Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story

by Zoe Howe

  After the show, the band returned silently to the dressing room, unable to even look at each other. ‘That was our first major break-up,’ Jim says, ‘but it never got as far as us actually telling anybody. Still, for a few weeks, the Mary Chain didn’t exist.’

  Both Jim and William were ragged after years of psychic warfare, not to mention self-medication to dull the considerable pain. They just wanted to move on with their lives, preferably with as little contact with each other as possible. Obviously it could never be that simple.

  By Christmas the brothers still weren’t talking, and it really did look as though there would be no way back for the Mary Chain. They’d had a good run, with a clutch of hit albums and singles to their name, gold records on the wall, well-thumbed passports and overworked livers. But while it might have been healthier for the brothers to stay apart, musically they were at their best together, and those close to them knew they had to sort out their differences.

  On Christmas Day, Jim and Laurence travelled to East Kilbride to spend the day with his parents. William would not be joining them, but he called home to speak to his family. The phone was thrust at Jim, and the brothers grumpily called a truce. I think we can probably call that a Christmas miracle.

  23

  Remake, Remodel

  They write up these histories of the 1980s and we’re not even in there. We were the fucking 1980s . . . but we feel a lot more comfortable with the 1990s.

  Jim Reid to John Robb in Sounds

  By 1991 the Reids were communicating a little more fluently with each other, and had started developing material for their next album, Honey’s Dead. While Automatic had proved to be their hardest, ‘most rock’n’roll album’ as William put it (later describing it as ‘a compromise to get on American radio’), Honey’s Dead was reflective of their whole career up to this point, ‘everything rolled into one’. The future finally glimmered with a spark of hope and expectation. Some of the changes within and around the band, however, would be hard to take for some.

  The Mary Chain had burned themselves to a cinder before rising from the ashes to rebuild themselves, and, after the painful break-up in Tokyo, it was time to begin a new chapter. Said chapter, however, would not include founding member Douglas Hart. The Jesus and Mary Chain was very much a Reid-Reid operation in the studio now, and the brothers were also becoming even more insular after the decision to sack McGee. Their buffer had gone and, as the pressure mounted, Douglas was increasingly excluded from the proceedings until it inevitably reached the point of no return. Jim and William drove to Disgracelands, the squat Douglas shared with Philip King, to break the news.

  ‘It was terrible,’ Jim remembers. ‘I hated doing it, but he was really good about it. Douglas wasn’t really a gifted musician, nor were any of us. Well, William plays guitar like nobody else. But Douglas didn’t record on Darklands and he played on about half of Psychocandy. I used to play bass. We’d go to the studio and Douglas hadn’t heard the song. You’d be going, “Do this . . .” and then I thought, I’ll just get here early tomorrow and do it.

  ‘But he was a big part of the band in the same way that Bobby was,’ Jim concludes. ‘We were so tuned into each other, Douglas understood it the way we did. That was worth everything.’

  Douglas, who was already busy making videos at this stage, was philosophical about the decision, but after having practically grown up with the Reids and having gone through so much together, he felt as though he’d ‘lost a lover’. He agrees that it was time to move on, but leaving the Mary Chain was ‘emotional, very sad.

  ‘From 1983 to 1991, we saw each other almost every day,’ Douglas says. ‘But, you know, I was their first fan, so to be a kid and to be playing in your favourite group for eight years . . . not fucking bad! You’d have to be a real petty bastard to get bogged down in the crummy details. When you look back at the whole picture, it’s amazing. And the insanity in every direction . . . I’ve seen a lot of bands as a film-maker and I’ve never seen anything like the Mary Chain, never.’

  Douglas Hart would stay in touch with his former band-mates, and also with Geoff and Jeannette, making videos for artists (including, in later years, Pete Doherty) under the Rough Trade umbrella. But, as Mick Houghton says, even though Douglas had not been involved in the recordings since Psychocandy, there was something vital about The Jesus and Mary Chain that, inevitably, altered when he left.

  ‘They lost something,’ says Mick. ‘The dynamic within groups is really important. Douglas’s role was much greater than anybody realises.’ The Reids would bring in the rhythm section from The Starlings (Barry Blacker and Matthew Parkin) to replace Hart and drummer Richard Thomas, who had moved on to join the electro group Renegade Soundwave.

  On a positive note, the Reids finally did what they’d been muttering about since Automatic and bought their own studio in Elephant and Castle, just south of the River Thames – 9a Amelia Street, to be exact. They named the studio ‘The Drugstore’, and there they could create their own environment, stay all night if they wanted to, and, crucially, there would be no more haemorrhaging of cash while the clock ticked ominously in the background.

  ‘When we were making Automatic,’ Jim explains, ‘even though we got the studio [Sam Therapy] reasonably priced, we just kept thinking, Why are we paying all this money? We’d be thinking, rightly, that the budget on your average album is the same amount to buy an average studio, so we thought, Well, let’s not do this again.’

  The Drugstore was a bright, sunny studio in a modern red-brick building. A mixing desk was already in place, so the Reids just brought in effects equipment and made themselves at home in their own time, with no one breathing down their necks. David Cavanagh of Select magazine visited the studio in 1992 and, as the Reids were mid-rehearsal, he took the opportunity to nose around.

  ‘The loo downstairs, contrary to nervous premonitions,’ he wrote, ‘is a model of sophistication and hygiene. The kitchen is pristine white and user-friendly. There’s a packet of herbal tea with some digestives nearby and – for those occasional moments of ill-health – some sachets of Lemsip.’

  Most days would begin relatively late, with the brothers meeting at either one of their respective homes in North London before William drove them down to the studio, having recently learned to drive. (He was rather put out by the number of people who appeared surprised by the idea of him behind the wheel of a car. ‘I couldn’t help feeling insulted,’ he told Vox. ‘I mean, there are people I know who I can’t imagine driving a car, but that’s because they’re pretty much semi-retarded.’)

  Alan Moulder, now the Mary Chain’s go-to engineer, would make his own way there to help the Reids set the studio up. He recalls that the Reids’ first priority was to get a television set installed in the control room. ‘They had the TV on constantly. We made the studio really homely. We spent some days just assembling Ikea furniture.’

  William was in his element; finally the Mary Chain didn’t have to be ‘creative on demand’. As William observed, it seemed ludicrous to have a studio booked for a specific date, only to hope that they would be feeling creative and productive that day. The Reids would develop their songs together in the studio rather than turning up with finished songs, ready to record. ‘You can find yourself with a week’s studio time booked, but no ideas to work on,’ William explained to Vox’s Alan Jackson. ‘Now we can work when we want and for however long it takes. I know we’re not the first people to think of it, but I’m surprised this way of working doesn’t occur to more bands.’

  *

  Laurence Verfaillie, meanwhile, who had been at Jim’s side since 1985 and had helped the band however she could, started to pull away. She’d been offered a job by Alan McGee to take care of PR for Creation Records, replacing Jeff Barrett, who founded the Heavenly Recordings label.

  Laurence says: ‘My interview with Alan went like this: “Alan, I don’t speak good enough English, and I hate the press . . .” “Great! You’re hired!”’<
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  It had been some years since Jim Reid and Alan had crossed paths, and, while Jim was not entirely comfortable with Laurence’s new post as a PR for other bands, ultimately her new role would be a factor in bringing the former friends back together.

  ‘I never felt comfortable about them falling out,’ Laurence says. ‘Jim was missing Alan a lot. But they all became friends again at a secret gig by The Sugarcubes at the Borderline. Jim was a bit drunk, Alan was also a bit drunk. They ended up talking and things got back to normal.’

  However, one of the problems ushered in by Laurence working with Creation was that The Jesus and Mary Chain were increasingly seen as the old guard, while a new wave of so-called shoegazing groups was emerging. The Reids felt left out, and the fact that Laurence, their ally, was furthering the careers of up-and-coming bands led to increased paranoia.

  ‘They started feeling threatened, stupidly, by the new bands,’ Laurence explains. ‘And what was I doing? It might be a bit over the top, but it felt like while I was getting all these front covers for the Creation bands, I was digging the Mary Chain’s grave a bit deeper.’

  Laurence would agree that the press had largely dropped the Mary Chain in favour of newer, younger groups such as Lush (with Philip King on bass), Curve, St Etienne and Ride – all groups who, ironically, were influenced by the Mary Chain. Primal Scream meanwhile, the jewel in Creation’s crown at this point, had released Screamadelica – an instant hit now rightly hailed as a classic, their shift from indie to acid house proving to be a fortuitous move. Creatively and in terms of profile, this was proving to be a golden era for Creation (although financially it couldn’t quite be described thus; My Bloody Valentine album Loveless, released not long after Screamadelica in 1991, left the label teetering towards bankruptcy, a merger with Sony hauling Creation back from the brink). The early 1990s would also be defined by the birth of Britpop – with Blur, The Charlatans, Supergrass, Inspiral Carpets and, most notably, Oasis (soon to be picked up and given their big break by McGee) as its swaggering kings, booting aside everything in their path.

  Neil Taylor says: ‘Many of the more studious, inward-looking pioneers of what went on to be called indie, their ideas were taken almost lock, stock and barrel by Britpop, polished up and expanded. The Britpop bands got the lot, the riches, the spoils.’

  The band’s US manager Jerry Jaffe felt it didn’t help that the Mary Chain were so adamantly anti-showbiz. This is, of course, a rare quality – basically, they had integrity. But in terms of staying afloat, as Jerry observes, they didn’t always help their own cause. ‘Almost everybody else walked the tightrope between being anti-establishment and commercial,’ says Jerry. ‘I don’t think the Mary Chain knew how to walk that line, and so they never really got the following that they should have.

  ‘If they were in the internet era, perhaps they could have got a viral following and they would have been big enough to counteract what they did to not ingratiate themselves with the powers that be.’

  *

  The most recent release for the Mary Chain had been the ‘Rollercoaster’ EP; it was unveiled in September 1990 and included a cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower Of Song’. By the end of summer 1991, work began in earnest on Honey’s Dead, ‘the last sober album,’ says Jim. ‘Sober and without drugs. We still had that industrious, do-the-job thing. That record was made relatively quickly, in about two months.’

  Still, the Reids were enjoying having their own studio to work from; they had time and space to just play and experiment, something they couldn’t do to the same extent in a studio before. ‘We were teaching each other things and learning together,’ Alan Moulder says. ‘We were messing around with loops and synths, sampling and triggering guitars and vocals. It was great fun and we felt we were doing something new.’

  A new addition to the Mary Chain periphery, later joining the group as a touring musician, was Curve drummer Steve Monti. As always, the degrees of separation were few – not only had the Mary Chain’s paths crossed with Curve in the past, but the lead singer, Toni Halliday, was in a relationship with Alan Moulder. Monti was, according to Jim, ‘a great drummer, but I’m not sure whether he was right for the Mary Chain’.

  Jim adds: ‘Monti reminded me a bit of what Murray Dalglish might have been like as a grown-up. He was a nice bloke, a bit too much into the musicianship. I believe that the vibe and attitude is everything. You can learn to play guitar and sound like Eric Clapton, but why would you want to when you can pick up the guitar and not know anything about it and just do something really mental? That’s my brother. He’s done things that nobody would think of had they had a guitar lesson.’

  While, as always, the Reids relied upon those in the inner circle to put them in touch with potential band members, they already knew Monti’s playing and could trust him to record his drum parts without them having to hover over him. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘This is why I was able to do nine tracks in such a short time period,’ explains Monti. ‘Jim and William were laid back and let me follow my own drumming ideas without interfering. That was something I always liked about them.’

  Despite recording generally being a stressful process for the Mary Chain, there were light moments and, most importantly, some classic Mary Chain songs were recorded during the making of Honey’s Dead. The album, which remains a favourite of the Reids, would include songs such as ‘Far Gone And Out’; ‘Almost Gold’; ‘Teenage Lust’, a sleazy portrait of virginity lost; and the brilliantly profane ‘Reverence’. Several sacred cows slain with one swipe.

  ‘“Reverence” is a wannabe song,’ William explained to NME’s Simon William. ‘There’s a glamour in dying, like Jesus Christ and John F Kennedy are two of the most glamorous deaths in the history of the world. I certainly don’t want to die like a 75-year-old man in a bedsit in Hackney.’

  ‘Reverence’, the first single from the album, was released in February 1992, reaching number 10 in the UK chart. (And, as Alan McGee points out with pride in Creation Stories, the Mary Chain were flanked by Ride at number 9 with ‘Leave Them All Behind’ and Primal Scream at number 11 with their Dixie-Narco EP. A ‘royal flush’ of bands signed by McGee.) This admirably perverse choice of single was a deliberate two fingers to everyone who had shrugged them off, stonewalled them, banned them. Now they were at least giving the music industry a real reason to get hot under the collar. This track had it all: controversial death-wish lyrics (I wanna die just like Jesus Christ . . . I wanna die just like JFK) delivered in orgasmic moans. A menacing groove that whacked sneering Britpop around the head before calmly pushing it straight out of a high-rise window. A heavy, hypnotic middle eight that paid tribute to Iggy’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Uncompromising religious themes being more mercilessly subverted than ever. But it wasn’t blasphemous, according to William.

  ‘To me, “blasphemous” means to show disrespect, even hatred, toward God,’ William told Interview’s Bradley Bardin. ‘I’ve never felt that way . . . Another thing these middle-class Bible-thumpers forget is that Jesus was a man. Jesus maybe had an affair with Mary Magdalene. I mean, Jesus had a hard-on, Jesus was flesh and blood and bones.’ In reality, there was little for said ‘Bible-thumpers’ to complain about at all if they really listened to the lyrics. The Reids made references to religion, and that was seen as subversive in itself, but the words themselves weren’t disrespectful. ‘Even a lyric like “I want to die like Jesus Christ” from “Reverence”,’ argued Jim. ‘I mean, that’s probably a fantasy of 100,000 Catholic priests. They probably go to bed at night and dream of being nailed to crosses.’

  Ultimately, when it came down to the matter of personal faith, the brothers were divided.

  Death still seems to be as much of a taboo subject as religion when it comes to songwriting, and it irritated the Reids that, thanks to the ‘Walt Disney attitude’ in pop music, it was acceptable to write a book about death, but not a song. ‘I don’t see any reason why pop music can’t be more than three-minute thro
waway rubbish,’ Jim said at the time. Whether you believed death was final or a portal to another plane, the certainty and also the mystery of our own expiry is a perennially fascinating theme – and thanks to the output of The Jesus and Mary Chain, pop had its very own musical memento mori. While other groups gave nary a nod to existentialism, the Reids and their admirers (such as the Pixies, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana) could be relied upon to remind us of the old inevitable.

  ‘Maybe that’s why death creeps into our songs a lot,’ said William. ‘Everyone runs around as if it’s never going to happen, everything else seems to be important in people’s lives – sex, money, love – but death’s one of the things people don’t respond well to. It’s going to happen to you, me . . . It doesn’t depress me.’

  Jim declared religious belief to be a ‘sort of mental illness’, while William insisted he believed in God, ‘but it’s like, “What if there’s no God? What if God doesn’t like me?”’

  *

  The Reids were stunned by the success of ‘Reverence’, although it was still banned from Top of the Pops. The Mary Chain were never invited back after they upset the show’s producers five years earlier, drunkenly miming to ‘April Skies’, but even the video for ‘Reverence’ was snubbed. Infamous pop-culture series The Word, however, could be relied upon to embrace the single, and they even had the band on to play it live. (It’s worth finding this on YouTube for obvious reasons, but also because, thanks to the studio audience, it’s a masterclass in early 1990s dancing. There are flapping elbows and flopping fringes and a great deal of loping on the spot. Thankfully, the Mary Chain themselves abstain from this sort of caper.)

  ‘Reverence’ also provided proof that The Jesus and Mary Chain were still pop’s most radical provocateurs. While mainstream audiences slavered over rock bands such as Guns ’n’ Roses, a band Jim Reid shrugged off as clichéd, moronic nonsense, the Mary Chain were courting genuine danger with a song like ‘Reverence’. The Reids believed they were particularly risking their lives in the US, not least because of the fate-tempting line ‘I wanna die just like JFK’. The accompanying video also features the American flag being riddled with bullets. ‘Never mind drinking Jack Daniels for breakfast and sleeping with a snake,’ Jim sniffed, referring to Guns ’n’ Roses guitarist Slash, a renowned reptile-fancier. ‘We’re inciting someone to shoot us on stage, and knowing our fucking luck it’ll happen. Lee Harvey Oswald’s cousin will show up in Dallas and we’ll be killed. Meanwhile everyone will continue to call Slash “dangerous”.’