by Zoe Howe
‘It sounded like your eardrums had burst; all of a sudden there was no top end at all,’ he remembers. ‘Fortunately, the song had nearly finished. Most bands would have been furious and fired me on the spot, but they didn’t mind. They thought it was funny.’
17
Alcohol, Speed, Farewell McGee
Jim’s the rock’n’roll swinger. I’m a pipe-and-slippers man.
William Reid to Adam Sweeting, Q
Finally the Mary Chain had a chance to go home and recover briefly from what seemed like an almost endless stint of touring. Relaxing wasn’t exactly on the cards back in London, however. It was more a case of retoxing. Or just toxing. To retox, one does have to detox, after all, and there was certainly no danger of them doing that.
John, who had recently moved into a squat in Vauxhall, would hit Soho with Jim to inhale the contents of the bar at the Spice of Life in Cambridge Circus and the famous Coach and Horses, situated just behind it. ‘Then,’ says John, ‘we’d watch Roland Rat on TV:AM at my place after being up all night. There was a lot of breakfast television in those days.’ John Moore, incidentally, remains a dedicated Roland Rat fan to this day.
Another haunt that loomed large in the nightlife of Reid and Moore was the Limelight club, just a few yards away from the Spice of Life. Several people who shared John’s squat worked at the club, which was convenient, as ‘they’d give me piles of free drink tickets. I’d take Jim there and we’d get drunk for nothing.
‘I got into a spot of trouble because we got photographed with Bananarama. It was in the Daily Mirror, I think. Alan McGee said, “You’re leading the boy astray! We don’t want to be in the mainstream!” It was great. Getting hammered with Bananarama back in the 1980s . . .’
Another good reason to get smashed in this part of town was that it was a mere stagger away from Speed, a club night run by Douglas every Thursday, situated opposite where the much-missed Astoria used to be. Here Douglas could create exactly the kind of club he had fantasised about when he was a kid. It would also be the conduit to Douglas’s future career as a film-maker and music video director.
‘The guy who rented us the club said, “What are you going to call it?”, and I said, “Speed, you know, because we’re into cars and all that.” And he goes, “You know it’s a name for an illegal drug?” We were going, “Nah, no way!” And he was going, “It is!” He was trying to warn us. We were going, “Thanks for telling us!”
‘My Bloody Valentine played there a lot, and that’s how I got into making music videos. I had a Super-8 camera, so they said, “Why don’t you shoot something for us?” So that was the early stages of that.’
The Mary Chain had severally moved over the river to North London and now William was in Stoke Newington, Douglas in Stamford Hill, and Jim had found a place on Kentish Town’s Leighton Road, where he would stay for the next twenty years. He often pined for Fulham, but life had changed. The Jesus and Mary Chain were now famous. They were pop stars. They were the alternative pin-ups of choice for thoughtful teenagers left unmoved by the images of tanned young men with Princess Diana haircuts that usually greeted them in Smash Hits.
This new status, and the knowledge that their shadowy visages were being Blu-tac’d to walls and wardrobe doors the world over, must have been at once flattering and confusing. It wasn’t exactly what the Mary Chain aspired to and underneath the public bravura, Jim in particular found it vaguely worrying. (Or so he says, anyway. On the subject of girlfriends, Jim declared at the time that they ‘welcomed as many as possible’.)
‘We left Fulham when we started to get well known,’ he explains. ‘I’d started getting Japanese girls who’d spot me on the bus, and they’d wait for me to get off, and you’d have to run around the block, shake them off. I didn’t enjoy that side of it. We were never really that famous, but we did get to the point where you’d walk down the street and people would look round. I was never interested in all of that, it was about the music.’
*
The new single would soon reach number 13 in the UK: a proud moment for McGee – it was the first time a Creation band had had a hit in the charts. But it wouldn’t be long until he was given his marching orders.
‘They wanted rock’n’roll management,’ says McGee. ‘I was haphazard, mental management. They wanted someone who could answer the phone, not some bum who would let it go straight to the answering machine and pick it up at two o’clock in the afternoon when I got out of bed.’
But the band also felt they still had a stigma after the unrest that had plagued their gigs and the consequent troublemaker status they had earned. This was the image presented to the press during their formative years in the public eye, and while it worked from one point of view, it was not easy to brush off. It soon became obvious that, if they wanted to be taken seriously for their music, this would have to change.
Douglas Hart describes the feeling within the Mary Chain camp at that time: ‘With all the talk of the violence and the spectacle of it, Jim and William felt there weren’t enough people talking about the songs. Maybe they thought it was time for a Stalinist purge, a changing of the guard. As much as we liked playing the music-business game, the balance wasn’t always right, and maybe that’s why it had to end. The publicity Alan generated for us obviously did a lot of good but when you’re the subject of it, you wonder . . .’
Alan McGee says: ‘It was strange. I was so in their camp. If they’d said, “We want McGee to be our manager forever,” I would have been. It kicked me in the balls when I got the sack, but it was the best thing that ever happened to Creation Records. It made me go out and find The House of Love and The Valentines, Ride, break the Primals, find Oasis . . .
‘They sent Jim round, and I knew I was going to get the sack. But he came round and he couldn’t bring himself to sack me. He left after about ten minutes. Jim never left after ten minutes. I thought, That’s too fucking weird.’
After Jim sheepishly went home and told the others he hadn’t had the heart to do the deed, William grabbed the reins, contacting McGee to say they wanted to meet him in Oxford Street. It helped that it was somewhere neutral, although McGee was not impressed that the Mary Chain chose to sack him in a Wendy Burger outlet.
What happened next, oddly enough, was, as McGee remembers it, ‘one of the most civilised moments that we’d shared . . . There was no screaming or shouting. I played my part and that was the end of the part.’
McGee had cut his management teeth with the Mary Chain, and in a way they had all grown up together. But what took him by surprise was learning, in the years to come, how much of a good time other bands were having in comparison.
‘You think, “OK, rock’n’roll, you might not make much money but it’s good fun.” Well, with the Mary Chain, we got plenty of money, we just had a shit time. I’d say, “The NME has done three pages on you, it’s amazing!”, and they’d look at you as if you’d told them that someone had died.
‘The House of Love and the Primals were just, “Give me the drugs, give me the drink, give me the girls and let’s go on tour!” “Fuck, this is what rock’n’roll’s about! This is what they said in the books!” I’m not digging at the Mary Chain, they’re brilliant guys. They were just so miserable. I love Jim, I really like Douglas, I haven’t seen William in years but I have no bad feeling towards him, any of them, but it was not fun managing them.’
The Mary Chain might have been dysfunctional, something they’d admit themselves, but they wouldn’t be the worst offenders from that point of view in McGee’s experience. He had all of that to come with Pete Doherty.
‘The Libertines were actually, truly unmanageable – and my filter for mental cases is quite high – but managing Doherty was on another level. We had to wrap him up in carpets and bring him to the gig. If we couldn’t wake him up we’d just roll him up in a rug.’
In the long run, the split between McGee and the Mary Chain wouldn’t lead to a lifelong rift. Just a few years down the lin
e, McGee would be happily off his face on Ecstasy with Jim at the latter’s Kentish Town flat, their differences very much in the past. But what would have happened if The Jesus and Mary Chain had not decided to part ways with McGee?
‘I’d probably now be in a mental institution,’ says McGee flatly. ‘But I’m in Wales, in the country in my big fucking house, you know? I don’t think in life you can regret anything. Shit happens and the art form is to deal with it and go forward.’
It’s natural to draw comparisons between the Reids and Noel and Liam Gallagher, who would be working with McGee just a few years later when Britpop burst lairily into life. For McGee, having worked with the Reids, nothing the Gallaghers could do could faze him. Admittedly, the Gallaghers are more extrovert than the Reids and more prone to jab at each other in the press, something the Reids tend to avoid save the odd sparring match when they’re together. The Reid brothers might have been more inclined to brooding silences and dark moods, but what is also clear is the fierce loyalty they have to each other. As Douglas Hart remembers it, the Reids could count on each other, no matter how stormy their relationship became – often to the exclusion of others around them.
‘It was like a solid rock underneath it all,’ Douglas says. ‘Going into that second period with all of the stress, they held on to each other. At the time it was a bit hard, but now I can totally understand it. They weren’t much older than me, not that worldly, not the most naturally well-adjusted characters, so it must have been difficult for them.’
Of course, there was a period of adjustment, and a period of hurt, after the Mary Chain and McGee parted ways. McGee admits it was ‘difficult, because there were a lot of people around me all slagging them off.’ He gave an interview to a French journalist soon after that fateful afternoon at Wendy Burger, and the Mary Chain were naturally curious as to what he was saying. Thanks to Laurence, the interview was translated and one sound-bite really stood out. Even though McGee appeared to be having a dig, the Mary Chain couldn’t help but admire the cut of his jib.
‘He said this amazing thing,’ Douglas recalls. ‘I suppose it was an insult, but we loved it: “If it wasn’t for me, the Mary Chain would still be at home, videotaping adverts off the TV.” It scanned amazingly. If I was a kid and read that, I’d have thought it sounded great. I mean, we used to do that. We’d always have a videotape in, and we’d just record and make these mad compilations.
‘We lent McGee a tape, but because we couldn’t afford videotapes there’d be a documentary and then mad adverts and little clips, so he’d watch the documentary and these things would come on and he’d be, “What the fuck?” He couldn’t get his head around it. He was thinking, These guys are freaks!’
Cutting ties with McGee had been hard, and the Mary Chain weren’t ready to think about who might take his place. It seemed prudent to take the opportunity to get away from London and the inevitable press intrusion. Jim headed to Paris with Laurence for a much-needed break, and this was when the next in a long line of Mary Chain thunderclouds decided to burst.
18
White Noise, Black Moods
‘I want to make as much money as Phil Collins. I don’t think mass appeal always has to be bad. People think: “Football stadiums? Crap! It can’t be any good.” I’d like to be the band that proves that isn’t true.’
William Reid to Nina Malkin for Raygun magazine
When the BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith heard ‘Some Candy Talking’, which was, at this point, safely residing in the UK Top Twenty, he was incensed. He believed the song was clearly a love song to heroin and refused to play it on his show, fearing that the nation’s Radio 1-devoted youth would be corrupted if they heard it. The press required a response from the Mary Chain, and McGee was no longer there for them to deliver a statement. Jim became the voice of the group, whether he liked it or not.
‘“Some Candy Talking” is not about heroin,’ Jim confirms. ‘When that whole thing kicked off, I was in Paris. I got a call and they wanted me to go live on Radio 1. I’m having a holiday, let somebody else do it. William didn’t want to, so it ended up being Rob Dickins. At the end of it I said, “Did you tell them that the original recording was commissioned by the BBC? That it was originally recorded as a John Peel session?” “Ah, no, I never thought of that.”’
When a record is banned it generally becomes a sure-fire hit, but the Beeb had made this mistake before, and they weren’t going to make it with the Mary Chain. The record, therefore, was never officially axed; Radio 1 just starved it of airplay, letting it sink. ‘They’d got wise because of all the stuff with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and “Relax”,’ Jim explains.
With regard to any narcotic references in the Mary Chain’s songs, Jim has always been dismissive, at least partly because it is no one else’s business unless he or William chooses to be explicit about those themes. But also, people are famously quick to pin the blame on stars when their fans, in a supposed attempt to emulate their heroes, choose to experiment with drugs.
‘Sometimes people see drug references that aren’t there,’ Jim offered in an interview with The Aquarian Weekly. ‘I’m not saying there’s none at all, but some fans go over our lyrics with a fine-tooth comb. People should take responsibility for their own life. If someone in a band says, “Yeah, I took smack,” then if some fans take it because of that, they’re just idiots.’
*
The Mary Chain still had no replacement in mind for the position of manager, so they tried their best to make their way without one, organising their affairs on their own. Jim’s then partner Laurence was an invaluable support; she was a strong but approachable character, she knew about music, and obviously she was close to the band. However, once the music press discovered that Laurence was helping out, they immediately wrote about it as if the Mary Chain had turned into a Spinal Tap-style operation, which was some way off the mark.
Jim says: ‘There was a classic thing in the music papers saying, “In true Spinal Tap tradition, the Mary Chain have sacked their manager and got the singer’s girlfriend in.” I thought it was quite funny. I think Laurence laughed.’ She didn’t.
‘I was really offended by that,’ says Laurence. ‘It wasn’t the attention, it was just that my role was to kind of be a glorified personal assistant more than anything else. I wasn’t going to be making any decisions but I went with Jim to meet people to make sure I knew what was going on. So that was not very nice.’
Laurence was also trying to maintain some domestic balance for Jim because the tension within the group was reaching seemingly impossible new heights. The Reids wanted to start working on their next album, but Psychocandy had been such a success that the pressure was on to make an album that would be just as good, if not better.
‘Shortly after I moved to London, they had to start Darklands. Oh my God . . .’ says Laurence. ‘The process was painful, to say the least.’
‘I remember being a lot more uptight,’ William admitted in a 2009 interview with Pitchfork. ‘Once we made Psychocandy we were burdened, and it put a lot of stress on the relationship between me and Jim.’
The Reids had already started writing songs and forming the concept of Darklands – Jim, who felt like ‘a rabbit caught in the headlights’, relaxed a little when he heard the quality of William’s song ‘Darklands’ – but they also needed space in which to come to terms with their rapidly changing lives. It wasn’t just about the loss of McGee, and the inevitable if temporary animosity between them, but the simple fact that they were now very much in the public eye and, therefore, targets. Not just for libidinous teenage girls, either.
‘Jim would get people wanting to hit him,’ John Moore remembers. ‘“You’re that guy with the shit band . . .” He got beaten up at a Birthday Party gig, someone just decked him. I think Jim and William needed a bit of time away to come to terms with what had happened with McGee too.’
On being asked about their next tour by Smash Hits, Jim warned ominously that, whatever happene
d, they couldn’t go away together for longer than a month. ‘If it was any longer than that, I don’t even like to think about what might happen.’
The Reids admittedly spent most of their time on the road screaming at each other; it’s no wonder they had to press ‘pause’. ‘William is the really intense one,’ says John Moore. ‘Jim would be fun, but then when he was working with William it was like a battle. You know the Scanners film, where one of their heads is about to explode? They were scanning each other. They say you shouldn’t get involved in a boy-girl fight; well, don’t get involved in a Reid-Reid fight.’
There was no use in trying to work out what the triggers were either. According to William, it took next to nothing to tip them over into savage combat and they would argue about anything and everything – ‘Whether it was a grey day or a slightly sunny day. Whether the new McDonald’s vegetarian burger tasted like Mexican food or Indian food . . . that actually was one of the big fights.’
*
The Mary Chain had six months until their next major shows: two nights at the National Ballroom in Kilburn, North-West London. By this point another change had taken place: John Moore had moved from drums to guitar, his main instrument. The Reids were keen to move on from the two-drum Moe Tucker set-up, and this change would soon herald the Mary Chain’s drum-machine era, although this was really nothing new for the Reids; their early Portastudio demos had programmed drums, after all.
In the meantime, Laurence Verfaillie put the Reids in touch with a drummer called James Pinker, playing with the Australian fusion band Dead Can Dance at the time. He was booked to play drums for the Mary Chain at the Ballroom on 15 and 16 December. It felt like he was in the band for ‘a minute – but a long, fun, scary minute,’ from which, he jokes, he ‘never fully recovered’.