the jesus and mary chain
 
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Jesus and Mary Chain: Have they got a prayer?
Michael Goldberg / Rolling Stone (Aus)
04.1986
The gaunt, black-leather-clad members of the Jesus and Mary Chain are perched about the dressing room of the I Beam in San Francisco like four crows, looking dour and ill at ease.

"What are you writing?" demands lead guitarist William Reid, whose matted black hair poufs out from his head in every direction. The somnolent William and his slightly more perky, red-haired brother, Jim, are the masterminds behind the latest U.K. rock sensation, an eighteen-month-old Scottish band that's been dubbed "the new Sex Pistols" by the every-hyperbolic British music press.

With his feet up on a desk, Jim, the singer, pokes idly through a desk drawer, finds a pair of scissors and snips at rubber bands. Little bits of rubber fal onto the floor. He's making a mess for my benefit, which seems perfectly in character with the band's studied attempts at controversy - their name, for starters - or their at-times pointedly irritating sound. That sound mixes classic pop melodies (the Shangri-Las'"Leader of the Pack," for example) with a thick layer of white-noise feedback straight out of the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." Add to that a bad reputation and a number of London gigs that turned into minor riots and you have a commotion guaranteed to perk up the ears of the U.K. rock critics. They have called the band "obnoxious brats" and described their music as "punk rock resurrected."

The band's latest U.K. single, the heavenly, suggestively erotic balled "Just Like Honey," and their brilliant first album, the appropriately titled Psychocandy - recently released in the U.S. - have finally allowed their music to at least compete with their bad rep.

"We've been taken hold of by the media as if we were some kind of plaything," grumbles Jim in a thick Scottish brogue. "To a certain extent we played up to that in the beginning. But it got to the point where we were being portrayed as drunken idiots. It's completely untrue. Just because the music is loaded doesn't mean we're loaded."

They interrupt the interview for a sound check that goes on twice as long as the thirty-minute performance they'll give later this evening. William Reid works hard to get his guitar sound just right. As he kneels before his amplifier, a jagged screech of feedback fills the empty club. He fiddles with various knobs, sculpting the sound unti it has the unsettling impact of an out-of-control vacuum cleaner.

Live, this band is a minimalist's dream: bassist Douglas Hart faces his amp, his back to the audience, for the entire set; drummer Bobby Gillespie stands before one snare drum and one tom-tom, pounding out the simple rhythms; William Reid envelops the club in feedback as Jim stands clutching the microphone with both hands, reciting his lyrics in the somber monotone of a resentful schoolboy.

When the brothers return to the dressing room to finish the inquisition, William mumbles: "Come on, come on. This was to take half an hour. It's gone an hour already. My body is absolutely fucked up. Up all night, [the next word or two are missing due to bad printing] food whenever you can snatch it. [Next bit missing again due to bad print] -er rises and manages to cradle six bottles of beer in his arms before heading out into the freezing winter night.

"Sometimes I like how it feels to get no sleep," says William as he makes his exit. "Right now, it just makes me depressed."

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