Feedback to the Future

James Oldham / NME
11.04.1998

Almost homicidal sibling rivalry, record company wrangles and, oh yeah, some of the greatest music ever made. That'll be THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, then. And after four years away they're back, back on form and as grumpy as ever.
Chain reaction: JAMES OLDHAM (words) STEVE GULLICK (photos)



Last night, William Reid was arrested in LA for abusing a policeman. Tonight, with his iron-wool hair exploding from his head and a malevolent grin plastered all over his face, he's preparing to entertain a select crowd of journalists and record company executives in New York City.

"Anyone who wants to suck my cock can come backstage afterwards," he begins, brightly.

"That'll be the shortest queue in living memory," mutters his brother Jim, before switching on his guitar and striking a few random chords in a vain attempt to shut him up.

"Has anyone here ever bought a fucking record?" continues William, obliviously.

"Shall we just play a song?" enquires Jim, hopefully.

"Didn't fucking think so," concludes William.

"Right, let's just get on with it then, shall we?" snarls Jim.

At which point William smiles, bends his head over his guitar and obediently begins to crank out the skewered opening riff to 'Cracking Up'. No-one in the audience seems to see the funny side.

The next morning, we stroll into the Paramount Hotel, and see Jim and longterm guitarist Ben Lurie slouched in the far corner of the lobby. William, aged 39, isn't with them. William, apparently, doesn't do interviews any more. Or photographs.

"I know it'll look strange," mutters Jim irritably, "but what we're doing now is all we can do. I can't force a man who's nearly 40 to do anything. I've tried, I've talked to him and I've said, 'I don't agree with what you're doing,' but you know..."

Jim shrugs. What more can he do?

Welcome to the story of The Jesus And Mary Chain, a band who 13 years ago crashed into the music business with 'Psychocandy', one of the greatest debut albums ever made, and never really got over it; two painfully shy and wilfully obstinate brothers from East Kilbride, who've spent the intervening period cultivating the embattled paranoia of Vietnam veterans, and who now find themselves right back where they started: on Creation Records and with everything to prove all over again.

Still, what could be a potentially tragic tale is at least softened by the imminent release of both an astonishing single (the aforementioned 'Cracking Up') and a double album, 'Munki', their best work so far this decade, and a vitriolic encapsulation of all the frustrations of the past decade.

All of this from a band who might have been as big as Oasis if they hadn't been so consistently bloody-minded from the start. A fact that, arguably, only one of them has ever learnt to live with.

 

It could have been so different. If you want to know why the Mary Chain are currently abusing their way across America, you only have to trace a line back to the beginning, to the aftermath of their debut single on Alan McGee's nascent Creation label in 1984, when Jim and William - buoyed by a fatal mix of ambition and naivety - thought the world really was theirs for the taking. A dream that took approximately 12 months to crumble.

"At the time, it was never a serious option to stay on Creation," recalls Jim, by now ensconced at a balcony table above the Paramount foyer, "because they were nothing. We thought that in order to be the biggest we had to sign to a major label, just because of the lack of ambition in the indie scene at the time. We didn't want to stand with those people, all those wee, jerky, masturbatory indie bands in the '80s made us sick. We wanted to be Marc Bolan, they wanted to jerk off in their bedrooms. It was all just so pathetic."

At the start of 1985, The Jesus And Mary Chain signed to Warners. They left Scotland and moved to London, convinced they were about to become the biggest band in the world. Six months later, in the corridors of their new record company, the truth of what was happening began to dawn on them - and The Fear started to close in.

"I always felt so ill at ease there," recalls Jim, gulping down his fifth glass of water. "I always felt like the maintenance man walking around the Warners building. I felt that everyone thought I was there to mend the toilets. I never knew anyone there; there were all these people in Armani suits, it was terrible..."

The Reid brothers were fast finding out that they were unsuited to the slick world of the London music business. Having barely left their family home when they lived in East Kilbride, they now had to work with a whole army of unfamiliar faces. And they had absolutely no idea how to deal with it.

"We were just so paranoid and wary," explains Jim, sighing. "It was kind of like us versus the rest of the world. We didn't trust anyone who worked for Warners, or any record company. We heard that bands like Echo & The Bunnymen would make an album and their record company would say, 'That isn't good enough, make another one', and we just thought, 'Fucking hell, what if they say that to us?'"

Thank heavens, then, that they still had Alan McGee as their manager and confidant.

"I remember around that time, they (Jim and William) took me to a Wendy Burger on Oxford Street, and sacked me over a cup of coffee," McGee recalls later. "They were not a class act. It couldn't have got any cheesier than that. At the time, it was devastating. I mean, I thought I was quite a good manager, because by the age of 24 I'd got them into the Top Five."

Jim shifts uncomfortably on his seat at this memory, because he knows full well that from this point on everything the Mary Chain ever did became an almighty struggle. They junked any idea of being the biggest, cut themselves off from all around them and spent the next decade arguing with anyone who'd listen. A succession of great albums might have continued to flow, but their disillusionment and paranoia just kept growing - William isn't here today because of his "mistreatment" by the press. Jim, on the other hand, is more reasonable. He blames the record company.

"We'd be bringing out the records that we were really proud of," he snarls, "and no-one would know they were out. We'd walk down the street and we'd be surrounded by posters of a hundred other shit bands, you'd turn on the telly and there'd be God knows how many indie bands on it, and we'd be nowhere.

"I mean, wouldn't it have been great if 'Reverence' (their 1992 single - banned from the BBC on grounds of blasphemy) had been on Top Of The Pops? 'Reverence' got in the Top Ten, for fuck's sake. Part of the reason for forming the Mary Chain was to inspire people to get out of their living rooms and form a band. You don't start a band because you've heard a Spice Girls or Gina G record, do you? I remember that feeling when I saw Marc Bolan on Top Of The Pops, it sent shivers up my spine. Who gave a fuck about who else was on that week?"

The final straw arrived with the release of their last proper album, 1994's 'Stoned And Dethroned' - their most poorly-received record both critically and commercially. It was this that finally hastened their departure from Warners and brought us to where we are today: disgruntled and in New York.

 

Still, as we hinted earlier, this isn't a story necessarily destined for a tragic ending. The Reid brothers might be finding ten years' worth of embattled frustration difficult to shake, but the reality is that that's exactly the fuel which has enabled them to keep making great records. 'Munki' might have taken three years instead of the scheduled three weeks to make, but the end result is still a sprawling double-album that reverberates with all the garage simplicity and bleak - self-obsessed - sentiment of their debut, and it's hard to imagine another single this year that'll come close to matching the speed-fuelled Bolan blues of 'Cracking Up'.

You see, even if their frustrations have remained constant, their confidence in their own ability never deserted them. If anything, the opposite's true, and now they're back on Creation, maybe that'll finally begin to show.

"I think that's right," agrees Jim, brightening slightly. "In the beginning I was just so uptight about everything. I loved the idea of being in a band, but the reality of it was very, very frightening to me. I didn't feel good enough, I didn't feel that I could sing or write songs well enough.

"At one stage, I thought I just had to get pissed to perform. I didn't realise that you could just get onstage and play good music. I thought you had to be this larger-than-life cartoon character. I thought I had to be Iggy out of The Stooges and I always felt in the early days that when I was standing there people thought I was a fraud. Now I realise that was all a load of bollocks.

"I actually enjoy being onstage now. I still drink, but there again I drink everywhere. I'm probably an alcoholic. I mean, it's noon now and I'm already thinking about my next drink. I just love alcohol. The difference is that now I don't have to get drunk to go onstage and before it was the only way I could do it."

Of course, some people have suggested that the prospect of seeing two men in their late-30s still trying to replicate the sound of their disillusioned youth is a crime enough in itself - and not a million miles away from the Stones' abysmal, and perennail, freak show.

Jim swigs slowly at his coffee.

"Well, when you go and see the Stones, it is hideous. There's no doubt about that. You're just screaming to yourself, 'Stop! Please stop!', but I think that as long as you're aware of the possibility that you could become a hideous parody of what you once had to offer, I don't think it can ever happen. I think they know how ludicrous they are, but if the Stones stop being the Stones, then what the fuck are they going to do? Do you know what I mean?"

Will you know when to quit?

"The only reason we would stop is because of me and William. If we actually came to blows, then that would be it. I mean, we always nearly kill each other, there's nothing new in that and that's the strength of the band in one way. But on the other hand it's hellish: being cooped up in a recording studio with someone you both love and hate... it's very difficult.

"To be honest with you, we almost split up every time we release a record. You do that whole touring shebang, then you get back to London all frazzled and you think, 'God! What the fuck am I doing? There's got to be a saner existence.' But you heal, you go away and lick your wounds and the next thing you know you've got a couple of songs that you're dying to record. I mean, you're right, this could be our last ever record, but who knows?"

The chances are though, it won't be. For all their bitterness and William's increasingly wayward behaviour (which might have more to do with his on - and currently - off relationship with Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval than anything else), the Reid brothers - or Jim, at least - remain obsessed with the whole idea of rock'n'roll, and just like the Stones, what else could they do? They may have always been too shy (and stubborn) to deal with the circus that surrounds it but, as with Bobby Gillespie, they can't live without it.

And even if the public persona remains one of defiant obstinacy, beneath it is a fervent pride in what they've achieved. Whatever happens now, they remain one of the most influential and important groups of the past decade, every bit the equal of peers such as My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Spiritualized. Indeed, if you were to press Jim hard enough, you might even get him to admit to a certain contentment with his life. There again...

"I don't know if I've ever felt happy," he concludes, gruffly, "but I'm probably calmer these days. Mellowed out, even."

He laughs.

"It sounds hideous, doesn't it? But I don't know, these days I'd rather be mellowed than frenzied. What's wrong with that?"

 

A week later, in the cramped confines of London King's Cross Water Rats, such sentiments seem to have spread through the whole Mary Chain camp. Even William's fury appears to have dissipated - because placed, once again, in front of a crowd of journalists and record company employees, he utters not a single word. Whether down to a sudden (and miraculous) change of heart or a reported abstinance from drink, it's impossible to say, but there's no sign tonight of the abusive and embittered individual who dragged his way screaming across the States.

In his place, there's a band far removed from the shambolic caricature of New York. The Jesus And Mary Chain play 30 minutes of distorted, swaggering noise and head for the door. They might be the same two brothers who've spent the past decade railing hopelessly against a record company that misunderstood them from the start, but they're also the same two freakish loners responsible for some of the greatest music of their generation. Who cares if they never grew up?