Stoned and Dethroned
Nina Malkin / Raygun
09.1994
09.1994
It's a foggy blur now, but it being London, that's fitting. London in the clutch of holiday season '93 (reprised into present tense for the you-are-there immediacy that makes rock journalism such a thrill). Harrods is coruscating and crowded. A Village People remix and something from large, pink Mister Blobby--the immaculate conception of Barney the Dinosaur and the Michelin Man, perhaps--top the British charts. Children with rosy red cheeks, hack rides jolly as quality gin, the whole schmear of cheer. 'Tis everywhere. Just about.
In moldy Elephant and Castle, down the alley behind the police station and up the stairs to the Jesus and Mary Chain's studio, cheer free is no laundry detergent. Here, a faded dark pervades, varying hues of murk. It suits the Reids, William and Jim, brothers and band mates. Should they remain immobile, they'd blend right in, perfectly camouflaged. It's a drafty space, hardly plush but adequate. "State of the art maybe eight years ago," William says. The shrug is implied. "You don't need state of the art to make records. All you need is a tape recorder and a few ideas."
The Jesus and Mary Chain have been recording a few. Stoned and Dethroned is "95 per cent finished," according to William (though its progenitors will continue to tinker with the 17 songs, bumping the release date from April to August), and JAMC have consented to unveil some tracks and possibly a bit of themselves. Not that you'd know it; not at first.
Would they care to play the record?
"No."
Then they prefer to talk first?
"No."
Notoriously mum, the Reids ultimately opt for the less appalling of two evils. Jim busies himself with kettle and the poor excuse for coffee that tastes like the Thames on a bad day, effectively avoiding eye contact. William heads for the booth to offer selections from what is rumored to be the Jesus and Mary Chain's acoustic album and obviously is not. Where do these stories come from? The horse's mouth, in this case.
"We'd always threatened that we were going to do a bunch of acoustic stuff, and we thought this was going to be it," William says. "We should never have said it was going to be acoustic--that was the problem," adds Jim.
Making the threat public "confused us for a while," William explains. "We were trying different things, and it wasn't sounding right." Musicians of honor, duty bound to serve their songs, they concluded "doing it acoustic would have been compromising; we'd be doing acoustic versions of songs that need more stuff on them."
So JAMC Unplugged it ain't. The mere mention of which rankles the Reids. "I would have thought that the idea of those unplugged things was to strip it all down so it was a bit more personal, to do something basic--getting an acoustic guitar, sitting in front of an audience and saying 'Well, look, this is how the song was written,'" says Jim. "But instead you get some fucking idiot like Phil Collins in there with himself, an acoustic guitar and a 400-piece orchestra. What's the point of that?"
Though eminently electric, Stoned and Dethroned won't make Headbanger's Ball, either. The noise-buoyed blasts that marked their early work are all but absent. It sounds like the Jesus and Mary Chain--the sexy come-hither-because-I-can't-or-won't-go-whither vocals, William's distinctive guitar, the fuzzed bass are there--but "It is a different record for us," William says. "All the songs are slow, soft, mellow or whatever. We do that kind of stuff on our albums but never a whole album's worth."
The songs are entirely pretty but won't rot your teeth; the downers have threads of hope, the uppers a cynic's nibble rather than bite. They're short, too: Half clock in under three minutes, the rest just over. These songs come at you fully formed; they bait their hooks, make their point and get out. Simple. Not to be confused with easy.
"Nothing that is good is easy," William says. "If you saw Picasso doing one of his famous paintings, it probably would look easy, but then if it was, 'Okay, you go and do a Picasso,' you'd soon see it's not as easy as it looks. It's like that with our music: It sounds easy, as if it were strung together on a weekend. That's not the way it is."
As to whether Stoned and Dethroned is a deliberate departure from cacophony, William says, "We've already done records without any feedback or noise, so it's not that we had to prove it. The Sound of Speed EP was probably the noisiest thing we've ever recorded. It's whatever suits the time, whatever we're doing: Four-track EP, let's turn up the noise. It just felt right. We've sort of gone in all different directions and tried all different things, and this is just another. You have to follow your instincts. I think people analyze too much."
What else have we got to do with our lives? Deconstructing the muses and motives of other's is welcome respite from wallowing in, then spouting off, our own petty introspections. A point the Reids concede--especially in regard to their ilk. "I think mostly everybody who's ever made a record seems to be in an incredible hurry to blab all day about themselves and how they made the record and whatever records they've been listening to," says William. "It seems that everybody in a band is just obsessed with themselves."
"It's difficult to talk about anything to do with your music, because there's nothing more boring than some idiot talking about himself," says Jim. "People in bands, in my experience, are a bit more boring than your average person. The most interesting thing I probably got up to, if you retell it, comes across like Spinal Tap cliches."
Such as?
"Is it interesting that last weekend I got fucked up and woke up beside somebody I didn't know?"
Uh-huh!
"That's interesting--but it's embarrassing. Do I really want to go into the details?"
Well, was she blonde or brunette?
"HE was a big fat truck driver."
If there's one subject the Reids like to talk about it's what they don't like to talk about.
"The thing I don't like about interviews, or reading interviews that we've done, is I very rarely recognize myself in them," says Jim. "It's usually little bite-size chunks of me that don't seem to represent me."
Here's a snack: That the Reids are siblings comes across most through a subtly expressed rivalry. William (the elder) tends to respond to questions first, but Jim is quick to disclaim, clarify or otherwise invest two pence. If they are drug addicts (another rumor), they're awfully good at it (they don't flaunt, much less offer). Despite that reputation for reticence, they speak volumes--with caustic humor directed at any target, themselves intrinsic--once warmed up. Yet always that reserve: the Anticuddle. "A lot of people think we're very arrogant and distant but we are quite shy," William says. "Our music can sometimes be very assertive and aggressive, but we as people rarely are, and people think we're just a couple of arrogant little shits. They'll say, 'Oh, I met them and they wouldn't talk to me.' [That's because] a lot of times we're just awkward, fucked-up little idiots."
Misunderstoodniks destined to the wacky, icky whirl of limelight and celebrity, they got their first taste soon after moving from Glasgow to London in '85. "We never really did what most bands do, tour and tour and tour to get a following," William says. "We played about four gigs, and then somebody came and reviewed us. There were two reviews: The one in Sounds said we were the biggest piece of shit ever, and the one in the NME said we were the best band in the world. And those are basically the only kind of reviews you want--the best and the worst."
Not that they cared for the attention much. "I think it came too soon," says Jim, "because we didn't have a fucking clue. We were just fumbling, feeling our way around."
Regardless, Her Majesty's music media hailed JAMC as "the new Sex Pistols," which would make even the grandest egoist run for cover. "That's just because they were looking for a new Sex Pistols," Jim says. "Every fortnight there was a new somebody. A couple of months after that, we suddenly became the new Velvet Underground. We were the same band, the same songs, but shortly after that we became the new Syd Barretts. Nobody wants to be called the 'new' anybody; it's an insult. And the new Sex Pistols--who can live up to that? We're lucky we survived."
You should "survive" so good--and as prolifically. Singles, EPs and LPS ensued throughout the rest of the Eighties, all self-produced, with the brothers trading off lead vocals and bringing in sidemen only as necessary. Sometimes they shimmered, sometimes they smacked, everything they underscored with a certain Achtung! Though the press release for 1992's Honey's Dead album hyped the band as "carefully masterminding each step of the way," William prefers "clumsily flailing" and Jim believes "stumbling onto" is more accurate.
Physical ineptitude notwithstanding, JAMC were appropriately scandalous enough: "Reverence," the album's single, was banned from "Top of the Pops." Those lines about wanting to die like Jesus Christ and JFK. "'Reverence' didn't get on 'Top of the Pops'--well, neither did the ten singles that came out before it," says Jim.
"For years before, we were paranoid. We would tell people, 'We'll never get on 'Top of the Pops;' they hate us," says William. "But with 'Reverence,' that came out in the open. So you start to think, 'It's horrible--but at least now we know they hate us.' We're not imagining it."
"I think it's more important to talk about why those other records didn't get on 'Top of the Pops," says Jim. "I mean, why can't we go on television...." A hint of a grin. "Another thing that happens when you talk about the band, you end up whining...."
Nonplused but accustomed to it, the Jesus and Mary Chain went on to another nightmare, the one commonly known as Lollapalooza '92. The Reids have a litany of complaints, not the least being that venerable songwriter Lee Hazelwood, whom JAMC hoped to have guest on Stoned and Dethroned (first single "Sometimes Always," is a duet with Jim and Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, has a Hazelwood feel), "got weird on us" after receiving shabby treatment from 'looza security while attempting to visit the Reids backstage.
But wait, there's more. "We were misled," Jim recalls, one can only imagine, painfully. "We were originally told that there wasn't a hierarchy, that it was just a bunch of bands--it wasn't about who sold what amount of records. First day we got there, we discovered that the Chili Peppers were using extra PA that nobody else was allowed to use. We objected and somebody said, 'Yeah, but they're paying for it,' so we said,'Well, we'll pay for some, as well,' and they said, 'No, you can't.' "
Since there was hierarchy up the hoositz--and a headliner--JAMC took the stage in mid-afternoon. Ghastly. "Every single gig was like a little death," William says. "We couldn't create the atmosphere we wanted. Everybody has tricks when they play live, we need darkness, for a start. We need a kind of mystery. We have an incredibly huge light show--a lot of times you can't see who's on stage, and we need that. Playing in the sunshine, the light shining in your eyes and lighting up your red, sweaty face--it was horrible." Grabbing a nearby desk lamp, he re-directs the bulb, third-degree style, for emphasis. "That's what it felt like on stage every day. It didn't feel comfortable. I felt exposed. I felt that everybody could see the cracks."
Worst was a flagrant self-importance and fake sincerity thick as tats and goats. "It was a bit like everybody agreed with each other in a superficial, phony way, like there was a connection with the audience," says William. "Everybody was making believe that something big was going on, when it was so fucking obvious to us that nothing was happening other than loads of t-shirts were being sold. The truth was this: We were in Atlanta, Georgia. I had a walk around the day before the show, and I couldn't find a white person in that city. So you're thinking, right, 'Ice Cube's on the bill, there's going to be a lot of black folks in the audience,' or maybe better, black and white mingling, getting along together. So we get to Lollapalooza, and it's filled with spoiled, middle-class, 15-year old white kids waving their arms in the air to Ice Cube. What was that achieving? If they wanted to do something, they could have made it half rap and half rock, so that people who really like rap music might have come and might have listened to us and Ministry. Instead of having a token rap act for white kids."
Just the sort of big blech to send JAMC racing back to the relief of the studio.
"Well," William says, "we hate the studio, as well..."
Then why bother?
"I'm not about to get a job sweeping the streets..." says Jim.
That's one good reason. William's got another: "I do art because I don't think I'm clever or dedicated enough to be a scientist or a doctor. Also, those professions have rules, and by and large art doesn't have rules. It does, but you make your own rules. If I want to be a painter, I can be a painter, and you could say, 'Well, you're a shit painter,' but I'm still a painter. I've got canvas. And I know deep in my heart that if I liked it and all the art critics in the world called it a piece of shit, I'd know it was good. You have to trust yourself. I know when I've done something good. Sometimes you don't know how good--you don't know if it's great or if it's okay."
Ergo, they do what they do--with certain intensity. "Even when you're just sitting around doing nothing, you're thinking about it," says Jim. "You never switch it off. People think you don't make a record for two years, you've been away having the time of your life. We spent most of the last two years thinking about the band, what should it be doing. We spent five years unemployed before this. I'd be an idiot not to take this seriously."
So, fun and profit. "I want to make as much money as Phil Collins," says William. "A lot of musicians are afraid to talk about money or want money. If you asked would I fuck up our music to make money, no, I wouldn't. But I want our records to be released and sell two million copies.
"I don't think mass appeal always has to be bad. Quite often it is, but it doesn't have to be. I hate to sound like some old nostalgia freak, but in the Sixties, something like 'Sympathy for the Devil' was a huge record around the world--but it wasn't a piece of shit. These days, people think: 'Football stadiums? Crap! It can't be any good.' I'd like to be the band that proves that isn't true."
Some groups have come close to achieving that goal; the Jesus and Mary Chain cite two--with reservations. "R.E.M. are near that, but if you listen to R.E.M.'s old records, they were jangly and unpolished and rough here and there, and then listen to 'Everybody Hurts,' it's a good record but as smooth as a record can be," says Jim. "I think that they made a decision that they were going to be huge and they were going to get rid of all the things that made them small--the jangly rough edges."
"I prefer mostly new R.E.M., but I do recognize that they were a different band, that they did change," says William. "I think R.E.M. are into black magic because nobody ever said a bad word in print about that. They probably boil goats' heads or something."
And then there is (make that was) Nirvana. "When Nevermind first happened, people said, 'Things are going to be different now; there are going to be other bands like this," William says. "What did you get instead? Stone Temple Fucking Pilots! Sorry, but I've got enough money to hire a fucking hit man..."
Commenting further on the state of music today, William says, "I think it's probably healthier now than it was ten years ago, but not healthy enough." Adds Jim: "There are too many technicians who spend their energies in the wrong places. I think the hardest thing about music is using your brain, your imagination. You can teach anybody to play an instrument; you could probably train a monkey. Thinking up the idea--that's the difference between a cover band and the band they're covering."
"It's hard to be memorable," says William. "It's harder to write a hook than it is to do something free-form. I can pick up my guitar and play stuff you wouldn't remember, but it would be very hard for me to make a piece that will be buzzing around your head this evening."
When it comes to the sticky wicket of critique, the Reids are surprisingly charitable. "The difference with books and films is once you've read the book or seen the film, you know if you like it. With music, some of my favorite records I've hated when I first heard them. Like the Clash's first album: The first time I heard it, I thought it was shit, and then a year later I was playing it non-stop. So that's what I wonder about reviews: I feel that they've just put the record on, listened to it, called it a piece of shit and then maybe a few months later played it and thought, 'Well, that's not half bad.' I would hate to be a journalist because every record I heard, I'd just say, 'Shite! Bad production, horrible songs, terrible singer' and then change my mind a week later."
Jim, who's penned a review or two in his time, says, "If somebody reviews one of our records and says absolute filth and nastiness, I mean, who cares? It may irritate me for a while--I must admit that I do read most of the reviews--but that's one person's point of view, and every person who hears that record will make up his own mind."
One can only hope. The music business doesn't always champion individual choice--and that's hunky dory with much of the listening public, which would rather be told what to like. "People want things that are easy to swallow and easy to digest; they don't necessarily want things that are good for them," William says.
Take the recent MTV spot where the taxicab driver extols the channel's prime virtue as eliminating the thought process. Finally, truth in advertising! The situation is just as dreadful--but a little different--from the musician's perspective. "Did you see the 'Twilight Zone' with the little kid and the family that's afraid to say anything bad to him?" William asks. "MTV is like the little kid, and musicians are like the family. That little kid controls everything, and you can't say, 'Hang on there, you stupid, smelly little brat!" because he'll turn you into a vegetable."
Yet they perservere, not just making music but working to get it heard. "I think it's got to be heard, otherwise there's really no point," says Jim. "If you go to confession but there's no priest there, it's not confession. You can say you just want to get it out, but there has to be somebody to get it out to....But please let's not get into too much of this--it's like putting a screwdriver into the socket."
Too late. This line of questioning takes its own momentum. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
"Yes," asserts William. "Did the World Series happen in America this year? To me it didn't because I wasn't there--but it did. Human beings are pretty arrogant that way. That little Zen thing about the tree in the forest supposes that trees are there for human beings to hear."
"What it supposes," counters Jim, "is that the universe is all in our heads. If there were no people or insects or animals alive, would there still be a universe? If so, where would it exist? If there's nobody here to appreciate or understand the universe, is it still there?"
"The universe exists!" William insists.
"How do you know?" Jim challenges.
"Well, there's nobody on Mars, and Mars exists."
"Does Mars exist? See, it's the screwdriver in the socket! Sqwerlirkstpftz..."
In moldy Elephant and Castle, down the alley behind the police station and up the stairs to the Jesus and Mary Chain's studio, cheer free is no laundry detergent. Here, a faded dark pervades, varying hues of murk. It suits the Reids, William and Jim, brothers and band mates. Should they remain immobile, they'd blend right in, perfectly camouflaged. It's a drafty space, hardly plush but adequate. "State of the art maybe eight years ago," William says. The shrug is implied. "You don't need state of the art to make records. All you need is a tape recorder and a few ideas."
The Jesus and Mary Chain have been recording a few. Stoned and Dethroned is "95 per cent finished," according to William (though its progenitors will continue to tinker with the 17 songs, bumping the release date from April to August), and JAMC have consented to unveil some tracks and possibly a bit of themselves. Not that you'd know it; not at first.
Would they care to play the record?
"No."
Then they prefer to talk first?
"No."
Notoriously mum, the Reids ultimately opt for the less appalling of two evils. Jim busies himself with kettle and the poor excuse for coffee that tastes like the Thames on a bad day, effectively avoiding eye contact. William heads for the booth to offer selections from what is rumored to be the Jesus and Mary Chain's acoustic album and obviously is not. Where do these stories come from? The horse's mouth, in this case.
"We'd always threatened that we were going to do a bunch of acoustic stuff, and we thought this was going to be it," William says. "We should never have said it was going to be acoustic--that was the problem," adds Jim.
Making the threat public "confused us for a while," William explains. "We were trying different things, and it wasn't sounding right." Musicians of honor, duty bound to serve their songs, they concluded "doing it acoustic would have been compromising; we'd be doing acoustic versions of songs that need more stuff on them."
So JAMC Unplugged it ain't. The mere mention of which rankles the Reids. "I would have thought that the idea of those unplugged things was to strip it all down so it was a bit more personal, to do something basic--getting an acoustic guitar, sitting in front of an audience and saying 'Well, look, this is how the song was written,'" says Jim. "But instead you get some fucking idiot like Phil Collins in there with himself, an acoustic guitar and a 400-piece orchestra. What's the point of that?"
Though eminently electric, Stoned and Dethroned won't make Headbanger's Ball, either. The noise-buoyed blasts that marked their early work are all but absent. It sounds like the Jesus and Mary Chain--the sexy come-hither-because-I-can't-or-won't-go-whither vocals, William's distinctive guitar, the fuzzed bass are there--but "It is a different record for us," William says. "All the songs are slow, soft, mellow or whatever. We do that kind of stuff on our albums but never a whole album's worth."
The songs are entirely pretty but won't rot your teeth; the downers have threads of hope, the uppers a cynic's nibble rather than bite. They're short, too: Half clock in under three minutes, the rest just over. These songs come at you fully formed; they bait their hooks, make their point and get out. Simple. Not to be confused with easy.
"Nothing that is good is easy," William says. "If you saw Picasso doing one of his famous paintings, it probably would look easy, but then if it was, 'Okay, you go and do a Picasso,' you'd soon see it's not as easy as it looks. It's like that with our music: It sounds easy, as if it were strung together on a weekend. That's not the way it is."
As to whether Stoned and Dethroned is a deliberate departure from cacophony, William says, "We've already done records without any feedback or noise, so it's not that we had to prove it. The Sound of Speed EP was probably the noisiest thing we've ever recorded. It's whatever suits the time, whatever we're doing: Four-track EP, let's turn up the noise. It just felt right. We've sort of gone in all different directions and tried all different things, and this is just another. You have to follow your instincts. I think people analyze too much."
What else have we got to do with our lives? Deconstructing the muses and motives of other's is welcome respite from wallowing in, then spouting off, our own petty introspections. A point the Reids concede--especially in regard to their ilk. "I think mostly everybody who's ever made a record seems to be in an incredible hurry to blab all day about themselves and how they made the record and whatever records they've been listening to," says William. "It seems that everybody in a band is just obsessed with themselves."
"It's difficult to talk about anything to do with your music, because there's nothing more boring than some idiot talking about himself," says Jim. "People in bands, in my experience, are a bit more boring than your average person. The most interesting thing I probably got up to, if you retell it, comes across like Spinal Tap cliches."
Such as?
"Is it interesting that last weekend I got fucked up and woke up beside somebody I didn't know?"
Uh-huh!
"That's interesting--but it's embarrassing. Do I really want to go into the details?"
Well, was she blonde or brunette?
"HE was a big fat truck driver."
If there's one subject the Reids like to talk about it's what they don't like to talk about.
"The thing I don't like about interviews, or reading interviews that we've done, is I very rarely recognize myself in them," says Jim. "It's usually little bite-size chunks of me that don't seem to represent me."
Here's a snack: That the Reids are siblings comes across most through a subtly expressed rivalry. William (the elder) tends to respond to questions first, but Jim is quick to disclaim, clarify or otherwise invest two pence. If they are drug addicts (another rumor), they're awfully good at it (they don't flaunt, much less offer). Despite that reputation for reticence, they speak volumes--with caustic humor directed at any target, themselves intrinsic--once warmed up. Yet always that reserve: the Anticuddle. "A lot of people think we're very arrogant and distant but we are quite shy," William says. "Our music can sometimes be very assertive and aggressive, but we as people rarely are, and people think we're just a couple of arrogant little shits. They'll say, 'Oh, I met them and they wouldn't talk to me.' [That's because] a lot of times we're just awkward, fucked-up little idiots."
Misunderstoodniks destined to the wacky, icky whirl of limelight and celebrity, they got their first taste soon after moving from Glasgow to London in '85. "We never really did what most bands do, tour and tour and tour to get a following," William says. "We played about four gigs, and then somebody came and reviewed us. There were two reviews: The one in Sounds said we were the biggest piece of shit ever, and the one in the NME said we were the best band in the world. And those are basically the only kind of reviews you want--the best and the worst."
Not that they cared for the attention much. "I think it came too soon," says Jim, "because we didn't have a fucking clue. We were just fumbling, feeling our way around."
Regardless, Her Majesty's music media hailed JAMC as "the new Sex Pistols," which would make even the grandest egoist run for cover. "That's just because they were looking for a new Sex Pistols," Jim says. "Every fortnight there was a new somebody. A couple of months after that, we suddenly became the new Velvet Underground. We were the same band, the same songs, but shortly after that we became the new Syd Barretts. Nobody wants to be called the 'new' anybody; it's an insult. And the new Sex Pistols--who can live up to that? We're lucky we survived."
You should "survive" so good--and as prolifically. Singles, EPs and LPS ensued throughout the rest of the Eighties, all self-produced, with the brothers trading off lead vocals and bringing in sidemen only as necessary. Sometimes they shimmered, sometimes they smacked, everything they underscored with a certain Achtung! Though the press release for 1992's Honey's Dead album hyped the band as "carefully masterminding each step of the way," William prefers "clumsily flailing" and Jim believes "stumbling onto" is more accurate.
Physical ineptitude notwithstanding, JAMC were appropriately scandalous enough: "Reverence," the album's single, was banned from "Top of the Pops." Those lines about wanting to die like Jesus Christ and JFK. "'Reverence' didn't get on 'Top of the Pops'--well, neither did the ten singles that came out before it," says Jim.
"For years before, we were paranoid. We would tell people, 'We'll never get on 'Top of the Pops;' they hate us," says William. "But with 'Reverence,' that came out in the open. So you start to think, 'It's horrible--but at least now we know they hate us.' We're not imagining it."
"I think it's more important to talk about why those other records didn't get on 'Top of the Pops," says Jim. "I mean, why can't we go on television...." A hint of a grin. "Another thing that happens when you talk about the band, you end up whining...."
Nonplused but accustomed to it, the Jesus and Mary Chain went on to another nightmare, the one commonly known as Lollapalooza '92. The Reids have a litany of complaints, not the least being that venerable songwriter Lee Hazelwood, whom JAMC hoped to have guest on Stoned and Dethroned (first single "Sometimes Always," is a duet with Jim and Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, has a Hazelwood feel), "got weird on us" after receiving shabby treatment from 'looza security while attempting to visit the Reids backstage.
But wait, there's more. "We were misled," Jim recalls, one can only imagine, painfully. "We were originally told that there wasn't a hierarchy, that it was just a bunch of bands--it wasn't about who sold what amount of records. First day we got there, we discovered that the Chili Peppers were using extra PA that nobody else was allowed to use. We objected and somebody said, 'Yeah, but they're paying for it,' so we said,'Well, we'll pay for some, as well,' and they said, 'No, you can't.' "
Since there was hierarchy up the hoositz--and a headliner--JAMC took the stage in mid-afternoon. Ghastly. "Every single gig was like a little death," William says. "We couldn't create the atmosphere we wanted. Everybody has tricks when they play live, we need darkness, for a start. We need a kind of mystery. We have an incredibly huge light show--a lot of times you can't see who's on stage, and we need that. Playing in the sunshine, the light shining in your eyes and lighting up your red, sweaty face--it was horrible." Grabbing a nearby desk lamp, he re-directs the bulb, third-degree style, for emphasis. "That's what it felt like on stage every day. It didn't feel comfortable. I felt exposed. I felt that everybody could see the cracks."
Worst was a flagrant self-importance and fake sincerity thick as tats and goats. "It was a bit like everybody agreed with each other in a superficial, phony way, like there was a connection with the audience," says William. "Everybody was making believe that something big was going on, when it was so fucking obvious to us that nothing was happening other than loads of t-shirts were being sold. The truth was this: We were in Atlanta, Georgia. I had a walk around the day before the show, and I couldn't find a white person in that city. So you're thinking, right, 'Ice Cube's on the bill, there's going to be a lot of black folks in the audience,' or maybe better, black and white mingling, getting along together. So we get to Lollapalooza, and it's filled with spoiled, middle-class, 15-year old white kids waving their arms in the air to Ice Cube. What was that achieving? If they wanted to do something, they could have made it half rap and half rock, so that people who really like rap music might have come and might have listened to us and Ministry. Instead of having a token rap act for white kids."
Just the sort of big blech to send JAMC racing back to the relief of the studio.
"Well," William says, "we hate the studio, as well..."
Then why bother?
"I'm not about to get a job sweeping the streets..." says Jim.
That's one good reason. William's got another: "I do art because I don't think I'm clever or dedicated enough to be a scientist or a doctor. Also, those professions have rules, and by and large art doesn't have rules. It does, but you make your own rules. If I want to be a painter, I can be a painter, and you could say, 'Well, you're a shit painter,' but I'm still a painter. I've got canvas. And I know deep in my heart that if I liked it and all the art critics in the world called it a piece of shit, I'd know it was good. You have to trust yourself. I know when I've done something good. Sometimes you don't know how good--you don't know if it's great or if it's okay."
Ergo, they do what they do--with certain intensity. "Even when you're just sitting around doing nothing, you're thinking about it," says Jim. "You never switch it off. People think you don't make a record for two years, you've been away having the time of your life. We spent most of the last two years thinking about the band, what should it be doing. We spent five years unemployed before this. I'd be an idiot not to take this seriously."
So, fun and profit. "I want to make as much money as Phil Collins," says William. "A lot of musicians are afraid to talk about money or want money. If you asked would I fuck up our music to make money, no, I wouldn't. But I want our records to be released and sell two million copies.
"I don't think mass appeal always has to be bad. Quite often it is, but it doesn't have to be. I hate to sound like some old nostalgia freak, but in the Sixties, something like 'Sympathy for the Devil' was a huge record around the world--but it wasn't a piece of shit. These days, people think: 'Football stadiums? Crap! It can't be any good.' I'd like to be the band that proves that isn't true."
Some groups have come close to achieving that goal; the Jesus and Mary Chain cite two--with reservations. "R.E.M. are near that, but if you listen to R.E.M.'s old records, they were jangly and unpolished and rough here and there, and then listen to 'Everybody Hurts,' it's a good record but as smooth as a record can be," says Jim. "I think that they made a decision that they were going to be huge and they were going to get rid of all the things that made them small--the jangly rough edges."
"I prefer mostly new R.E.M., but I do recognize that they were a different band, that they did change," says William. "I think R.E.M. are into black magic because nobody ever said a bad word in print about that. They probably boil goats' heads or something."
And then there is (make that was) Nirvana. "When Nevermind first happened, people said, 'Things are going to be different now; there are going to be other bands like this," William says. "What did you get instead? Stone Temple Fucking Pilots! Sorry, but I've got enough money to hire a fucking hit man..."
Commenting further on the state of music today, William says, "I think it's probably healthier now than it was ten years ago, but not healthy enough." Adds Jim: "There are too many technicians who spend their energies in the wrong places. I think the hardest thing about music is using your brain, your imagination. You can teach anybody to play an instrument; you could probably train a monkey. Thinking up the idea--that's the difference between a cover band and the band they're covering."
"It's hard to be memorable," says William. "It's harder to write a hook than it is to do something free-form. I can pick up my guitar and play stuff you wouldn't remember, but it would be very hard for me to make a piece that will be buzzing around your head this evening."
When it comes to the sticky wicket of critique, the Reids are surprisingly charitable. "The difference with books and films is once you've read the book or seen the film, you know if you like it. With music, some of my favorite records I've hated when I first heard them. Like the Clash's first album: The first time I heard it, I thought it was shit, and then a year later I was playing it non-stop. So that's what I wonder about reviews: I feel that they've just put the record on, listened to it, called it a piece of shit and then maybe a few months later played it and thought, 'Well, that's not half bad.' I would hate to be a journalist because every record I heard, I'd just say, 'Shite! Bad production, horrible songs, terrible singer' and then change my mind a week later."
Jim, who's penned a review or two in his time, says, "If somebody reviews one of our records and says absolute filth and nastiness, I mean, who cares? It may irritate me for a while--I must admit that I do read most of the reviews--but that's one person's point of view, and every person who hears that record will make up his own mind."
One can only hope. The music business doesn't always champion individual choice--and that's hunky dory with much of the listening public, which would rather be told what to like. "People want things that are easy to swallow and easy to digest; they don't necessarily want things that are good for them," William says.
Take the recent MTV spot where the taxicab driver extols the channel's prime virtue as eliminating the thought process. Finally, truth in advertising! The situation is just as dreadful--but a little different--from the musician's perspective. "Did you see the 'Twilight Zone' with the little kid and the family that's afraid to say anything bad to him?" William asks. "MTV is like the little kid, and musicians are like the family. That little kid controls everything, and you can't say, 'Hang on there, you stupid, smelly little brat!" because he'll turn you into a vegetable."
Yet they perservere, not just making music but working to get it heard. "I think it's got to be heard, otherwise there's really no point," says Jim. "If you go to confession but there's no priest there, it's not confession. You can say you just want to get it out, but there has to be somebody to get it out to....But please let's not get into too much of this--it's like putting a screwdriver into the socket."
Too late. This line of questioning takes its own momentum. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
"Yes," asserts William. "Did the World Series happen in America this year? To me it didn't because I wasn't there--but it did. Human beings are pretty arrogant that way. That little Zen thing about the tree in the forest supposes that trees are there for human beings to hear."
"What it supposes," counters Jim, "is that the universe is all in our heads. If there were no people or insects or animals alive, would there still be a universe? If so, where would it exist? If there's nobody here to appreciate or understand the universe, is it still there?"
"The universe exists!" William insists.
"How do you know?" Jim challenges.
"Well, there's nobody on Mars, and Mars exists."
"Does Mars exist? See, it's the screwdriver in the socket! Sqwerlirkstpftz..."
