Smile, The Jesus And Mary Chain Love You
Brantley Bardin / Interview
12.1994
12.1994
Some candid talking with the suddenly acoustic and suddenly friendly Reid brothers
Hated and adored in equal measure, the Jesus and Mary Chain screeched onto the scene ten years ago with the release of their beyond-audacious single, "Upside Down". Sheets of violent feedback guitar yowling over a poppy Beach Boys riff, the song served not as a mere recording but as an aural introduction to the world of Jim and William Reid - two Scottish boys deep into death, despair, the Velvet Underground, and drugs, drugs, drugs. Establishing their name with 20-minute concerts that led straight to tabloid stories of riots and rampant nihilism, then buttressing the buzz with Good Quote ("twenty minutes of us is worth any amount of money"), the Reids went on to deliver on their seemingly arrogant claims of greatness by releasing a bona fide masterpiece, 1985's Psychocandy. Five (also great, if underappreciated), albums later, they're back with Stoned and Dethroned (American), a breezy collection of seventeen acoustic guitar-based songs, including the Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra-inspired duet, "Sometimes Always". That song's guest vocalist, Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, is also William's current main squeeze.
The day after a recent sold-out gig in New York, I somewhat tremblingly met with the Reids. After all, their reputation for not being the friendliest and most forthcoming boys on the planet precedes them. Happily, they surprised me with a shocking amount of candour and (gasp!) laughter. Not that the thoughts were always pretty...
Brantley Bardin: The show last night was an hour and a half long, and you used to say that there isn't a band good enough to play longer than twenty minutes. When did you change your mind?
Jim Reid: Probably when we got more than twenty minutes worth of songs. Actually, back then the kind of music we were making was like, you walk onstage, you turn everything up, and you're practically abusing the audience with feedback and white noise, like one big explosion. And whoever heard of an hour and a half explosion?
BB: After Psychocandy, some people thought the Jesus and Mary Chain was supposed to overdose, never make another record, and basically die young and beautiful. Here you are ten years later.
William Reid: Yeah, apparently we'll live to be old and ugly.
BB: I always thought you should be huge. You've written a lot of hit-sounding songs, but radio and MTV are reluctant to play you. Any theories?
WR: We have far-flung theories of supernatural goings-on, but probably it's a combination of bad luck, bad timing, and us being sometimes not...the most accessible people.
BB: Neither is Michael Stipe.
WR: I think he's more friendly than us. When we're pissed off we're pissed off, and it doesn't matter if we're being introduced to the head of the record company or the guy who owns MTV. We've made enemies because of our sincerity and lack of bullshit. I've always thought it was a sad situation that I'm encouraged to pretend I'm happy when I'm pissed off. God, this sounds so negative.
BB: What's the biggest misconception about the band?
WR: That we're always depressed, always miserable, always aloof. Despite what I've just said (laughs), if you saw us in the dressing room after a show with a beer in each hand, you'd see that's not true.
BB: How much do you think the name of the band has to do with the way people perceive you? To this day, when I wear a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt, people on the street look shocked.
JR: When we started, we wanted to be the kind of band that grabbed people, that said, "Look at us. Listen to us." But we didn't choose it because we thought people would be burning our albums and saying , "Blasphemers!"
WR: I think it's a very tasteful name. I mean, if you want to use the word Jesus and upset people, you'd call the band Jesus Erected or Jesus on a Stake. I'm always shocked when people say it's blasphemous simply to use the words Jesus and Mary.
BB: Well, there's also the matter of the name in combination with your themes, i.e. sex, drugs, death, and violence. The whole package taken together could be considered "blasphemous".
WR: To me, "blasphemous" means to show an intense disrespect, even hatred, toward God. I've never felt that way.
JR: If you actually study all the religious references in our songs, nothing is terribly disrespectful. Even a lyric like "I want to die like Jesus Christ" from "Reverence" - 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.
WR: And another thing that 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, and I know that - I've always felt that.
BB: OK, boys, now let's really talk religion.
WR: I believe in God, but it's like, "What if there's no God?" Or, "What if God doesn't like me?" If I truly had faith in God I'd be happy, because I'd believe I wasn't going to die. I'd get to seventy and then go somewhere else.
JR: I think religious belief is some sort of mental illness, some sort of unrecognized schizophrenia. Your mind is so freaked-out, so fucked-up by the thought of dying and nothingness, that it just invents heaven. It's a weird area, religion.
BB: You guys have always been quite out about your recreational drug use, but half of the lyrics on Stoned & Dethroned sound like you've gone to a twelve-step program. It's almost a denial of what came before.
JR: It's more the end result of the old lifestyle - it's where it leads. It's not denial.
WR: I see why you think it's denial, because on a song like "Girlfriend" which is about drugs and junkies, the guy's leaving the girl beause she's fucked-up, and he's decided he's not anymore. And maybe you see that as us saying, "Enough is enough." You can only be fucked-up for so long before you realize you're gonna have to not be so fucked-up or you're gonna die. It has something to do with getting older.
BB: Do you miss getting fucked-up?
WR: What I'm saying is, you can be aware you're fucked-up and want to change, but you just can't do it. I probably get more fucked-up these days - in the last year - than I have in the past ten years.
BB: So a song like "Till It Shines" with its lyric "Junk the junk, love the love," is not necessarily where William is at today?
WR: It's where William wants to be. In a song, you write a person you think you want to be. That lyric is so nice and romantic to me, but a lot of people wouldn't say I'm too nice or romantic.
BB: Actually, I always thought there was an overlooked romantic streak in your music.
JR: Anyone who has ever written a song is a romantic. A song isn't life - it's supposed to depict a part of life. Anything that isn't real life is romanticism. Anything that's under the heading of art is romanticism. Art exists to make us feel exalted and above bunny rabbits.
BB: Another thing that jumps out of Stoned & Dethroned is its optimism. In general, would you say you're happier these days?
JR: Nope.
BB: So I guess you still stand by one of your old quotes, happiness is "an eternal blowjob"?
JR: (laughs) That was the wisest thing I ever said.
BB: How important is "being cool" to you today?
WR: Not as important as it was. But if you've got the choice of being cool or not cool, choose cool. But if you are playing cool, don't try to force it. Like, last night, I was onstage playing "Reverence," and I was thumpin' away, showing off, and I walked offstage and threw my guitar down. I thought I was the coolest fuck that ever walked the earth. But just as I got offstage, I banged my head on a light. And I felt like, Well, I deserved that. God was watching me and said, "You fucker, you're not so cool."
Hated and adored in equal measure, the Jesus and Mary Chain screeched onto the scene ten years ago with the release of their beyond-audacious single, "Upside Down". Sheets of violent feedback guitar yowling over a poppy Beach Boys riff, the song served not as a mere recording but as an aural introduction to the world of Jim and William Reid - two Scottish boys deep into death, despair, the Velvet Underground, and drugs, drugs, drugs. Establishing their name with 20-minute concerts that led straight to tabloid stories of riots and rampant nihilism, then buttressing the buzz with Good Quote ("twenty minutes of us is worth any amount of money"), the Reids went on to deliver on their seemingly arrogant claims of greatness by releasing a bona fide masterpiece, 1985's Psychocandy. Five (also great, if underappreciated), albums later, they're back with Stoned and Dethroned (American), a breezy collection of seventeen acoustic guitar-based songs, including the Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra-inspired duet, "Sometimes Always". That song's guest vocalist, Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, is also William's current main squeeze.
The day after a recent sold-out gig in New York, I somewhat tremblingly met with the Reids. After all, their reputation for not being the friendliest and most forthcoming boys on the planet precedes them. Happily, they surprised me with a shocking amount of candour and (gasp!) laughter. Not that the thoughts were always pretty...
Brantley Bardin: The show last night was an hour and a half long, and you used to say that there isn't a band good enough to play longer than twenty minutes. When did you change your mind?
Jim Reid: Probably when we got more than twenty minutes worth of songs. Actually, back then the kind of music we were making was like, you walk onstage, you turn everything up, and you're practically abusing the audience with feedback and white noise, like one big explosion. And whoever heard of an hour and a half explosion?
BB: After Psychocandy, some people thought the Jesus and Mary Chain was supposed to overdose, never make another record, and basically die young and beautiful. Here you are ten years later.
William Reid: Yeah, apparently we'll live to be old and ugly.
BB: I always thought you should be huge. You've written a lot of hit-sounding songs, but radio and MTV are reluctant to play you. Any theories?
WR: We have far-flung theories of supernatural goings-on, but probably it's a combination of bad luck, bad timing, and us being sometimes not...the most accessible people.
BB: Neither is Michael Stipe.
WR: I think he's more friendly than us. When we're pissed off we're pissed off, and it doesn't matter if we're being introduced to the head of the record company or the guy who owns MTV. We've made enemies because of our sincerity and lack of bullshit. I've always thought it was a sad situation that I'm encouraged to pretend I'm happy when I'm pissed off. God, this sounds so negative.
BB: What's the biggest misconception about the band?
WR: That we're always depressed, always miserable, always aloof. Despite what I've just said (laughs), if you saw us in the dressing room after a show with a beer in each hand, you'd see that's not true.
BB: How much do you think the name of the band has to do with the way people perceive you? To this day, when I wear a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt, people on the street look shocked.
JR: When we started, we wanted to be the kind of band that grabbed people, that said, "Look at us. Listen to us." But we didn't choose it because we thought people would be burning our albums and saying , "Blasphemers!"
WR: I think it's a very tasteful name. I mean, if you want to use the word Jesus and upset people, you'd call the band Jesus Erected or Jesus on a Stake. I'm always shocked when people say it's blasphemous simply to use the words Jesus and Mary.
BB: Well, there's also the matter of the name in combination with your themes, i.e. sex, drugs, death, and violence. The whole package taken together could be considered "blasphemous".
WR: To me, "blasphemous" means to show an intense disrespect, even hatred, toward God. I've never felt that way.
JR: If you actually study all the religious references in our songs, nothing is terribly disrespectful. Even a lyric like "I want to die like Jesus Christ" from "Reverence" - 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.
WR: And another thing that 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, and I know that - I've always felt that.
BB: OK, boys, now let's really talk religion.
WR: I believe in God, but it's like, "What if there's no God?" Or, "What if God doesn't like me?" If I truly had faith in God I'd be happy, because I'd believe I wasn't going to die. I'd get to seventy and then go somewhere else.
JR: I think religious belief is some sort of mental illness, some sort of unrecognized schizophrenia. Your mind is so freaked-out, so fucked-up by the thought of dying and nothingness, that it just invents heaven. It's a weird area, religion.
BB: You guys have always been quite out about your recreational drug use, but half of the lyrics on Stoned & Dethroned sound like you've gone to a twelve-step program. It's almost a denial of what came before.
JR: It's more the end result of the old lifestyle - it's where it leads. It's not denial.
WR: I see why you think it's denial, because on a song like "Girlfriend" which is about drugs and junkies, the guy's leaving the girl beause she's fucked-up, and he's decided he's not anymore. And maybe you see that as us saying, "Enough is enough." You can only be fucked-up for so long before you realize you're gonna have to not be so fucked-up or you're gonna die. It has something to do with getting older.
BB: Do you miss getting fucked-up?
WR: What I'm saying is, you can be aware you're fucked-up and want to change, but you just can't do it. I probably get more fucked-up these days - in the last year - than I have in the past ten years.
BB: So a song like "Till It Shines" with its lyric "Junk the junk, love the love," is not necessarily where William is at today?
WR: It's where William wants to be. In a song, you write a person you think you want to be. That lyric is so nice and romantic to me, but a lot of people wouldn't say I'm too nice or romantic.
BB: Actually, I always thought there was an overlooked romantic streak in your music.
JR: Anyone who has ever written a song is a romantic. A song isn't life - it's supposed to depict a part of life. Anything that isn't real life is romanticism. Anything that's under the heading of art is romanticism. Art exists to make us feel exalted and above bunny rabbits.
BB: Another thing that jumps out of Stoned & Dethroned is its optimism. In general, would you say you're happier these days?
JR: Nope.
BB: So I guess you still stand by one of your old quotes, happiness is "an eternal blowjob"?
JR: (laughs) That was the wisest thing I ever said.
BB: How important is "being cool" to you today?
WR: Not as important as it was. But if you've got the choice of being cool or not cool, choose cool. But if you are playing cool, don't try to force it. Like, last night, I was onstage playing "Reverence," and I was thumpin' away, showing off, and I walked offstage and threw my guitar down. I thought I was the coolest fuck that ever walked the earth. But just as I got offstage, I banged my head on a light. And I felt like, Well, I deserved that. God was watching me and said, "You fucker, you're not so cool."
