Acid House, Sugarcubes and a Trip behind the Iron Curtain
If the public don’t like ‘Sidewalking’, I’ll be utterly pissed off and my view of the public taste will go even lower.
William Reid to Steve Sutherland, 1988
The Reids had to find a replacement guitarist, but they were reluctant to advertise, didn’t want to have to go through the audition process, and didn’t have anyone in mind. ‘Perfect example of their sociopathic tendencies,’ says John Moore. ‘They got Dave Evans, their former roadie.’
Dave Evans, an erstwhile member of Biff Bang Pow! and the Mary Chain’s sometime sound man, had taken a year out with the Shop Assistants as a backline/guitar technician but had returned to the Mary Chain fold for the upcoming tour. The Reids now had just two weeks before the tour started, but, as Evans recalls, ‘they spent the first week in the studio and there didn’t seem to be any enthusiasm on anyone’s part to find someone. I offered my services and they said “Yes”. We didn’t have any rehearsals whatsoever.’
It was a solution, but the decision to include Evans in the line-up was not universally popular. He was well liked and could play guitar, but, as Douglas observed, it was strange that the Reids spent so much time perfecting their song-craft but would put little or no effort into finding just the right people to play it live. Whether it was a lack of confidence that prevented the Reids from being more outward-looking when it came to line-up changes, or just sheer indolence, their fellow founding member found it hard to reconcile.
‘It’s weird,’ says Douglas. ‘They cared so much about everything else. Dave Evans, lovely guy, but it’s just because he was there. That’s something that would occasionally confound me. Mary Chain laziness . . . “He’ll do!”’
The cloistered process of making Darklands, the advent of a more businesslike manager, and some ostensibly lackadaisical decision-making had all caused Douglas and the Reids to grow apart. But while the brothers worked together on new music, Douglas had been developing new ways of expressing himself, particularly through film-making and making music videos for artists such as My Bloody Valentine and the Cramps/Gun Club sideman Kid Congo.
Douglas was also inspired by acid house in its formative years, which led to some musical experimentation of his own. He made his first record away from the Mary Chain, under the name of Acid Angels, with Peter ‘Pinko’ Fowler, an associate of the late John Loder and an instrumental part of the alternative music television series Snub TV. The result of their collaboration was a sprawling dance record called ‘Speed Speed Ecstasy’, which featured a sample of Donna Summer’s iconic disco hit ‘I Feel Love’.
‘In 1988, way before Screamadelica, I went to some gig at the Astoria,’ Douglas recalls. ‘My girlfriend at the time said, “Let’s stay here, there’s a club coming after, they play dance music.” And I’m going, “What, a fucking disco?” But it was an acid house night.
‘It was an important moment. Andy Weatherall was DJ’ing, and he was like, “What are you doing here?” He was surprised to see one of the Mary Chain, I was still in that indie world. So I made a dance record really early on, just a one-off, came out on Mute. Of course, two years later everyone was doing it.’
William too had been making solo dance tracks in his bedroom, but as Jim observed, he didn’t have the confidence to release them. But the Reids were both influenced by acid house, and the next Mary Chain album, Automatic, would be their most dance-orientated record yet.
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The summer of 1988 also saw the rise of music festivals across Europe, and this ensured that the Mary Chain would cross paths with other groups of a similar mind-set, such as the Cocteau Twins and Iceland’s Björk-fronted indie band The Sugarcubes.
Laurence remembers: ‘At Roskilde, not far from Copenhagen; we were booked in the same hotel and they all went out. I think the Icelanders are pretty good at holding their drink, they beat the Scots flat out.’
This experience clearly bonded the two bands; eccentric Sugarcube maverick Einar Örn (now dividing his time between his group Ghostigital and his day job on the Reykjavik city council) was especially friendly to the Mary Chain, and this connection would lead to The Sugarcubes inviting the Reids to remix their hit ‘Birthday’. The result is compelling and mysterious, interweaving Björk’s yelps and wails with some trademark Jim Reid ‘Hey, Hey, Heys’. It was, as Laurence recalls, ‘really the first time the Mary Chain had done anything like this’.
Another memorable music festival the Mary Chain played that June was Tallinn Summer Rock in Estonia, still firmly behind the Iron Curtain at this point. The Mary Chain were put up in the now infamous Hotel Viru, a high-rise hotel where it was compulsory for all foreign visitors to stay, and where they were monitored closely by the KGB. Agents recorded guests and listened to every conversation in every room from their secret hub on the wind-blown top floor, which is now open to the public as a KGB museum. The door that leads to the old secret recording rooms in Hotel Viru bears the ominous and highly unconvincing sentence: ‘There is nothing behind this door’ in Russian.
‘Every floor had a concierge who reported back to the KGB on what you were doing,’ says then Mary Chain manager Chris Morrison. ‘You were noted every time you went in and out of your room. So I went in and out of my room about six times. Give them something to do.’
‘I imagine we were followed everywhere on our trip,’ Douglas adds. ‘Wouldn’t it be a blast to have a look at the KGB’s Mary Chain files?’
It sure would. Although, as Jim observes, ‘they probably got rid of them for being too fucking obscene’. The conversations crackling up the line from the Mary Chain’s rooms to the top floor of the Hotel Viru would certainly have made for interesting listening. ‘I remember a bizarre fetishistic conversation I had with Douglas and Richie (drummer Richard Thomas) in the hotel room,’ recalls Lincoln Fong, who was working with the Mary Chain as a technician. ‘It’s probably best not repeated.’ There’s a good chance that the KGB wouldn’t have been able to decipher their accents, of course.
‘Tallinn was a pretty weird trip,’ says Jim. ‘There were all these dodgy high-rise constructions that looked like they would have fallen down if you sneezed near them, and it was totally run on bribery and corruption. You’d go to a restaurant and they’d say, “It’s fully booked,” and you’d look and there’d be loads of empty tables. The promoter would bung this guy a load of roubles and a table would appear.’
On one occasion, on his way downstairs from his room, Chris Morrison was approached in the lift by two young women who suggested he take them to dinner. He politely declined. When the lift reached the ground floor and the doors slid open, he was met by Jim and William and their Estonian guide, who was extremely perturbed. She warned Chris that some American tourists had also recently been propositioned by the same women. Their ‘dinner date’ culminated in the women spiking their drinks with drugs and, the following morning, the hapless Americans woke up naked in an alleyway not remembering anything of the night before.
Chris remembers, ‘I said, “My God, all of my life I’ve wanted to wake up naked in an alleyway not remembering where I was the night before. Where are they?” Jim said, “Forget the women, how do we get the drugs?”’
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Tallinn Summer Rock took place in a vast football stadium, and the Mary Chain walked on stage to see about 200,000 Estonians staring back at them – one of the biggest crowds the band have ever played to. The bill was somewhat incongruous in terms of style: blues singer Robert Cray was also appearing, as were ‘a bunch of Finnish heavy metal bands,’ says Douglas. ‘The strangest Mary Chain show ever. Such gigs were rare, so everyone from Tallinn under the age of 40 came along. We played to thousands of bemused Estonians, many with mullets and bum-fluff moustaches.’
‘They were just standing there like frying sausages,’ says Jim. ‘All these bands they’d never heard of doing what they do. It was quite bizarre.’
The Jesus and Mary Chain performed, as they always did, with maximum noise, concentrated energy, and, in Jim’s case, the usual attack on the equipment. But when he looked up, mid-frenzy, Jim noticed that the crowd appeared to be in a collective state of shock. Their reaction, as Douglas recalls, ‘was similar to that of the audience in The Producers, at the premiere of Springtime for Hitler’. You get the idea.
‘I was as off my tits as it was possible to get in Tallinn,’ Jim explains, ‘and I did my standard smashing-the-monitor thing that I used to do. These people had no reference points as to what it was I was doing. They were just standing there thinking, What the fuck is that guy doing? Looking back on it, I was smashing up their gear that would have taken them about eight lifetimes to buy. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.’
In the not too distant future, Jim Reid would increasingly leave the gear unscathed during a live show. His initial feeling was that the destruction was theatre; ‘you have to put on a show,’ he said in later years. ‘It’s something to do besides playing the songs.’ Sometimes the violence was borne of nerves, desperation or genuine frustration, other times it was ‘unnecessary, or sometimes you go on speeding out of your head and there’s a guitar and a floor to smash it on.’ The point at which it had to stop was when audiences started to expect it. There was no point in being predictably unpredictable, and the Mary Chain didn’t need a gimmick. ‘It dawned on us that what’s good about the Mary Chain is it’s not about glitzy showbiz stuff,’ said Jim. ‘Now we push the music to the front.’
As summer waned, it was time for the Mary Chain to set off to Australia to continue the ‘Sidewalking’ tour; two more gruelling months on the road. But there was a light at the end of this particular touring tunnel, an Iggy Pop-shaped light, to be specific. Once they had completed their dates in Australia, they would travel to the US for a run of shows with one of their lifelong heroes. Meanwhile, to accompany the Australian tour, Blanco Y Negro released a 7-inch of the Mary Chain’s jagged cover of ‘Surfin’ USA’.
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There were difficulties on the tour from the off: an argument erupted between Lincoln Fong and a drunken Jeffrey Lee Pierce from The Gun Club; a riot broke out on an early Australian date when Perth’s finest The Triffids set the stage alight (literally); and the Mary Chain’s gigs were the subject of a public protest in New Zealand when two goths died in an unrelated suicide pact the week before. Protesters tried to have the Mary Chain shows cancelled, but they didn’t succeed and the band escaped New Zealand unscathed. More trouble, however, lay ahead in the US.
The Jesus and Mary Chain were trepidatiously excited about whom they were soon to share a bill with. They had revered Iggy Pop since they were teenagers, listened to his records, waged joyous trails of destruction in the abandoned paint factory to the sound of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, and now they were about to meet the sinewy dark lord of proto-punk himself. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, disaster ensued.
‘Oh God,’ Jim sighs, cringing at the memory of it. ‘One of the main reasons the Mary Chain exists is because of Iggy and The Stooges. We were asked if we wanted to “co-headline with Iggy”, which basically meant we were the support band. Anyway, we’re big Iggy fans, so we do it.’
The Mary Chain arrived at the California Theater in San Diego and prepared for a soundcheck, but Iggy was still on stage. ‘We thought, Good, let’s watch Iggy soundcheck,’ says Jim. ‘Not allowed to watch Iggy soundcheck. Even then, that’s cool, I hate people watching me soundcheck. I’ve never stopped anybody doing it, but I know how that feels.
‘But Iggy is soundchecking not for half an hour, not for an hour, but for about three or four hours. And suddenly we’re told, “There’s no time for you to have a soundcheck.” We’re like, “What happened to this ‘co-headline’ shit?”’
Despite the way the tour had been sold to the Reids, the Mary Chain were hardly treated as equals by Iggy’s crew. ‘Iggy had this Scottish tour manager, a real hard nut,’ Jim continues. ‘He thought that if he sent Iggy into our dressing-room to hang out for about ten minutes that it would make everything OK.
‘I don’t want to put the guy down here, because I still love him and I love his music, but he came in and said, “Have you got everything you need?” I said, “No, not really.” He said, “What do you want?” And I said, “A soundcheck.” And he went, “Gee, I was really looking forward to meeting you guys . . .” He stumbled out and that was that. Then we were told, “You can have a sound-check for ten minutes.”
Once the Mary Chain were on stage, an argument broke out between William and Iggy Pop’s roadies about how much of the stage they could use. The disagreement concluded with William spitting angrily on Iggy’s ‘Marley’, a large vinyl mat used on stage that the Mary Chain were not allowed to go near, let alone gob on.
Jim says: ‘One of Iggy’s crew came up with a towel and said, “Clean it up.” We told him where to go and all hell broke loose. During the show I was so furious that I literally wrecked all of the onstage equipment. I smashed up the monitors and kicked them all into the pit at the front of the stage.’
Mid-set, Mary Chain tour manager Scott Rodger (now Paul McCartney’s manager) sidled up to Jim and quietly conveyed that as soon as they’d finished the show, they were to run, not walk, straight out of the fire door and into the waiting van. ‘If you don’t,’ he said, ‘you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you.’ Jim looked up to see Iggy’s crew standing in the wings with baseball bats.
When the debacle reached the ears of the press, however, promoter David Swift took Iggy’s side. The Mary Chain were, according to Swift, ‘very demanding about using Iggy’s lights and wanting more stage room,’ he told the LA Times. ‘Logistically, Iggy couldn’t do that for them.’
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Work would soon begin on the Mary Chain’s third studio album, Automatic, the brighter, harder, synth-heavy record that William refers to as their ‘driving across America’ (and away from Iggy’s baseball-bat-wielding crew) album. The Reids holed up in Sam Therapy, a studio on Kensal Road in West London, and the ever-supportive Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee would visit occasionally to check in on them. As Jeannette remembers, the atmosphere was often strained.
‘You wouldn’t know what the vibe would be; maybe they’d have been working on something that hadn’t gone well and they’d had a row, so you could walk into a very black mood. One could storm out as you were walking in.’
Although the Reids had long had a combative relationship, this ominous studio atmosphere provided a preview of things to come. The mood of the record, from the song-writing to the glittering programmed drum sound, seems to reflect where the band was at personally too – while Darklands was softer, more sensual and more introspective, Automatic has clean, sharp lines and, at times, a glaring cocaine confidence compared to Psychocandy’s acid-inspired haze. As David Quantick concluded in his review for NME, it was ‘cruel, but fun’.
The album was released in September 1989, reaching number 11 in the UK album chart. Arguably it is more loved now than it was at the time, featuring as it does such enduring songs as ‘Blues From A Gun’, ‘Halfway To Crazy’ and ‘Head On’, famously covered by The Pixies. However, some critics and fans, no doubt hoping for Darklands or Psychocandy part two, did not take to the release.
‘Automatic was probably their least well-received album,’ admits then Mary Chain press officer Mick Houghton. ‘Not that it’s for me to talk about how a record should be produced, but I thought the mistake was not having the proper drum sound. The songs were great, but the production lacked something, they kind of worked it too much. But later they came back with “Reverence” as a single. When that came out in 1989, it blew people away.’
Just before the Automatic promotional tour started in October 1989, with three months of British and European dates stretching out ahead of them, the Reids decided, apparently at the last minute, that Dave Evans was not the guitarist they wanted to take. As much as they hated auditioning musicians, this time it couldn’t be avoided. Nobody suitable was springing to mind.
Jim says: ‘We auditioned what seemed like hundreds of guitarists. When I look back on it, it was probably about four. We narrowed it down to two, and that was Ben Lurie and Phil King.’
Philip King, later of shoegaze band Lush fame, first met the Mary Chain when he was playing with See See Rider, an indie group also originally from East Kilbride (although King himself is a Londoner). Some members of See See Rider, Philip included, also shared a flat with Douglas, who had a hand in producing some of their material. ‘Total keep-it-in-the-family Mary Chain thing,’ says Douglas.
London-born Australian Ben Lurie, on the other hand, was working as a receptionist at Rough Trade when Jeannette Lee, who knew he wanted to join a band, suggested he try out for the Mary Chain.
At first it seemed that Philip was the ideal choice – he looked right, played well and was already part of their extended circle. Ben Lurie admits that he ‘did everything wrong’ at the audition. Apart from anything else, ‘he had a ponytail . . .’ Jim shudders. However, the Reids appreciated his contrariness and his blithe disregard of the groups he was supposed to revere.
‘We asked him what music he liked,’ says Jim. ‘He started going on about The Police. We were like, “What? Are you fucking kidding?” Then we said, “You’re Australian, what do you think about The Birthday Party?” And he said, “They’re pretty funny.” We thought he was amusing. When it came to musicianship, he and Phil were neck and neck.’
‘Jim says they flipped a coin and Ben won,’ Philip adds. ‘William says I didn’t get in because my shoes were too pointy. So, somewhere in between the two . . .’
As October loomed and rehearsals were arranged, Ben Lurie and his ponytail were absorbed into the Mary Chain line-up, which would stay as it was for three years after a long period of all too frequent changes. Also joining the tour of Britain and Europe would be Richard Thomas on drums, who had played with the Mary Chain on the ‘Sidewalking’ tour. The drum sound on the Reids’ latest output sounded more mechanical than ever, and yet the drum machine on the road had, perversely, been scrapped in favour of a real drummer.
The Automatic tour is remembered by all as a difficult, exhausting period for the band. However, despite the usual touring melancholia, Jerry Jaffe recalls a heartwarming moment that would doubtless change anyone’s opinion of the band. (Unless your opinion of them was that they were well-mannered young men with a soft spot for old ladies.)
Jerry Jaffe recalls: ‘My mother was in her eighties. She’d never been to Europe, and I took her to Amsterdam during the tour. The Jesus and Mary Chain were very big on meeting my mother. I mean, I had trepidation about meeting this band, so the thought of them meeting my mother . . . But they said, “No, we want to meet Mrs Jaffe.” It was kind of sweet, but I was apprehensive.
‘They told me to meet them at a certain Italian restaurant at a certain time. I was thinking, I can’t believe I’m doing this, my mother’s not going to talk to me for the rest of my life . . . But they were all there, and they couldn’t have been nicer – they made her feel like a million dollars, honestly it was the nicest time of her life. She was saying, “You know, you’d be so handsome if you cut your hair . . .”
‘William said I was his third favourite American Jew behind Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce. That used to make me feel good. And they made my mother feel good, so there you go.’