THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN Immaculate Conception?

THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN Immaculate Conception?

FEATURES

Bill Holdship

Most early reaction to the Jesus & Mary Chain was not very favorable. An occasional New Musical Express writer would jump on their bandwagon, but NME regularly jumps on some bandwagon— and I stopped trusting their attempts at pop trend-making around the time of the new romantics, which later spared me the anguish of having to even consider Frankie Goes To Hollywood on any serious level. Besides, there was more written about the Chain’s Malcolm McLaren-ish publicity stunts (20-minute sets, contempt for their audience—riots) than there was about the music. They did create a stir in the British press. “The new Sex Pistols...bringing back punk,” someone suggested, and the world yawned. And when their live music was described in print, well...

“If Iggy Pop feels the need to hire a hitman, he can relax,” Cynthia Rose wrote in these pages, later telling me that “they want to be like Einsturzende Neubauten, but they’re not very good.” Respected British critic Mick Farren attacked them even harder in an article which defended both Iggy and the Sex Pistols: “...the noise they make is only music by the most avant stretch of the imagination. It’s been likened to both Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and a demolition crew knocking down a building. There’s been considerable confusion on the part of the audience as to whether the band was playing, tuning or experiencing technical difficulties.” All of which, coupled with the band’s contemptuous attitude, didn’t sound like my cup of tea. I mean, I haven’t listened to Metal Machine Music since some very messed-up nights in college, while my favorite rock music (ineluding the Stooges, the Velvets and the early punk thing) has always at least resembled music with melodies, lyrics and all the rest of that stuff.

Then I heard the singles. This stuff was od. Yeah, a lot of feedback, atonality re and there—but melodies and real cool rock reference points as well. But even the singles didn’t fully prepare me the thril of Psychocandy, a perfect title to describe the contents of the Chain’s nearly perfect debut LP. After scoring a British import copy of it in November, I listened to it all the way through—and then immediately listened Jo it again, deciqing tben and there t^Psychocandy was easily one of the three best albums of 1965.

It seems that everyone who's heard the LP has their own list of what it recalls. Beyond the obvious Velvets/Stooges/ Pistols comparisons, people have mentioned the Monkees, Tommy James & The Shondells, the Beach Boys. the Cramps, the Buzzcocks, Roxy Music and various metal forerunners—while my editor says they especially remind him of the Troggs, adding songs end just like the Velvets’ '“I Heard Her Call My Name.” What else? Well, there’s a lot of Ramones. the vastly underrated Belfegore several steps further. At least two of the tracks have an intro drumbeat so much like Phill Spector’s “Be My Baby” that it’s almost a shock when Ronnie Spector doesn singing. There’s acoustic guitars here and there, ballads, and even one that begins like the Velvets’ “I Found A Reason.” “You Trip Me Up” is nothing more (or less) than psychotic Buddy Holly or Fogerty’s “Rock & Roll Girls” with feedback, while “Taste Of Cindy” is the British Invasion (we’re talking “I’m Telling You Now” or Herman’s Hermits here) by way of White Light/White Heat and Fun House.

This stuff is wonderful! Even the song sequence seems perfect, Psychocandy is a rock historian's dream feast—one of the grandest pastiches of all the "right" rock influences I've heard in years. So what if it's extremely contrived? It's also extremely funny. I really didn't scrutinize the lyrics that closely at first—but " The Living End” stands out with the best minimal chord drone since the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” and the hilarious lyrics: “I get so wild on my motorbike/I feel so quick in my leather boots/I’m in love with myself/There’s nothing else but me...”

“I think we’re a bit too good to be called the new Sex Pistols.”

—Jim Reid

Perfect rock lyrics—both funny and hip with and image that takes you back as far as Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Even the "darker" lyrics are too funny to be taken at face value—"All the walls fall down/And all the fish get drowned" or "God spits on my soul/There's something dead inside my hole." Great sense of humor. Great music. Great band. For the first time in a long time, I'm listening to a rock 'n' record—and I'm totally in love.

It's a week before Christmas, and I'm in Toronto. Although I like visiting Canada, it always strikes me as the Bizarro World (yip, mean man!) version of America.. It's freezing, and I'm catching a cold—which makes me feel like I'm on bad drugs and even more disoriented. Plus, for the first time in 30 years, I don't especially want it to be Christmas because the memories of last Christmas (perfect-but-gone)are still too fresh. A bum hits me up for cash at the train station with "season's greeting," a hooker propositions me on the street, and I'm here to interview the Jesus & Mary Chain, my favorite new rock band of the moment.

Brothers Jim and William Reid are the Jesus & Mary Chain. Jim sings and “plays” guitar. William plays guitar and creates the feedback. They both write the songs and produce the records. They are extremely pale, dress completely in black leather, and look strange enough to weird-out the cocktail waitress in the hotel bar. They speak with very thick Scottish brogues, which are hard to understand when they’re not speaking slowly. They seem awfully paranoid, seldom looking at me, let alone looking me in the eye. They’re not especially friendly, though surprisingly mild-mannered and softspoken. “Everybody thinks if you make loud music and sound that aggressive, you must be a rock ’n’ roll cliche,” says Jim. “Weird rock ’n’ roll funsters or idiots or whatever shit you want to call it. Which is so far from the truth. Basically, we’re quite mild, quiet people.”

They take themselves very seriously, and don’t appear to have any special sense of humor. They’re even cryptic about their ages. (Jim: “Everyone asks that. It’s funny that it matters. For awhile, we told people we were 16, and they believed it. Then someone published our birth certificates or something. Basically, we’re in our early 20’s.”) They spew the same anti-music biz/anti-radio/anticommercialism spiel that seems a rock cliche in itself by now. (Jim: “All the best music that’s ever been made has been made with a total disregard for the music business.” Tell that to the Beatles. “It’s the ability to cut yourself off from things like the temptation to make a million dollars.”)

They think a lot of themselves, believing that they’ve written the perfect pop song, and slagging other current bands. (Jim: “Some are like half good. Some have come out that have good ideas, but they don’t go all the way with them.") They’re not especially rock “trash” aesthetic. (Jim: “What we’re saying is that the got itself a bad image these days because you get so many terrible, tasteless groups that call themselves 'trash' bands. I just don't want us to get mixed up with that word because of the new image it’s gotten, that’s all.”) Although they give some credit where it’s due—mentioning that the Fire Engines, another Scottish band, originated the 20-minute set thing— thaey seem to believe they're total originals and hate being compared to anyone. They are very pretentious..

"I don’t think the Beach Boys or Phil Spector have ever made a record anywhere near ‘You Trip Me Up.’” —William Reid

Jim: "Maybe it sounds pretentious, but I think we are artists. And it has't got a price. It's like what would have happened if Vincent van Gogh would've designed beer mats or something like that? He probaly would have made more money in his lifetime, but we wouldn't have all his paintings now...Our message is something that can't be summed up. It's feit rather than said. It's a whole feeling of attitude, y'know?

Wm: "It's like if l've got a message, it can't be meade into a slogan. We're not the Clash or anything like that. I think all the best groups in the world—the Velvet Underground, the Stooges or the Doors—didn't have a message in words.'

Jim: "The message isn't in any of the lyrics&emdah;it's in the package. It all point in one direction, and if you don't see it, you never will. You should just understand instinctively. All the best groups I ever heard, straight away I knew what they were doing. Nobody had to come along and explain to me what was good about it. It's like getting back to our Vincent van Gogh painting"—why don't they just cover the Don McLean song and be done with it—"if you think it's a fantastic painting, no one explains it to you. You just know. It's the same with our group.

pe next LP won’t be like the People can be sure of that. One we are is very impatient, and we of ideas all the time. I’m lookward to the actual LP, but not records going to be hell. You hear the record in your head, but then you have go through the mechanical process of ting it down on tape, and it’s just not easy. I don’t think we’ve ever really done Ah though we’ve got close a few time. I Ihink the closest we got to it was ‘You Trip Me Up.’”

Jim: “I don’t think that being ‘contrived’ is an insult. We do think about what we do. We do plan it and plot it out. It’s as contrived as anything needs to be. There’s a hell of a lot of spontaneous heart as well. When we go into the studio, we begin with a song—and then we totally build everything upon it. Everything he does on guitar is completly spontaneous. But the whole idea of the group is contrived. We always said we wanted to have the best group possible, so that’s contrived.”

Wm: "Contrived makes it sound too cold, really. I’d say that it was wellplanned. Or well-organized.”

Jim: “I think we’ve been misread more than any other group has been. It’s like from the very beginning we got so many different reactions. Nobody seemed to know what to make of us because it was something quite new...There’s never been a riot at any of our gigs. There’s been a few fights, which is unfortunate, but it’s like you get some journalists in Britain who have this idea of what our group’s supposed to be. They think a riot’s some kind of positive reaction, so they write there’s going to be a riot in the music papers—and there’s a lot of fights at the next gig, y’know? There’s too many journalists in Britain with big egos. That’s all the riots were—journalists’ egos and a few fighters. We were getting some complete idiots in our audience, but I think we’ve recently disassociated ourselves from that.”

Wm: ‘‘These days most people come to see us for the music, which is the way it should be.”

Jim: ‘‘One of the first policies of this group was to be as original as possible. We wanted to be the group that nobody could say that they’re the new this or that. We want to be something completely new, so when you get called the new anything, it’s an insult. It doesn’t matter who the group is. I think we’re a bit too good to be called the new Sex Pistols because I think we can do a lot more than they ever did. They could do conventional, cliched rock ’n’ roll music. But there are so many different things that we can do.”

Wm: ‘‘The difference between us and the Sex Pistols is that they were fantastic for the time, but they couldn’t have developed. Plus, I think we’re a totally different kind of group. It’s not that simple, really. For instance, we’ve heard that ‘You Trip Me Up’ is the Beach Boys meet Phil Spector—but I don’t think it’s anything of the sort. It’s a whole different world. I don’t think the Beach Boys or Phil Spector have ever made a record anywhere near that. I really don’t like being compared to people because then you don’t have an identity. I don’t like to see our name ever being compared to anything or any song.”

“I don’t think that being ‘contrived’is an insult. It’s as contrived as anything needs to be. ”

—Jim Reid

Jim: ‘‘We do have obvious influences like the Stooges and the Velvet Underground. But there’s also less obvious ones, like Lee Hazlewood or Burt Bacharach and Hal David.”

Wm: “Or Neil Diamond and things like that. I think that basically we appreciate good music—and that doesn’t necessarily mean screaming guitar music. It could be an Irish folk song. To me, a good song is a good song no matter what came before it.”

Jim: “It could be influenced by a bad record as well. There’s so much bad taste around that you want to do something about it. If I see a group I consider the worst in the world, it kind of makes me angry, and I want to do something that’s the opposite. So we’re a result of good taste and bad taste mixed together. And we hope we’ll come up with a product that’s extremely tasteful. Taste is what we’re most interested in.”

Well, there’s no accounting for taste, as they say, but it should be noted that critics Rose and Farren were probably right. In a live environment, the Jesus & Mary Chain are pretty shabby. (I taped the show, folks; I know of what I speak.) They played a little over half an hour. I was relieved when they finished.

First off, I find myself in the middle of this death trip club where the P.A.’s blasting either industrial noise tapes (which may or may not be the Eraserhead soundtrack) or ugly, mutated, sound effect versions of “White Christmas,” “Let’s Twist Again,” “Locomotion,” “Land of 1,000 Dances” and “Hanky Panky.” Nearly everyone looks like rejects from the Cure (or worse), no one looks like they’re having a good time, the kid in front of me is wearing a “Heroin Saves” T-shirt, and I feel like I’m in an outtake from After Hours or Liquid Sky.

TURN TO PAGE 57

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47

Earlier, the Reid brothers had expressed their disdain for image over music (though Jim finally did admit that ‘‘we at least look like we sound”)—but the Chain are total image onstage: shades, leather, stark white spotlights, silhouettes, everything for the effect. William kneels in front of his amp; he and the bassist keep their backs to the audience the whole show. The entire drumset consists of two kettle drums (like on the galley slave ships in Ben Hur). Suprisingly, the Chain aren’t especially loud, but they sound horrible, nowhere near the album. I am disappointed. People in the audience scream like they’re in a Friday The 13th sequel throughout the set. “This is like the Velvet Underground,” someone in front of me says.

The band has a rep of getting very drunk or very drugged before their shows, and they were quite drunk for this one. “Sometimes we like to get extremely drunk and play a complete haywire gig,” Jim had said earlier. “That happens occasionally. It’s generally quite good visually when we do that, but it’s usually crap, musically. It depends on which one you like best. Musically, you can listen to the record. But then I do think there’s something depressing about groups that can’t stand up.” So do I, Jim, especially when it does nothing to enhance a boring performance.

But the worst part of the show was what sounded like 10 minutes of meaningless feedback and banshee wails, but was actually a song called ‘‘Jesus Suck,” which Warners refused to release in the U.K. The second word of the title is really “Fuck”— but the Chain apparently thought they’d fool ’em like the Stones did with “Star Star.” The lyrics basically consist of the latter word being screamed over and over again alone or in conjunction with phrases like “Walk, Johnny, walk,” “Sweet Jesus” and “dripping, sucking...” Which made me later go back and really listen to their other lyrics, concluding only that, other than a dark— albeit humorous—view of love, the Chain seem obsessed with oral sex. Note the lyrics “I get head/head on my motorbike” from “The Living End”—or “dripping beehive” and “Eating up the scum is the hardest thing for me to do” on “Just Like Honey.” Or the song titles: “Taste Of Cindy,” “Head” and “Suck” (the latter two are Bsides). Now, I’m not particularly religious, enjoy oral sex as much as the next person, frequently find myself using four-letter . words, and have always taken great delight in people who offend those who deserve/ need to be offended. But I somehow still miss the point here. It seems to have less to do with Lenny Bruce’s “suppression of the word” concepts then it does with a child who’s just learned his or her first dirty word, and repeats it over and over again for no other reason than to be “bad.”

At the conclusion of “Jesus Suck,” Jim drops his guitar on the stage and breaks it. Earlier in the day, he’d said: “It’s like if you drop your guitar and the neck breaks, so

what?” I couldn’t have put it any better.

• • •

During our interview, I told Jim and William that I thought they were excellent producers—and that Psychocandy was one of the best LPs of the year. They told me they would continue as the Jesus & Mary Chain as long as they “can write good songs,” and that they’d like to see something come along that’s newer than rock ’n’ roll, more exciting than rock ’n’ rollsomething that, in effect, makes rock ’n’ roll obsolete. I tell them I don’t know if that’s possible. Everything comes from something else. And I think of a statement made by the man whose old band the Chain most try to emulate (and who once said his idea of heaven would be playing rhythm guitar for eternity): “Nothing else does it for me like those three great chords.” Or the musings of a late, great rock critic who once wrote: “it’s always been my perception that art comes in all forms, and that some of the truest artists never have to lean on you to let you know they are.” Or a theory by author Henry Miller, who suggested that all important change has been effected by tradition; that is, all the great anarchists, iconoclasts, heretics, rabble rousers, etc. have been part of a tradition.

After all, it’s been a long time since the last immaculate conception. 0