Heaven and Hell
The Story of the Jesus and Mary Chain EMAIL LINK
by Jonathan Garrett
March 8, 2009
Photo by Eirik Lande
If one had any doubts that heaven is indeed too close to hell, as the Jesus and Mary Chain first suggested on 1987's Darklands, the band's own career ought to lay them to rest. For three decades, the Scottish brothers who comprise the core of JAMC, Jim and William Reid, have demonstrated that noise and melody can not only coexist, but when properly executed, each can cast the other in sharper relief. While many artists have been drawn to extremes, few have explored such opposite ends of the spectrum simultaneously. This is their story, as told by the Reids themselves and those who know them best.
JAMC wouldn't play their first formal gig until 1984, but the most critical step in getting the band to that point actually took place five years earlier, when both Reids abruptly quit their jobs. "We were working at factories," explains William. "Jim worked at Rolls Royce Aerospace where they made big Boeing plane engines, and I worked as a sheet metal worker, which was a terrible job because I was always worried about losing my fingers."
The Reids might have continued indefinitely as assembly-line workers had it not been for the birth of punk. "When we heard the Sex Pistols, it changed our whole attitude and philosophy," says William. "Before the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Ramones, I thought to be a musician you had to be as good as the Beatles or the [Rolling] Stones. Punk was a revelation to us-- all you really needed was a cheap guitar, a couple of chords, and a good imagination."
To the "absolute horror and disgust" of their parents, the Reids left their factory jobs to pursue music. According to William, he and his brother "dropped out of society," their days and nights consumed by music and films as they attempted to plot their future course. What William had assumed might be a year or two of living on welfare turned into three, four, and finally five. "What's strange," says William, looking back on those lost years, "is that I never thought [Jim and I would] make music together. I didn't want to be in a band with my little brother, but when we started writing songs, we found they were so remarkably similar that it made sense."
The similarity of their creative output no doubt stemmed from their overlapping tastes. Both shared an affinity for the Velvet Underground, and Jim admits that their early songwriting efforts were little more than facile emulations of VU's work. The nascent band eventually, through trial and error, stumbled upon their own kind of racket, but progress was slow. Even after five years of seclusion, the Reids had managed only a handful of songs that they deemed worthy of public consumption. Nonetheless, both had the sense, as Jim admits, that "if we don't do it now, we're never going to do it."
Jim and William finally played their first London show on June 8, 1984 at a venue called the Living Room, then run by ambitious young Scottish promoter and Creation Records founder Alan McGee. "Me and William were having a bad day and we had a blazing row during soundcheck," says Jim. "That was the first day we met McGee and he thought we were nuts, total psychos. Here we had come all the way from Glasgow to play this gig and we were screaming at each other."
Yet McGee liked what he saw in the combustible Reid brothers and offered to manage them. It didn't take long for others to take notice as well. The band's second London gig, at the Three Johns pub in Islington, was reviewed by Neil Taylor, a journalist with the NME, who immediately saw greatness. Recalling the concert today, he says, "Not since Joy Division had I seen a band that mesmerized you so much. They had great stage presence-- they didn't give a shit about anything, and they made this enormous noise. The other thing that struck me [about that show] was that the room seemed to be filled almost entirely with people who worked at Rough Trade."
Rough Trade was indeed pursuing the band. Geoff Travis, the label's founder, would eventually sign JAMC after the band recorded only one single, "Upside Down", for McGee's then-fledgling label. Larger audiences turned up for subsequent shows, their interest piqued by Taylor's glowing review. Whether due to overcrowding, the unholy, nausea-inducing racket, the fact that they only played 15 minutes, or some combination of all three, many of the gigs were plagued by violent outbursts. Taylor recalls watching with some alarm as events unfolded at the North London Polytechnic on March 15, 1985. "I'm not sure exactly how many people turned up, but it was a venue that could hold 200 or 300 and maybe 1,500 showed. You could see that it was potentially going to go wrong. Alan [McGee] talks about bottles being thrown in the John Harris piece ["Eyewitness-- The Jesus and Mary Chain Riot", Q magazine], and I kind of remember that. There was a very nasty edge of violence."
As word spread about the hostile display at North London Polytechnic, local authorities called off some Mary Chain tour dates for fear of similar incidents. Shows that did proceed often teetered at the brink. "Sometimes things got out of hand and people got hurt," concedes William. "We played in Brighton and [drummer and future Primal Scream leader] Bobby Gillespie's girlfriend came onstage to sing along with us and she got hit with a bottle in the head. That's when you realize it's not funny anymore."
Despite the audience potentially feeling cheated when the band only played for 15 minutes, William bristles at the suggestion that JAMC were purposely stirring up trouble. "There was a Scottish band called Fire Engines and they only played for 20 minutes and we used to love them. I don't remember anyone wanting their money back or rioting at a Fire Engines show."
Either way, the unruly crowds coupled with the band's ear-splitting din marked JAMC as ones to watch. "I remember at the NME real, real anticipation," says Taylor of the lead-up to the group's 1985 debut. "Was it going to be an album filled with 12 variations on 'Upside Down', which would not have been very easy to listen to, or were they going to do something else?"
What the Reids did was something else, but while their debut, Psychocandy, may have been easier to listen to than 12 versions of "Upside Down", it was by no means easy listening. Many have credited the album with birthing the shoegazer era, the pedal-heavy movement that sometimes saw feedback as an end in itself. Indeed, a good number of Psychocandy's songs were completely enveloped in static, an innovation that was singularly theirs. "The Mary Chain are ground zero for shoegaze, definitely," says renowned engineer/producer Alan Moulder. "They paved the way. Psychocandy is probably what [all those bands] were listening to growing up."
Yet shoegaze, despite its debt to feedback, was essentially a melodic genre, with multi-tracked guitars often blending with pop sensibilities and/or ethereal vocals. In its primordial form on Psychocandy, shoegaze is feedback not so much smoothed but inexpertly sculpted, the jagged edges exposed. Even by today's standards, Psychocandy sounds extreme, which is a testament to how audacious the Reids' experiment truly was at the time-- exactly how much damage can a melody sustain and still perform its essential function?
Oddly, the album's creators seem have been unaware of just how bold and provocative their debut was. The Reids labored under the delusion that, despite its confrontational tack, Psychocandy would be their ticket to stadiums and universal adulation. They would instead have to settle for critical acclaim: None of Psychocandy's singles cracked the UK Top 40. "We hadn't a clue," confesses Jim. "As I look back on it now, I can see how ridiculously naïve we were-- that people once they got a load of what we were doing that we would be international superstars."
As proud as the Reids were of what they'd accomplished with Psychocandy, both were a bit put off by how the album was received. The shards of feedback, it seems, was all anyone really wanted to discuss. "I think Psychocandy has a lot of great songs on it," says William. "But no one ever really talked about the songs."
So with their follow-up, Darklands, the Reids set out to make an album that would prove they were more than sonic terrorists or punk's heirs apparent. Darklands places the emphasis squarely on composition, with the Reids resisting more blatantly caustic impulses. Although the album's more conventional approach may have been an unwelcome shock to those impressed by Psychocandy's coarse, foreboding exterior, Darklands has benefitted immensely from the passage of time, with its historical context fading from view. "It's my favorite [Jesus and Mary Chain] album," says William rather bluntly. "I do remember being a lot more uptight and stressed than [I was while] making the first one because when we made the first one, there weren't a lot of expectations. But once we made Psychocandy, we were burdened and it put a lot of stress on the relationship between me and Jim."
Jim agrees that both he and William were under quite of bit of pressure in the wake of Psychocandy, but he is somewhat less pleased with how the added stress affected the album. "I think we were too self-conscious. We shouldn't have listened so much to our critics and we should have made whatever record we felt like making. We shouldn't have placed so many restrictions [on our songwriting]."
While the restrictions were never made explicit during the recording process, they are evident in the results. By stripping away the hissing layers of feedback, the Reids intended for Darklands to sidestep comparisons to its predecessor altogether. That may have been wishful thinking, but the strategy did at least earn them a measure of commercial success that had thus far eluded them. All three of the record's singles-- "Darklands", "Happy When It Rains", and "April Skies"-- charted in the Top 40 in the UK. "April Skies" managed to get as high as #8, their highest UK chart placement ever, then or now. Travis, who had placed JAMC on the major label-funded Rough Trade offshoot, Blanco y Negro, in the UK, recalls the Darklands era fondly and took a kind of perverse pleasure in their commercial success. "We had some genuine hits and that was exciting," says Travis. "Seeing them on 'Top of the Pops' was, well, pretty hilarious."
Emboldened by the success of Darklands in the UK, JAMC set their sights beyond their home shores for album number three. According to William, Automatic was intended as their "driving through the American desert" record. To achieve their vision, JAMC brought back some of the more abrasive guitar effects but did so in service of songs that were both leaner and less prone to diversion. While the Reids may have accomplished their goal-- the record resonated in America to an extent that their others had not (and subsequent records would not)-- it arguably came at very high price. "Blues from a Gun" and "Head On" rocketed to #1 and #2 on the U.S. modern rock singles chart, respectively, but audiences in the UK snubbed both.
JAMC may have been building a following in America, touring at a frenetic pace, but in their quest to conquer the States, they hadn't anticipated being so far out of touch with what was going on back at home, where acid house and Madchester were changing the landscape of UK pop. Jim seemed unnerved by how their fortunes in the UK took a dive at the precise moment they were making headway in America. "By the time we released Automatic, the whole Manchester thing happened, and we didn't fit what was going on [in the UK]. It was alarming how quickly we were marginalized."
Perhaps smarting from the album's chilly reception in the UK, JAMC returned to a more recognizably British sound with Honey's Dead, an album as infatuated with the era as it was defined by it. It was heralded as a comeback of sorts for Reids upon its release, and it's easy to see why: the guitar sounds, the beats, almost every element is attuned to the prevailing movements of the day, specifically shoegaze and the tail end of Madchester. However, listening to it years later, it's also the most easily timestamped entry in the band's catalogue-- suggesting assets can quickly become liabilities in the context of pop music.
Still, the band has nothing but positive things to say about the recording process, which, according to William, was rife with "happy accidents," spurred in part by his discovery of marijuana. In fact, "Reverence", the album's first single, was the first song William had ever written while on pot-- a drug he took up to cure a rather nasty case of writer's block. In addition to the marijuana, the band's newly built studio also allowed them greater freedom to experiment. Located right near the Labour party headquarters, the JAMC studio was the place where Moulder claims he and the Reids learned to use sequencers properly. More importantly, it was a place where, according to Moulder, the Reids could avoid the reproachful gaze of big studio engineers, who had tended to view their methods and deliberately dyspeptic output with disdain.
But whatever comfort they may have experienced in the studio during the making of Honey's Dead didn't carry very far on tour. Ben Lurie, who had joined the band as a touring member following the release of Automatic, recalls their stint on Lollapalooza, in particular, as a low point. "It was just not the right forum for us at the time, maybe any time," he says. "We were playing at four in the afternoon in broad daylight, which didn't suit us. It probably got us a lot of exposure, but it was an uncomfortable time-- a definite mistake."
Both Jim and William had toyed with the idea of an acoustic album for many years, but it wasn't until they wrapped Honey's Dead that they began the project in earnest. If they had had any trepidation prior to starting, it would prove to be well-founded. Stoned & Dethroned, intended to be recorded quickly and inexpensively, rapidly spiraled out of control. What was, according to Jim, meant to be a "quick and painless" experience turned into an agonizing two-year process. "I practically had a nervous breakdown," says Jim. "We were getting in way over our heads in the studio."
As it turned out, Stoned & Dethroned would not see release as a purely acoustic record, but even the electrified tracks found JAMC in a curiously somber, mellow state-- as if their experiences touring Honey's Dead and the recording sessions for the new album had sapped their energy. The truth was not far off, though far more personal. "It was around that time I was coming out of a very long, nine-year relationship," says William. "I think with that album, lyrically, I said what I meant to say, and I'm glad we made it. The songs I wrote were very, very personal to me."
Personal or not, the album was greeted by the press with a mixture of cold indifference and benign neglect. The NME gave the album a mildly positive review upon release, but Sylvia Patterson's subsequent single review for "Come On" casually dismissed Jim and William as "the Grandpas Reid." There was a growing sense that the Jesus and Mary Chain were becoming the very antithesis of their younger selves-- middle-aged artists settling into something that looked an awful lot like a conventional career. As if to prove the critics right, Stoned & Dethroned spawned a fairly sizable hit in "Sometimes Always", a duet between William and Mazzy Star vocalist Hope Sandoval (who also happened to be his new girlfriend). "It made a huge impact and revived their fortunes to a large degree as well," says Travis. He may have been right in a commercial sense, but the song did not bode terribly well for their artistic health.
It was during the recording of Stoned & Dethroned's follow-up, Munki, that Jim and William's notoriously rocky relationship frayed to the point that they could no longer be in the same room together. As a result, Munki was mostly a collection of songs that Jim and William wrote and recorded separately. One could make a convincing case that Munki wasn't even a Jesus and Mary Chain record at all but two solo records masquerading as one. "It was a depressing period for us," says Jim. "To put it mildly, we weren't getting along. It had been building for a while and I'm not sure why. Looking back on it now, I can see certain things that we should or shouldn't have done, but nobody was really clearheaded enough."
Lurie, now a full-fledged member of the band, also recalls the Munki period as a tumultuous one. "It was either William playing with me and Nick [Sanderson] or Jim and I playing with Nick," he says. "In hindsight, I can see it was the start of the end."
While all parties had become quite consumed with drugs and alcohol around that time, Travis remembers William being particularly out of control. "I think William had a lot of demons. He was pretty crazy and behaving in an irrational manner. I remember Jim was really worried about him."
When JAMC did finally hand over the finished record to the label, it was rejected. The story as to why depends on whom you ask. According to William, the only reason Warner rejected Munki was because "they didn't think there was a single on it and if they accepted it, they were going to have to pay, I don't know, $700,000 or something. It was a big shitload of money-- so they either had to accept the record and give us [that] shitload of money or tell us to fuck off. They told us to fuck off."
Travis remembers it a bit differently. "That's a record I rejected," he says without a hint of remorse. "That was the first time that I said to William: 'I don't like this.' And that was when our relationship abruptly came to an end."
Released from Warner, the band did ultimately find a home for Munki on Sub Pop in the States; in the UK it was issued on Creation, the label that released JAMC's first single 14 years prior. But the group was in no mood to celebrate its homecoming. The band was about to embark on a world tour in support of the new album and yet William, perhaps still reeling from the press's treatment Stoned & Dethroned, refused to give interviews. To further complicate matters, both brothers were still very much at odds with one another.
The tour didn't last long. "I think we played about two gigs," says Lurie. "William and I got into a row in the van on the way from San Diego to L.A., and in order to shut him up, I punched him and then it all got out of hand. William said that was it and that he was leaving the band. Our tour manager somehow kept us together. We had a gig that night at the House of Blues in L.A., and we all agreed that we wouldn't speak to each other-- we would just go out and play the gig because we were supposed to and they had sold out [the venue]. We got a couple of songs in and it all fell apart. Jim walked off and then William."
Jim remembers coming off in a daze. "Everyone [in the audience] got their money back and the promoter pretty much chucked us out the back door."
Following the on-stage meltdown, William refused to join the band for any more of the scheduled dates, so Jim and Lurie limped along without him as JAMC to avoid lawsuits from angry promoters.
It would have made for a bizarrely meek end for a band renowned for its antagonism, but after some time had passed, William and Jim finally reconnected. And after nine years in purgatory, JAMC surfaced again in 2007, playing their first major gig at the star-studded Coachella Festival in Southern California. It's hard to know what to make of this incarnation of JAMC as their output has been limited to a soundtrack single, the very KROQ-esque "All Things Must Pass", released as part of the soundtrack to NBC's hit show "Heroes". But if the title is any indication, the Reids are way past caring if others insist on using their storied past as a yardstick or to write them off as has-beens. They're on their own time now.