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jim-reid · 6 years

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Sporran Co-Despondents

Keith Cameron / NME 24.09.1994

After ten years on the road, The Jesus and Mary Chain find themselves in pretty much the same place they've been for years: on licensed premises sitting at a table filled with margaritas and naked dancers. But, reckon Jim and William Reid, the place may be the same but they've moved on. Keith Cameron drinks his fill. It is across the road from the Moulin Rouge. There appears to be an al fresco Ann Summers party in full swing just next door. And our chosen late-night Parisian refreshment stop rejoices under the name Lili La Tigresse. Yet the ultimate piece of circumstantial evidence confirming that this is not the place to come for a quiet lager top and quick game of dominoes hangs above the bar, in the form of a trapeze, a young woman of insufficient dress straddles it and begins to swing extravagantly. Her stilettoed feet come within inches of grazing the startled features of one Mr Jim Reid. Well "Hey! Hey! Hey!", as the man himself has been won't to utter on many an occasion over the past ten years. What more could you want from a Paris rendezvous avec le Jesus et Mary Chain? There are frozen margaritas on tap, dodgy-looking heavies in every corner and the naked chicks are said to "do" "it" "all night long". Pretty soon we'll hit the sidewalk take ourselves to the dirty part of town; you know the place, where all our troubles can't be found. Whaddya say, Jim? Jim?? Hey Jim, where ya goin'?! "Gotta get some kip. 'Night." Aw! Never mind, here's William. Yo William! Have a seat, have a drink, lets talk about the last time you were here and got chased out of town by the local vice squad in cahoots with a gang of machete-wielding LSD-crazed nuns. "Aye, I went to the Highlands for my summer holidays last year. Fuckin' rained every day. Hey, did you just see a girl with no clothes on dancing on the bar just now? Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, the ferry to Skye was a bit choppy, though..." The Jesus & Mary Chain are growing up so gracefully that their unrelenting progress is hard to believe. Some would say this is just as well. We are ten years since they stuck a pointy boot through the ear of a nation and screamed "Fuck" for 20 minutes before trashing the joint and still getting home in time to cop as much sulphate as they could before maw and paw came home from bingo. It's not pipe and slippers time yet but we can forgive them for at least beginning to consider acting their age. Even in a dodgy bar in Paris at two in the morning... This ten year-year tour of duty in rock's field of dreams has seen the brothers Reid resolutely ploughing the same furrow, against the odds and expectations of others, unearthing different ways to say much the same old things. "Fuck with me and I'll fuck with you / Isn't that what we're supposed to do / Kick me down and I will kick you too," sings Jim on 'Dirty Water', a new Jesus & Mary Chain song. "But you break me in two / And you throw me away / Knock me on my back / I'll send a heart attack," sang the same man on 'You Trip Me Up', a ten-year old Jesus & Mary Chain song. To the band's detractors, the fact that either lyric could conceivably fit in either song proves that the Mary Chain are a pair of con-men, desperately flogging their one trick pony 'til the poor beast can take no more. OK, so the early song was soused with feedback while its junior sibling bathes in a soothing acoustic balm – no matter, both are cut from the same starry-eyed cloth. Of course, claim the fully-paid up Chain-holders, this is the whole point. Rock'n'roll's corpse has been exhumed and defiled so often that nothing truly new of worth is ever likely to emerge. What makes The Jesus and Mary Chain so remarkable is that through persistently drawing upon the same chords, the same words, the same obsessions – they manage to continually reinvent themselves as a slightly but subtly different version of the old model, and still succeed in being unique. For, as much as they sound like other bands, no other band sounds quite like the Mary Chain. It really is ten years, then. Ten years of proving that the rule book need never be purchased, let alone read and its strictures followed. Compared with their contemporaries only the Mary Chain have enjoyed continuous chart success allied with critical acclaim. Primal Scream's star might have shone brighter at times but at others it's resembled a black hole. Ironically, in view of their early hell-raising activities, the Mary Chain have assumed the role of rebel rock's dependable elder statesmen. This month's new jacks come, last year's young things slip into oblivion, but Jim and William just keep on playin' their song. How much longer they are inclined to do so seems the not unreasonable topic for discussion this morning after the night before. Reeling from the dual impact of hangovers and a day-long interview schedule, both Jim, in his 33rd year, and 36-year-old William betray the haunted look of men for whom this business long ceased to be a respectable occupation. "It feels like it's getting hard to deal with as the years go on," considers William. " 'Cos I think the business side of it it getting less and less interesting. Making records, writing songs is just brilliant. It's brilliant to be able to do that and it's good to be good at it. But the rest of the stuff it's appeal is wearing thin. To be honest, for me it was only the first five months being in the group that was any real fun, and after that it seemed a chore." "I still like touring, though," adds Jim. "I still like seeing new places, still like to get around. I mean, I'd rather be sitting in Paris talking, than some shithole in London." The Mary Chain are in Paris not just to shoot the breeze with a chorus line of earnest local hacks. Last night they had performed live for only the second time with their latest out-of-studio line-up, following a bizarre liggers-only set at Soho's sleezemungous Madame Jo-Jo's the previous month. Joining guitarist Ben Lurie, who has been part of the set-up for five years now and is therefore eligible to sit in on interviews, are bassist Lincoln Fong (Moose) and former Curve drummer Steve Monti, who as well as hoping to make the Mary Chain his new regular seat of employment is also currently a Blockhead. "Great fun," he says of working with the venerable Mr Dury, Curve, he says, felt like playing with U2. And this lot? "Well it doesn't feel like U2, put it that way." The performance for French national radio's The Black Session – hosted by Bernard Lenoir, whose fierce enthusiasm and avuncular appearance result in him routinely being dubbed "the French John Peel" – was by the band's own admission "rusty" but proved them still capable of bristling the neck hairs when it counts. Moreover, in front of a rapt audience it served as a graphic demonstration that outside their own country at least the Mary Chain are still very much regarded as mythical rock'n'roll outlaws. At home, however, it's different. Or that's how the Reid brothers perceive matters, certainly. The generally cool critical reception meted out to the new 'Stoned and Dethroned' album seems to have confirmed their opinion of Britain as a fickle place that refuses to accord them their deserts but instead views them as a faintly comical cabaret act. "This record's been reviewed all over the world but it's been reviewed particularly fucking nastily in Britain," says William. "It's like it's the worst record in the world. I wish I could have somehow released the record without our name on it, as if it was by a new band, 'cos I'm sure it would have been seen differently. I'm sure it would. But no, it's The Jesus & Mary Chain and we've got a lot to live up to." "There seems to be no way we can win," sighs Jim. "You make a record with loud guitars and it's like (tuts)'Mary Chain, still got that feedback thing...'You make a record without feedback and it's, (tuts) 'Mary Chain, softening getting old..." Such are the problems of having made one of the landmark albums of the 1980s – people will always insist on remembering it. But aren't you proud of the fact that you carry this baggage around with you, that you made such an impact on the national pop psyche that people maintain these preconceptions? "I think I would be if it wasn't such a fuckin' albatross around our neck," says William. "We do get a lot of respect outside Britain. We're seen as an important band. But in Britain it's totally different, we're just a bunch of old fuckin' has-beens... Which is not true. Yeah, the baggage we should really be proud of, but when you read a review of your record you don't wanna hear about 'Psychocandy'. That was almost ten fuckin' years ago. We're different people and we cannae make that music. We've done it, we've done it as best we could and we moved on. And I think we've kept moving on." So how would you prove to someone that you weren't an old has-been? William: "I'd say listen to our new record. This record's pretty mellow, it's quiet. But it's no' because you get to a certain age and then all of a sudden realise, 'Oh, I don't know how to make noise'. It's just because we wanted to make this record. We recorded the (decidedly un-acoustic) 'Sound Of Speed EP' at the same fuckin' time." Jim: "I wouldn't even try. It's ludicrous. Anybody that thinks it can never really be convinced otherwise." If only bands were somehow incapable of reading their own reviews. Despite the fact that their records sell more than respectably, Jim and William's assessment of their esteem in Britain appears entirely based on what the press has said about them. This goes a long way to explaining why it's been over two-and-a-half years since they toured this country and why they have no plans to do so again for the foreseeable future (though they're off to the USA soon for six weeks). Which in turn might have something to do with why one of the bands that supported them on that last Rollercoaster tour – Blur – are a considerably hotter property than the Mary Chain at this present moment. As they are no doubt aware, making good records is not necessarily enough. But if that is the only aspect of being in a band that gives them any joy then why bother with the rest? "Unfortunately," says William, heaving a gargantuan sigh, "we are not in a grand economic situation. We're no' rich. Our records don't sell millions. So to maintain the sales we've got to do the interviews and photo sessions and 'travel the world'..." He spits the words out like someone has laced his mineral water with prune juice. "He says Paris is as good a place as any to be," nodding across at his brother. "I don't think so. I don't want to be in Paris right now. There's other places I'd like to be right now and people I'd like to be with. This is my work. And the reason I say I love songwriting is 'cos it never feels like a job. It's a pleasure. The rest of it's abstract. I wonder what would happen if we never did it, never spoke to people, never did photo sessions, TV interviews..." "I imagine," counsels Ben, "that people would think we're a bunch of snotty bastards." "But people already think we're a bunch of snotty bastards!" yells William. Couldn't you afford to give it a try? How well off are you? "We're no' poor. But if we stopped making records we could be poor. If we suddenly gave up we couldn'ae easily survive." "I had to fire my butler last week," Jim deadpans. "Caught him stealing the last hundred quid out of my safe." In many ways, Jim and William are ill-suited for life in this, the fifth decade of that multi-formatted, superannuated behemoth known as Rock (Inc). Despite their artful manipulation of video imagery they are deeply uncomfortable in front of any type of camera lens. Nor are they the most natural live performers in the world, which led to a notably traumatic experience on the second Lollapalooza tour in 1992. William: "It was the most soul-destroying experience I've ever had in the group." Jim: "Going on at four in the afternoon in broad daylight, it's not what the Mary Chain's about at all. And then there was all the backstage bullshit with everybody talking about guitars and having this wild great time...We shouldn't have been there. We thought it was gonna be more like a European festival on the road, and we get there and it's 4pm with a bunch of American kids sitting there waiting for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You're playing your heart out and there's silence. Ten weeks' worth. It was hellish." "It's happening to Nick Cave this year," adds William. "He's stiffing badly. When we play live there's got to be a certain mystery to the show, because we're not the greatest showbiz performers, and the same with him. When you see Nick Cave you wanna see him in darkness with a bit of smoky atmosphere. Broad daylight in Oklahoma just isn'ae sexy! "Lollapalooza was an exercise in hypocrisy, the whole thing. The philosophy behind it was freaks, weirdos and outsiders get together and let's all be free. But backstage we kept to ourselves and instead of letting us be free about that people got fucked off with it. It was supposedly a celebration of freaks and weirdos but we weren't allowed to be freakish or weird." Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the Mary Chain turned down the offer to play the great celebration of freakish weirdosity and 13-dollar pizza that was Woodstock 2 ("it sounded tacky," sniffs William, "and it was!"). Can it really be that after ten years they still find the most fundamental aspects of being in a rock'n'roll group problematic? "I think we've settled down a bit," says Jim. "We don't fuck up as much as we used to, 'cos the whole situation was a lot more intimidating at the beginning. We just didn't think we were good enough. We believed in the songs but presenting the songs to an audience scared the shit out of us. So we used to get really shitfaced before we went onstage and there was always some incredible fuckup gonna happen. These days it's a lot more relaxed and it seems to be in front of people who want hear the music and accept it any way you give it to them." See? They've always wanted to be a regular band. Which perhaps hits the nerve as to why when some people listen to 'Stoned and Dethroned' and hear the groovy swing of Jim's duet with Hope Sandoval or the Drifteresque hand-jive of new single 'Come On' they maybe think, "This is nice but..." In conquering the demons that once led to their shows being so singularly chaotic, the Mary Chain succeeded in removing much of the excitement. "That might be true," ponders Jim, "but it's easy to be exciting onstage. You could walk onstage with a gun and shoot a dog. That's exciting, but so what? There's more to what we do than sheer in your face excitement, that's only one element, a small element, to what a band should be about. So OK, we don't walk onstage and fall over, you lose something if you don't do that. But I think what you gain from not doing that is more important. Excitement is easy, you just walk on with a road drill and destroy the stage. But anybody can do it. And if that's what you're into buy a road drill and a stage and do it yourself!" Every revolution eventually assumes the robes of the regime it succeeded. But maybe The Jesus And Mary Chain were never the revolutionaries some of us took them to be in the first place. And it might well be that they're getting tired of being misunderstood. "I'm sure there's gonna be an end to The Jesus & Mary Chain." Says William, "and sometimes it feels like it's right around the corner. Right after Lollapalooza I was thinking, 'I don't want to do this'. Same with him – you go through phases where you just want to stop it." "I think recently I've felt it could finish," nods Jim. "Whereas before we've just kinda talked about it. It seems more real now. I can actually imagine life without the Mary Chain. These days I could easily do it. Sometimes you just wonder, 'Is this worth it? I could do something else with my time." Such as? "I'd still like to make music but just not within this band. It's just the fact that we've been doing this for years and years and years and years. And you like to see there's some kind of progress in terms of people listening to your music, and sometimes we get really frustrated. You play the same clubs as you played in 1985...It's a thought." And one they seem reasonably preoccupied with at the moment. The previous evening, oblivious to the theatrics at Lili La Tigresse, William had expounded at length and with utter enthusiasm about the simple pleasures of music, of picking up a guitar and writing a song, purely for his own enjoyment. He'd said he writes maybe 40 or 50 a year, of which maybe eight are deemed worthy of recording ("ten, if you're lucky"). As the margaritas kicked in, your correspondent blithely predicted that they'd write ten more classics to shut the doubters up. Suddenly, William Reid's ebullience melted away. "We might. We might...Remember when you went from primary school to high school? They're just one summer apart but it's like moving from complete innocence to total cynicism and world-weariness. That's what the music business is like. We're hard. We started out and we thought we were soft as shite but we've been here for ten years now and we're hard. We've seen a lot and we've changed. Sometimes it's best not to know certain things."

#interview

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postingpebbles · 7 years

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campfire song song

hello hello!!

i was tagged by @forovnix to put my music on shuffle 10x (tho she did 5x) and list what comes up!! (i used spotify bc my phone’s music library is real bare lol)

aaaaand under the cut bc i got wordy haha

End Up Here // 5 Seconds of Summer heck this takes me back to my freshman year of high school when my friend was screaming about some band named 5sos and desperately trying to get us into their music. so. um. this is one of my favorite songs in their first album, and i found myself screaming the lyrics in my bedroom when it came up bc nostalgia. (i haven’t listened to this album in so long omg)

You Only Live Once - #7 TV size version // w.hatano (i can’t find this ver on youtube help) this... should explain itself... (also fun fact: the first time i listened to yutora, i recognized immediately that this was ep 7′s ending song when it came on. i wiggled around a little in my seat bc i just remembered seeing that scene for the first time on a wednesday evening and (funnily enough) crying in my bathroom bc my ship just became canon ;A;)

Anybody Have a Map? // Dear Evan Hansen i really wish i coulda gone and seen this when ben platt was still on broadway—i mean, i could probably still go and see it (tho i probably won’t bc broadway tickets are hecka expensive), but his voice is gorgeous and he is the evan hansen and ughhhh this whole soundtrack gives me feeeeeeelingssssss

History Maker // DEAN FUJIOKA hi hello i love this song to bits it’s just so happy and uplifting and gosh darn it i could listen to this song forever bc it’s beautiful. also!! the full version of my cover is in the works!! when’s it gonna be posted? who knows haha ;p

Destiny // Steven Universe do you belieeeve in destinyyyy? wow i really love steven universe??? all its music just makes so—to quote a certain person—fonken happy aaaaaa maybe i’ll cover something from it someday (also there are filipina voice actors in the show and yES represent!!)

You’ll Be Back // Hamilton i remember sing-shouting the lyrics at the end of one apush class during my sophomore year of high school with my friends after our teacher played the song on youtube and it’s just so fun to sing this song??? especially the way jonathan groff sings it haha. but also geez the lyrics are so twisted; they’re awful out of context. (i.e. when push comes to shove / i will kill your friends and family / as a reminder of my love) bc this is a sorta love letter from king george to baby america and it’s cute and creepy at the same time? idk man

6/10 // dodie um, a little warning for Personal Feelings™ and stuff—this song hits deep for me. it’s about being average and plain and not really standing out and just being... there. i’ve just gotta learn how to get out of my head and remember that people love me for who i am and i am wanted here. (also the lyrics and melody are so so lovely, and dodie’s really lovely as well <3 if u haven’t listened to her music yet, you really should!!)

All Of London Is Here Tonight // Finding Neverland okay okay i actually did see this musical live on broadway with the original cast two years ago (i think it was two years ago?), and i loved it. it was so good omg it’s the story of how j.m. barrie came up with the story of peter pan and neverland ugh ugh ugh i’m crying

Long Way Home - Acoustic // 5 Seconds of Summer oh look another 5sos song this is also one of my favorite songs by them? it’s so pretty and it makes me smile and it feels like warm hugs, especially since it’s the acoustic ver :’)

You and Me // Lifehouse childhood throwback wooooooo (i was considering this song for my cotillion last year, but i ended up choosing another song bc it felt more like me. haha what can i say, i’m a sap lol)

yayyy so this all of them!! i think this shows how much i love soundtrack music haha—there’s a loooot of ‘em in my list of songs haha

ummm let’s see... i’m tagging @japansace and @word-spielen if you’d like to do it, and opening it up to anyone else who wants to as well!! ( ´ ♡ ` )

#tag meme #music #forovnix

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