Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story Read online

  Praise for Barbed Wire Kisses and Zoë Howe:

  ‘A great book. Really funny and honest’ ALAN McGEE

  ‘Genuinely great’ NEIL TAYLOR (formerly NME)

  ‘Howe does a fantastic job at unveiling a band that have been, up until

  now, shrouded in mystery’ THE QUIETUS

  ‘Zoë Howe is one of our favourite music writers – a great writer who

  is in love with rock’n’roll and one who can make the essence and magic

  of the dark stuff seem so alive’ JOHN ROBB, LOUDER THAN WAR

  ‘Fucking brilliant. Get it read, people’

  STUART BRAITHWAITE, MOGWAI

  ‘Suitably candid and diligently researched biography . . . engaging

  throughout. ****’ RECORD COLLECTOR

  ‘Her interviewees trust her, and so they should’

  GLENN AIREY, LOUDER THAN WAR

  ‘A touching story of kids in the music business . . . A cut above the

  usual’ THE SCOTSMAN

  ‘One of the UK’s great biographers’ DR SIMON WARNER

  ‘One of the best – and funniest – books I’ve read about music’

  SEAT IN THE STALLS

  ‘A stunning reinvention of the rock memoir format. Zoë Howe bottles

  Wilko’s lightning’ DAVE COLLINS, VIVE LE ROCK, ON WILKO

  JOHNSON: LOOKING BACK AT ME

  ‘Brit-rock book of the year’ GAVIN MARTIN ON TYPICAL GIRLS?

  THE STORY OF THE SLITS

  A Note on the Author

  Zoë Howe’s books include Typical Girls? The Story of the Slits, Stevie Nicks – Visions, Dreams and Rumours and ‘How’s Your Dad?’: Living in the Shadow of a Rock Star Parent. She co-authored and collated Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson’s memoir Looking Back at Me (Cadiz Music, 2012) and contributed to the Eel Pie Island book British Beat Explosion: Rock’n’Roll Island (Aurora Metro, 2013). Lee Brilleaux – Roadrunner: The Adventures of a Rock’n’Roll Gentleman will be published by Polygon in autumn 2015.

  Zoë’s journalism has appeared in The Quietus, Company Magazine, Notion, BBC Music, Holy Moly, Classic Rock, The Blues Magazine and NME, and she has made music radio series for stations including Resonance FM. Zoë can be heard talking about rock’n’roll from time to time on BBC 6 Music, BBC London, Absolute Radio, E4 and Planet Rock. She lives in Essex with her husband Dylan. She also plays the drums.

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  This paperback edition published in 2015 by Polygon

  Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Zoë Howe 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 331 4

  eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 665 6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  All efforts have been made to trace copyright holders. If any omissions have been made, the publisher will be happy to rectify these in future editions.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset in Sabon by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  1

  New Town, Punk Rock, Dole Queue

  2

  Acid, Paint Factory, Portastudio

  3

  Gillespie, McGee and a Green Ink Letter

  4

  The Living Room

  5

  Night Moves, More Acid and Disaster in Wonderland

  6

  Upside Down

  7

  Murray Leaves, Bobby Joins, Germany Beckons

  8

  Peel Session, The Three Johns, NME Falls in Love

  9

  Brothels, Barbed Wire, Blanco Y Negro

  10

  Tea and Cakes with Travis

  11

  Escape From EK

  12

  Smashing up Pop

  13

  New York, Innocence Lost, Psychocandy

  14

  Rants, Reality and Trouble in the Ballroom

  15

  Milestones/Millstones

  16

  Besotted Americans and Burst Eardrums

  17

  Alcohol, Speed, Farewell McGee

  18

  White Noise, Black Moods

  19

  Do Not Smile

  20

  Meatheads, a Mic-Stand and the Drunk Tank

  21

  Acid House, Sugarcubes and a Trip behind the Iron Curtain

  22

  Crash and Burn

  23

  Remake, Remodel

  24

  Rollercoaster, Lollapalooza, Cocaine Blues

  25

  Stoned and Dethroned

  26

  Love, Hate, a Departure and a Homecoming

  27

  Cracking Up

  28

  Changes

  29

  Fear, Film-Stars and the Future

  Timeline

  Sources

  Discography

  Credits

  Index

  Preface

  The Jesus and Mary Chain have always been a contradiction – shy, yet anchored by total belief; gently spoken, yet famous for playing the kind of gigs that would leave you deaf for a week even if they only lasted for twenty minutes (or ‘until we got booed’, according to William Reid). They created their own genre, born of a cocktail of psychotic noise, Spector rhythms and dark lyrics, delivered via a visual explosion of smoke, leather, big hair, Ray-Bans, silhouettes and searchlights. They took the glittering jewel of pop and casually lifted it up, revealing the darkness underneath. The fractious sound of The Jesus and Mary Chain also reflected a time of significant social tension in the UK, a time of pickets and riots, conflict and change. They were past, present and future rolled into one.

  Brothers William and Jim Reid, the core of The Jesus and Mary Chain, seemed to conjure sonic otherworlds inhabited by the ghosts of 1960s pop, swaying beneath layers of powerful feedback and soft, obsessive mutterings. The Mary Chain’s debut album Psychocandy, is a perfect example of this, and the dreamlike slice of doomed youth, underpinned with fractured sensitivity and subtle black humour, is now hailed as one of the greatest pop LPs of the 1980s While the considerable mystique of The Jesus and Mary Chain has always been a huge part of their appeal, the time is right to hear their story and to reconsider an impressive canon of work.

  It has been a genuine pleasure to work with the Mary Chain, and to gather so many memories and perspectives for this long-overdue chronicle of their career. Every contributor has been kinder and more helpful than I could have anticipated, and it’s a privilege to present their story. When I was about to start working on this book, one question that kept coming up from various people (including Alan McGee) was: ‘Are you sure they can remember anything?’ Fortunately for me, and you, they could. Or, at least, they’ve respectively made up some very convincing anecdotes, some of which even match up with each other.

  I first met Jim Reid and Douglas Hart at the Artrocker awards in 2011, where they were collecting an award for the reissue of Psychocandy. That was, of course, the main reason I went: to see one of the groups who
had sound-tracked my formative years be publicly paid due respect. I already knew Mary Chain/Black Box Recorder guitarist John Moore (who, apropos of nothing, once attempted to teach me to play the musical saw), and through John I had met the Mary Chain’s then bass player, and now guitarist, Philip King. But that freezing November day in East London marked my first brief meeting with Jim, who, alongside John, was a touch hungover, speaking in what Smash Hits referred to as the famous ‘spooky whisper’ and concerned largely with the whereabouts of ‘drinkies’. Douglas Hart, who towered over me (as most people do), seemed more immediately open to an initial broaching of the book idea under circumstances that were admittedly better suited to . . . well, locating drinkies.

  Cut to today and, after an eventful and industrious two years of persuasion, persistence, anecdotes and characters (and alcohol), The Jesus and Mary Chain’s biography has finally burst into tangible life, and within these pages is the rich, revealing and absorbing account of the band, thanks to Jim Reid, Douglas Hart, Bobby Gillespie, John Moore, Murray Dalglish, Alan McGee, Geoff Travis and as many former alumni and associates as I could get my hands on. William Reid, unfortunately, chose not to be involved.

  On the cusp of the 1980s, before the Mary Chain existed, the Reid brothers found little acceptance in their hometown of East Kilbride, near Glasgow, preferring to stay in, or stroll through town in the middle of the night, rather than risk being targeted by gangs of neds (‘non-educated delinquents’). Not unusually for brothers, they didn’t even really want to associate with each other until their late teens, when they found common ground in their love of glam-rock and punk. They actively ‘hated each other’ when they were at school according to William, who was older and didn’t want to hang around with his little brother; by the time Jim reached sixteen he still only looked about ten anyway. ‘That was quite embarrassing,’ admitted Jim. ‘Nobody really wanted to talk to me.’ But the energy of punk, and particularly proto-punk groups such as The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, would soon unite them, motivating them (despite initial outward appearances) to create their own future, a future of making music with integrity, on their own terms. This would provide their escape and ultimately change their lives. All in good time.

  The Reids’ shyness was legendary, but they had total faith in what they were doing. It is their sense of being outsiders, never being part of a ‘scene’, combined with a strong individuality and self-awareness, that really defines the Mary Chain for those who felt and feel similar. It’s a lonely but ultimately more rewarding place to be; so many continue to identify with the Mary Chain for this reason. Like the punks who went before them, The Jesus and Mary Chain are the champions of the weird, the poster boys for the misunderstood, and there was no way they were going to remould themselves to suit others. For that alone, they have a special place in my heart. They might have been chaotic onstage, they might have drunk too much, they might have even been thrown out of their own gigs in the early days – but they also knew they were, as they often nonchalantly proclaimed, ‘the best’. Once the hip and enthusiastic Bobby Gillespie joined the line-up as their Moe Tucker-style drummer, their confidence could only grow.

  With Alan McGee at the management helm in their early years, the Mary Chain knew they had the power to cut through saccharine mainstream pop like a knife, forcing fans to question the culture they were being fed, just as punk had encouraged them to question the same thing. And hits? World tours? Gold records and Top of the Pops? It was all on the horizon – and once their music reached the ears of Alan McGee, success would come rapidly. ‘It wasn’t a rollercoaster,’ founding member Douglas Hart remembers. ‘It was more like a rocket.’

  Acknowledgements

  Love and thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed for this book: Jim Reid, Douglas Hart, Bobby Gillespie, John Moore, Laurence Verfaillie, Murray Dalglish, Linda Fox, Philip King, Ben Lurie, Steve Monti, Lincoln Fong (who dedicates his contribution to Kyra Rubin, ‘the world’s biggest JAMC fan’), Alan McGee, Geoff Travis, Jeannette Lee, Chris Morrison, Jerry Jaffe, Neil Taylor, Stephen Pastel, Terry Edwards, Clive ‘The Doctor’ Jackson, Joe Foster, Alan Moulder, Pat Collier, Mick Houghton, David Evans, Loz Colbert, Mark Crozer, John Robb, James Pinker, David Quantick, Terry Staunton and Kevin Pearce. Gratitude also to Gerry McElhone, Barbara Charone, Karen Ciccone, Gavin Martin, Nick Hasted, Mat Snow, Sigtryggur Baldursson, Tom Seabrook, John Ingham, the essential Mary Chain fan resource that is Niina’s April Skies blog, Rock’s Back Pages, Mihoko Kimura, Carlos Benavides, Robin Kennedy, Gary Fowles and Filipe Albuquerque.

  Finally, thanks to Kevin Pocklington at Jenny Brown Associates and commissioning editors Alison Rae at Polygon Books and Kathy Huck at St Martin’s Press. Love and gratitude to friends and family for support and encouragement. Special thanks as always to my husband Dylan.

  1

  New Town, Punk Rock, Dole Queue

  East Kilbride, located close to Glasgow, is a central base for business, a great place to live, shop, work and play . . . EastKilbride.org, the ‘premier community information site for East Kilbride’

  East Kilbride was fucking Neolithic. Stonehenge with windows.

  Douglas Hart

  East Kilbride, Scotland. The 1980s had dawned with little fanfare and, for many, even less opportunity, unless you didn’t mind the idea of working in a factory for the rest of your life. Margaret Thatcher (who, oddly enough, died while this paragraph was being written) and her vice-like grip on Britain might have heralded a golden ‘me-centric’ era for the moneyed entrepreneur, but for most the reign of the Conservative government would be a dark time that, in many areas, destroyed industry and wrecked communities. The post-war new town East Kilbride might not have been as mind-numbingly bleak as it has sometimes been described, but a heady concoction of boredom, inertia and, occasionally, fear – of violent ‘neds’, mostly – hung in the air. East Kilbride wasn’t the worst place in the world to grow up; it was just dull, antiseptic and uninspiring.

  There is always, of course, another way; at least, there is for those who have the talent, wherewithal and determination to find and pursue it. The spirit of punk, which lit the creative touch-paper for so many young people in 1976 and in the brief period that followed, was incandescent enough to continue burning in the hearts of many teenagers who found themselves inspired by the music, imagery, strength and sheer can-do/fuck you attitude. This would carry them through, not only to the new decade, but also beyond. Punk also celebrated seminal American acts including The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Television, Patti Smith and The Ramones, and introduced British youth to transatlantic treasure that they might not otherwise have been exposed to. These influences were essential to unlocking a new life, and as music in the mainstream became more slickly packaged and over-produced they would pass the flame of urgent, raw guitar-based music on to a new generation. The pioneers of this new generation lived here. In East Kilbride.

  William and James Reid were actually born in Glasgow, William on 28 October 1958 and Jim on 29 December 1961. The family left the tenement block they once called home after their tiny flat was broken into. Nothing was taken, largely because there was nothing to take. ‘They must have been the most disappointed burglars in the world,’ Jim later quipped. Still, a life somewhere safer and quieter beckoned. The Reids graduated from what was basically, as Jim puts it, a ‘slum’ to a small, neat, suburban house in East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire, less than ten miles south-east of Glasgow.

  Fast forward to the end of the 1970s, and the two brothers are in their teens, as close as twins and often too close for comfort, skulking in their family home. They barely emerge except to sign on the dole or walk the dog. But, while a shared bedroom in a blustery Scottish new town might not strike one as a potential Petri dish of creativity, the Reid brothers were slowly (very slowly) creating something that would not only offer them an escape route, but ultimately change the course of pop during a time of disinfected chart fodder and anodyne tweeness. Th
is is impressive considering that music was not treated as an important part of life by their parents, who, according to Jim, ‘would buy a single once every five years and then play it over and over again.’

  ‘My mum and dad were into music, but very casually. We got our first record player in about 1971, but we had no records, so we went round to our neighbours’ house and borrowed one. It was “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”. We were so amazed we played it about 50 fucking times.’

  At least Jim and William had an older cousin, a music fan who lent the Reids his precious Beatles and Bob Dylan albums, but it was glam-rock that first sparked the Reids’ serious obsession with pop music. Hard as it may be to believe, Jim Reid remembers getting ‘really excited about waiting for a new Slade record to come out, seeing them on Top of the Pops, talking about it at school the next day . . .’ But exhilarating as the stomping rhythms and dazzling personalities (and trousers) of glam-rock undoubtedly were, punk provided the sea change that ultimately made the idea of forming a band accessible, necessary even.

  ‘Having a band just seemed like something that other people did. It was punk that made you think, you know, what are the alternatives here? We could go and work in a factory, or we could start a punk band,’ says Jim. ‘But unfortunately me and William were both incredibly lazy. William bought a bass guitar that just sat in the corner for about five years.’

  The Reid brothers felt keenly that they were very much alone, culturally, in East Kilbride, which added to their insularity – at the very least they had each other (‘we became like weird twins, finishing each other’s sentences,’ Jim noted). But a young Douglas Hart was another creative spirit adrift in faceless East Kilbride who was kick-started by punk rock. He was more outgoing than the Reid brothers, who were, to be fair, shy to the point of being completely anti-social, but he was still a sensitive outsider who had little in common with his peer group.