Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story

by Zoe Howe

  ‘It was like going to a wake,’ he says. ‘If you’d walked in the room and had been blindfolded, and someone asked, “What’s just happened here?”, you could be given 150 guesses and you wouldn’t guess that these guys had just played a rock’n’roll gig.

  ‘On many tours that’s just what it would be like. Sometimes I’d go, “That was a great gig!” and it’d be like, “He humiliated me there!” It wasn’t always like that, it was great fun as well. But it just shows you the difference between them and a lot of groups, and thank fuck for that.’

  25

  Stoned and Dethroned

  A couple of times on tour I felt my real role was to stop the Reids from killing each other.

  Steve Monti

  Soon after the Rollercoaster tour concluded, plans were afoot for the recording of a new album: Stoned & Dethroned – a title that poetically but succinctly described the way the Reids were feeling at that time. This luminous collection of slow, stoner grooves would appropriately take quite a long time to complete, during which time, according to Mick Houghton, they were somewhat left behind. ‘To some extent, they had been dethroned by Oasis and Britpop, then grunge put the lid on it.’ The Reids might have taken more kindly to the situation had grunge not turned out to be something of a disappointment in itself. William Reid: ‘When Nevermind first happened, people said, “Things are going to be different now; there are going to be other bands like this.” What did you get instead? Stone Temple Fucking Pilots! Sorry, but I’ve got enough money to hire a fucking hit man . . . (Music) is probably healthier now than it was ten years ago, but not healthy enough.’ Creativity aside, however, the Reids weren’t especially healthy at this point themselves thanks to their now day-long proximity to the pub. The plan was originally to go into the studio for two weeks and record an acoustic album. But ‘it took about two years,’ Jim says, ‘and we spent most of that time in the Queen’s Head across the road.’

  William claimed that, at the time, both he and Jim were also suffering ‘breakdowns’, and the making of this album was simply ‘one long bad dream’. Jim seems inclined to agree. ‘My personal life was starting to slide, broken relationships and stuff like that, likewise with William. He got it on with Hope [Sandoval, Mazzy Star’s lead singer] during that record, but he was still going out with Rona. That got messy, as it would.’ William himself would later explain in an interview with musician and friend Dimitri Coats that while he had fallen in love with Hope, ‘it was the unhappiest time in my life. It was horrible, horrible, horrible.’

  Going into the studio had always been a time of abstinence for the Reids in the past, and that clarity had served them well. But, for the first time, this sober industriousness went well and truly out of the window with Stoned & Dethroned, as the title itself indicates.

  ‘We must have got tanked up one day and then did a good day’s work,’ Jim surmises. ‘Then you think, “Fuck, that’s the answer!”, and you spend three weeks at the pub and then think, “Why are we in Elephant and Castle again? Oh yeah, that record!” It was a hard way to go about getting it, but it was a bloody good record.’

  William’s difficult split from Rona, his girlfriend of nine years, also gave the elder Reid an excuse to ‘dive headlong into fucking degeneracy’, as he admitted in his 2000 interview with Uncut’s Nick Hasted. But incredibly, neither bouts of depression nor alcohol abuse affected his ability to write songs. ‘Music comes from your higher self,’ he explains. ‘I never lost the drive to make music. I’d be lying in a pool of vomit, wake up feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the world, play a tape of what I’d done the night before, and be amazed it worked.’

  With Alan Moulder, producer/engineer Dick Meaney, Ben Lurie and drummer Steve Monti in tow, the Reids created something that would become an enduring classic. The record was certainly worth the wait as far as fans were concerned, even if it wasn’t immediately lauded by the press. One especially compelling element of the new record was that they had finally decided to go back to a live sound after making three albums with mostly programmed drums.

  ‘We didn’t use click tracks or machines,’ says Monti. ‘Sometimes it was just me playing with William on guitar. It was an enjoyable process, sparse and organic compared with the recording of Honey’s Dead. Dick [Meany] was quite experimental, and we set up my drums in different places to get a different sound. At one point I was playing in the stairwell.’

  Honey’s Dead might have been the Mary Chain’s ‘last sober album’, but there was still an element of discipline in the making of Stoned & Dethroned, or at least something of a routine. Those keen to preserve the rock’n’roll myth in their minds, look away now.

  ‘We’d turn up at the Drugstore,’ Ben remembers, ‘and then, around 12.30, go up the road to Marks & Spencer and buy lunch, go back and work all afternoon. Microwave our dinner, have half an hour off – Dick liked to watch Brookside – and then work for a few hours and go home. Then on Friday night, there wasn’t really anywhere to go, so we’d go to Pizza Hut for a treat. If fans knew, it would have totally blown the mystique.’ Mystique duly blown. Oh well.

  The relationship between the Reids was deteriorating, however; even their relationships with themselves seemed to be on a downward turn. The melodic strength of Stoned & Dethroned is balanced by bittersweet themes and quiet cry-for-help songs such as ‘Save Me’, ‘God Help Me’ and ‘Hole’. But something that helped the brothers rein in their mutual irritation was the presence of those from outside of the usual circle during these sessions. Stoned & Dethroned would be the Mary Chain’s first album to feature collaborations with other artists, most famously on the bright, velvety boy-girl ballad ‘Sometimes Always’, sung by Jim with Hope Sandoval (although Jim would get quite irritated by her too). Hope was already a ‘good friend’ of William’s at that point, to quote the party line, but the rumour that they were dating soon proved to be correct.

  The other collaboration on Stoned & Dethroned would be ‘God Help Me’, a tender ballad reminiscent in both melody and sentiment of Television’s ‘Guiding Light’. Shane McGowan of The Pogues would take care of vocals on ‘God Help Me,’ or at least he would once Jim Reid finally pinned him down. When it came to drunkenness, the Reids had met their match in MacGowan, and it took time to secure him for a session.

  ‘We sent him a demo months before,’ Jim says. ‘I would call him up. I’d go, “Shane? It’s Jim,” and he’d say, “What? Jim who?” “Jim from the Mary Chain. Did you get the demo?” “What demo?” I’d go, “We sent you a demo, you said you would sing with us . . .” “Oh! No, I haven’t listened to it yet.” So I’d say, “I’ll call you tomorrow.” And for about a month it would be exactly the same every time I called. “Shane? It’s Jim.” “What? Jim who?” Over and over again.’

  A meeting was finally arranged at the Good Mixer pub in Camden, then a haunt of the boozed-up stars of Britpop, and Jim, William and Mick Houghton turned up to meet possibly the palest man in rock’n’roll. Nervous, Jim downed a few whiskies and ‘was swaying by the time Shane arrived’, as he remembers, safe in the knowledge that Shane would probably arrive in the same state. ‘But Shane arrived stone cold sober,’ Jim laughs. But after buying Shane his drink of choice – a quadruple whiskey – the plan to record ‘God Help Me’ was soon arranged. However, Shane still hadn’t learned the song by the time it came to lay down his vocal.

  ‘It was, “Shane, shall we go for a take?” “What does it go like?”’ Jim says. ‘Anyway, after many takes and playing the tape to Shane, he got it and it was fucking magic.’

  Another stand-out track on Stoned & Dethroned is the song ‘Bullet Lovers’, inspired by a news clip William had seen while on tour in Los Angeles two years previously. ‘It was bizarre,’ he told Melody Maker in 1994. ‘There were two guys being interviewed, without any disguises, and they were drive-by killers. I was lying in bed having breakfast, and I was thinking, This is live, the police could be on their way to get you, you dumb motherfuckers. One of
them, when he shot people, his girlfriend got so horny that they’d go off somewhere and fuck.’ Sex and death: inspiring William Reid’s songwriting since 1982.

  While Stoned & Dethroned was in the making, the Mary Chain released the compilation The Sound Of Speed, their first collection since Barbed Wire Kisses. The Sound Of Speed featured singles and rarities including covers of ‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘My Girl’ and ‘Guitarman’, an acoustic version of the Honey’s Dead track ‘Teenage Lust’, and ‘Write Record Release Blues’, which deftly describes the Reids’ weariness at the perpetual dilemma of being in-demand, pressured pop stars who don’t relish the schmoozing side of the business.

  Also on the compilation, which would come out in August 1993, were ‘Snakedriver’ and ‘Something I Can’t Have’, two tracks recorded with The Gun Club’s Nick Sanderson, the drummer they had rejected at audition some years before. The EP Sound Of Speed, featuring the tracks with Nick, would be unveiled just prior to the collection and the Mary Chain, therefore, had to greet their public, something they were in no mood to do. Antagonism behind the scenes was mounting, not least because of William’s new relationship and a growing wariness regarding the machinations of a music industry that was moving on without them. They emerged into the limelight growling, wired and paranoid.

  To coincide with the release of Sound Of Speed, The Jesus and Mary Chain were invited to appear on the long-running, hugely popular music show Later . . . With Jools Holland to perform ‘Snakedriver’. The show would provide excellent exposure, and the Mary Chain were even looking forward to it. It was good to be back at BBC Television Centre. They might have been banned from Top of the Pops back in 1987, but they were older now and more experienced, although that didn’t mean they were drinking less. Unfortunately, technical difficulties, gallons of booze and the resulting turmoil culminated in yet another entry in the Mary Chain’s ‘catalogue of fucking disasters’, as Jim puts it.

  ‘We got there all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,’ says Jim. ‘We did everything we were told to do, but there were technical problems when it came to the Mary Chain. We did a rehearsal in the afternoon and it was spot on, and then you do the show. They go round everybody, and then when it came to us it was, “Ah right, fuck it, we can’t fix this.”’

  ‘At first everyone just thought it was the Mary Chain being difficult but it was the monitors that the show had hired in,’ adds Ben. ‘So they did the show as if it was live, introduced the Mary Chain – except we weren’t there, because they couldn’t film our bit. Once it was all over, at around 10 or 11 p.m., they were going to fix the problem and film our bit as though we were part of the show.’

  The Mary Chain had been at Television Centre for twelve hours by this point, and through sheer boredom, much of that time had been spent drinking. By the time they were required again, Jim was, unsurprisingly, ‘slaughtered. By midnight I can hardly stand, and then I start getting paranoid: “How come everybody else got treated OK?”’

  One of the other artists featured on the show was Paul Weller, who had, as you may remember, bumped into the band six years earlier at the BBC when they were both on Top of the Pops, making an obscene gesture behind their backs as they passed. During the hours of down-time, the Reids wandered outside into the iconic ‘doughnut’ courtyard and an argument ensued. As always, no one remembers why it happened; perhaps it was just something to do. Just in time, Weller, who had noted their technical difficulties during the rehearsal, decided to wade in to offer some helpful advice.

  Jim says: ‘Me and William were screaming at each other, then Weller came by and went, “Mate, you shouldn’t put your hands on the microphone, that’s what makes it feed back.” And then he walked away. Me and William just fell about laughing. It defused the situation.’

  Finally it was time to try for a take. ‘By that time I’m wobbling,’ Jim says. ‘And I was feeling hard done by, and I’m swinging at these £50,000 cameras . . . But we did it. William’s guitar was great, my singing was awful, everybody was fucked off with us. Everybody. Management, record company, the BBC . . . I remember waking up with the most horrendous hangover the next day, and that feeling when you can’t remember exactly what you did, but you know that you made an absolute fucking disgrace of yourself.’

  *

  By the following year the Mary Chain would still be completing the B-sides for Stoned & Dethroned, but they had at least put out ‘Sometimes Always’, sung by Jim and Hope, in July 1994 as the lead single. It reached number 22 in the charts.

  ‘I’d written this song that sounded to me like Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra,’ William told Melody Maker. ‘We’d always liked Hope’s voice. We asked her years ago to be on one of the records, but there was never a song that suited. Then this one came along and it felt right. At first I felt it was a bit too cute, too light a story. But when we recorded it, Hope and Jim sang and they just transcended it.’ The demo was still ‘bleak’, though, in William’s opinion, and even when they had recorded the track the Reids were surprised it worked as a single.

  It was decided that a new bass player was called for in time for the album launch on 15 August 1994 (almost exactly ten years since the band’s first gig at the Living Room), with Ben Lurie moving back to guitar. As usual, the auditions weren’t the easiest of processes, and Lincoln Fong, formerly their live sound engineer, was eventually brought back into the fold. At that point Lincoln had been working with a group called Moose, who were ‘having a quiet period’.

  The launch took place at the famous Soho club Madame Jojo’s, formerly a louche, colourful haunt for drag queens but now frequently used for gigs and club nights. Shane MacGowan joined the Mary Chain to sing ‘God Help Me’, turning up to rehearse at the soundcheck with, Steve Monti recalls, ‘a clinking Sainsbury’s carrier bag full of booze. He was swaying, and I was convinced he wouldn’t make it on to the stage, let alone sing the song. He managed it.

  ‘After we played I said, “I’ll buy you a drink,”’ continues Monti. ‘But he was reluctant to go out there because he didn’t want to be mobbed.’ Monti headed backstage to the dressing-rooms, used more frequently by kitsch cabaret performers than moribund rock stars. It was full of all manner of disguises, albeit conspicuous ones. ‘I put a wig on Shane that I found among the transvestite gear and he went out with me, wearing this huge camp wig,’ says Monti. ‘Of course everyone recognized him, but he wore the wig all night.’ Comedy toupees at a Mary Chain gig. This had to be a first. And no doubt a last.

  The NME’s David Quantick hailed Stoned & Dethroned as ‘Iggy Pop’s country album or Bob Dylan’s Lou Reed tribute,’ but Mick Houghton, whose final press campaign for the Mary Chain was for this album, felt that while the record was great, ‘it never got appraised properly at the time. They made a beautifully crafted record, but it was a record the press didn’t want them to make. Had they not taken so long and stuck to the plan, it might have been different.’

  The Mary Chain worked in their own sweet time, but the media had meanwhile been swept off their feet by a new wave of Britpop, shoegaze and grunge bands. Things had changed. William, however, now felt relatively serene about the shifts that had taken place while they were making their album. ‘I think we always felt more connected to what was going on than we do now,’ he told Melody Maker’s Kevin Westerberg. ‘Now I realise we’ve always been disconnected from everything. So if we go away for two years, and there’s five new fashions in that time, I feel like it doesn’t matter to us.’

  Stoned & Dethroned, in a way, seems to draw a line in the sand – there’s a feeling of the Reids rising above the past; the Mary Chain were coming of age. Talking to Interview after the album’s release, Jim admitted the record reflected ‘the end result of the old lifestyle’, and William expanded on the theme: ‘On a song like “Girlfriend” which is about drugs and junkies, the guy’s leaving the girl because she’s fucked-up, and he’s decided he’s not any more. Maybe you see that as us saying, “Enough is enough”. You can only
be fucked-up for so long before you realise you’re gonna have to not be so fucked-up or you’re gonna die. It has something to do with getting older.’

  On Stoned & Dethroned it was possible to detect at times a growing sense of self-acceptance, packaged in self-deprecating humour – such as in the slow, swaying ‘Feeling Lucky’ (‘I’ve got someone who knows me/And still wants to hold me’). The youthful arrogance that the Mary Chain did so well had morphed into something a little mellower, albeit still powerful.

  While the Reid brothers were feeling philosophical about some aspects of their lives, something they weren’t too comfortable with was the fact that Chris Morrison, then their manager, was also managing the now hugely successful Blur. The Reids liked Blur – they had invited them on the Rollercoaster tour when others wrinkled their noses at them, after all – but the Reids finally decided to let their manager go, because, as Chris remembers it, they felt they would be overshadowed.

  ‘Which was a mistake,’ says Chris. ‘I was gutted to see them go. I was very fond of the Mary Chain. They’re a couple of complete lunatics. They made great music. Some of their stuff was remarkable. There were idiosyncrasies that were a nightmare at first, but it was a great time.’

  There was no replacement in mind; in fact, William didn’t want a manager at all. They attempted to work with Charlie Charlton, Suede’s manager, and Bennie Brongers, who used to be the Mary Chain’s tour manager, but as Ben Lurie remembers, ‘William was really against it, and in the end he put his foot down and said, “I don’t want anyone to manage us.” And really, we were just an unmanageable mess at that stage.’