Big Jim

Rip It Up, Issue 149, 1 December 1989, Page 6

Big Jim

The Jesus @vMaw' Chain

The Jesus And Mary Chain —a couple of Scottish boys called Reid who are not the Proclaimers and who just might be the only lasting success story thrownupby the English indie rock ghetto this decade? Theirnew LP Avutomatic, seemslikea confident stab at cementing the Reid bros’ positionasa right royal pain if\ the UK charts, a reflection of the star quality they’ve shown all the way down their road to fame. “Inthis grey street, they shone like sun gods. They didn't seem human, - they were like creatures off another planet,impossible to reach or understand but most exotic, most beautiful in their ugliness.” — Nik Cohn on the Rolling Stones, 1965.

“I might have spots on my face and might not be the most glamourous looking guy in the world, but that's what we're getting at. You don't need to change your underwear to be a sex symbol.” : — Jim Reid on the Jesus And Mary Chain, 1989. :

The Rolling Stones set the 60s alight. They were the archetypal = Band That Every Mother Hates — brash, loud and snotty. Andrew Loog Oldham, theirinfamous manager, amplified the young Stones' latent anti-establishment traits simply because there wasn't enough space foranother Fab Four. Yeah—everybodyloved the Beatles, but Oldham wanted The Kids, and fora while, The Kids only wanted the Stones. The band might have stolen alltheir licks off black American musicians, from Robert Johnson's ‘Love In Vain’ to Marvin Gaye's ‘Can |

Get A Witness', butthey were good and they were enormously popular. Unfortunately, they're still going strong. : The Jesus And Mary Chain turned upin 1984 asthe Best New Band Since The Sex Pistols. They too had a manager to thank for the initial effect thatthey had on the rock industry — Alan McGhee, who owned their first record company, Creation — but, like the Stones, they were to deliver beyond the hype. By the end of 1985, the Jesus And Mary Chain had a new title under their belt, that of Best Debut LP Since Never Mind The Bollocks for their Psychocandy album. They had made ‘arecord that matched their pop sensibilities and coy, barely-enunciated melodies to feedback, noise and intensity. Like the Stones and the Sex Pistols (with Malcolm McLaren as theirsvengali), the Jesus And Mary Chain excite The Kids, they don'treally scarethem, andthat's the trick that's got them into the charts with every record since Psychocandy. The Reid bros’ have stolen all their licks too — mostly from Velvet Underground and The Beach Boys, but one or two good ones from Marc Bolan and even, on their new LP, a song that could be an early Stones’ ‘Route 66'. Don'tforget, - though (as anyone who saw them live last year shouldn't) that if's all good fun and all just pop music. ABit of Noise Darklands, the studio LP that followed Psychocandy, had seen the Reids strip away most of their “sinister” feel, but it wasn't really happening. The new LP, Automatic takes its cue from last year's ‘Sidewalking' single. It's just. Jim and

William and a drum machine, butit rocks. Like the accompanying press says: ‘more power, more drive, more assurance.” -

“The last record thatwe do is always the closest thing to what we wantto be,” says Jim Reid, taking a breakin London after the band's first UKtourintwoyears. “Themost recentrecord is always exactly what we'reinto right now really. I'm sure thatin a year's time Aufomaticwon't satisfy us anymore, but that's the reason why you keep making records.” +

He agrees with the “back to their roots” description that RIUs Matthew Hyland tagged to the album: “There is a bit of that really. We did deliberately try and getbackinto a bit of noise. There'sbeensomuch said about the record that | can’t

really say — Ithink people have just said the opposite in this country! |

think it's rock n’ roll too, but there's a bit of dance musicinfluence in their somewhere— Take It and ‘UV Ray’ —well, it was supposed to be anyway, but nobody seems to have pickeduponit” ' Why dance mysic? “| don'tlike to §Q\on aboutit'cos -

everybody goes on about dance music atthe moment, and you feel a bitlike you're jumping on the : bandwagon. But| like De La Soul, S-Express— mostly the popular stuff. I think dance music’s like everything else though, most of it is shit and the only good stuffis the stuff that surfaces.” ; Butyou're notlooking to gainany sort of credibility with the dance crowd? ' : “Notatall, ‘cos people whoare info dance music are incredibly snobbish about it. They tend to listen to dance music and nothing else and that's justthe way it is. | like alot of what goes on in dance music, but it depresses the shit out of me in some ways — like right now, everybody over here is making dance music and they're basically not saying anything. I've never seen so many records that are released atthe same fime all singing about dancing. ‘Cos right downto if, who gives a fuck about dancing? The musicis good, the rhythm s inferesting, but all these people just singing about the dancefloor makes me sick. I s all these people with greatideas but nothing to say.”

Perhaps the people aren't prepared to look forthat dance stuff fromthe Jesus And Mary Chain? “People make too much of a big deal about influences. You can'tread aJesus And Mary Chain review without reading Phil Spector’s name inthere somewhere and that really irritates the shit out of me, to be honest. It's totally unnecessary and absolute laziness onthe part of the person who is gonna write the - review.” The Beach 80y5...2 “Yeah, then againthey'll say we sound like the Beach Boys. Butthe truthis | don’t know much about Brian Wilson. | don’t know much about him atall except that he gave all of his royalties away to some fucking psychiatrist. It doesn'tsound like a smartideato me. | think Brian Wilson is one of those people that, like just about everything else, was probably overrated. | was never a Beach Boys fanand I'm not really a big Brian Wilson fan— and I'm not just saying that either, it's the truth of the matter. The only reason we've ever done Beach Boys songsisthat we didn't think they were done very well at the time. Great songs that were done really badly, and we thought we'd do themin our style. We'd never covera song that we didn'tthink we could add something to. ANasty Rash “Allthis “influence”stuffreally does stem from a couple of years ago when we did a Melody Maker interview and it was supposed to be about choosing your heroes and yourfavourite records. It was supposedtobe likehalfapage - inside, like one of those small - features. We gotdrunk with the journalistand spent hours talking about Bob Dylan andlggy Pop and allthat stuff, and it ended up as the coverstory. They putit on the cover and we came across as the biggest music fans in the business. Eversince then we've never heardthe end of it, we've been “Phil Spector this” and “Scott Walker that” and itjust gets a

bittiresome.” ' So | decide notto go on aboutit. Face the facts though— evenif they don’twanna admititin the interviews, there’s not a lot for the Reid brothers to hide once they climb onstage or put outa record. They may be a “nasty rash in pop music” who “gatecrash the charts” in Jim's mind, butin reality they get there because they are as obvious as everything else that gets there. But you don'thave to hate them for t, not atall, because whatthey're doing isn't so bad at all. Atleast they have decided to take the good bits from rock’s rich tapestry and (so far) haven't had the fime fo mess seriously with the all-new hard rock trend in indie rock— probably because they've got big enough to getbeyond all that. Automatic sees their posturing getting pure; they owe less to the Beach Boys and Velvetsin terms of outright plagiarism (though | swear | can hear ‘Sweet Jane'in there somewhere, again) and unlike Darklands, they have some songs fo challenge the listener. ‘Willitbe arecord forthe “broken down Jesuses with ataste for frash” of 20102 Jim Reid hopes so— ifit's not, then he's wasting his fime. “It's notjust music for people just now, it's music that will hopefully lastlonger thanldo.” » Isit easy? “Nothing to do with the Jesus And Mary Chainiis easy,” says Jim.“l don't really think it should be. | thinkif it was easy, | would be worried.” ; True, butif you believe that the Jesus And Mary Chain's greatest assetis theirimage — their wonderfully morbid fixations, William's introverted guitar anti-hero stance and Jim's javelin tricks with mic-stand — thenitis their effortless way of being cool that still sets them apart. The Jesus And Mary Chain are cool and they know it. “Idon't care aboutthe state of my - hair/ | got something out of nothing.” — Jesus And Mary Chain, ‘Blues FromA Gun'.

PAUL McKESSAR