Midnight Express
Andrew Perry / Select
01.1993
01.1993
the nocturnal noise-fest that is the Rollercoaster tour rattles into New York. In the front car, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Curve, and Spiritualized...
--On the door, it says "Curve--this one's yours." In the four-star dressing room deep in the bowels of New York City's Roseland Ballroom, the five members of the group are draped around with varying degrees of knackeredness, but a shared, if glazed, look of contentment. Surely they're not enjoying life on the road?
Maybe it's because, after two long days without, the band's grass consignment has just come in, and boy, it's a whopper. Only enough to see The Orb through a soundcheck maybe, but to most earthlings, they've got a stash the size of Central Park. Each of them is either skinning up, toking or too stoned to do either. And they only started when they came offstage ten minutes ago. Those Hollywood-style bulbs around the mirror are shining much brighter now.
"This is the best tour of my life," gushes Toni Halliday from her pew on the floor, as Dean Garcia looks on from the sofa, quiet and alert. "I mean, the Spiritualized LP is my favourite album of the year, and the Mary Chain are my all-time favourite band. It's perfect. I don't want it to end. We're in tour heaven, basically."
But what about the technical hitches, the hangovers, the long drives, the hotel reservations that don't exist, the irregular eating and sleeping patterns, the paranoia, the horror, the soul fear? Something must have gone wrong...
Oh, there's a weird guy at the door sporting the sort of rough, fashion-free haircut given to hippies on their first day in Vietnam--the degradation crop. But he looks more than happy as well, showing his teeth in a fixed, almost piss-takingly broad smile. Images from Tom & Jerry spring to mind--Tom just before his shattered teeth tinkle to the floor.
"Alright?" someone asks. "What are you doing?"
"Just been talking to Jim." He pauses. "Jim The Grin."
Hearty giggles all round. Jim Reid maybe?
"Yeah, Jim The Grin," he continues poetically, "we should put him in the bin."
Hysteria. Tears of merriment. But hang on. That t-shirt's familiar. It's grey like the guy's been wearing it for four years, and the big, black letters on it say 'DRUGS NOT JOBS'. It's Jason Pierce of Spiritualized. He's supposed to be a Black Belt in unremitting miserabilism, so what the hell's he got to smile about? This must be tour heaven. Welcome aboard Rollercoaster USA. It could be less hairy than expected.
Last time around, you'll recall, when Jim and William Reid arranged Rollercoaster Mk1 for the UK last spring, things weren't quite so rosy. The bands didn't know each other too well, and only the Mary Chain had a fixed position on the bill--at the top, with an enviable light show behind them.
The other three acts were switched around every night, the first going on at a vibe-unfriendly 7pm. Nobody wanted to follow My Bloody Valentine's nightmare monochord climax, Blur had to deal with being seen as the joker in the packs, and Dinosaur Jr... Well, they probably didn't get it together to cause much hassle, but what started out with the best, four-way, VFM, brain-blowing intentions seemed to result in tension, confusion and (rumour has it) financial loss.
Perhaps shrewder, more realistic planning went into the Stateside venture. The running order doesn't change--Spiritualized at eight, Curve at nine, then the Mary Chain--and that's fine by all concerned. As well as Toni Halliday's seal of approval, Spiritualized boast Jim Reid as one their biggest fans. They just failed to make it off the shortlist on to Rollercoaster UK. Curve and the Mary Chain, meanwhile, go back a long way with their shared production assistant, Alan Moulder, who lives with Toni.
"It's so cool," Halliday enthuses, "everybody's just doing their thing, going on and playing. There's no egos or bickering at all. Nobody gives a fuck, really."
When the doors open at 7:30, mind, it's not looking so cool. There isn't a queue. The huge, absurdly tanned doorman sings the words "Honey's Dead" with mocking atonality. Presumably this means he doesn't approve of musicians who dress in black and have no muscles.
You'd think even Jason and his laissez-faire troupe might take umbrage at hitting the stage in the 3,200 capacity all-standing Roseland to a crowd of precisely five people. It's said, too, that when they've seen ad-posters for the tour, the band have often had to add their name in with marker pens. And they've all had the 'flu.
New York's lowlife must've had trouble dragging themselves away from the daily hour of Roseanne on Fox 4 between six and seven. They gradually crawl from the woodwork during Spiritualized's 40 minutes, which acts as a low-key overture to their evening--an understated role for a set that's relaxed but relentlessly ambitious.
With a six-strong line-up that includes sax-player Will Gregory, Pierce's arrangements are complex and irrepressibly lavish for a beery nocturnal noise-fest.
They begin with a new gem, featuring Sean Cook on the bluest harmonica in North America, and soon pump out the fluctuating aural dazzle of 'Medication', 'Angel Sigh' and a cracking version of Spacemen 3's 'Walkin' with Jesus'. Still, it's clouded--and we aren't talking little fluffy ones here--by the fact that they don't have time to kill between numbers to get things right. When Jason straps on a fresh axe for the finale, his amp instantly packs up. Exit Spiritualized, tangibly pissed-off. 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by The Beach Boys comes over the PA.
Even with three bands who are mates instead of four who aren't, and without the chaos of a rotating bill, Rollercoaster's US sibling is proving a bit of problem child.
"It's a waste of time comparing the two tours," claims Jim Reid after the show. "This one shouldn't have been called Rollercoaster, it was a misunderstanding."
"We didn't want Rollercoaster to become like Lollapalooza--every fuckin' year," adds brother William, heaving a sigh that'd fill a petrol tank. "No thank you. We don't want it to become an international institution. This is just a bunch of bands touring together--that's the way I see it. If we'd called it Shindig, it'd still be the same."
The Mary Chain, notoriously road-shy but permanently touring since February, had a pretty bad time on this summer's Lollapalooza. They had little say in the travelling festival's wider aims and had to perform among macho, MTV-hungry stagers like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Chili Peppers--in daylight.
Perhaps their idyll has taken a bit of a kicking in '92, but they're clearly trying to offer a better class of tour here, with a crap-support exclusion policy and good music in between (from The Pastels and Pixies to The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart). Surely they're after a sense of event?
"Aye, most gigs are too boring," Jim agrees, warming with anger. "People don't give it any consideration. The band come off, the lights go up and everybody's standing around with pints of beer. Anything to get away from that. We thought of keeping the house lights down, putting coloured strobes in the audience and cranking up the music like it's a club or something."
"Did we do that tonight?" William asks.
Jim: "No, I was just saying..."
William: "No, but you remember we told them..."
Jim: "Pfff..."
William: "We give people these elaborate instructions, and they ignore them and do what the fuck they want anyway."
You wouldn't guess it, but Curve's tour hasn't been blemish-free. Last night Lawrence Taylor, their ligthing man, heard his wife was seriously ill and had to fly home. Without him, their illumination is in some disarray--mid-way through, they're playing under the glare of two hand-held torches.
It's rather effective, because as a live combo they're in outrageously fine fettle, blasting off with 'Doppleganger' and 'Die Like A Dog', cooling down on mellower stuff like 'Sandpit' and slamming to the end with 'Coast Is Clear', 'Fait Accompli' and 'Ten Little Girls'. Often regaled as callous and calculated, they have a warm presence that's reciprocated by a now extensive moshpit which incorporates every race, age and sexual denomination. At one point, a ten-year-old black girl surfs overhead.
Great, well-received shows like this probably explain best why these bands are so into Rollercoaster USA. Later, the brothers Reid will have to admit, however grudgingly, that they're in shit-hot form too.
In England, they have that ancient reputation for riots and shambolic behaviour to live up to, but as anyone who saw their early gigs will testify, they were (very exciting) rubbish in those days.
Their streamlined barrage of abandoned riff trash and bloody noise owes its roots to junkpile Americana, so the Yanks are far readier to tip their hat in appreciation.
Though Jim has to get quietly plastered every night of the tour, to forget the organisational horrors and erode his stage fright, the Reids swagger with regal arrogance--and when they do 'Gimme Hell' and Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' they're like Louis XIV and Frederick The Great. Blasphemous, evil kings.
With a white-noise flurry of televisual litter flickering on the screen behind him, William desecrates the final 'Kill Surf City' with feedback atrocities, and does the same to the unbelievable encore, 'Reverence'. What'll happen when they do all this down South, down in redneck Texas? Jim may get his death wish. Maybe they'll all die in the USA.
And so the Rollercoaster roars on to Washington DC, but not before calling in at The Mission, a gothy East Village bar. All three bands continue to knock it back copiously in pals-only surroundings. Toni's especially happy when the Banshees' 'Helter Skelter' gets an airing. Somewhere along the line, she also loses her purse.
Curve and the Mary Chain convene in their hotel foyer the next morning--OK, call it 5pm. There are plenty of sorry, whiskey-wounded faces. Not Toni's.
"I shouldn't feel like this," she beams from behind circular mirror shades. "We've lost Lawrence, I've lost all my money, cards and everything, but I'm loving every minute of it. We just wanna do a tour as good as this at home."
--On the door, it says "Curve--this one's yours." In the four-star dressing room deep in the bowels of New York City's Roseland Ballroom, the five members of the group are draped around with varying degrees of knackeredness, but a shared, if glazed, look of contentment. Surely they're not enjoying life on the road?
Maybe it's because, after two long days without, the band's grass consignment has just come in, and boy, it's a whopper. Only enough to see The Orb through a soundcheck maybe, but to most earthlings, they've got a stash the size of Central Park. Each of them is either skinning up, toking or too stoned to do either. And they only started when they came offstage ten minutes ago. Those Hollywood-style bulbs around the mirror are shining much brighter now.
"This is the best tour of my life," gushes Toni Halliday from her pew on the floor, as Dean Garcia looks on from the sofa, quiet and alert. "I mean, the Spiritualized LP is my favourite album of the year, and the Mary Chain are my all-time favourite band. It's perfect. I don't want it to end. We're in tour heaven, basically."
But what about the technical hitches, the hangovers, the long drives, the hotel reservations that don't exist, the irregular eating and sleeping patterns, the paranoia, the horror, the soul fear? Something must have gone wrong...
Oh, there's a weird guy at the door sporting the sort of rough, fashion-free haircut given to hippies on their first day in Vietnam--the degradation crop. But he looks more than happy as well, showing his teeth in a fixed, almost piss-takingly broad smile. Images from Tom & Jerry spring to mind--Tom just before his shattered teeth tinkle to the floor.
"Alright?" someone asks. "What are you doing?"
"Just been talking to Jim." He pauses. "Jim The Grin."
Hearty giggles all round. Jim Reid maybe?
"Yeah, Jim The Grin," he continues poetically, "we should put him in the bin."
Hysteria. Tears of merriment. But hang on. That t-shirt's familiar. It's grey like the guy's been wearing it for four years, and the big, black letters on it say 'DRUGS NOT JOBS'. It's Jason Pierce of Spiritualized. He's supposed to be a Black Belt in unremitting miserabilism, so what the hell's he got to smile about? This must be tour heaven. Welcome aboard Rollercoaster USA. It could be less hairy than expected.
Last time around, you'll recall, when Jim and William Reid arranged Rollercoaster Mk1 for the UK last spring, things weren't quite so rosy. The bands didn't know each other too well, and only the Mary Chain had a fixed position on the bill--at the top, with an enviable light show behind them.
The other three acts were switched around every night, the first going on at a vibe-unfriendly 7pm. Nobody wanted to follow My Bloody Valentine's nightmare monochord climax, Blur had to deal with being seen as the joker in the packs, and Dinosaur Jr... Well, they probably didn't get it together to cause much hassle, but what started out with the best, four-way, VFM, brain-blowing intentions seemed to result in tension, confusion and (rumour has it) financial loss.
Perhaps shrewder, more realistic planning went into the Stateside venture. The running order doesn't change--Spiritualized at eight, Curve at nine, then the Mary Chain--and that's fine by all concerned. As well as Toni Halliday's seal of approval, Spiritualized boast Jim Reid as one their biggest fans. They just failed to make it off the shortlist on to Rollercoaster UK. Curve and the Mary Chain, meanwhile, go back a long way with their shared production assistant, Alan Moulder, who lives with Toni.
"It's so cool," Halliday enthuses, "everybody's just doing their thing, going on and playing. There's no egos or bickering at all. Nobody gives a fuck, really."
When the doors open at 7:30, mind, it's not looking so cool. There isn't a queue. The huge, absurdly tanned doorman sings the words "Honey's Dead" with mocking atonality. Presumably this means he doesn't approve of musicians who dress in black and have no muscles.
You'd think even Jason and his laissez-faire troupe might take umbrage at hitting the stage in the 3,200 capacity all-standing Roseland to a crowd of precisely five people. It's said, too, that when they've seen ad-posters for the tour, the band have often had to add their name in with marker pens. And they've all had the 'flu.
New York's lowlife must've had trouble dragging themselves away from the daily hour of Roseanne on Fox 4 between six and seven. They gradually crawl from the woodwork during Spiritualized's 40 minutes, which acts as a low-key overture to their evening--an understated role for a set that's relaxed but relentlessly ambitious.
With a six-strong line-up that includes sax-player Will Gregory, Pierce's arrangements are complex and irrepressibly lavish for a beery nocturnal noise-fest.
They begin with a new gem, featuring Sean Cook on the bluest harmonica in North America, and soon pump out the fluctuating aural dazzle of 'Medication', 'Angel Sigh' and a cracking version of Spacemen 3's 'Walkin' with Jesus'. Still, it's clouded--and we aren't talking little fluffy ones here--by the fact that they don't have time to kill between numbers to get things right. When Jason straps on a fresh axe for the finale, his amp instantly packs up. Exit Spiritualized, tangibly pissed-off. 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by The Beach Boys comes over the PA.
Even with three bands who are mates instead of four who aren't, and without the chaos of a rotating bill, Rollercoaster's US sibling is proving a bit of problem child.
"It's a waste of time comparing the two tours," claims Jim Reid after the show. "This one shouldn't have been called Rollercoaster, it was a misunderstanding."
"We didn't want Rollercoaster to become like Lollapalooza--every fuckin' year," adds brother William, heaving a sigh that'd fill a petrol tank. "No thank you. We don't want it to become an international institution. This is just a bunch of bands touring together--that's the way I see it. If we'd called it Shindig, it'd still be the same."
The Mary Chain, notoriously road-shy but permanently touring since February, had a pretty bad time on this summer's Lollapalooza. They had little say in the travelling festival's wider aims and had to perform among macho, MTV-hungry stagers like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Chili Peppers--in daylight.
Perhaps their idyll has taken a bit of a kicking in '92, but they're clearly trying to offer a better class of tour here, with a crap-support exclusion policy and good music in between (from The Pastels and Pixies to The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart). Surely they're after a sense of event?
"Aye, most gigs are too boring," Jim agrees, warming with anger. "People don't give it any consideration. The band come off, the lights go up and everybody's standing around with pints of beer. Anything to get away from that. We thought of keeping the house lights down, putting coloured strobes in the audience and cranking up the music like it's a club or something."
"Did we do that tonight?" William asks.
Jim: "No, I was just saying..."
William: "No, but you remember we told them..."
Jim: "Pfff..."
William: "We give people these elaborate instructions, and they ignore them and do what the fuck they want anyway."
You wouldn't guess it, but Curve's tour hasn't been blemish-free. Last night Lawrence Taylor, their ligthing man, heard his wife was seriously ill and had to fly home. Without him, their illumination is in some disarray--mid-way through, they're playing under the glare of two hand-held torches.
It's rather effective, because as a live combo they're in outrageously fine fettle, blasting off with 'Doppleganger' and 'Die Like A Dog', cooling down on mellower stuff like 'Sandpit' and slamming to the end with 'Coast Is Clear', 'Fait Accompli' and 'Ten Little Girls'. Often regaled as callous and calculated, they have a warm presence that's reciprocated by a now extensive moshpit which incorporates every race, age and sexual denomination. At one point, a ten-year-old black girl surfs overhead.
Great, well-received shows like this probably explain best why these bands are so into Rollercoaster USA. Later, the brothers Reid will have to admit, however grudgingly, that they're in shit-hot form too.
In England, they have that ancient reputation for riots and shambolic behaviour to live up to, but as anyone who saw their early gigs will testify, they were (very exciting) rubbish in those days.
Their streamlined barrage of abandoned riff trash and bloody noise owes its roots to junkpile Americana, so the Yanks are far readier to tip their hat in appreciation.
Though Jim has to get quietly plastered every night of the tour, to forget the organisational horrors and erode his stage fright, the Reids swagger with regal arrogance--and when they do 'Gimme Hell' and Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' they're like Louis XIV and Frederick The Great. Blasphemous, evil kings.
With a white-noise flurry of televisual litter flickering on the screen behind him, William desecrates the final 'Kill Surf City' with feedback atrocities, and does the same to the unbelievable encore, 'Reverence'. What'll happen when they do all this down South, down in redneck Texas? Jim may get his death wish. Maybe they'll all die in the USA.
And so the Rollercoaster roars on to Washington DC, but not before calling in at The Mission, a gothy East Village bar. All three bands continue to knock it back copiously in pals-only surroundings. Toni's especially happy when the Banshees' 'Helter Skelter' gets an airing. Somewhere along the line, she also loses her purse.
Curve and the Mary Chain convene in their hotel foyer the next morning--OK, call it 5pm. There are plenty of sorry, whiskey-wounded faces. Not Toni's.
"I shouldn't feel like this," she beams from behind circular mirror shades. "We've lost Lawrence, I've lost all my money, cards and everything, but I'm loving every minute of it. We just wanna do a tour as good as this at home."
