the jesus and mary chain
 
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Jesus Christ Pop Stars
Jason Josphes / The Rocket
10.06.1998
"If we made Psychocandy II, we'd probably be more SUCCESSFUL career-wise in terms of money and stuff like that." -Ben Lurie


Jim Reid snatches my notebook off the table and looks at my questions before I can even begin to ask them. "It's usually little bite-size chunks of me that don't seem to represent me," the Jesus and Mary Chain vocalist/guitarist was quoted as saying once in reference to interviews, so I'm careful not to ladle out the gristle. The band is in Seattle to play a show at the Breakroom, and Reid and longtime Mary Chain guitarist Ben Lurie, sitting in a noisy downtown bar, have been selected to do the press rounds for their upcoming release, Munki, their first full-length in almost four years.

From their humble beginnings in the early '80s, the Jesus and Mary Chain have ascended from stalwart underground legends to...stalwart underground legends. Really, this rock superstar stuff can be a taxing chore in terms of "How long does it take?," but Reid, brother and vocalist/guitarist William, Lurie and current drummer Nick Sanderson are more than willing to make a go of it with a little help from their new label, Sub Pop.

The move to a small label may seem like a step down for a group that's released six full-length albums on Warner Bros., but don't tell that to Reid. "We started making the record and we took some stuff to them and they said, 'Well, we don't like it. Change it or leave.' So we left. It's as simple as that. It's worked out for the best. Everything's been going well [with Sub Pop] so far. We're in that glorious period before it's released."

"I'm a natural pessimist," Lurie adds, "so you make a record, and you always think it's fantastic and going to do well, but you always think that. It's healthy to be pessimistic. Our proudest moment is an ever-changing thing, it's the latest thing we've done. We always end up looking back and saying, 'Well, we made mistakes there,' but you do the best you can at the time. Of course, you look back and it changes."

So let's take a look back, shall we? The Jesus and Mary Chain began as a two-piece in 1984. The brothers Reid were stuck in their hometown of East Kilbride, Scotland with no jobs and a disgust for the current state of pop music. (William's disgust continues to this day; he refuses to take part in anything but the music, signified by the empty chair at the interview.) They began hashing out demo tapes that went nowhere. Within a year they relocated to London, fleshed out into a four piece (with Douglas Hart on bass and Murray Dalglish on drums, both long-departed), and made a notorious name for themselves crashing gigs claiming to be the support act. Rarely playing sets longer than 25 minutes, the band jacked up the feedback quotient to mask its simple, Velvet Underground-like pop songs. Eventually finding a big fan in the form of Alan McGee, the band was offered the chance to put a single out on McGee's legendary label, Creation, and the result was "Upside Down," a pop song steeped in white noise that suddenly turned the band's luck around big time. Almost overnight, the majors came a-knockin' and the Jesus and Mary Chain hitched a ride on the Warner Bros. train to record Psychocandy.

Psychocandy falls into the delicately uncomfortable category of an album talked up by diehard pop music fans as exciting and influential, but which never found a place in the hearts of your basic radio listeners. While they scored minor hits during the next 10 years with singles like "Reverence" and "Head On" (the latter known more as a song the Pixies covered), and played the second Lollapalooza, the Chain have been relegated to riding in the back seat of U.K. rock 'n' roll superstardom.

Therein lies the strange cross that this particular Jesus has had to carry. The casual fans of rock 'n' roll music don't know that today's big boys of U.K. rock--Radiohead and the Verve, for example--owe a huge debt in sheer sonic muscle to the Jesus and Mary Chain. Meanwhile, many of the Chain's longtime fans are still stuck in 1985, waiting to see if the next album will be the one to tell Psychocandy to rescind the crown of aural greatness. "It does get a bit frustrating," Lurie opines. "It's a great record, but it's frustrating, 10 years later being known for that record. We don't make the same record over and over again. If we made Psychocandy II, we'd probably be more successful career-wise in terms of money and stuff like that."

Hopefully, Munki will be greeted with enthusiasm beyond the pale of critics and fanboys; it's the best album the band has recorded since 1992's Honey's Dead. It's still the same joyous family affair, with Jim playing Noel to William's Liam (sorry) and an album name courtesy of the boys' sister. "We were looking for an album title that was very un-Mary Chain, no Candy no Guns, no Honey," Reid offers. The title may be atypical, but all the fizzy chords, narcoleptic vocal delivery and sharp hooks are firmly in place.

"I love rock 'n' roll/I love what I do/I'll be rock 'n' roll/Gets me where I'm going," Jim sings in the album's lead-off track, the Ramones-on-cough-syrup anthem "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." It's a mite gentler than classics like "Taste the Floor," but that dirty rock 'n' roll heart still pumps purple poison through the Reids. Sixteen tracks later, Munki shuts down with "I Hate Rock 'n' Roll." And so the obvious question is asked: At the end of the day, is it love or hate?

"Both," Reid quips immediately. "What can I hate? What goes along with being in a band? You have to do all this stuff that doesn't feel very comfortable. We love music, we love being able to travel all over the world and do what we do."

Such as?

"Videos have destroyed rock 'n' roll music. You have to make this like a record, like you're subverting your soul to make this cartoon, piece of shit, three-minute film that goes with it."

"MTV killed music," Lurie adds. "You get Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and the guy has to make a video for it."

Well, probably not. I doubt there's a teenager in America who is anxious to see Van prancing around shirtless, and if there is we've probably fucked him up with algebra classes. Reid and Lurie don't go so far as to say they're not going to make another video, but the tour that wasn't supposed to happen for Munki has gotten the green light, so who knows? The one thing that gets cemented with Munki--and indeed, has been delivered time and time again over the past 14 years--is this band's unwavering commitment to chiseling out perfect, albeit clangorous pop songs--something Reid knows a thing or two about.

"The perfect pop song," he says, speaking slowly and deliberately into the tape recorder, "has got Maureen Tucker playing drums, Ramones-type melodies, Eric Clapton's severed head hanging from the drum kit; it's got Alan Vega singing, and it sold no records. Nobody bought them."

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