Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story

by Zoe Howe

  The Mary Chain had to cope with cancellations and pulled fees by promoters who wouldn’t go ahead without William. Laurie Small was instrumental in ensuring they minimised their financial losses, but the emotional loss was considerable. ‘It was bloody awful,’ Jim admitted to Uncut’s Simon Goddard in 2001. ‘We were standing on stage as the Mary Chain, but I looked to my left and that big mop-top wasn’t there.’

  The final date of the US tour was supposed to be in Providence, Rhode Island, but it all fell apart when the promoter disappeared. Providence indeed that night, Philip decided to get some much-needed space from the rest of the band and get away, while the others, he discovered later, rather surreally ‘almost got into a punch-up with the cast and crew of Riverdance at the hotel bar’.

  *

  After the tour was finally over, the band staggered back to London to lick their wounds. The period that unfolded post-Mary Chain was, as Douglas Hart observed, ‘a real struggle’, and it would be nearly a decade until the brothers would play live together again. Jim sank into ‘an ocean of booze’ and was soon broke after ‘chucking money about like an idiot’. His solution was to take in lodgers to bring in some cash. However, his lodgers included Ben Lurie and other friends, and Jim’s Kentish Town home soon became a bit of a party house, much to the chagrin of the neighbours. ‘It was very bad for my health,’ Jim admits. ‘Every night was drink and drug hell. Or heaven, depending on which way you look at it. I got pretty fucked up.’ Jim, understandably, was so scorched by the last Jesus and Mary Chain tour and the incidents that had led to the split that he couldn’t bear to even go near a guitar, he didn’t play music at home and he certainly didn’t want to step out onto a stage any time soon.

  William, meanwhile, had plunged into work mode, developing his solo project Lazycame. He released the ‘Taster’ EP and the Finbegin LP in 1999, while Yawn! and Saturday The Fourteenth came out the following year. The work is pure, unfettered William, but a William evidently at a singularly difficult point in his life. Musically, while often beautiful, whimsical and Syd Barrett-surreal, lyrically William occasionally veers into disturbing territory (‘She’s been fucking since the age of ten . . .’ he croaks on ‘510 Lovers’) and Saturday The Fourteenth is cathartic to the point that, when William listened to the album sober, he didn’t want to release it. The songs also have a loose, disjointed feeling, as though some of them were being worked out for the first time in an unaired bedroom, curtains closed and, as with ‘Tired Of Fucking’, released in the same year as Munki on Creation Records, there is a spatial oddness that ventures into free improvisation.

  William also wanted to play live, with Philip King and Nick Sanderson as his backing band, but ‘rehearsals’ usually ended up in the pub and eventually the project was shelved. It wouldn’t be long until William decided to leave his former life behind altogether and move to LA.

  Perhaps William’s adoption of Los Angeles as home isn’t such a surprise; William’s then partner was American after all, and psychologically it was important to put some miles between himself and the Drugstore, London, everything that had such strong associations with the Mary Chain. Also, while the Reids had always appreciated the UK’s musical broadmindedness, William increasingly found that looking at Britain from the outside, that is, from the US, left him feeling ‘embarrassed’.

  He didn’t miss Britain much; indeed, he managed to make himself feel he was still there, just with nicer weather, because of his Slingbox, a device connected to his mother’s TV back in East Kilbride. The Sling-box allowed him to watch British programmes and, according to John Moore, ‘change her channels from LA, which infuriated her, but also reminded her she was not watching alone’.

  Slingbox aside, was William changed by the hard-boiled showbiz glitter of Los Angeles? ‘No,’ Jim insists. ‘He stumbles around Beverly Hills like Rab C. Nesbitt.’

  28

  Changes

  My three wishes? That little alien blokes would come and govern the planet and make everybody be nice to each other. And that they would bring many drugs with no ill effects. And that I would be given a licence to kill.

  Jim Reid to Kitty Empire in NME, 1998

  As the new millenium dawned, Jim Reid decided to pull together a band of his own, although, as he admits himself, ‘band’ might not be quite the right term. ‘Drinking club’ would probably be a more accurate description. ‘If the truth be told it was an excuse to go to far-flung locations and get wasted,’ says Jim. Fair enough.

  It was time to have some fun and also experience life on the road without William by his side – of course, Jim had already experienced the latter at the end of the last Mary Chain tour, but this time it was actually supposed to be this way. Jim already had the right mix of musicians around him – Nick Sanderson and his wife Romi Mori, who played bass in The Gun Club, and Ben Lurie, who became very much the driving force of the group that would become Freeheat. After a nervous debut at Camden’s intimate Barfly venue, the alcohol-fuelled Freeheat roadshow began.

  ‘We did two tours of America, and it was insanity,’ Jim says. ‘We just drifted into these psychotic situations. It was like your life had fallen through the cracks. I’d be thinking, Not long ago I was playing at the Hollywood Palladium, and now I’m in this motel in the middle of nowhere, and there are crack dealers, curtains twitching, how did this happen?’

  Ben Lurie recalls: ‘A woman in America told us she could sort out a tour but we could only do it if it paid for itself, as we didn’t have any money to put into it. The first warning sign should have been being picked up by a limousine at Boston Airport and then being driven to a Holiday Inn. I think we were the only people who were driven to the Holiday Inn Express in a limo.’

  The promoter of the tour ended up losing a considerable amount of money, and Freeheat would hand over the EP ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ to help cover the losses. ‘It’s all exciting, though,’ says Jim. ‘Great, but surreal. If William Burroughs had written a story about a rock’n’roll band, it would have been Freeheat.’

  The year 2000 also saw William Reid striking out on his own and playing live without his brother for the first time in his life. His acoustic solo debut took place at the intimate 12 Bar Club in London’s Denmark Street in March, eighteen months after the Mary Chain’s split, in front of his wife Dawn and a collection of Mary Chain super-fans. He was clearly nervous, but ‘he strikes a chord’ wrote Uncut’s Nick Hasted, also lurking in the crowd, ‘and he’s back’. He even played a handful of Mary Chain songs, including the poignant ‘Never Understood’ (‘I think I’m going out of style/I think I’ve known it for a while . . .’) and ‘Reverence’.

  William had recently experienced something of a turnaround in his health, thanks to a new era of domesticity (and detachment from everything that connected him to the past). Family life with Dawn, her child and eventually a baby of their own would, temporarily at least, help him to break away from alcohol and drugs. The idea of making music sober excited him, and the thought of being able to turn up for an interview, and not have to conduct it in a pub, was liberating too. ‘Small achievements,’ he admitted, ‘but for me, it’s like the clouds parting.’ At this point in time, however, William was still adamant there would be no more Mary Chain – there had been too much hurt, and he had only just started to feel that he had his life back.

  It would still take some years for the psychic wounds to heal on each side of the Reid fence after The Jesus and Mary Chain’s breakup, but another (temporary) casualty of the split would be Sister Vanilla’s debut album Little Pop Rock. Linda had always been supportive, visiting her brothers in the studio over the years and giving her honest opinions, and William in turn wanted to help Linda make an album of her own. The idea was, originally, that this would be an enjoyable family Reid production, germinating as it had during happier (but not that happy) times. Work on Little Pop Rock started in 1996. By the mid-2000s it still wasn’t complete.

  ‘After every tour we wanted to kil
l each other, and after the last one we nearly succeeded,’ Jim had said grimly after the final sputtering flames of the Mary Chain were forcibly extinguished – obviously the idea of getting together to work on anything at all was something they were not keen on. All the same, over the years to come, Little Pop Rock became a vital part of the healing process for the brothers’ scorched relationship. ‘It was the thing we all had in common,’ says Jim.

  Linda was understandably put out that the album William had promised would be out in two weeks took almost a decade to complete. Geography didn’t help, nor did the Cold War between the brothers, which meant that much of the album had to be recorded in separate parts. Linda says: ‘We recorded it in William’s house in Muswell Hill, Jim’s house in Kentish Town, the Drugstore, William’s house in LA and the Glasgow flat of a friend of Stephen Pastel. It was difficult when William and his family moved to LA. I started thinking it was never going to get finished.’

  However, via Little Pop Rock, Jim and William did, inevitably, have to talk to each other occasionally, and they reunited in the studio with Linda during a family trip to LA. ‘That was one of the few times on the album when William and Jim and I worked on the record together,’ says Linda. ‘It was good to work with William and Jim. They are very different, but both are so talented and such good people. To be able to make my own record but with their help was such a privilege.’

  The melodic, sometimes dreamy Little Pop Rock would finally be released in March 2007 to be greeted with hearty enthusiasm by Mary Chain fans, delighted to hear the family-affair album that had played its part in bridging the chasm between the brothers. Sadly there would be no more forays into music for Linda, however. ‘We knocked that out of her,’ Jim laughs.

  Jim, meanwhile, had been playing solo shows, accompanied by Philip King on guitar. If Jim felt exposed in Freeheat with no brother by his side, this would be even tougher. He would still muster up artificial courage thanks to the booze, but the time soon came when, after years of living in the grip of alcoholism, he chose to stop completely, which was no mean feat.

  ‘I stopped drinking because I played a fairly disastrous show,’ Jim explains. ‘My wife Julie and Phil King set it up. It was a good opportunity for me. But I met Duffy from Primal Scream, late morning or early afternoon, and we went to the pub. I showed up at the sound-check, already wobbling, and Julie said, “You’ve got to stop drinking.” I said, “I know what I’m doing, I’ve been doing this for years.” By the time of the gig I couldn’t remember where I was.’

  This solo show was a watershed moment for Jim. The following day, Jim’s wife Julie gave him an ultimatum: family or the bottle. ‘I chose family.’

  Many Mary Chain fans will know that Julie and Jim recorded a duet together, ‘Song For A Secret’, released as a 7-inch in 2005. ‘It was a good single,’ says Jim. ‘If we do an album I’m going to re-record it. I don’t want it to be forgotten.’

  It was a stack of ‘Song For A Secret’ 7-inches that caught the attention of guitarist Mark Crozer, who was running a booking agency and who would soon, little did he know it at the time, be playing with Jim himself. Mark was intrigued to hear the duet, and to learn of Jim’s solo project. ‘I ended up booking some shows for Jim in the UK,’ says Mark. ‘Then, backstage at a gig in Brighton, we started talking about having a band. I said, “I’ll play bass for you,” kind of volunteering.

  ‘I’d never really been a bass player until I’d offered my services. Then I said, “I know this drummer . . .” I’d just met [former Ride drummer] Loz Colbert a few weeks before and I thought Loz would be great for the band, because I knew Ride were influenced by the Mary Chain.’

  Before long Jim, Philip, Mark and Loz met in a rehearsal room in Oxford, near where Mark and Loz were based, and, as Mark recalls, ‘it gelled’. Jim had only just quit alcohol when they started rehearsing, and the quiet but heavy significance with which he turned down a casual drink is something Loz has never forgotten. ‘When he looked at me and said, “No . . .” it seemed important. Then he said, “When I drink, I tend to drink an awful lot.”’

  For someone who would automatically reach for the bottle to quell his nerves, this was a brave new period for Jim, and he staunchly stuck to his new routine for years. It wasn’t easy – he had no alcohol in his system to embolden him, and no brother by his side on stage. After gigs, Jim would simply go straight back to the hotel to avoid the usual flow of alcohol.

  One thing Jim might have found hard to contemplate was the idea of performing a Mary Chain show while sober – not that that was something he had to worry about, or so he thought. The band had dissolved almost a decade earlier and there had been no conversations about reforming. However, in 2007 the organisers of California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival came calling. Originally it had been suggested that Jim’s solo band play a slot, but the conversation soon developed into a plea for the Mary Chain to reform at the festival.

  ‘Coachella came to us with an offer and I thought it was a good one,’ Jim recalls, ‘but it hadn’t occurred to me that we would ever get back together. When I said, “I’m never going to do this again,” I meant it.

  ‘But it was nine years later, you think, “Maybe things will be different.” I’d assumed William wouldn’t be into the idea, and he assumed I wouldn’t be. But we got on the phone one night and I said, “I’d probably do it.” And he said, “Me too.” Just as we’d decided that, Coachella doubled their offer, so it was, “Woohoo!”’

  If reports of a Mary Chain reunion were hard for the public to believe after the years of pain, pugilism and piss-artistry that had led to their messy demise, it was even harder for Philip, Mark and Loz to fathom. On hearing about the upcoming show, Mark thought it was a joke at first, while Phil brushed it off as a rumour. But no, it was happening. Hell had indeed frozen over.

  The Reids allowed themselves to be cautiously excited. It seemed like a resolution, and, as John Moore has observed, the fact that their father had sadly passed away the year before made them look at their situation in a different light. Life was just too short. Rehearsals were booked for two weeks in a studio in Shepherd’s Bush and William flew from LA to meet the latest Mary Chain line-up.

  The sense of anticipation was almost tangible, and Mark and Loz weren’t sure what to expect, but when William turned up he was affable and positive, which immediately made the new members of the band relax. The first few minutes were civilised. Too civilised. Within seconds of launching into the first song, a jet-lagged William and a keyed-up Jim were at each other’s throats. ‘It was a massive bust-up,’ says Jim, ‘But it was more to do with getting something out of our systems. We’d kind of made up, but there was still all this background resentment. It was a boil that needed to be lanced.’

  Once they had cleared the air, the band could get to grips with the set, and it was fascinating for Loz and Mark to witness the symbiotic nature of the Reids’ songs. ‘Jim’s songs made sense when William added his parts to them,’ Loz explains, ‘but William’s songs really fell into place when Jim started singing. They just became the right song as soon as Jim opened his mouth, and as soon as William started playing, it just felt like we were ready to take off.’

  29

  Fear, Film-Stars and the Future

  You’re up there on stage at Coachella, and all you can think about is how awful it would be if your trousers fell down.

  Mark Crozer

  April 2007: the time had come for the newly reformed Jesus and Mary Chain to fly to California. No one knew whether to view it as a one-off at this stage, but Jim’s mantra was, quite wisely, to see how it goes and take each moment as it comes. They had a major hurdle to get over first – it would be the first time Jim had ever played sober with the Mary Chain, and also the first time he’d played live with his brother for nearly a decade. To make it even more daunting, it had been decided that Hollywood film-star Scarlett Johansson would provide backing vocals on ‘Just Like Honey’. The song had f
eatured on the soundtrack of the movie Lost In Translation, which starred Johansson and Bill Murray, and Johansson had proclaimed herself a great admirer of the Mary Chain.

  Flattering as this was, Jim was ‘terrified. Absolutely terrified,’ he shudders. ‘We did a show the night before in Anaheim, California, and that went well, but me being a glass-half-empty type of a bloke, I thought, Fuck it, the first show was bound to be the best! Then you’ve got this starlet there . . . it was scary, I just didn’t know how to deal with the situation. I would have if I was drunk, but sober I just don’t know what to do.’ Scarlett and her entourage ventured into the Mary Chain’s dressing room – a nerve-racking experience in itself – but after a few silent, awkward moments, William ‘piped up, probably about something drug-related,’ remembers Loz Colbert, and the ice was broken.

  The Jesus and Mary Chain finally ambled on to the stage as the sun was setting behind the mountains, a glorious setting for a comeback. The rumour that Scarlett Johansson was going to join the band on stage had long been circulating the site, and when she finally walked on, a huge cheer erupted and every camera-phone in the place was held aloft. John Moore thought it hilarious that, ‘in true Mary Chain style, they didn’t even bother to introduce her’.

  The show was a success, the Mary Chain were back, and there was no reason why they should stop at Coachella. A healthy run of tour dates would follow, including an appearance alongside their long-time compadres The Pastels at Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown on the South Bank (with Duke Spirit’s Liela Moss on backing vocals for ‘Just Like Honey’). They also played a show at the Brixton Academy, a venue that had hosted many Mary Chain concerts over the years. The Academy was packed, but unlike the early days, instead of delivering put-downs to their audience, Jim made a self-deprecating joke that, ‘misheard’ by the press, was interpreted as though the comeback kings had insulted their loyal fans. In response Jim wrote this statement, which appeared on the April Skies fan site.