The Jesus and Mary Chain, a Scottish alternative rock band in its thirties, was snatched up a few months before the pre-sale tickets for its tour in China in May.
Jesus Mary Chain China Tour
The author (flower girl) who didn't have time to go on tour or music festival and didn't grab a ticket had to put on headphones to open "Darkland" and write an article about why these two brothers are so fascinating.
Despite suspicions that the queen mother sells melons, Alan McGee, the manager of Jesus Mary Chain, insists that Mary Chain is the world's greatest band and an important bridge between punk and 90s music.
"I really believe they are revolutionaries." He said so. The musical achievements are obvious to everyone, and today I want to tell the story of a Reed brother who fell in love and killed each other, from a small town boy to the present.
Brother Reed
Text: Helen
Editor: Aki
1
The Riddles grew up on the outskirts of East Kilbride, known as the "Edge of the Universe." The brothers officially resigned in 1980 to begin preparing for punk bands (Hart (their bassist) called Mary Chain an "obsolete punk band").
For the next three years, they drank tea and chewed cookies one night after another and fantasized about a perfect band. Jim thought the two brothers were typical identical twins at the time: "If we could work seamlessly with each other, the brains worked the same way, basically we were the same person." 」 ”
The music they eventually imagined blended the noise of the German industrial band einsturzende neubaten with the pop sweetness of shangri-las.
Jim says that when they first heard Velvet Underground and Nicole, "our jaws fell to the floor." They are the Mary chain before the Mary chain. That's when we jumped up from the couch and started working. ”
Underground Velvet and Nicole
In 1983, Jim was 21 and William was 24. William, 24, gave himself a small goal: If the band didn't succeed before the age of 27 he would move to Israel to join the big collective farm.
"I think everyone thinks we're two pieces of crap. Actually, to be honest, we might be," Jim said. "We thought, well, if we don't do this now, we'll never do it."
The Reed brothers in the early days of their debut
That year, their father lost his factory job. He took £300 from the severance pay to his two sons. The sons spent their money on recording equipment. In doing so, they produced two demos for their debut singles, Upside Down and Never Understand.
Neither of them wanted to be the lead singer, so they had to toss a coin to make a decision. As a result, Jim lost. "The situation was completely random," he said. But after a while, as I started sleeping with more girls than he did, William started making a fuss about wanting to be the lead singer. I said, "I'm sorry, kid, the coin doesn't lie. ”
"I have a great job," William retorted. "I hid in the shadows and did whatever I wanted. Jim is noticed all the time. ”
We hate the music of the 1980s," Jim said. "I mean, we really hate it. Mary Chain is more influenced by bad music than good music. In fact, it was the garbage on the radio that made us want to form a band. And we thought, 'Why is everything we hear so fucking bad?'"
2
Luckily, their demo got into the hands of future primal scream lead singer Bobby Gillespie. He sent the demo to his friend Alan McKee. McKee released Upside Down on Genesis Records and became the manager of Mary Chain.
Jesus Mary Chain "Upside Down"
"McGee's enthusiasm is a driving force," Jim said. "He's like your charger. As soon as you saw Alan foaming at the mouth, you thought, 'Fuck, he's right!'"
In late 1984, after recording Upside Down and hiring Bobby Gillespie as their drummer, Mary Chain felt it was time to sign a big label.
The Reed brothers with Bobby Gillespie in 1985
William said: "We're looking forward to being the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, so we have to do it in the big way. It is completely the newborn calf who is not afraid of tigers. ”
What he didn't realize at the time was that Warner Bros. wasn't interested in the Mary Chain at all. "There was no one to help us. It's always felt like people just wanted you to leave as soon as possible.
They clashed with factory workers because workers refused to make b-sided CDs called "jesus fuck," while BBC's sound engineers kept trying to "fix" the band's unorthodox noise.
"You come back to the bathroom and the guitars are all turned off," Jim recalled. "We don't know what the rules are. We do it only because it sounds good. ”
Then there's the fame of the live they sang. They get drunk before the show to numb their nerves. So the early performances, although sometimes only 15 minutes long, presented a sense of confusion and alienation. This is mistaken by a growing number of troublemakers for violence.
In March 1985, when they performed at the North London Institute of Technology, the excited audience smashed the stage and the band members hid in the dressing room.
The riot that took place in 1985 during the performance of the Chain of Jesus Mary
The Music Press reported that it was a "riot". In the spirit of Malcolm Mclaren, McColm Mclaren excitedly proclaimed it to be the "art of terrorism," and suddenly the band became uncontrollably infamous.
Jim said, "After that, if you want to go to the Mary Chain concert, you have to bring a baseball bat. This notoriety is indeed a bit. Out of control, we had to nip it in the bud. ”
3
Interestingly, these men, who are always drunk and drunk, did not get drunk when they recorded the whole "psychocandy". "There's a lot of tea and burgers, not speed and alcohol," Hart said.
Jesus Mary Chain "Psychocandy"
The apparent chaos on the album is actually well-crafted: they sample the white noise and feedback, and then carefully mix them together.
The band's high demands on the quality of the music led them to spend six weeks with engineer John Loder in a recording studio in the south of London to produce the album.
Their musical differences are sometimes resolved with fists. At one point, Jim slammed William into the studio door, and the hinges of the door fell off in a trembling state.
Hart said admiringly: "They're really good at fighting [verbally] because they know each other's pain points very well. Sometimes I stand by in awe, thinking that the original scolding can still be so perfect! Then they start punching and kicking, and it's time to step in. ”
The Riddles were "quite proud" of Psychocandy, and critics loved it, but the music industry still didn't pay for it.
According to Jim, Warner Music UK chairman Rob Deakins told them, "Nobody's going to buy it." Radio One's DJ Mike Smith blacklisted their single "Some Candy Talking" because he mistakenly believed the song was related to heroin.
When Mary Chain toured the United States, their Jesus t-shirts were not popular. "Texas extension workers said, 'They're going to lynch you,' so he put some tape on his T-shirt. He covered the word Jesus and left the word. Jim rolled his eyes at that.
4
The shyness of reeds made it difficult for them to enjoy the success of madness. Mary Chain is an introvert. Their walls of noise were defensive, not aggressive, like a prickly cocoon, heralding a closed roar like my bloody valentine. No matter how good their songs are, they lack approachability.
"What were we thinking?" recalled Jim. "Playing Psychocandy in the stadium?" This will never happen. But we had that confidence. It's ridiculously naïve. ”
Jim Reed
In retrospect, that was the best outcome, as the Riddles weren't ready to become celebrities. "Great fame is definitely going to mess my head up," Jim agreed, "but I think William would have liked the flattery." ”
Starting with the cleaner-sounding Darklands (William (and author's) favorite album in 1987, each of Mary Chain's subsequent albums was good and varied, but each took longer to produce because they drank more and talked less.
Jesus Mary Chain "Darklands"
"In '85, I drank to relax my nerves. In '97, I drank because I had to. Jim said.
"The process gradually became addictive to me. I would sit in the living room with a bottle of whiskey and call my drug dealer for a gram of cocaine. But despite drugs, alcoholism, and quarrels, music was never affected. Every record we create is great. ”
After William quit the band in 1998 during a performance in Los Angeles, the brothers didn't speak for a year and didn't perform together for nearly a decade.
But since their first reunion at the Coachella Festival in 2007, they've maintained enough harmony to tour regularly and produce their seventh album, Damage and Joy.
In 2007 the Reed Brothers reunited
In an interview with The Guardian, the interviewer asked Jim to describe their relationship, and Jim sighed heavily.
"Oh my God. It's complicated. We tolerate each other. I know how to cheer him up, and he knows how to cheer me up. When awake, we give each other space. If you drink alcohol, it will be a little bloody. Unusually on this issue, William fully agreed.