘I was covering new bands at the time,’ says Neil, ‘the June Brides, the Wedding Present, Big Flame and Tools You Can Trust, who would go on and become part of a C86 tape which I compiled for NME – obviously that was a year and a bit off. I was doing a lot of work for Mat Snow, and he said he’d got this single from Alan McGee at Creation. It was literally out of the mailer, and he said, “They’re playing tonight at the Three Johns pub.” It was about six o’clock, and he said, “Do you want to go?” I played the single and it sounded great. So off I went.’

  The back room of the Three Johns, filling up slowly, was tense with anticipation. The Mary Chain never mixed with the audience before or after the gigs, developing a mystique that also suited their personalities perfectly. As soon as Neil Taylor arrived at the pub, Alan McGee spotted him. ‘He was straight on to me,’ remembers Taylor, ‘pushing, pushing, pushing the music. Very willing ears, open to what he had to say.’ McGee wouldn’t have to push too hard with the Mary Chain, however. By the time they were on stage, Taylor was already mentally forming a review so positive it would cement their position as the agitative saviours of rock’n’roll. NME writers do this from time to time and sometimes, inevitably, they’re wrong, so they save face by later snatching back the golden words they briefly bestowed upon yet another new indie-pop hope. That wasn’t the case on this occasion. ‘It was a revelation,’ confirms Taylor.

  ‘The gig was out of control,’ McGee recalls. ‘I don’t even know how to describe it. Every single one of them bar Gillespie was sort of having a nervous breakdown as they played. Douglas Hart was . . . well, I don’t know what drug he was on, but he was, like, pinned to the wall. Jim was having an epileptic fit, William was on his knees, and then they proceeded to smash their instruments up. Gillespie – the guy barely drank, but he was drunk, manically drumming away.’

  In an era of often twee, anodyne music, these intoxicated misfits and their earth-juddering sound had a quality that went straight to the heart, brain and nerves and, as always, prompted a totally divided reaction. The sound and atmosphere created was actually frightening, and it was certainly unnerving for the support band, who were standing in the wings watching the gear they’d reluctantly lent the Mary Chain get trashed.

  ‘We borrowed an amp off the support,’ Jim remembers. ‘The guy said, “Please take care of it.” “You’ve got my word, I’ll treat that like I treat my own.” Even though ours was in the repair shop because I’d kicked it over. I wasn’t trying to upset the guy, I was just falling all over the place. I bumped against his amp and it just went flying. There’s a photograph in the paper of him getting ready to punch me.’

  The gig was typically short, and there’s an argument that, with this level of intensity, any longer would have been overkill. From the band’s point of view, they poured so much raw energy into their live appearances that they were often just too exhausted to continue any longer.

  ‘The Fire Engines only played for twenty minutes and we used to love them,’ concludes William Reid. ‘I don’t remember anyone wanting their money back or rioting at a Fire Engines show.’

  As soon as they’d finished their brief, provocative set the Mary Chain were off, out of the venue without meeting any of the press, wisely keeping the spell unbroken as Alan McGee worked the room. It was all theatre, and the Mary Chain knew that the show continued after they had left the stage. This worked for them – they were generally uneasy in company, and this enigmatic closed-door policy would last for much of their career. ‘If people burst into our dressing-room expecting a wild party, they would be frozen out within about ten seconds,’ says Douglas. ‘I always thought it was funny. It was never like, Hey! What a great show! We’d sit in silence and then go home and watch the telly.’

  Meanwhile Neil Taylor was already filing his review. ‘We got the live review into the paper quickly,’ says Neil. ‘It became the lead review because it was so enthusiastic and it made these ridiculous comments about them being the best band since God knows who, the Sex Pistols or Joy Division.’

  Oblivious to the effect they had had on the NME, and how their world was soon to change as a result, the Mary Chain made the short journey back to Tottenham for another attempt to sleep on McGee’s floor. They also had to prepare for the trip ahead, now just hours away. It might not have been easy to sleep that night, although the amount of alcohol that had been imbibed at the Three Johns probably helped at least a couple of them to pass out. But they were all full of fevered expectation about what was to come; Bobby in particular still couldn’t quite believe he was in his favourite band, let alone embarking on their first tour as their drummer – and he wasn’t even a drummer, anyway. Life was taking some interesting turns.

  ‘It was really exciting,’ says Bobby. ‘At that point in my life it was such a big deal to me. I was on the dole and I was kind of a bit depressed. But suddenly I’m going away with The Jesus and Mary Chain.’

  Planet Mary Chain didn’t know what was about to hit it. Neither did Germany. It was, as McGee remembers, ‘insane’.

  ‘We were all there together,’ says Joe Foster. ‘Us against the world, or at least normal German people. Maybe that was a bit delusional, because they weren’t really normal German people, they were rock’n’roll German people. But it was fun. We felt immune to everything.’

  9

  Brothels, Barbed Wire, Blanco Y Negro

  All their songs are very noisy and sound a bit like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard. (False)

  Some of their songs are very noisy and sound a bit like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard. (True)

  William Shaw, Smash Hits

  The Creation package tour of Germany was, to put it mildly, something of a lo-fi affair. Alan and Joe’s band, Biff Bang Pow!, had only released two singles, and as Alan remembers it, ‘sold about fifty to a hundred copies. The Jasmines had done about the same.’ The Jesus and Mary Chain still didn’t technically have a record out at all. The groups travelled in two dodgy-looking vans, freezing air blasting through the broken windows, and stopped off at small rock venues around the country to play to a handful of people curious to see who had just rolled into town. ‘We were roughing it pretty badly,’ Jim says.

  This was the Mary Chain’s first experience of being on the roa
d, and it was an early taste of how they would cope crammed inside a van for significant periods of time. They were used to sharing rooms and sometimes even beds, but any hopes they might have had for anything beyond the basics were swiftly trounced. ‘McGee had promised a certain level of comfort and style,’ says Jim Reid wryly. ‘One of the places we were staying in was a doss-house. A pretty good one, I have to say. We probably lowered the tone a bit, but there you have it. That’s McGee’s idea of the Hilton. It was a good time though. We’d been signing on the dole, and suddenly we were riding around Germany and Switzerland, playing in front of an audience.’

  As McGee remembers, anything that could happen really did on that fateful tour. ‘We nearly crashed in the van when the person behind the wheel went to sleep,’ he says. ‘There was inter-band arguing with every band, although funnily enough not so much with the Mary Chain. We nearly got beaten up by a bunch of skinheads, there was fighting, bottles thrown . . . Nobody had any money. Nothing against brothels, but we slept in one.’

  A particularly memorable gig on this tour was at the Loft in Berlin, the first show of the tour and one that counted My Bloody Valentine among the audience, although they didn’t make themselves known to the Mary Chain at the time. Berlin was eventful for various reasons, not least because Bobby broke his self-imposed alcohol ban.

  ‘When we went to Berlin I remember Douglas getting off with an older woman,’ remembers Bobby Gillespie. ‘She seemed like a real woman, not like a girl. I remember drinking vodka and jumping over the drums. Generally I didn’t get smashed – I had to play the drums.

  ‘One night I remember sitting on the floor and just looking at the others and thinking, I belong. I never said this to any of them, I just felt a really deep connection with those guys. It was special. You don’t get that every day of the week.’