Changes
My three wishes? That little alien blokes would come and govern the planet and make everybody be nice to each other. And that they would bring many drugs with no ill effects. And that I would be given a licence to kill.
Jim Reid to Kitty Empire in NME, 1998
As the new millenium dawned, Jim Reid decided to pull together a band of his own, although, as he admits himself, ‘band’ might not be quite the right term. ‘Drinking club’ would probably be a more accurate description. ‘If the truth be told it was an excuse to go to far-flung locations and get wasted,’ says Jim. Fair enough.
It was time to have some fun and also experience life on the road without William by his side – of course, Jim had already experienced the latter at the end of the last Mary Chain tour, but this time it was actually supposed to be this way. Jim already had the right mix of musicians around him – Nick Sanderson and his wife Romi Mori, who played bass in The Gun Club, and Ben Lurie, who became very much the driving force of the group that would become Freeheat. After a nervous debut at Camden’s intimate Barfly venue, the alcohol-fuelled Freeheat roadshow began.
‘We did two tours of America, and it was insanity,’ Jim says. ‘We just drifted into these psychotic situations. It was like your life had fallen through the cracks. I’d be thinking, Not long ago I was playing at the Hollywood Palladium, and now I’m in this motel in the middle of nowhere, and there are crack dealers, curtains twitching, how did this happen?’
Ben Lurie recalls: ‘A woman in America told us she could sort out a tour but we could only do it if it paid for itself, as we didn’t have any money to put into it. The first warning sign should have been being picked up by a limousine at Boston Airport and then being driven to a Holiday Inn. I think we were the only people who were driven to the Holiday Inn Express in a limo.’
The promoter of the tour ended up losing a considerable amount of money, and Freeheat would hand over the EP ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ to help cover the losses. ‘It’s all exciting, though,’ says Jim. ‘Great, but surreal. If William Burroughs had written a story about a rock’n’roll band, it would have been Freeheat.’
The year 2000 also saw William Reid striking out on his own and playing live without his brother for the first time in his life. His acoustic solo debut took place at the intimate 12 Bar Club in London’s Denmark Street in March, eighteen months after the Mary Chain’s split, in front of his wife Dawn and a collection of Mary Chain super-fans. He was clearly nervous, but ‘he strikes a chord’ wrote Uncut’s Nick Hasted, also lurking in the crowd, ‘and he’s back’. He even played a handful of Mary Chain songs, including the poignant ‘Never Understood’ (‘I think I’m going out of style/I think I’ve known it for a while . . .’) and ‘Reverence’.
William had recently experienced something of a turnaround in his health, thanks to a new era of domesticity (and detachment from everything that connected him to the past). Family life with Dawn, her child and eventually a baby of their own would, temporarily at least, help him to break away from alcohol and drugs. The idea of making music sober excited him, and the thought of being able to turn up for an interview, and not have to conduct it in a pub, was liberating too. ‘Small achievements,’ he admitted, ‘but for me, it’s like the clouds parting.’ At this point in time, however, William was still adamant there would be no more Mary Chain – there had been too much hurt, and he had only just started to feel that he had his life back.
It would still take some years for the psychic wounds to heal on each side of the Reid fence after The Jesus and Mary Chain’s breakup, but another (temporary) casualty of the split would be Sister Vanilla’s debut album Little Pop Rock. Linda had always been supportive, visiting her brothers in the studio over the years and giving her honest opinions, and William in turn wanted to help Linda make an album of her own. The idea was, originally, that this would be an enjoyable family Reid production, germinating as it had during happier (but not that happy) times. Work on Little Pop Rock started in 1996. By the mid-2000s it still wasn’t complete.
‘After every tour we wanted to kill each other, and after the last one we nearly succeeded,’ Jim had said grimly after the final sputtering flames of the Mary Chain were forcibly extinguished – obviously the idea of getting together to work on anything at all was something they were not keen on. All the same, over the years to come, Little Pop Rock became a vital part of the healing process for the brothers’ scorched relationship. ‘It was the thing we all had in common,’ says Jim.
Linda was understandably put out that the album William had promised would be out in two weeks took almost a decade to complete. Geography didn’t help, nor did the Cold War between the brothers, which meant that much of the album had to be recorded in separate parts. Linda says: ‘We recorded it in William’s house in Muswell Hill, Jim’s house in Kentish Town, the Drugstore, William’s house in LA and the Glasgow flat of a friend of Stephen Pastel. It was difficult when William and his family moved to LA. I started thinking it was never going to get finished.’
However, via Little Pop Rock, Jim and William did, inevitably, have to talk to each other occasionally, and they reunited in the studio with Linda during a family trip to LA. ‘That was one of the few times on the album when William and Jim and I worked on the record together,’ says Linda. ‘It was good to work with William and Jim. They are very different, but both are so talented and such good people. To be able to make my own record but with their help was such a privilege.’
The melodic, sometimes dreamy Little Pop Rock would finally be released in March 2007 to be greeted with hearty enthusiasm by Mary Chain fans, delighted to hear the family-affair album that had played its part in bridging the chasm between the brothers. Sadly there would be no more forays into music for Linda, however. ‘We knocked that out of her,’ Jim laughs.
Jim, meanwhile, had been playing solo shows, accompanied by Philip King on guitar. If Jim felt exposed in Freeheat with no brother by his side, this would be even tougher. He would still muster up artificial courage thanks to the booze, but the time soon came when, after years of living in the grip of alcoholism, he chose to stop completely, which was no mean feat.
‘I stopped drinking because I played a fairly disastrous show,’ Jim explains. ‘My wife Julie and Phil King set it up. It was a good opportunity for me. But I met Duffy from Primal Scream, late morning or early afternoon, and we went to the pub. I showed up at the sound-check, already wobbling, and Julie said, “You’ve got to stop drinking.” I said, “I know what I’m doing, I’ve been doing this for years.” By the time of the gig I couldn’t remember where I was.’
This solo show was a watershed moment for Jim. The following day, Jim’s wife Julie gave him an ultimatum: family or the bottle. ‘I chose family.’
Many Mary Chain fans will know that Julie and Jim recorded a duet together, ‘Song For A Secret’, released as a 7-inch in 2005. ‘It was a good single,’ says Jim. ‘If we do an album I’m going to re-record it. I don’t want it to be forgotten.’
It was a stack of ‘Song For A Secret’ 7-inches that caught the attention of guitarist Mark Crozer, who was running a booking agency and who would soon, little did he know it at the time, be playing with Jim himself. Mark was intrigued to hear the duet, and to learn of Jim’s solo project. ‘I ended up booking some shows for Jim in the UK,’ says Mark. ‘Then, backstage at a gig in Brighton, we started talking about having a band. I said, “I’ll play bass for you,” kind of volunteering.
‘I’d never really been a bass player until I’d offered my services. Then I said, “I know this drummer . . .” I’d just met [former Ride drummer] Loz Colbert a few weeks before and I thought Loz would be great for the band, because I knew Ride were influenced by the Mary Chain.’
Before long Jim, Philip, Mark and Loz met in a rehearsal room in Oxford, near where Mark and Loz were based, and, as Mark recalls, ‘it gelled’. Jim had only just quit alcohol when they started rehearsing, and the quiet but heavy significance with which he turned down a casual drink is something Loz has never forgotten. ‘When he looked at me and said, “No . . .” it seemed important. Then he said, “When I drink, I tend to drink an awful lot.”’
For someone who would automatically reach for the bottle to quell his nerves, this was a brave new period for Jim, and he staunchly stuck to his new routine for years. It wasn’t easy – he had no alcohol in his system to embolden him, and no brother by his side on stage. After gigs, Jim would simply go straight back to the hotel to avoid the usual flow of alcohol.
One thing Jim might have found hard to contemplate was the idea of performing a Mary Chain show while sober – not that that was something he had to worry about, or so he thought. The band had dissolved almost a decade earlier and there had been no conversations about reforming. However, in 2007 the organisers of California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival came calling. Originally it had been suggested that Jim’s solo band play a slot, but the conversation soon developed into a plea for the Mary Chain to reform at the festival.
‘Coachella came to us with an offer and I thought it was a good one,’ Jim recalls, ‘but it hadn’t occurred to me that we would ever get back together. When I said, “I’m never going to do this again,” I meant it.
‘But it was nine years later, you think, “Maybe things will be different.” I’d assumed William wouldn’t be into the idea, and he assumed I wouldn’t be. But we got on the phone one night and I said, “I’d probably do it.” And he said, “Me too.” Just as we’d decided that, Coachella doubled their offer, so it was, “Woohoo!”’
If reports of a Mary Chain reunion were hard for the public to believe after the years of pain, pugilism and piss-artistry that had led to their messy demise, it was even harder for Philip, Mark and Loz to fathom. On hearing about the upcoming show, Mark thought it was a joke at first, while Phil brushed it off as a rumour. But no, it was happening. Hell had indeed frozen over.
The Reids allowed themselves to be cautiously excited. It seemed like a resolution, and, as John Moore has observed, the fact that their father had sadly passed away the year before made them look at their situation in a different light. Life was just too short. Rehearsals were booked for two weeks in a studio in Shepherd’s Bush and William flew from LA to meet the latest Mary Chain line-up.
The sense of anticipation was almost tangible, and Mark and Loz weren’t sure what to expect, but when William turned up he was affable and positive, which immediately made the new members of the band relax. The first few minutes were civilised. Too civilised. Within seconds of launching into the first song, a jet-lagged William and a keyed-up Jim were at each other’s throats. ‘It was a massive bust-up,’ says Jim, ‘But it was more to do with getting something out of our systems. We’d kind of made up, but there was still all this background resentment. It was a boil that needed to be lanced.’
Once they had cleared the air, the band could get to grips with the set, and it was fascinating for Loz and Mark to witness the symbiotic nature of the Reids’ songs. ‘Jim’s songs made sense when William added his parts to them,’ Loz explains, ‘but William’s songs really fell into place when Jim started singing. They just became the right song as soon as Jim opened his mouth, and as soon as William started playing, it just felt like we were ready to take off.’