The main voices in this book belong to:
Jim Reid
Founding member and lead singer of The Jesus and Mary Chain from 1983 to date. Solo projects include the group Freeheat.
William Reid
Founding member and lead guitarist of The Jesus and Mary Chain from 1983 to date. Solo projects include Lazycame and William.
Douglas Hart
Founding member of The Jesus and Mary Chain and bass player from 1983 to 1991. Other projects have included Acid Angels and Cristine. Now a film-maker, Douglas Hart has made music videos for artists including My Bloody Valentine, The Horrors and Paul Weller and films including the award-winning Long Distance Information.
Bobby Gillespie
Drummer in The Jesus and Mary Chain from 1984 to 1986. Frontman, founding member and songwriter in Primal Scream.
Alan McGee
Founder of Creation Records. First manager of The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream. After parting ways with The Jesus and Mary Chain he went on to manage My Bloody Valentine, Oasis and The Libertines among others. He retired from music management in 2008, but in 2013 announced he would be launching a new record label, 359 Music. He has also made the movie Kubricks with director/writer Dean Cavanagh.
First drummer in The Jesus and Mary Chain. Murray Dalglish left the band in 1984, going on to play drums in Baby’s Got A Gun and, latterly, Trixie’s Big Red Motorbike. He also owns a hairdressing salon in East Kilbride.
Linda Fox
Linda Fox (née Reid) is William and Jim Reid’s younger sister. She is also known as the recording artist Sister Vanilla, and made an album, Little Pop Rock, with her brothers. The album was released in 2007.
John Moore
Drummer and later guitarist in The Jesus and Mary Chain after the departure of Bobby Gillespie. Also a writer, he enjoyed success with solo projects including John Moore and the Expressway after leaving the Mary Chain, and later with Black Box Recorder alongside Luke Haines and Sarah Nixey. He joined The Jesus and Mary Chain again in 2012.
Neil Taylor
Former NME journalist, C86 pioneer and founder of digital publishing imprint Ink Monkey Books.
Clive ‘The Doctor’ Jackson
Lead singer in Doctor and the Medics. Jackson also ran the club night Alice in Wonderland in central London in the 1980s. Clive Jackson continues to tour and DJ.
Joe Foster
Also known as ‘Slaughter Joe’, Foster, a producer and former member of the Television Personalities and Biff Bang Pow!, co-founded Creation with Alan McGee and Dick Green. He also runs the PoppyDisc label, which has artists including BMX Bandits and Norman Blake on its roster.
Stephen Pastel
The professional name of Stephen McRobbie, lead singer and guitarist in The Pastels since their formation in Glasgow in 1981. In May 2013 the Pastels released Slow Summits, their first album since Illumination in 1997.
Pat Collier
Engineer/producer, former owner of Alaska Studios, where The Jesus and Mary Chain recorded ‘Upside Down’, engineered by Collier. He also mixed ‘You Trip Me Up’. Pat Collier now works from Perry Vale Studios in Forest Hill, south-east London.
Geoff Travis
Founder of Rough Trade Records and the Rough Trade chain of record shops. Also founder of Blanco Y Negro (a subsidiary of Warners), who signed The Jesus and Mary Chain in 1985.
Jeannette Lee
Co-owner of Rough Trade Records with Geoff Travis, Jeannette Lee also worked with The Jesus and Mary Chain during their time with Blanco Y Negro.
Mick Houghton
Former press officer for The Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen and many others during his time working with Warners before setting up his own PR company, Brassneck Publicity. Mick Houghton is also a prolific writer, and at the time of writing he is working on a biography of Sandy Denny.
Laurence Verfaillie
After working with Alan McGee at Creation Records, Laurence Verfaillie went on to be a leading music PR and was the managing director of drum-and-bass PR company Electric. She now runs a successful French delicatessen called Degustation in south London.
Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison, founder of CMO Management, managed The Jesus and Mary Chain from 1987. He is also famous for having managed Blur and Damon Albarn, and currently manages artists including Grace Jones, Mutya Keisha Siobhan and Morcheeba.
Former senior vice-president of A&R at PolyGram Records, Jerry Jaffe worked with Chris Morrison and managed The Jesus and Mary Chain’s career in the US. He set up Management By Jaffe and managed the careers of artists including St Etienne, Dead or Alive and Midge Ure. Jerry Jaffe also ran the US operations for Creation Records until 1995.
David Evans
A one-time roadie for The Jesus and Mary Chain, David Evans stepped in to play guitar when John Moore first left the group. He now works as a designer.
James Pinker
New Zealand-based drummer, percussionist and engineer James Pinker joined The Jesus and Mary Chain briefly at the end of 1987 and appears on the compilation album The Power Of Negative Thinking. He has also worked with Dead Can Dance, The Pogues and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Philip King
Bass player for UK shoegaze legends Lush and later for The Jesus and Mary Chain, Philip King is in the current line-up of the band, now playing guitar two decades after failing an audition to be their guitarist. Philip is also a picture researcher, working with publications such as Uncut.
Ben Lurie
London-born Australian musician Ben Lurie was working on reception at Rough Trade before joining The Jesus and Mary Chain, at first to play guitar and later, replacing Douglas Hart on bass. Ben Lurie was also in Jim Reid’s group Freeheat, and is now a graphic designer.
Steve Monti
Drummer for Curve, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and later the Wilko Johnson Band, Steve Monti joined The Jesus and Mary Chain in 1992. Monti has also worked with the Cocteau Twins among others.
Engineer and bass player Lincoln Fong joined The Jesus and Mary Chain initially as a technician, and later post-Stoned And Dethroned (1994) on bass. As an engineer Fong has also worked with artists including the Cocteau Twins and Pete Townshend.
Alan Moulder
Closely connected with the UK shoegaze movement (and married to Curve frontwoman Toni Halliday), engineer and producer Alan Moulder first worked with The Jesus and Mary Chain as an assistant engineer on sessions with the engineer Flood. He is considered to be one of the UK’s best engineers and has worked with Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine, Foals, Arctic Monkeys and others.
Loz Colbert
Founding member and drummer in Oxford-based shoegaze group Ride, Loz Colbert would eventually join The Jesus and Mary Chain after working with Jim Reid on his solo project prior to the band’s reunion at Coachella in 2007. More recently he has been working with Gaz Coombes of Supergrass.
Mark Crozer
Guitarist/bass player who joined The Jesus and Mary Chain in 2007 for the reunion appearance at Coachella, after being in Jim Reid’s solo band up to that point. Other projects include The International Jetsetters and Mark Crozer and the Rels.
John Robb
Musician and writer John Robb (formerly of The Membranes) conducted The Jesus and Mary Chain’s first interview in 1984, for the magazine ZigZag. Robb has written a number of books including Punk Rock: An Oral History and is the frontman with the group Goldblade. He also runs the rock journalism website Louder Than War.