Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story

by Zoe Howe

  More mainstream acceptance was due for Honey’s Dead after its release in March 1992 – NME’s Stuart Maconie concluded in his glowing review of the album that ‘all is well with the unholy family’ – and the release was shortlisted for the inaugural Mercury Music Prize alongside Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, Jah Wobble’s Rising Above Bedlam, U2’s Achtung Baby and St Etienne’s Foxbase Alpha among others. Primal Scream would win the award. Gongs aren’t particularly Mary Chain anyway, but deep down they must have felt at least an amused sense of vindication at being short-listed, considering how left out in the cold they had been feeling around the time of making this album.

  After the release of Honey’s Dead, the Mary Chain would be back in the States for an appearance on The David Letterman Show to perform ‘Far Gone And Out’. Letterman has always been a fan of the Mary Chain, despite what happened on this particular occasion.

  Ben Lurie recalls: ‘The first thing was that Jerry Jaffe threw us a great big celebratory party, but due to some mix-up in scheduling he threw the after-show party the night before we went on the show.’

  ‘There were all sorts of temptations,’ Jim adds. ‘Drugs, all the things that rock’n’roll bands have at their disposal. We got seriously fucked up. I didn’t sleep at all that night, I was just twitching around at five in the morning thinking, I don’t know where I am . . . I don’t remember what city I’m in . . . I don’t know if I know what my name is . . .’

  William was ‘totally freaking out’, as his brother puts it, calling Jim’s hotel room repeatedly throughout the night to report that he’d been possessed by the devil during the night, then saved by Jesus, only to be possessed by the devil again. The Letterman show was certainly going to be interesting.

  A car came to pick up the band from the hotel and take them to the studio, Jim feeling ‘as fragile as I’ve ever felt in my life’. One of the first things they had to do was liaise with the very sober and very chipper house band, who would be playing the Mary Chain’s music. The Reids delegated Ben Lurie to communicate with them as best he could.

  ‘I said, “Just play what’s on the record.” Well, they weren’t having any of that,’ Ben says. ‘They were jazzing it up, and I remember having to tell the bass player to just calm down.’

  The bass player was clearly an excitable fellow, and not only were his bright red blazer and gleaming white trousers proving painful for the excruciatingly hungover Reid brothers, his exuberant manner nearly tipped them over the edge.

  ‘This ultra-cheerful bass player came up to me and went, “Wooh!” I literally jumped in the air,’ Jim groans. “Arrgh!! Can you just . . . not do that?” I could hardly talk. I looked over at William and he looked like a little pussycat who’d been run over by a tractor. I looked at Jerry and said, “Get me alcohol or this is not going to happen.”’ Jerry Jaffe hurried off, returning with two pints of beer. It was all he could find. Jim necked them both.

  ‘It was enough to make me remember who I was and what I was there to do,’ says Jim. ‘We did it. And you know what? I look back on that and it looks totally together. How? We seriously got away with it.’

  Jerry Jaffe remembers that William, still hiding under his trademark explosion of black hair, kept his back to the audience. Meanwhile Jim, furrowing his brow under his auburn Caesar-cut, ‘looked like he wanted to be anyplace else. When they finished and they had to shake Letter-man’s hand, I guess Jim didn’t think he was going to do that. David Letterman ended up shaking thin air. I remember him saying, “Oh, what’s with these kids?”’

  ‘Oh well,’ says Ben. ‘It was nice to be in New York anyway.’

  24

  Rollercoaster, Lollapalooza, Cocaine Blues

  The two key words for The Jesus and Mary Chain this year are ‘Reverence’ and ‘Rollercoaster’.

  Select magazine, 1992

  After the release of Honey’s Dead, the Mary Chain embarked on one of their most famous and extensive outings, the Rollercoaster Tour. Chris Morrison had come up with the concept after being inspired by Lollapalooza, the pioneering American touring festival, which features several bands on the same bill as they travel the country – a ‘travelling Woodstock’, as Jerry Jaffe puts it. Also, as it turned out, the Mary Chain would end up joining the Lollapalooza line-up itself that same year.

  ‘For Rollercoaster, we got Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine and Blur, equal billing,’ Chris Morrison says. ‘Total respect to the Mary Chain’s modesty, they didn’t think they could do it.’ The idea was to represent three distinct genres in the bands they chose – American rock with Dinosaur Jr, indie noise with My Bloody Valentine, and Blur were there as champions of the Baggy phenomenon which bridged the gap between dance and Britpop.

  Laurence Verfaillie, still working with Creation Records, was a veritable queen of indie at this point and, having fallen in love with Blur, had introduced Jim to their music. During Blur’s early days she knew the band were looking for a manager, and passed this information on to Chris. ‘The rest is history,’ says Laurence.

  Chris’s concept for Rollercoaster was that the Mary Chain would close the show every night, and the other three groups would circulate. They would have the same lights, same sound and the same treatment. He was always amazed that support bands weren’t always treated well, and were generally expected to put up with technical limitations. Apart from anything else, those groups are there to entertain the audience to the best of their abilities, to get the crowd warmed up.

  Tickets were priced at a paltry £12.50, and all in all the Rollercoaster tour ‘worked’, as Chris puts it. ‘We played small arenas and we’d have 5,000 people in, so I was quite pleased with the outcome.’

  Jim liked the concept for Rollercoaster largely because it was reminiscent of the punk crusades of the late 1970s. ‘It reminds me of when The Clash and the Buzzcocks used to do tours together,’ he told Miranda Sawyer for Q. ‘Hopefully, that’s the way it’ll be and that’s the way people will see it. It’ll be a good night out. This alt-indie line-up appealed strongly to the fans, although the decision to include Blur was seen as something of a curveball. ‘They were the band we took the most flak for,’ Jim remembers. ‘Everybody was going, “Great line-up, but why Blur?” They were on the way down at that time and it did them the world of good, they came out with a good record after that, Modern Life Is Rubbish. The combination of a good record and that tour resurrected them.’

  *

  For most people, a year like this – with Lollapalooza sandwiched between two long tours – would be hard-going. For the Reids, it nearly sent them out of their minds. Lollapalooza itself was a spinning planet of stress around which everything else circled and occasionally collided. Little about Lollapalooza was appropriate for the Mary Chain, not least the fact that they were given an afternoon slot. Playing in broad daylight would ruin the Mary Chain experience, render the lights and visuals redundant and destroy any chance of creating an atmosphere. The Mary Chain, of all groups, should be allowed to take you over after night has fallen, not in glaring daylight as sun-hatted festival-goers wander about, squinting and aimless.

  Jerry Jaffe remembers: ‘Lush opened up, whom the Mary Chain were friends with, then second on the bill was Pearl Jam, Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Ice Cube, Ministry, Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Mary Chain just thought everybody on this tour was pure mainstream bullshit rock’n’roll.’

  ‘The tour was just unbearable,’ says Jim. ‘We’d signed up to do it because Lollapalooza was the thing to do. We were worried that we had to go on at two in the afternoon; we relied heavily on our light show and we used to use movies and stuff like that. But you know, fuck it, let’s live a little.’

  They should have followed their instincts, if only for the sake of their physical and mental health, but they went for it and ended up anaesthetising themselves to the point of near-oblivion to blunt the effects of bombing repeatedly in front of 10,000 people every day for more than two months. ‘Lollapalooza knocked the
shit out of us,’ said William in an interview with Uncut. ‘It messed with the fragile parts of our minds. We always felt our music was huge, and there it just felt tiny.’

  Lollapalooza kicked off on 18 July at the Shoreline Amphitheater in San Francisco for two nights before heading off around the country, taking in Cincinnati, Detroit, Boston, Long Island, Phoenix and everywhere in between before returning to California at the end of August. The Mary Chain would be just about holding it together health-wise, but many of the other groups on the bill, including the Chili Peppers and Soundgarden, were not dissimilar to Nine Inch Nails when it came to how seriously they took their health and, most importantly, their general buffness. The Mary Chain, being more of the pale and determinedly unhealthy persuasion, could not relate.

  ‘The other bands would work out and go to the gym,’ Jerry Jaffe says. ‘I guess The Jesus and Mary Chain thought alternative bands were supposed to die young, not do push-ups and have personal trainers and be on vegetarian diets. They felt they were the odd men out on that tour.’

  Grunge band Pearl Jam, Seattle’s energetic rivals to Nirvana, went on before The Jesus and Mary Chain, just after lunchtime. Not the best slot in the world either, one might argue, but this was the tour that launched Pearl Jam – not least because, as Jim admits, ‘We made them look great.’

  Jim continues: ‘The singer, Eddie Vedder, was really dynamic. I kid you not, he climbed up on the lighting rig and was standing on the canopy. People were going nuts. Then the Mary Chain stumble on and scowl at everybody and go “Rrrrgggh” for half an hour and then leave. You could see people leaving and you’d think, “Oh God, we’ve got ten weeks of this.” We tried to switch with Pearl Jam and they didn’t want to, obviously.’ ‘Every single gig was like a little death,’ William admitted in an interview with Raygun’s Nina Malkin. ‘We couldn’t create the atmosphere we wanted. Everybody has tricks when they play live; we need darkness, for a start. Playing in the sunshine, the light shining in your eyes and lighting up your red, sweaty face – it was horrible. I felt exposed. I felt that everybody could see the cracks.’

  In addition to the indignity of being upstaged by Pearl Jam, and playing to an indifferent crowd, the Reids were disappointed that the so-called democracy of Lollapalooza was not quite as it seemed. All artists were equal, but some were more equal than others. Jim remembers: ‘We were told that Red Hot Chili Peppers were bringing an extra PA, so we said, “Can we use it?” “No, they’re paying loads of money for it.” So we said, “Can we pay loads of money and bring in our extra PA?” “No.” What happened to the democracy?

  ‘We started to realise it was a mistake. We tried to get out of it, but then we realised we’d lose our insurance. So that’s when I got into cocaine in a big way. I didn’t even know what an eightball [a nominal eighth of an ounce of cocaine] was until 1992. I just got off my tits for the whole ten weeks. That was the most unhealthy tour I’ve ever done.’

  Def American (now American Recordings) boss Rick Rubin was present at one of the band’s Lollapalooza shows as the drama unfolded yet again, like Groundhog Day, for the Mary Chain. Rubin was intrigued by the Reids and saw how difficult it was for them. He suggested to Jaffe while watching from the wings that, instead of trying to play their set to an disinterested crowd, they should just play a 40-minute version of ‘Reverence’, complete with feedback, and then leave the stage, the guitars still screaming long after their owners had gone.

  ‘Of course we didn’t do that,’ says Jerry. ‘But in hindsight, we should have. That’s why I think Rick Rubin’s kind of brilliant, he understands the essence of everything. The essence of the Mary Chain is to play that song and let it go on and on with feedback and say, “Fuck you”.’

  Another element of Lollapalooza that was hard to enjoy was that, although they were travelling across the country, the hotels were almost all attached to out-of-town shopping malls. ‘Very grim,’ Ben Lurie remembers. ‘And Jim and William were fighting a lot. There were times when I’d just disappear to the back of the bus and you’d hear things crashing. Sometimes the vibe in the dressing-room was so bad that I’d just take myself out of it. I think most people did. It was incident after incident.’

  One of the main incidents to which Ben refers was the disastrous clash between William and rapper Ice Cube, or rather Ice Cube’s posse. ‘This was the first time that I saw the whole thing of an entourage,’ says Jerry, who was on damage-control duty whether he liked it or not.

  William became increasingly irritated by the often abrasive presence of Ice Cube’s ever-present gang of sycophants, who would, as Jerry recalls, occasionally stride into the catering tent and knock people’s food to the floor, like school bullies. What shocked Jerry the most was not that William lost his patience with them, but that nobody else dared say anything. ‘There was no malevolence on William’s part, certainly no racist overtones,’ says Jerry. ‘It was just: “Leave me alone.”’

  This grating behaviour unfortunately combined with the usual maelstrom of Mary Chain ill-feeling, unlocking something in William and letting a very angry genie out of the bottle. ‘This was when William’s crazy behaviour started to become an issue,’ says Jim. ‘Ice Cube’s crew were going about with water-guns and soaking everybody. It was irritating, but you’ve got all these liberal types from the record companies who don’t want to upset the rap band.

  ‘They soaked either William or Rona, and William tried to pick a fight. Anyway, it turned out they were quite tough. The guy bottled William, and William came up to me covered in blood saying, “The guy from Ice Cube did this!” I said, “Right, let’s go and get those so-and-so’s.” I can’t fight my way out of a paper bag, but when you’re drunk, you’re Superman. We started looking for the guy that had done this, and then we were told that they were all tooled up on their bus with guns, waiting. I was thinking, Er . . . maybe . . .’

  This was not the only Ice Cube-related occurrence on the tour. Ben Lurie doesn’t remember it himself, but he was told on good authority that the following story is true. ‘Ice Cube’s posse used to have fake guns on stage, like assault rifles made of rubber. Apparently I wandered off with one of these guns and into the production office, where the tour managers happened to be doing a cash settlement for the day.’

  Stunned at the sight of a wild-eyed, long-haired lunatic wielding what appeared to be an assault rifle, everyone panicked, and Ben almost got shot by someone who had whipped out a real gun. ‘One of the US tour managers was packing,’ he mutters ruefully.

  The tour ended on 28 August 1992 and the Mary Chain, exhausted and somewhat mentally scarred, headed back home. They had two months until they had to return to the US for the second leg of their Rollercoaster tour, this time with Spiritualised and Curve. But this was far from an opportunity for rest and recuperation. ‘I still wouldn’t get drunk when I was at home, but when we got back I made a few contacts to get coke,’ says Jim. ‘I’d say by the mid-1990s cocaine was ruling all of my decisions.’

  Ben Lurie too was hoovering up copious amounts of cocaine at that time, which cemented the bond between himself and Jim even more firmly. William, on the other hand, preferred weed. Inevitably, this would split the band down the middle. ‘There were little camps, those who liked to snort and those who liked to smoke,’ says Jim. William apparently started to resent Ben’s presence, referring to him as ‘Smithers’ to Jim’s ‘Mr Burns’, according to Douglas.

  ‘William and Ben loved each other,’ says Jim. ‘But in my opinion William was a bit unreasonable at that point, and I think anybody who was sane would have agreed with me. Ben called it as he saw it, and William saw that as Ben siding with me. It wasn’t like that.’

  The Rollercoaster tour swung round again, by which time depression reigned supreme and William’s dope-smoking was hitting a peak. The flight between New York and Philadelphia would be action-packed, to say the least. That day, William had bought a sizeable bag of marijuana, and he understandably didn’t want to throw it awa
y before boarding. So before they left their hotel, he smoked it. All of it.

  William was rather quiet for the rest of the day, although this would soon change. Ben would be sitting next to William on the plane, and, as the long journey wore on, everyone was soon either asleep or gazing silently at the video screens in front of them. All was calm. Until:

  ‘William starts screaming “Fire!”’ says Ben. ‘It’s not a good thing to yell on a plane. He’d woken up in this semi-stoned psychotic state and they were showing a news story on the screen – Windsor Castle had had a fire. Everybody was waking up on the plane and Jim’s sitting a few rows away thinking, Thank God I’m not sitting next to him. William just wouldn’t shut up.’

  After a polite but firm request from a steward to ‘calm your friend down’, Ben finally managed to convince William that the fire blazing in front of his eyes was not incinerating the plane but just one of the many homes of the royal family, and peace was restored.

  The Rollercoaster tour was also notable because it would mark the first time Douglas Hart would see the Mary Chain as a member of the audience, with Bobby Gillespie and the KLF’s Bill Drummond in tow. It was a strange experience on many levels for Douglas: not only did it sting to see someone else playing bass with the Reids, but he also experienced the funereal backstage Mary Chain atmosphere as a relative outsider.