Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

The Mission
Joy Division

THE CURE Southern Death Cult

Cocteau Twins

SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
SISTERS
OF MERCY
All About Eve

& THE GORY YEARS OF GOTHIC ROCK 1976-1992 RIP

Bauhaus

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 17 us $10.95 uk £5.99 PRINTED IN THE UK

07

0 70992 30039 6

Fields Of The Nephilim The Creatures The Birthday Party

 The Best Of
OUT NOW
19 songs including Tainted Love, Disposable Teens, mOBSCENE,
The Beautiful People, Personal Jesus & two bonus tracks
Special CD/DVD set available featuring
20 videos including the (s)AINT exclusive

i
www.marilynmanson.com
TLFeBOOK
 Contents
Chapter 1 1976-79
9-20
Chapter 2 1980
21-32
Chapter 3 1981
33-40
Chapter 4 1982
41-54
Chapter 5 1983
55-68
Chapter 6 1984
69-76
Chapter 7 1985
77-90
Chapter 8 1986
91-98
Chapter 9 1987
99-114
Chapter 10 1988
115-124
Chapter 11 1989
COVER SHOT: STEVE DOUBLE. THIS PAGE: DEREK RIDGERS

125-134
Chapter 12 1990-92
135-145
TLFeBOOK
 Editor’s Letter
“The children of the
night, what sweet
music they make”
w
hile research was underway
on this edition of NME
Originals, the estimable
DJ and cool music
connoisseur Mr Sean
Rowley was busy compiling an album
called ‘Guilty Pleasures’ full of songs
generally considered naff. The phenomenal
response to Mr Rowley’s project
– celebrities and fans alike swamping
his radio shows with calls confessing
previously hidden affections for the likes of
Barry Manilow and Boston – begged only
one question: where was all the Goth?!
If the experience of creating NME
Originals: Goth has taught me anything it’s
that, although we seldom dare mention its
name, there’s a little bit of Goth in all of us.
Cranking up the soundtrack to the months
of research – the Sisters’ ‘This Corrosion’,
Siouxsie’s ‘Happy House’ and, of course,
the Bauhaus classic ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’
booming off the CD in our tiny office
– caused many a passer-by to stop at the
doorway and sheepishly grin, “Fuck me,
I haven’t heard that in ages. You ain’t got
a copy of ‘Dawnrazor’ have you?”
Why, of all musical genres, Goth should
be among the last to be rehabilitated by
history probably has something to do with
the fact that it is a determinedly adolescent
pleasure. Goth makes all the sense it’s
ever going to make almost exclusively in
those teenage years when you suddenly
realise that everything you’re being taught,
everything you’re being groomed for,
everything about everything, in fact, is
an utter waste of time and effort because
4 NME ORIGINALS
–Count Dracula
we’re all going to die. Goth wallows in this
eternally darkest of jokes and provides
a suitably doom-laden soundtrack to
this monumental morbidity. As we grow
older and closer to the inevitable, we
understandably tend to fill our time with
stuff to avoid such thoughts and slough
off Goth as a ridiculous phase we grew
through. Well, that and the fact that if
you’re still wearing the widow’s weeds and
bogbrush hair as you exit your thirties,
you’re either a treasured rich eccentric like
Robert Smith or you tend to look like some
sad kind of escapee from the nuthouse.
That said, like most things rooted in our
adolescence, we are fiercely protective of its
memory. Hence the incredible arguments
that ensued over the compilation of the
volume you’re now reading. There was
no dissent over the roots of Goth. The
first usage of the term referred to a tribe
of ancient Germans that the civilised
Romans regarded as barbaric. Later the
term was applied to a particularly brutish
form of medieval architecture. And then,
in the early 1980s, it was used by music
critics to describe the emerging black-clad
movement of bands and their fans who,
out of the ashes of punk, were determined
to revel in the misery of human mortality.
So far so good. But when it came to
actually deciding who was Goth enough
to feature in this magazine and who was
merely Peripheral Goth, all hell broke
loose. Numerous phone calls ended with
colleagues or acquaintances (ex-Goths
all) vowing not to buy the issue if Echo &
The Bunnymen were in it or if Sex Gang
TLFeBOOK
Children weren’t. Killing Joke? Some
said yea and some nay. Psychedelic Furs?
Mostly nay. And so on it raged until it was
decided, for sanity and space’s sake, to deal
with the species that I guess we might term
Stadium Goth. In other words, the big,
influential bands that, for better or worse,
have influence on and can claim some
responsibility for all of today’s dark stuff,
from Marilyn Manson through Mortis to
Dashboard Confessional.
So, a quick apology to those faithful few
who hung around the Batcave and to those
who’ll throw a hissy fit because Virgin
Prunes, Danse Society or Red Lorry Yellow
Lorry just didn’t make the cut. And a big
welcome to the rest of you. Goth, it seems
to me, is in the ascendancy just now. The
Cure are being honoured by MTV and
name-dropped by The Strokes et al, while
Interpol are reinventing Joy Division for
a new generation. Gloom is back big time.
So time to climb out of the closet. Buy this
issue – go on, you know you want to! – wrap
it inside your copy of NME if you must,
hurry it home, dim the lights, spark up the
candles and, as the great Nick Cave once so
gruesomely hollered, release the bats!
Steve Sutherland
Editor
 MIKE MORTON

NME ORIGINALS 5
TLFeBOOK
6 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 NME ORIGINALS 7
TLFeBOOK
 three imaginary boys
THE LEGENDARY 1979 DEBUT ALBUM
2 CD DELUXE EDITION

2 CD SET COMPILED BY ROBERT SMITH

Digitally Remastered from the Original Master Tapes
Features 6 previously unreleased songs and 17 tracks on CD for the very first time
Deluxe package contains a 16 page booklet including sleevenotes with rare and
previously unseen photographs
982 182-8

TLFeBOOK
 Chapter 1
1976-79
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Bromley Contingent
Siouxsie &
The Banshees
100 Club, London
I t’s never the same at a Pistols
gig nowadays (in London,
anyway) if what is known as
the “Bromley Contingent” isn’t there.
This inseparable unit is Steve (21),
Bill (22) and Simon (19) – he sells hot
dogs off a mobile stand during the
day – raspberry-haired Debbie and
Suzi [sic], of Suzi & The Banshees.
They first heard the Pistols at their
local tech in January and they’ve
been faithful followers ever since.
They made the trip to Paris, in a
ropey old car, to see their heroes’ first
overseas performance, and Siouxsie,
shocking in her semi-nudity, got
punched on the nose.
She is nothing if not m agnificent.
Her short hair, which she sweeps in
great waves over her head, is streaked
with red, like flames. She’ll wear
black plastic non-existent bras, one
mesh and one rubber stocking, and
suspender belts (various colours),
all covered by a polka-dotted,
transparent plastic mac.
Over the weeks the Bromley
Contingent’s parade of inventive
dress (it’s rarely the same two weeks
running) has set the fashion pace of
the scene. It was only a matter of time
before they took their street theatre
to the stage.
MM, 29 October 1977, p17
10 NME ORIGINALS
MM, 2 October 1976, p26
Apart from Suzi, it wasn’t
decided who would actually end
up doing the 100 Club festival until
the day. Everyone thought though
that they’d carry out their much-
advertised plan to sing ‘Goldfinger’.
It was not to be. At the last
moment, in an orgy of rock
iconoclasm, they decided on ‘The
Lord’s Prayer’ spiced with “the most
ridiculous rock songs ever written”.
Two-tone Steve (his hair is black
on top, white at the sides) was on the
bass he picked up for the first time
‘The Lord’s Prayer’ begins. It’s wild –
a bizarre stage fantasy acted out for real
the night before. Sid Vicious, Johnny
Rotten’s friend and inventor of the
pogo dance, was on drums. He has
“Too many Jews for
my liking”, sang
Sioux. Ironically,
of course
TLFeBOOK
Deliver us from
evil: Siouxsie, Steve
Havoc, Marco Pirroni
and Sid Vicious at
the 100 Club
had one rehearsal. And a mature gent
called Marco was the lead guitarist.
The prayer begins. It’s a wild
improvisation, a bizarre stage fantasy
acted out for real. The sound is what
you’d expect from, er, novices.
But Sid, with miraculous
command, starts his minimal thud
and the beat doesn’t fluctuate from
wonders how much more it can take.
Twenty minutes later, on the nod
from Marco, Sid just stops.
The enthusiastic cheering is
the start to the finish of the, er, set. just recognition of their success.
Against this knobbly sound, Siouxsie, If the punk rock scene has anything
with the grace of a redeemed ghoul, to offer then it’s the opportunity
rifles the senses with an unnerving, for anyone who wants to get up
screeching recital of ‘Twist And and experience the reality of their
Shout’ and ‘Knocking On Heaven’s wildest, stage-struck dreams. The
Door’. Sid’s smile flickers. Marco, bar-flies are horrified.
his guitar feeding back, rolls up his “God, it was awful,” says Howard
sleeves, and two-tone Steve two- Thompson, an A&R man from Island.
tones. But Suzi is not interested in contracts.
The audience, enjoying the band’s “The ending was a mistake,” she
nerve and audacity, eggs them on, says. “I thought we’d go on until they
gets bored, has a laugh, and then pulled us off.”
NME, 29 October 1977, p3
RAY STEVENSON/RETNA/REX FEATURES
This is Siouxsie
& The Banshees.
They are
patient.
They will win.
In the end.
A World Domination By 1984 Special
by Paul Morley NME, 14 January 1978, p7

s
iouxsie is the frail-faced, tough-minded, Calm down and reflect on a looking different, dancing
strange-light-in-her-eyes voice/ bewildering reputation. It’s now around, on drums, PP
performer of Siouxsie & The Banshees. 15 months since the Banshees, Barnum on guitar. They were
When she was a little girl… “I was in a spirited, impulsive shot of unformulated, but intense.
very lonely. The few friends I had were gypsies. audience participation, went From there, the growth has
When I was eight I tried to commit suicide to get on stage at the 100 Club and been subdued and careful,
noticed by my parents. I used to do things like set their unique, shocking, PP Barnum left (he’s now
fall on the floor upstairs so that they’d think I’d honest precedent. That’s a dark, formed Heroes); Martin
fallen downstairs, and I’d have bottles of pills in distant past, perhaps the only was brought in. The group,
my hands. I’ve always felt on the outside, really.” period that the Banshees have as would be expected, have
She, like the rest of the group, admits to being actually felt that they belonged touched controversy. There’s
a loner. They don’t really like people. Their to something. A movement been a farcical fracas with the
reason for existing is to perform noise with that pressed self-destruct police, resulting in a £20 fine
meaning for people to share and benefit from. early on, a movement whose for Siouxsie, and the infamous
They could be the last “rock” group. The only successful ones were, with odd spraying incident, “Sign
“rock” group. They are not a “rock” group. Siouxsie & The Banshees.”
They are twentieth century performers. No record deal, except the
Friday night at The Nashville. An
incongruously traditional venue, it would
“When I was eight I tried to commit occasional futile one-off, and it’s only in
the last few months that they gelled as a
suicide to get noticed by my parents”
DEREK RIDGERS, ADRIAN BOOT/URBANIMAGE.TV

seem, for the Banshees. Isn’t anywhere? It
is ‘an occasion’. Names/faces are scattered,
perhaps admiring the path of individualism.
Wayne County, Billy Idol, Marianne Faithfull,
Jordan and on. It is a sell-out. People straggle
outside, hoping for admission. Some, absurdly,
produce five pound notes in vain attempts at
bribing the doorman. What is this?
exceptions, the shrewdest, the most adaptable
to the business, as opposed to the most creative,
challenging and committed.
In March/April of ’77 a new Banshees
appeared, playing their first real gig at the Roxy,
with Siouxsie singing, Steve on bass, Kenny
considered, permanent group. And now?
Their development has happened away
from the subcultural acceleration. There is no
rush. They are patient.
“Now we’re starting to do interviews, we’ve
just begun to understand what we’re doing,
whereas before without doing interviews we


never really thought about motives.”

NME ORIGINALS 11
TLFeBOOK
 Southern
The New Trend
DeAth Cult


For a group who leave such a huge question
mark after their work, it is hard for the Banshees
to take being so readily wrapped and dismissed
in the rock press, often as either “oh-a-girl, the-
future-is-female. Great. Next” or “ooh-Nazism-
nasty-destroy. Next.”
They had indeed been misinterpreted, though
admittedly, as regards ‘Nazism’, as a result of
their lack of forethought. They wore swastikas.
There were stiff-armed salutes. Their lushly
subversive, brutally sensual words and the
rhythmic/anthemic noise they create to form an
undoubted Teutonic heaviness didn’t help.
“But always with any sort of politics, which is
why we haven’t got any, you get extremists, and
once you get extremists you get people doing
great things and terrible things… for every
following of some sort you get followers who
distort things.”
And yet, despite all this, Siouxsie & The Banshees
find themselves in an almost enviable position.
Siouxsie is, according to the NME poll, the
fourteenth most popular female singer in the
world. They hold the house record at the Vortex.
They sold out The Nashville two nights running.
They have made no commitment sacrifices, no
compromises, and they feel comfortable that
what they’re saying is necessary.
“Things have to go on. We’re trying to show
that it does not have to be pop-punk next, it
doesn’t have to be the same old rock’n’roll riffs.
We don’t like trends. We formed initially because
we felt we had something of our own to say.”
Is it this different way of doing things/saying
things/playing things that has attracted this
curious following? Or is it just hip to like them?
Are they the new trend?
“Well, there’s the girl thing… there’s a lot of
people who’ve latched on to us because of the…
because they’ve understood things that aren’t
there… like being labelled Nazis… many of the
audience don’t understand… we probably don’t
understand ourselves completely.”
(Right) “Put your
left leg in, your left
leg out…”: Sioux
invents the punk
hokey-cokey
12 NME ORIGINALS
Whatever the reasons for their popularity, it
exists, and their audience intuitively grasps the
fact that they’re not absorbing run-of-the-mill
music/noise. It is unconventional in form, but no
way inaccessible. Structured noise. Do they view
themselves as musicians?
“As non-musicians. Sound innovators.” A
comprehensible term? “It’s making different
sounds with what you’ve got. We go out of our
way not to be musicians… we don’t rehearse
till our fingers bleed. We can play rock’n’roll,
but we ignore it, shove it in a corner. We don’t
see ourselves in the same context as rock’n’roll
groups. We’re out on a limb. It is dangerous, but
it excites us, makes it worthwhile.”
Visually, Siouxsie is harsh, asexual. She wears
shorts/short skirts for freedom of movement.
She is nicknamed ‘Android’ by the group.
Siouxsie is harsh, asexual. She wears short skirts for
freedom of movement. She is nicknamed ‘Android’
Her make-up, which eerily transforms her
nervous, wistful, pale face into the hard-lined
clown-tragedian, is the one concession to the
audience. Her voice is staggered. No orthodox
fluid melodies, but clipped, forced lines, sharply
falling and rising.
She displays no exhaustion,
exhilaration, amusement,
frustration or any of those
other colourful sideshows
that performers often find in
themselves. In the early days there
was little nervousness when she
got on stage. Now, she gets
very nervous.
“Maybe it’s because
there’s a lot more emotion
put into what we’re doing
now… when you just get
up there like we used to, the
TLFeBOOK
emotion that comes up, you’re not realising it.”
Emotion? “Passion… it’s just emotion full stop.
There’s no other words. It’s just one thing.”
If the emotions of the group have toughened/
flowered over the last few months, then so has
their intensity as performers.
“Now, we seem to have some sense of
direction. We haven’t just gone out and done
every gig that we’ve been offered. The best things
are those when you go down really badly but
you know you’ve done a good set… we don’t
really need audience approval… we’re putting
on a show for ourselves and if anyone wants to
take something from it it’s up to them. We’re
not going to impose anything on anyone. It’s
entertainment for some people but it’s not
mainstream entertainment.
The Banshees’ words are of a strange
language, derived from experience and
observation, chilling vignettes of minor
atrocities and gruesome indulgences, of
frustration, of unrequited love. From the dark
side of life, grinning, perverted, subversive;
euphoria and depression, vision and
pessimism mysteriously co-exist. The truth
in ugliness. Striving to manufacture
some semblance of order, or
purposefulness, set against the
absurdity and pointlessness of life.
Their realism is vital, snatches of
everyday life exaggerated for effect:
“People live in a dreamworld”.
Their abrasive, uncompromising
language, and the way that its
presented, is not of the type that is
liable to entice record companies to
propose lucrative deals. The group
realises this is important.
“We want to become successful because
it would mean that people are confronting
what we’re putting down on vinyl and
paper… but if we are, we’d probably be
successful for the wrong reasons.
“Every day there’s a problem about
having to compromise… everyday there’s
a reporter wanting to interview just
Siouxsie, getting across that it’s a backing
band for Siouxsie. It’s not that at all. It’s
a four-piece band. In the end you have to
explain yourself in the most basic, moronic
way and that takes something away. Record
companies aren’t there to help a band
progress, that’s bullshit. That they’re to make
money for themselves. They don’t care if a
band falls by the wayside as long as they’ve
made enough money out of them. We want
commitments from a record company so
that we can do what we want to do.
ADRIAN BOOT/DAVID MUSCROFT
“We’ll win in the end. If we don’t let
people get the better of us, influence us,
like the establishment.
“As long as we can resist I think
we’ll win in the end.”

NME, 18 November 1978, p45
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
The Scream
(Polydor)
Good-day, second-class of ’78!
And now, for the last goddam
time in my life – I ask you, who
wants to be David Bowie when they
graduate? Hands up! Siouxsie – ah,
Siouxsie, come up the front here
and show the boys and girls how it
should be done.
One: must be
skinny, wear a mass
of make-up and look
asexual enough to
accommodate every
closet’s ambivalent
fantasies. Two: blind
the critics with words
and silence and all but
a few ungrateful hack swine
will lick your soles for the privilege
of an interview from you. Three:
flirt with the all-time contraband
coquette that is Fascism, and it will
still get that ridiculously uncool yet
controversial minority going. Four:
get out of your depth.
Things I like about Siouxsie:
‘Hong Kong Garden’; the way she
treats her audience like muck,
knowing why the gross majority of
them come to gape at her; I even
kind of liked the way she danced on
Top Of The Pops.
Fact: until recently, Siouxsie & The
RETNA
Banshees included in their stage set
a song called ‘Love In A Void’. This
song featured the line “Too many
Jews for my liking”.
This, says Siouxsie,
was a metaphor
for too many fat
businessmen waiting
to pounce, suck the
youth from and cast
aside new talent.
I do not see the
connection. I consider
this to be the most
disgusting and unforgivable lyric
ever written. Siouxsie is well into
her twenties, so ignorant youth is
no excuse. Therefore she must be
either evil or retarded.
I am disgusted by the way
Jewish writers (Viv Goldman) and
otherwise extremely moral writers
(Chris Brazier) have drooled over the
silly cow, letting her get away with
that line. Well, take your shocking
song and stick it up your rude white
ass, Sioux, because here’s a review
that don’t believe in running with
the pack.
Oh daddy please, pretty please,
TLFeBOOK
won’t you beat up that nasty girl
and make her fade away? She hurts
my ears and she bores me and the
only reason she hasn’t been written
off yet as a corny ‘art-rock’ act is
that she once used to hang around
some, ah, punk band.
Standing alone, the Banshee
sound is a self-important threshing
machine thrashing all stringed
instruments down onto the same
She must be either evil or retarded. Stick
your shocking song up your ass, Siouxsie
low level alongside that draggy
sub-voice as it attempts futile
swoops around the mono-beat.
Their sound is certainly different
from the normal guitar-bass-
drums-voice set-up. But it’s radically
stodgy, as opposed to that light-
fantastic Public Image trip. It’s loud,
heavy and levelling, the sound of
suet pudding.
The Banshees unite sub-glam
flowering poesie (“Amorphous
(L to r) Siouxsie,
John McKay,
Kenny Morris and
Steve Severin
jigsaw pieces tra la la”) with
unpleasant but truthful sociology
topics (going mental, self-
mutilation, Fascism, cancer):
subjects which have only been
dealt with in any number by “punk”.
I quite enjoyed singing along
to ‘Helter Skelter’ (the least awful
effort here, and even that was
written elsewhere), and ‘Carcass’
got me a bit jittery until I saw the
joke, giggled and yawned. The rest
(barely) struck me as endless plain
noise totally bereft of melody.
Her words for ‘Switch’ and
‘Nicotine Stain’ (she should write
more lyrics alone) contain a certain
germ, which is rendered totally
ineffectual via drone, pretension
and conceit. Her words for the
stunning ‘Suburban Relapse’ are
flawed only in the tune that John
McKay sets it to and, naturally, by
the singularly awful Banshee sound.
Ah well, kid, hear it for yourself
and examine your subconscious.
Maybe you’ll love it. Me, I keep
seeing Siouxsie up there in her
swastika armband making nothing
but a fashion accessory out of the
death of millions of people.
And I honestly don’t think that a
rilly sensitive person like myself can
ever see beyond that.
Julie Burchill
NME ORIGINALS 13
 Where Will It End?
NME, 12 May 1979, p43
THE CURE
Three Imaginary Boys
(Fiction)
Aaah! More alert and
anguished young
men. Do not applaud
them. This glistening
long-player contains
variations upon the
smoothly quirky
theme that brought
the world the
pleasurable ‘Killing
An Arab’. Over a whole album that pretty
bending and doodling does a lot less than
please, and a lot more than grate.
But The Cure are not just making pop music.
They are trying to tell us something. They are
trying to tell us they do not exist. They are
trying to say that everything is empty. They
are represented on the ice-cream colour cover
by three bulky, ageing household gadgets. Lol
Tolhurst (drums) is a fridge. Michael Dempsey
(bass, voice) is an upright Hoover. Robert Smith
(guitar, voice) is a standard lamp. Each song is
represented on the back sleeve by a picture and
on the label by a symbol.
All this charming, childish fiddling about
aims for the anti-image but naturally creates the
perfect malleable image: the tantalising enigma
of The Cure. They try to take everything away
from the purpose and idea of the rock performer
but try so hard they put more in than they take
out. They add to the falseness.
The Cure, really, are trying to sell us
something. Their product is more artificial than
most. This is perhaps part of their master plan,
but it seems more like their naivety. The Cure
set themselves up as though they float along
way outside the realms of anything we can
understand. They are scandalous, fulfilled aliens,
and they look down on us. What do they see?
Not much that’ll shoot your being through
with vigour or sudden understanding, but they
never stop nagging. Willowy songs wallow in
the murk and marsh of tawdry images, inane
realisations, dull epigrams. Sometimes a song is
as pretty as ‘Killing An Arab’: ‘Accuracy’ (a target
over a man’s eye) or ‘Fire In Cairo’ (palm tree in
the desert). But nowhere is there anything truly
adventurous. What The Cure have done here
is the equivalent of an album of Enid Blyton
readings packaged as readings from Angela
Carter. No, it’s maybe not that awful-good.
It’s just that in 1979 people shouldn’t be
allowed to get away with things like this.
There are too many who do. Fatigue music. So
transparent. So light and – oh, how it nags.
Paul Morley
14 NME ORIGINALS
NME, 16 December 1978, p16
Ain’t No Blues For
The Summertime Cure
R obert Smith, teenage lynchpin of The
Cure, plays a Woolworth’s Top Twenty
guitar that set the lad back precisely £20.
Hands up those of you who still reckon you
need expensive instruments to play rock’n’roll?
An abrasive Light Metal trio hailing from
Crawley, a far-flung southern outpost of
London’s commuter hinterland, The Cure are
like a breath of fresh suburban air on the capital’s
smog-ridden pub and club circuit.
Compact and self-sufficient – guitarist
Smith balances the group’s sound live himself
aided by a portable mixing desk at the side of
the stage – The Cure are a triumph of impulse
and spontaneity. As Smith explains, “We see so
many of the people we went to school with doing
absolutely nothing. A lot of them are talented
enough to, but they just don’t bother themselves.
“There are so many people playing music that
is absolute rubbish and getting somewhere doing
it. You just think, if they’re doing it, why don’t
you, when you know you’re so much better?”
Smith formed the band at school with
drummer Lol Tolhurst and bassist Mike
Dempsey as long ago as 1976. They spent most of
last year in limbo,
unhappily signed to
German disco label “ We could have been the
Barron Knights of punk”
Ariola-Hansa and
recording demos
with unsympathetic
producers, but never
actually getting that elusive first single release.
“We thought we’d be able to do all these
outrageous songs we’d written, but all they
wanted were really banal old rock’n’roll songs.
“Then they gave us the money to do our own
demos. And of course they didn’t like them. So
they tried putting us in the studio with one of
their soul producers, and that didn’t work out
TLFeBOOK
The Cure: (l to r)
Robert Smith, Lol
Tolhurst and
Mike Dempsey
either. It got to the stage where we would have
become the Barron Knights of punk…”
With their five-year Ariola-Hansa contract
terminated, The Cure, master tapes tucked
firmly under their armpits, went back to gigging
at local venues until an old friend lent them the
cash to cut some last-ditch demos.
A dozen copies of the resultant tape were
mailed out to record companies. A week or so
later, young Rob received a call from former
Polydor A&R man and Jam producer Chris
Parry, with whom they have finally recorded a
single, ‘Killing An Arab’. The title comes from
The Stranger, a
book by Camus
about an Algerian
uprising.
“It’s not racist, if
JILL FURMANOVSKY/JUSTIN THOMAS/KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
you know what the
song is about,” says
Rob. “It just happened that the main character
in the book had killed an Arab, but it could have
been a Scandinavian or an English bloke.”
With a John Peel session and more extensive
London gigging on their immediate agenda, it
remains to be seen whether or not The Cure can
retain their refreshing joie de vivre.
Adrian Thrills

MM, 21 July 1979, p27
JOY DIVISION
Unknown Pleasures
(Factory)
“To talk of life today is like talking of
rope in the house of a hanged man.”
Where will it end?
The point is so obvious. It’s been
made time and time again. At the
time of writing, our
very own mode of
(Western, advanced,
techno) capitalism
is slipping down the
slope to its terminal
phase: critical mass.
One particular and
vigorous product of
capitalism’s excess
has been pop music,
not so much because of the form’s
intrinsic merit (if any) but because,
for many, bar football, it’s the only
arena going, in this country at least.
“Trying to find a clue/Trying to
find a way/ To get out!” ‘Unknown
Pleasures’ is a brave bulletin, a
danceable dream; brilliantly, a
record of place. Of one particular
city, Manchester. And in defining
reaction and adjustment to place
so accurately, it makes the specific
general, the particular a paradigm.
“To the centre of the city in the
night/Waiting for you…” Joy
Division’s spatial, circular themes
and Martin Hannett’s
shiny, waking-dream
production gloss are
one perfect reflection
of Manchester’s dark
spaces and empty
places, endless sodium
lights and hidden semis
seen from a speeding car,
vacant industrial sites – the endless
detritus of the 19th century – seen
gaping like rotten teeth from an
orange bus, Hulme seen from the
fifth floor on a threatening, rainy
day… This is not specifically to
glamorise: it could be anywhere.
The song titles read as an opaque
manifesto: ‘Disorder’, ‘Day Of The
Lords’, ‘Candidate’, ‘Insight’, ‘New
Dawn Fades’. Loosely, they restate
The album’s two aces are ‘Insight’ and
‘She’s Lost Control’ – here, finally, Gary
Glitter meets The Velvet Underground
outsider themes: individuals caught
in a trap they dimly perceive – anger,
paranoia, alienation, feelings of
thwarted power, and so on. Hardly
pretty, but compulsive.
What gives Joy Division their
edge is the taut danceability
of their faster songs, and the
dreamlike spell of their slower
explorations. Both rely on the
tense, careful counterpoint of
bass (Peter Hook), drums (Stephen
Morris) and guitar (Bernard Dickin);
Ian Curtis’ expressive, confused
vocals croon deeply over recurring
musical patterns which themselves
mock any idea of escape.
Live, he appears possessed
by demons, dancing spastically
TLFeBOOK
and with lightning speed;
unwinding and winding as the rigid
metal music folds and unfolds over
him. Recording demands a different
context: Hannett imposes a colder,
more controlled hysteria – songs
merge in and out of one another in a
brittle, metallic atmosphere.
Opener ‘Disorder’ races briskly,
with ominous organ swirls – at the
end, Curtis intones “Feeling feeling
feeling” in the tones of someone
who’s not sure he has any left. Two
slower songs follow, both based on
massively accented drumming and
rumbling bass. ‘Day Of The Lords’ is
built around a wrenching chorus of
“Where will it end?” while the even
sparser ‘Candidate’ fleshes out the
bare rhythm section with chance
guitar ambience.
The album’s two aces are ‘Insight’
and ‘She’s Lost Control’; here,
finally, Gary Glitter meets the Velvet
Underground. Both rely on rock-
hard echoed drumming and bass
recorded well up to take the melody
– the guitar provides textural icing
and thrust over the top. The former’s
attractive, bouncing melody belies
the lyrics: “But I don’t care any more/
I’ve lost the will to want more”.
‘She’s Lost Control’, remixed to
emphasise guitar and percussion,
Facing the future:
Stephen Morris, Ian
Curtis, Bernard Dickin
and Peter Hook
1978 - 1979
is a possible hit single: it’s certainly
the obvious track for radio to play.
Deep and dark vocals ride over
an irresistible, circular backing
that threatens to break loose but
never does; the tension ends in a
crescendo of synthesized noise.
Three faster tracks follow
– mutated heavy pop, all built
around punishing rhythms and riffs
it’d be tempting to call metal, except
control is everywhere. ‘Shadowplay’
is a metallic travelogue, with
Curtis fleeing internal demons;
‘Wilderness’ externalises things
into Lovecraftian fantasy, all
echoed drumming and sickening
guitar slides, while ‘Interzone’
moves through a clipped, perfect
introduction to guitar shrills and
murder-mystery mumbles.
Both sides end with tracks – ‘New
Dawn Fades’ and ‘I Remember
Nothing’ – so slow and atmospheric
that alienation becomes a waking
dream upon which nothing
impinges: “Me in my own world…”
Leaving the 20th century is
difficult; most people prefer to go
back and nostalgise. Joy Division at
least set a course in the present with
contrails for the future – perhaps
you can’t ask for much more.
Indeed, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ may
very well be one of the best white,
English, debut LPs of the year.
Problems remain: in recording
place so accurately, Joy Division
are vulnerable to any success the
album may bring – once the delicate
relationship with environment is
altered, they may never produce
anything as good again.
Perhaps it’s time we all started
facing the future. Where will it end?
Jon Savage
NME ORIGINALS 15
 Me In My Own World

l
et me draw back the curtains on a
winter night last year. A midweek night
of no special significance, save that Joy
Division had come marching into town.
It wasn’t much of a welcome. It wasn’t one of
those jam-packed little-league sell-outs where
you can’t get in for the length of the guest list
and where breath is bated in anticipation of
something about to turn big. Nothing of the sort.
Down in the basement confines of a celebrated
Islington watering hole it was relaxed and cool.
In front of the stage, though, a gaggle of
a dozen or so modern boys staked out their
territory like there was some sort of conspiracy
afoot. Minions were dispatched to fetch the
pints. The space in front of the stage was
jealously guarded. Their muted green tribal
colours set them apart from the dowdy crowd.
They had come, heaven knows where from,
for Joy Division. Another Manchester Band. The
band that looks dead set to follow Buzzcocks out
of merely local and underground acclaim and
into the wider limelight – at least judging by the

Take No
rapturous critical reaction to their first album,
‘Unknown Pleasures’.

A single overhead spot floods the centre-stage

microphone and spills out onto the heads of the
aforementioned gaggle of sartorial hot-shots.
Heads that start to bob furiously at the first pulse
of streamlined rhythm, attached to bodies that
lurch back and forth, attached to legs that jerk up
and down at the knees and arms that swing in a
loose crawl or elbows that flap madly.
The spot picks out singer Ian Curtis. The rest
of Joy Division are shrouded in darkness as they
pour out their harsh metal thunder. The singer’s
body shakes, rocks and palpitates, a mad dervish
caught in that one spotlight.
Were you to shine a torch around this
subterranean scene you would see the young,
tidy faces of Joy Division and notice perhaps the
ordinary, neat cut of their clothes, with the barest
hint of the regimental overtones of their name
in their flap-pocket shirts. You might also notice
the excitement in the faces of the onlookers, all
locking into the irresistible motion of the music.
The strongest new music to emerge this year.
It owes nothing to the after-punk cult of the
amateur. If it’s pop, that’s purely accidental. And
it plays with musical perimeters in ingenious,
never pretentious, ways – by building carefully
on their standard rock basis and using sounds
as textures with which to construct a song. It’s a
technique that anyone who listens to the radio
these days will be familiar with, from ‘I Feel
Love’ to ‘Public Image’, to give but two examples.
The themes of Joy Division’s music are
sorrowful, painful and sometimes deeply sad.
Ian Curtis (left) and
It’s music that gives often harrowing glimpses
Bernard Albrecht
anxiously await the of confusion and alienation. Joy Division walk
Joy Division backlash alone, with their heads bowed.

16 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

NME, 11 August 1979, p24
Prisoners, Leave No Clues
Not just another band from Manchester, Joy Division’s ‘Unknown
Pleasures’ LP puts them at the top of the league. By Paul Rambali
At least, that’s my interpretation. Joy Division
aren’t giving anybody any clues. They don’t agree
with lyric sheets.
“You get people who seem to think you should
put your lyrics on so you can get your message
across,” says bearded bass player, Peter Hook,
with obvious disdain. “We’ve said to people,
‘Haven’t you ever been listening to a record
where you’ve been singing a certain line and
when you find what it really is you feel let down?’
But they just won’t admit that at all. They still
wanted to know what our lyrics were about.
“Don’t you think it’s wrong to pin somebody
down like that? Our lyrics may mean something
completely different to every single individual.”
Why not write gibberish then? On a variation
of the monkey-and-typewriter principle it’ll
mean something to someone sooner or later.
“The songs mean something personal to us,
but that’s not the point. It’s like saying, ‘What did
Max Escher mean when he did that painting?’”
He points to a giant print of one of Escher’s
typical perspective puzzles that hangs on the
wall of Manchester’s Central Sound Studio,
where we are now located. “He might just say,
‘I was pissed.’ We don’t want to say anything.
We don’t want to influence people. We don’t
want people to know what we think.”
Ian, who writes the lyrics, broadly speaking
PENNIE SMITH
shares these views. He is off stage the virtual
opposite of what he is on. His speaking voice is
(L to r) Bernard
Albrecht, Ian Curtis,
Peter Hook and
Stephen Morris
high and faltering, not swarthy and assertive,
and his shyness you would not guess from his
onstage abandon.
Stephen Morris, the drummer who completed
the foursome a few months after Ian joined,
lives, like Ian, in Macclesfield, and owns a huge
record collection, partly inherited from his jazz
enthusiast father: “He took me to see Count
Basie once… So I took him to see Hawkwind. He
was getting all dressed up and I had to explain
that, no Dad, it’s not that sort of concert…”
He bought his first drum kit by chopping up
the furniture in his house to sell as firewood.
Which leaves only Bernard Albrecht, who
plays guitar, and went to school with Hook. He
is astute and eager to explain himself.
“I don’t like a lot of music,” he admits, “but
the music I do like I get more out of than from
“You get back to the rehearsal room, and there’s just
the four of us. You get your instrument and you’re free”
anything else in life. I want to put the feeling that
I get out of music back into music as well.
“When we started off none of us could play.
But each time we go one step forward – and that
draws you on. It’s just a really good feeling. I
think that’s why a lot of people get disillusioned,
’cos, like, the music dries up.”
It’s relatively easy to trace the stealthy progress
Joy Division have made from their aggressive,
TLFeBOOK
1979
noisy, unkempt beginnings in ’77 to the superb
controlled heat they generate now.
But up until now Joy Division have been
dogged by business problems, stalled by
personal problems, and ignored. They mistrust
the glowing reviews they now get, and wait,
dispassionately, for the backlash.
Being on the outside has made them very insular
and possessive about their music. It has also
given them their strength: not a resentful, we’ll-
show-’em sort of strength, but the satisfaction
they derive from their music.
“All the business side – that really fucks you
up,” moans Peter. “Once you get back in the
rehearsal room and there’s just the four of us
with instruments we’re back where we started.
It still hangs over you like a cloud – but once
you get your instrument you’re free…”
“You’re always working on the next song,” says
Ian. “No matter how many songs you’ve done,
you’re always looking for the next one. Basically
we play what we want. It’d be very easy for us to
say, ‘Well, all these people seem to like such and
such a song – it’d be easy to knock out another
one.’ But we don’t.
“We don’t want to get diluted, really, and
by staying at Factory we’re free to do what we
want. There’s no one restricting us or the music
– or even the artwork and promotion. You get
bands that are given huge advances – loans
really – but what do they spend it on? What is
all that money going to get? Is it going to make
the music any better?”
“Another good thing about it,” says Stephen,
from the heart, “is if you’ve got some sort of
frustration, something eating you, you can get it
out just by playing.”
“The thing is, if you’ve got a brain,” explains
Peter, “obviously you want to do something with
your life, or whatever. I’m sure a lot of people feel
like that. Now that we’ve got this, we don’t.”
Ian: “When I was about 15 or 16 at school, I
used to talk with me mates and we’d say, ‘Right.
As soon as we leave we’ll be down in London,
doing something nobody else is doing.’ Then
I used to work in a factory, and I was happy
because I could daydream all day. All I had to do
was push this wagon up and down. But I didn’t
have to think. I could think about the weekend,
imagine what I was going to spend me money on,
which LP I was going to buy… You can live in
your own little world.”
Too true. But whichever world you choose to
live in the chances are it’ll soon coincide with
Joy Division’s. They’re here to stay.
NME ORIGINALS 17
 Trouble At The Top

MM, 1 September 1979, p23

SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES

Join Hands
(Polydor)

A year ago, the

Banshees had a hit
album, a Top 10 single
(‘Hong Kong Garden’),
the crossover pop
audience and the
punk audience.
Credibility, critical
acclaim and pop
prowess. They even wore their
clothes nicely – perfect. Blink… and it’s gone!
There was a weak follow-up, ‘Staircase’.
The group doesn’t play much; the audience
fragments, as the matrix moves to new areas.
In limbo, the Banshees plump for standbys:
“art” and “mystery”. It hurts. Shorn of the bounce
and verve that balanced the odd obscurity of
‘The Scream’, ‘Join Hands’ is a confusing, in parts
brilliant, in parts awful, faintly musty collection.
Conveniently, almost all the better pieces
are kept on the first side. ‘Poppy Day’, is a short,
powerful evocation of the Great War graveyards
in Flanders. McKay’s phased guitar scythes out a
barrage of sound while the bass carries the tune.
‘Regal Zone’ opens with an urgent flurry, muted
slightly by McKay’s sax: it shifts into an urgent,
insistent claustrophobia.
The two best tracks follow: ‘Placebo Effect’ has
a stunning flanged guitar intro, chasing clinical
MM, 15 September 1979, p3
lyrics covering some insertion or operation. It
winds down, spaciously, into the apocalyptic
‘Icon’. Siouxsie begins awkwardly, and the band
slip into one of the oldest tricks in the book – the
Bo Diddley rhythm – and make it their own: the
brilliantly reverbed guitar is a perfect foil for
t he Siouxsie & The Banshees tour ground
to a halt after only one gig last week when
guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny
Morris left the group and disappeared after a row
Siouxsie were aware of problems with McKay and
Morris – they were given the option of leaving the
group before the tour started – they anticipated
the make-or-break aspect of the tour would not
Siouxsie’s soaring and, for once, emotional vocal. in a record shop. be decided until the dates had finished.
The second side begins with the single, After the row, which followed a disagreement “They have just run away,” said Siouxsie.
‘Playground Twist’. Siouxsie’s fascination for the over signing autographs and giving away “Their actions were a complete cop-out. They
macabre finds an expression that suits it in a swirl promotional LPs in the Aberdeen shop on have showed complete apathy. If they wanted
of child-like disorientation and terror. A great Friday, the pair went back to their hotel, packed, to object to something, or felt they were being
song. ‘Mother’ then sets alarm bells ringing: a arranged their pressured, they
short recital by Sioux, childlike, over a music box, pillows in their beds should have shouted
it’s mawkish rather than evocative.
With ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ the alarm bells burst
to look as if they
were occupied, and
“They have just run away. Their back, or hit me, but
instead they did this.
into a cacophony of sirens. Over 13 minutes,
Siouxsie pulls the wings off the Lord’s Prayer over
a Banshee boogie which, when it shifts, provides
fixed their backstage
passes to the pillows.
Apart from a brief
actions were a complete cop-out” “I consider it is
the worst, the most
cowardly way they
the only movements of interest. It’s not art, not encounter with their manager, Nils Stevenson, could have behaved. It is the most disgusting
proper noise: the Banshees aren’t, respectively, as they drove away in a taxi, Morris and McKay thing they could have done to a band, and worst
good enough artists or incompetent enough have not been seen since. of all, their action feels so calculated – it wasn’t
musicians. The 100 Club one-liner (and myth), Their sudden departure means that Siouxsie as if they stormed out in a fury.”
taken out of context, is made absurd. and Steve Severin had to pull out of their The band have cancelled dates this week,
At its worst, ‘Join Hands’ is unforgivably Aberdeen show, but after explaining to fans that although there is a chance they will have been
necrophiliac; at its best, it captures the power “the two art students have left”, Siouxsie and able to rehearse with two new members to open
of which the Banshees are capable. Translated Severin joined support band The Cure for a again at Oxford’s New Theatre on Friday. Venues
PAUL SLATTERY

practically, all this means: listen before you buy. ten-minute version of “The Lord’s Prayer”. should be checked locally. Tonight’s Bradford
Jon Savage Severin told MM on Monday that while he and show has been postponed until 24 September.

18 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
www.wychwood.co.uk

The legendary Hobgoblin beer is the per fect potion for celebrating All Hallow’s Eve. Available from
all good supermarkets and of f-licences, it’s enough to scare the taste buds of f any lagerboy.
TLFeBOOK
 Enfants Terribles
MM, 24 June 1978, p23
JOY DIVISION
An Ideal For Living
(Enigma)
Yet more promising new music
from Manchester. Joy Division
were called Warsaw until they
recorded this EP last November,
and it was under that name that
I saw them at the Electric Circus
the month before (they’ve made
it on to the new Virgin album
commemorating the Circus’ last
weekend). This has the familiar
rough-hewn nature of home-
produced records but they’re no
mere drone-vendors – there are
a lot of good ideas here, and they
could be a very interesting band
by now, seven months on.
Chris Brazier
NME, 19 August 1978, p19
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Hong Kong Garden
(Polydor)
A lot of people have been waiting
for a long time for this disc, while
punk’s self-styled enfant terrible
played cat-and-mouse with a
music industry she openly regards
with contempt and disdain.
Siouxsie’s got a point. The
record companies who decide
what you’re going to be able to
buy are often reactionary and
staid and can be accused of
manipulating the populace. But
then she isn’t entirely blameless
on that last count herself.
20 NME ORIGINALS
If you really think The Banshees
spent the past year in a contract-
less limbo because their music
was too near the edge, then you
must spend a lot of your time
going round walking into walls.
The Banshees have fans, lots of
them, and no record company
worth its salt would pass up the
chance to sell them records.
And what about releasing
a record themselves? Don’t
they know the old mass access
argument hardly applies any
more? But here it is, a brash,
delirious two-chord triumph
that I would never have thought
them capable of, being not in the
least enamoured of their facile
attempts at creating radical music.
‘Hong Kong Garden’, a long-
time stage favourite, is a bright,
vivid narrative, something like
snapshots from the window of a
speeding Japanese train, power-
charged by the most original,
intoxicating guitar playing I’ve
heard in a long, long time.
Would you believe it’s going
to be played on the radio? Would
you believe Siouxsie on Top Of The
Pops? Would you believe not one
mention of Blondie… oops.
Paul Rambali
NME, 27 January 1979, p20
THE CURE
Killing An Arab
(Small Wonder)
Apparently based on Albert’s
The Outsider and, if so, quite
possibly the straw that broke
Camus’ back. Cymbals crash once,
twice, three times. A guitar, full of
eerie promises, slithering like the
TLFeBOOK
sprog of some belly-dancer and a
poisonous reptile. Compact bass
guitar motif, descending alone.
Then those vocals – taut, terse,
tense intonation, a voice like that
feeling you get watching the faces
on the workaday tube ride after
stepping out at dawn for the third
time without sleep.
“Standing on the beach/With
a gun in my hand/Staring at the
sea/Staring at the sand/Staring
down the barrel at the Arab on
the ground/Can see his open
mouth/ But I hear no sound/I’m
alive/I’m dead/I’m the stranger/
Killing an Arab”.
And racism has got nothing to
do with it.
Tony Parsons
MM, 30 June 1979, p31
THE CURE
Boys Don’t Cry
(Fiction)
Hum… this is something of a
disappointment. On stage ‘Boys
Don’t Cry’ is invariably one of the
high points, but somehow, in its
translation onto vinyl, the good’s
virtually gone. The agile interplay
between the three Cure members,
and the reverberating economy
that producer Chris Parry
spotlighted on the debut album,
have been edged out in favour of a
muddy mix and an old-fashioned
hierarchy of instruments. It just
sounds so ORDINARY now. The
flip, ‘Plastic Passion’, doesn’t
redeem the situation either. A
feeling of disappointment makes
a slim song sound threadbare.
Such a shame.
Ian Birch
NME, 30 June 1979, p31
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Playground Twist
(Polydor)
If Ingmar Bergman produced
records, they might sound like
this. The listener is immediately
engulfed in a maelstrom of
whirling sound punctuated by
the ominous tolling of church
bells, phased guitars, thundering
percussion, a surreal alto sax and
the wail of Siouxsie’s voice. It
demands to be played repeatedly
at threshold-of-pain volume to
elicit its full nightmarish quality.
Roy Carr
NME, 17 November 1979, p25
JOY DIVISION
Transmission
(Factory)
Dance, dance, dance to the radio!
A bass guitar slowly stirs and
quivers. A relentless, dipping riff
gathers momentum and sweeps
its way into a spiralling electric
guitar as a distant drummer
pumps out strict Can doublebeats.
This is an awesome disc, scaling
the heights fellow Mancunians
Magazine merely hinted at in
‘Shot By Both Sides’.
Ian Curtis provides regular
Iggy-style grunted vocal
interjections while the simmering
production – again the work of
Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett – is crisp
enough to push ‘Transmission’
into the chart. With the right
breaks, this could easily be a hit!
Adrian Thrills
 Chapter 2
1980
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 The New Pink Floyd?
Joy Division
University Of London
NME, 16 February 1980, p55
j
Simply the First Division
oy Division at the University
of London was a sell-out.
The guest list was huge.
Their impact was substantial.
Seeing Joy Division, if you
are properly tuned, is a jarring
experience. The music keeps
coming, trenchant, serene,
steady, hard, almost an orgiastic
celebration of the fact that Joy
Division have arrived at a noise and
form that is distinctive, instinctive
and immeasurably dynamic. The
introversion and singularity of
the four musicians is fitfully held
under control and private music
is forced out into the open. The
tension is startling.
The presentation is as grey and
bland as the noise is volatile and
deeply black – singer Ian Curtis’
comical trapped-butterfly flapping
the only real stage movement,
a visual representation of the
struggle inherent in Division’s
22 NME ORIGINALS
music. As Richard Jobson said,
Division’s music is genuinely
violent, and it’s the violence of
beauty rooted in beastly desire, the
violence of breakdown, inhibition,
failure, fatalism…
It could be vanity, it could be
impatience, even nervousness,
but during a Joy Division set,
Their songs are desperate nightmares,
clearly drawn, potent and personal
outside of the songs, you’ll be
lucky to hear more than two or
three words. Hello and goodbye.
No introductions, no promotion.
Good or bad? Inside the songs,
careful words – settings, situations,
dilemmas, images that are
primitive and anxious. Joy Division
are a powerful act of make-believe,
their songs like desperate bits of
TLFeBOOK
nightmares, clearly drawn, potent
and personal. But Joy Division’s
dreams are the inescapable places
where we live. It’s all suggestion
rather than direction or dogma.
Joy Division sped through
their early songs with intensity
of feeling and concentration.
The group pointedly proved that
they still work well away from
the mainstream, forging ahead
down the slippery corridor of
experimentation. They played
more new songs than old (they
didn’t play ‘She’s Lost Control’ or
‘Transmission’ or ‘Disorder’ or…
name your favourite) and these
new songs give no suggestion of
Division stagnation.
These new songs show that
Division’s music is as natural as
PiL’s, not held down by the grey
hands of limitation or expectation.
Joy Division are still coming up
with new ways to alter the shape,
emphasis and texture of their
music. The new songs are as
organised, hostile and spacious
as the last set, but there’s all-
round intensification, further
emphasis on the lead bass and
the active drums, even an overall
simplification.
The songs have extreme, para-
melodies, and some have no bass,
some no guitars. Synthesizers
and bass with the drums, or two
guitars. The new single ‘Love Will
Tear Us Apart’ is one hell of a
‘classic’ – bass, synth, drums, voice;
KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
Curtis hugging a white guitar up
to his chest but rarely using it.
The song’s mobility and fluidity
shows how much potential there

is in the simple contrasting and
connecting of instruments that
Division use. It’s a staggeringly
melodic and momentous piece.
For ‘Isolation’ they have the
same instrumentation, but it’s
more withdrawn and estranged;
a song they wrote only days
before that reveals Numan and
Foxx as true fools. The full
introduction of synthesizer has
not damaged the coherence and
balance of the music in any way.
It simply increases the amount of
mood, atmosphere, ephemeral
terror Division are capable
of achieving. The encore is a
confident, compelling, utterly
withdrawn ballad, something
like a dislocated and depraved
improvement upon Bowie’s
‘Heroes’. So impressive.
Part of Joy Division’s ‘success’
is the breadth and certainty of the
reactions they inspire. For this
performance there were three
obvious ones: love, penetration
and stimulation is one all in
itself, and if I wasn’t tied down
by language and responsibility I
could attempt to explain. Simple
frustration; that the group didn’t
lay out for selfish delectation
their eloquent standards. How
ironical! And old-fashioned
derision. A dissenter behind me,
with a spiteful snort, reckoned Joy
Division are the new Pink Floyd.
TLFeBOOK
MM, 14 June 1980, p10
Joy Division’s music is
physical and lucid, music about
uncontrollable emotions,
impulses, prejudices, fears. The
group have turned inarticulacy
into concrete impressions of the
deepest, most degenerate desires.
It’s simple music, but not
simple-minded; cryptic but not
impenetrable. As Danny Baker
said, Joy Division are due some
sort of backlash, but he’s not the
one to do it. If the group had
shown the slightest indication of
slackening I would have attacked.
But they are now better than they
have ever been. Joy Division will
tear you apart. Still.
Paul Morley
1980
NME, 26 April 1980, p37
THE CURE
Seventeen Seconds
(Fiction)
For a group as
young as The Cure,
it seems amazing
that they have
covered so much
territory in such a
brief time.
It’s impossible
to locate one
continuous
thread linking works as dramatically
opposed as their solemn debut 45 ‘Killing
An Arab’, the classic single ‘Boys Don’t Cry’,
and now the oblique, stilted soundtracks
that populate ‘Seventeen Seconds’.
Only one factor remains constant:
Robert Smith’s pleading whine of a
voice and (‘Boys Don’t Cry’ excepted) his
dependence upon keeping up a shield of
– often mischievous – distance.
After ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (and its
commercial failure), Smith regrouped with
a keyboard player, one Matthieu Hartley,
taking on many of the textural chores that
Smith’s guitar had previously covered.
A brief, pensive keyboard exercise very
much in the mould of Brian Eno’s ‘Through
Hollow Lands’ – entitled ‘A Reflection’
– opens ‘Seventeen Seconds’, setting
the mood. ‘Play For Today’ builds on its
predecessor: keyboard notes and sombre
electric guitar touches act as a prelude
for an odd, mysterious piece of music
that aims to haunt through extensive
use of a stock pulse-beat overladen with
brush-strokes of guitar, bass and synth,
while Smith’s vocals hang limply in the
mix. You either find yourself drawn into
the landscape created or else you sit there
waiting for a sudden jolt, an acceleration.
This mode of musical arrangement
finds its fullest realisation in the single ‘A
Forest’ – yet the scenario, once created,
soon sounds limp, devoid of any tension
or mystery. Again, one keeps waiting for a
sudden lift-off, yet the song just lies there
twitching occasionally. It’s a symptom
throughout ‘Seventeen Seconds’.
The album occupies a midway land
where much is insinuated but nothing is
truly delivered. It seems caught in that
very sense of ‘distance’ that Smith seems
so obsessive about keeping up.
To many, ‘Seventeen Seconds’ may
seem a valid progression. I however find
it depressingly regressive. Even so, I await
their next move with great interest.
Nick Kent
NME ORIGINALS 23
 Southern DeAth
Something so good…
Cult
Don’t Walk Away
In Silence
Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division and one of the most talented performers
and writers in contemporary rock music, committed suicide on 18 May 1980.
Paul Morley and Adrian Thrills pay tribute to the man and the group
s
o why do we get so animated and
enthralled by Joy Division?
Their music is filled with the horror
of the times – no cheap shocks, no rocky
horror, no tricks with mirrors, but catastrophic
images of compulsion, contradiction, wonder,
fear. The threatening nature of society hangs
heavy; each song is a mystery, a pursuit. The
music is brutally sensual and melancholically
tender. The songs never avoid loneliness, cruelty,
suffering; they defy these things.
All this isn’t out of a love for deep, oppressive
seriousness; we’re not celebrating doom. It’s
more a loathing for mediocrity and hypocrisy
and complacency, the deceptions rock often
seems proud to mould. There can be nothing
so silly as believing that rock is a saviour, and
nothing as outrageous as accepting it as an
artificial, attractive network of trash and flash.
Joy Division pushed its possibilities to the limits.
The very best rock music is art, and that is
nothing to be ashamed of. Good rock music
is entertaining and amusing, legitimate and
intelligent, and from week to week, single to
single, upset to upset, it keeps us going. It is
rarely straightforward intelligence and wit that
produces the very best rock music. It is dreams,
naivety, aspirations, intuition, exuberance…
there are dreams that shout for a better world
and a deeper understanding. These are the
dreams of the very best rock music.
Joy Division make art. The prejudice that
hangs around the word ‘art’ puts people off,
makes them think of the untouchable and the
unrealistic. Joy Division put reality into rock.
Yet for all the intensity and violence of their
images, the music never relinquishes a classic
accessibility; rhythm, melody, atmosphere are
awesomely sophisticated.
“They seemed a gloomy band, but
Joy Division achieve something
unique. Joy Division are not
merely a hip new wave group on
a fashionable independent label.
Oh no! they were the absolute opposite”
24 NME ORIGINALS
The month before what were to have been their
first American gigs, Joy Division completed an
impromptu set of British dates. In keeping with
their aversion to regulation and routine, the gigs
hardly qualified as a tour proper.
The dates took in London venues as diverse
as the Rainbow, where they supported The
Stranglers, to three nights at the Moonlight Club.
Out of town, they went largely unannounced
or were advertised only locally. Though a few
dates were cancelled as Ian Curtis fell ill, it was a
period of intense activity for the group.
The last of the gigs was in the University Of
Birmingham’s High Hall on Friday, 2 May. It
was also, fatefully, the last public appearance Ian
Curtis made as vocalist in Joy Division.
Four days before the Birmingham gig, a video
was filmed in Manchester for the forthcoming
‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ single. The location
– a disused, windswept, Dickensian warehouse
converted into a rehearsal studio – seemed the
ideal place for a Joy Division video. But the
band’s attitude to proceedings was withdrawn
and disinterested. Even on camera, they seemed
to have little time for such promotional niceties.
Such lethargy could hardly have been further
removed from the mood in the university
dressing room later that week as the band
prepared for the Birmingham gig – Joy Division,
despite their reputation as sober individuals,
despite the myth of romanticised gloom, were
earthy and easy-going people.
As Tony Wilson says, “To people they seemed
a very gloomy band, but as human beings they
were the absolute opposite.” They indulged in
the customary dressing room horseplay and
practical joking, beer-swilling and football talk
– Ian Curtis was a Manchester United supporter.
TLFeBOOK
But the earthy offstage demeanours – the
blunt, wary Peter Hook; the mischievous Bernie
Albrecht; the quiet, easy-going Stephen Morris
and the shy, fragile, polite Ian Curtis – were
transformed the minute they stepped out into
the misty glare of the stage spotlights.
Though a reticent student audience were
sluggish in warming to them, Joy Division’s
power and purity of purpose was immediately
apparent in the undiluted vigour of their music.
Their ultimate live set, characteristically,
made few concessions to rockbiz tradition,
the opening number being an unfamiliar
instrumental built around a revolving drum
motif, one of two new songs already written and
rehearsed in the few weeks since the completion
of the new LP, ‘Closer’.
A ripple of cheers greets a feedback-ridden,
faster than usual ‘Shadowplay’. But Joy Division
never stooped to easy games, and follow the
familiar song with two choppy, strident ones
from the new album, ‘Means To An End’ and
‘Passover’. Indeed, it is only with the end of
the slow, mournful ‘New Dawn Fades’ that Ian
Curtis acknowledged the audience verbally for
the first time with a curt ‘Hello’.
But the crowd, surprisingly, stand transfixed,
their feet taking all of five numbers to warm to
the dark dance music as the swirling guitar and
drum patterns of the hypnotic ‘Twenty-Four
Hours’ give way to the pulsebeat of the throbbing
bass introduction to ‘Transmission’. The song
suddenly seems to take on the aura of the hit it
should have been as the audience finally begin to
respond with real vigour, their reticence melting
in the face of the frightening intensity of Joy
Division’s performance.
The euphoria rises through ‘Disorder’, Curtis’s
flailing robotic juggle dance taking
on almost violent proportions as
KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
Morris and Hook hold down the
backbeat with precision and power
and Albrecht picks out the purest
improvised guitar solos.


 NME ORIGINALS 25
TLFeBOOK
 … Just Can’t Function No More


The guitarist takes over on synthesizer for
the two closers, the translucent ‘Isolation’ and
the serene ‘Decades’, a track, like the awesome
‘Atmosphere’, that provides a sharp counterpoint
to the more physical hard rock that comprises
most of their set.
Curtis, however, stumbles from the stage
before the end of the song, totally exhausted and
obviously showing signs of strain. The band,
despite demands for more, return for only a
sharp one-song encore, a revamped version of
the 1978 Factory Sampler track ‘Digital’…
It doesn’t really need saying, but Ian Curtis was
highly emotional, deeply romantic and acutely
sensitive. It was these qualities, plus an irrational
willingness to take the blame, combined with
a set of problems it’s not relevant to reveal,
that made him decide to leave us. A change of
scenery. For him, perhaps, freedom.
On Saturday 17 May, four days before Joy
Division were to fly to America, he had visited
his old house in Macclesfield to watch the
televised film Stroszek by his favourite director,
Herzog. Hours later, in the early hours of the
Sunday morning, he hung himself. He was 23.
That a myth will develop is inevitable, if only
because of the type of group Joy Division seemed
to be, the passions they arouse. Ian Curtis’
words are vivid and dramatic. They omit links
and open up perspectives; they are set deep in
untamed, unfenced darkness. He confronted
himself with ultimate realities.
However it’s written, this piece contributes
to the myth. Things need to be said, things that
would have been said anyway, without perhaps
Ian Curtis: the
myth grows
stronger
26 NNMMEE OORRIIGGIINNAALLSS
??
so much unconstrained emotion. Ian’s leaving
gives his words and his images a final desperate,
sad edge of clarity. It’s a perverse way for Joy
Division to get their deserved attention.
Our memories add to the myth. Ian Curtis’
own myths, the myths he dragged up from the
deep and tuned to our reality, inspire it.
The myth gets stronger… we might as well get
on with it. Ian would love this myth. Ian Curtis
was young, but he had already seen the depths.
His death is a waste, but he had already given us
more than we dare hope from anyone.
We were looking towards him.
And he was no longer there.
Joy Division played their first gig at the Electric
Circus supporting Buzzcocks and Penetration in
May 1977. Their name was then Warsaw, having
rejected the Pete Shelley suggestion of Stiff
Kittens. The name Warsaw was derived from
‘Warszawa’, a song on Bowie’s ‘Low’.
Warsaw were undistinguished, but there was
a great belief and romance guiding them. Slowly,
the noises formed. They recorded a four-track
single, ‘An Ideal For Living’, and planned to
release the EP using their new name Joy Division
– Joy Division being the prostitutes’ wing of
a concentration camp. Poor sound quality
postponed the release and even when it was put
out, it created no stir, although something was
obviously forming.
Ian Curtis was young, but he had seen the
depths. He gave us more than we dared hope
In 1978 Joy Division met their
manager Rob Gretton. Producer
Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett took an
active interest in the group, and
he and Gretton became fifth and
sixth members.
Joy Division had a quarter of
the Factory Sampler, contributing
two songs, the first indication
that Joy Division had a special
understanding. But still, the
completeness and strength of their
first LP, ‘Unknown Pleasures’,
was unnerving. The group had
discovered their own potential.
They had quietly, effectively
travelled from one extreme to the
other. Every word counted, every
line had a chilling penetration.
Somewhere between ‘An Ideal For
Living’ and the few months later
when ‘Unknown Pleasures’ was
recorded, a radical transformation
had taken place. Everything had
fallen into place.
An audience began to look
their way, but Joy Division never
let go. They relished Factory’s
uncomplicated flexibility,
contributing two extra songs from the
‘Unknown Pleasures’ session to Fast’s
‘Earcom 2’, recording two new songs
for French label Sordide Sentimentale
TLFeBOOK
and recorded a thrilling single for Factory called
‘Transmission’.
They quietly established their independence;
prolifically and ambitiously expanded upon their
already considerable originality; unpretentiously
discovered the capacity there is in rock for truly
traumatic and radical developments. They played
scores of gigs, but never made it seem like they
were merely promoting product. They created
their own pace. They made it look so easy. ‘It’
being something like a total lack of compromise.
Only the cruellest blow could shatter Joy
Division’s brilliant development. Really, they
show what is possible. They never dared wonder
aloud what effect they were having. They never
asked for special treatment. They never shouted
for attention, they just got on with the job.
Joy Division’s powerful work will naturally
live on. The name Joy Division will not be used
by Hook, Albrecht and Morris. The group
had decided a long while back that if any one
of the quartet should, for whatever reason, in
whatever way, depart, the rest would, in cautious
recognition of the fact they were making
something special, change the name of the group.
There are no set plans for the future, but it
must be said that Ian Curtis was not the major
force in the group. He wrote the words and
offered contributions to the musical make-up.
Hook and Albrecht wrote the melodies, Morris
composed the rhythms. Curtis was a dazzling
focus, but the music is unique in itself. Each
contribution was equal.
The impact of Joy Division can only grow
stronger. Joy Division can not clean away the
trivia and delusion of mass-based rock music,
but they throw a shadow over it all.
They emphasise the vanity and vulgarity
of the rock music so recklessly publicised and
glorified by industry and media, the plain
mundanity of the majority of pop, and their
own complete lack of conceit or ego indicates
the uselessness of pretending rock is some sort of
weapon of change. The very best rock is part of
a fight, a widespread perception, something that
actively removes prejudice and restriction.
Rock’s greatness is its emotional effect on
the individual. Joy Division’s worth is immense
to every individual who does not resent their
strange awareness. The struggle and the
conflict never ceases. There is no real safety, no
consolation, and often the evil, futile boundaries
of existence become too claustrophobic.
Ian Curtis decided to leave us, and yet he
leaves words of such strength they urge us to
fight, seek and reconcile. Joy Division will not
change the world. But there is value; there has
to be. The effect of Joy Division, the unknown
pleasures each individual fully tuned into Joy
KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
Division discovers, can only be guessed at. But
the moods and the insight must inspire us, excite
us, challenge us…
The value of Joy Division is the value of love.
 NME ORIGINALS 27
TLFeBOOK
 Play For Today

h
ere we go again.
I walk into The Cure’s
dressing room for the
night. I always hate
these sort of entrances. The four
members of The Cure, stood
among empty guitar cases,
practice amps, lager cans, dead
chairs, look limp and vacant. I slip
on my best brave face. Someone
rushes off to get me a Cure T-shirt,
something I’ll be happy to wear.
Somebody else hands me a can of
lager, something I force myself to
swallow. Robert Smith is nearest to
me as I hover by the open door.
“Hello,” he says amiably, “are
you nervous?” Yes, I say through
a narrow throat, I always am. He
grins goofishly. I grin goofishly.
Last year, on the night of the
General Election, I reviewed-
destroyed The Cure’s first LP
‘Three Imaginary Boys’, at first
spluttering at what I saw as a
queasy blend of arrogance and
austerity, then growing steadily
annoyed at what I fantasised as a
grand conspiracy of pompous pop
people and relentlessly hateful
politicians. I saw ‘Three Imaginary
Boys’ as a conceited scrapbook
with a bitter lack of internal
coherence. Wrapped up in dinky
pinkness, with symbols instead
of titles, it was too self-conscious,
and fitted in a place where talk of
innovation and stimulation was
all pose, no action, and where the
next mask was more important
than the next song. I thought The
Cure were horrible.
“I listened to that LP three
times,” says Robert Smith, and
murmurs in assent when I mention
that the second LP ‘Seventeen
Seconds’ is much more soulful and
direct. “The first LP in a lot of ways
was like a compilation, it didn’t
have a lot to do with what we were
doing even at the time.”
At that time Robert Smith
felt hurt by my antagonism. He
immediately wrote me a note,
sternly and hilariously parodying
my own indulgent word-play,
pissing all over it. The Cure sang
a song about the review during a
Peel session. The incident got silly.
Then quickly forgotten. When we
meet, I turn up deeply in love with
‘Seventeen Seconds’ and Robert
Smith doesn’t hate me at all.
Smith is soft where I imagined
he would be hard. He’s not a big
softie. He’s always on a fine line
between agitation and boredom,
and such a balance turns out
The Cure Mk II: (l to r)
Lol Tolhurst, Mathieu faintly, deviously charming. He’s
PAUL COX/LFI

Hartley, Simon Gallup no pretentious mock recluse,

and Robert Smith perpetually feigning intensity

28 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

DAYS OF WINE
POSES
AND
Y’see it wasn’t that The Cure ever had a non-image, they just didn’t have
an image, right? Nothing terribly wrong about that, is there? Well...
Paul Morley shares a bottle and begins to understand
of vision. He’s never quite sure
what to say. Does he take himself
seriously?
“I do take myself seriously but
there’s a point beyond which you
become a comic figure.”
Robert Smith is a songwriter
who wrote songs of enough
individuality and attraction to
warrant interest, who got hooked
into the record business and then
had to start wondering about
justification, morals, compromise.
Robert Smith cannot believe The
Fuss: “I still don’t feel comfortable
holding a guitar.” Smith has the
look of the perpetually puzzled. He
stutters, he blunders… he wonders
what the hell it’s all about, this
rock thing. “I sometimes think I
might be in someone else’s idea of
heaven,” he says with grisly irony.
In the early hours. We’re soul-deep
into bottles of red wine, muttering
about the state of the art, the
idleness and extravagance of the
shady rock heroes.
A Cure live set of the moment is
nothing like the sort of putrefied
and obsolete rock’n’roll gig a lot of
people think is the only way. Their
new songs sound faded and lonely,
rely on touch and quietness. They
don’t nag at you or remove your
independence. They rouse your
curiosity rather than remove it.
These songs are a slight chill, not a
right charge. A build-up of gloom,
shadows, broken bits of dreams
and expectations, not guaranteed
to supply the good night out.
Smith realises that The Cure
don’t fit into the rude rock gig, but
he likes to play.
“It’s very selfish when I go on
stage. It matters what the audience
thinks, but I write songs for myself.
It’s very narrow-minded. And we
don’t present shows. We don’t leap
about on stage. We could make it
visual and everything but we’re
not like that naturally so why
should we? I’d prefer it if we really
impressed a lot of people who’ll like
us for a long time rather than give
someone a good night out who’ll
forget it next week.”
What does he mean by impress?
“Just to show… I dunno… that
we’ve got something to offer.”
He chuckles. He’ll want to
change that later.
“I still don’t feel comfortable holding a
guitar. Sometimes I think I might be in
someone else’s idea of heaven”
The Cure form part of a new
realism in a part of rock that won’t
take over but won’t disappear.
Rock that isn’t trapped in a maze
of mirrors, that isn’t lost and
ignoble in a wasteland of dead
pride and rigid beliefs. The Cure
don’t demand everyone be like
them, and their expectations are
moderate. The space to breathe,
decent access to recording and
releasing, a modest listening
level. The Cure want to exist, they
TLFeBOOK
expect respect, they want their
privacy. ‘Seventeen Seconds’ is a
record of exceptional quality. Brief
and wistful. The Cure leave it there
as much as they are able.
“I don’t think that we have any
right to an audience. I don’t think
that just because we make records
people should listen, or if we play
they should come. If we weren’t
selling records I’d still be playing
in a pub or something, which I was
a year before we got a recording
contract. Just because I enjoy it. It’s
as simple as that. I’d rather be on
stage than doing anything else.”
The Cure story is a blur. It started
in pubs, now it’s reached clubs and
telly, and it will end quietly. They
started as a three-piece in 1977:
Smith, drummer Lol Tolhurst and
bassist Michael Dempsey. They
played other people’s songs, it was
all for fun and fun was all it was.
Robert Smith was part of a very
musical family. He recalls that
there was always an instrument in
the house, always people playing
music. At five he walking around
hitting guitars. Just making noises.
“I don’t know if I believe that
thing about some people being
born musicians and some not.
1980
That’s elevating musicians to
an unfair status.”
This background and his
hardening pubby experience
developed and disciplined
Smith’s beautifully polished and
adventurous guitar – a personal
and delicious post-Hendrix
technique wasted on the first
LP but exquisitely exploited for
Seventeen Seconds’. (Similarly his
obsessive, compelling vocals.)
It was automatic for Smith to
play on a stage with friends, for
himself, with the audience only
half-welcome. It was difficult for
Smith to express himself. There
was so much he wanted to say, but
it was almost as if he didn’t want
anyone to hear his words.
“I don’t know. I’ve always
written things down ever since I
could remember. Mainly because
sometimes I get really angry. I’ve
got a really violent temper but it’s
not physical because I don’t think
I should vent my frustrations and
depressions on anybody else. I
don’t throw tantrums or anything
like that, so rather than smash the
room up I write things down. It’s a
release. But I haven’t got over the
idea of separating communicating
from preaching. My words are
mainly about me, how I feel,
they’re not about world situations
and alternatives.”
The Cure dispensed with most
of their versions. They developed
originals. A debut single, ‘Killing
An Arab’, caused a bit of alarm;
Robert Smith was pulled into
the flow before he’d even tested it
out. Fiction signed them. ‘Three
Imaginary Boys’ was pinned
together. But the three-piece Cure
was destined not to last long. The
Siouxsie & The Banshees bust-up
accelerated fate. The Cure were
supporting them.
Kenny and John left the
Banshees. Budgie played for
Kenny. Robert played for
John, using his superior guitar
temperament to adapt perfectly to
the Banshee shapes. For that tour
he played two shows a night. The
Cure barely survived.
“It just became like a job. I’d
known Lol since I was six, but not
Michael, and the differences were
between him and me. I found
on the Banshees tour that I was
enjoying it more playing with the
Banshees than The Cure. That’s
what really made the decision. Lol
felt the same way, Michael wasn’t
criticising or joining in on any
sort of level. We were sticking to
the same set night after night and

the whole thing was getting like
NME ORIGINALS 29
 Art And Artifice fi
MM, 26 July 1980, p17
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Kaleidoscope
(Polydor)
‘Kaleidoscope’
follows hard on
the heels of the
morale-boosting
chart successes
of ‘Christine’ and
‘Happy House’,
both of which
are featured
here. ‘Christine’,
the story of the schizophrenic with 22
clashing personalities, was breathtaking:
strong, steady drumming, a running bass,
a skilful acoustic guitar and Siouxsie’s
compassionate vocals all evoke perfectly
the song’s stark atmosphere.
‘Happy House’ was great pop as well,
everything moving together to form
its own distinctive sound. And now
‘Kaleidoscope’ – a series of sketches each
evoking its own atmosphere and place.
‘Happy House’ kicks off Side One
before ‘Tenant’ is ushered in with a slow,
almost Public Image feel, with Severin
contributing electric sitar, among other
things. ‘Trophy’ is a McGeogh number
with a recurring guitar motif and an
exploration by Siouxsie of the futility of
remembering past triumphs.
‘Hybrid’, though meticulously
constructed, tends to outstay its
welcome, while ‘Clockface’ seems trite,
save for Siouxsie’s chanting. The side
ends with ‘Lunar Camel’: slow, a trifle
draggy, it lacks characteristic Banshee
purpose or direction.
Side Two: ‘Desert Kisses’ boasts a
great swirling feel of power and intent
with Siouxsie’s voice reminding us of
its unique quality. ‘Red Frame’ is almost
Human League but with more depth
and darkness, while ‘Paradise Place’ and
‘Skin’ are just classic Banshee pieces.
Hypnotic, relentless, and incisive, both
feature Steve Jones on guitar, revealing a
hitherto unknown side of the (S)ex Pistol.
As the title implies, ‘Kaleidoscope’
aims to give the listener exactly that.
A kaleidoscope of sound and imagery,
new forms, and content, flashing before
our eyes. Undoubtedly a lot of the album
is a success on those terms, but even after
about ten plays it’s still hard to fully grasp
‘Kaleidoscope’ as a concrete whole. Or
maybe that’s the beauty.
Paulo Hewitt
30 NME ORIGINALS

a joke. There wasn’t
much point carrying on.”
Late ’79, Dempsey left.
Two new members were
drafted – keyboardist
Matthieu Hartley and
bassist Simon Gallup
– who oddly made the
music more sparse and
withdrawn.
“They’ve added a new
dimension to the group
– pissheads.”
Resisting the
compromising
temptation to become
a full-time Banshee,
Smith and The Cure
emerged more in
control than they’d ever been. Out of bad times
and sad times was blended the tender ‘Seventeen
Seconds’ – a collection of songs restlessly remaking
and reworking one particular incident from inside a
love trap. Smith reflects on a moment from different
points of view: resentful on ‘Play For Today’;
morbid on ‘In Your House’; near-extinguished on
‘Seventeen Seconds’.
“It was a really condensed incident, a rush of
feelings that I’d found in myself had been watered
down mainly by playing in a group. It’s a really
strange situation, but I find touring and things like
that shut me down. I harden and get very reclusive,
sort of shun people. All the things that I’d been
shutting down just came out in a big rush and
for the following two weeks every day I’d just be
thinking about that one particular incident. One
day I’d wake up wanting to kill somebody, the next
day I wouldn’t even bother getting up. It was awful.
“I wasn’t fighting it, whereas in everyday life
you’d have to control those feelings. But it’s good
that it happened. At the time I
was shutting down and didn’t feel
like writing any more songs, I just “One day I’d wake up wanting to kill
couldn’t be bothered, and it was
through actually being in a group, somebody, the next day I wouldn’t even
through playing songs, that
caused me to stop writing songs!”
Out of such a strained
bother getting up. I was shutting down”
experience came an extraordinary LP: the
atmospheres are consistently melancholic,
the textures relaxed and subtle. No hurrying
or harrying. The Cure use genuine technical
originality – the sound is light and misty, paler and
thinner than ‘Another Green World’, as convincing
as rock music can be in conveying the way the mind
runs, slows, repeats itself. It is definitive soft rock:
a crumbling world and its pervasive persistence in
memory is beautifully evoked, there is the quiet
agony of love and loss, a constant sense of distance –
between people, places, past and present. ‘Seventeen
Seconds’ is an LP of romantic melancholy, of
anguish and finally of horror.
“There is genuine emotion on there and again
whether people want to take it that way is up to
them. I’m not going to say you’ve got to believe me,
this genuine emotion, because now I’ve done it I
don’t really care. It’s there if people like to listen to
it. It’s not the type of LP you’re going to put on if you
want a party. Nor a record to put on if you’re having
a fit of depression. The whole thing of doing Top Of
The Pops, of selling it, the whole shop window thing,
TLFeBOOK
The Cure model for
the Littlewood’s
catalogue ‘post-
punk’ collection
I stay away from. I’m not a seller. In fact I sometimes
go the opposite way. Which is a bit stupid.”
Sometimes it seems as though Robert Smith is
embarrassed by living. He is unsettled by the extent
and demands of his ego, necessarily oblique about
his work, finally ashamed by the vulgar way it tends
to be sold. But slowly he is beginning to realise that
he cannot exist in a vacuum. He is consolidating
his position within this Fuss, striking a fine balance
between playing the game and reconciling his own
inner conflicts. And ‘Seventeen Seconds’ is a victory
of aspiration over circumstances: one of the most
calm, liberating and progressive rock LPs of recent
years. It’s easy (so calm! So uncluttered!) to miss. It
should be heard again and again and again (fade).
Deep into
the deep red wine, deep into the deep
conversation, Robert and I are talking about image.
Around the time of ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ they
seemed to be elaborately disguising their plainness.
My mistake: I called it the anti-image. Robert Smith
was utterly fed up by that. “We had to get away from
that anti-image thing, which we didn’t even create
in the first place. And it seemed like we were trying
to be more obscure. We just didn’t like the standard
rock thing. The whole thing got really out of hand.
I was trying really hard to be normal, at home I
was being all nice, and my mum kept saying to me,
‘What’s an anti-image?’”
I tell Robert he can often be infuriatingly vague,
because he can.
“I am very vague. I don’t know why. Ha! Ha!”
Does obscurity mean anything to Smith?
“I’m not doing this to make my name go down
in history. I really couldn’t care less. I’m not saying
that to look good in the interview, I honestly don’t
think like that. There are so many people trying to
do that, it’s like another facet of the treadmill, and
it’s pointless because I could never win it anyway.
I’ve got faith in what I’m doing from a personal
point of view, but as to whether I go down in history,
I’m very doubtful about that… so I don’t let it worry
PAUL COX/LFI
me. If I let that worry me along with everything else
I’d crack up before I’m going to anyway.”

A
trendy disco in
the centre of an
Oxford shopping
Bauhaus are consistently
precinct seemed an
incongruous place for
a band like Bauhaus to
challenging, perplexing and elating
play on the opening night of their
British tour. But with this lot
nothing is predictable.
An extremely bizarre but
intricate film served as a support,
and after much shuffling around
with screens, the band emerged
from the crowd and walked
on stage. Talk about lack of
PHILIPPE CARLY - WWW.NEWWAVEPHOTOS.COM
mystery! It gave everyone in
the audience a chance to gawp
at close quarters at them and
completely destroyed, for me,
their glamorous untouchability.
But in a moment, with the
stark white light bleaching
out Peter Murphy’s elegantly
Bauhaus Scamps, Oxford
Oh bondage, up
yours: Peter Murphy
of Bauhaus
arrogant features and with the
rest of the band hovering in the
half-light, all was forgiven.
From the buzzing opening
TLFeBOOK
1980
MM, 30 August 1980, p27
bass notes, ‘Double
Dare’ was a killer, with NME, 8 November 1980, p32
Kevin Haskins beating
the living daylights out
of his drum kit and BAUHAUS
Danny Ash torturing In The Flat Field
his guitar – yet they all (4AD)
looked so restrained! Crossovers are
‘In The Flat Field’ interesting to
was the first of two observe, but
new numbers and generally not
came over very well, a lot of fun to
while ‘Boys’ had Peter listen to.
Murphy dragging We’re now
Danny Ash across the in the throes
stage by his hair and of a hard
going down on his punk/moderne
guitar à la Bowie and monochrome crossover, with
Ronson. bands like Killing Joke and Bauhaus
There’s more than on the verge of tapping a potentially
a touch of truth in massive market opened up by Siouxsie
talk of their affiliation & The Banshees, Adam & The Ants and
with glam rock. Their even Joy Division. To these ears, there’s
version of ‘Telegram as palpable a difference between these
Sam’ did justice to two groups of groups as there is between
Marc Bolan, and the Sex Pistols and Cockney Rejects
both that and ‘Terror – something like the difference between
Couple Kill Colonel’ art and artifice, but not quite.
had the previously ‘In The Flat Field’ is the first Bauhaus
unresponsive crowd album, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised
up and twitching. to see it storming up the “alternative”
One of the charts, at the very least. It oughtn’t to.
highlights of their I must admit to a passing liking for
very varied set was their three singles. I was even prepared
‘Stigmata Martyr’, to overlook their taking their name in
which had the vain (what the hell has their Gothick-
band emulating the Romantick schtick got to do with the
crucifixion while stripped, no-nonsense principles of
chanting the blessing. the Bauhaus?), but over the length of
They closed with an album, their limitations and endless
‘St Vitus Dance’, pretence are just too much to take.
though the audience ‘In The Flat Field’ is nine meaningless
was still quiet. moans and flails bereft of even the
Bauhaus never
fail to alienate
most cursory contour of interest, a
record which deserves all the damning
certain sections
of their audience,
but such is the lot
adjectives usually levelled at grim-faced
“modernists”. It’s doom for doom’s sake.
If nothing else, this sheds some
of a band who are consistently light on the punk/moderne crossover
challenging, perplexing and audience, who, in their taste for excessive
elating. Enigmas indeed! tribal plumage and dismal, doom-laden
Gill Smith music, are more closely related to the
heavy metal hordes than they’d like to
believe. And Bauhaus are nothing more
than a hip Black Sabbath. Really.
Personally, I couldn’t give a toss, not
feeling much affinity with many other
human beings in general, and certainly
not with any tribal group. I just wish this
record had been more interesting, more
original, and less reliant on the obvious.
Ah well. Their singles showed Bauhaus
weren’t devoid of an idea or two; this
album shows they’ve used them both up.
Andy Gill
NME ORIGINALS 31
 The Bye
Bye CureBlackheads
NME, 8 March 1980, p23
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Happy House/
Drop Dead Celebration
(Polydor)
Seemingly, hell hath no fury
like a Siouxsie scorned. For
all the contrived cynicism, it’s
Budgie’s remarkable drop-beat
drumnastics that dominate the
exotic, danceable top-side. But
it’s the unbridled viciousness of
the flip – supported by the cryptic
message ‘Bye Bye Blackheads’
etched next to the run-off
groove – that overshadows the
whole affair. Obviously aimed
at former Banshees Morris and
McKay, it’s probably one of the
most venomous put-downs
ever recorded. It’s as if Siouxsie
is gleefully sticking pins in wax
effigies as she shouts out her
abuse. When it comes to carrying
grudges, Sweet Sioux makes
Madams Thatcher and Ghandi
look like Sisters of Mercy.
Roy Carr
32 NME ORIGINALS
NME, 5 April 1980, p4
THE CURE
A Forest
(Fiction)
Unfortunately tagged as
naively witty suburbanites by
admirers, precocious darlings
by detractors, The Cure’s severe
growth problems were largely
caused by unwarranted heavy
attention early on. Consequently,
writer Robert Smith’s ability to
construct fleetingly mysterious
and highly evocative scenarios
went uncredited, as critics tried
instead to pinpoint the band
sociologically. ‘A Forest’ is a good
example, which gets better with
age: Smith’s dry, lost vocal tells of
Severin and
Sioux: hell
hath no fury…
TLFeBOOK
an unsettled individual listening
out for a strange guiding voice,
while the band play an attractively
doomy tune, enhanced by reticent
drums and carefully folded-in
keyboard lines. Nice, vaguely
psychedelic, production too.
Chris Bohn
MM, 28 June 1980, p16
JOY DIVISION
Love Will Tear Us Apart
(Factory)
This single, a follow-up to the free
flexi-disc which some baddies in
record shops have been selling,
has been invested with sad
significance after singer Ian Curtis’
tragic suicide.
Joy Division were (and may
remain) an innovative and
courageous band. Divorced from
Curtis’ fate, this record offers a
taster for their forthcoming album
‘Closer’. Evocative, interesting… a
powerfully original piece of music.
Martyn Sutton
MM, 13 September 1980, p17
JOY DIVISION
She’s Lost Control /
Atmosphere
(Factory)
A record that puts nearly
everything else to shame.
‘Atmosphere’ was only available
previously as a collectors’ item
French import and thank God
Factory Records have decided to
put it out as an official release.
It features a plaintive bassline
and sparse drumbeats as Ian
Curtis dolefully sings “Don’t walk
away in silence”. This is deeply
moving music.
‘She’s Lost Control’ shows just
how far the band moved ahead
after recording the ‘Unknown
Pleasures’ album. The song has
been given a totally new feel
to the original version, aided
by producer Martin Hannett’s
masterful drum and bass sound,
and ‘Closer’-style synth work
towards the end.
Lynden Barber
NME, 22 November 1980, p18
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Israel
(Polydor)
Siouxsie Schmiouxsie – what
does it matter as long she makes
good singles? ‘Christine’ was
one and ‘Israel’ isn’t. At first
impressive, grandiose, the song
meanders into tedium and clutter
and not even the wholesale
homage to Herzog’s soundtrack
can offset that.
As for the flip, ‘Red Over White’,
God spare us from all this pseudo-
religious Catholic guilt hogwash
with feebly disguised drum solos
and stream-of-consciousness
hippy lyrics.
You see how prejudice will
beget prejudice? I’m quite happy
humming the odd Banshees tune
but faced with the attendant
iconography that surrounds them
JANETTE BECKHAM
these days all I can see in their
image is a twee pose.
Max Bell
 Chapter 3
1981
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Small talk stinks
Northampton
discovers
art school rock!!
But school cad Chris Bohn picks apart Bauhaus designs
i
f the truth doesn’t fit, embroider
it. A basic rule of promotion is
to set up the myth early on and
hope the band will eventually live up to
it. The game can be fun, and Bauhaus have
always suggested that they were willing, if
not particularly adept, participants.
Formed a few years back, their evocative
name – lifted from this century’s most
influential art school – irrevocably links
them with 1920s Germany, making it easy for
commentators to draw expressionist leanings
from their shadowy live shows.
But the true face of Bauhaus is far removed
from singer Peter Murphy’s pained onstage
mugging, and they go to great lengths
to deny the German connections when I
meet them at bassist David Jay’s pleasantly
suburban Northampton home. Jay and
drummer brother Kevin Haskins timidly
fend off criticisms, while Murphy reacts more
spunkily. Danny Ash, guitarist, is absent after
catching an iron filing in his eye.
Bauhaus deserve their cult following.
So far they’ve made two very good
singles in their debut, ‘Bela
Lugosi’s Dead’, and the terse,
cogent ‘Terror Couple Kill
Colonel’; a failed commercial
gambit in their cover of
‘Telegram Sam’; and one
flop, ‘Dark Entries’.
But their debut album, ‘In
The Flat Field’, pointed up
all the limitations of their
approach. Murphy’s words
get inextricably tangled
in introspective journeys
through the terrors of a
Catholic past, but worse,
his classicist leanings
means he twists them
into needlessly inverted
sentences and forces
unnecessary rhymes.
“I was brought up a Catholic… ‘Stigmata
Martyr’ is about total fixation with Christ”
34 N M E ORIGINALS
TLFeBOOK
NME, 21 February 1981, p12
Matched as they are to tortuous hard rock
workouts over lurching rhythms, Bauhaus
have arrived at a pomposity almost equal to
that of the early ’70s progressive bands.
“I was brought up a Catholic, so I obviously
felt it was something to write about,” Peter
says. “One track, ‘Stigmata Martyr’ was about
total fi xation with Jesus Christ to the point of
bleeding from the same places as Christ bled.
It seemed like a really strong subject to me.”
Bauhaus are better appreciated live.
Murphy’s overwrought drama is highlighted
by stark white lights battened to the floor, thus
throwing up heavy shadows of the band onto
the wall. The effect is visibly gothic.
No, it’s not, contests Kevin Haskins: “It
seemed to us like a no-nonsense thing that
contradicts that whole gothic romance thing.”
Unless you see it in terms of old German
silent movies…
“We hadn’t seen any films like that when
we started,” points out David Jay. “
But this statement’s considerably
undermined when they hand me a copy of the
‘Bela Lugosi’ 12-inch featuring a back cover
still from The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. David
Jay notices me glancing at it suspiciously.
“Our guitarist Danny had torn it out of a
book and gave it to us without telling us where
it came from,” he explains timidly.
It’s not much of an excuse but there’s no
reason to disbelieve him in light of Bauhaus’
wilfully haphazard approach.
Made up of former art school students and
an ex-printer (Murphy) who wished he was
one, Bauhaus are laudably open to ideas, but
they’ve yet to show they’re capable of using
them. After a brief description of art school
life from Jay, Murphy rues his missed chance.
“I was accepted for art college but then I
changed my mind. I imagined you had to have
a good idea of what you wanted to do before
you enrolled.”
“It’s the opposite,” says Jay. “It opens you
up to different levels and ways of thinking.”
Going by their singles, Bauhaus have it
KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
in them to pull off a masterpiece, but at the
moment they’re still stuck at the sketchbook
stage. As it is, hang onto those early sketches
– look what happened to Adam & The Ants.

NME, 27 June 1981, p34
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Juju
(Polydor)
Of course, I watched Top Of The Pops
last week. It was poor – it’s going in
four-week cycles at the moment,
the good, the bad, the sagging, the
so-so – but Siouxsie & The Banshees
were on. A savage gloss, a slashing
glamour amid the tepid turns, a
turn-on like few others.
The Banshees are a terrific vision,
an exclusive attraction, a peak in
entertainment; Siouxsie & The
Banshees – the display of hair, skirt,
boys, vanity, flash, thigh, smile,
cheek to cheek, back to back – are
a discerning and devious
distortion of the ‘Pop
Group’ that can be
traced back to The
Velvet Underground,
Hendrix, The Doors
and the dark side of
Bolan: never wise
or mellow, meek
or smutty, sweet
or ‘significant’. None of this
romantic desire for action.
There is nothing earthy about
Banshee music. Their fourth LP
– thus far, their second-best – is a
FIN COSTELLO/REDFERNS/M BRITTON
gliding, comfortless delivery of self-
distrust, infatuation and fetishism.
‘Juju’ has an infernal quality:
nothing majestic or mysterious but
a kind of unawed unworldliness. The
mistake is to imagine that Banshee
words and images are intended
to be profound and responsible,
or brutally corrective. ‘Juju’ songs
don’t deal with dull matters, but
with peculiar things in a taut and
teasing manner.
The words are not as imposing
as people imagine. Precise syllables
and broken rhythms are used to
dramatise the music. The mood
of a Banshee song
is disapproval: not
a great intensity but
an idealistic, vexed
profanity. A Banshee
pop song is a bitter
twist, a grave grace.
The diabolical
themes, the emotional
poignancy and
remoteness are part of
the whole. It’s not all a weeping
over lost pleasures, neither is it
a thanksgiving. Banshee words
are an effective way to reject the
prosaic, to avoid the vulgar, and
the grouping of the words, the
melodramatic undercurrents
enable the glorious Sioux to camp
and exult with priceless poise.
Side One’s highlights:
TLFeBOOK
Siouxsie: better
than Toyah. Then
again, what isn’t?
‘Spellbound’, ‘Into
The Light’, ‘Arabian
Nights’, ‘Halloween’ and
‘Monitor’. Side Two’s
highlights: ‘Night Shift’,
‘Sin In My Heart’, ‘Head
Cut’ and ‘Voodoo
Dolly’. ‘Juju’ is the
first integrated and
sparkling-complete
Banshees album since ‘The Scream’.
It’s ‘Electric Warrior’ to the ‘Tanx’ of
Toyah’s ‘Anthem’.
Paul Morley
MM, 18 April 1981, p20
THE CURE
Faith
(Fiction)
There’s not a lot here you can
stuff carelessly into the drawer
labelled “fun”. Just check the
song titles – ‘The Holy Hour’,
‘The Funeral Party’, ‘The
Drowning Man’. Not the stuff
Mrs Mills albums are made of.
But it’s impressive. The
professional genre detective,
confronted by the evidence
1981
of The Cure’s first two albums,
might have spotted the penchant
for pop on the first and detected
the spots of blood on the sombre
sleeves of the second and added
them together. But he couldn’t
have predicted the richness and
deceptive power of ‘Faith’.
They start as they mean to go
on with ‘The Holy Hour’, where
Simon Gallup’s slowly phased bass
riff is beaten and punched by Lol
Tolhurst’s fat, dead percussion.
The rest of the first side, except
the wonderfully streamlined single
‘Primary’, offers variations on
these themes. ‘Other Voices’ slyly
builds enough momentum to start
pushing crockery off the sideboard.
‘All Cats Are Grey’ (in the dark?)
adopts a more sluggish tempo
but wrenches it into a completely
different perspective via Robert
Smith’s desperate keyboards.
There’s an inexplicable melancholy
to it which is overwhelming.
Overleaf, you run straight into
‘The Funeral Party’, suggesting a
coach-load of pall-bearers enjoying
a works outing to the great morgues
of Europe. On ‘The Drowning Man’,
the skeletal structure is modified by
speaker-swapping overdubs and
clipped handclaps.
‘Doubt’ is Side Two’s ‘Primary’,
slicing through the dominant
moody textures with angry vocals
and grunting bass. “Tear that flesh
and rip that skin”, snarls Smith,
who would rather mince people
than words.
Mostly, ‘Faith’ is a
sophisticated exercise
in atmosphere and
production, gloomy
but frequently
majestic. You may
not love it, but you’ll
become addicted to it.
Adam Sweeting
The Cure: touring
the great morgues
of Europe
NME ORIGINALS 35
 The sound of music
Pew, what
a scorcher:
bassist Tracy
with Nick Cave

MM, 17 October 1981, p15

BAUHAUS
Mask
(Beggars Banquet)

Bauhaus, though
I loathe to admit
it, are about to
be big.
The signs
are all there.
An inevitable
commercial dog-end of post-Joy Division
doom, they’ve wedded that image-
conscious, pretentious inner soul-searching
to Bowie’s glib theatricality and come up
crowd-pleasing trumps. At Bingley they
were showbiz magnificent.
‘In The Flat Field’, their last long-player,
sold well on sub-Banshees pseudo-religion
and a splash of Cramps Hammer horror
alone. ‘Mask’ (an apt name – very Siouxsie)
is a suitably showy, hollow successor – a
souvenir of their crass live show; all shock
no substance.
In the face of outmoded criteria like NME, 12 September 1981, p50
originality, having something to say, etc,
Bauhaus are a joke; so old-hat Iggy-bound
they shouldn’t exist. But with the current
accent on imitative image over anything
else, Murphy just MUST be an idol.
The Birthday
Africa Centre, London
Party
Teen mags will lap up his muscular
suntan and false aggression despite
the patent unlistenability of just about

everything they’ve ever recorded except
the ‘Young Americans’-cloned ‘Kick In
The Eye’ (re-recorded here).
Bauhaus are a soulless stance, a pathetic
excuse for idolatry in an era when heroes
shouldn’t exist but seem to be so badly
longed for. Adam & The Ants and The
Human League all better watch out – ‘Mask’
may not yield any potentially massive hit
singles but the leather-jacketed hordes
are eager and waiting.
The impression and atmosphere of
‘Mask’ counts today more than anybody
else’s struggling commitment – a Glitter
Band for post-punk depressives. Its appeal
is obvious: cosmic electronics, ethereal sax,
tribal drums, scratch-unfocussed guitar
and eerie, effective/affected vocals… a
pantomime pretence of communication.
Bauhaus are an unstoppable surge
towards the sham/glam mid-’70s. ‘Mask’,
more than Spandau, more than Rondo,
takes the stylistic route to success by the
short and curlies and flaunts it as a virtue.
Top Ten. I hate it.
Steve Sutherland
A
strange venue for
a strange group.
Crammed into a hall
that is more used to hearing
discussions on African culture,
politics and poetry are a
motley collection of after-
dark dancers, anticipating the
arrival of a group who have
been compared to The Pop
Group and The Cramps.
“Welcome to The Birthday
Party. Forty-five minutes of
sheer hell.”
Nick Cave does indeed look
like a skinny Lux Interior as
he introduces the group, an
odd assortment of Australian
reptiles in checked shirts
and the occasional Stetson.
Their sound bursts from the
tiny stage like a primordial
beast shedding the chains of
convention – a nightmarish
Gothic brew of Beefheartian
wordplay and nerve-jangling
It’s like standing too close to a firework
– dangerous but compulsive
Whatever reservations
I have about their ‘Prayers
On Fire’ LP are immediately
dispelled by their dynamic
performance. There is
wildness in the air, a feral
psychosis that owes as much to
the modern notion of paranoia
as it does to a prehistoric,
animal instinct of survival.
Cave’s voice seems to come
from somewhere else; it’s
hard to believe his slender
frame can accommodate the
relentless howl that screeches,
screams and throbs its way
around the sexual/surrealistic
lyrics. Obsessions scuttle,
slither and crawl through the
songs like so many nasty little
creatures – insects, fish, bugs
‘normal’ rock concerns of sex,
sadism and sacrifice.
Yet despite their apparent
strangeness, The Birthday
Party are a lot of fun. They give
so totally in performance that
questions of approachability
and involvement go flying
out of the window. Their
unrestrained enjoyment in
playing creates a positively
organic atmosphere – a
steaming jungle in which you
can laugh yourself silly or be
scared to death.
The Birthday Party are
genuine (ab)originals.
Watching them is a bit like
standing too close to a firework
– dangerous but compulsive.
Light blue touch paper and
TOM SHEEHAN

guitars stirred into a bubbling and bats are predominant stand near.
rhythmic broth. images – reinterpreting the Neil Norman

36 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 1981

pain either. On the naked feelings must have

contrary, they viewed got harder every time. Joy
exposing themselves Division presented them
to pain as one way of with that hardest thing to
breaking the aura of swallow: reality. Theirs was
insensitivity, suggesting all the more indigestible
that through brutality as it juggled together
or self-abasement the commonplace with
they might achieve the taboo, brutality with
those elusive moments of true sensuality and stark
NME, 17 October 1981, p41
feeling. On ‘The Sound Of Music’, horror with simple,
Curtis sings: “I’ll walk you through appealing melody. But Joy
JOY DIVISION the hard breaks/Show you all the Division never spared
Still outtakes/I can see it getting higher/ themselves in their
(Factory) Systematically degraded/ pursuit of experience
It shouldn’t have Emotionally a and truth.
happened, but as it did scapegoat /I can see You can feel
let’s take consolation in it getting better”, it still.
the fact that lan Curtis’s with the ecstatic Chris Bohn
death on 18 May, affirmation: “LOVE!/
1980 didn’t so much LIFE!/Makes you
bring Joy Division’s feel/Higher/
journey to the heart Higher /Higher!/
of darkness to an HIGHER!”
abrupt halt as freeze At their
it for all eternity at the brink of best, Joy Division were
discovery. At least we can still travel awesome, frightening
that far with them, and though they and beautiful – never
had positioned themselves well for more so than on ‘Dead
a final breakthrough, who knows Souls’, which somehow
if they’d have been able to cope on embodied the tragedy
the other side? of their vision, their
Their quest remains just that, its grasping after the
purity unspoiled by repetition, bad unattainable and
moves or false conclusions. It was the inevitable
founded in a courageous analysis of disillusionment that
their own condition, presented on would follow.
‘Still’ as a struggle towards a new, Joy Division never
more complete consciousness far resorted to faking
removed from the street squabbling emotions. Their
of the punk that spawned it. concerts seemed
Instead of moaning about the to be purgative
mess they were in, Joy Division experiences,
confronted it and discovered the especially for Curtis,
causes of the current depression who found release
to be rooted in spiritual rather in intense, brief
than material impoverishment. bursts of butterfly
They registered a profound movement. To
estrangement from their ugly watch him was like
environment and shock at the witnessing the last
callousness of the age. just man accepting the
They were fascinated by that sins of the world as his
which repelled them; their music’s personal burden.
tension often emanated from their The two live sides work
approximating the characteristics as a patchy retrospective,

They juggled brutality with sensitivity,

and horror with simple, appealing melody
of the very things they found
oppressive, either in undeniably
attractive abstractions of cityscapes
or in superbly drilled militaristic
marches. Unlike the dumb futurists,
past and present, they neither
KEVIN CUMMINS/IDOLS
despite the fact the synths
went horribly awry on most
of the ‘Closer’ material and
that Ian’s voice is often lost
in the shoddy mix.
Bearing in mind how

embraced nor glorified the speed quickly an audience grows

of modern life, but presented it as a accustomed to emotional Ian Curtis:
symptom of their malaise. shocks to its ordered grasping after
They wouldn’t shy away from system, expressing such the unattainable

NME ORIGINALS 37
TLFeBOOK
 blast off!

Sometimes pleasure A Manhattan melodrama starring The Birthday Party, by Barney Hoskyns

i
t’s a chill, exposed night in New York
City. The East Coast has just recovered
from a week of torrential rain, and the
winds sweeping up the island’s avenues
from Battery Park to the Bronx threaten more.
But the show must go on, and at a swanky
disco in Union Square called the Underground
it’s only just beginning. Strutting their stuff to
English imports like ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Don’t Say
That’s Just For White Boys’ are second division
preppies and neat executives from Hoboken.
They are trying to get their dates drunk.
The night is flowing by pretty amorphously
when suddenly, at one o’clock, the lights dim and
the sound dies. Everyone looks round; without
the disco their plans are ruined. Their faces drop.
Onto the stage are climbing five undesirable
aliens. One, festooned in split-crotch gold-
lamé drainpipes, his bruised features twitching
through black flames of hair, appears to be the
singer. Another, strapping on a bass guitar like a
giant dildo, sports a fishnet vest, a Stetson, and
the sort of moustache you might cultivate for
hustling some meat on Christopher Street.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, a kind of
The management is not amused. After the intellect to a “raw power”, that original sin which
second song, ‘Zoo-Music Girl’, someone’s Iggy Stooge so rightly perceived as “Laughing at
climbing on the stage and telling them their time you and me…”
is up. They thunder into one last, outrageous But the Birthday Party do not suffer from
exhibition of carnal mayhem and disappear. delusions of grandeur.
This little scenario is roughly what The “I mean fuck it,” says Nick Cave, “what we’re
Birthday Party call “a really great gig”. I mean, trying to do is the biggest musical cliché in the
how degenerate can you get? world. It’s just that some people forget the cliché.
Can you imagine Echo & The Bunnymen trying
In this climate of cold design and concealed to let themselves go?”
despair, The Birthday Party take the concept
of stage performance about as far as you
are likely to see it go. Live, the songs of Nick
Cave and Rowland Howard are driven to an
emotional edge where pain and pleasure fuse
– in cathartic madness for the performer
and dithyrambic joy for the
audience. Their concerts
are feasts of energy, chaotic
spectacles which break the
surface of art and carry
sound and lyric to ultimate
violence. The Birthday
Party in performance burst
through the constrictions of

“Fuck it, what we’re trying to do is the

biggest musical cliché in the world”
gangling, psychotic hillbilly in a ridiculous suit
is fastening on a guitar like he was auditioning
for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It’s not quite what the management was
expecting. Hell, they haven’t even played a note
and already half the crowd is filing out.
The next moment, all the worst premonitions
are justified. Cranking out of the amps comes
this murderous death-rattle, like the gaze of
Medusa freezing the few foolhardy adventurers
who dare to look. The bass lurches obscenely
into the foray, and finally, his body doubling up
in unholy convulsions, the macilent wreck of a
singer starts to spit and fume…
“AMERICAN HEADS WILL ROLL IN
TEXAS!”
Hmmmm… like what is this? Some turn
away in nervous laughter, the rest suck on
straws and pray it’s over soon.
When the song ends, however, an ugly pause
ensues. Something’s wrong with the guitar.
There’s trouble stirring. Seconds later, there’s
this ashen-faced nut behind the keyboard
shouting into his mic, very loudly but very The Birthday Party:
slowly, again and again and again: Mick Harvey, Nick
“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU Cave, Phil Calvert,
Tracy Pew and
BASTARDS?. . . WHAT’S THE MATTER
TOM SHEEHAN

Roland S Howard.
WITH YOU BASTARDS? . . . WHAT’S THE Jelly and ice cream
MATTER?…” not pictured

38 NNMMEE OORRIIGGIINNAALLSS
??
TLFeBOOK

heads must burn
He sprawls across the bar, finding his drink.
“I think it’s really important to rely on clichés
– like Suicide did. Not that it sounds like a cliché.
As a matter of fact I think ‘King Ink’ is one of the
best songs ever written. That song can become so
intense it puts me on another planet, though
I don’t think the recorded version is at all good.
“The record, as a cultural event, is a very
limited concept. With the cover and everything,
it can be much more than just the music.”
The Birthday Party have come to shake us
out of our inhibitions. They militate against the
sedative boundaries of Pop.
Cave: “There’s a real need for an intelligent
but aggressive group in London. All the
treasured groups are just so softcore.
At one time there was a real
upsurge of new young groups,
like The Pop Group before
they sacrificed the music
for that soapbox, toilet-roll politico.”
Pew: “Our last two London gigs have been the
best. Before that the audiences only lost control
when they were told to, like Pavlovian dogs.”
Cave: “Compared to the gigs in Australia,
especially in Sydney, they’re nothing. You
remember when that girl was slicing me up with
a key, Tracy? In Australia, you really feel you’re
turning decent people into monsters.
“We’re not setting ourselves up as some
kind of demonic force, it’s just that things are
more successful when they become blind and
unconscious. You feel anything could happen.”
Is popular music culture an important thing?
Cave: “When the history of rock music is
written – which, since it’s practically dead, will
be soon – it’ll just be remembered as a sordid
interruption of normality.”
Pew: “Rock will be remembered as the
“Rock will be remembered
as the anus of culture”
TLFeBOOK
1981
NME, 17 October 1981, p29
anus of culture. Not Del Shannon but Iggy Pop.”
Cave: “The point is that the creative process
is not some fucking craft. WE’RE A LIVING
MUSICAL CLICHE.”
The Birthday Party started life as The Boys Next
Door. “We went through a year in Australia
playing the most disgusting kind of shit. Like
[their 1979 LP] ‘Door, Door’,” Cave recalls.
“We were a bunch of snivelling little poofs,”
Pew interjects.
So what happened?
Howard stares into his drink for an answer.
“It was just a case of natural progression.”
Yeah, like the state of a person’s mind before
he drops acid to the trip itself. Tell us another.
“It’s the honest truth,” he protests, “things just
got a little… wilder, that’s all.”
That’s obvious. It was on the 1980 LP ‘The
Birthday Party’ that perennial influences such
as the Stooges and Beefheart and more
recent ones like Pere Ubu and The Pop
Group began to coalesce in Cave’s
and Howard’s songwriting. The result
is unique and unmissable.
By this time, the group had been
so inspired by the weird sounds
imported from possible goldmines
abroad they decided it was time to leave.
Their sights naturally settled on England.
Cave clears his throat with an evil grin.
“Coming to London has been one of the most
disillusioning experiences of my life. When we
arrived, we saw this package show at the Lyceum,
with Echo & The Bunnymen, A Certain Ratio,
The Teardrop Explodes and so forth and…
well, I’ve never been able to take English music
seriously since. It was horrible.”
The Birthday Party arrived in Britain just
as the last, perhaps most intense vestiges of
punk energy were burning themselves out:
the anger, the revolt, the sensuality went into a
coma. Perhaps as a result, The Birthday Party’s
wake-up call has won them the kind of critical
approval whose terms simply don’t apply to the
likes of Spandau Ballet. ‘Release The Bats’, their
“voodoo rockabilly” anthem, saw three weeks
at the top of the alternative singles chart. Their
latest LP, ‘Prayers On Fire’, has been in the indie
LP charts ever since its release. And attendance
at London gigs has been growing all the time.
After the year of “pop”, 1980, The Birthday
Party realised the solution was… TO ATTACK.
So in the words of ‘A Dead Song’:
“HIT IT! WITH WORDS LIKE
“THOU SHALT NOT
“THIS IS THE END”.
NME ORIGINALS 39
 mad eyed screamers

ain’t pretty, but they’re a welcome

antidote to the age of Ultravox.
Colin Irwin

MM, 28 March 1981, p18

THE CURE
Primary
(Fiction) MM, 26 September 1981, p14
This is a triumphant return to The
Cure’s rushing, rhythmic roots THE CREATURES
after the limpid wanderings of the Mad Eyed Screamer/So
‘Seventeen Seconds’ album. Unreal/But Not Them/
Robert Smith has rediscovered Wild Thing/Thumb
the fine-tuning control installed (Polydor)

in his unusual musical sensibility,
and as a result ‘Primary’ is
unbearably urgent, matching a
new-found sense of space with
brilliantly focussed precision.
Smith’s propulsive guitar drone
is punctuated by crashing waves
of percussion, and his voice floats
yearningly over the top.
It’s oddly like a more tightly
reined U2, and is a far better
pretext for a national holiday than
the forthcoming Royal Wedding.
Adam Sweeting
NME, 4 July 1981, P31 insensitivity by a band who’ve
overcome my inherent distrust
BAUHAUS of Australians with a series of
The Passion Of Lovers hugely entertaining interviews.
(Beggars Banquet) Both tracks here wield similar
The desperation of losers… characteristics – brutal and bloody
Adrian Thrills amid a volley of drums
and arrogant bravado.
The Birthday Party are the
kind of boys who bopped the
teacher while the rest of the class
sniggered and played with their
geometry sets. They certainly
I hear the sound of distant
drums… again. The Sandie Shaw
of yesterday’s punk, Siouxsie
Banshee delivers her usual
atmospheric vocals over Budgie’s
lonely percussion.
It’s spread over a double-45
soft-porn epic that includes a
lame repeat of The Troggs’ finest
two minutes and ten seconds.
Jane Birkin was steamier than this.
Ian Pye

MM, 25 July 1981, p23

SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Arabian Nights
(Polydor)

MM, 23 May 1981, p27 More menacing childhood

memories dredged up and

SIOUXSIE & dressed up in tired old riffs.

THE BANSHEES
Spellbound
(Polydor)
For a group that’s accused,
and rightly so sometimes, of
hiding behind a “pretentious
smokescreen of art”, they don’t
half make great singles. This is
one of them. Archetypal Siouxsie
vocal, set to a strident, even
military feel, that just takes off and
never lets go. As exhilarating as
Ricky Villa’s winner last Thursday
and you know how great that was.
RETNA
Siouxsie sounds disinterested;
McGeoch wrenches out the
standard guitar atmospherics.
Thin, brittle, forgettable; no push,
no magic; avoid this voodoo.
Allan Jones
MM, 22 August 1981, p12
THE BIRTHDAY
PARTY
Blast Off/Release The Bats
(4AD)
The Creatures:
Three-minute horror movie some people will

Paulo Hewitt soundtracks of jarring do anything to

get on TV

40 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 Chapter 4
1982
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
Last Year I Was 21…
MM, 27 FEBRUARY 1982, p11
The sisterhood of terror
“From Detroit, pretending to destroy themselves before anybody else could, came Iggy &The Stooges…”
From Leeds, threatening to destroy everybody else in a multi-megaton pre-emptive strike, came
The Sisters Of Mercy. Adam Sweeting has a terrifying experience with an extremely dangerous group
u
nleashed into the no-man’s-land
of Vanbrugh College dining room
(c/o York University), The Sisters
Of Mercy are four men in pursuit
of renegade drum machine Dr
Avalanche. No respecter of anything,
the doctor careers ahead manically
like a slavering Doberman taking
Norman Wisdom for a walk.
Attached to the mic like it was
a failing life-support system is
Spiggy, alias Andy, a skinny black-
clad thing from the corners of the
night, kept alive by ginger beer.
“These are the finest legs
in rock’n’roll,” he boasts later.
“These legs are thinner than any
of the Delta 5’s legs. These legs
are the thinnest in Leeds.”
Spiggy has a high opinion of
himself and his group. “We’re
not a provincial band, we’re
a MAJOR ENTITY. There’s
no reason we
should be
compressed
into this sort of
hicks-from-the-
sticks mentality,
which is so
damning. It’s hard
being a cult band when
you really wanna be immense.
There’s no reason we shouldn’t
“All the people who’ve asked me for autographs
have been under 16 and female. It’s amazing”
be able to carry on playing more or
less like we do at the moment and
be IMMENSE.”
Soon you will be able to
purchase a single from the
Sisters called ‘Adrenochrome’,
a double A-side with ‘Body
Electric’ (sing it!).
“‘Adrenochrome’ is
Eldritch, aka
Spiggy: skinny like a theme for the band
legs, big fat ego really,” Spiggy reports,
“inasmuch as I wake up a
lot of mornings and I look
at the wall, and I’m not sure
if it’s the wall or the ceiling,
TLFeBOOK
and I think, er, Hunter Thompson, he was
twigging something.”
As Dr Avalanche pumps through the PA
like a battery of AK-47s, the bespectacled Ben
Gunn cowers behind his guitar at the back
of the stage. A slight and tremulous figure,
how could he be caught up in this hideous
barrage of sound? He won’t tell me, and he
won’t have his picture taken.
Next to and in front of him, other guitarist
Gary Marx has no such scruples. A burly
figure in boots and thick socks, he storms
and rages through the songs, flaying chords
with his hands and crushing the stage with
his feet. On bass, the stocky and stalwart Jon
Langford seems to be in control of his new
career – he used to drum for The Mekons.
And whatever you do, don’t compare
The Sisters Of Mercy to Bauhaus.
“We made a tape once and took it down to
Rough Trade. Geoff Travis gave it one listen,
it was 18 minutes long, lotsa tracks, tapped
his feet all the way through and turned
round and said, ‘It’s like Bauhaus.’
“You’re continually coming up against
people like that. They work in weird and
wonderful ways, their marvels to perform.”
Spiggy oozes a sickly sort of charisma,
which is surprising considering his lank
black hair and specs.
“All the people who have asked me for
autographs have been under 16 and female.
It’s amazing, when you go out and play that
raw sort of thing… it’s not pretty.”
Through the boiling rage of massed
guitars and mechanik percussion, it’s
possible to discern the odd word that Spiggy
is spitting out. Ah yes, “1969…”
Spig: “It’s the first song off the first Stooges
album – the first album being the best,
whatever The Birthday Party say.”
The Sisters Of Mercy all-time order of
merit: “There was one great heavy metal
group and that was the Stooges, and there’s
only two bands around that can touch them,
and they’re Motorhead and The Birthday
Party. We’re not as good as Motorhead but
TOM SHEEHAN
we’re better than The Birthday Party. That
makes us pretty damn good.”

The Birthday Party The venue, London
T
hings weren’t looking
bright. The Birthday
Party’s bassist, Tracy Pew, is
back home doing time on a
labour farm, and his temporary
replacement, Barry Adamson,
had only had one rehearsal.
But all fears were promptly
allayed by a volley of intense
and hectic songs which reduced
most of the spectators to
speechlessness. Let us make
certain things clear from the
start: The Birthday Party
appal by revelling in the pain
of artifice – the desperate
drive of will to emotion
through exhibition. Theirs is a
genuinely ritualistic theatre of
frustration, a farrago of sound
so visceral it can only produce
gestures of exhaustion and
despair. Some terrible void at
the heart of human energy has
been reached here.
On Friday night, the group
revisited their surreal junkyard
of forms and images with a
higher intoxication than ever.
That forlorn and shimmering
ballad ‘She’s Hit’ has taken on
added starkness and splendour,
perfectly brought out on
this occasion by Adamson’s
languorous bass.
Previously unheard were
‘Dead Joe’ and ‘Hamlet’, two
PETER ANDERSON
brutal, mythopoeic parables
shorn even of the group’s
usual semi-jazz structures:
NME, 13 March 1982, p51
here rhythm is compressed
to a disconcerting on-beat
stiffness and vocals to a mere
gutteral rambling. The effect
is compulsive. Some of the
earlier numbers still prove
troublesome, for there’s no
doubt that more than one
of the group’s arrangements
outstrip their current musical
capabilities. ‘Zoo-Music Girl’,
for example, has grown too
shambolic for its own good.
Chaos, however, is The
Birthday Party’s speciality.
With the stage in its normal
state of disarray, bouncers and
stage-hands scrambling about
madly in pursuit of overturned
microphones and tripped
wires, Nick Cave was at his
most gloriously irresponsible.
So perfect a parody is he of
the rock’n’roll egomaniac
Cave: “‘Religious
conflagration of
melos’? Moi?”
TLFeBOOK
Nick The Stripper
on stage at the
Venue, London
that he possesses an almost
intimidating innocence.
This group is an explosion
of sensuality and laughter at
the desensitised mediocrity
of our lives. They are our new
Rolling Stones, but holding
back their profiles in shadow,
in the penumbra of myth. In
them jazz races with punk
and rock’n’roll slips on funk,
a collision of forms whose
domain is lust suspended in the
timeless zone of excess – bodily
exhumation and spiritual
disease. Here Jerry Lee Lewis
meets ‘The Modern Dance’,
and sex meets death.
Who else is using words
so stridently as a musical
medium of rhetoric? They are
the religious conflagration of
melos itself.
Barney Hoskyns
1982
MM, 27 February 1982, p27
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY/
LYDIA LUNCH
Drunk On The Pope’s Blood/The Agony
Is The Ecstasy
(4AD)
So much mumbo-
jumbo’s been made
of adolescent art, of
pop or rock voicing
the vainglorious
views of each
new generation,
washing the sins
of the fathers (and
mothers) from the hands of the
kids, that it’s long been forgotten that the
real truth lies in tantrum.
Most lucrative noise is – and always has
been – made by (non) musicians old enough
to know better, but never prepared to admit
or accept it. It’s not a well-aimed kick against
growing up and its values, but a blind sulk
and shout about already being there. Pop is a
toddler’s plea for selfish attention, a “me, me,
me, me” not an “I told you so”. It’s mean and
it’s meaningless. And that’s its great beauty.
The Birthday Party, more than most,
appreciate the perverse practicality of
making a row. They’re obnoxious, so much so
that they piss people off. Not only the clichéd
old fuddy-duddies and traditional church
wardens, but also the hipsters and boffins
who fawn and dote over pop flash and fact.
The Birthday Party are awful. Subversively
awful. Awfully great. Awesomely brilliant.
‘Drunk On The Pope’s Blood’ is their second
really BAD long-playing record. Recorded
live at the Venue, it struggles – in vain
– to capture and/or castrate the ranting
confrontation of their stage act. “Get involved
… say something!” Nick Cave screams while
Beefheart is brutally butchered behind.
Back beyond basics, this is what punk
ought to be like – angry and futile with
nothing to say and barely the words to
express it. The critics turn pop into protest
because that gives it a comforting logic, an
aim and direction that renders it open to
sane comprehension. Sheer bloody-minded
pointlessness is too mad and too menacing.
The Birthday Party are violently pointless.
That’s why they’re important. Their “16
minutes of sheer hell” is all ugly feedback.
Unlistenably listenable. Love it to death.
Lydia Lunch’s unpleasant squawking on
the other side is even more potent. I hate it. It
neither exasperates nor elevates. It irritates.
And that, or course, is exactly the point.
Ah art! Don’t you just love it?
Steve Sutherland
NME ORIGINALS 43
 All We Ever Wanted
NME, 20 March 1982, p24

Bauhaus:
Breaking down the
walls of art-ache
“When we heard that you were going to interview us, we came up with two possibilities:
a) being physical violence, and b) being a reasoned discussion. We decided to plump for the latter,
but this doesn’t mean that the former isn’t in with a ffifi ighting chance…” Victim: Paul Morley
e
xcerpts from a conversation: Number The day’s labourer: “But because of the is received that you go over the top and the idea
Two – weak knees anticipate the kiss? system that you operate within, a withdrawal or gets smothered by incidentals.”
Murphy: “…by intending to provoke a vagueness tends to suggest that you’re merely Jay: “No… it’s just there’s a belief in the idea
us, maybe a reaction you’ll get will be one of trying to create a mystique, an enigma.” that we have, a passionate belief, it really is…”
absolute anger and hurt.” Murphy: “It’s not that… if we’re going to Ash: “Also, when we’re on stage, our feelings
Jay: “You could have got your head kicked in try and label our work, which a lot of the time are concentrated into one hour… it’s all
if we were Killing Joke.” comes from our subconscious, it will be a wrong intensified and enlarged. It’s all going into one
The day’s labourer: “I’ve been through this labelling. What we might say about one aspect hour, not one week or one lifetime. It’s all got to
one (a similar situation) with Killing Joke.” of what we do might be totally wrong because… be condensed and so you put everything into it.”
Murphy: “I know…” we are not really sure ourselves. A lot of what
Jay: “The initial reaction when we read your I do is totally spontaneous. It comes from my Additional remarks: One – one little streak of
review and then heard that you were going to emotions and, uh, how can you…” grey that matched the wall.
interview us, we though how we were going to Jay: “We believe in the beauty of an idea, Bauhaus are recording some new music at
approach it. We came up with two possibilities: without grinding it into the ground. If Morgan Studios in North London. The group
a) being physical violence, and b) being a something is working, no matter how simple it are sat close together when I arrive, collected
reasoned discussion. We decided to plump for is, we try and maintain it without elaborating around a small mixing desk. They’re almost
the latter, but this doesn’t mean that the former upon it. That’s really important to us.” holding hands. And I am completely ignored.
isn’t in with a fighting chance…” Ash: We think that a lot of the best ideas are I am dirt the wind’s blown in. They don’t care
the simple ones.” for me! It’s not surprising.
Excerpts from a conversation: Number Three Jay: “That’s nearly always the case. If Recently I reviewed their live show – which
– sex times technology equals the future. something is overworked it will show.” they say is an extreme but vigorously valid
Murphy: “I’ve always thought that as far as The day’s labourer: “But your stage integration of the very anxious stuff they’re
Bauhaus were concerned what we have to say or presentation does seem to be overworked.” about – and implied that at the core of their
theorise about what we do isn’t important. Ash: “We feel that if the stage is there, why entertainment lay a lump of shit. I suggested
“The actual act of listening to the music is just stand on it and play… you might as well that their heart was made up of sick.
the be-all and end-all of what we’re about. We put a record on. You are there to entertain to a In the little studio my presence is fi nally
don’t really want to analyse it all tightly acknowledged.
the time, we don’t want to have to
speak about it. We do it…” I implied that at the core of The studio is probably well
heated, but it’s very cold.
The day’s labourer: “Aren’t
individual interpretations from
within the group an important
Bauhaus lay a lump of shit “When you came in,” singer Pete
Murphy shudders later, “it was a
real sick feeling… it was horrible…”
thing, especially having made the decision to certain degree. I have the feeling that you think Who would have thought that a collection
accept the interview situation?” that it is all really worked out, but it isn’t. It’s of words, a pile of images, teased together and
Murphy: “One thing I find really boring is totally spontaneous.” presented in such a trivialised context could
when an artist talks about his work in a really The day’s labourer: “I detected an over- cause such antipathy: but then half a wink in the
over-the-top way. It just really spoils it for me. compensation… you have a particular idea or wrong place can cause murder.
If you like something, it’s there…” image and you’re so eager to make sure that it We move to the studio bar. I try to be

44 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

friendly; they’re content to stay blank. They
make it very clear that I have bruised them.
All I wanted to do was blast away the sheets of
vagueness that have covered Bauhaus.
I turn on my tape recorder. They turn on
theirs. The conversation will be recorded by two
cassettes. This is serious: it’s surprising. This is
desperate: it’s terrific.
Drummer Kevin Haskins is prepared to
thump me: he’s so quiet that at one point
Murphy asks him if he’s alright. His brother,
bass player David Jay, consistently looks at me as
if to say who is this puddle of drabness and how
FIN COSTELLO/REDFERNS
dare he come along and question our radiance?
Guitarist Daniel Ash is as reasonable as I am.
To Bauhaus I am just another pop journalist.
I am just a day’s labourer.
Excerpts from a conversation: Number Six –
let us be friends even if we can’t hold hands.
The day’s labourer: “I have a very apathetic
view of Bauhaus – the dark side of the damp
patch. Do you pay attention to all sorts of
things, messy things and nice things?”
Ash: “It’s all in there… it’s just that we seem
to get picked up on the dark things…”
Jay: “It’s not as though we have a whole set
of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’. I think that record has
cast a backward shadow over everything and it’s
been hard to move out into the sun.”
Excerpts from a conversation: Number Eight
– creative activity can undoubtedly act as a
defence against all kinds of threat.
Jay: “We all wanted to do something where
TLFeBOOK
1982
Bauhaus: (l to r)
Kevin Haskins,
Daniel Ash, Peter
Murphy, David Jay
there was a certain amount of return. We felt
we were putting a lot into things like a job and
getting nothing out of it…”
Ash: “I think initially we were fighting for
something better than the mundane… it’s also
to do with gaining respect…”
The day’s labourer: “From who?”
Ash: “From people around you. You want to
make a statement saying, ‘I am worthwhile, I am
necessary, I’ve got something to do…’ It’s about
saying that you are worthwhile as a person…”
Murphy: “You’re gaining self-respect as
well… and everybody has potential… everyone’s
wonderful… this is really idealistic… oh shit…
but…we should all search for ourselves, learn
to love yourself before you can love others. You


have to go through shit. Or life…”
NME ORIGINALS 45
 Happy Hunting Ground


Excerpts from a conversation: Number Ten
– what young man is by nature diligent, sober
and regular in his habits?
The day’s labourer: “Was the initial impetus
to escape Northampton? Did you want to be pop
stars or were there greater intentions involved?”
Jay: “Not greater intentions, but not pop stars
either…”
Murphy: “No, but that is part of it. For me…
a part of it, not all of it…”
The day’s labourer: “And that part fits into
the whole?”
Murphy: “No, nothing fits in… it is… I’m not
Bauhaus, he’s not, he’s not, he’s not…”
Ash: “It’s always been and always will be
four very disparate views and attitudes… it’s
a mental chicane: all the ideas colliding and
meeting in the middle…”
Murphy: “I think we really respect each
other… well, I hope so. It’s like a real love
relationship… I really miss them when I’m
away from them… It was my first experience
of creating something and when you live with
them on tour and work with them it really
brings you together, it really brings you close.”
Jay: “But it’s not all love and peace…”
Murphy: “But neither’s marriage, dear… you
and Ann can’t love each other and be smiling at
each other all the time…”
Jay: “I’m not saying that… I’m trying to give
a clear view of the situation… there’s a lot of
friction there. It’s central to the whole thing…”
The day’s labourer: “How would you describe
the four inputs that knot together?”
Jay: “Our guitarist is an accident victim, I’m
a weed, our drummer is a plain Ron and our
singer is A Mouth…”
The day’s labourer: “What is ‘the truth’?”
Jay: “Ah…”
Excerpts from a conversation: Number 15 – why
are you wasting your time with snowmen when
the basement needs cleaning?
Haskins: “…if someone is working in a
factory and they have Radio 1 on… if we came
on it would make them stop for a moment.”
Ash: “Oh, I very much doubt it… Pop music
is for young people, and they’re pretty mixed
up anyway… I’m categorising, putting people
in boxes, but it’s like when they get to their
thirtieth year they won’t be listening to pop
music, or pop music won’t be influencing their
lifestyle even if they are listening to it. It will be
part of their past.
“What I’m trying to say is that pop music isn’t
really that important, because it only affects
people when they’re mixed up and young…”
Murphy: “That’s like one sad fact…”
Ash: “It’s not necessarily sad…”
Murphy: “That space which you can achieve,
it’s potentially a really valuable vehicle and if
you can, if you use that space, and if you’re able
to enlighten… that is amazing, you’re asking for
the world, you’re asking for a saviour…”
The day’s labourer: “I know an avid fan of
the group whose attitude is, ‘Oh they’ll never
be on Top Of The Pops, they’re not that sort of
group,’ yet I feel it can be the only logical, useful
conclusion for a group like Bauhaus. They have
got to be in that space, as a cult they’re surely
wasting their time.”
46 NME ORIGINALS
Shivers down
your spine:
Bauhaus live
“Our guitarist is an accident victim.
I’m a weed. Our singer is A Mouth”
Jay: “That is exactly what we think…”
Haskins: “Right from the very start we’ve
hated that label of being underground. If you
listen to our singles, any of them could be
potential hits… we were really pissed off that
they weren’t hits, any of them.
“We want to go on Top Of The Pops. A lot of
people do take it for granted that we wouldn’t
go on but they couldn’t be more wrong. You can
reach more people through that programme
than you would doing three or four tours, it
would be absolutely ridiculous not to…”
Jay: “In a way it’s to our advantage that it’s
taken this long for us to break through because
now we’re…”
Murphy: “…more determined.”
Ash: “If we’d suddenly catapulted into view
with the second single I think we’d all be drug
addicts by now…”
Excerpts from a conversation: Number 13 –
how much applause, after all, has God got for
his troubles over the years?
The day’s labourer: “Have Bauhaus always
been aware of how they could use certain
aspects of the group, such as Murphy as
conventional frontman, to attain commercial
success or has this developed recently?”
Ash: “There are various vehicles to be used.”
Murphy: “Although the live show is an honest
representation of our music, we’re also aware
of how it will draw people to come and see us
because of our reputation as a really good live
band. And then they might find out about us…”
The day’s labourer: “And once people become
aware of you and you’re no longer underground,
is that the achievement: Bauhaus become part of
their day, along with the food, the commercials,
the radio?”
Murphy: “Not their day… once a month…”
The day’s labourer: “But is that all you can
expect –to make an occasional interruption?”
Ash: “I think as far as music is concerned
that is all you can expect. That’s as powerful
as it can be. For example, PiL, their stuff is
very intimidating, it’s very strong, but it does
make an impact to a certain degree. It isn’t that
TLFeBOOK
powerful – only a certain amount of people are
going to draw from it, and accept it, because
you can’t force anything down people’s throats.
You only have a certain amount of strength to
make a statement. It’s not that potent because it
doesn’t last for long and there are hundreds of
other groups.”
The day’s labourer: “So can Bauhaus claim to
have any distinctive value?”
Ash: “It is a distinctive value but only to a
certain amount of people. We can’t do anything
about that, because people are only going to
draw on something that they want, that they
relate to. Obviously we don’t think that we’re
just another band lost among hundreds.”
Excerpts from a conversation: Number 21 –
and then we kissed goodbye.
The day’s labourer: “Do you envisage a
situation where Bauhaus doesn’t exist?”
Ash: “Well, Bauhaus won’t exist for ever…
it might not exist next week. It might exist for
another five years… you can’t say… We have
other interests. But we seem to be climbing the
ladder slowly, so we continue…”
Additional remarks: Two – do not think I
underestimate your great concern.
The interview has been tidied, arranged and
edited. It fails to evoke the Bauhaus art-ache:
sex or nightmare. It fails because I do not enjoy
their music and so placed a continual emphasis
on pressurising the members to justify their
existence and examine their work, and because
the group are reluctant to explain their work.
Perhaps Bauhaus are healthy. Perhaps they
are healing people. I wouldn’t like to say. I am
only the day’s labourer. I get merely a bland,
unsensational impression of a group who are
committed, idealistic and questioning… it’s
still very cold… and I can’t wait to see them
on Top Of The Pops.
Excerpts from a conversation: Number 17 –
SANTOS BASONE/LFI
the difficult bit to grasp.
Ash: “It all boils down to getting that shiver
down your spine.”
 NME, 1 May 1982, p52
Southern Death Cult/
Sex Gang Children
The Clarendon, London
A
ndi Hayward fronts Sex may invoke perverse and braves and how! Southern
Gang Children with a paedophilic images, but they Death Cult come to sacrifice a
pretension to angst that fail to live up to their name. prepared audience. The band
would shake Pete Murphy. This There is no overt or even subtle enter and the war paint daubs
pained face, painted white, sexuality. They are sterile and the fans with fire. Ian is more
fails to convey a warrior than Adam
the feelings so
protractedly
projected – he
This is Crazy Horse coaxing ever was – pushing
the primitive drums,
encouraging the tribal
strikes you as a
howling Marcel
the faithful into his war dance
Marceau lost for words and uncoordinated – warm where
war of sound.
They cross the plain
between Theatre Of Hate’s
signalling rejection. This is a they should burn, tepid where energy and the dark, percussive
Sex Gang Child. they should freeze. dance of Joy Division. Strict
The name of the band Movement from graves to co-ordination is their essence
and their strength.
Lyrically the songs vary
from the polemic ‘Moya’
to the rampant chant
of ‘Fatman’. The band
are not great creators or
innovators – they are a
four-piece with all the
restrictions that implies
– but they are savage, and
they blow fresh with that
same Western breeze
that whistles through
‘Westworld’ or ‘Your
Cassette Pet’.
The followers know
the signs and read the
signals, all a perversion
of Indian pride, in
songs like ‘Vivisection’
and ‘Today’. All this
is enhanced by the
shaman-like qualities
of the singer, wearing
full war paint; this is
Crazy Horse coaxing
the faithful into his
war dance.
The tribal factor
has been exploited
before, but only in a
fashionable sense – all
suede, World’s End
and Kings Road. This
is REAL – Northern
heart and soul. When
Southern Death Cult
charge London again
it will be for scalps and
KEVIN CUMMINS/LFI
for the happy hunting
ground.
Ian Astbury: David Dorrell
a man called
Hoarse
TLFeBOOK
NME, 8 May 1982, p31
THE CURE
Pornography
(Fiction)
It won’t improve your
social life or relieve
you of your load, and
this music provides
an antidote to
nothing much at all,
though it may clear out your
system. But what ‘Pornography’ does show
is that The Cure do have a certain flair for
identifying symptoms.
This record portrays and parades its
currency of exposed futility and naked fear
with so few distractions or adornments, and
so little sense of shame. It really piles it on.
The Cure have collected the very purest
feelings endemic to their age, and held them
right on the spot in their most unpleasantly
real form. Here is an album written from
the knife-edge of despair, and as a piece of
craftsmanship in expressive sound, it is a
very big, very harrowing achievement.
The drums, guitars, voice and production
style are pressed scrupulously together
in a murderous unity of surging, textured
mood. We are better off not picking about
at particular parts of the whole: too close a
look at the poetic permutations on the lyric
sheet, taken with the occasionally irksome
whine of Robert Smith, and he and his
friends can quickly become the tiresomely
self-analytical young ‘sensitives’ I’ve always
feared The Cure might be.
‘Pornography’ was not designed to be
probed, but taken en bloc as a dense wash
of emotional colour, portraying one soul on
a leash, fighting the panic in the dark. And,
as such, it really works. The confessional
returns, fragile, frightened, horribly forlorn,
and very finely drawn. A killer of its kind.
Don’t have too much fun, now.
Dave Hill
NME ORIGINALS 47
 Raise The Teutonic
MM, 10 July 1982, p16
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Junkyard
(4AD)
Three months ago, I’d have given
you this: ‘Junkyard’ is brilliant;
an essential, abrasive album,
something to sort out once and for
all the malcontents from the chart-
mesmerised morons.
Now I’m not so sure.
Living with The
Birthday Party is much
like living with pain – you
numb to the hurt with
the passing of time.
Not to say Nick Cave’s
grotesque parody of
a rock’n’roll messiah
doesn’t stink as bad
as it always did, it’s
just that a skeletal
production and the most cruelly
callous of lyrics liberally battered
by primeval grunts can’t hope to
emulate the theatre of the brutal
48 NME ORIGINALS
The Birthday Party
throw good taste of, their flawed but furious
and decency on debut, ‘Prayers On Fire’, but
the barbie. Again it also signals the end of a
phase, maybe even the end
of the band. “Welcome to the
car crash/You can’t tell the boys
from the girls”, can deservedly
claim a premium place in this
hack’s hierarchy of tasteless
punter-baiting, but to what
end and at what cost?
‘Prayers’ was a genuine
shock, a flaunting arrogance,
a flick-knife slash and a boot
in the groin of last year’s
short-lived trends. ‘Junkyard’
finds the Party
comfortably
assimilated into the
scene as welcomed,
accomplished
shock-rockers;
a species to be
studied but no
longer a startling
experience.
We’ve outlived
their aggressively one-
dimensional examination
of the atrocious potential of
language and sound; we’ve
moved on while they flounder
in a seemingly inescapable rut,
merely shifting the emphasis
from the soggy bass mix of
‘Prayers’ to the arid guitar
scratch of ‘Junkyard’.
Don’t get me wrong:
live confrontations, can’t disguise a lyrically, musically, monotonously,
formula struggling and strangled at magnificently, ‘Junkyard’ spews
the end of its tether. all over anything you’ll have heard
Great rock or pop should act as all year. A harrowing pantomime
a springboard, a jolt of the preposterous power of pop,
for your adrenalin, it maliciously delights in exposing
a catalyst for your self-inflicted wounds and fertilising
emotions, a trigger them with gangrenous germs. A
for your reflexes skirmish with ‘Big Jesus Trashcan’
to run ruinously should suitably offend.
apeshit. ‘Junkyard’ But such wanton offence can
finds The Birthday only command brief attention and
Party foreclosing recorded revulsion soon subsides
on interpretation to neglect. Uneasy listening is no
and demanding longer enough. Almost ironically,
attention like the spoiled brats they this party’s been fun. Pity now it’s
mercilessly seek to dismember. over. There’ll never be such garbage
‘Junkyard’ is, without doubt, an in Honey’s sack again.
improvement on, and extension Steve Sutherland
TLFeBOOK
NME, 23 October 1982, p30
BAUHAUS
The Sky’s Gone Out
(Beggars Banquet)
‘Dark Entries’ was a wonderful single
– a shuddering, wired monolith
of implacable ill-intent. Since
then Bauhaus have consistently
disappointed, and this half-studio,
half-live double album does nothing
to change my view.
Bauhaus’ undeserved popularity
demonstrates rock’s time-hallowed
need for Princes of Darkness,
but razor-sharp
cheekbones and a
style that went down
with the Teutonic
does not entitle
them to the Stones’
(or Doors’, Velvets’,
Stooges’…) satanic
raiment.
Their fundamental
fault is the simple-
minded equation of a lurid,
melodramatic narcissism with
the elegant trappings of terminal
weltschmertz. Pete Murphy comes
across like David Bowie imitating
Jacques Brel declaiming a pastiche
of Lautréamont backed by the
early Banshees. As silly as that.
What Bauhaus believe to exude
the alluring scent of the forbidden,
merely stinks of flatulent rhetoric.
But the band that made ‘Dark
Entries’ and romped with such brio
through that camp impersonation
of ‘Ziggy Stardust’ can’t be all bad.
‘The Three Shadows’ and ‘All We
Ever Wanted Was Everything’ faintly
evoke the sinister musical-box of
Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’ or even Bowie’s
‘Kooks’. ‘Exquisite Corpse’ concludes
the studio album as Bauhaus’
resounding riposte to ‘A Day In The
Life’, though not half so frightening.
Side One is more turgid, starting
with a crude version of Eno’s ‘Third
Uncle’, but it recovers on the last two
numbers, ‘Swing The Heartache’
and ‘Spirit’. The latter sings the
praises of Bauhaus’ communion
with their audience of worshippers.
It’s set to one of those pounding
anthems of the sort popularised by
the late, lamented Skids. Curious.
The live set, titled ‘Press The Eject
And Give Me The Tape’, is a brutally
proficient run-through of their
greatest hits, including John Cale’s
‘Rose Garden Funeral Of Sores’, a
rather Blacker Mass than any of their
own songs. But the album ends on
a cheerful note with ‘Dark Entries’
DAVID CORIO
– which is where I came in.
Mat Snow

People in A Glass’Haus
Steve Sutherland (Christian) faces up to Bauhaus (Lions)
a t a pre-arranged whisper and nod from
the wings, Bauhaus’ bassist David Jay cut
the hack stone dead. “There’s very little
spontaneous about Bau…” the hack had been
babbling when David smartly cut in…
“That’s a load of shit! We’d thought of this
literally hours ago so surely that indicates an
amount of spontaneity. This is all part of it
anyway. The whole point of this is to show
that an interview situation, far from being a
comfortable, informative gathering, is totally
absurd and bizarre so, to put it on stage in front
of an audience, simplifies the abstract nature of
an interview and, therefore, shows it for what it
really is… a load of old balls!”
(Somewhere, high in the auditorium, the spirit
of Sir Robin Day guffaws: “If you believe that you’ll
believe anything!”)
TOM SHEEHAN
Satisfied that the tumultuous whooping and
wailing signalled sort of psychological victory,
the bassist staged an animatedly agitated exit,
followed, rather sheepishly, by the rest of the
band. The hack, somewhat stupidly, stood his
ground, dismayed but barely rattled, and waited
for the barracking and hailing glasses to cease
before attempting to vindicate the idea of an
interview. His efforts were largely lost in catcalls,
encouraged by Jay’s sarcastic final comment:
“The journalist always has the last word!”
“Strange,” thought the hack, swollen with
pride, “that this sentence of prophetic spleen
should amount to the only sensible comment
that Bauhaus had mustered all evening!”
Just how the hack found himself on stage at the
Lyceum and subsequently engaged in a heart-
to-heart with a band he hoped he’d washed his
hands of forever is a rather protracted tale, but
one that’s vital to grasp if any sense at all is to be
made of this extraordinary encounter.
TLFeBOOK
1982
MM, 30 October 1982, p24
In the 4 July 1981 issue of Melody Maker, the
hack had published his conclusions on a weekend
spent on tour with Bauhaus. The piece was
presented as “Anarchy in Aylesbury” and sub-
titled “Steve Sutherland travels in the shadow of
Bowie with Bauhaus” – nothing new, nothing
startlingly original, the article merely sounded
out opinions already widely expressed by others
and subsequently echoed many times.
The band had baulked at every word,
contested every connotation and yet, 14 months
later, they seemed to be conceding an odd about-
face, putting ‘Ziggy Stardust’ back in the charts.
The hack was intrigued; hadn’t the band
already publicly chastised his assertions on stage?
Were Bauhaus perpetrating some perverse con or
had they simply gone stark, staring bonkers?
The hack decided to check for himself and
after a phone call to their press officer, Chris

‘King’ Carr, was informed that Bauhaus would
NME ORIGINALS 49
 Hack In The Spotlight

grant him audience on their own terms
– which involved two separate rooms in their
native Northampton and an interview conducted
over video. Sounded silly but a cracking good
story, so the hack unconditionally agreed.
Unfortunately fame, fortune and Top Of The
Pops put the kibosh on the whole idea as the
band were due to mime their hit for the cameras
the day the interview was supposed to take place.
Suddenly Bauhaus were overnight big shots
and the liaison was scheduled and rescheduled
according to their every passing whim.
Eventually it was mooted that the hack should
meet the band between their soundcheck and
their gig at the Lyceum. Then, in a bewildering
flurry of late evening phone calls, King Carr
informed the hack that he was “being set up”.
Seems the band thought the hack should be
brought to the Lyceum where, without prior
warning, he would be bundled onto the stage to
about imitation… we’re about humour… um…
DEATH, BLACKNESS… But you’ve been very
brave to accept this offer and we appreciate that.”
Hack: “Why? I see an interview as a situation
where, if you want to read about somebody and
what they think about what they’re doing, it can
be quite a revealing thing.”
PM: “Well, the fact is, you were on tour in our
van, under our hospitality, hiding under a cloak
of friendliness and amiability and yet, when
the article came out, you absolutely turned and
showed yourself to be a very cynical, hypocritical
person. It was a very dirty trick to do.”
Hack: “You haven’t answered my question.”
Daniel Ash: “Why did we put out ‘Ziggy
Stardust’? Well, we’ve been tapping away at the
door of acceptability and it just seemed that the
door needed a fuckin’ good kick so we kicked it
out. Once inside the room we shall attempt to
follow up with original compositions.”
Media circus:

“I don’t think anyone else could do a cover version of ‘Ziggy Melody Maker’s
Steve Sutherland
(centre) on stage

Stardust’ like we’ve done it. It’s so dangerous… so on edge”. with Bauhaus at the
Lyceum, London

conduct the interview in front of the audience,
in place of a pulled-out support act. The hack,
again, agreed but when King Carr informed
the band their scheme had been rumbled, they
“ummed and aahed” for 24 hours, finally giving
the go-ahead hours before the event.
(The spirit of Robin Day whispers in the hack’s
ear: “THAT indicates an amount of spontaneity?
Tell us another!”)
And so the stage was set: five microphones and
a table with glasses of water, all in an elaborate
attempt on the band’s behalf to belittle the hack,
conduct the conversation in front of witnesses so
the little rat couldn’t wilfully misinterpret their
words and to prove, through their theatrical
mock-up, that all interviews are worthless.
The hack, for his part, was determined to get
a good story, to escape the proceedings with life,
limb and self-respect intact, to belittle Bauhaus
as Bowie plagiarists and to show that it was
only an interview situation with Bauhaus that is
“totally absurd and bizarre”.
The following events and conversations are
documented, as far as space allows, as near as
possible the way they occurred. Any additional
comments – the hack’s own home crowd if you
like – are attributed to the spirit of Robin Day.
Those who want the grist without the gripes are
therefore advised to ignore his asides.
The Hack: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
I’m Steve from Melody Maker and this is
Bauhaus, otherwise known as Ziggy Stardust
And The Spiders From Mars. I’m here because
I’ve written stuff about Bauhaus that hasn’t
pleased them, so maybe the first thing we should
take up is that I accused you of being second-rate
Bowie copyists, which you denied – and yet here’s
‘Ziggy Stardust’. What do you think of that?”
Peter Murphy: “We’re very angry and very
pleased as well. This is a really good occasion
to get him back. In effect it’s changing the
whole interview situation into something else;
it’s using it as performance, something very
dangerous, which is what we’re about – nothing
Hack: “So what you’re saying
is you took the easy way out?”
PM: “No! I don’t think
anyone else could do a cover
version of ‘Ziggy’ like we’ve
done it. It’s so dangerous…
so on edge…”
DA: “And we know the
chords!”
Hack: “OK, it was a brave
song to tackle, but what have
you brought to it that wasn’t
there already?”
PM: “We’ve reincarnated it,
we haven’t attempted to make
it any different. The original
version was excellent, no way
could we rearrange it. We’ve put our heart into
that song because it’s part of our past, part of our
interest when we were young. The way we did it
on Top Of The Pops was also very humorous.”
Hack: “OK, but as I’ve been cast as the cynic,
it seems to me you’ve been releasing a string of
singles which weren’t getting anywhere and so
you used ‘Ziggy’ to get there.”
PM: “We did a string of singles which should
have got somewhere but never did.”
Hack: “Everybody says that.”
PM: “But we’re different!”
Hack: “OK, lets talk about the new album,
‘The Sky’s Gone Out’. Isn’t making it a double
package with an album of old live numbers the
oldest marketing ploy in the business?”
David Jay: “Fuck off!”
PM: “Of course… we want people to hear our
music.”
Hack: “But what has it achieved that hasn’t
been achieved before?”
PM: “It’s up to the audience to interpret it
in whatever way you want. We feel there’s a
progression there. Full stop.”
Hack: “Progression’s a very easy word to use.
From what I’ve heard, the new album sounds
much the same as your others – melodramatic
but pretty empty. It doesn’t seem to say anything,
it uses stark, crude images in a dilettante way
with a little bit of reggae, a little Bowie, a little bit
of Eno… I mean, who are you and what are you
saying? At the end you’re left feeling as empty as
you started…”
DA: “That’s up to the individual.”
Hack: “That’s a cop-out. What did you want
it to do?
DA: “Making that album, we had a lot of fun.”
Hack: “Everybody says that.”
(Spirit: “There ensues an embarrassing series of
squabbles concerning the value of entertainment,
captive audiences and references to Des O’Connor,
the hack fielding platitudes, left, right and centre,
hurling them back in at the wicket. Sad to see
a band so sensitive that they resort to the oldest
trick in the book, adopting superior, sarcastic
detachment and patronising benevolence as if, in
humiliating one hack, they repudiate all criticism.)
Hack (some time later): “What’s the point in
being in Bauhaus?”
PM: “What d’you mean, what’s the point?
We’re excellent and that’s it. We’re a sparkling
cell of activity, we’re really enjoying our work.”
Hack: “Why won’t you answer my questions?
Why are you putting forward all this bullshit?”
PM: “What do you mean, not answering your
questions? You’re putting out all these comments

50 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK

“You deal in Hammer horrorisms. I mean
lyrics about fishes’ piss – Jesus Christ!”
and opinions which are totally wrong. Why
should we bother to argue with them? You’re so
negative, so uninterested in what we’re doing,
you’re not really attempting to understand…”
Hack: “Well shouldn’t you, in that case, be
thinking about the way you communicate to
people if I’ve so obviously missed the point?”
PM: “You’re one of the people who shouldn’t
listen to us. Why should you even interview us?”
Moments later they’d stormed off stage. The
hack, head reeling, heart thumping, joined them
in their dressing room.
Hack: “Very nicely rehearsed spontaneous
walkout! Very John Lydon 1977! Now that
charade’s over, when do I get the real interview?”
DJ: “That was it! That’s all!”
David storms out and doesn’t return for about
half an hour. Later he declines to stay for a photo
session and leaves after the show.
Hack: “Surely he doesn’t believe the sham out
there was serious. Come on! You can’t just leave
it like that!”
DA: “OK. The idea of doing ‘Ziggy Stardust’
was partly a reaction to people like you who
were slagging us off as Bowie rip-offs. It’s like
a statement that we’re not ashamed of: liking
David Bowie. Instead of running away from it
we’re admiring the guy. Full stop.”
Hack: “But I find the whole idea of ‘Ziggy’ so
pathetic because it doesn’t say anything – it just
creates myths for people to escape into. OK, so
Bowie made a few people dress up, moved on
and made them dress
a bit differently… so
what?”
DA: “I get your
point now totally,
but what the hell are “That journalist is
you supposed to do? interrupting my
Change the world?” meditation. Slay
Hack: “No… but him, my pretties”
we can try!”
DA: “Well we’re
not. We’re not trying to change the world at all,
we’re trying to open people’s minds. We aren’t
interested in politics or political parties because
they’re all a fuckin’ waste of time.
“I think you can open people’s minds
on a personal level… it’s not about telling
other people what to do, it’s about suggesting
something and it’s up to them to take what they
want from the music.”
Hack: “But I don’t think you suggest or open
up anything. The area you delve in is so small
and morbid. It’s easy doom for a doomy time.
You may see humour in it, but I don’t. What you
deal in is Hammer horrorisms. I mean lyrics
about fishes’ piss – Jesus Christ!”
PM: “Shall I dissect that lyric? It’s not
Hammer horror. It’s tapping my own experience
of – here we go again – the religious suppression
of a lot of people. It’s like a mirror of the reaction
I experienced to the absurd images that my
teachers, for instance, put into me. I was very
impressionable at the time, very young and
TLFeBOOK
1983
they frightened me silly and now, after burying
them for years because they’re too painful to
remember, they come out and I write about it.
“It’s like tapping the subconscious, which is
something Bauhaus is very interested in doing.
It’s not giving answers, it’s almost asking,
expressing the pus. I mean the fish symbol was
the original Christian symbol; it wasn’t supposed
to be shocking, it was just an image I used…”
Hack: “That’s exactly why an interview is so
valuable with a band like you. Who would have
guessed in a million years that’s what the fish
image meant? See, I’m prepared to believe you’ve
got something to say, but I still think you’re so
off the mark you go beyond communicating
badly to not communicating at all.”
PM: “Well I’d admit there’s a lot of mask
there. I’ve still got these inhibitions and if I
express them literally… I think I’m afraid of the
comeback from my family or whatever. But I can
read those lyrics like an objective reader and,
although they’re very blacked with mystique and
obscurity, I still find them interesting.”
Hack: “But aren’t they dangerous? You
unleash an awful lot of energy
– live, if not on record – but
so few of your implications
get through that you excite
people, get ’em up, make ’em
angry and what do they do?
Punch each other! I call that
irresponsible…”
DA: “Music of any
particular type, of 1982, can
only reflect the times, how
people think – it doesn’t
actually say ‘do this, do that’.
Music is only a reflection and
that’s what we are.”
PM: “My view is that
you should never attempt
to be a philosopher until
you’ve reached a point of
understanding. Until that
point you’re questioning and
whether people understand
that… that’s the only thing
I can do. There’s so much I
haven’t learned yet…”
Hack: “But your fans see you as an idol!”
PM: “That’s a sad result of human need; like
someone to enact one’s fantasies, to take them to
the edge and experience the edge for them.”
DA: “All we can do is be honest with ourselves.
If we started considering if what we do was
gonna upset somebody or have an adverse effect,
then we wouldn’t be able to do anything. I think
it’s very unfortunate if the public – like you say
they do – take what we say as gospel. I would
never have imagined that to be the case!”
(Spirit: “The hack disappeared to lubricate
shattered nerves, Bauhaus prepared to dress ‘down’
for the show and I’m left here to have the last say. It
seems Bauhaus may know what they’re on about,
but the fans who think they’re peddling solutions
and the foes who take them for trumped-up tarts
just aren’t catching the clues. Worshipped for almost
all the wrong reasons, Bauhaus’ poor handling of
the Lyceum fiasco proved they aren’t up to putting
their plans into practice. For fans, band and hack
alike, it must have seemed like a kick in the eye.)
NME ORIGINALS 51
 Let’s Go To Bed
incurables The
Have The Cure split? Is Robert Smith joining the Banshees?
Does anybody care? Steve Sutherland investigates
w
hatever happened to The Cure? Part-
time Banshee Robert Smith sits in the
lounge of the Kensington Hilton, sips
his ice-cool Perrier and worries whether it’s time
to write his baby’s obituary.
“Do The Cure really exist any more? I’ve
been pondering that question myself. See, as I
wrote 90 per cent of the ‘Pornography’ album,
I couldn’t really leave because it wouldn’t have
been The Cure without me.
“But it has got to a point where I really don’t
fancy working in that format again. People
keep saying, ‘You mustn’t break up, because it’s
become like an institution’ – that almost gives
me an incentive to pack it in anyway. I think
it’s really awful seeing bands just disintegrate
slowly in a stupid way, don’t you?
“Whatever happens, it won’t be me, Laurence
and Simon together any more. I know that.”
I wonder if you ever did have any idea what
The Cure were doing?
“I don’t know. It’s impossible to articulate
really. It sounds really horrible but it’s more
than words and music. I’ve always aspired to
be like certain bands who affected me: Joy
Division, New Order, the Banshees, Echo &
52 NME ORIGINALS
MM, 18 December 1982, p18
The Bunnymen… there’s very few, but I think
they’ve kept a sort of intensity.
“That’s what I was always striving for
with The Cure, but there were far too many
things working against it really; things of
our own making like anti-image and all that
rubbish. That was probably a big mistake, not
establishing ourselves as personalities earlier.”
The Cure always seemed to me to promote
a woolly, unvaried
imprecision, refusing to
entertain any conclusions. “‘It doesn’t matter if we all die’.
“That was through
apathy more than anything
else. As long as I would have
To me, that’s a really funny line”
bought stuff that we were producing, then that
was reason enough for releasing the records.
“There was never any idea of covering a
certain section of the market or broadening out
and appealing to more people. I’ve never been a
public face, I wouldn’t ever dare to presume that
people hold me up a some kind of figure and,
if they did, they’d be really stupid because I’m
much too horrible to be a model for anybody.
“You can’t gear your life around presenting
yourself as something to be consumed by
TLFeBOOK
And then there
were two: Lol
Tolhurst and
Robert Smith
the people. I mean, people like Culture Club
do, but we were trying to reach beyond that
façade, beyond current fashion to actually do
something that was gonna last.”
What virtues
music exhibit?
and values should such lasting
“I can’t say… it’s impossible to verbalise.
Everything we’ve done has been instinctive.
You never – well, hardly ever – have pure
insight. There’s really no answers or solutions.”
That’s a cop-out. Your music is presented in
such a manner as to suggest significance.
“But the first line on ‘Pornography’ is ‘It
doesn’t matter if we all die’. There could be
nothing more throwaway than that. To me,
that’s a really funny line…”
Or a really pretentious one…
“No, it’s not pretentious – I really think that!
I’m as convinced by arguments for the end
of the world as I am for saving whales – it’s a
completely theoretical area. If I saw someone
jumping on a baby, I’d probably go over the try
to stop them but, at the same time, I can sit here
and glibly say that it doesn’t matter if we all die.
“It’s not sixth-form angst or immaturity. It’s
TOM SHEEHAN
a paradox in that what we were doing, to most
people, seemed really doomy and depressing and

yet, as a band, we were almost absurdly happy.
“I’ve never really considered that I’ve had
anything of importance to say on record and
yet we get hundreds of letters from people who
are very concerned about what we’ve done; it’s
almost been like a soundtrack to their crises.”
Exactly. The Cure were not a Cure,
they were an ailment, pandering to the
emotional afflictions of their listeners.
“No, it’s not like an incentive for
someone to wallow in their own despair.
It’s impossible for me to justify what
we’ve done because it only really mirrored
our experiences, it never really sought to do
anything more than that.”
Fiction have just released a new single, ‘Let’s
Go To Bed’, credited to The Cure but really
recorded by Robert and Laurence Tolhurst as
a disco experiment. Laurence has packed in
drumming and is learning keyboards; Simon
Gallup has formed his own band and Robert has
recorded a “pop” single with Steve Severin.
Meanwhile, the guitarist relaxes on tour with
“The Cure are almost like a
soundtrack to people’s crises”
the Banshees as a substitute for John McGeogh.
Rumours abound that the position may prove
permanent. How ’bout it Robert?
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m just doing this
tour. Never believe rumours.”
TLFeBOOK
1982
What about as far as the Banshees are
concerned?
“I don’t know, we haven’t really discussed
it that much. I thought it would be very
presumptuous to say something like that
but… well, once a Banshee, always a Banshee.
I don’t think I’ve said anything
in this interview, have I? It’s all so
ambiguous. It just perpetrates the
wanton obscurity.”
You’ve managed to not clear up the
Cure and Banshees mysteries quite
successfully.
“Yeah, it’s all just a state of flux at the
moment. There’s nothing clear-cut to say
except… I know what I want for Christmas,
Melody Maker readers – a hologram kit.”
NME ORIGINALS 53
 High-Camp Menace
NME, 20 February 1982, p 17
BAUHAUS
Kick In The Eye
(Beggars Banquet)
Bauhaus are a cumbersome,
archaic as hell, hard rock blurge
who owe more to The Stranglers’
gothic battering ram than the
Pistols’ explosive rage. They trade
in the old high-camp pseudo-
art menace with their onstage
theatrics and ponderous musical
attack. ‘Kick In The Eye’ is one
of their most popular songs, so
hopefully all who want it have got
it and we’ll be hearing as little of it
as possible in the coming weeks.
Gavin Martin
MM, 15 April 1982, p22
THE SISTERS
OF MERCY
Adrenochrome
(CNT)
Ha! So there’s life in the ould beast
yet, the creature in question being
“a form of music characterised
by a simple repetitive beat and
extremes of volume, popular
among young people during
the post-war economic boom.”
(Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1993
edition.) Rock, that is.
The Sisters come from Leeds,
wear young rebel trousers and
make a din so glorious they sound
like they stumbled on rock music
by accident without ever having
heard a note of it before.
About six plays after first
digging this from the bottom of
the vinyl junkyard, the brain-
54 NME ORIGINALS
wiping riff of ‘Adrenochrome’
still sounds like the greatest four-
chord sequence ever invented.
Look, the Stones, The Kinks, The
Byrds, the Pistols, the Stooges,
The Clash and all the other morons
were just testing out a few ideas.
THIS was the riff they were looking
for. Put it this way: it’s not bad.
Vocal-wise the lead Sister (a
male) sounds like Lux Interior if
he were given a decent group
and some proper songs instead
of a collection of musical cripples
like The Cramps… or Ian Curtis on
‘Transmission’, even. Purchase.
Lynden Barber
NME, 17 April 1982, p22
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Fireworks
(Polydor)
Unfortunately there’s not a
firework within earshot on this
song, which is a pity because side
two of the Banshees’ ‘Once Upon
A Time – The Singles Collection’ LP
is a record gourmet’s delight.
Gary Crowley
NME, 10 July 1982, p21
THE CURE
Hanging Garden
(Fiction)
Don’t be fooled by the Banshee-
esque title, ‘Hanging Garden’
is a dismal exercise in rolling,
tumbling rhythmic textures. The
Cure have drifted disappointingly
and indulgently from the idyllic
pop invention of their younger
TLFeBOOK
days, a decline in standards
reinforced by the inclusion of
the original versions of ‘Killing
An Arab’ and ‘A Forest’ on one
portion of this doublepack.
It’s just as well that The Cure
have now jettisoned what was
their finest moment, ‘Boys
Don’t Cry’, a song now being
respectfully refurbished in a
Glasgow home by The Bluebells,
who seem to be the sort of people
that appreciate it more.
Believe it or not, I was actually
the first person to write about
The Cure, although it’s not
something I tell anyone but
my closest acquaintances.
Adrian Thrills
MM, 9 October 1982, p23
BAUHAUS
Ziggy Stardust
(Beggars Banquet)
Peter Murphy blows his cool badly
and reveals a hidden yearning
to be Mike Yarwood. Quite good
facsimile of Bowie’s voice, but
maybe he’d be better off doing
Robin Day or Dennis Healy next
time. Inexplicable.
Adam Sweeting
MM, 16 October 1982, p23
COCTEAU TWINS
Lullabies
(4AD)
It’s a sad comment on the state of
Music Today (assumes grandad-
like posture and nestles into
rocking chair) that there are
hundreds of groups who make
their livings by impersonating
their heroes as accurately as
possible, in much the same way
as 57 years ago a group called
Wild Wally wore out the tarmac
on the M1 bringing watered down
rock’n’roll to the kids. What is
worse, some people appear to
accept their liverish dross.
All you need to know about
The Cocteau Twins is that they
make “Siouxsie & The Banshees”
records. OK?
Lynden Barber
NME, 27 November 1982, p17
THE SISTERS
OF MERCY
Alice/Floorshow
(Merciful Release)
They’re sounding not unlike The
Psychedelic Furs, this group – he
said, crushing their chances of a
fair hearing in one fell swoop.
No, don’t be put off. This is
dark and powerful stuff from
Yorkshire’s Sisters. Maybe a bit
too dense for extended listening,
but this much I like a lot. And
a big improvement on their
‘Adrenochrome’ debut.
Paul Du Noyer
 Chapter 5
1983
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Mercy Mercy Me
The
Devil’
s Floorshow Adam Sweeting unravels the stream of consciousness gushing
forth from The Sisters Of Mercy
o
“ ur problem is that talking usually
ends up as a very serious affair,
which isn’t a true reflection of the
band as a phenomenon,” said Andy,
singer with The Sisters of Mercy. “It’s very hard
to convey the non-intellectual aspects of any
band through talking.”
What the hell, we talked anyway. We talked in
Andy’s front room in Leeds, all four Sisters and
me. Then I talked to Andy and guitarist Gary
Marx in a Chinese restaurant. Then back to the
front room. I vetoed the full all-nighter around
3.30am. Andy probably spent the rest of the
night talking to himself, because he’d finally got
warmed up, the night creature pacing in his lair.
Before he found himself in the spotlight with
The Sisters Of Mercy, Andy studied languages.
Where, I queried.
“Oh, all over the place,” he said guardedly.
“I never finished a course because I kept finding
more exciting things to do, like petty vandalism.
“I’ve done French and German and Italian
and Latin and Chinese and a smattering of
Russian and a smattering of Dutch in my time.
56 NME ORIGINALS
Chinese was the best. Latin helped me no end
– I don’t know whether it helped my brain any,
but as a linguist it was certainly vital. And I can
do crosswords in a zillionth of the time it takes
anybody else. I can’t do the ordinary ones, but
the cryptic ones are a doddle.”
The day of our meeting found The Sisters Of
Mercy unaccountably quiet, possibly the result
of a sordid and thinly attended gig in Bradford
the night before. Consider these men: guitarist
Gary Marx is tall, lanky, thick white socks
of the sort favoured by mountaineers pulled
up over the bottoms of his jeans. He watches
the proceedings with apparent indifference,
occasionally throwing in an oblique comment.
On stage, he wreaks violence on his guitar.
Bassman Craig Adams crimps himself into
the corner of the sofa and reads an old Batman
annual from cover to cover, pausing only to light
another cigarette. He only uses three strings
on his bass because one of the machine heads
in broken. His cheerful exterior seems quite at
odds with the grinding, warlike attack of his
TLFeBOOK
MM, 15 January 1983, p20
playing. Craig is the beer-drinker of the group.
Guitarist Ben Gunn sits quietly in an
armchair, boyish and suspiciously innocent,
the classroom swot who goes home at night and
makes explosives in a shed in the back garden.
Then there’s Andy, frontman, writer of all
the material so far, dominant theorist and
mouthpiece. Andy likes logic, order, Motorhead,
cats, industrial design, The Birthday Party, The
Psychedelic Furs, aeroplanes and TS Eliot.
Andy hates Bauhaus, Kid Creole, false
spiritualism, numerous groups from the Leeds/
Bradford area, fashion, eating and alcohol.
The Sisters’ use of a drum machine instead of
a drummer makes excellent sense – Andy can
growl and roar and the others can torment and
punish their instruments, but the beat will not
slacken or surrender.
Andy, if you do all the writing, how
important is the rest of the group?
“It’s vital. The personal chemistry is very
important. Craig’s response is just to play the
bass like he does, that sort of awesome noise,
and that says a lot to me.

“Sometimes at soundchecks, maybe after
we’ve been in the van all day, he just plugs in
and wham! It just knocks me out. Mark provides
the more lunatic side of things. And Ben’s got a
much more open mind on things. The balance
of all these four is what makes it work.
“Even minor decisions are ludicrously
democratic. That’s one of the reasons why we
never got a drummer, because drummers just
don’t fit into anybody’s personal chemistry.”
You talk a lot about the humour in your
music, but does it communicate to an audience?
“Well, basically it involves the dialectics of
cynicism, which is something that takes a long
time to explain,” said Andy. “It’s a
very, very, very, dry joke.”
Gary: “I think the gigs are pure “The name’s a nice 50-50 balance
slapstick.”
Because you make them that
way or because of the places you
between nuns and prostitution”
have to play in?
Andy: “It starts off OK but by the end of the
gig Gary’s just not in control any more, he’s just
destroying things. And it is very slapstick.
“But every band’s got that anyway. It’s just
that most of them don’t realise it. And of course
the fact that you’re being serious about it only
makes it more ironic and the whole thing about
irony is that is compounds itself at every stage.”
Of course, a joke’s no longer a joke once
you’ve picked it apart and explained it. I
can only say that the first time I saw them
something clicked at once. Perhaps it’s a little
like that horrific thrill of driving fast on a
motorway in the rain and the car suddenly
starts to aquaplane, or realising that you’ve gone
over the line this time but wasn’t it worth if for
the rush? Gamesmanship par excellence.
Check, for verification, available Sisters
vinyl on their own Merciful Release label:
the fierce, teeth-clenching bobsleigh runs
of ‘Adrenochrome’ and ‘Body Electric’, the
relentless ‘Alice’. At the moment I’m fi xated by
the suspended torment of ‘Floorshow’, a roaring
electric tarantella, the kill-or-cure dance of
death. It’s hard rock without the pomp (though
Andy can and will pose like a good ’un), heavy
metal with keen critical faculties.
What do you love about rock?
Andy: “We like a loud noise, we like a
good tune. We like the relentlessness of
classic rock music – heavy metal.”
What do the Sisters do that’s any
more than a loud physical noise?
“Well, our attitude towards parody is
designed to show people how this loud
noise is ideally to be taken. You can
frighten people and amuse them at the
same time, and excite them and inspire
them. Because that’s what it does to us,
it does all those things.”
Are you offering your audience
some kind of faith?
“Yeah, I mean to us cynicism
is very closely linked to faith or
belief or holding something dear.
It’s the sort of cynicism that comes
out of disappointment with one’s
environment rather than despair of
it, and that’s a very precious thing.
It’s the only thing which
separates us from bozos.”
Do you advocate self-
destruction?
Andy: “Under certain
circumstances, yes. Nietzsche
once said that a man’s greatest
power is the power to decide
the time of his own death,
and that seems perfectly
reasonable. I wouldn’t hold Andrew Eldritch:
your regular
that suicide is necessarily a Renaissance Man
symptom of unsoundness
of mind, or being not in
possession of all one’s faculties.”
Gary: “Which is one of the connotations of
the name of the group. It was picked because it
had several strong images, not just one.”
‘The name’s nice and ironic,” said Andy
with a thin grin, “very corporate. A nice 50-50
balance between nuns and prostitution, which
seemed like a very suitable metaphor for a rock
band. All this pseudo-faith business and high
ritual, and yet – prostitution.”
And Merciful Release?
“Suitably pompous,” chortled Gary.
“Vincent Price delivered the line very well
once,” said Andy. “And it’s a nicely self-
deprecating way of releasing stuff. When you
make a Merciful Release it’s like, ‘Well, that’s
out of the way, the agony is now over.’”
By Andy’s own admission, the Sisters are still
embryonic, but plans have been laid for 1983.
Depending on trivial little factors like money,
they should have a single called ‘Anaconda’
out in February, and an EP is also high on the
agenda. An LP is not envisaged before 1984.
They’re currently entering a “slower and
heavier” phase, which Andy feels he has to work
out of his system forthwith.
The Sisters in ’83: (l to r)
Ben Gunn, Andrew Eldritch,
Gary Marx, Craig Adams
TLFeBOOK
1983
Reading some of his lyrics
on paper, I was surprised by the
formal attention to detail which
had gone into them. Generally
the voice is used as a strand in
the group’s overall sound.
“Our sound says a lot about
me,” Andy explained. “People
say things like, ‘What’s your
attitude to nuclear war?’ and
I say, ‘Just listen to the sound
– what the fuck do you think
our attitude to nuclear war is?
“The voice is much more
personal than the instruments,
so it’s better to mix it down,
because you’re very vulnerable.
I think with ‘Anaconda’ we
might include a lyric sheet.
We’d never print the lyrics on
the sleeve ’cos that would spoil my artwork.”
Andy does the Sisters’ artwork himself, and
typically it’s cold and neat, iced with sharp
detail, using livid monochrome to index the
stark polarities contained inside.
‘Anaconda’ is about the hip games people play
with heroin addiction, now worryingly back in
vogue at prices too many people can afford.
“There’s far too many smack songs which are
a bit too callously irresponsible. Junkie chic is
not where it’s at. We do ‘Sister Ray’ because it’s
just an orgy of self-destruction every time we do
it. That’s what it’s all about.
“All of the lyrics are designed to be taken away
and used. It’s not just purging myself. I couldn’t
go and perform it or make a record of it if I didn’t
think it was generally useful. Besides, the band
wouldn’t let me and why should they?”
Is there anything you’d die for?
“[Long pause] I might die for someone. Not for
any cause. Dying when you don’t intend to is not
my idea of an intelligent act.”
What would you be doing if you weren’t in
The Sisters Of Mercy?
“I’d like to do all sorts of things – whether
anybody’d give me the chance is another thing.
I wouldn’t mind being your regular Renaissance
Man, but who’s gonna employ me
to do that? Not many vacancies for
them in the Exchange & Mart.”
How about you, Gary?
“Working Class Hero. It’s
true, that’s what my name is, it’s
just sending it up. I’m just a born
Working Class Hero – deprived
background, almost a footballer.”
What use are you to anybody?
Andy: “You could say, ‘Well look,
four million people can’t be wrong
and that’s how many we’ve sold,’ and
it wouldn’t justify it. You could say,
‘Well it stopped one person jumping
off a bridge,’ and that wouldn’t
justify it. Whatever justification you
had wouldn’t prove the point; you
can only offer an opinion.
“That question not only asks ‘What
do you do?’ but also ‘Do you regard
it as worthwhile?’, and obviously one
does or one wouldn’t do it.”
NME ORIGINALS 57
 Redskin Rock
Tunes of glory
Adam Sweeting sings the praises and questions the poses of Southern Death Cult
i
met Southern Death Cult in Liverpool
on a cold grey afternoon. I’d wanted
to meet them because they’re one of a
sadly tiny number of groups who have
some sort of aura, who project more than just a
chart position or a certain brand of hype.
Foolishly, I’d believed what I’d read in the
papers about them being the spearhead of
some new movement, and consequently I had a
whole clutter of preconceptions. I saw them as
potential fakes (probably arrogant), who maybe
believed what they’d been told about their own
importance. But I hoped they didn’t.
From their side, the view was different. The
Death Cult don’t read the papers much, probably
because what they’ve read about themselves
has in general disgusted them. They saw me as
58 NME ORIGINALS
the latest in a long line of labelling machines
(probably unscrupulous). After some nervous
false starts, and probably to everybody’s surprise,
we finally found some common ground.
“A lot of people want to accept us for some
reason,” said Ian, the singer, “so they’ve got to
try and understand us. To understand us they’ve
got to put a label on us. By putting a label on us
they’re linking us with other people. But it is
dangerous, it’s like the nails going in the coffin.”
With their loud declarations of their
absorption with North American Indian culture,
the Death Cult were instantly pegged as ‘Redskin
Rock’, and visions of Adam & The Ants started
to haunt them. But Ian, you must have known
that would happen?
“I was aware of it but I thought if I could get
TLFeBOOK
MM, 5 March 1983, p20
into an interview situation I could explain why
I was interested in Indian culture. But I never got
the opportunity and we were already labelled.
“So I thought it would be better for the four of
us if I toned everything down, and now I don’t
wear those clothes any more. I haven’t packed it
in ’cos it’s still in me heart, but I thought if I take
the image away and people wanna find out, then
they can go deeper than that…”
Meet the Death Cult… there’s guitarist Buzz,
blond hair falling bashfully down one side of a
face which can only be described as pretty. Buzz
likes Woody Allen, Mad magazine and George
Melly, all of which came as a bit of a shock since
I’d expected him to say something like “Sex
Gang Children and grave-robbing”.

There’s drummer Aky, who’s Pakistani.
He admits to reading Mayfair and likes old
rock’n’roll – “the happy stuff” as he puts it.
“I’m a really ambitious person,” he confesses.
On bass, there’s Barry. He looks very serious,
shakes my hand with great solemnity. He speaks
in a wistful tone which sounds like the faintest
breath of wind could carry it away. Barry reads a
lot of books. Aky says: “I can never understand
the questions when we get interviewed, so if they
ask me I refer them to Barry.”
And finally Ian, frontman and performer,
chief talker of the group but
not necessarily the last word on
what they do or why. Ian does
like Sex Gang Children – “I’m
‘Moya’ is a near-classic deployment of simple rock
pretty much obsessed with them
now. They’re about the only new
components, adding up to an aura of eerie suggestion
group that I really like.”
Ian is emotional, an extrovert in an intense
sort of way, and has a penchant for self-
dramatisation. Useful credentials for a singer
with a rock band, but he needs more realistic
qualities of the other three to prevent him from
flying out of control.
Ian started to tell the story of an incident
which had taken place at Friars in Aylesbury the
night before. Ian had been on stage at the time.
“There was this little Asian kid and he sort of
looked up and motioned me over, and he said,
‘You’re fuckin’ in love with yerself, aren’t yer?’
I thought, ‘You little bastard, you don’t fucking
know how I feel.’
“I started babbling on to him, everything I
could think of to show I wasn’t what he thought
I was, but he just sort of flopped into the crowd
and shrank away. But afterwards I was talking to
him for like two hours, and he said, ‘Please come
back and play again.’ It was good. But that first
thing he said sort of knocked me on the head for
the rest of the evening, it really cracked me up.”
Having been elected as baby Messiahs, you
have to expect problems like these. Meeting the
Death Cult, I was startled by how unprepared
they were for the kind of status which has been
thrust their way. I thought their ‘Fatman’/‘Moya’
single was fine stuff, moody and evocative, but
I’d been disappointed by a thoroughly drab
session they recorded for John Peel.
At the moment they’re still probing their
own weaknesses and strengths, which is why
songs like ‘The Girl’ can end up sounding like
a raw tangle of noise, while newer stuff like ‘All
Glory?’ begins to resonate with a dawning sense
of power. ‘Moya’ is still their best song – a near-
classic deployment of simple rock components
which adds up to an aura of eerie suggestion.
So Ian, are you aiming for the group to work
on that basic level of just being something for
people to dance to?
TLFeBOOK
Southern Death Cult:
Ian Lindsay (soon
to be Ian Astbury),
Buzz, Aky and Barry
“To a certain extent yeah, but we’re not sorta
like puppets, you know, we do have feelings and
we are sorta reflecting what we see around us
through our music. I wouldn’t like to see what
we do being taken purely as an entertainment
thing, just a dance band. I’d like to see maybe a
bit of thought going into it.
But isn’t it an entertainment industry?
“I think it was.”
You mean it’s changed?
“Before, people had a choice of what they
wanted to be into. Now they’ve got it forced upon
them, like Kajagoogoo and
all that shit. I think that’s
pretty wrong.
“We’re not forcing
ourselves upon anyone
– if people want us we’re
there, but if they don’t want us then fair enough.
We’re not sort of on every fucking kids’ TV
programme, trying to push our product to them.
We’re just where we are.”
There has to be an element of ‘performance’,
though. You have to pose to some extent to be
the frontman with Southern Death Cult.
“No I don’t,” said Ian hotly. “I just do what
I want. Sometimes I’ve just got to control meself,
like when that kid said that thing to me at
Aylesbury I just felt like getting a microphone
stand and shoving it down his throat. But you
just don’t take your frustrations out on people.”
“What Ian does on stage isn’t a pose, it’s from


the heart,” added Barry seriously.
NME ORIGINALS 59
 Creature Discomforts
NME, 12 February 1983
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
The Bad Seed
4AD
The Birthday Party have
always seemed more an
exercise in exhausting
self-parody than the
gothic Beefheart
claimed by their rabid
supporters. They may
have come to bury
rock’n’roll, but the
trouble is they keep digging the
grave over and over again.
And after listening to this four-song EP, it
seems that it won’t be long before Nick Cave
and his performing troupe of deviants fall into
their purpose-built tomb.
It’s impossible to avoid the obvious when
you’re talking about The Birthday Party simply
because they are so ludicrously larger than
life: sex, smack and death are all over into this
unctuous assault.
The playing sounds tired and overwrought,
any tension lost in a barrage of clichés. The rusty
stabs of bass, drums and guitar are used more as
a means of colouring Cave’s schlock accounts of
love gone awry than as a force in their own right
– which places the emphasis on lyrics that are
no longer disturbing or genuinely dark.
‘Deep In The Woods’ is a swing love song for
psychotic misogynists – “Tonight we sleep in
separate ditches”, croons Cave. ‘Sonny’s Burning’
is a black account of energy-saving. ‘Fears Of
Gun’ boasts a chorus that runs “Fingers down
the throat of love” and ‘Wild World’ is a plea for
protection and little more.
This is a flight into miserable fantasy; a
diversion that offers hardly any insights into the
sometimes poignant state of the truly wretched.
The Birthday Party pretend to be crucified
for the consequences of irrepressible extremes.
Yet, like most of their supposed obsessions, this
record is another plaything. They’ve probably
forgotten it already and if you’ve any sense
you’ll do the same.
Ian Pye
Nick Cave: “Sex,
smack and death?
Mmm, yes please”
60 NME ORIGINALS


Ian: “It just reflects the way I see
things… things that may have happened to
me through my life that have made me the
way I am. I’ve got it all built up inside me.
“When I get on stage I can hit some
levels where I just open my heart
completely. Like last night before I went on
it was really strange, ’cos I closed me eyes
and I could see me own face looking at me.
I wasn’t scared, but something like that
had never happened to me before.”
What are the things that have happened
to Ian to make him the way he is? He’s
lived in Canada, Belfast and Liverpool,
and spent a month in the army before
deciding that wasn’t for him. He’ll talk
about some of it, but then infuriatingly
stops just when the subject sounds like it’s
getting weird. Such as: “The subjects you
could talk about, I’m too scared to, so I’d
rather not talk about it. It’s something
I’m aware of within meself, so that’s why
I control meself. Like
I know certain people who
think they’d like to fuck “Last night, before I went on stage, I closed my
off to Nicaragua, pick up
a gun and fight there, ’cos eyes and saw my own face looking back at me”
they’re too scared to fight
in this country. It depends what you’re into…”
Look, you’re hardly the first band to sing
about jingoism (‘Patriot’ or ‘All Glory?’) Or
genocide (‘Moya’).
“Oh no, certainly not,” said Ian.
So isn’t there a danger of just turning these
topics into clichés?
“I don’t think human feelings can be clichéd
– it’s not a little trend or fashion, it is a feeling.
You can’t cliché feeling. You get psychologists
saying a certain condition is schizophrenia or
something – that’s garbage. How can you sort of
put somebody’s frame of mind into a category so
you can understand them?”
Are you offering people faith, or…
“I don’t think I’m offering anything. I’m just
myself, stating the way I feel about things. I’m not
a preacher. At one time I thought I was supposed
to be a preacher ’cos I thought I had to say things
to get people to look at me in a certain way, or to
look at us and say, ‘Well, Southern Death Cult
are about being free or fucking the system,’ or
whatever. But now I think no, that’s not the way.
“I don’t wish to become a leader or anything
like that, I don’t think any of us do, because of
the responsibilities that we’d have.”
In the end, aren’t you just one more rock
group out of thousands of rock groups?
“I dunno,” sighed Ian.
“Within ourselves I guess not,” said Barry. “As
regarded by other people, probably yes.”
Ian, isn’t the problem with music that
anything you want to say is simultaneously an
escape or a social occasion for your audience?
“Yeah, I would say that. Um… I think music is
one of the only things people have got left where
everyone can express themselves the way they
want to, through dancing. A lot of people can’t
paint or draw or write and they don’t even care
about stuff like that, but when people come to a
concert they can do what they want.
“You can use the concert as a focal point. It is
TLFeBOOK
“Did we really just
admit to liking
Supertramp?”
inspirational – to go out and make whatever you
do a bit better, you know? You can shut things
out around you, make yourself feel good.”
I think the Death Cult could fall into the same
traps as The Clash, of promising more than you
can deliver.
“We don’t base everything on image and we do
a lot of things on feeling,” said Ian. “I suppose to
a very very small extent we do things for effect,
I think everyone does. I’ve got a hell of a lot of
respect for The Clash; I think they’ve still kept
their integrity. Maybe they’re past their peak.”
It’s in your favour that you draw on a very
basic, traditional kind of rock power – it has a
weight of history behind it.
“Oh yeah, it goes a long way back. Back to,
I suppose, when people were banging sticks
and stones together.”
Well, I dunno about that…
“People are always looking to the future for
answers – that’s why everything’s falling apart.
If you go back to the past, you know what you
are and where you’re going.
“Even us, looking back into the ’60s for
inspiration… Before the Sex Pistols I was
listening to stuff like Supertramp and Genesis –
I used to pass off The Who and that as dinosaurs.
“It’s only been in about the past year that
I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of listening to ’60s
stuff, like Jimi Hendrix, The Who and The Small
Faces, and it’s fucking mind-blowing.”
1983 looks like being a good year for rock groups,
and Southern Death Cult will become one of the
best of them. How much does this matter, Aky?
“The whole thing about the band and all
is that sometimes when we do gigs it shatters
that whole image thing. Ian will just say or do
something that shatters people’s image of us, like
‘Oh, Southern Death Cult, they’re just another
Haircut One Hundred’ – which is really good.
There is something more than just a band.”

NME, 28 May 1983, p26
THE CREATURES
Feast
(Polydor)
For one brief,
wonderful winter when
I was 11, three of my
friends and I formed a
small theatre company
and showed off to the
rest of the school with
plays that we wrote,
produced and performed
ourselves. We’d write a certain scene
time and time again – a Rising From
The Grave scene, effected by the
application of talcum powder to the
face and getting up slowly off
one’s back with a glazed look
in one’s eyes and hands out in
front like a sleepwalker.
Eventually some squealer
spilled the beans and we
were hauled up in front of the
head – words like “unhealthy”
and “morbid” were thrown
around. Morbid! We were only
HAVING FUN.
Siouxsie is stuck in the sort
of adolescence in which the
stuff dreams are made of is
séances, car crashes, ketchup
and the house of Hammer – I
could never take her seriously
with the Banshees, and The
Creatures – the Sonny and
Cher of the psychiatric ward
– are even more transparent.
They’re not evil incarnate,
they’re comedians.
If you take a girl from
Chislehurst and drop her on a
paradise island – Hawaii in the
case of The Creatures’ ‘Feast’
– obviously she’s going to
be impressed; but Siouxsie’s
instant impressions leave a lot
to be desired. The sounds of
the sea and the jungle, what
with Siouxsie’s complaining,
droning voice imposed
over them, give the record
the flavour of a travelogue
STEVE RAPPORT
narrated by someone
recovering from a nervous
breakdown; the voices of the
Hawaiians featured seem totally
superfluous and show-offy.
Siouxsie will hate to face the fact,
but what she does is very ’60s, very
hippy, very Bad Acid.
Her voice often sounds
like Julie Driscoll’s, and
her songs could be
Arthur Brown or Edgar
Broughton, or even
Donovan.
The key words of
the record are (in
order of popularity)
FLOWERS, COLOURS,
FIRE and DANCING – very Bad Acid.
And the lyrical content throughout
is as florid as Denis Healey’s face.
There are doubtless many
TLFeBOOK
1983
questions to be asked about Hawaii, as a lash-up, though “a mess” is
but The Creatures’ sub-Campari probably closer. It’s been botched
ad gushings – “Good ’ere, innit?” together from a couple of Radio 1
– answer none of them. sessions, some unreleased demo
Julie Burchill versions and a live recording made
at Rafters in Manchester, and on
MM, 11 June 1983, p27 the whole does the chaps little
justice. It’s a painful irony that
SOUTHERN Southern Death Cult, of all people,
should have got themselves
DEATH CULT lumbered with a contractual
Southern Death Cult obligation album of the
(Beggars Banquet) most transparent sort.
The sudden implosion The three live
of Southern Death Cult tracks, ‘Crow’, ‘Faith’
a couple of months and ‘Vivisection’,
ago, when they seemed are probably best
to be on the crest of a forgotten. ‘Crow’ is
wave, was a rude shock a mere fragment,
to the numerous pundits while the other two
who’d been touting them suffer badly from the
as everything from The shrill, dry quality of the recording.
Meaning Of Life to The Best Rock ‘Faith’ merely demonstrates that
Group Since… guitarist Buzz has been listening
The very model of to Jimi Hendrix.
untogetherness, the Death Cult There are versions of the Cult’s
made their hasty exit leaving loose dynamic duo, ‘Fatman’ and ‘Moya’,
ends everywhere. This posthumous engineered by Mike Hedges at the
LP doesn’t really tidy them up, it Playground studio. ‘Moya’ is slower
just collects them together in one and altogether less sinister than
place. It can charitably be described the “official” single version cut with
Mick Glossop at the helm,
The Creatures: while ‘Fatman’ displays a few
the Sonny and minor differences in tone
Cher of the
and balance. Um… so what?
psychiatric ward
On the more positive side,
you get versions of the fine
‘All Glory’ and the passionate
‘False Faces’. ‘Apache’, too, is
a useful addition to available
Cult material.
‘Today’ is a dramatic
non-song, all breast-beating
vocal from Ian Lindsay and
thundering drums from
Aky, demonstrating that
SDC were regularly strong
on atmosphere but short of
decent pegs to hang it on.
Finally there’s ‘The
Crypt’, which is decked
out with moody piano and
some weird studio effects
– promising, but like the
rest of this stuff a mere
blueprint for what might
have happened if Southern
Death Cult had been able to
put time and effort into a
full scale album.
I can’t imagine the group
are particularly proud of
this tatty compilation,
which should really have the
phrase “Don’t remember
me this way” displayed
prominently on the sleeve.
Meanwhile, we await their
various next moves…
Adam Sweeting
NME ORIGINALS 61
 Glove Story

MM, 9 April 1983, p3 MM, 16 April 1983, p4

Party weary
treats us in a very different way. It’s
like they wait for some sort of signal
from the group as to what way we
want them to behave.”
The group return to their much-
hated outpost of London this month
NME, 18 June 1983, p14 – supposedly to complete a double
EP which was begun in Berlin before
Following months of rumour, The Birthday Party have announced that they are splitting up. the tour.
And that, says Nick, will be “the
Drummer and co-founder Mick Harvey attributed the decision to lack of artistic direction, last project for quite a long time for

and audience inflexibility. Brett Wright reports from the band’s home town of Melbourne on The Birthday Party”.
Cave’s next project is the staging

their ffi inalfifi dates in Australia, and talks to Nick Cave about his own plans for the future… of 50 or so one-minute plays he’s
written with Lydia Lunch. He
doesn’t have too many details about

T
he tour was a debacle. They
were reasonably well-received
in Sydney, but flopped in Perth
and flopped in one of two concerts
in home town Melbourne. The other
Melbourne show was a qualified
success, but many felt cheated by
the group’s unwillingness to play
any more than “eight lousy songs”,
as several patrons put it.
At the Perth show, the absurdity
came to a head. Cave was bitten on
called The Shuffling Hungarians.
Both said they liked Nick a lot.
Back in Melbourne a week later,
Nick Cave was convalescing at home
in his mother’s place in the affluent,
tree-lined surrounds of Malvern
East. He looked carefully wrecked:
dark lines under the eyes; a weary,
dismissive manner, drainpipe jeans,
a swastika belt buckle…
“I have tried to make it clear to
the audience that despite what
this project, but he does have a
philosophical position on it.
“I find theatre the most awkward,
restricting medium which you
can work in. Which is primarily the
reason I’m working in it and why
these plays are going to be put on
under the banner of traditional
theatre rather than performance art
or fringe theatre. Or at least, it will
be presented under that guise. Once
the audience are trapped within
PETER ANDERSON

the leg by a hospital clerk named they think, I don’t like being pulled the doings of the plays it will be no
Sarah and knocked to the ground under a crowd… stomping feet and longer remain respectable.”
by the former lead singer of a band so forth. Now the British audience I bet it won’t.

62 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
The Glove
The further adventures
t he comely young wife with her hands in
the sink smiles as her hubby strolls into
the kitchen of her Los Angeles dream
home. Just back from the office and starving for
his dinner, he skirts the table and folds his arms
around her ample waist, twisting her into an
affectionate embrace.
She tilts her head back to receive his kiss, and
suddenly tufts of her hair drift gently to the
tiles. As he recoils in horror a carving knife arcs
up out of the suds and strikes and strikes and
strikes again…
of Steve Severin and Robert Smith, by Steve Sutherland
This, or thereabouts anyway (it’s a long time
since I’ve seen it) is a scene from Blue Sunshine,
a superbly harrowing B-movie that did the
rounds to little acclaim towards the end of
the disillusioned ’70s. Taking its name from a
reputedly super-potent strain of LSD, its plot
was lip-smackingly simple: anybody who had
sampled a certain contaminated batch of the
said hallucinogenic would, without warning, go
bald 10 years to the day that they dropped their
trip and then turn into a homicidal maniac. The
revenge on or of the love generation?
TLFeBOOK
MM, 3 September 1983, p20
Some people out there would do well to start
checking their diaries smartish.
‘Blue Sunshine’ is also the name of the
first and only album by The Glove. This is no
coincidence. After all, The Glove – that’s Robert
Smith, Steve Severin and Zoo, aka dancer-
turned-singer Jeanette – took their name from
the Blue Meanies’ giant fist-cum-executioner in
Yellow Submarine. The same glove that turned
back into LOVE when the power of music
overcame bad with good. There’s either message
or madness in these mindgames.


NME ORIGINALS 63
 Kitchen sink drama


Of course, both the Banshees
and The Cure have always mucked
about with the romantic notion of
love, happiest with a relationship
to dissect or an emotion to torture
into screaming confessions of guilt,
so it should come as no surprise
that when Smith and Severin’s plan
for a single called ‘Punish Me With
Kisses’ expanded into a feverishly
claustrophobic album project, love
should end up on the rack.
It does come as something of a
shock, however, when Smith sits cross-
legged on the floor and says: “It’s quite
a happy album really. It’s good that it’s
gonna be a summer release.”
My mind swiftly retracks in panic…
the nightmare-in-a-nursery of ‘Mr
Alphabet’… the brooding cacophony of
‘Orgy’… the séance tension of ‘Blues In
Drag’? I catch a hint of a smile.
I should have known: once a Banshee
always a…
“We haven’t got together to do this
because there’s anything trapping us
within the music that we already do,”
Severin insists in a whisper. “I know
that I’m quite free to do whatever I like
within the Banshees and always have.
“The main reason the whole thing started
was because, when I listened to The Cure, I
could understand why Robert was putting a
certain thing in a certain place; the sense of
dynamics and melody was fairly similar to
what I was doing with the Banshees.
“The main thing now though is it’s a
completely different situation, a completely
different way of working…”
Smith agrees: “It was a real attack on
the senses when we were doing it. We were
coming out of the studio at six in the morning,
watching all these really mental films and then
going to sleep and having really demented
dreams and then, as soon as we woke up, we’d
go virtually straight back into the studio, so it
was a bit like a mental assault course towards
the end.
“When we were writing the words, we were
picking up on things we’d experienced within
the time of doing the album. I mean, God, we
must have watched about 600 videos at the time!
There’d be like all these after-images of the fi lms
we’d watched cropping up in the songs.
“It wasn’t deliberate, but after a while, they
were chosen, I think, almost as influences.
When we were waking up, in the half-hour or so
that we were just like in a coma, I’d put on a fi lm
or a piece of music that was completely different
to what we’d been doing the night before, so that
it would influence the day. We’d set ourselves
the task of writing two songs a day, so it was the
only way we could refresh ourselves.”
“We just kept going at it,” Severin confirms.
“We had to make it sound complete. At the
beginning, it was just like a dozen, 15 songs
completely different from each other.”
“Songs?” laughs Smith. “It sounded like
15 different groups! The other thing that
influenced it, talking about snippets, was the
amount of junk we were reading, the amount we
64 NME ORIGINALS
Severin and
Smith: Evil Dead
meets the Blue
Meanies
The Glove’s‘ Blue
Sunshine’ sounds like a
journey into the tunnel
oflove that took a wrong
turn into the horrors
spent on idiot magazines and stuff like that! We
were making big murals of all these cuttings and
pictures and stuff, big day-glo posters.”
And the films?
“Oh, The Brood, Evil Dead, Helicopter Spies,
Inferno… I dunno, what else? Some Divine
stuff… Yellow Submarine…”
Ah, but what purpose these days to such
perversions of love? Can they act as anything
beyond kitsch, choreographed titillation?
The love-peace vision of the ’60s has long been
reduced to a fashionable quirk and ridiculed
for its naivety. We tend to dismiss the whole
ethos as stoned-out lunacy and look instead
to cut-throat private enterprise as a means of
personal, rather than global, salvation. So much
for Sergeant Pepper and Blue Sunshine.
And even the promise of promiscuity and
dark fantasies fulfilled – inherent in Severin’s
chosen pseudonym and Smith’s psychotic
imagery – are a confusion, a wry comment on
society’s sordidly accepted double standards.
On the surface, ‘Blue Sunshine’ sounds like
a journey into the tunnel of love that took a
wrong turn into the horrors. But underneath,
there beats a subliminal pulse, a frantic desire to
test out ways of working within the confines of
pop without contributing to its malaise.
Severin and Smith want to do something with
TLFeBOOK
their fame. Where others make commercial
success the be-all of their existence, the
Banshees contingent want to use it as a
weapon. Hence the splintering of the band
into its offshoots – experiments with the
attraction of reputation.
“It’s basically an album and that’s where it’s
gonna stop,” says Severin of The Glove. “And
that’s what The Creatures is, just one album.
The more time The Creatures are seen to be
around, the more people think, ‘Have the
Banshees split up?’ And all sorts of nonsense.
So we’re just gonna do the minimal amount,
then concentrate on other things.”
“To me, it seems perfectly natural to
be involved in so many different areas,”
says Smith. “But it still seems odd to other
people, Funny that…”
The trap is , of course, that ensuring your
own working environment remains vibrant
doesn’t mean that what you produce will
be valid to anybody else. Just because
Robert Smith plays a lot more keyboards
than guitar on The Glove album doesn’t
necessarily mean the album’s any good.
Severin is acutely aware of the problem.
“The idea that The Glove could get away
with anything vanished very quickly because
it became a real responsibility to get it to
sound not indulgent. What I wanted was for it
to have more of a specific personality than the
Banshees or The Cure.
“I think we’ve nearly got to an idea of
what me and Robert are like as people, our
relationship. Songs like ‘Blues In Drag’ are the
kind of thing I’m most pleased about because,
if the Banshees had approached that from
the beginning, it wouldn’t have ended up like
that. I just wanted to do something a bit…
softer, a bit more… introverted, probably.
That’s what I wanted to achieve, the kind of
things that are exclusive to our friendship.
“Everybody I’ve played this to has almost
immediately said it sounds really fresh and
added to that by saying that everything else
that’s coming out now is really horrible.
“Last year, ‘Fireworks’ being in the charts was
unusual and this year, when a Banshees single
gets into the charts, it’ll be even more unusual
because the climate’s just horrific!”
“Chartwise, so much of it’s down to melody,”
Smith intrudes. “You find yourself humming
most of the Glove songs but, at the same time,
they’re not pop songs. I like that about it.”
The Banshees coterie are more vulnerable
now than ever because, in a musical climate that
encourages safety and contrition, being different
for being different’s sake is one hell of a virtue.
The Banshees/Glove/Creatures’ particular
genius is that not only do they advocate constant
change but they remain fertile and unbridled
rather than cynical or calculated.
“We haven’t got a clue what the next Banshees
album is gonna be like,” Severin chuckles. “If
you stuck the Creatures album and The Glove
together, I don’t think anybody could know
what is coming next from the Banshees. There’s
a certain amount of glee involved in that but it’s
not contrived at all.”
“No,” Smith agrees, smiling. “Just manic.”
 1983

Twindrops Keep
Falling On NME, 10 DECEMBER 1983, p26

My Head Robin and Elizabeth are

The Cocteau Twins – but
they don’t like to brag about
it. Paul Morley attempts to
discover more about this
obscure couple
R obin and Elizabeth, two friends, are sat,
drinking tea from cheap mugs, in the
kitchen of their flat. It is a Wednesday.
The flat, in Muswell Hill, London N10, they
share with some people I do not meet. Robin
and Elizabeth have their own room where they
sleep and which they tidy. In the kitchen they
make the tea and plan the day.
The kitchen looks just like a kitchen that a
few people share – well used. You almost want
to pat it on the back and say well done for all it’s
been through. Robin and Elizabeth sit on small
wooden chairs at a skinny table. Calm, I burst
in, noisy, with a carrier bag of strong lagers and
a plastic case containing a mono Sony recorder
and two TDK C90 cassettes. Storm.
The couple in the kitchen are soft, and quiet,
and remote, and only really smile for each other.
Robin eyes me suspiciously. Elizabeth grips her
mug as though it contains wonderful secrets.
“So what do you want to talk to us about?”
asks Robin, using a soft Scottish voice that is
quite at home in this cold, shared kitchen fi lled
with old, used utensils. He places a careful,
deprecating emphasis on the ‘us’ and at the
same time he challenges me.
TONY MOTTRAM

Oh, vague things, I say.

The couple consider this reply. Vaguely.
The three of us get used to our positions in

TLFeBOOK
 Mere Mortals


the kitchen, defending in our own ways the
almost handsome silence. I open a bottle of
strong lager. Robin, at a distance, mixes a gin
and tonic and adds a slice of lemon. Elizabeth, to
my surprise, frantically rubs her fingers together,
in a state of true anguish. I thought I’d been
invited, but it appears I am an intruder. I could
kill them, because they make me feel so ugly.
But I had a feeling this would be indulgent, so
I gently enquired if we would have to talk in the
open wilds of the kitchen.
They invite me into their room. Traffic
turns right outside the windows in this room,
which doesn’t smell of anything, and a clock
ticks proudly by their bed. You can hardly hear
Robin defending his virtue and describing
his disappointments, and even he seems to be
bawling compared to Elizabeth. The loudest noise
she made was the first noise she made during the
conversation, after many meandering minutes.
She sneezed, startling me, Robin and herself.
At one point Robin will pull a hair from
Elizabeth’s throat: the length of the hair shocks
us all, but don’t worry, it wasn’t growing out of
her throat. It must have fallen there somehow.
Records in the room are stacked very neatly.
The room is dustless, there isn’t really a hair
out of place. Or at least, if there is, it is removed
with some drama, and it finds its proper place.
Oblivion, or something. They’re from Falkirk.
Robin softly complains: “Everybody at our record
company tells us how popular and important
The Cocteau Twins are, but I can’t comprehend
any of that. All we have to go on is our record
sales, and we don’t really sell that many records.”
That was something to think about.
We needed something to laugh about. I asked
Elizabeth if she considered herself a writer: by
this time she was talking to me, not sneezing or
staring down past her knees at the clean carpet.
“People would come along to interview us and they’d go,
‘Oh God, we thought you at least looked good!”
Are you a writer?
“No.”
Do you call yourself a singer?
“No.”
So what do you call yourself?
She turns to Robin, touches his leg.
“Oh, you’ve got a lot of names that you call
me, haven’t you…”
Robin smiles at her: “You’re a wee bastard,
that’s what you are…”
That made us laugh.
Robin looks into a corner of the room: “I get
a funny feeling up my nose and my back when
people go on about having to label yourself.”
He looked as if he was in some sort of pain.
Robin and Elizabeth are The Cocteau Twins.
If you wondered why we were all brought
together, it was to talk about The Cocteau Twins,
or not talk, or try to talk. At the end of our
talk-not-talk I tell Robin that I have a conclusion
about The Coctwins.
I conclude that The Cocteau Twins are
one detached Scottish boy who wants to be a
record producer, and one distant Scottish girl
66 NME ORIGINALS
who found, somehow, that she could sing. A
technician and a voice.
“That’s a bit hollow,” Robin snorts.
Well, tell me more, I implore.
“Oh, we’ve been spilling our bloody life stories
out to you…” he sneers.
Spilling? This was an exaggeration.
Dripping, more like.
A couple of drops.
Twin drops were falling on my head.
It was torture.
I asked Elizabeth if she was excited about being a
Cocteau Twin. I thought it might be interesting
if she could explain whether being a Twin
had taken her anywhere exciting, disturbing,
stimulating, and I didn’t mean on a bus. Are you
excited about being a Cocteau Twin?
“Yes and no.” Drip and drop.
In what ways yes and no…
“Er…” A pause as long as your grandmother’s
life. Or death. “Oh…” A pause as long as a
sleepless night. The clock ticks. The traffic turns.
“Oh God…” C’mon woman. “I’m going to say
sorry again…”
“What are you trying to provoke us into
saying?” demands Robin.
Tell me some stories, tell me where you are,
tell me where you might have been… tell me
something. Unfair, decides Robin.
“I don’t think we should have to explain
anything. I would have thought that the music
explains everything really…”
You feel that the music is the end, not the
beginning. You won’t accept that your music,
something you feel very close to and involved
with and therefore special to you, will attract
attention and questioning… you don’t seem to
want to acknowledge all the complications that
must go with making pop music.
“It all comes from a rejection I have of certain
The species cocteaus
geminus emerges
from its burrow. Liz
and Robin with Will
Heggie (left)
TLFeBOOK
ideas in the music business… the selling… the
competing… the music is there, it represents a
particular time for us, and there it is… If I was
someone else I wouldn’t want to know about
me, all those little personal details, my opinions,
that’s all to do with packaging, a packaging I
don’t want to know about…”
Is this purity possible in such a rough, raucous
world?
“Well, it’s a nice thought to have with you…”
But it means that you’re completely defensive
all the time, even towards people who are, so to
speak, on your side.
“On the whole in interviews I am defensive
because generally the first question is, ‘Oh,
why do you copy Siouxsie & The Banshees?’
Something like that.
“In the days of ‘Garlands’, especially, people
had these notions that we would be clad in
leather, with make-up all over, and po-faced.
People would actually come along to interview
us and they’d ask us where The Cocteau Twins
were. They’d go, ‘Oh God, we thought you at
least looked good!’”
Robin smirks out of a kind of triumph
– he cannot hide it, although he tries – at this
memory. Elizabeth shivers a little, as if this
memory, like most others, was a cold wind.
Will enters our time together. Will and Robin
wanted to make some music together, there
in Scotland, and found Elizabeth dancing in a
club. If she could dance that well, it was decided,
surely she will sing superbly.
I look at Elizabeth sat on the bed, as perplexed
to be involved in a conversation about pop
music as your grandmother would be, dead or
alive, and I find it hard to think that she has ever
danced. She rubs her fingers.
At that time, had you nothing planned, did
you know where you were going, or where you
would be pushed? Elizabeth cannot quite flick
this memory into play. Robin answers.
“I think this is probably the last place she
TOM SHEEHAN
thought she’d end up.”
It’s Elizabeth’s regretful, exultant voice that

Liz and Robin:
“You’re a wee
bastard, you are”
“I think about cooking the tea and
Elizabeth about hoovering the carpet”
has over the last 18 months, between the two
LPs ‘Garlands’ and ‘Head Over Heels’, made The
Cocteau Twins just that little bit better, a little
bitter brilliance, a little brittle beauty. A light at the
beginning of the tunnel.
Elizabeth declares war on established language,
and the songs allow a kind of orbit or cluster
of possible responses, tangential readings and
splintered echoes. The songs pivot inwards and we
follow as best we can.
The Twins’ music has a magic that has cut
through everything that should have destroyed it:
their innocence and insolence, which in the cold
plight of the pop interview sometimes just seems a
stupid modesty or a hopeless purity, has somehow
worked, and a standard success has come to them.
They are baffled by this.
“The more successful we become,” says Robin,
“the more it will get cocked up, the more we will
have to do things that are nothing to do with the
music… and we’ll probably feel shitty about it.”
Isn’t the attention you are receiving a kind of
reward?”
“The idealist in me says, ‘No, fuck that, it doesn’t
matter about people’s attention’… the realist in me
says it’s quite nice for eating and things like that.
You have to survive.”
Do you feel that maybe The Cocteau Twins can
encourage other people because out of nowhere,
you have shown that it is possible to establish an
audience in this deadening joyless world, making
something unique and unclouded?
Robin lets this soak in. Elizabeth doesn’t let it
touch her. “I would say we’re the biggest shits, no
example to anyone. We’re such a mess… we never
think about those kind of things…”
You don’t think about yourself at all?
Robin: “Not on that sort of level… I think about
cooking the tea and Elizabeth about hoovering the
carpet… like mere mortals you could say…”
Will leaves the time we have together. He played
bass in the group until a long European tour
supporting OMD: this tour hit them flat with the
impact of routine and the greyness of repetition
and only the two lovers could survive.
“As much as I’d like to be able to say I’ve not
spoken to Will since we split out of choice, I can’t.
I’d love to speak to him, I just can’t bring myself
to talk to him. I’m sort of frightened. He was like
my best friend for eight years or whatever and
suddenly he’s not here.”
How can this be?
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
From sight, from mind. Loss, and gain.
Talking to Elizabeth, she makes me so frustrated
I could hit her over the head with a lager bottle.
Hearing her sing, she just leaves me moved.
When did you realise you could sing?
Robin answers: “It was a Cocteau Twins
rehearsal. When we first started she would never
sing until Will went home for his tea.”
Elizabeth boldly interferes: “He fucking told
Will he’d heard me sing and
he hadn’t.”
So Elizabeth having this
supernatural voice was… fate.
“Fate’s a rather romantic word
for it,” says Robin, “Luck was
more like it. I suppose fate will
look better in print.”
Was it a kind of liberation, Elizabeth, when you
discovered you could sing?
Elizabeth flutters… Robin answers. “It started
off wonderfully, I thought.”
Can you remember the moment?
“I can…” smiles Robin. “I burst out laughing.
I was just amazed.”
What did you sing?
“I can’t remember… OH!” she squeals,
delightedly, unexpectedly. “I remember! Four
lines, I’d written four lines… I had to squeeze
them out… they were awful…” The memory
rapidly burns itself out. “I can’t remember them.”
Was it a liberation for you to sing?
“I didn’t keep at it…” Elizabeth fades away.
Robin: “She wanted to be a singer, then she
didn’t, then she did…”
When did you want to be a singer – why? This
question seemed important, considering the
uncanny power Elizabeth discovers when she sings.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say… I never think
about these things… it’s all very natural… we don’t
force ourselves in any way…”
Is this beauty? This rare, precious belief in
‘the natural’? Are you scared that you might lose
something if you analyse it?
Robin: “Well, if we just made records to make
everybody else happy, we’d make shitty records.”
In your lyrics, Elizabeth, are you trying to
compile your own logic, make up your own sense,
create your own reality?
“No… no… I don’t think that’s right at all…”
Do you know what you do?
“No… but I don’t think that’s right at all…”
Elizabeth sneezes. It’s a very loud sneeze. “I’m
sorry,” she whispers. It’s OK, I say. But she’s gone.
Maybe she’s in the kitchen. Robin tries to join her.
There’s time for me to go.
TLFeBOOK
1983
NME, 5 November 1983, p35
COCTEAU TWINS
Head Over Heels
(4AD)
The Cocteau Twins’
new record suggests
infinite distance, or
at least a massive
space. Its first boom
is like an avalanche.
From there they
wing a course over
soundscapes that
hypothesise Phil Spector producing
‘Spellbound’. Till I heard this, I considered
Liz and Rob a Banshees for the bedsit: Liz
Fraser, I thought, a Siouxsie-as-Sandie-
Shaw; Rob Guthrie as a doughboy McGeoch.
I still say there’s something hollow and
vaporous at work here, but when Liz is
singing cosmic Chrissie Hynde and Rob is
striating these ice-floes with crystal shards
of guitar and huge splashes of percussion
and carrying the girl away in a swirling,
swooshing mist of sound, I’m not going to
quibble. It’s probably a good thing, too,
that we can’t hear Liz’s words, if the sleeve’s
snippets – “Fig up my love paramount/Ooze
out and away onehow” – are any indication
of their general quality. Better to think of
this extraordinary voice as being just an
exotic sort of instrument.
Were the sound more thistled, more
thorny, Liz would be a proper Mavis of the
moors, but the warp’n’woof of the lass’s
warble is not one of dulcet heather purity
but of, how can I say it, dry ice. That is its
mysterious charm. In her elementally naïve
universe, sheets and flesh don’t figure
much. Everything is sugar, tinderboxes,
glass and candles. It is empty of sex; empty,
too, of fear and joy. You flow to pure space,
soar to endless ice-capped peaks: an alien
child-world.
The record, this wreath of epic innocence,
only comes undone when The Cocteau
Twins get too cocooned, too gloved – in
Banshees. Then they are weak. ‘Multifoiled’
is their poor ‘Cocoon’, in fact; ‘Tinderbox Of
A Heart’ is just too morbidly deadpan. Other
parts of Side Two suffer from the languor of
‘A Kiss In The Dreamhouse’.
But then, of course, the record goes
out on its most exultant, unabashed
passionade, ‘Musette And Drums’, an
impossibly cavernous finale to the free
flight we have enjoyed across such
spectacular surfaces.
Did I mention escapism? These are
garlands where I feel secure.
Barney Hoskyns
NME ORIGINALS 67
 Feverish concoctions
NME, 29 January 1983, p15
BAUHAUS
Lagartija Nick
(Beggars Banquet)
Now that they’ve broken down
the doors of the music biz with
their inch-perfect ‘Ziggy Stardust’
(that was their plan, you dig),
Bauhaus offer us… revolution?
Salvation? Anarchy? Actually no.
Just another lifeless, predictable
rock song with all the usual
trappings of pompous vocals,
forgettable riffs and numbskull
drums and bass. What catalysts
you turned out to be boys, eh?
Paulo Hewitt
MM, 9 July 1983, p22
THE CREATURES
Right Now
(Polydor)
No one else had a hope this
week. The Creatures slipped in,
ransacked the place and left with
the best ideas in a fast car.
From the earliest seconds of
‘Right Now’ you know you’re on
shifting ground. Siouxsie baba-
da-babing to the noise of her
own fingers clicking until Budgie
barges in with congas on speed.
Christ, which way is this going?
The one direction you don’t
expect is a vagrant big band
coughing out drunken bursts of
brass in a Starlight Room of its
own making. There’s no telling
where their feet are going to fall
next. Probably on your head.
Paul Colbert
68 NME ORIGINALS
MM, 13 August 1983, p22
THE GLOVE
Like An Animal
(Polydor)
The Severin-Smith axis of the
Banshees finally break cover
with a vivacious confection.
Eminently preferable to the
Gothic big band swing of The
Creatures’ ‘Right Now’, this is a
feverish concoction: ignore the
lyric, the words are nonsense;
just listen to the noise. ‘Like An
Animal’ sparkles. Whooshing
swathes of synthesizer and
keyboards erupt colourfully and
continuously; jangling guitars
peel away, mostly on the lip of
the main action; the percussion
clatters with a nervy rattle that
recalls Wall Of Voodoo, while the
bass simply hums through the
mix, playing a melody adapted
from the final vocal cascades of
The Go-Betweens’ ‘Cattle And
Cane’, providing a challenging
counterpoint to Jeanette’s keenly
pitched but rather thin vocal.
‘Like An Animal’ provides the
same kind of spacious rush as
The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ and
races along with the exhausting
momentum of the thunderclap
climax of Love’s ‘Seven And
Seven Is’. Are The Glove the new
West Coast experimental pop
art ensemble? Whatever: like
all good pop records, ‘Like An
Animal’ sounds like it’s always
been there.
The Glove may yet prove to
be a real handful.
Allan Jones
TLFeBOOK
NME, 17 September 1983, p19
SIOUXSIE & THE
BANSHEES
Dear Prudence
(Polydor)
A beautiful sleeve and a less than
astonishing cover. As Siouxsie’s
pop standing dissolves from
light to dark and back again
the records of her group are
getting fogged and indecisive.
Whirlybird guitars and even some
nostalgic phasing scarcely paper
over a cracking and under-fed
treatment of a dried-out chestnut.
And it goes on, and on. What will
they do next – ‘The Continuing
Story of Bungalow Bill’?
Richard Cook
MM, 29 October 1983, p22
THE CURE
The Lovecats
(Fiction)
As if some macabre folly cast
Vincent Price instead of Jeremy
Irons in Brideshead Revisited,
or some sinister senility chose
Tobe Hooper to direct a series
of Jeeves, ‘The Lovecats’ is a
post-modernist’s dream of a
nightmare, a purrrfect example of
the past purrrceived impurrfectly,
then put to use on this purposeful
madness, the last of The Cure’s
“fun” single trilogy.
‘The Lovecats’ is Smith’s
masterpiece of disorientation,
a mental collage of history
unhinged. Herman Munster takes
spiked tea with Jean Cocteau
while a taxidermist twitches the
net curtains in anticipation of a
cannibal feast. But how to praise
something so zany? Well, at a
pinch it’s psychedelic cocktail
jazz, a strychnined nursery rhyme
where every allusion (illusion!)
triggers off a tunnel of flashbacks,
but it’s so much sillier than that.
Sing the slap-dash chorus,
swoon to that devil-may-care
decadent swing. Single of the
week? Single of the year(s)!
Steve Sutherland
MM, 3 December 1983, p27
COCTEAU TWINS
Sunburst And Snowblind
(4AD)
When The Cocteau Twins
perfected their impersonation of
Joy Division nobody liked them
much; now they’ve learnt another
act – The Banshees’ gothic wall of
sound – it seems suddenly they’re
very desirable. Yet this four-track
EP only serves to underline that
the Twins still prefer artifice to
substance. Everything about
their music appears to have been
chosen because of its superficial
immediacy: the grandiose guitar
lines, the fake majesty of the
frequently incomprehensible
lyrics, even the fatuous song
titles: ‘Sugar Hiccup’ and ‘Because
Of Whirl-Jack’! This is music for
people who want to play at being
serious young persons but lack
the resolve to see it through to
the bitter/positive end.
Ian Pye
 Chapter 6
1984
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Look At My Squalor!
NME, 19 May 1984, p33
NICK CAVE &
THE BAD SEEDS
From Her To Eternity
(Mute)
‘From Her to Eternity’ is one of the
greatest rock albums ever made.
Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’ is, I think,
the last album to achieve such
extremity of feeling, scope of
reference to animate it, and theatrical panache
to bind it all together. Dynamic, subtly layered,
funny and obsessive, ‘From Her To Eternity’ is
the work of a visionary unfettered by worship
of the romantic rock’n’roll mythology, and who
thus reaches peaks hitherto unscaled.
Like ‘Horses’, ‘From Her To Eternity’ starts
with a cover. Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’ looms
ominously for a few seconds, then explodes into
a melodramatic demon-showman snarl not far
removed from one of Nick’s heroes, Alex Harvey.
That gap-toothed stage pirate was a master of
sinister disguise and distorted self-projection,
and so too is Nick. ‘Avalanche’ has as its
protagonist a vengeful hybrid of Caliban, Christ
and Nietzsche’s Superman.
Whether you like your savage messiahs well-
read or not, you can’t escape the, er, avalanche
of ‘Avalanche’: you will hear no more slashing,
grinding, throbbing, wrenchingly physical
rock’n’roll ever. The Bad Seeds are drummer
Mick Harvey (ex-Birthday Party), bassist Barry
Adamson (ex-Magazine), guitarists Hugo Race
(ex-Play With Marionettes) and Blixa Bargeld
(Einstürzende Neubauten). These men storm
the ramparts of sound, these men will make you
sweat. When was the last time that happened?
To continue:
‘Cabin Fever!’ is a
sister song to ‘83’s
‘Mutiny In Heaven’,
You wil hear no more slashing,
another tale of
Nick the crazed
grinding, throbbing, wrenchingly
mariner adrift on
the boiling seas
of soul’s torment.
physical rock’n’roll ever
Wheels clank and your mind’s rope is stretched
to quivering tautness. Never has a keel-hauling
and a hanging been so much fun.
And that rope recurs in ‘Well Of Misery’,
and from it “dangles the bucket of sorrow
which swings slow like a bell and its toll is dead
and hollow”. Note the smooth procession of
imagery united in the single theme of death,
for Nick’s little girl floats at the bottom of that
well. Two favourite songs of Nick’s are ‘Hey Joe’
and Neil Young’s ‘Down By The River’: his motto
could be “You always kill the one you love”.
From the mordantly stalking bassline
through the chain-gang rhythm and chorus
70 NME ORIGINALS
If this
to the extraordinarily twisted bottleneck
guitar and harmonica at the end, ‘Well Of
Misery’ exemplifies the range and logic of
Nick’s songwriting and the staggering musical
imagination that has gone into its realisation.
‘Wings Off Flies’ is a malevolent word-
association game on the themes of life, loss
I’m
and retribution. Wickedly funny, it’s also worth
mentioning that when Mick Harvey’s drums
thunder to a crescendo during the
first chorus, I nearly fainted with
their crushing force.
Back to the central concern, the
oldest and saddest story of them
all, three versions of which fall
either side of the spine and right
at the very end of the LP. They
are the title track, ‘Saint Huck’,
and ‘A Box For Black Paul’ – epic
tragedies, ‘rock psychodramas’
as they used to be called. We’re talking ‘ Land’,
we’re talking ‘The End’, we’re talking ‘Heroin’,
we’re talking ‘Desolation Row’…
These three songs aspire to an ambition
greater still than ‘Mutiny In Heaven’, Cave’s
masterpiece thus far. A whole welter of
referential detail has been plundered from
cliché-dom to be restored to its original force,
though not perhaps a force of quite the same
meaning as when first coined.
“Achtung!” : in ‘Saint Huck’ you will be
crushed by a relentlessly stormtrooping
drive from claustrophobia to lebensraum;
Robert Mitchum’s fake Southern preacher
out of Charles Laughton’s Night Of The Hunter,
‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ tattooed on clenched white
knuckles, an Amerikan Gothic knell tolling
across the turgid Mississippi. Melodramatic
yes, but overwrought no.
‘From Her to Eternity’, the song, is an epic,
starring the most icy scalpel of a piano motif
ever to cut to the heart of trauma. And backing
it up is an arsenal of breakdown, electrocution
and massacre that rises and rises in the multiple
orgasm of a man torturing himself to death.
And finally the funeral oration of ‘A Box For
Black Paul’. A piano maudlin with moonshine
melancholy drifts over a steaming swamp,
surveying the
aftermath of
the lynching
of Black Paul.
(BP also stands
for Birthday
Party, and
that inquest’s
verdict must
thus stand as murder, not suicide.) Death has
reared up again, and so this elegy wends it way
to the broken heart of Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’,
rewritten as the testament of a man whose
loved one has not survived her leaving him.
And thus Nick’s girl finally fades away in the
coda, leaving just the echo of the sound that’s
dominated this record, the mutated electric
blues collage of a man as much in the tradition
of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Moanin’ At Midnight’ as he is
of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov…
As I said, this is one of the greatest rock
albums ever made.
Mat Snow
TLFeBOOK

is heaven
bailing out
NME, 12 May 1984, p28
Who is the real Nick Cave and will he ever emerge from his
gallery of masks borrowed from classical fiction and the
hallowed museums of rock’n’roll? Don Watson goes in search of
old Nick as he releases his debut solo LP, ‘From Her to Eternity’
TLFeBOOK
1984
t he enigma of The Birthday Party, like that
of Werner Herzog’s saintly idiot Kaspar
Hauser, begins with grunts in the darkness
and ends in murder.
Slithering between irony and tragedy last year,
The Birthday Party slug finally sliced itself open
on that razor’s edge, but instead of the unsightly
mess you might have expected, it left behind the
finest examples of its art in ‘The Bad Seed’ and
‘Mutiny’ – two four-track EPs that shone through
the amorphous mass of transparent mediocrity
released in 1983. Both are testaments of romantic
daring and sick obsessiveness, full of feverish
images of guilt, pictures of murder that are
simultaneously horrendous and secretly attractive.
It was at that point that it first became clear
that Nick Cave’s songwriting was departing from
every mode known to rock and developing into
some new, iridescent form, by turns trenchant
and direct, epic and overblown. Meanwhile,
the music was hurling itself into a state of wild,
epileptic disorder.
And yet in the midst of the crash, Nick
captured the mood of modern Britain with an
acute perception that the desperate, depressing
worthiness of a Weller could never have
approached: “At night my body blushed to the
whistle on the birch”, he raved. “With a little
practise I learned to use it on myself ”.
With that line, ostensibly referring to religion, he
encapsulated the masochism of a nation that seems
to be yielding any notion of individual power to
a higher authority. It was a reaction against the
dulling of the imagination. It ended The Birthday
Party in the only way possible – violently.
From the wreckage of ‘Mutiny’, Cave has now
emerged with a solo LP, ‘From Her To Eternity’.
Released from all controls, Cave’s songwriting
has spiralled into a wild and wheeling poetry of
cruelty, pursuing the most nightmarish strands
of The Birthday Party’s fascinations. It’s not
constructed without a certain humour, but it’s
dark, even by the standards of The Birthday Party.
‘From Her To Eternity’ is a statement of romantic
irrationalism stretched to the very limits.
Talk to Nick Cave and you’re talking to a
variety of characters. Like JG Ballard he views
external reality as a sinister novel, and he seeks
to play more parts: the irresponsible artist, the
wounded romantic, the hunched grotesque,
the Nietzschean individualist. He plays with
the cartoon personae of Nick Cave in the same
manner that he manipulates the images of Elvis
Presley or Iggy Pop.
Right now he’s playing a character very close to
the consumptive hag displaying her blood spots in
Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment, as he indicates
the cramped surroundings of his current living
conditions. Look at my squalor!
“Nice, isn’t it?” he asks with ironic relish as we
enter the single room he shares with Bad Seeds
Blixa Bargeld (also of Einstürzende Neubauten)
and Hugo Race. At the moment, though, Blixa has
fled to Berlin and Hugo to Oxford, leaving Nick
to share the room with a handful of telephone
messages, a copy of Moby Dick and a treasured
portrait of GI period Elvis Presley.
He runs nicotine-stained fingers through his
DEREK RIDGERS
back-combed nest of hair, an amused glance
reflected in the bathroom mirror as he watches


NME ORIGINALS 71
 In The Ghetto


the latest voyeurs stumbling around in search
of standing space amid the dirty laundry.
“I always think it’s important to show people
where you live,” he continues.
So what are the chances that Nick Cave will
give himself away? Show us the bleeding heart he
delights in setting against the swastika?
Well, first we’d have to distinguish just which
one of the many faces on show, both here and
elsewhere, precisely is Nick Cave. His art is one of
dramatic fakery, executed with a wicked delight
in defying expectation.
Of course there’s the Wild Man Of Rock/
Thinking Man Of The Modern Age dichotomy
between the most readily recognisable Nick Cave
stage personae and the calm and contemplative
demeanour of Nick Cave the interviewee. But his
gallery of masks contains less easily classifiable
characters than that – some borrowed from
history, some from classical fiction, some from
the most hallowed museums of rock’n’roll.
In his songs fiction merges into reality: the
shadow of Raskolnikov mingles with Hamlet;
Cave’s own creations – Gun, King Ink, The Dim
Locator – mix with hybrids like Saint Huck.
All of them are partly, but never entirely, Cave
himself. His latest fascination stares down at us
from the wall.
“I’ve just joined the Elvis Presley Fan Club,” he
grins. “They’re sending me some posters; can’t
imagine I’ll go to many of the meetings though.”
The Presley infatuation is reflected in a vocal
inflection at the end of ‘Box For Black Paul’;
more specifically there’s the next single, a version
of ‘In The Ghetto’.
“There’s very little in it to suggest that it’s
recorded with anything other than the
greatest respect and admiration,” he
says with a certain bemusement. “I’ve got a right to be arrogant.
“I love it – but I can imagine a
Birthday Party fan might have some
difficulty knowing what to make of it.”
I’m famous. I’m Napoleon”
As with most of Cave’s fascinations, his
interest in Presley is in his decline, in the
artifice rather than the art.
“The influence that I get from any fictional
character,” he says, “is from their cartoon
selves, the point at which they themselves
become clichés. In that sense, all of my own
characters are cartoons of themselves as well,
in that they begin with a stock cliché that
people can latch on to, that will trigger off
the desired initial impression.
“You have to remember what a cliché
is – which is something that was formerly
powerful, but through overuse has become
meaningless. You can restore its meaning by
putting it in a different setting.”
Musically, ‘From Her to Eternity’ is a
sparse sound, snagged with Blixa Bargeld’s
corruption of the blues guitar. As a
longstanding friend of Nick’s, Blixa was
the natural choice – not only because
Neubauten’s philosophy is in accord with
Cave’s “search for a simpler, more directly
violent” form of expression, but because as
a non-musician he is incapable of seeing
things in a conventional manner.
“As far as I can work out, Blixa can’t
actually play the guitar in the conventional
72 NME ORIGINALS
form at all, but he has some method of tuning
the instrument that can produce the most
amazing noises without the use of any effects
whatsoever. He would regard using footpedals
or whatever as a hopelessly middle class, public
school form of playing.”
Where the music is simple and direct, though,
the lyrics have developed a new complexity. The
images are direct and violent, but there’s always
something deeper and darker than the surface
indicates. It makes demands on the listener that
Nick describes with a typical arrogance.
“I see it in same the way as a tight, tense drama
in the cinema – my songs require you to listen to
the storyline from beginning to end, to listen to
and understand each line. Otherwise you get lost
in the same way as you would if you decided to
visit the toilet in the final scenes of Taxi Driver
and expect to know what the film is about.”
As he proclaims, he has abandoned any
careerist notions that he might have entertained.
It’s a brave attempt to escape the tyrannies of
commercial punishment and reward.
“I would like to escape defining my own
reality in terms of punishment and reward, in
preference to what I consider to be good and bad.
“Those lines in ‘Mutiny’ referring to
punishment and reward were intended to point
the finger at religion, and why people believed
in the conventional concepts of good and bad,
which are based on greed and fear.
“I’m very interested in discovering something
within myself that is not affected by other forces.
I have very strong feelings that the way I am is
not due to the influence of my parents or my
environment that I was brought up in – any
TLFeBOOK
external factors are basically quite superficial.
I would like to consider myself totally alone
and above those influences, which is to do
with developing a character that is sufficiently
strong not to be influenced by the way that other
people think, but to develop a moral code that
is not under the influence of ordinary laws and
religious laws – and be able to live under that
without a nagging conscience.”
Murder, of course, looms large in Cave’s scheme
of things.
“My songs are fairly harmless vehicles for
expressing what I might entertain within my
mind,” Cave says. “The things that I write
about are things that, outside of the obvious
difficulties, I would like to witness. I don’t dwell
on these themes in order to be controversial.
There are things that I do for those reasons but
they’re very deliberate and obvious things that
are making a comment on the idea of being
controversial, and how ridiculous and shallow
such a way of life is.’’
You mean the vacuity of the good-old
fashioned shock value?
“Well… In the case of the swastika I’ve always
used it in the most deliberately moronic fashion.
I’ll also do that in the writing, by inserting a line
that is deliberately shocking or irresponsible. It’s
finding those symbols and thoughts that are far
more shocking in certain contexts than they are
in others. As I’ve said, certain clichés in the right
context can still be reasonably effective…”
As the conversation continues in a local pub,
an old man leans across to our table, and fi xes
Nick with a stare.
‘’You’re an arrogant fellow,’’ the
old man accuses.
‘’I’ve got a right to be, I’m a
famous person,’’ Nick replies. “I’ve
just done a European tour.’’
“Oh yeah, what’s your name?’’
“I’m Napoleon,’’ answers Nick, with
a twinkle.
Yes, the role of the irresponsible artist
as provocateur, as enemy of the tidy world
of liberal moralists has been in existence
for some time now, long enough now to
qualify for cliché status.
All the same, some of us are grateful
that the rich tapestry of rock’n’roll has
been splattered with the pus and gore of
The Velvet Undergrounds, the Iggy Pops,
the Foetuses and the Nick Caves, figures
who will play with fire and seek to scorch
the glossy package of the shiny pop fantasy.
Nick Cave is an ardent irrationalist, too
complex a creature to plod the straight
line of the liberal path. His images are a
perpetual provocation contrived to throw
even his admirers into a state of crisis.
“I would like to define this irrationalism as
the ultimate principle of infinity in our art…
the yearning for meaning in madness… the
continuation of life by other means, including
the issues of guilt, the work of mourning as
the reflection of this loneliness of infinity. At
its start suffering; and at its end morality.’’
DEREK RIDGERS
– Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, taken from Hitler:
A Film From Germany.

MM, 5 May 1984, p24
THE CURE
The Top
(Fiction)
Trying to get to the
bottom of ‘The Top’
is a bit like trying to
decide whether a happy
lunatic would be better
off sane. It’s silly and
sinister, like Syd Barrett.
It’s selfish, irresponsible,
perfectly amoral and
completely incompatible
with anything else
happening now or, indeed, anything
that’s probably ever happened.
It’s playing practical jokes where
the victim dies. It’s Vincent Price in
Theatre Of Blood – plotting, sawing
the head off another nice song.
In a way it’s as carefree and cocky
as the ‘White Album’ but it never
TOM SHEEHAN
sounds wilfully disorganised. Its
logic is strict, just unhinged.
‘The Top’ is psychedelia that
can’t be dated, the sounds and
shapes of somebody revelling in
an identity crisis. It recognises no
values but its own existence; no
rules, no precedents, no
preconceptions. ‘The
Top’ is perfect freedom.
I’ve yet to meet
anyone who can tell
me why The Cure are
having hits now of
all times. Have we
discovered something
in Smith’s busy
lethargy (two bands
and still dreaming all day!), and if so,
what? Or has Smith uncovered some
twitching nerve near our funny
bone that reacts instinctively to
his whimsical tortures? Whatever’s
going on, Smith has done what all
the Wellers have been bleating on
about – he’s escaped his past and
wriggled out of the cul-de-sac that
we knew and loved to death as
The Cure. He doesn’t care what we
TLFeBOOK
Robert Smith:
tipped for
‘The Top’
think any more – he’s not the guitar
hero in black with a head stuffed
with Camus, but he could be next
Wednesday if he felt like it. He just
doesn’t give two hoots.
Smith’s voice is all over the place:
mock-passionate, whining, daft as
Steve Harley, devious as Devoto.
Where his head’s at is something
else; most of the lyrics sound like
video cues to egg on Tim Pope to
weirder excesses.
Could it be drugs? ‘The Wailing
Wall’ could be an acid trip in Israel.
Could it be The Banshees? ‘The Top’
itself worms around similar tunnels.
Could Smith be a hippy? ‘Dressing
Up’ is a gorgeous acoustic ditty,
yawning and stretching like vintage
String Band. Could it be cunning?
Oh, very. There are clues to Smith’s
inspiration: the
flutey feedback
of ‘Wailing Wall’ is
Hendrix’s ‘If Six Were
Nine’; ‘Give Me It’
echoes Nick Cave’s
‘Mutiny In Heaven’.
Still, accounting
for ‘The Top’ is like
accounting for a dream
– you add it all up and
there’s still something missing.
I reckon either Smith’s gone mad or
we have. Maybe both. Who knows?
Who cares? Love it!
Steve Sutherland
1984
MM, 9 June 1984, p32
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Hyaena
(Wonderland)
The laughing dog. The scavenger.
The survivor, picking over the bones
of the past to nourish the present.
At times ignoble, essentially alive.
This is the Banshees.
Their prey may have varied
over the years, but it’s still the
same old carrion carry-on. At their
transcendental best, the Banshees
are a million times more than the
sum of their parts. That arrogantly
independent attitude, those
embarrassing excursions into the
occult, the creeping spell and the
sudden rush of blood is so unique
that it takes on a life of its own.
There are many such moments
on ‘Hyaena’, moments where
the Banshees are caught up in
the revelry of their own creations.
Parts of it are so wistfully carefree
that it’s impossible not to credit
Robert Smith as the talisman
– his irreverence seems to course
through everything.
‘Take Me Back’ is the Banshees
rollicking like some primitive jazz
combo drunk on the Good Lord’s
wine. On ‘Belladonna’, Smith’s
liquid guitar relaxes Sioux to the
extent that she drops a few masks
to reveal her vulnerability. When the
siren sings “daylight devours your
unguarded hours”, she’s illuminating
her own predicament so acutely it
surely can’t be coincidence.
‘Dazzle’, too, is naively daring:
Siouxsie’s voice, framed alone
against the firmament of strings.
It could be Lloyd Webber’s Cats or
something by Vaughn Williams.
You can get impressed, wrapped up
and lost in this. That’s the beauty
but then there’s the complacency.
‘Running Town’ tries to sound eerie
but instead of evoking the awful
truth behind the clown’s
cheery mask, it just sounds
giddy and silly. And
‘Hunger For This’ and
‘Pointing Bone’ are just
the Banshees being
the Banshees.
I doubt ‘Hyaena’
could be any other way.
It urges itself to the
turning point where we
stop assuming what the Banshees
should be and start accepting that
they can do anything they like.
‘Hyaena’ is an immaculate
conception. Again.
Steve Sutherland
NME ORIGINALS 73
 The Last Great Rock Band
MM, 25 August 1984, p29
THE CULT
Dreamtime
(Beggars Banquet)
“Only connect.” (EM Forster)
Instinctively coveted but
words still unclear. So it is with
The Cult. Something magnificent
glows within these songs, ideas
and lyrics as emotions swirl, crash
and dance…
…and connect of course, while
the over-the-top press release
makes much, with tongue piercing
cheek, of their Rolling Stones
similarities (in terms of “the future”).
It’s not far from the truth. The
Cult, almost accidentally, could
be the last great rock band. With
their rhythmic ferocity, their guitar
predominance and purely unique
vocals, membership is open to that
club of U2, Big Country, The Clash
and Simple Minds, but there is an
important difference:
The Cult don’t come
out of a packet.
There’s an ethereal
fire burning in their
songs (although the
title track seems rather
crass), which could have
quite an effect when
they bite deep into the
charts, as they clearly will.
And the beneficiaries of that will
are us. Hooked and pampered by
The Cult: (l to r)
Billy Duffy,
Jamie Stewart,
Ian Astbury,
Nigel Preston
74 NME ORIGINALS
‘Horse Nation’ onwards. Gritty and
noisy (‘Spiritwalker’) with finesse
and calamity (‘83rd Dream’), The
Cult take great strides to ease
the emotions home. ‘Flower In
The Desert’ and ‘Bad Medicine
Waltz’ are not merely hypnotic but
strangely uplifting and reassuring.
Try it, dumbo.
The Stones, eh? Hmm. The
trouble is that people are no longer
inclined to be shaken awake,
particularly since the introduction
of those spectacular video
nightgowns. But The Cult are on a
precipice. Not since the Ants have
there been clandestine guards
meeting commercial success,
without excess. The Ants, of course,
made that unexpected shift into
pantomime, so the crown is there
if The Cult want it. They could really
do something.
Musically they are spruce and
hard-hitting. Nigel Preston, man
of a thousand arms, is a rhythmical
lynch-pin of some
versatility.
His partner, Jamie
Stewart (retired from
acting), is a shade less
assertive, although the
live album (given away
free with the first
10,000 copies) shows
him in ruthless form.
Billy Duffy (currently
keeping clear of swimming pools)
exhibits true mastery, the notes
falling in viscous ringlets. And of
course there’s Ian Astbury. A
telescopic voice, rearing up in
front and then nipping round
the back for a bit of well-
groomed gargling.
And this live album, where
Ian harangues the sleeping
characters at the back, catches
them in explosive form: “We
played our fucking hearts out for
your tonight. The least you could
do is show some appreciation!”
Get stuck in. All of you.
And before I go lads, a piece of
advice in case, on your travels,
you should come to a town
called Altamont.
Keep driving.
Mick Mercer
TLFeBOOK
MM, 10 November 1984, p34
COCTEAU TWINS
Treasure
(4AD)
Trust true brilliance to arrive by
accident. With ‘Treasure’ echoing
all around my head, it all seems so
obvious. Only something this naive
could shake the shame from all
categories we worry about.
Relax. ‘Treasure’ sounds like
nothing you’ve ever heard and
everything you’ve ever wished for.
Most people change; The
Cocteau Twins blossom. The break
from the hellish Gothic shackles
of the awkward ‘Garlands’ to the
heavenly scorpion
cocktail jazz of ‘Head
Over Heels’ was
a metamorphosis
beyond the imagining.
But how were we to
know that the chrysalis
had only just cracked,
that the colours we were
devouring were just a
dazzling secretion?
Without meaning to, without
caring, ‘Treasure’ is what so many
strive for – a new pop music. Anyone
can listen to this and feel enriched.
It’s stirring, sensual, stately, subtle.
It’s bubblegum spiked with acid. It’s
candy-coloured, it’s timeless.
Crack its sugary shell and you
read the name right through. Pin
its plump, squirming body to a
Cocteau Twin
Liz Fraser: the
voice of God
board and examine its translucent
wings and it’s an anatomical marvel.
Simon Raymonde’s sturdy, haunting
bass forms a vertebrae, the drum
machine drops heartbeats like
bombs and Robin Guthrie’s guitar
congeals into a pale, perfect skin.
The creature thus far is grubbing
in the dark, begging for sight. It’s
the voice that leads it from sweet
ambience to poignant emotion. Liz
Fraser must be schizophrenic, she
speaks in so many tongues. During
‘Lorelei’ she’s a panting orgasm,
a celestial turn-on. As ‘Pandora’
she’s The Angel From Ipanema;
as ‘Otterly’ she’s the spectral
confessor; as ‘Amelia’, the lady with
the lamp.
It would be easy
to point out that The
Cocteau Twins use
Liz’s voice as an
instrument rather than
a narrative, but that’s
like reducing flight to
the motion of muscles.
Liz isn’t accomplished,
she’s inspired.
It’s weird. The Cocteaus barely
seem to exist off record. They work
like receivers; something plays
itself through them and reaches
us untainted and pure. There are
dimensions to ‘Treasure’ which
strike me as spiritual – it invades the
body, intoxicates the imagination
and succours the soul. Surely this
TOM SHEEHAN
band is the voice of God.
Steve Sutherland
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TLFeBOOK
 Hooked On Classics
NME, 17 March 1984, p21
Singles
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Swimming Horses
(Polydor)
Siouxsie! Listen to me! It is
obvious by now that your career
will be at its most pungent if it
is composed solely of covers,
the Cilla Black of the Blackheart
Set – nothing wrong with that,
someone’s got to do it – so may
I recommend ‘Martha My Dear’,
the crooner Paul McCartney’s
love song to his late sheepdog –
it is a Beatles song from ‘The
White Album’ (ring a bell?), a
song about an animal (you go
for our furry friends, don’t you?)
and ripe for reproduction. So
may I recommend it to you as
a wise career move?
Oh, sod you, then.
Julie Burchill
NME, 21 April 1984, p21
COCTEAU TWINS
Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops
(4AD)
In The Cocteau Twins scheme
of things, putting on a black
dress and looked pained = a
cosmic Piaf! A plodding tortuous
dirge = a mark of sensitivity!
Screeching like a doolally fishwife
= passion! These precious little
people are one of the finest
arguments I have ever heard for
STEVE RAPPOST
bringing back National Service.
Tony Parsons
76 NME ORIGINALS
MM, 12 May 1984, p30
THE CULT
Spiritwalker
(Situation 2)
If they keep this up, The Cult soon
won’t have a name at all. Still,
they can be relied on to deliver
a bit of clout, and this bristles
with hostile voice and scorched-
earth guitar. Not much of a song,
unfortunately.
Adam Sweeting
NME, 4 August 1984, p16
THE SISTERS
OF MERCY
Body And Soul
(Merciful Release/WEA)
Here’s a nugget to start with.
As I write, ‘Body And Soul’
has crashed into the Hot 100 at
– let’s see, now – number 100.
Oh well, it’s magnificent all
the same: a gorgeous swell of
sensurrounding warmth.
Where will the indie charts
be without them? …
Paul Du Noyer
TLFeBOOK
pretentious, three traps which
most previous classical/rock
experimenters have fallen into
headfirst. In fact, the power of a
classical orchestra is the perfect
foil for the band’s grindingly
insistent sounds and there’s
something about Siouxsie’s
voice which benefits from such
a combination of chaos and
formality. ‘Overground’ is the
undoubted highlight, with the
orchestra churning away at a
sort of spaghetti western
backing full of castanets and
snare drums while the guitars
snarl angrily between them.
A little reminiscent of Deep
Purple’s ‘Concerto For Group
And Orchestra’… but let’s not
go into that.
Mark Jenkins
MM, 25 August 1984, p30
THE CULT
Go West
(Crazy Spinning Circles)
(Beggars Banquet)
Exuberant youths become
strapping lads, the rebel
yell controlled but
not calm. There is
smooth cloud cover,
but you can’t hide
the lightning storm
within.
Mick Mercer
Sioux: the Cilla
Black of the
Blackheart Set
NME, 25 October 1984, p20
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
The Thorn
(Polydor)
Remixed and remodelled
with strings, choirs and all the
production of a ‘Hooked On
Classics’ effort, ‘Overground’,
‘Voices’, ‘Placebo Effect’ and ‘Red
Over White’ do The Banshees
credit – it doesn’t sound in
the least bit silly, clichéd or
 Chapter 7
1985
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Amphetamine Logic

MM, 16 March 1985, p30

CARELE SS
WHI SPERS
Steve Sutherland swaps badinage with Andy Eldritch of
The Sisters Of Mercy. Eldritch reveals little about his
new LP, but we learn that he intends to eat lemons on tour

t
he self-styled Mr Eldritch drags on his fag and takes
another of those long, practised, meditative pauses. I’ve
just asked him how come he wasn’t asked to sing on the
Band Aid single. Almost a minute elapses.
He exhales audibly: “That’s a tough one, isn’t it?”
This self-same Mr Eldritch, stubble-chinned and bone-dry
behind shades in a Leeds living room, is explaining why The
Sisters Of Mercy’s debut album, ‘First And Last And Always’,
has taken so damn long to crawl into the light of day. He
confirms the rumours of illness, revelling in revealing just
what he wants and no more. Just like his songs.
“I’ve got the scars to prove it. I think I just started working
too hard and, at the end of last summer, my body said, ‘No
thank you. This has gone far enough. It’ll end in tears.’ So
I’ve calmed down a bit… I enjoy it so much, being strung out
for a very long time… I’m told you can’t do it for that long.”
This is, of course, the only possible reaction from a man
associated with the doomier side of existence.
“Doomy is a housewives’ word for realistic. It’s a
dangerous world.”
Now this Mr Eldritch is a man of starchy intelligence,
the sort of fellow you can say words like “art” to and not feel

78 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 1985

like a dickhead. And so it was that I asked him
whether his art informed his life or vice versa.
And, naturally enough, this was exactly the sort
of question he loves.
“After so much practice, it’s very difficult not
to live it so, yeah, the lifestyle informs the art.
I keep putting myself in this godawful position
quite deliberately. It’s possible to get out of it but
I’ve chosen not to.
“The next question is, ‘Will there come a point
where you can’t? And then what will you do?’
And the answer is, ‘I don’t know’. I shall probably
just keel over.”
“You have to laugh at it because you have to
see it for what it might do to the nation’s youth
and, God forbid, to the nation’s housewives to
hear ‘Amphetamine Logic’.”
This Mr Eldritch, as you’ll have doubtless
surmised, is one wry customer, a bit of a master
when it comes to a wind-up and I, too, have had
my moments so we joust a bit and I ask him what
MM, 16 March 1985, p28
he’d say to somebody who considered his antics
pathetic because some people really are ill while
his maladies are generally self-induced? THE SISTERS OF MERCY
“I’d probably tell them to fuck off.” He rasps First And Last And Always
and I take it to be laughter. “Telling people to (Merciful Release/WEA)

I tell this Mr Eldritch that I think he’s a damn fuck off, that sense of glorious vindication, is a James Dean is alive!
good actor, creating for himself the classic role primary, motivating factor, I think.” He’s living in a flat
of romantic victim. Rock’n’roll in Leeds disguised
He rather likes this outlaws, eh? as Andrew Eldritch
notion too.
“I’ve spent so long
“Telling people to fuck off, “Aren’t we just! No!
We have appetites!
– a 24-hours-a-day
enigma, complete
doing this that I can’t
distance the two. And
that glorious vindication, is a We’re human! We
have needs! It’s
with permanently
affixed shades.
it’s more interesting
than what I was
primary motivating factor” about time we were
pandered to.”
Last year it
seemed that
before. I was so shot Such as? success had eluded the Sisters once and
when I wrote the lyrics on the album that there’s “Such as the 12 fresh lemons I have to have for all. But their new album is packed with
no distancing of persons at all. It’s not a problem every night on the next tour.” glistening gems, and just as Andy’s beat-up
to live up to it, it’s just a problem to live, period. This is exactly the stuff of which legends are crow hat appears to be riveted to his head,
The way I seem to end up living these days, I’m made and, of course, Mr Eldritch forever keeps so his lugubrious baritone-drone rivets
very aware of how fast the blood’s going round an eye on legend. But I wonder, can someone the attention – in turns commanding, then
and how high the sugar level is because I’ve been so cryptic with such an advanced, nay, chronic, inviting, following a path wrought with morbid
forced to be aware of it.” sense of irony ever attain that status? depression and reeking of misery.
I now decide it’s time Mr Eldritch and I “No, because I always let people know just that “I have heard a million conversations going
stopped beating around the bush and started bit too much. It disturbs them.” where they’ve been before/I don’t care for words
talking serious drugs so I inform him that, in my Mr Eldritch’s favourite word is “oblique” and that don’t belong”. Ah, music to hum over the
humble opinion, the second side of ‘First And yet his followers tend to be the new Goths, the three-minute warning. Yet the doom-ridden,
Last And Always’ is about being wasted, finding it ersatz Siouxsies. Strange. Mr Eldritch’s fantasy gloom-trodden world of the Sisters is but half
hard to cope and relishing every agonised second. is much more subversive. He likes to flirt with their appeal. Delicacy showers the spheres of
He smirks: “It would be clichés. He likes twisting his ‘Black Planet’ as Wayne’s infectious guitaring
dishonest to write anything sources. Goddamn, he even slopes and spirals around words cradled with
more homely. I don’t think acknowledges his sources! dark innuendo, rhymes invested with sparks
the band’s particular
pleasures are destructive.
Ten things you The Sisters once recorded
‘Gimme Shelter’.
of aggression, and a chorus that once heard, is
never to be forgotten.
It’s horses for courses. At
our age, you generally know
didn’t want to know “Everybody’s doing
exactly the same thing to
The Sisters supplement the intensity of
‘Walk Away’ with the bittersweet tang of ‘No
what’s good for you and
what isn’t and, most of the
about Mr Eldritch a greater or lesser degree.
We’re just rather shameless
Time to Cry’, while ‘A Rock And A Hard Place’
breathes life into the ossified remains of
time, you stick to what’s 1. His favourite film is The Blues about it. People don’t like to post-punk using Eldritch’s dulcet tones to bind
good for you. None of the Brothers be reminded of it. They’d together the ornaments of instrumentation as
songs on the album are 2. He supports Manchester much rather we went out they dance on the grave of circumstance.
about being a victim of one’s United there like messiahs from The second side unveils Celtic guitars that
own pleasures except in the 3.̀ He is currently courting Josie another planet who’d never career through arid wastelands until they’re
case of getting emotionally from Vicious Pink heard of Chuck Berry swept up by the blistering chorus of ‘First
involved with people who 4. He owns a spiffing collection or…” – he whispers this bit And Last And Always’. The surge of drums
aren’t very good for you.” of Likely Lads videos – “…Led Zeppelin.” finally yields to a sustaining piano note that
So what sort of 5. He idolises Jake Thackeray If it’s only rock’n’roll, is stretches suspense to a point only dreamt of
irresponsible hero is this 6. He’s currently launching a this Mr Eldritch really happy by Hitchcock. God forbid, but these songs are
man in black who stalks campaign to get Reg Varney as being a Sister? almost explosive enough to launch a goth
the streets of Leeds 4 in a the next Dr Who and, failing that, “Smug might be a better revival (the third this year?).
battered cowboy hat? Eleanor Bron word. We’re in a good Have Mercy! And pass the razor blades.
“The sort of irresponsible 7. He studied French and German position. We can step in Andrew’s sense of humour rattles with such
hero who makes it very at St Johns, Oxford and then and out of the mainstream ominous overtones that laughter takes fright
clear that certain things Chinese at Leeds University and the band decide what’s and takes flight. His prowling voice veers
are irresponsible. There’s 8. His black coat/cloak was given required, not someone else.” dangerously close to pastiche, but the songs
no actual propagation of to him by The Gun Club Is there anyone else, I ask, are so striped with splinters of power and pain,
irresponsibility on the 9. He owns the 12-inch of who Mr Eldritch reckons is his words remain dangerous.
records and that’s why you ‘Careless Whisper’ although he doing anything worthwhile? Here, all past promises have been fulfilled:
need detachment, irony with doesn’t own a record player. “It’s He pauses that pause: the Sisters have successfully accumulated a
a capital I. You have to be important to have the artefact if “Roy Kinnear, always.” startling array of timeless jewels.
clinical about certain aspects the record’s that good.” My, he is a smug bastard It can only be a matter of time before they
DEREK RIDGERS

of portraying any persona, 10. There’s a picture of Jimmy isn’t he? accumulate success.
even if it’s your genuine self. White above his fireplace “Well, yeah. Why not?” Ted Mico

NME ORIGINALS 79
TLFeBOOK
 Southern
No More Mad
DeAth
BobCult

claustrophobia of ‘Pornography’,
MM, 8 June 1985, p34 checked himself out of the funny
farm where he turned out ‘The

NICK CAVE & Top’, and now roams among us,

THE BAD SEEDS
The Firstborn Is Dead
(Mute)
Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds
continue their excursion into a
nightmare world where perdition
will never lead to
salvation, and pain
and horror are not
fleeting agonies,
but the only true
religion.
Despite the
obvious drawbacks
of coming from
Australia (and not
the Deep South),
being white (and not black), and
looking like a cadaver (and not
having a dead grandfather who
was a slave) Cave has achieved
a startling grasp on beat of a ritual drum at a sacrifice
the John Lee Hooker as Barry Adamson’s bass hauls the
and Screaming Jay lumbering beast across landscapes
Hawkins world of blues. of mock hell. Cave’s voice aches with
Thunderclaps and the persecution, but his stories of woe
acid rain of futility drench are tinted with the blackest humour.
the sparse Bo Diddley- It’s not clear if ‘Say Goodbye To The
style guitar of opener Little Girl Tree’ is a joke pretending
‘Tupelo’, which quickly to be funny, or a man pretending to
sets this album far above be a joke, but either way it succeeds!
the standard post-junkie blues ‘Black Crow King’: Blixa’s lone six-
epics that are dampened by crass string scrapes the crypt floor while
sentiment and self-pity. Nick recounts the tale of a King who
‘Knocking On Joe’ chimes to the is set up for worship only to find
his former authority turns to
parody. Sound familiar?
Nothing like as familiar as
‘Wanted Man’ – which sounds
remarkably like Dr Feelgood!
The album’s lugubrious
chain-gang beat marches
on – arid and remorseless,
punctuating Nick’s hollow
and morbid
chant. Halfway
through the
murderous
‘Train Long
Suffering’
you wish
someone
would hand
Nick a razor-
blade and
put us all out of our misery.
It’s sordid, it’s predictable,
it’s sickening, and it’s quite
indispensable!
Ted Mico
MM, 31 August 1985, p27
THE CURE
The Head On The Door
Fiction
No more Mad Bob? Maybe.
Maybe not. Robert Smith
has wormed himself into
an enviable but precarious
position over the past 18
months. We don’t know
what to expect any more.
But, then again, we know
Black crow king: to expect nothing. He’s
Nick Cave in his slipped the straitjacket
a harmless eccentric. I can’t help
wondering if the magnificent liberty
that fashioned ‘The Head On The
Door’ won’t cement into another
image, comfortably digested and
easily dismissed.
Certainly, this album is as
wilfully enigmatic as ever. The
only difference is it’s determinedly
languorous, nowhere near as
tortured or tense as its predecessor.
So ‘The Head…’ is a collection
of pop songs, it’s as simple(?) as
that. Bursting with potential hits,
it staggers under its influences,
rescued from dilettantism solely
by Smith’s steady presence. Some
stuff, like ‘The Baby Screams’ – a
classic Cure concoction of mixed
metaphors and creeping guitar
– will satisfy the Faithful. Others, like
‘Close To Me’ – a squirming, sobbing,
pleading disco thing complete with
handclaps – will seduce just about
any Tom, Dick or Vanessa.
‘The Head…’ makes a mockery
not only of the accepted parameters
of what the radio will play and the
public accept, but also of what The
Cure are supposed to be about.
There’s nothing obscure or sinister
about ‘A Night Like
This’ – it deals with
love and despair in
desperate balance,
toys with a joyously
incongruous singalong
and accommodates a
sax break more at home
with Hall & Oates.
It’s a neat ragbag of
the arbitrary, each song
a separate piece from a different
jigsaw. Some shapes bear the
imprint of exotic scenes – ‘Kyoto
Song’ sounds Japanese while ‘The
Blood’ stamps through its paces to
a flamenco guitar. Others suggest
there are more strident, less fickle
things ahead. ‘Push’, for example,
is stronger, less whimsical than
anything on ‘The Top’, and ‘Sinking’
is more majestic, more honest
perhaps than anything Smith’s done
since ‘All Cats Are Grey’.
As a compilation of possibilities,
‘The Head On The Door’ is
perfection of sorts – a romp more
than a rage through the closet,
trying things on, not tearing them
up. This Cure is boisterous but
relaxed and reliably unreliable.
I’m used to it now and I use it with
pleasure.
BLEDDYN BUTCHER

Berlin bolthole of brooding depression So, no more Mad Bob. Next time,
that shaped ‘Faith’, something else. Again.
cleaved through the Steve Sutherland

80 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 1985

MM, 17 August 1985, p24

n o more Mad Bob.”

Pardon?
“No more Mad Bob.”
Oh, I see. Robert Smith is happy.
Deliriously happy. Think about that
for a moment.
Doctor Doom. Mr Miserable.
The Prince Of Paranoia. Happy.
Happy with life. Happy with death.
Happy to wind us up. Happy to let us
down. And happy to talk his head off
about ‘The Head On The Door’,
the new Cure album and another
departure from what we might expect.
So what’s he got to tell us, this
smudge of lipstick in a lion’s mane?
Will he spin us a yarn to match the one
he foisted on Smash Hits – you know,
the one about the album title referring
to a nightmare childhood vision
engendered by a chicken-pox fever?
“Oh, did I tell him about that one?”
Robert grins sheepishly as he attacks
an onion bhaji. “Well… it’s sort of true.
Do you want me to give you a different
version?”
Oh, yes please.
“Alright then.” (Are you sitting
comfortably?) “When I was little, I used
to sleep in the same room as my little
sister and we used to have one of those
Noddyland scenes, quite a big event,
made out of felt.”
Oh really.
“Look, this is deadly serious. I couldn’t
make something up like this, now could
I? Right. You had all these particular
characters who existed in Noddy’s particular
brand of reality, which is basically Big Ears
and his family – hundreds of ’em – oh, and
a policeman. That was about it.

A Suitable
“Anyway, my big sister was going to art
school at the time and she used to make us
toys out of felt, nice things to put in this two-
foot window into Noddyland, and my brother
got the idea that it would be really good fun to
introduce a sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre
element. So there I was, sitting up in my

CaseFor
bunk-bed before I went to sleep and suddenly
I noticed he’d cut Noddy’s head off, and it
really, really scared me.
“I went really mental – Noddy had such
a sweet face, he was always Mr Happy, and
I remember thinking at the time that it was
a really evil thing to do. Even now it seems
pretty awful. Uh… d’you know, the biggest

Treatment
Has Robert Smith taken the cure? He says yes.
evil I could imagine then was Catwoman.
Remember they used to have bubblegum cards?
Well, I used to have Catwoman under my pillow.
I used to think that was pretty dangerous, my
first stirrings of lust.
“But cutting Noddy’s head off… I was in
trauma! And at the same time, Father Christmas
arrived in our street on a lorry. What a pile of
cack! It destroyed my faith in things like that.
Still, I don’t suppose people of my generation
keep that kind of thing going for their kids. I
TOM SHEEHAN

Steve Sutherland isn’t convinced. Now read on… mean, how can you possibly believe in the tooth
fairy with a Conservative government? You

NME ORIGINALS 81
TLFeBOOK
 Sick Boy

don’t get something for nothing any more.
“There are a lot of references to dreams in my
songs. It seems to bother other people but it’s
never really worried me that I have vivid dreams.
I find it very reassuring. It’s not always nice to
wake up with your whole body vibrating like an
engine – it sometimes takes three minutes to get
back to normal – but that’s OK.”

Does Smith the visionary rise, I wonder, from his

bed onto some imaginary psychoanalyst’s couch,
combing his slumber for secrets and signs?
“No! I think the whole concept of interpreting
dreams is the biggest wank really. Freud’s
obviously the most well-known exponent of
delving into your subconscious and examining
it but the idea that you can have secrets from
yourself is such a paradox, it’s unreal.
“I can understand it if you suppress things but
you know, you’re suppressing them. The idea of
tricking yourself is one of those imponderables
– it’s impossible. Who are you to trick yourself?
“My dreams are very straightforward, very
much like my life. I murder in my dreams, much
as I murder in real life. I’ve always really wanted
to kill someone but it’s wearing off now. Y’know,
just a casual murder.”
I think I understand. I’ve always thought if I
was gonna go crazy, I’d do it creatively, riding
in the passenger seat of a monstrously fast car,
blasting oncoming cruisers with a shotgun. That
way you get the bullet impact and the crash.
“No, no. Much more physical. If you use a
gun, you might as well shoot a bird really. I used
to murder a great deal in my dreams – people
that I’ve never even met and who, no doubt, hope
I never will. But I wouldn’t murder any more,
I’m sure of it.”
Has this Smith, lately labelled a nouveau hippy Robert Smith:
because of his beads and baggy bits and pieces, doesn’t look at all
mental ,does he?
ever hated anyone enough to kill them?
“Oh yeah, of course. I know there’s one that if

“I’ve always really wanted to kill someone. “Everything.”

Isn’t that hard?

You know, just a casual murder”
I ever met him, I’d kill him. Every fight I’ve ever
been in, I’ve thought I’m fighting that person but
I’ve never met him. Not through want of trying.”
What on earth did the blackguard do?
“Ah, that’s the story that will remain forever
secret. He once did something – not actually to
me, but I always vowed to avenge it. It was quite
an awful thing that I witnessed.
“See, I’m still very moral, I still have the same
ethics I always had but I don’t really think that,
if I did kill someone casually, there would be any
retribution if I didn’t get caught. I’d just like to
do it as an experience. I wouldn’t like to torture
somebody or anything like that.”
I’ve decided this “No More Mad Bob”
business might be a little premature, but I press
on regardless, wondering if Smith thinks he’d
feel like a different person burdened with the
knowledge that he’s taken a life?
“Yeah. The thing that always put me off is that
it’s not really the sort of thing you can mend.”
you’d probably end up confessing anyway. But
it’s not that big a step, not really. We’re gonna be
rotting in 50 years’ time anyway so why not rot
now and give someone some pleasure from it?
If someone dies naturally, everyone cries. There
may as well be someone dancing round the grave
– and it may as well be me.”
As I said, Robert Smith is happy, even when
he’s contemplating the inevitable. Can
this metamorphosis from gloom to glee be
permanent or is it just another of his infamous
emotional see-saws?
“Well, I’m very aware of my periods of
instability and I’ve tried to think, ‘If it’s going
to happen to me, I may as well use it for some
benefit,’ but last year all it succeeded in doing
was getting in the way. I couldn’t really do
anything at all whereas now I generally feel
much better. I’ve cut down on my vices – I’ve
only kept drinking, everything else has gone
“No, not at all. I just decided one night. I
was doing absolutely nothing, y’know? It got
to the point when cleaning your teeth seemed
too much bother. It’s cack when you get to that
stage, so I tried to learn to water-ski and things
like that – the other extreme. It actually shocked
my body back into a happy status quo. I didn’t
get fit but, at the same time, I didn’t keel over
and spend a month in a rest home which is what
everyone said I should do.
“I thought that idea was bollocks – you know
your own body… or you should do. The older
you get, the more you know it. I’m afraid I can
no longer wake up in the morning and boast that
I haven’t got a hangover.”
Me neither. Never. Wonder how this affects
Boy Smith’s public image?
“I’d be hard-pressed to imagine what my
public image is, to be honest. Indifferent. It
varies, actually, from place to place. Here it’s
very obvious from the general media myth that’s
perpetuated – character assassination, that’s the
phrase I’m after. But in America I’m considered
a really radical bloke, a really dangerous person,
TOM SHEEHAN

And what if you grow to like it? out of the window.” on the Wanted list, because they filter through
“Well, there is that. And if you don’t like it, Everything? the more sordid elements from England and

82 NNMMEE OORRIIGGIINNAALLSS
??
TLFeBOOK

then they also invent their own… oh, and also,
when I’m in America, I misbehave more than I
do in England because it’s far away from home.
“In Japan, it’s teenybop hysteria. We went
mega there – we were on television arriving at
the station. But in New Zealand we’re still doom
and gloom, so when we go there, we only smile
behind closed doors.”
I think you deserve an update on this
schizophrenic Smith character, just to help you
make up your own mind. He’s writing a book on
The Cure in conjunction with a French lady. The
book, he claims, will be far more honest than
anything I could cook up. He speeds around in a
four-wheel-drive jeep which his friends consider
“a post-nuclear vehicle or what?”
He owns a flat in Maida Vale with a
soundproofed bedroom to shield him from
the professional writer of musicals who lives
upstairs. He’s decided to holiday in London this
year to catch up on all the movies he’s missed
He saw Ghostbusters three times at the Marble
Arch ABC, because he enjoyed watching the 300
teenies punching the air during the theme tune
– “It reminded me of a David Cassidy concert.
Not that I ever went to one, you understand, but
it’s the sort of thing, looking back, that I wish
I had done.”
He never drinks on planes – “You can’t
drink on an eight-hour flight, pass out then
go on stage… Well, you can, but then you’re
Spandau Ballet.”
His back garden is a football
pitch-cum-dog’s toilet – “I haven’t
plucked up the courage to play “I was being sick in the ladies’
toilet. Then I proceeded to pick up
in the team yet but I think, in my
current state, I’d probably play a
sort of Glenn Hoddle role – fading
away for 80 minutes then a killer 10
minutes towards the end.”
His band, The Cure, is now a
my sick and throw it on the floor”
quintet, with Simon Gallup, the original bassist,
welcomed back to the fold. Robert’s ecstatic
about this line-up – “it’s a group again” – and the
pair of them reckon they’re pretty hot at pool. In
fact, Ex-Mad Bob had a table installed in his flat,
a slate bed six-by-three, but he was “a bit mental”
when he measured it up, so the fit was a mite
cosy – no room to make shots – and the table
now resides at a local youth club.
Smith the sportsman warms to the subject.
“Me and Simon, we’re known as The Hackers,
that’s the name of our pool team – as in
Computer Hackers, because we’re both Luddites
and the rest of the band are very pro whatever’s
new. Boris and Porl, who reckon they’re the
best but we hammer them, are called The Bros,
because they both have this fantasy that they’re
constantly driving about on huge throbbing
motorbikes.”
There’s more you should know about this Robert
Smith and ‘The Head On The Door’.
“I think it’s the most entertaining album we’ve
ever done in the sense that it doesn’t require very
much from the listener for it to be enjoyable,
mainly because it’s very simple, intentionally
simple. It’s as much a reaction against us as a
reaction against anything else that’s going on
because I didn’t want to get too precious again.
“I was getting a bit too close to falling into
Mad Bob and people were saying that to me,
jokingly – mainly inspired by what you wrote
about ‘The Top’ actually. People picked up on
what you wrote and decided that I was going
mental. Well, for a while I was a bit unstable but
I think it’s horrible when people make a career
out of being something.”
What, professional loonies, like professional
Cockneys?
“Yeah, it’s cack. The last thing I wanted to do
was drive my jeep into a swimming pool.
“I don’t think this record heralds us doing
anything. I know I’m supposed to be selling
it but I never see it like that. ‘Pornography’ or
‘Faith’ are peculiar in that quite a lot of people
probably think ‘If I could only listen to one
album for ever and ever, it would be this album.’
But I don’t think this one’s like that because it
doesn’t inspire that kind of emotion.
“It’s the same as when The Human League
brought out ‘Dare’ – I thought it was a really
good collection of songs. It didn’t send shivers
down my spine but I’ve got drunk to it and
danced to it a lot over the years.
“I tried to make this album really obvious
because I was aware that people thought I was
getting too obscure for anyone’s good. I suppose
they are still obscure in a way but they’re as plain
as I can be. That’s why I find most songs in the
Top 20 at the moment really boring, because
they’re like ‘end of conversation’ – you don’t
really need to bother.
“Some of the songs are a bit wayward but ‘In
Between Days’ is probably the simplest thing
I’ve written since ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. I did it on
purpose. I thought, ‘Right, I might as well prove
all those bastards wrong.’ I know it’s big-headed
but you couldn’t really make a record if you
didn’t think it was good and there’s very few
albums that I’ve listened to this year that people
have recommended to me that are comparable.
“Lol told me to listen to New Order’s album
and I thought, ‘This is a really dull record for
what they can do.’ For me, their record is 100
times safer than ours.
“‘The Head On The Door’ is just me being
gloriously happy, probably. After we’d finished
touring, I had a sudden surge of thinking that I
wouldn’t have to do anything forever and ever
if I didn’t want to because we’d reached the end
of our contracts and things like that. I had this
sudden sense of being able to do anything.”
Smith’s new sense of freedom apparently
extends to all matters concerning The Cure, a
radical reversal from his involvement with the
claustrophobically secretive Banshees. Why, it
even extends to videoing the recording of The
Head, a home movie of daft drunkenness and
corny jokes which he hopes to release soon to
“really take the myth apart”. The funny thing
TLFeBOOK
1985
is, though, despite all this gaiety, Robert’s
beginning to act as if he’s old. He recently told
some other hack that he’d always anticipated
being dead by 25 but here he is, no grey hairs in
sight and fitter than ever.
“I feel old because of what people have been
saying to me. I’ve consciously done interviews
with Just 17 just because it’s pap. All these
17-year-olds are coming along saying, “Well,
as an established band… As a famous…’ and
eventually it gets to you.
“But I defy all these people to name me
someone we are comparably old to. I look at the
five of us in a metaphysical mirror and we’re still
100 years younger than all these people who are
physically younger because they’re so fucking
worried about nothing.
“I mean, when I was young I didn’t feel young
but I still feel younger than any new group…
except The Jesus And Mary Chain.”
I feel a story coming on.
“The occasion was me being more drunk than
I had been all year, my one night out in London
clubland. Seriously, I can’t risk more than one
night out. See, we were doing Top Of The Pops,
and we usually drink loads and loads of vodka
in the bar beforehand, which explains our
frighteningly exciting performances.
“But this time we went to the bar afterwards
and we stayed there until we got thrown out,
by which time we were pretty hot so we decided
to go to eat, but I had to go to this studio fi rst,
supposedly to do backing vocals on the new
single and listen to the brass section,
y’know, to give ’em the Pope’s seal
of approval.
“So we went to the studio and
I couldn’t even make out what the
song was, so I was helped out and
we weaved our way mysteriously
down to the Sun Luck Restaurant
where I proceeded to eat a washing-
up bowl of prawns – heads and feet and tails,
y’know – not thinking, talking rapidly and
just eating. And then me and Lol staggered
outside and someone grabbed hold of Lol and
said, ‘Excuse me, you’re The Cure. My friend
wants to meet you, we’re drinking in this
bar.’ Well, the next thing I knew we were
descending the steps to this really dingy
place and I was thrust in from of William
from The Jesus And Mary Chain.
“All these people gathered around expecting a
confrontation or something but actually it ended
up that I did a little bit of pogoing and I ended up
throwing up, I think, in the ladies’ toilet.
“I was actually being sick in the sink because
someone was in the toilet and someone else
came in and said, ‘You can’t do that mate, you’re
blocking up the sink and I want to have a wash,’
so I then proceeded to pick up all my sick in
my hands and throw it on the floor. It was all
perfectly formed prawns – in fact, had I picked
up my meal initially and thrown it on the floor,
it would have been the same but I’d have had a
really good night.
“As it was, Lol ended up carrying me home
which is why I know it was my last night out in
London. Because when you get to the stage when
Lawrence puts you in a taxi and takes you home,
you’re in fucking big trouble.”
NME ORIGINALS 83
 Heavy Heavy Heavy
Thisain’tthesummeroflove
Hippies, hippies… everywhere. Or are they punks? Or are they
psychedelic hard rockers? Steve Sutherland comes face to face
with The Cult and fifinds they’re all these things and less
i
“ ’m a naïve, romantic kid. I’m supposed
to be some middle-class drop-out who’s
quite well-educated, but I’ve got me ’ead
up me ass and I just walk around going,
‘Everything’s beautiful’.”
I think we’d better start again…
“Kids take us on a more serious level than they
do a lot of other bands and a lot of journalists
seem to find that very annoying. They seem to
think that what we do is shrouded in a mysticism
that we create in order to hide a basic lack of
understanding, but we’re not that clever. We’re
just two lads from the north, right? We’re doing
what comes naturally – ’e makes a noise with ’is
mouth and I play guitar. That’s what we do.”
I think we’d better start again…
Ian Astbury’s one of those people who’s
embroidered his pretty uneventful youth into
a diary of momentous incidents and traumatic
turning points and told it to so many people so
many times that he probably now believes it.
“The first gig I ever done was filmed for TV,
my fifth ever gig with Southern Death Cult
was reviewed by the press. Anything I’ve done,
people have wanted to know what it’s all about.
I just find it so amusing that all these people keep
slagging us off and I couldn’t give a shit about it.
People have tried to pound us into the ground
but they just can’t get a hold of it.”
When Ian Astbury talks, he reminds me
of Nick Rhodes – thick but
authoritative, intoning the
most commonplace truism or
embarrassing drivel with such
“We ’re not that clever. We ’re just
haughtiness that you’d believe he
believes he’s imparting some real lads from the north, right? We ’re
pearl of wisdom.
Billy Duffy’s different but the
same – he’s confident but sharper,
doing what comes naturally”
he listens whereas Ian, for all the community
spiel he’s about to unleash, exhibits, in his own
favoured condemnation of others, “a very closed
mind”. For someone so intent on learning, Ian
never listens, he just stares away into a more
important world of his own and sometimes
deigns to descend to my level to say his peace
piece. I’d say he was stoned but…
“The funniest thing about the music business
is that the people who are most into the
rock’n’roll cliché lifestyle are the ones whose
TOM SHEEHAN
public image is the least like that. We don’t take
drugs, we never have. That’s just a personal way
84 NME ORIGINALS
MM, 26 October 1985, p28
punks down the King’s Road.’”
“It’s that guy in the NatWest advert,” says Ian.
“The one with the mohican haircut who spits at
people and head-butts walls.”
Ian’s dead proud of having missed punk. He
was in Canada at that time, in the army, and
when he heard the Pistols, of course, it changed
his life. He picked up on the vibe after the event.
this band are and I suppose it’s a paradox. We’re “I think it’s really nice, what’s happening
a rock band – that wasn’t too acceptable a year now, because it’s unquantifiable. Because so
and a half ago, it was like putting your head in a many things have gone in the past, I think what
guillotine. The times have changed a bit now.” we do is an amalgamation of all those different
I think we’d better start again…. influences and it’s gonna be a lot longer lasting.”
“A lot of things have been in the negative,”
The Cult are a rock band with accoutrements. A
swagger away from Black Sabbath. Something so
old that they’re new. The rock of ages.
“Everything in this world right now is fast,
fast, fast,” Ian informs me, fiddling with his Led
Zeppelin badge. “Fast food, fast TV, fast sex, fast
everything. And people just skim on the surface
all the time and I think a lot of journalists look at
us on the surface and pick up on certain things.
Like the North American Indian thing – but that
didn’t just happen to me overnight, that was an
experience that happened to me over five or six
years. And hippies…”
Ah, hippies. Glad he brought it up. The new
Cult album’s called ‘Love’ and there are some
out there who will tell you it’s all you need. Not
me. When MM branded Ian as a spitter for Neil
The Hippy, I wasn’t exactly blameless. And now
here’s this man who claims he’s a boy, with hair
halfway down his back, wearing a cowboy hat
with an owl’s feather in it, snakeskin cowboy
boots with gold points and a Cure badge,
staring into middle space and asking…
“What’s a hippy? A lot of kids who come
to see us haven’t even got any conception of
what a hippy is except for maybe a teacher at
school with long hair and a beard. I got called
a hippy by some 14-year-old kids the other
day – I wonder where they got it from?”
I wonder…
“Look, what the fuck is a hippy? I think
people see a hippy as some guy with long hair
and glasses with a peace sign and flared trousers
– it’s just an image, like punk.”
“What does punk mean now?” asks Billy, a
less bolshie Idol. Here comes the answer: “It’s
a deprecating term. ‘Let’s go and laugh at the
TLFeBOOK

says Billy. “Maybe now is the time for… well,
the positive. That’s been a terrible word for a few
years, almost frightening, but maybe what we’re
involved with is the first thing that’s positive.
Every other fashion – hippies, acid rock, punk
– seemed to be against something. Well, we’re
not necessarily ‘against’ in that obvious way.”
I think we’d better start again…
The Cult, live and on record, are the most
po-faced, humourless group it’s possible to
contemplate. They deny the brighter side of
existence for the sake of their precious image,
complete with pseudo-religious trimmings.
“There’s no religion in this country,” mourns
poor Ian. “Christianity, the spiritual side, is a
very special part of people’s lives, it gives them
strength just to live and the only thing for kids to
look to is the music.
“Music matters. A 14-year old kid buys a
Duran Duran record, grows up a little bit, and
sees that Duran Duran aren’t really saying
what they feel so they go onto something else,
something a little bit heavier, something that
makes a statement. And then they become bored
with that and they end up with us.”
What Ian’s pitching for is progressive rock, the
notion of something more deep and meaningful
than something else. That way self-indulgence
lies. And worse…
“We’re skimming the surface of something
quite spiritual…”
See what I mean?
“We don’t really want to quantify it. I find
it very, very rare to bump into people who are
communicating on the same level because
they’re so hung up on looking cool or hanging
round with the right people. It’s so hard to meet
people who are tuned in to something more than
the rational world. We’re called hippies because
we’re into life, right?
“Look, there’s certain things we just can’t
talk about because there’s an incredible danger
of being misinterpreted. It’s really sad and
unfortunate but that’s the way it is.”
I think we’d better start again…
Hippy Cult:
Ian Astbury,
Mark Brzezicki,
Billy Duffy and
Jamie Stewart
TLFeBOOK
1985
MM, 19th October 1985, p38
THE CULT
Love
Beggars Banquet
The only thing
more deplorable
than half-baked
dogma is barely
understood half-
baked dogma
pilfered from a
culture 6,000 miles and 200 years away.
With ‘Love’, The Cult’s second album,
they continue to propagate a half-chewed
bubblegum wrapper of redskin info for people
who think that a Voodoo Chile is a Mexican
Hotpot. They continue to celebrate the ways
of the old people with clamour and cliché
– wigwams, squaws, moccasins, and ritual
fire-branding. The Cult dribble a lot.
If nothing else, ‘Love’ will prove that the
band have done for rock tribalism what
General Amherst did for the Sioux nation. The
benign general offered the Indians blankets
to keep them warm in winter – blankets
impregnated with smallpox bacilli. The
images, lyrics and titles are mainly elemental
– the usual earth, fire, water piffle – but the
surprise comes from the cover, which bears a
striking likeness to an old Love cover after a
tortuous journey through an alimentary canal.
‘Nirvana’ plunges into a barrage of metal
guitars where risible pastiche masquerades
as rousing chorus. The Indians believed in life
after death – not before it!
With each successive funereal beat and
onslaught of Duffy’s unchained guitar, the Cult
sound more and more like Led Zeppelin.
The chords of ‘Revolution’ descend, and
their songs go down faster than a lead balloon.
The Cult used to offer excitement – not ashes
scraped from yesterday’s joss stick. Now they
simply continue to continue.
‘Hollow Man’ and ‘Brother Wolf, Sister
Moon’ (oh brother!) both employ the same
bluesy thump as they stomp through old
hunting grounds like buffalo on Mogadon.
It sounds like a 45 playing at 33. In fact
it’s ’69 playing in ’85. All this may sound as
if I detest The Cult … but I don’t. ‘She Sells
Sanctuary’ was one of the few pinnacles of this
summer’s charts but its appearance among
this clutch of witless, listless and soulless
twaddle serves only as a painful reminder of
what The Cult could, and should, be doing.
We deserve more than pathetic hippies
reliving their dream and our nightmare.
Forget Big Country. Forget ‘God’s Zoo’. Forget
U2. And most of all forget Bury My Heart At
Wounded Knee.
The Cult should bury their head in shame.
Ted Mico
NME ORIGINALS 85
 The Cocteau Twins:
Simon Raymonde,
Liz Frazer and
Robin Guthrie

TLFeBOOK

Worlds
apart How do you interview The Cocteau Twins? Steve
Sutherland, who considers them to be something like
the voice of God, doesn’t know. Well, he sat down and
talked to them for a bit, and this is what happened
The End
“In the best of all possible worlds,” said Robin,
“this wouldn’t be happening.” Hold it right
there. I’ve read this before.
“But…”
No buts. I’m determined that this will not be
another Cocteau Twins interview about how
The Cocteau Twins hate interviews because
that, after all, after hours of agonised silence
and blank incomprehension, is all that anyone’s
ever gleaned from this lot on paper. I won’t sit
down and discuss this again. I won’t attempt
to defend the rigmarole of the rock’n’roll
interview, nor will I perpetrate it further.
So what shall I do Robin? What shall I do?
And what will I get? Will I get anything? Or is
there nothing there to get? Nothing at all?
“Well, we’re not divs but people make us out
to be… we come over like…”
Yes I understand that I don’t understand.
Some justification
The Cocteau Twins make my favourite music
in the whole wide world ever and, on 16 and
22 November, they release two four-track EPs.
I want to talk about them but I know it’s no
good. They want them well-treated because
they envisage a Cocteau Twins backlash on
the horizon and they don’t think it’s fair. Just
because they don’t fit in, folks think they refuse
to fit in, but it’s not the same thing at all.
There’s nothing wilful about the Cocteaus’
refusal to play along, they just do what they do,
that’s all.
Hey, they live on our planet, believe it or
not. They eat, they drink, they see what we see
and hear what we hear. It’s just that what they
create when they’re locked away somewhere has
no bearing on any of this whatsoever. My task,
I suppose, is to reconcile this into some sort
of sense but all I can come up with is intricate
babble which, even in the act of praising, seems
TOM SHEEHAN
to tarnish their pure simplicity.
I’ll admit at this point that I was going to wax
all wonderfully lyrical about the new Cocteau
Twins stuff. I was going to construct some
elaborate review of ‘Tiny Dynamite’ (‘Pink
Orange Red’, ‘Ribbed and Veined’, ‘Plain Tiger’
and ‘Sultitan Itan’), some glowing testimony
to ‘Echoes In A Shallow Bay’ (‘Great Spangled
Fritillary’, ‘Melonella’, ‘Pale Clouded White’
and ‘Eggs And Their Shells’) but I realised
that all I’d be doing would be conjuring
fantasies, evolving mythologies and warping
expectations.
So, at the risk of encouraging accusations
of lethargy and cop-out, I say this: buy these
records, I think they’re brilliant. They exist.
Why am I squirming? Here’s my problem:
The Cocteau Twins can’t talk about their music
because there’s nothing to say and I can’t write
about it because, as it’s instrumental with vocal
impressions, all I can produce is mind’s-eye
gibberish. And believe you me, I’ve said some
pretty embarrassing stuff about this lot in the
past. Stuff, incidentally, that I stick by.
“The things you’re allowed to write!”
Robin’s smiling. “You went and wrote
something about God in one of our reviews.
You said we were the voice of God or something.
I hated that. It gives people the wrong
impression. It gives people your impression.
If I read that, I’d think, ‘No fucking way am
I buying that!’
“And another time you said I hadn’t
developed much further than some Banshees
album and that we were too loud. That was
insulting. The idea of three people totally
stationary on stage with no affi liation at all to
rock’n’roll making the loudest fucking noise
you’ve every heard kind of appeals.”
“And that thing you said to Robert Smith
about his lipstick!” Liz is trembling.
What?
“You said Liz Frazer wants to know why
you wear your lipstick like that. That was very
naughty of you Steve, very, very naughty. I was
so embarrassed.”
Contrary to common belief, The Cocteau
Twins care. A lot.
TLFeBOOK
1985
MM, 16 November 1985, p24
The unmentionable
mentioned
The Cocteau Twins don’t exactly scream at
you to ask them about their sex lives or the
colour of their socks, so it all comes down to
self-justification and that nebulous area where
you’ve no idea what you’re talking about or what
will come out and the smallest detail assumes
the stature of enigma. Or…
Robin: “I’m still completely at a loss to
understand what people want to know. I’ll
tell all. We do tell all, that’s the thing I can’t
understand. What more can I say?”
The big question
Why? Why do you sound like The Cocteau
Twins?
Robin’s big answer
“Why not?”
They confess
Robin: “It almost gets to the stage where you
just want to turn round to somebody and say,
‘Yeah, I’m really magical and mysterious,
that’s what I think about myself. I’m weird and
obscure and it rubs off on the music…”
Simon: “Yeah, we’re religious, spiritual…”
Liz: “Would you like some tea or coffee just
now?”
Robin: “There’s some tins aren’t there? I’ll
have another beer.”
Liz: “You’ll want a fuckin’ straw with it next
– get you pissed quicker.”
Robin: “Got any gin?”
Liz: “Um… er… NO! I distinctly remember
you finishing it off last night. Don’t drink…”
Robin: “But I’m getting my hair cut tonight.”
Liz: “Yes, I know. You’ll fall asleep and wake
up with a skinhead – that’ll fuckin’ sort you out.
You’ll never drink again.”


NME ORIGINALS 87

“Can I go now?”
Liz thoroughly
enjoys another
photo session

Liz Frazer
Small, very funny and very, very shy.
At the photo studio, Liz is being made up,
having her face and hair done. By her side, by
the mirror, is a note pad into which she jots
every layer of foundation, every tint of eye
shadow for further reference.
“That’s typical,” says Robin. “Did you notice
at home by the record player, there’s a piece of
paper with instructions on it about how the
stereo works, step by step. And by the video
there’s another list of how to work it. And she
wants to learn to drive – can you imagine that?”
Oh yes, a very Liz thing to do.
Robin Guthrie
Fat, funny, delightfully sarcastic, he crimps his
hair to stop it looking pubic.
This thin guy with glasses comes up to him
in the Croydon Underground, brandishing a
poster advertising the 4AD night and asking for
an autograph. Robin looks him up and down,
snorts his disapproval and begins to read it out.
“Xymox. Is that us?”
No.
“Wolfgang Press. Is that us?”
Uh… no.
“Dif Juz. Is that us?”
No.
“Well then, shouldn’t you be going to get
their autographs?”
The bloke slinks off, bemused. Robin turns to
me and says: “It’s bad enough when they want
you to sign Cocteau Twins stuff.”
That’s a very Robin thing to do.
Simon Raymonde
Simon was “disgusted” by the Banshees at
Hammersmith Odeon. He considered them
“heavy metal”. Worst of all, though, he
considered the encores “dishonest”.
That’s a very Simon thing to say.
88 NME ORIGINALS
My method
Well, what was there left?
The personality angle wasn’t
paying dividends because, as
the antithesis of all they are,
it couldn’t. The enormous
review wasn’t on either
– all that verbiage trying to
describe something defiantly
inarticulate. No. I was left
with flotsam, with various
meets in various places, with
circumstantial evidence.
Whether it comes any closer to
anything, whether it helps,
I don’t know. But anyway…
Meet one: Liz and Robin’s
flat in Chiswick. Ground floor.
Clean and bare with a Siamese
kitten called Otto (after the
punk in Repo Man) who bites
and scratches and has never
heard of house-training. No
books about so no clues there.
A record player. A video. Lots
of videos. A photo of Lillian Gish in the toilet.
The door handle comes off in your hand and
you have to keep the lid down or the cat might
fall into the bowl.
Meet two: Riverside, for That Petrol Emotion.
Meet three: the photo session in Covent
Garden. A small studio and a pint or two in the
pub. (Liz is on cider and Babycham, fact-fiends).
Meet four: Simon sees the Banshees at
Hammersmith Odeon.
Meet five: the 4AD night at Croydon
Underground – they’re very much the visiting
stars. Robin hates it.
Temptation
If anybody around pop today is enjoying the
fact that language obscures as much (and as
well) as it reveals its intentions, it’s Liz Frazer.
Her lyrics are noise games, not nonsense
but emotion liberated from cliché. When she
sings, my world moves and it means something
beyond and without all the blasted, blighted
baggage of linguistic nostalgia.
She uses words but the words never matter,
their sounds carry the fullest impact, her voice
– the most desolate ever recorded – cuts the crap
but can’t avoid it. We can’t handle The Cocteau
Twins, we don’t possess the critical apparatus to
do them justice. It’s no big deal on their behalf,
no deliberate setting themselves apart from
the mainstream, no arrogant isolationism. It’s
simply that the channels we stomp down to beat
pop to a pulp and render it comfortable and
comprehensible don’t lead us anywhere near
The Cocteau Twins.
We don’t touch them and yet still we try.
In Japan, for instance, they’ve published lyric
sheets with all the albums, even renaming
‘Treasure’ at whim ‘The Woman Who The
Gods Loved’.
Robin: “Tell me if any of these words are what
Liz is singing, right? I’m not joking. ‘Let us rock
you so/Rock you so good’. ‘The wave of the earth
has got me all fooled now’. ‘Should have fixed it
TLFeBOOK
before it floated away’.”
Liz: “Oh, that’s fucking disgusting…
disgusting. They must think we’re a bunch o’
perverts or something.”
Robin: “‘Take this fish/Harder than roe/
Who sauntered away’.”
Liz: “Jesus!”
Robin: “‘Julianne was first called a genius/
Julianne a genius too/Our song is framed by a
genius/Suddenly she got up and turned it on’.”
Liz: “Definitely a drug-induced hysteria.”
Simon: “‘I’m a prisoner of the fence’.”
Robin: “‘I don’t mend no fence’. Look at the
sleeve notes. It says here that The Cocteau Twins
are three girls, right? And that I sing all the
backing vocals on the LP and that my backing
vocals are ‘psychedelic but never freaky’.”
Liz: “Bloody hell!”
Mere mortal concerns
Self-parody?
Robin: “It happened to us about a year and a
half ago. It happens to everybody. You can’t do
anything about it…”
I confess
If the process of this interview is to ascertain
some truth, to nudge some reality, to realise
there aren’t any answers then I’ve failed. If the
essence of the piece is to avoid an obsessive
autopsy of The Cocteau Twins’ problematic
relationship to the interview, I’ve let you
down badly. It’s here, it’s inescapable and I’m
circling, searching for something I can’t define,
struggling to discover is the big factor or the
conveniently mystical cop-out.
Certainly the people I met and the records
I hear don’t match up too well, don’t fit. I’m
speaking of what stubbornly won’t be spoken
of and it’s the best I can do to tell you that of all
the outfits I’ve ever met the characters of The
Cocteau Twins are the least informative when
applied to their music.
And naturally, in saying that, I open two
options, each equally inappropriate: they’re not
fakers, they wear no masks, they hide nowhere,
nor are they recipients for some mysterious
muse. They don’t act as ciphers for some
spiritual genius descending from the either.
The Cocteau Twins just go and do it – and if
they don’t know, why the hell should I?
In the beginning was
the word
“That was the shittiest interview we’ve ever
done…”
It’s OK.
“But we said nothing, we talked about
nothing…”
It’s OK.
“But what are you gonna write about?”
Oh, I’ll make it up. I’ll write about you. I’ll
think of something.
“But that means we’re in your hands, we’re at
your mercy…”
TOM SHEEHAN
Aha, well the hack always has the last word.
This is it…
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TLFeBOOK
 Morphine Paradise
MM, 16 March 1985, p27
SISTERS OF MERCY
No Time To Cry
(WEA)
First Killing Joke, now Andrew
and his wonderful Sisters.
Whether it’s a remarkable and
strangely coincidental coming
together of the untouchables
and the pop marketplace or
something a lot more contrived
is hard to say, but who really gives
a tinker’s diddly one way or the
other? What counts now is that
this is the Sisters’ best ever slice
of slime, with Andrew down in
his boots as always but the rest
of the band delivering an edge
that must make this a monster hit
with the previously uncommitted
housewife. Laugh if you want, but
far better Crazy Andrew than 100
cuddly toys.
Barry McIlheney
MM, 1 June 1985, p27
THE CULT
She Sells Sanctuary
(Beggars Banquet)
She sells sanctuary, but will The
Cult sell any more records? Their
record sleeves may be getting
more graphically adventurous
– and their name can’t get any
shorter – but the swirling density
of their pulse-beat stays locked
inside the same blurred groove.
Boy Duffy’s guitar is edgily set for
the heart of the sun – great sitar
impersonations! – but The Cult
are struggling. Still, the gothic
millstone might be slipping;
imagine a more sprightly,
90 NME ORIGINALS
psychedelic Killing Joke shorn
of the ton of bricks. By the way,
this is infinitely preferable to the
B-side ‘No.13’ which attempts to
bring Led Zeppelin into the 1980s.
Silly Cult.
Martin Aston
NME, 27 July 1985, p14
THE CURE
In Between Days
(Fiction)
Three thoughts occur. One: how
does he do it? How on earth does
Smithy keep that face straight
as he unloads these records?
‘The Top’ was a schoolboyishly
cruel – legs torn slowly from
helpless insects – companion to
the Bunnymen’s contemporary
and equally silly-sod-psychedelic
‘Ocean Rain’, while his butter-
wouldn’t-melt ‘Love Cats’ routine
was sublime, media-mocking TV.
The man is a comic to be rated
with Keaton.
Two: if I didn’t believe New
Order to be as rich as Tsars, I’d
advise them to grab this record
and their own ‘Temptation’ and
‘Power, Corruption And Lies’ and
to hotfoot it to the nearest court
of law. The monstrous scale,
nerve and cynicism of Smith’s
plagiarism, in a world where most
claim unique creative genius, has,
oddly, to be admired.
Three: either because of, or in
spite of one and two, ‘In Between
Days’ – a sneeringly off-hand
debunking of all that Factory’s
finest seek so assiduously to
mystify, is a good 45, easily the
best of the week’s pop crop.
Danny Kelly
TLFeBOOK
MM, 3 August 1985, p34
NICK CAVE
Tupelo
(Mute)
There are those who would have
you believe that this decrepit
scuzzball and his infrequent
record releases represent the
zenith of the alternative pop
scene. For years I tried to convince
myself that I didn’t loathe the
entire catalogue of this corrupter
of small goths, but I am older
and less charitable now. Boppy
backbeat, though.
Caroline Sullivan
MM, 1 June 1985, p27
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Cities In Dust
(Wonderland)
I rather lost interest in this lot
after ‘Hyaena’ yielded one good
single and little else. But ‘Cities In
Dust’, a great rush of sound and
a massively confident burst of
pop, suggests a return to form.
Perhaps a bit intense for the
airwaves, and lacking the great
melody of the slightly similar
‘Fireworks’, ‘Cities’ nevertheless
recaptures the wondrous
hypnotic pop of the Banshees’
greatest singles era, that between
‘Kaleidoscope’ and ‘A Kiss In the
Dreamhouse’.
David Quantick
NME, 16 November 1985, p17
COCTEAU TWINS
Tiny Dynamine
(4AD)
Inside a cover that looks like a
cross between the trip sequence
from 2001 and a camel’s
afterbirth, those fun-loving
Cocteau Twins bring you a four-
track selection of dead clever
Liz Fraser vocal gymnastics, a
chorused 12-string guitar sound
that’s so rich it could kill a diabetic
at 40 paces and some rather
indifferent lyrics. The closing
‘Sultitan Itan’ is a treat for the very
tired to hallucinate to just before
bedtime.
Charles Shaar Murray
MM, 23 November 1985, p30
COCTEAU TWINS
Echoes In A Shallow Bay
(4AD)
‘The Great Spangled Fritillary’
takes its name from a butterfly;
‘Melonella’ is more upbeat than
the Cocteaus’ usual music, noisy
almost; ‘Pale Clouded White’
feels like you’re caught in a warm
snowstorm; and ‘Eggs And Their
Shells’ is making love on a clifftop
with seabirds flying overhead. Am
I alone in finding them a complete
and utter turn-on?
Kris Kirk
 Chapter 8
1986
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Mission Accomplished
Snake
charmers
Rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the Sisters, The Mission
“
watch the dawn come up with a wide-eyed Mat Smith
t
hey don’t make songs like that any more.”
Wayne Hussey lurches towards the
stereo, pulls off ‘Roll Away The Stone’ and
replaces it with ‘Like A Hurricane’. Next door
the neighbours pull the bedsheets over their
heads. In an hour their alarm clocks will ring,
signalling the end to another long night.
“They came round with an axe the other
night,” Wayne chuckles wide-eyed. “But I think
we should be safe now.”
Before The Mission there were the Sisters, and
there are still a lot of puzzled
Sisters fans. What went wrong?
“It was going wrong in the Sisters even when
“It was going wrong even
when I joined. I mean, we did
the album hardly talking to I joined. Eldritch was very hard to work with. You
each other. We were rehearsing
the new stuff – his new stuff, he never got any credit. He was a real headfucker”
wouldn’t touch any of my songs
– and it was just crap. Craig had had enough and
walked out. As the studio door slammed Eldritch
clapped his hands together and said ‘Ha! We’ve
got rid of the driftwood.’ I thought, ‘You bastard’
and left the next day.
“It’s sad but we really had no choice. I still
respect him. He probably thinks I’m a bastard
– well I hope he does anyway, but I know he
respects me as a musician.”
92 NME ORIGINALS
The Mission: (l to r)
Mick Brown, Craig
Adams, Wayne
Hussey and Simon
Hinkler
MM, 10 May 1986, p14
Do you feel more comfortable in The Mission?
“Nah,” he sighs. “Some people can feel
comfortable in a five-star hotel but I can’t. I’d
rather be in a hovel ’cos you can trash it and not
do much damage. It’s the same thing with The
Mission. I can trash it and not do much damage
whereas, with the Sisters, there was a certain
reverence even when I joined the group.”
The Elvis Presleys From Hell took shape towards
the end of the Sisters’ reign – Wayne and Craig
playing various benefit gigs in their native Leeds
with Red Lorry Yellow Lorry drummer Mick
Brown. However, it wasn’t until they added
ex-Artery guitarist Simon Hinkler and changed
their name to The Sisterhood that the fun and
games really began.
Wayne: “It was a brilliant trick. I knew it
would antagonise Andrew and WEA and we also
got a lot of press out of it. I always knew we’d lose
TLFeBOOK
the battle but we didn’t see it as a battle as
such – more of a publicity stunt.”
On hearing of the split and the newly-
named Mission’s intentions for the future,
WEA promptly showed Wayne and co the
quickest way out of the building.
“WEA didn’t think I could sing. They
gave us this list of singers they thought
would be good for us – Andi Sex Gang,
Gavin from the Virgin Prunes and Sal
Solo. They just didn’t have a clue.”
“We were open to constructive criticism
but Sal bloody Solo is not constructive
criticism,” Mick states.
They seem to be playing a different
game to Eldritch – taking it out on the
road as opposed to sticking in the studio.
Wayne: “I’m a very different person
to Eldritch. First and foremost I’m more
sociable. The feeling of comradeship
in The Mission is very similar to the
one I had when I was in Dead Or Alive.
Andrew was very hard to work with.
You never got any credit. I mean, he was
a real headfucker.”
Don’t you ever wish The Mission
were starting out tomorrow just like
every other band, with none of the
expectations and exploits of the past
hanging around your shoulders?
Wayne: “No, ’cos then we’d be playing
the fucking dives of the world. In some
ways it’s a bit of an albatross but it does
guarantee us an audience. Initially,
it’ll probably be very similar to that
of the Sisters, but, in time, I think it
will widen. Our songs are a lot more
accessible than the Sisters’ ever were.”
Would you say you’re writing for others now
then, rather than yourself?
“I never used to write for myself. It was always
for Andrew. The criteria we use in The Mission
is that if it sounds good when we play it on an
acoustic guitar in my living room then it’s a good
song. That’s how our single ‘Serpent’s Kiss’ was
written. The majority of the songs we’ve been
doing in the set so far are my songs that Andrew
rejected for the second Sisters album. It’s ironic
’cos he actually saw us in Birmingham and told
us how good he thought the songs were.”
Was he being sarcastic? Or was it from the
bottom of his heart?
Wayne: “I don’t think he has a bottom of his
heart. Bottom of his hat perhaps.”
The cat comes down from his
perch. The sun flickers in and
TV-am’s Gyles seems even more
irritating with the sound turned
down. Jumbled thoughts and
jumbled talk. How can you face
your mother Wayne?
“My mum knows what I get up to. I had a
really bad relationship with my parents for a
while. They’re both devout Mormons. Seriously!
It’s stood me in good stead but it doesn’t stop me
doing drugs. I like speed – my mother knows
that. She knows I like girls and she knows about
my homosexuality. She knows all about it.”
Understanding lady, that Mrs Hussey. But
CORBIS
then she’d have to be wouldn’t she?

MM, 26 July 1986, p28
THE SISTERHOOD
Gift (Merciful Release)
It all looked so obvious. Minimalist
packaging and one of those glossy
black sleeves that’s covered with
1986
thumbprints before you’ve even singing-into-my-boots What the hell
got the record out. It all looked like from Andrew Eldritch is this? Check the
an attempt to carry on precisely that always made the credits. Ah, Alan
where The Sisters Of Mercy left off. Sisters slightly comical. Vega from Suicide.
So we’re barely into the first And when he does It fits. It’s the kind
track, ‘Jihad’, when I think I hear sing, on the version of music you’d call
a Mantronix-style handclap. of the single ‘Giving industrial if there was
Surely not. Must’ve put the wrong Ground’, it sounds any industry left in
record on. No, there it is again, like Peter Murphy this country. The kind
and over a stomping Eurobeat having a dark moment. of music you’ll hear
that would make the boys from Eventually I’m ground under by on a train travelling through the
DAF proud. Things, I think, could a relentless synth beat that crushes Frankfurt conurbation.
be looking up. None of that silly all colour in its path. Phil DC
NME ORIGINALS 93
TLFeBOOK
 Southern
A SensitiveDeAth
Guy Cult
If you prick me,
do I not bleed?
“I believe you have a song about the British music press entitled ‘Scum’.” “I didn’t write it
about the press; I wrote it about you.” Nick Cave does not take kindly to criticism, as Mat Snow
discovered when he went along to discuss Cave’s new album, ‘Kicking Against The Pricks’
a
mong Nick Cave’s most prized
possessions is a hard-cover green
book stuffed with press cuttings and
private observations written in his
painstakingly spidery hand.
“Rather than living out the extremes of our
particular fantasies, most of us rid ourselves of
these desires in other ways – beating the wife,
the normal day-to day things. In this particular
book I indulge myself to the limits. I don’t have
to show this to anyone; I don’t have to worry
about whether my mother’s going to read it…”
I believe it includes a song about the British
music press entitled ‘Scum’.
“I didn’t write it about the press; I wrote it
about you…”
He flicks through the pages, his pink-rimmed
eyes not looking up once to meet mine.
“I write hate lyrics really well. It’s not every
day you can use them really…”
This interview is not turning out at
all as I’d hoped.
I had hoped for an interview which
“I’m inconsistent, illogical,
would amplify how Nick Cave’s
preoccupations have been revealingly
side-lit by his new album of cover
irrational. So fuckin’ what? ”
versions. Called ‘Kicking Against The Pricks’, its
very title alludes not only to the verse from the
Acts of the Apostles but perhaps also to Samuel
Beckett’s borrowing of the phrase; certainly, a
pun of Cave’s own devising is intended. And I
suspect I might be one of the pricks.
As he explains in his measured, dictation-
speed sigh of a voice, “There’s not a great deal
of intellectualisation of the reasons why we did
these particular songs. We’re musicians and feel
music more from the heart than the head. I’m
not sure whether you can understand that.”
Ouch.
“When I listen to a song, it strikes my
heart whether it’s worthwhile or not. There’s
something so basic and so simple it shouldn’t
even need to be said.”
94 NME ORIGINALS
What, however, constitutes that instinctive
recognition of a song’s worth is not so simple.
On his new album there are self-confessed
tributes, like his version of ‘The Hammer Song’,
originally by his schoolboy hero Alex Harvey, the
piratical Glaswegian rocker whose Jacques Brel-
derived theatricality anticipated punk.
Missing from ‘Pricks’, however, are songs
Cave loves which have already been fully realised
elsewhere, offering no avenues for further
exploration. Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’ LP is
a case in point, though Cave reviles all his other
records. Likewise damned is Jimi Hendrix, whose
rendition of ‘Hey Joe’ Cave regards as an easily
surpassable high point in an unappealing career.
Nick Cave’s ‘Hey Joe’ invokes a brooding cosmic
wrath surrounding Joe’s crime passionel which
echoes the heavenly portents which attended the
birth of the Presley twins in ‘Tupelo’.
‘Kicking Against The Pricks’ is a richly exciting
record, not only for the choice of songs and their
singing, but also for the revitalising aplomb and,
where needs be, restraint of their performance
by the Bad Seeds, whose highly talented maestro
Mick Harvey is too little recognised.
‘Pricks’ is, in addition, a further instalment in
the remoulding of Nick Cave into one of rock’s
most striking and multi-levelled leading players.
For a start, Nick Cave hates the ‘rock world’.
He is highly literate about rock and its many
sources, but inclines towards its most earthy
poets of passion, the balladeers and story-tellers.
Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison – like him, men
in black – figure large in his taste, as do Elvis
Presley and Bob Dylan. Cave has sought among
this canon those themes which most closely
resemble his preoccupation – that of a jilted lover
TLFeBOOK
whose thoughts in abandoned desolation turn
from regret to grief to vengeance. That the end of
his relationship with his girlfriend of seven years,
Anita Lane, in 1983 has inspired so much of his
subsequent work has never been denied.
From that point, Cave has turned his life’s big
wound into art, and he has also plunged into
that art as a safety-valve. Not for a long time
has a more poignantly tragic figure – one whose
downfall springs from an unbalancing ruling
passion – starred in rock’s obsessively scrutinised
zone where private life and public image overlap.
His gravity of demeanour and much-trailed
affinity with serious literary endeavour not only
mark him out from the frivolities of the pop
industry, but also bestow on him a tradition in
which his torment may find a home.
Not for Nick Cave the battlements of Elsinore
– he stalks instead America’s deep South, a
larger-than-life corrupted Eden of hot blood,
primitive religion, swamplands, scarlet
women, quack sawbones, whisky
preachers, riverboat gamblers, white
trash, slaves and the lynch-mob.
This mythical deep South serves
not only as the landscape for some of
Cave’s favourite music, but also as a backdrop
sufficiently wild to project his tragic image onto
– an Oedipus wreck in winklepickers.
“I just think Mat Snow is an arsehole who said
this, and it’s not true. I find it hard to sit down
and talk to someone who gave us a bad review.”
Tragic figures are usually proud – it goes with
the territory. Petty-mindedness, however, tends
to be comic. So why are neither of us laughing?
What had I done to poison this whole encounter?
In March last year I wrote of an Einstürzende
Neubauten single that it “musters the psycho-
logical edge disappointingly absent from Nick
Cave’s forthcoming LP…” That I have also
heaped extravagant praise upon his work cuts
no ice at all.
 Nick Cave: declined
to appear in the
new series of How
Clean Is Your House
“If someone says something good about me,
they’re doing their job; I have no complaints.
They get no medal, they get their wage. That’s
all. But if they say something bad, then that
really gets on my tits.
“I’m inconsistent, I’m illogical, I’m irrational
about it. So fuckin’ what?”
Cave’s voice barely rises. He’s as laboriously
patient as an iceberg.
“Everything that’s said against me offends
me, whether it’s true or not. I can’t fathom
these people who flunked their arts courses and
became rock journalists and are too ignorant
about music or academic about their thoughts
BLEDDYN BUTCHER
or have so many hang-ups that they can’t bring
themselves to perform. Yet it is these people
whose opinions are lauded as being gospel.”
If, with few exceptions, Cave has scant regard
for we back-stabbing scribblers, he “doesn’t give
a flying fuck” for the other four-fifths of his
audience, most of whom by my reckoning are
full-time goths, part-time slummers, wallowers
and weirdoes who are there to be fucked up the
dirt-track, metaphorically speaking.
“I’ve got less and less inclined towards being
some sort of colourful food for a lot of other
people to consume. Writing allows me to be
myself and not have to perform this filthy
function which, no matter what I do, is inherent
in being lead singer for some freak group.
“I don’t know what the people who come and
see me are like. I don’t know what their reasons
for doing anything are. I don’t know the reason
for the boy down the front who comes to each
TLFeBOOK
of our shows and screams out, ‘You’re a fucking
arsehole!’ Pays every night to scream that at the
group, and, if he gets a chance, to punch me. He’s
not there to pick up a girl, that’s for sure.”
Sometimes during this supremely painful
interview Nick Cave forgets himself and speaks
eloquently and animatedly about something
outside his immediate concerns; the prison
system, for instance, which he’s been researching
for a film project in Australia. When I ask about
God and the afterlife, he becomes more guarded.
All he’ll say is that he believes evil will not go
unpunished, even if it’s rewarded on earth.
But soon he reverts to being the sod with a
grudge and thin veneer of forced politeness.
“I’m just a sensitive guy,” he smiles inwardly.
Very inwardly.
NME ORIGINALS 95
 Purple Prose
MM, 12 April 1986, p27
NICK CAVE &
THE BAD SEEDS
Kicking Against The Pricks
(Mute)
This record is a kind of essay about
pop. By covering these obscure
pop, country and blues songs, Nick
Cave admits them to his canon and,
in effect, claims that
they’re inhabited by the
same extremes
of obsession,
possession and
abjection that
characterise his
own work.
Cave is writing out
a lineage in which he
is the sole heir, the
only one who still remains close
to the heart of rock’n’roll.
‘Kicking Against The Pricks’
is critical in another sense too,
marking a key shift in his career.
Cave’s sense of his own stature has
swollen to the point where he feels
he can reduce his own creative
role to choosing other people’s
material and arranging it: such is the
corrosive originality of his style that
he need only sing a song to make it
his own, to catalyse its latent tragic
qualities. So there’s a shift from
poet-visionary of sex and death to
interpreter, from Jim Morrison to
Scott Walker, from bayou howl to a
kind of croon, from self-immolation
to fatigue.
When Cave addresses his own
‘legend’ in song the result is some
of his most hilarious work. Like
‘Avalanche’ and ‘A Box For Black
Paul’, ‘The Folksinger’ is a fantastical
dramatisation of Cave’s contempt
for his audience of goths and rock
critics; a Johnny Cash song about
a singer abandoned by his fickle
public, who muses, “All the truths
I tried to tell you were as distant to
you as the moon/Born 200 years
too late and 200 years too soon”.
A masterstroke that induces real
shame for my having forgotten
about Nick Cave, filed him away.
Not withstanding the
ethnomusicological sleevenotes
on ‘The Firstborn Is Dead’, a pastiche
of the kind you’d find on a boxed
Harry Belafonte record, this music
isn’t really modern folk music. It’s
art rock masquerading as folk’s
tradition, using folk’s textures of
bitter, broken lives and ghost town
desolation as a contemporary
metaphor for our rootless, faithless
existence.
Like many others, Cave has
96 NME ORIGINALS
been drawn to the
melodrama of country
love songs, their
imagery of religious,
absolute passion.
These songs – stories
of calamity, betrayal,
guilt and revenge – are
fuel for dissent against
the current mainstream
representation of love
as health and fulfilment. Cave has
always seen love as problematic and
mysterious, an affliction.
The music here is absolutely
brilliant – an unhinged, eerie
simulation of bygone pop on
‘Sleeping Anleah’ and ‘Long
Black Veil’, a swollen tide of
clangorous, corrugated sound on
‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, almost
perfect pop on ‘Something’s Gotten
Hold Of My Heart’, with only Cave’s
burnt-out husk of a voice giving
away that this is really 1986 and the
‘alternative scene’.
There’s enough almost casual
brilliance on ‘Kicking Against
The Pricks’ to totally justify Nick
Cave’s bloated sense of his own
importance.
Simon Reynolds
MM, 16 August 1986, p27
THE COCTEAU TWINS
Victorialand
(4AD)
How time flies when time is time
and again. Another Cocteau Twins
album, another gilded pillar of
excellence, another review of
waxing lyrical ballads.
Nothing is new, but
the news is good – the
progression is complete.
Time marches on, and
passes by the elusive
Twins whose work is
neither updated, nor
outdated, but sieves
through another
calendar in another
place. Once more
they are left
out on a limb
– playing in
TLFeBOOK
limbo – playing in the
isolated peace and
secret splendour of
‘Victorialand’.
Nothing is as it
seems. The cover’s
weathered and
slightly distressed
style conceals the
haunting umbrella of
perfection that lies within.
This time the Cocteaus’ quest
for that perfect ethereal serenade
has even meant the album must
be played at 45rpm. The slower
the speed, the coarser the quality,
and the twins’ flawless production
has no room for mistakes – only
mystery. Though ‘Victorialand’ is
not as immediate as ‘Treasure’, nor
as ornate as ‘Tiny Dynamine’, its
jewels glisten in a sensual languor
of intrigue that outstrips its
predecessors.
Spikes of Robin Guthrie’s
crystalline guitar stake out a fecund
landscape where Liz Fraser’s
beatific voice is free to swirl and
entwine stroking chords before all
dissolve in the cascading chant of
‘Lazy Calm’. As usual, the Cocteaus’
titles swing between the abstract
and the absurd with
songs such as ‘Fluffy
Tufts’ heralding the
nursery rhyme stroll
of ‘Oomangmak’.
The songs chime with
innocence not incense
and it all almost makes
sense. Almost.
But what does it
all mean?
What does it matter – the guiding
hand of true genius is at work
here. No clatter of percussion, no
Simon Raymonde, no clutter, and
gargoyles of replica. It’s so simple,
and simply unique. From the first
breathless and elemental touch
of ‘Throughout The Dark Months
Of April And May’ the duo conjure
wistful spectres of serenity and
submission that cast no shadow.
The balalaika-like refrains of ‘Little
Spacey’ – wings spread wide,
eyes alert, scything thought the
depths of dreamtime, the vocal
hieroglyphics of ‘Whales Tails’
– triggering a stampede of a heart
that beats in unison with the very
stirrings of the soul.
For a full half-hour, the lush and
the barren thread through the
amorous caress of ‘How To Bring A
Blush To The Snow’ and the brittle
cataracts of ‘Feel Like Fins’ before
culminating in the wavering cries of
‘The Thinner Air’.
Nick Cave: the
thinking goth’s
Cliff Richard
 1986

How time flies in the face of Bargeld’s barbed-wire strings

beauty. And the music stops, the
clock starts, and all that remains are
fragments of beauty torn from the
paradise of the Gods.
Nothing is new.
All good is renewal.
Ted Mico
MM, 15 November 1986, p29
wrapping around wood blocks
and the galleon drum.
In darkness the sinister
chimes of the fantasy
mannequins of desolation strut
and clutch at the outrages of
‘Stranger Than Kindness’, with
the same mesmeric chain-gang
beat that binds the entrails of
‘Sad Waters’ to Cave’s ferris

NICK CAVE & wheel of fire.

THE BAD SEEDS
Your Funeral… My Trial
(Mute)
There is no land, there is no hope,
there is no glory. There is only the
sight of helpless and hapless people
being dragged screaming into the
cave of perdition to experience the
thrill of horror.
Nick Cave, the patron saint of
burials, is there to make sure there
is no escape from the
quicksand.
Once more he is
heard suffering for
his art and displaying
the art of suffering
– twitching with
pain and scratching
his arts. Many have
tried to facsimile St
Nicholas’ infernal
inferno but only a man who is
reputed to have spent half his
life unconscious, face down in a
public urinal, could convince
people that hell on earth is real.
Only a man sustained by a wincing
self-mutilation could make this
skeleton-strewn underworld a
tantalising sauna.
The funeral procession crackles,
stumbles and ruptures as if led by
the three blind mice pretending
to be the three wise men carrying
smouldering gifts of rampant
paranoia.
Throughout ‘The Trial’, Cave’s
vision of women as either the chaste
or the chased – the Virgin Mary, or
a lascivious whore (the two inner
sleeve illustrations) is antiquated,
facile and repellent. Only a man
whose heart and mind have been
severely jilted would devote so
many tortured words to Beatrice,
the unapproachable dream of
womanhood, or Doreen, a cheap
and moist gap to fill up the time.
Yet in Cave’s purgatory
everything is black and white
– without the white. Unlike ‘The
PETER ANDERSON/TOM SHEEHAN
The daylight finally fractures
the cortege of ‘Jack’s Shadow’,
but the upbeat joy and relief is
short-lived. The sun blinds love,
casts a haunting shadow and
emasculates truth.
It also causes skin cancer
but Cave is not concerned with
such mundane matters – not
when there’s dead women to
sing about.
He is probably the only man
more openly religious
than Cliff Richard,
demanding and
demeaning belief
by hollering
savage psalms,
empty words
from Leviticus
and dismembered
sermons from
the OT gone OTT. The Cocteau Twins:
making journalists
Nick Cave, hallowed be thy swoon since 1982
name. In this gospel love
can only exist in the solstice
of self-deprivation, the ritual of in the midst of the most ungodly With Me’, a nursery rhyme which
self-sacrifice, and the accidents of activities, revelling, quaffing and insists on masquerading as a song.
self-indulgence. throwing up all around town as he Elsewhere the material is riveting,
It’s a small wonder he found the rampages ever onwards in search of colourful and extraordinarily varied.
borrowed time to make his ‘Funeral’. the next likely boiler. The bright pop-rock of ‘Severina’
It’s nothing short of Wayne, it must be and the infectious up-tempos of
a miracle that this said, is not a man to ‘Sacrilege’ and ‘And The Dance Goes
barren and polluted hide his libido under On’ contrast satisfyingly with the
underworld is so a bushel, and one string-laden, lascivious ‘Garden Of
enticing, forcing a can only admire the Delight (Hereafter)’ or the smoky
parody of beauty recklessness of his ‘Love Me To Death’.
from the grotesque. lyrical enthusiasm for But The Mission are at their most
There is no sex, even if he does, now brilliant when they’re at their most
salvation, there is and then, get a trifle too over-the-top. ‘Bridges Burning’, with
no redemption, affectionate. I mean, if its shrieks and screams and wails, is
there is only delirium anybody ever dared call the masterpiece of the album, and
– a mirage that mistakes hell for me “my blossom” or “my precious”, the slower ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Die’
paradise. I’d break their neck. But Wayne is is not far behind in terms of
Yet this paradise in one hell of nothing if not impulsive, and this, dramatic impact.
a place. coupled with the sprightly musical The first time I was really
Ted Mico imagination of The Mission, makes impressed with The Mission was the
for a remarkably entertaining LP. night they became the only Top 30
I hadn’t expected this. In my band in the universe to be turned
MM, 15 November 1986, p29 previous ignorance, I’d think away from the Limelight for not
The Mission, and I’d think goth being famous enough.
THE MISSION – dark and broody and boring, The second time I was really
God’s Own Medicine boring, boring. In reality, this is a impressed by The Mission was

Firstborn…’ and ‘Kicking Against
The Pricks’, the Bad Seeds have
stretched and scattered their
lugubrious hacksaw shrapnel so far
it no longer resembles the blues,
(Mercury)
“I still believe in God, but God no
longer believes in me.”
Frankly I’m not surprised. Wayne
Hussey is invariably to be found
predominantly dynamic album
which comes to grief on only two
counts – the tedious ‘Dance On
Glass’, all pattering drums and non-
events, and the infuriating ‘Stay
last week, when I finally started to
listen to their music. So Wayne, my
blossom – do I qualify for a free
pint now?
Carol Clerk

NME ORIGINALS 97
TLFeBOOK
 Sweet Nothings
MM, 1 February 1986, p26
THE SISTERHOOD
Giving Ground
(Merciful Releases)
Can’t quite understand what’s
going on here. ‘Giving Ground’
was apparently written and
produced by Sister Of Mercy
Andrew Eldritch along with the
hideously old Lucas Fox, whom
hairier readers may remember
from the original 1902 Motorhead
line-up. The great man doesn’t
actually appear on the track,
however, and it’s up to someone
called James Ray to inflict terror
via the tonsils. It doesn’t quite
work and sounds at times a little
like the tune to Lytton’s Diary
– that is until those Banshees
baselines creep in, then it sounds
like something you get pissed
to in dodgy German discos. The
instrumental version on the B-side
fares a little better and is probably
nice background music for those
nights you have to stay in and
wash the blood off the walls.
Mat Smith
MM, 1 March 1986, p31
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Candyman
(Wonderland)
If I had a penny for every would-be
Siouxsie I’ve ever seen on a stage,
I’d have enough money to write to
PETER ANDERSON
you all personally and tell you to
buy this record. Not that I’ve ever
been much of a Banshees fan: a lot
98 NME ORIGINALS
of their wailings have driven me
to drink, and I never once fancied
that I heard through their albums
the veritable Voice Of God. This
single, however, is thrilling, my
favourite since ‘Playground Twist’.
Big and brash and clashing, its
many parts combine to form
one spirited, unpredictable yet
wholly co-ordinated outburst
while Siouxsie’s voice, in confident
control, bounces up and down
and around the repeating
motifs and unexpected twists of
arrangement.
Carol Clerk
MM, 24 May 1986, p31
THE MISSION
Serpent’s Kiss
(Chapter 22)
Born from the jetsam of The
Sisters Of Mercy, The Mission’s
signature is all too familiar – a
spider’s scrawl on the tabernacle
wall. Cosy guitar arpeggios coil
around Wayne Hussey’s low-
slung drone, until suddenly the
darkness shatters and the spectre
of Andrew Eldritch’s shades rises
out of the black. The ghost smiles,
shakes his head and slopes off into
oblivion, muttering, “The horror…
the horror.”
Ted Mico
NME, 31 May 1986, p30
ALL ABOUT EVE
In The Clouds
(Eden)
Goosebumps a go-go on the 12-
inch version – from the fruit cellar
to the crow’s nest and back again.
TLFeBOOK
NME, 11 October 1986, p12
THE COCTEAU TWINS
Love’s Easy Tears (4AD)
A blood-curdling 50 seconds of
whip-cracking, saddlesore Tex
Mexabilly. This bucking bronco of
a single shows itself no mercy and
finally runs itself into the ground
with a sparkling accordion solo in
the final furlong. There are many
Prickly music delivered in a coolly ways to describe The Cocteau
assured manner. On the one Twins, aren’t there, kids?
hand, the simple, dreamlike title Cath Carroll
track, on the other a purple ‘End
Of The Day’ built along satellite
principles, intermingling classy
phases that keep you indoors
for hours. There are pop hernias
aching to burst in All About Eve,
this is only the swelling.
Mick Mercer
NME, 18 October 1986, p17
THE MISSION
Stay With Me (Mercury)
Pomp rock for night people in
which Wayne Hussey croons
seductive sweet nothings to the
virgin of his choice. I’d sooner
cuddle up to a bag of chisels.
MM, 26 July 1986, p26 Mat Snow
THE MISSION The Mission:
Garden Of Delight lacking in humour
(Chapter 22)
apparently.
Predictable stuff from these ex- Apart from their
Sisters Of Mercy, though entirely hats of course
lacking in the humour that set
the originals apart, and full of
enough jangly guitar and doom-
laden vocals to build upon their
recent ‘Serpent’s Kiss’ success.
Far more interesting though is
their cover of Neil Young’s ‘Like
A Hurricane’, also included here,
with Hussey and co taking the old
redneck’s classic and camping it
up to a quite outrageous degree.
I can hardly wait to see Adam
Sweeting’s face.
Barry McIlheney
 Chapter 9
1987
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Wayne’s WorlD

100 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 1987

NME ORIGINALS 101

TLFeBOOK
 Metal Machine Music
NME, 11 July 1987, p33
THE MISSION
The First Chapter
(Phonogram)
Just how serious can The Mission
possibly be? Anyone who can name
songs ‘Naked And Savage’ and
‘Serpent’s Kiss’ has either got
a severe cliché problem
or they’re laughing all
the way to the bank.
This bunch quite
clearly derive from a
post-punk culture, and
yet take a perverse
delight in flirting
with that bête noir
of their generation,
mid-’70s rock. The Mission quite
self-consciously break all the rules.
Deciding to cover a Neil Young song,
for instance, The Mission have to
choose his single example of that
great dodo, the ‘rock anthem’ – ‘Like
A Hurricane’, delivered with a po-
faced, blustering sincerity.
The problem is that if it’s
intended to be a joke, it’s not really
very funny. The clichés they use
rarely aspire to being anything
other than clichés, and at their
best they’re like consolation prize
winners in a Jim Morrison sound-
alike competition. At their worst,
they can be a veritable vomitbag
full of bilious pretension. A version
of Patti Smith’s ‘Dancing Barefoot’
misses the point altogether,
sounding like little boys playing
with naughty drug references,
where the original sounds like a
scarecrow playing with fire.
102 NME ORIGINALS
By far the most
entertaining aspect
of this pompously
titled collection is the
sleeve notes, which
refer to “blowing
brains out”, “searing
white-hot guitar noise”,
“various illegal states of
mind”, and, best of all,
“a gorgeous happening rock’n’roll
relationship”, whatever that may
be. After reading that lot, the most
amusing thought came to mind.
Hey! What if they mean it, man?
John Munro
NME, 7 March 1987, p26
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Through The Looking Glass
(Polydor)
Look deep into my eyes, little one…
trussssssssst me! Yesss, trussst me
when I say – this is OK, actually.
Who wouldn’t love that sssublime
sssnake from The Jungle Book?
Even he gets a chance on this, the
Banshees’ ‘collection of favourites
from Ten Years In A Tour Bus’.
Siouxsie croons ‘Trust In Me’ from
TLFeBOOK
The Mish: billowing
hair and bilious
pretension
the Disney soundtrack but fares
badly when compared with that
python’s creepy delivery.
It’s been a long time since the
Banshees have been hypnotic, but
this has its moments. Sadly it’s not
half the LP that Nick
Cave produced with
‘Kicking Against The
Pricks’, because here
the Banshees are
mostly too respectful
– except on ‘Strange
Fruit’, which is a
wobbling disaster.
Iggy Pop’s ‘The
Passenger’ is one
of the few rock records that could
start a barndance anywhere in the
world. It’s a legend, and at least
Siouxsie knows that if you’re gonna
mess with this one, mess with it or
leave well alone. So as all concerned
take a ride to see what’s theirs, the
horns swoop and it swings along
famously. On ‘Hall of Mirrors’,
the Banshees and Kraftwerk are
well-matched because each has a
trademark pulse, and the tune is
made to measure.
Anyone attempting to play out
Television’s seldom-heard debut
‘Little Johnny Jewel’ is asking for it.
But rather than try for the high-wire
tension of the original, they’ve
reheated it in a supper-lounge suit,
and it’s charming enough.
‘You’re Lost Little Girl’ needs
its Morrison to convince but
John Cale’s ‘Gun’ stomps along
righteously and the horns puff it up
for a welcome reincarnation.
Even allowing for the flat ‘This
Wheel’s On Fire’ and the token of
their glam adolescence (Roxy’s
‘Sea Breezes’), the Banshees have
here made their first good LP in five
years. Whatever that’s worth today.
David Swift
NME, 11 April 1987, p35
THE CULT
Electric
(Beggars Banquet)
One of the most fascinating things
about the development of music
over the last two years has been the
myriad ways in which heavy metal,
once an idiot in-breed feeding off
its own faeces, has reinvented itself.
Most spectacular is Run DMC’s
achievement in selling re-usable
Aerosmith riffs to the hipsters of
the soul patrol, messing up all the
ten-year old cultural boundaries.
But on the traditional side there’s
been a swing towards a New York
Dolls-ish sense of glam, while on the
punk, tribal side bands like The Cult
have slipped into the biker/killing
machine imagery of traditional
heavy metal.
No one knows the marketing
potential of the various strains of
new rock better than Rick Rubin
– the man who turned the Beastie
Boys from brash punk to brat
metal, the man behind
Slayer’s speed metal
thrash, producer of Run
DMC and now producer
of The Cult. Yes, it is a
conspiracy.
Rubin seems to have
a perfect grasp on what
the masses of middle
America want, which is,
in fact, not very much,
just something very noisy and
unpretentious. And if mid-America
wants it, it wants it in large enough
numbers to allow you to forget
about the rest of the world.
The question is whether they
will want The Cult, and the answer
TONY MOTTRAM/RETNA/PATRICK QUIGLY/RETNA
is almost certainly yes. ‘Electric’ is
a perfectly accomplished heavy
metal record, from the bladed
lettering of the cover right down
to the version of ‘Born To Be Wild’,
while the tawdry glamour displayed
in the inner sleeve shots is perfectly
designed to meet Bon Jovi halfway.

Musically it sounds like a trip
through the styles of the ’70s, from
sub-T.Rex catchphrasing through
acid-scrambled nonsense (“Sitting
on a mountain looking at the sun/
Plastic fantastic lobster telephone”)
to full blown Led Zeppelin bombast.
We might wonder just
how serious this can
be when we hear lines
like: “Zany antics of
a beat generation/In
their wild search for
kicks”. But the kids
with the dollars in
their pockets and
the college radio
station on their
portables won’t .
There’s gold in this here swill.
Don Watson
The Neph’s Carl
McCoy: sponsored
by Homepride
The Cure’s intangibility fades into
MM, 30 May 1987, p30
flesh here and bloodletting is rife.
We have 17 songs, we have two
THE CURE themes – ‘if only’ and ‘come over
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me here’ – we have tortured memories
(Fiction) and, believe it or not, we have some
Kiss kiss bang bang! Just as Rodin’s current fun.
lovers will forever hold palms to When Warhol made The Kiss
thighs and the only – another great arrogant accident
good lips will be red – the beauty of each
lips, this is a perfect rendezvous could’ve
objective blur, a been spoiled by
subjective sublime. saturation. Just as on
You find yourself The Cure’s magnetic
swaying, instinctively, magnum opus, the
to most of it: echoes of pert flirtations or
the known. “All I want is self-flagellations of
to hold you like a dog”: each mini-masterpiece
too furry to be rock, too should negate each
tearful to be pop, too reliant on other till it’s just all too
ice-skating strings to be soul, much. But somehow, somewhere,
there’s a place in your heart for each.
When Marilyn coos “simply
elegant” in The Seven Year Itch,
that’s fine too, because she has no
name. Robert Smith is only called
Robert Smith, but perhaps this is
why we let him get away with it. We
sympathise, because he’s clever
enough not to get too clever. “I wish
you were dead” and “You want to
know why I hate you?” he groans.
This is creative visualisation, for
Smith is undoubtedly enjoying life.
So not only can we mope along,
if we wish, we can boogie with
reverential and self-referential
delight to such exquisite
squeals as, “That girl was always
falling/Again and again/ And I used
to sometimes try to catch her/But I
never even caught her name”.
So it’s won, it’s won from the
extended lung twirling intro to
‘The Kiss’ – such anticipation!
Like unwrapping chocolate!
The consistent death and
pain imagery keeps
us brewing coyly till
‘How Beautiful You
Are’ sends everything
Venus-wards. ‘The
Snakepit’ slithers
with atmosphere
but is usurped by the
strings which
underline ‘Like
Cockatoos’.
And if ‘Hot Hot
Hot’ is flimsy
funk, ‘Just Like
Heaven’ is ribald
pop, as delicious
as a fling behind a
screen. This record
lacks the punch of
‘The Head On The Door’ but has
twice the suction.
Still, the search goes on
for ‘The Perfect Girl’, and
the conclusion of it all is a
TLFeBOOK
1987
staggeringly original “never give in”.
Not until several minutes’ silence
after the event (for that’s what
this subversive saintly saccharine
is, really) do we realise that the
answers have all been romanced.
We take one more quick glance at
the clothing strewn on the floor.
Crimson lips. If that was a picture of
entrails, we’d find it revolting. But it
isn’t. It’s lips, so we
think it’s chic. The eye
of the beholder is yet
again the sole arbiter.
They’ll be howling
this into the wind 10
years from now, and
if it wasn’t a double
album I’d have no
hesitation in calling it
album of the year. But
I’m hesitating. Which leaves me
no more or less lost than anyone
who irrationally loves the nebulous
aspirations, camp angst and lack of
definition of The Cure. A panacea or
Pantheism? Think ‘I’m In Love With A
German Film Star’ and be damned.
Chris Roberts
MM, 30 May 1987, p34
FIELDS OF THE
NEPHILIM
Dawnrazor
(Situation 2)
Detractors of the Nephilim are often
more inclined towards artier shite
and thereby choose to spare three
seconds peering at the hats and six
months ignoring the music. This is
how people come to miss out on the
rumbling sprees we call ‘Slowkill’
or ‘Volcane’, ominous preludes to
power both, gnashing teeth hard
enough to desecrate gums, but with
an undeniable grace.
Epiglottal rumpus aside, it is
the guitars which arrest attention
most, sneering and snapping their
way through torrential mixtures of
ridiculously sublime multi-textured
sounds and song. Nephilim stride
out of a gloom of their own setting,
to throttle your record
deck. You want
whipcord choruses,
tensile passages of
anti-inertia? All here.
This band
have constructed
something quite
magnificent in a
dismal time, when
everyone tends to ape
things of indescribable putrescence.
Unlike hip slop like Swans or Young
Gods, some rattlesnakes wag their
tails ’cos they’re pleased to see you.
Mick Mercer
NME ORIGINALS 103
 h Andy?
ello?
“Thin White Duck here.”
Who?
“Andy.”
certain to choke goth on its own bittersweet
excesses. ‘First And Last And Always’, the album
out on Merciful Release through Warners,
and nights sat up in hotels with Eldritch in his
manky leather cowboy hat doing wilful bodily
“Eldritch.” harm to our fragile metabolisms and rattling
Oh… uh… hi, Eldritch. on at mutual cross-purposes; me about love ’n’
“Come for drinks.” life ’n’ that; Eldritch, of course, about fencing
When? and self-defence and the iron bar he carried
“Now.” up the sleeve of his coat for dextrous use in the
I can’t, I’m asleep. It’s seven in the morning. eventuality of attack.
“Is it? Oh, coffee then.” The world was spinning at Eldritch’s pace
Later. and it was spinning very, very fast. There were
“Sure. Kensington. My hotel. At 10.” great conspiracies and greater paranoia. He even
OK… Uh, you haven’t been to sleep yet have offered to take someone out of my life by giving
you? them a job on the Sisters’ road crew for a US
“When… this week? This month?” tour – a job he could hardly refuse and which he
After the gig. might well not survive. Some friend. Some hero.
“Uh… no. Went to Dingwalls with Lemmy And then… well, those postcards. One from
and these Hell’s Angels and…” Mexico which read: “ELVIS IS DEAD. I know
Save it, Eldritch. Save it. See you later. because he told me. Sorry to break it to you so
bluntly, but you had it coming, hippie. Feed
Ah, those were the days. Cryptic phone calls at your head – when you can find it. Von Eldritch
all hours. The Sisters Of Mercy at The Albert X.” There was a PS: “Peyote girls go round the
Hall, a heavy dark nectar of irony that looked outside, round the outside.”

HIS MASTER’S
VOICE
Andrew Eldritch, the godfather of goth, is back to lead
his children form the hippy wilderness and to prove
The Sisters of Mercy are first and last and always.
Steve Sutherland gets the message
MM, 5 september 1987, p14

104N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNIANLASL S
??
TLFeBOOK

There were others from Hamburg, the last of
which was written in Chinese, and I wasn’t the
only one who feared for the great man’s sanity.
Rumour had it a combination of devastated
health, legal binds and sheer disappointment
that his ex-henchmen had made a go of The
Mission had laid Eldritch near-fatally low. We
presumed the world and Eldritch, to all extents
and purposes, had parted company. Such
miserable unbelievers!
Eldritch is in a photographic studio, glistening
with baby-oil and draped all over Patricia,
formerly of The Gun Club and
now his “right-hand man”. He’s
here to pose with cigarettes and Rumour had it that devastated health, legal
prove The Sisters Of Mercy are
still a force to get wrecked with.
He doesn’t talk of resurrection,
binds and sheer disappointment had laid Eldritch
but of continuation and, as if
to insist megalomania is alive
near-fatally low. Such miserable unbelievers!
and well and ready to pistol-whip pop, his new
single is called ‘This Corrosion’, lasts 11 minutes,
features a 40-piece choir multi-tracked 10 times
and was produced by Meat Loaf’s old buddy
and master of the Wagnerian, Jim Steinman.
I’m about to ask him why but I’m laughing too
much. The Bad News mondo-metal version of
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has just come on the radio
and Patricia thinks it’s The Cult!
Let’s talk over eats Eldritch. Where d’you fancy?
“Oh, anywhere but Indian.”
Really? I thought you’d be a man for a ruby.
“No, I refuse to eat anywhere they beat us at
cricket.”
Italian then?
“Italian.”
Where have you been since you last appeared in
the hallowed pages of the Maker?
“Well, we went through the corporate wars in
my familiar Jonathan E type role and we did OK.
A lot of untruths have been bandied about, but
unfortunately, the way we won makes it tricky
for us to explain how we won and, therefore,
prove that we did. It was basically over the name
– the people that are now The Mission and
myself had an agreement no one would use the
name when the band went its separate ways. But,
after they’d been touting their demos round
getting nowhere under all sorts of other names,
they began to claim rights to it, which patently
had to be stopped. And, when they wanted to be
called The Sisterhood, there was nothing I could
do but be The Sisterhood before them – the only
way to kill that name was to use it, then kill it.
I think that reflected rather badly on the name
The Sisters Of Mercy and it’s probably due for
reinstatement for that reason if no other.
“Then there was a little disagreement with
the publishers, RCA Music, over what would
happen to the money. Effectively it all kept us
out of action.”
TLFeBOOK
1987
Was it frustrating to see The Mission become
successful in the mean time?
“No… I mean, they took the interest and
capitalised on that but, musically, not. It was
noticeable for about a year that they couldn’t
get press unless they mentioned my name. I saw
interviews with myself so many times by proxy
– that got irritating because… well, Wayne has a
REMARKABLE way with the truth.”
Is there bitterness between you then?
“Yeah. Yeah, there is.”
Personal or corporate?
“Personal.”
You suggest there’s a
fundamental difference in
ATTITUDE between The Sisters
Of Mercy and The Mission.
“Yeah, their ability to bend
over forwards in order to make
progress appals me. The way
they’ve bent over contracts and
been appropriately assaulted for it which, again,
is something they’ve not really been prepared to
let on about.
“Musically, too. I never sang a lyric of
Wayne’s. I never found one I COULD sing.”
History has proved that, when The Sisters
disappeared from public view, was EXACTLY
the time you should have been reaping your
greatest rewards. What, other than legalities,
prompted your inaction?
“Well, I wasn’t well. I’d done three tours that
year and I thought we’d come to the end of a
logical course. I titled that Albert Hall gig ‘Wake’
about four months before it actually happened,
and the band are probably still wondering why.
I mean, I thought it should still have gone on but
I knew it wasn’t going to.
“The last time we actually spent any time
together, at the end of the tour before the Albert
Hall, we had some time playing in America and
then we had a week off in Los Angeles.
“I went to Mexico for the day and the other
two couldn’t think of anything better to do than
go to Disneyland. And when I came back from
Mexico a WEEK later, having got somewhat…
uh… distracted, I just thought, ‘God, what are
those people whinging about, really?’ They just
got so feeble.
“Then they said, ‘Well, OK, what are we
gonna do for new songs?’ And I said, ‘How
about this, this and this,’ and unfortunately,
the first ‘this’ I cited had too many chords per
minute and Craig said, ‘If that’s the guitar line,
I’m not playing it,’ and walked out. That was
really that.
“But Wayne had already become a problem
because he wanted to do more of his songs and
I thought they were particularly vacuous.
“I used to have to fight with him to get the
songs to make any sort of grammatical sense,
let alone be sharp with it. I mean, you’ve gotta
know grammar before you can work away from
it. The guy didn’t have a clue – he’d just string
buzzwords together.”
Strangely enough, someone from the Maker
was around Wayne while he was writing recently
and he had a book of aphorisms with all the
mystical-type ones underlined in red.
TOM SHEEHAN
“That’s how most people do it. I can’t bring

myself to work that way. That’s what passes
NME ORIGINALS 105
 A New Era Of Cynicism


for revolution these days. I’m glad I wasn’t
around in ’86 because it wasn’t just The Mission,
it was a bad year all over and anybody who broke
then will be tainted with it for a long time.”
But surely you’re responsible. You introduced
a generation of synth-pop fashion fops to the
thrill of anti-fashion, ‘When The Levee Breaks’,
outlaw biker chic and drug innuendo and guitars
and ripped jeans and dry ice. Without the Sisters
and the vacuum you created when you went to
ground, there could scarcely have been grebo
and Zodiac Mindwarp.
“I dispute that. That’s like saying Christ is
responsible for the Mormons – it’s really not on.
I don’t know what you lot were left with.
“So what’s grebo rock?”
You really haven’t heard of it?
“No, is it like Led Zeppelin?”
Well… yeah… fake… fantasy stuff.
“Oh, without the grunge. Maybe I SHOULD
have taught them outrageousness.”
You sound like The Godfather of Goth.
“Ha! When we were trying to sell ‘This
Corrosion’ to Steinman, we said it was like the
high point of a Borgia disco evening and he
went for it. Nobody makes gloriously stupid
records any more.”
Queen?
“No, they’re embarrassing. Steinman and I are
the only two who share this glorious stupidity.
Don’t tell him though. He just thinks ‘Corrosion’
is perfectly normal. Other bands have no
perspective on the stupidity of it at all. They say
things like, ‘Oh well, we never claimed we were
original,’ or, ‘Well, of course rock’s stupid,’ but
it’s just spiel, just Eldritch lines misunderstood.”
This is where the attitude comes in. The
difference between the Sisters and the pretenders
to the throne is an irony-in-overdrive that takes
the piss out of AND celebrates its role models.
“I always go away thinking I haven’t said enough
about post-war dramatic theory, fencing or Chinese
philology, which are the things I really care about”
“If you do it right, it compounds itself at every
level. ‘Corrosion’ is an indictment of bombast
– there was no other way to do it.”
A lot of old Sisters fans are gonna say, “He’s
taking the piss.”
“Of course I’m taking the piss – it’s the only
way to be serious about it. Same as it ever was.”
So this is crap AND fantastic. It’s time we
redefined the difference between man and beast.
It’s nothing to do with how many legs you walk
on; it’s everything to do with the possession of
irony. I know people who are animals.
“And I had a cat that had a very highly
developed sense of irony.”
‘Corrosion’ is already being compared to
some pretty God-like things. One of them is the
Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.
“That’s cool.”
So it’s pop about pop.
“That’s a very important element, yeah. You
have to acknowledge the medium in the message,
I think, otherwise you’re stupid… dishonest…
or just very naive.”
106 NME ORIGINALS
In a sense, your attitude was a precursor to I hope history proves you right.
sampling. You were acknowledging Led Zeppelin “I hope so too because I don’t think this irony
before The Beastie Boys USED them. Is their compounds itself properly unless you do add
literal approach even more honest than yours? an extra layer on the top, unless you do stick
“I think that’s a lower level, a very vulgar something worthwhile in.”
interpretation. The Beastie Boys aren’t familiar Don’t we need a new era of innocence? Don’t
territory to me. In about two years, I’ll cover we need to UNLEARN progress?
‘When The Levee Breaks’ and wipe the floor with “No, we need a new era of cynicism. The
The Beastie Boys and wipe the floor with The reason the NME, for instance, can’t comprehend
Cult because they haven’t got a grip on what is this sort of thinking is that they don’t have that
great about Led Zeppelin. It’s like The Mission cynicism. They still believe that rock’n’roll is
going out and covering Sisters music – they make supposed to be naive and wonderful and, if
it sound like bad Echo & The Bunnymen.
“I remember I went to see The Alarm when
they were knee-high to Big Country and I
thought, ‘These people have COMPLETELY
misunderstood Mott The Hoople,’ and it’s
been happening ever since. I’m now used
to people misunderstanding me, though
it’s weird when you get all these Eldritch
clones out there treading the boards.”
You’ve never seen Fields Of The
Nephilim?
“No, I’m told we played with
them once in San Francisco but
I wasn’t actually there when they
played.”
Patricia: “They knew I was there
and, afterwards, they came up and
started talking to people next to me.
I just left. I wasn’t even going to speak
to them. I mean, for a moment when
they were on, I turned and thought,
‘This is familiar, what’s THIS?’”
“The only reason that people like
that embarrass me so much is that,
if they’re really that hooked on me,
they must be tasteless. It gets to the
stage where you think, ‘I’m not THAT
good and anybody who thinks I am
must be an idiot’.
“There’s an inner integrity and
authority in ‘Corrosion’ which comes of
pain, grief and suffering. I couldn’t do
what The Cult are singing, I couldn’t do
what The Beastie Boys are doing, I couldn’t
do what Madonna is doing. I could do what
Alice Cooper did but then I’m not extrovert
enough. I would have no scruples about
doing it if I were able to.
“And if it takes a year fighting
corporate wars in order to be able to do it
with integrity, then I’ll do it… or not at
all. I don’t HAVE to do this.”
Don’t you have a touching belief that
the role of a recording artist is to be
intelligent and communicative, and isn’t
that belief extraordinarily old-fashioned?
“Yeah, and self-destructive.” Well-oiled sisters:
So you’re fighting a rearguard action. Andrew Eldritch
“Or vanguard, depending on how you and Patricia
look at it.” Morrison
TLFeBOOK

you give them irony, they say, ‘Oh dear, that’s
distasteful. Let’s forget about it. Let’s pretend it’s
not humorous.’ That’s very primitive cynicism
born out of a very vulgar and naive ideology.”
Has pop music let you down?
“No. I know what it’s capable of because, when
I grew up, it was blatantly capable of it and it
was delivering. Expectations have been lowered
since and deliveries have been faltering. It’s just
a question of raising people’s expectations again.
We can do it. I’ll make the records if you raise
the expectations. It’s a long war but ‘Corrosion’
might win one battle and, after all, it’s the only
war worth fighting.”
How much is revenge the motive?
“‘The Gift’ was the revenge, a weapon very
specifically pointed. This is the gloating, much
more widespread, more general.”
Why did you go to live in Hamburg?
“It’s the largest city in the Federal Republic
which is the most powerful country in Europe.
It’s just such a wonderfully cool place because it’s
not populated by cool people like Berlin.”
Do you feel badly done by in Britain then?
“Yeah. Not so much these days because I’ve
got a reasonable amount of goodwill stored up
but one knows it’s only goodwill as long as you
don’t start talking about aesthetics when they ask
you what your favourite colour is.”
Have you, in your time away, seen anything
encouraging?
“What, to do with music?”
To do with anything.
Twenty seconds silence. Then: “No.
“Of course I’m taking the piss. It’s the only way
to be serious about it. Same as it ever was”
But nothing discouraging either.
Life went on and I expect it to go on.
I’d find it pretty weird, in fact, if I
had seen any light… or darkness.”
Control seems important to
you while, all around, others are
relinquishing theirs.
“Yeah. But although I put my
sole existence into making
records, I don’t need to make
records. I mean, if I hadn’t
gone off and been a little
degenerate in the mean time,
I dare say I’d have joined the
Diplomatic Corps – that’s what
I’m trained for. Or MI6.”
So what d’you think of
Spycatcher?
“That’s pretty damn irrelevant
– that’s really all to do with the
Home Office isn’t it? I haven’t read
it but I can’t see what the surprise is
all about. Like Nixon – what the hell
did they expect? It’s just politics.”
So was Nixon hard done by or
was he just dumb to get caught?
“I thought Nixon was a great
president. He got the Americans
out of Vietnam, he made friends, to
some extent, with the Russians and
he certainly made friends with the
Chinese. He was the best president
in terms of foreign policy that
nation had in a long time
and I thought they were
very stupid to get rid of
him. He was very stupid to make a mess
of covering up Watergate up – I mean
Reagan survived Irangate.”
Patricia: “I was over there when that
happened and, you know, Reagan called
TLFeBOOK
1987
Nixon and asked him how to survive it.”
Eldritch is supposed to be a pretty ruthless
character himself.
“Not really, I’m a counter-attacker by nature.
I’m not a pre-emptive strike man.”
Most people in your position, if they’re
interested in maintaining control, tend to
make a point of confounding (Robert Smith)
or confirming (John Lydon) their public image.
You do neither.
“That’s where the hardship comes in. It’s
a lot of extra work and a lot of extra worry.
Anecdotes? I just don’t have them.”
Will ‘Corrosion’ chart?
“I’m told it will. I don’t care. It’s a good record
now, it’ll be a good record in five years. I don’t
care when people buy it though I think it’s more
accessible to people, it has a more accessible top
layer than the records we’ve had out in the past.
That’s just a function of the way it’s recorded,
I don’t think it’s a function of the song.”
So the song’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or…
uh… a wolf in what? Brontosaurus’s clothing?
I dunno, I’ll cheat and put in something really
witty and apposite when I write this.
“Ha! I think it’s a shark in wolf’s clothing.
That was a pretty duff metaphor to start with
though. Forget about that one…”
But it’s devious.
“Not deceitfully so. It’s just crafty. I hope it
makes sense. I mean, I’d like people to go for
everything they can get out of it and all at once
– that’s what symbolism and obscurism are all
about – but I don’t expect that. It’s the only thing
I get off on though. It’s the only thing that would
make me wanna sing the same song two nights
running. It’s gotta have that overwhelming
panoply of effects.”
What do you read now?
“Der Spiegel and The Times – I’ve started doing
the crossword again. Last month I read Pilgrim’s
Progress and Beowulf.”
Films?
“I don’t have a television in Hamburg. That’s
one of the reasons for not writing in Leeds
because there I’d spend 24 hours – well, 25
hours a day by the time I’d taken some medicine
– watching TV. I was very pleased to be forced
to catch the Rutger Hauer season while we were
in the studio. Patricia was renting anything
with Rutger Hauer in it. Some of them are real
stinkers but he’s so funny in The Hitcher – it’s a
brilliant comic performance. You’ll love it.
“It really makes you wanna go out and do it.
There’s not a lot of films where the character is
so obviously deranged but, at the same time,
makes it look like such fun that even the sanest
person could imagine doing it. I mean, to go out
and wanna be The Terminator, you’ve gotta be
a moron basically – it’s great to watch but you’d
never do it yourself. This is different.”
So what makes you happy Eldritch?
“Cats still make me ludicrously happy.”
TOM SHEEHAN
What makes you sad?
“Nothing makes me sad because I think


NME ORIGINALS 107
 Four Minute WArnings

there has to be some element of surprise in
order to feel sad.”
What else?
“Well, I’m thinking of learning to drive. The
thing is, whenever I go abroad, I invariably end
up driving and I don’t have a licence or anything
which is probably not the thing to do. Then,
you see, what happens after that is I buy a car.
I don’t particularly like cars for their own sake
and I don’t particularly like driving. I get these
MM, 21 November 1987, p31 urges. I see these things and I think, ‘What if…?’
That’s why I don’t really enjoy it; because I’m
THE SISTERS OF MERCY responsible enough not to do what I feel the urge
Floodland to do. I don’t get the urge to drive fast, I just get
(Merciful Release) the urge to drive off the road, especially when
Facing up to the fact that there’s nothing on either side of me.
nothing is new tends “It’s got nothing to do with suicide; it’s just
to separate the mice about driving a car off the edge of a cliff.”
from the men. Some,
like George Michael, How would you kill someone?
plagiarise. Others, “It would depend whether it was someone
Like The Cult, feign I liked or someone I didn’t like.”
ignorance. Eldritch OK, someone you like.
mocks, uses choirs and “It depends whether I think they’d appreciate
Coleridge, taunts pop with its elders and something spectacular or something just very
betters. sedate. I think if it was someone I really, really
‘Floodland” is more and less the same liked and they’d appreciate the spectacular, it
album as ‘First And Last And Always’. It’s would have to involve an expanse of scenery and
more in that Eldritch’s awareness of mortality an extraordinarily fast car.”
has spread from the knowledge that And those you don’t like?
“I never know. I always go away thinking,
‘Well, I haven’t said enough about post-
war dramatic theory or fencing, or Chinese
philology,’ which are the things that I really care
about. And then someone says, ‘Well? Did you
tell them how great the record is?’ And I go, ‘Oh,
actually that never occurred to me.’
“The only conversations I quite get off on
these days are the ones where we discuss how
crap conversation is. I’m not socially honed and
I don’t feel the need to be. Once you convince
yourself you’re the all-time best at it, where d’you
go from there?”
How enigmatic.
“I don’t feel enigmatic. Enigmatic is being
deliberately obscure and I’m not. I might
be oblique but that’s only because, to me,
obliqueness is a clearer way of expressing
something in its entirety.”
Could this be the Oxford University training
– the art of leaving oneself least open to attack
– or are we talking about truth here?
“Truth. I can do the other as well but I’m too
out of training – and when I was really good at it,
I began to despise myself for it.”
So you’re talking about a search for
communication?
“I really don’t know but, apart from the bit
about Roy Kinnear, I stand by everything I’ve
ever said to you.”

nothing is new to the opinion that nothing
is worthwhile; and it’s less in that being
incapable of contemplating nothing, it reacts
to time running out by amputating all the
curlicues of guitar and replacing them with
stark, essential foundations.
‘Floodland’ is an edifice to decay in
which Eldritch unleashes all his paranoia
and obsession. The gargantuan ‘Dominion/
Mother Russia’ finds our hero forsaking that
job in the diplomatic corps and pleading
with Mother Russia to “rain down”, while
the magnificently minimal ‘This Corrosion’
cleaves through its own pompous austerity
to admit “I got nothing to say I ain’t said
before”, a revelation which, far from
suggesting a lack of imagination, indicates
a surfeit of it. That admission, alongside
the metallic Luftwaffe slap of ‘Lucretia My
Reflection’, the breakdown of language
during ‘Floodland II’ or the (surely) sampled
nuclear depth charge drums from Led
Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’ on
‘Neverland’, is a mark of shocking honesty.
When Eldritch sings “Seconds to the drop
but it feels like hours…” the red light starts
winking on the dashboard and we realise
that ‘Driven Like The Snow’ is ‘Nine While
Nine’ revisited because he can do nothing
else –we’re all waiting. Dying on record’s a
dicey business, especially when it’s world
destruction that nags your every waking
minute because there’s nowhere to go
artistically. Facing up to that, ‘Floodland’
is a triumph of sorts, neither optimistic
enough to suggest there’s a Noah’s Ark
nor pessimistic enough to accuse us all of
navigating a ship of fools. It simply says rust
never sleeps and this is what it sounds like.
Great.
Steve Sutherland
PETER ANDERSON
“I’d always want it take longer. It’s best to kill Even the stuff about Norman Wisdom?
someone they really like, I think.” “Yeah.”
You suggest in what you just said that you like Gods will be gods.
and dislike but not love and hate.
“I’m very wary of it. I have to be very careful
because I think I’m probably a bit obsessive by
nature. I had to TOTALLY stop drinking in order
to be able to maintain any business whatever.
I don’t gamble. I don’t do smack.”
And love?
“Absolutely not. I only ever really did it once
and I don’t think I’m likely to do it again.”
Because you don’t like losing your personality
in someone else or because you don’t like
inflicting it?
“Both. We were just dreadful for each other.
It didn’t stop it being brilliant but it’s
marginally better that it doesn’t happen any
more. That’s tough. It still hangs over to the
extent that I couldn’t do it again.”
What would induce you to lose your self
control, to endanger yourself in passion?
“I’ve only ever done that when I wasn’t
quite… on stage I’ve done things that
afterwards I’ve thought, ‘No! That
was just beyond the pale.’”
Because you were out
of it?
“Because I could,
because I was out
of it and because
I had to. If you’re
in front of a crowd, you’re in a
position of responsibility and, if they’re waiting
for you to sort out one moron, you have to do it.
I mean, the last time it happened, I spent half an
hour trying to talk the crowd into sorting out
their own problem and then, eventually, I just
dived. It was really sad. I felt very ashamed on
their behalf that they let me do it.”
OK, that’s it. Was it good for you?

108 NME ORIGINALS

TLFeBOOK
 1987

Hippy hippy shake:

Julianne Regan of
All About Eve and
The Mission’s Wayne
Hussey

All About Eve/

The Mission
The Marquee, London MM, 5 September 1987, p19

W ith no rock giants, such

as Tommy Steele or
Charlie Drake, to kiss, poor Painey
Wayney turns to his band for his
kicks and everyone goes CRAZY,
except for the beleagured reviewer
and his girlfriend, anxiously timing
the guards’ patrols around the
perimeter fence. (Any moment
now…) Then, bugger me, it isn’t as
bad as I’d feared. The new songs
may simply be the old songs
(‘Sacrilege’?), may simply be jovial
noise without much in the way of
tungsten tunes, but this tiny tussle
was enjoyable! Standards are
slipping, ‘1969’ is slipped in and the
Eve. “I don’t know why. Must be
the wanker in me coming to the
surface.” The alcoholics. The Hippy-
Hippy Shake! Glorious pop songs,
bloody pop songs. All About Eve.
“Imagine you’re around a
campfire, my friends,” Julianne
suggests, dodging my flaming
arrows, “because this is ‘Gipsy
Love’!” And unfortunately it is.
But never mind, there was still a
Sweetness and light. Peace and love,
Sweetness and light. Peace and love. with a crowd scrap thrown in for
good measure. Some people have
With a crowd scrap thrown in for good no manners.
Warmed up for Reading Festival,

measure. Some people have no manners

JOHN-CHRISTIAN JACQUES/RETNA/TOM SHEEHAN

trivial pursuit is over. The Mish. In sweating in their delirium, sordid

one era and out the other.
The Igloos love it. Then they bay
for the band who can currently
charm anyone. To protect the
innocent I can even reveal that
one of the Stud Brothers recently
confessed a liking for All About
prickly ‘What Kind Of Fool’, plus
rampant versions of ‘Our Summer’
and ‘Flowers In Our Hair’, with
the real live human drummer a
torrential pulsebeat, the guitars
cutting in and out of the commercial
splendour. For ‘Shelter From The
Rain’, Wayney accidently stumbles
onto the stage, discovers it isn’t the
toilet so has a sing-song. Moving.
and sentimental, All About Eve wet
themselves tonight. The crowd
soak it up. “I don’t know about
you,” Julianne gasps, rebellious
banter flying, “but this is all a bit too
exciting for me!”
Mick Mercer

NME ORIGINALS 109

TLFeBOOK
Kissing
To Be
Clever
TLFeBOOK

This week, The Cure complete a triumphant European tour by playing
three nights at Wembley. Chris Roberts caught up with them on the eve
of their homecoming to discuss lips, hands, legs and boomps-a-daisy
MM, 5 December 1987, p25
t
“ he kiss originated when the first male
reptile licked the first female reptile,
implying in a subtle, complimentary way
that she was as succulent as the small
reptile he had for dinner the night before.”
– F Scott Fitzgerald: The Crack-Up
HE KISSES VARIOUS PEOPLE, HE SUPPOSES!
“The only person I really kiss is Mary,” says
Robert Smith. “I kiss Simon from time to time.
Oh, I kiss various people, I suppose. It’s just
spontaneous. But there’s a history of treacherous
kisses. And lecherous kisses are vile. A drunken
kiss can be one of the worst things in the world.
I used to say my hobbies were drinking and
kissing, in that order, but it wasn’t true. I don’t
know. I dislike kissing as much as I like it.
Seeing other people kissing is… ugh…
“At one point I almost got phobic about the
mouth being an orifice, about actually travelling
into someone’s mouth. I just liked putting the
mouth on the cover ’cos it’s so close-up it’s kind
of obscene and lewd. It was a
reaction to the way we’re often
interpreted – I’m seen as being “I’m seen as being cuddly. This isn’t
really cuddly, and my mouth
and lipstick are supposed to be
so nice. This isn’t true; I’m as
true; I’m as horrible as anyone ”
horrible as anyone. Probably more so than most.
“What comes out of people’s mouths is pretty
vile most of the time.
“And breath. Breath is revolting. Especially
in Germany.”
IF HE WAS AT HOME, HE’D BE IN THE PUB!
We, however, are in Brussels, the capital of
Europe. It is the capital of Europe because
nobody – not Rome, not Madrid, not Liverpool,
not nobody – could possibly be jealous of
Brussels. Thus peace is assured. Being jealous
of Brussels would be like being jealous of a
watering-can with scaffolding around it.
“We’re sitting here and it’s Sunday. But it
could be Tuesday as much as anything. That’s
what’s so good about doing this. I’d be at the
pub if I was at home anyway, so going on stage
is a bonus.”
The Cure on tour is a fascinating
phenomenon – it goes through all the rock’n’roll
motions while somehow maintaining a slight
filmy forcefield between amusing itself and
plummeting into all those Spinal Tap clichés.
Drinking. Saying someone “has never touched
a drink in his life”. Watching old videos of
Dr Who. Lol-baiting. Arguing about the
merits of compact discs, and how the Luddites
would smash them up. Crimping. Lol-baiting.
Drinking. Phoning home. Anyone-baiting.
Signing autographs. Trying to avoid Michael
TOM SHEEHAN
Jackson, Marvin Gaye and Van Morrison. Lol-
baiting. Saying, “Come on, just one more drink”
and “Hello, I’m a plank” (if you are Simon).
Asking the manager to reveal his wedding
tackle. Requesting ‘Thinking Of You’ by Sister
Sledge from a disc jockey who looks like Roscoe
Tanner. Being staggered that Roberts knows
‘Born To Be Alive’ and ‘Let’s All Chant’ were by
Patrick Hernandez and The Michael Zager Band
respectively. Not going out of the hotel because
that would mean instant lethal mobbing.
Getting up late. Going back to bed. Feeling a
bit awkward when little girls burst into tears
upon touching their hair. Drinking. Lol-baiting.
Talking about gore movies. Being chuffed that
Barry Gibb is a Cure fan. Having chewing-gum
on the rider. Drinking some more. Mercilessly,
relentlessly, savagely, baiting Lol. Not dancing.
Tittering. Not having some grand idea about
themselves. Watching shirts shrink. Miming to
Status Quo records. Being gods in France.
Why are The Cure so big, Robert?
“I think a lot of it is songs, I really do. Just
having the right song at the right time.”
Why are The Cure so big, Simon?
“I think it’s probably… Robert.”
THEY LOOK LIKE ANGELS!
“I worry about our attitude because I have to
live with it. I’m sure a lot of people don’t care
at all what attitude we have, but I have to keep
thinking it’s important because, if I let that go,
I may as well become a member of Spandau
Ballet or something.
“You have to keep a sense of… just being
human. I’m wearing black for the first time in
years today. We wear white on stage. We look
like angels.”
We talk about mouths, then I suggest that
Robert might feel his audience is too young to
appreciate the complex mesh of love and hate in
the songs…
“I never feel patronising towards anyone of 15;
I remember still how I experienced things then.
I could never write them down as well as I could
at 25, I didn’t have the same grasp of language,
but I felt the same emotions, just as strong, in a
much rougher form. Between 15 and 18 is when
you develop your personality. You go out with
people. You make contact with jealousy and all
the other horrible emotions which I no longer
suffer from.
“The songs aren’t that complicated; only one
or two. And they’re probably so convoluted that
they only really refer to me. Most of the recent
songs have been fairly obvious.”
“Get it out get it out get it out/Get your fucking
voice out of my head/I never wanted any of this/I
wish you were dead/Dead dead dead” – ‘The Kiss’.
TLFeBOOK
1987
HE NEVER HAS AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT!
The words to ‘How Beautiful You Are’ are of
interest to me…
“The lyric-sheet’s wrong, innit?”
Who proof-read it?
“Me.”
It suggests that “no one ever knows or loves
another”. That’s a bit of a rum do, isn’t it?
“Ah, that’s literary theft, from a Baudelaire
short story. I wrote a song round the time of
the ‘Faith’ album with the idea that, even if
you thought you were very close to someone,
you never really were. That you’d always be
disappointed in people. Then someone gave me a
book of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud.
“I read this story and his narrative idea put it
so much better. Just goes to show – I never have
an original thought!”
But is your view of communication between
people really that bleak?
“Mmm. Still is. I wish it wasn’t. But I expect
less of fewer people now. There’s just one or two
people who I rely on not to change. Maybe three.
It’s very difficult writing songs which people say
help them and not feeling like you’re the centre
of the universe. It’s nice to read something that
stirs you to think you’re on the periphery. Or
that you don’t even exist.
“I once met somebody who’d interviewed
Patrick White and I felt very peripheral then.
I wished I’d met him. But then I was invited
to lunch with Ray Bradbury
and I didn’t go: at the last minute
I got scared I’d be so useless in
the conversation.”
Recommended reading for
incurable Curophiles?
“Patrick White’s autobiography, which tells
me how an old person feels when he’s old. And
gay. I’m terrified of old people. And in Ireland
I set myself this reading course to try and
re-educate myself, ’cos I felt I was becoming
very dull. So I read Beyond Good And Evil
again, and The Myth Of Sisyphus. And Sartre’s
Road To Freedom trilogy, which I’d never read
before. That was brilliant. Really good. And
Confucius…”
Isn’t this all a little naively heavy-going?
“No, surprisingly enough – you know most of
what’s in them. You find you just know.”
HE ALWAYS FEELS LIKE THEY’RE NOT HIS HANDS!
If Robert wasn’t a compulsive liar, I’d ask him if
he was a compulsive liar.
What hypnotises you? Mesmerises you?
“Koyaanisqatsi. The rain on bus journeys.
Through the window. And snow, snow’s the best
thing in the world. When you’re driving through
snow at night and the headlights are on and it
looks like you’re going through star tunnels…
Oh, lots of things mesmerise me. Good dancers.
I suppose that’s the opposite to how I feel
– seeing people who are really fluid, who look
like they don’t exist.”
Do you wish you could disown the physical?
Lose your body?
“Yeah, a trade-in would be quite good.
Actually no – a lot of my experience derived
from how uncomfortable I feel within my own

body anyway, so if I was a disembodied mind,
NME ORIGINALS 111
 Messiah Of Angst


it’d take all that away from me.
“I always feel like they’re not my hands. I’ve
always felt like it – my body – is a third person.
If I cut my hand – I think the band has been
cut, not me. I suppose it’s an irrational desire
to escape from it – to feel that, even if my heart
stopped, I would still be here.”
Surely you forget yourself sometimes?
“Yeah, after about the seventeenth pint of
Guinness.”
Oh, boring – what about the “sexual act”?
“Yeah I suppose. That’s pretty mental as well
though. Um… late night swimming in dark
waters is a good way. And sleep! And waking up
in the morning when you don’t have to get up
immediately – I feel comfortable with my body
then, it’s just a big lump.
“This is why I find it strange that I can go on
stage in front of people and jump about. People
say, ‘Why do you always look down?’ I’m looking
at my feet. They don’t do what I want. I don’t
know how it is I can play football, really.”
What frightens you?
“Flying, now. I’ve suddenly decided against
it; I’ve realised how silly it is. Willingly agreeing
to subject yourself to that torture of throwing
yourself on the mercy of a machine and another
person. Also, I can always see through the floor
on planes. Lack of control I don’t like; that
makes me angry. And I’m scared of growing old.
And I’m scared at my continuing lack of faith in
anything. And I’m scared of going blind, ’cos my
eyesight’s failing rapidly.”
What sights would you miss most?
“Everything. Except the colour brown
– I could live without that. Most, I’d miss the
reflection of my own eyes. Y’know when you
stare really close into a mirror?”
Is that how you check you’re still there?
“Yeah. I hypnotise myself to see the devil in
my face and skull. I try not to do that so much
now. It affects my mental stability.”
HE’S LOSING HIS CYNICISM!
That’s devils and angels you’ve mentioned…
“Most people’s devil is far more pronounced
than their angel. I think the angel probably
visits, while he devil lives there. Although I’m
turning around a bit. I used to only be surprised
if people were nice. Now I’m surprised if people
are horrible. I’m losing my cynicism as I get
older! It’s generally easier to be affable and non-
committal than it is to be aggressive and angry.
Although I’m very argumentative.
I never think I’m wrong. I have a
very strong sense of morality and
a well-defined code of ethics I’ve
adhered to through the years.
This derives from my survival
instincts.”
Robert has in his time been
described as “walking a thin line
between agitation and boredom”,
and, among many less abstractly
complimentary things, “The
Messiah Of Angst”.
“I never thought those
descriptions referred to me;
so I didn’t have to live with it.
I didn’t go home and find my
mum saying, ‘Hello, Messiah
112 NME ORIGINALS
Of Angst, welcome home Messiah, we’ve killed
the fatted calf.’ I’ve never spent much time with
people who look up at me, or think I’m somehow
different. So when I read these things I either
laugh or just go, ‘Oh, nutty bastards.’ How could
I have stayed one thing for years anyway? That’d
be ludicrous. I’m not aware of being the ‘me’ that
does this – it’s weird – I can’t really grasp hold of
it. Ah, I suppose I’ll have to now, won’t I?”
Does he ever tap himself and find the hollow
resonance alarming? And is this emptiness, this
still life in mobile homes (thank you, Sylvian),
sadder than any angst?
“I stare into a mirror… I hypnotise myself
to see the devil in my face and skull”
HE ACTUALLY FELT… REALLY… DEAD!
“Yes I do – in fact I feel it to a worrying degree
now. When I went to the South Dublin coast for
two weeks, just before we came on this tour, I’d
go out by the sea each morning, and sit down
by the rocks. When I was younger it used to feel
really… I don’t know, I used to feel… inspired.
And this time I actually felt… really… dead.
“Back then, I’d feel a sense of infinity, I’d
feel really small, and helpless, but a part of
something. I’d be filled with overwhelming
despair or I’d feel deliriously happy, just sitting
looking at the sea. But this time, I didn’t feel
anything. I’d just sit. And it’d just be the sea.
There’s be no communion… oh, this isn’t
sounding how I mean it…”
It’s sounding like the old grey man on the
‘Standing On A Beach’ photographs. Uh…
ain’t that something?
“It’s just… knowing how much I can feel
something – no more than anyone else, but
I can be so overwhelmed by things – I find this
worrying. Not to feel anything when I know I
ought to. I’m not shocked any more. I just look.”
When?
“When someone gets knocked over. Or
Christmas. Because you remember how you
used to get excited and you no longer do, and it’s
worrying because it’s like you’re losing yourself
somehow. You’re becoming thinner. Or maybe
hollower.”
And this upsets you?
“It doesn’t make me feel anything, does it?”
The Cure:
myrmidons of
miserablism
TLFeBOOK
Ah. Yes. No.
“That’s what touring does to me as well. It’s
television, tapes, reading, thinking, sitting. And I
know at the start of the chain of actions that I’m
gonna feel nothing for, like, the next five hours.
I’m resigned to it till I go to sleep.
“‘Close To Me’ was about that. Some days you
just know nothing’s gonna happen. Nothing’s to
be felt. It’s another day gone.”
Is it worth being alive on those days?
“No…” He looks up with a puzzled
expression. “Not really.”
As for that ‘Fight’ song, all that “never give up”
tosh… in the light of what you’ve just said,
why bother?
“It’s about trying to force yourself into some
kind of action, which could lead to experience.
Because there isn’t really anything else but
experience. Whether it’s passive or active.
“I used to be able to rely passively on my
environment and the people around me. Now I
think I have got to – not necessarily manufacture
experience, but… look for things. I’m addicted
to feeling extremes.”
Taking risks?
“Yeah, mental ones.”
HE’S GOT A WEIRD COMPOSITE GIRL!
What’s this penchant you’ve got for “stupidly
gorgeous” girls?
“Ah yes, I have got a weird composite girl
in mind sometimes, when I’m struggling for
ways to eulogise femininity. It’s a kind of cross
between Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn
and Betty Boop.”
Must there be a dumbness?
“Naivete. A naive, trusting quality, I suppose.
And innocence that isn’t really innocence,
because they usually end up getting their own
way. And obviously there’s a lot of Mary in there
as well. That’s what I like about her.”
Does she ever get jealous?
“No! Why should she? There’s no room for
jealousy in the relationship: it’d be very tiring.
She may be jealous of the time other people get
from me, with the group existing. I’ve known
her since before the group started, so she’s always
seen it as an obstacle, whereas usually ‘being in
a group’ takes on a much more
romantic aspect.
“She probably does get jealous
from time to time but just doesn’t
tell me ’cos she knows I’d hit her.”
Apart from QPR finishing (at
best) eighth in the league, what
does the future hold?
“Sometimes I see myself staring
at the sea, writing music for Stanley
Kubrick’s next film or something.
Other times I think I’ll just be
surrounded by books, reading.
Other times I see myself in…
a blank space. Enjoying blankness.
TOM SHEEHAN
Doing nothing.”
Mmm, sounds good.
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23W

TLFeBOOK
 Too Many Truffles
NME, 3 January 1987, p30
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
This Wheel’s On Fire
(Wonderland)
As one whose pre-pubescent
ardour was first aroused by The
Trinity’s kohl-eyed and feather-cut
Julie Driscoll and whose fashion
sense was first alerted by Brian
Auger’s Regency cuffs as they
flounced over his Hammond
organ on Top Of The Pops, I can
only applaud Siouxsie’s latest
excavation of the 1968 songbook.
Far more liberty-taking though
less crystal-ball mysterious than
their reverential ‘Dear Prudence’,
I’ll be disappointed if this terrific
record doesn’t blast Siouxsie and
co up the chart pronto.
Mat Snow
MM, 10 January 1987, p27
THE MISSION
Wasteland
(Phonogram)
Preposterous mysticism and
loopy obsession I can just about
take if accompanied by sufficient
bombastic power – I’m thinking
of Black Sabbath, Killing Joke,
Earth, Wind & Fire. The Mission,
however, sound thin as mist.
There’s too much wisp, not
enough bottom to their sound.
This record is embarrassingly
similar to ‘Porcupine’ – something
which does not make me think
more highly of the Mission, but
rubs off to the detriment of the
Bunnymen. Funny that.
Simon Reynolds
114 NME ORIGINALS
NME, 18 April 1987, p23
THE CURE
Why Can’t I Be You?
(Fiction)
Still sounding like a haunted
hippie singing through a helium
bubble, Robert Smith’s voice
is the only facet of The Cure
which doesn’t shout “Teen
FUN”. Of course Robert’s trying
determinedly to sound skittish
and frivolous but, because he
can’t even cut it as a bathroom
singer, his voice is still little more
than a reedy, angst-ridden whine.
Otherwise, The Cure are as frothy
as white pop gets these days.
Shameless and cheap enough to
steal Wham’s ‘Young Guns’ riff,
this ditty will soon be another Top
Of The Pops cracker.
Donald McRae
MM, 18 April 1987, p26
ALL ABOUT EVE
Our Summer
(Eden)
When I saw the sleeve of this
single I almost wept. You button
down people’s ears with tales of
glorious contemporary beauty
and the glowing disc of delight in
TLFeBOOK
question then turns up sheathed
in some revolting medieval
spectacular! Oh God…
Consequently the only thing to
do is get your doublet and hose in
a speedy twist over the luscious
malignance within, containing as
it does that greatest of all reliefs,
a chorus. It’s a circular temptation
with a smooth guitar sliding shyly
up against the coolest vocals.
Produced by those awfully
nice Mission people it has just
enough thumping power and
glistening strength to fill a nation’s
jaded ears, syringing out all
that Curiosity Killed The Cat and
Erasure bilge. A well-delineated
giant of a song.
The heat is on…
Mick Mercer
MM, 11 July 1987, p26
ALL ABOUT EVE
Flowers In Our Hair
(Eden)
“Where have all the glowers gone,
Sun Children?” cries Julianne.
Sun Children! What planet did
she escape from? Us deprived
city types haven’t seen the sun
for many a long year. And, in
the depths of our subterranean
pleasure palaces, strapped to
our typewriters, the very last
thing we need is sanctimonious
hippy children fouling up the
carefully controlled atmosphere
of unpalatable nastiness brought
on by too much Swans, Young
Gods and hip hop. ‘Flowers’ brings
to mind days of contented zither-
playing and complacent middle
class twats sitting in fields being
mellow. ‘Flowers’ is Glastonbury
1967 and I hate it.
Sam King
NME, 26 September 1987, p19
SISTERS OF MERCY
This Corrosion
(Merciful Release)
Yes, the King of Goth is back!
Heeeeeeere’s SPIGGY!!!! Andy
‘Drac’ Eldritch (real name – Stan
Sunshine) has made a record and
it’s the lamest thing to crawl out of
Leeds since Norman Hunter’s last
sparring partner quit town.
Steven Wells
MM, 10 October 1987, p33
THE CURE
Just Like Heaven
(Fiction)
I’m at a loss as how to greet
and chronicle this important
event, knowing full well that
one facetious crack out of line
could see my Assistant Editor
taking a sudden interest in The
Edgar Broughton Band and
dispatching me with strange zeal
to review their gig at the Crewe
Corn Exchange on Saturday
night. What can I say? Well, at
least it doesn’t sound like Dexy’s
Midnight Runners like the one
before last did. It’s a colourful,
fluffy, fluttery, fussy thing, a
mere transcription of the Down
With Skool! graphic on the front
cover. Unimpeachable, really, but
turns my face green, as if having
consumed too many truffles.
David Stubbs
 Chapter 10
1988
DEREK RIDGERS

TLFeBOOK
 Fields Of The
Nephilim: flour
in the desert

TLFeBOOK
 1988

A Fistful Of
DYNAMITE
They rode into town from the wastelands of Stevenage, ffi ive mean hombres with a burning thirst,
preaching the prairie gospel of Goth. They called themselves Fields Of The Nephilim and the folks
locked up their wives and daughters and got on down. Steve Sutherland joined the posse in Spain
to discover why these dudes are wanted, dead or alive
R ight, in 1988 there’s “that chart
crap”, there’s MM’s hip alternatives
to “that chart crap” and now, out
of nowhere, out of the wastelands, unheralded,
uncelebrated in print or occasionally ridiculed,
through it. Their debut album,
‘Dawnrazor’, topped the 1987
indie chart and yet everything
you or I have ever read about
Fields Of The Nephilim has
NME, 28 May 1988, p3

there’s alternatives to alternatives. These people’s found them on the defensive,

champions, these great unwashed have become denying preconceptions,
popular, even adored, without hype or help from defying their many critics
any aspect of the industry. These outsiders have with a dull resolution. This
entered our awareness uninvited; they’ve gained will not do.
access the hard way, the old-fashioned way. Consequently we took a
They’ve played to people and people have repaid red-eye to the sleepy one-
them with astonishing allegiance. horse town of Zaragoza,
Where have they come from, why have they Spain, caught them on the
come, these hillbillies, these embarrassments, job in Spaghetti Western
these blights on the great pop plots and plans? country and approached
We writers don’t know. We shrink and shudder with caution on our bellies
at our own unimportance in the whole damn bearing gifts. We decided
thing. But you, the readers, you know. You voted it was time to unburden
for All About Eve in our Readers’ Poll and most ourselves of pretty prejudice
of us hacks looked at each other aghast. And you and attempt to get close
voted for Fields Of The Nephilim too and we hid enough to brand this critter
our fright behind our snobbery and one or two through trust and affection
scoffed and a few said, “Fields Of Who?” rather than bludgeoning
So term came to an end and we broke up for brute force.
Christmas and, when we came back, the clever
ones had arrived at a theory to explain away this It’s three in the morning
troublesome phenomenon. They said the Eves and everyone’s pissed.
and the Nephs were mere security blankets, “We lie nowhere,” says
something for the mascara hairies to suck while Tony Pettit, the big-boned, cheerful bass player the joy is qualitative and discriminating? Does
the true monsters/masters of Goth indulged with the gormless, friendly grin who wishes they enjoying what they’re doing imply a critique of
themselves. They said Eldritch won’t tour and hadn’t once joked to a journo that what they play their contemporaries?
The Cult have sold their souls to the States, so it’s is Spaghetti Metal. “We don’t fit in with any of “I dunno,” says Carl McCoy, the bellow-
little wonder the deserted masses have flocked to your things. I think we are just Fields Of The throated singer who wears translucent lenses,
these substitutes. Nephilim, I really do.” once took a pig’s head on tour until it started
The Neph… Sisters clones, Midnight The Nephs reckon they do what they do to sweat and stink in the carrier bag under the
Cowboys, surely comedians. Dung-punchers primarily because they enjoy it – that’s the top seat in the van and who has just had his bullets
TOM SHEEHAN

from Stevenage with shaded eyes on the main and bottom of the whole damn thing. confiscated at the airport. “Since we’ve been in
chance. See that gap and stampede straight What we want to know, then, is whether or not this band we’ve not been in touch with any

NME ORIGINALS 117

TLFeBOOK
 Spaghetti Metal

other new music at all so it
must fulfil something in our
lives which is needed.”
Commitment and work is
readily used as an excuse for
their lack of inclination to assess
their surroundings. Perhaps
these blinkers are purely
instinctive. Perhaps, though,
their insularity runs deeper.
We should investigate the
live phenomenon. Why, in an
era when live music is patently
dying, are the Nephs such a live
attraction? What is it about the
live situation which suits them?
“You can get a feeling off Baking with the
one live gig which you’ll never Nephs: they supply
ever get again. And it’s the the flour while the
same being in a band as being critics throw eggs
in the audience,” says Pete Wright,
the skinny guitarist with a bad bout of
flu. Earlier I gave him my bottle of cough
“There’s a lot of rebellion in our music.
medicine, good and speedy Do Dos, and he
poured it into a jug of Sangria and quaffed
the lot. Good stuff.
“I’ve so often heard a good record and
then been disappointed because the band
couldn’t pull it off live,” says Paul Wright,
the other guitarist who likes the drink, has
cultivated a sort of Bobby Charlton over-sweep
without the bald bit and apparently has a mole
on his ass like a hairy map of Australia.
“And that’s only been recently. Going back a
few years, bands used to play live,” says Carl.
Earlier in the day, the band are supposed to be
soundchecking at the En Bruto Club, Zaragoza
– a neat little mini-Marquee that holds about 500
(80 eventually turn up) where the bands have to
be off stage by 10pm because an old couple live in
the flat upstairs – but the equipment, such as it is,
isn’t ready, so we drive out to the hills in search
of some desert photo locations. Winding up a
precarious track we discover an ancient mission
church and a ruin. The sun makes a bid to sink
behind the horizon before the photographer
gets snapping and… where are the boys? I peer
around the other side of the van and there they
are, covering each other in flour.
“You didn’t see that,” says Tony.
I didn’t see that.
Coming from Stevenage and dressing as cowboys
must surely detract from any attempt on their
part to be taken seriously.
“It makes us easy targets, yeah,” says Nod.
“People probably look at us and think straight
away that we’re just another indie band with
an image,” says Carl. “And, to be honest, bands
with images have always put me off. But, looking
at us, I can see we’ve got this image and yet we
feel like it’s different. Every band will probably
tell you the same – that they feel comfortable in
those clothes and that’s why they wear them.
I really do though.”
Is it important for the Nephs to be different,
to sound original? Indeed, with their deliberately
traditional rock line-up, is it even possible?
“We don’t go out of our way to be original,”
says Carl, “because if we did we’d play chainsaws
118N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNI ANLASL S
??
We’ve never been accepted, we’ve
never been hip, we’ve never fitted in”
and cement mixers. I think we have quite an
original sound, but one that’s natural.”
“I think it’s honest,” says Tony. “It’s an honest
sound because everyone’s playing exactly what
we wanna play.”
The Nephs’ insistence on naturalness leads us
into an elephant’s graveyard of opinion – it’s too
flip, too easy. Surely they must have some verbal
notion of what makes a good record?
“An atmosphere,” says Tony. Another big,
meaningless, all-encompassing word.
We’ve tried empiricism and failed. Time to
get stupid. The Nephs are goths, or they appeal
to goths. Given 10 minutes with a new song to
write, they veer towards the darkness rather
than the light.
“I don’t find our music particularly dreary,”
says Paul. “We can see we appeal to a gothic
audience…” says Carl. Yes, but I’m here talking
to five funny geezers who adore Steve Martin
and tell some dodgy jokes and yet on record, up
there on stage, they become something other,
something else. How? Why?
“It’s a different language,” says Carl. “It’s
fluent to us and, between us all, we create this
sound and this atmosphere.”
Yes, but is it important that pop is something
other? Is that what it’s for ?
“I don’t think Joe Public wants to come and
see Joe Public on stage, if that’s what you mean,”
says Tony. “They want a bit of escapism.”
Yes, but the Nephs go beyond this – with their
Morricone worship and their sound symbolic
of wide open spaces, they surely suggest pop
can attain the heroic and that, through pop, the
human can become superhuman.
“Yeah, it’s approaching epic,” says Nod.
Why do they aspire to that?
“Once Upon A Time In The West is epic,”
says Paul.
“Epic, to me, is like a feeling,” says Pete. “It’s
not something you can put into words.”
Cheers.
TLFeBOOK
“I imagine it wide and
saturated with atmosphere,”
says Carl. “When I think of
epic, I think of something
really massive…”
“Like the pyramids of
Egypt,” says Paul.
“Something awe-
inspiring,” says Carl.
Aha, attaining something
beyond what you’d imagine
could attain.
“Yeah,” says Carl. “It’s
gotta have some mystery
behind it.”
So, instead of being grease-
monkeys or dole-boys, the
Nephs, through music, can be
anything they want to be. And
they have chosen their certain
type of music. Why?
“That makes it sound
deliberate, but it’s not really like that,”
says Nod, to our unbounded surprise.
“It’s just evolved, we haven’t aimed at it.”
So what do the Nephs write about?
“Everyone’s got different ideas in this
band,” says Carl. “I write the lyrics and a
lot of them are my feelings towards my life. It’s a
hard thing to talk about.”
Try.
“Well, I don’t sit around for ages with my
thinking cap on. The songs just come really fast.”
Where from?
“My underpants!” This is Paul. Witty bastard.
“I dunno… I don’t write love songs as such.
I sing about things that really fascinate me,” says
Carl. “Some of them are really odd and bizarre.
If people saw it written down, they’d probably
think, ‘Shit, the geezer’s on acid,’ or something.
“I don’t really want people to know what they
mean to me. A lot of our songs are written so
that people can get their own picture in their
mind. It doesn’t bother me whether people know
what I’m singing about or not, really, but I’m sure
they can sense the feeling of the song.
“There’s quite a lot of rebellion in our music,”
Carl continues. “We’ve always been against the
grain. We’ve never been accepted, we’ve never
been hip, we’ve never fitted in.”
So what are the Nephs’ ambitions?
Carl: “I’d like us to go sown in history, to be
put on a level with some of the older bands that
I admire, like Roxy Music and the Doors. Them
bands are lasting, they still create a feeling.”
Paul: “On my 34th birthday, I’d like to dress
up as a nun.”
Tony: “Success on our own terms.”
Pete: “We all want success but I don’t think
we’ll cop out for it. We don’t do the fucking
crappy Cult syndrome.”
What would be the worst thing that could
happen to the Nephs?
Paul: “To know exactly what the LP’s gonna be
in another year’s time, because that wouldn’t be
inspired, it would be thought out.”
Carl: “I think if one person left the band, that
would be it. I don’t think we could play with any
other musicians.”
Paul: “The second worst would be meeting
you again, I reckon. Want some of this vodka?”

MM, 13 February 1988, p27
ALL ABOUT EVE
All About Eve
(Phonogram)
Like modern Pre-Raphaelites, All
About Eve get history wonderfully
wrong, ingenuously ignoring the
cause and effect of past recordings
and accepting the song as an
isolated artefact, unblighted by
any of its author’s
stylistic or political
misdemeanours. They
are reclaiming pop for
the young through
rose-coloured specs
rather than cynicism,
blissful ignorance
rather than hip
knowledge.
Consequently
All About Eve’s debut album
sometimes gets it almost too wrong
to bear. ‘Every Angel’, for instance,
tarnishes epic echoes of ‘Stairway
To Heaven’ and Ennio Morricone
with the melodramatic lilt from
‘Knights In White Satin’; ‘Gypsy
Dance’ fiddles around its picaresque
folly like a blissed-out Barbara
Dickson; and the latest single, ‘Wild
Hearted Woman’, is twee enough
to sidle unnoticed onto any recent
Fleetwood Mac LP.
But, miraculously, these are the
only errors of judgement on an
otherwise exemplary album.
It would do the Eves discredit
to persist in source-spotting
– suffice to say they’ve listened
a lot to the Cocteaus and the
winnowing version of ‘She
Moves Through The Fair’, a
spooky old Fairport Convention
ballad, boldly resembles This
Mortal Coil’s ‘Song To The Siren’.
Julianne’s vocals are a triumph
throughout, so touching that we
accept, without irony, the
wide-eyed sentiments of
‘Flowers In Our Hair’.
It’s possible, I suppose, to
view All About Eve as a symptom
rather than a cure, to consider
the emotional journey from the
“just a kiss away” of ’70s Stones
to the “just a breath away” of
‘In The Clouds’ as a Pavlovian
reaction to AIDS. And it’s true
that there’s plenty of yearning
here but no consummation.
But it’s a measure of their
achievement that we’re wholly
spellbound by the Eves’ longing
for a return to life the way it was
“before the fall”.
And even if you’re the type
TOM SHEEHAN
who finds it difficult getting into
the swing gathering rosebuds
while ye may, you’ll
surely recognise a
great chorus when
you hear one and
‘All About Eve’ is
blooming with them.
Personal favourites
are ‘Martha’s Harbour’,
where Julianne is a
galley slave to her
lover’s wave crashing
on the bow, and ‘Never Promise’,
where the real world for once chafes
against their fantasy and threatens
to expose their hopes as lies.
With so many alternatives and
alternatives to alternatives bustling
for predominance, All About Eve
have achieved the impossible and
wedded attitude to accessibility. Fall
into their dream and you’ll awaken
convinced that your innocence can
be retrieved after all.
Steve Sutherland
Wayne Hussey
of the Mish: the
Dr Feelgood of goth
TLFeBOOK
MM, 5 March 1988, p41
THE MISSION
Children
(Phonogram)
It’s so easy to laugh at The Mission.
The mere mention of ‘Wasteland’
is enough to send depressives into
raging guffaws. They are the
Dr Feelgood of goth, a poor man’s
Sisters, a rich man’s Cult, a blind
man’s Nephilim.
At their best, The
Mission are laughable
buffoons, playful
rogues. At worst, the
band are the seismic
belch emitted after
pop’s banquet. At
all times, however,
they are museum
curators, restoring
the dilapidated foundations of
rock, preserving its heritage,
1988
embroidering its myth.
It’s therefore no surprise that
‘Children’ is produced by John Paul
Jones and happens to be buoyed
around the Led Zeppelin myth
– a legend only revered by those
who can’t remember just how
excruciatingly tedious Page and co
could be. It’s even less surprising
that ‘Tower Of Strength’ is a sketchy
facsimile of ‘Kashmir’, that ‘Heat’
stomps around the hemline of
Heart, while the bilious ‘Child’s
Play’ sounds like an Anglicised,
lobotomised Toto. In short, the
album is every Eskimo’s wet dream.
The concept behind ‘Children’
is the usual guff about a quest for
instinct and innocence – hence
snatches of playground screams and
nursery rhymes. Footsteps echo in
the memory as Wayne and his merry
men plough safe pastures with the
usual flourishing arpeggios on the
melodramatic ‘Beyond
The Pale’. From here,
the full, glutinous sound
oscillates between
the pomp and glory of
‘Kingdom Come’ and
the tranquil 30-second
harpsichord lullaby of
‘Breath’.
The Mission create an
insulated community,
immune to the feckless whims
of pop. They may make the
occasional stab at relevance
– the accelerated tumbling
chord slam of ‘Hymn For
America’ is The Mission’s
answer to U2’s ‘Bullet The Blue
Sky’ – but the band are at their
most effective when at their
most meaningless.
Despite all the dungeons
and dragons imagery, the only
real mystery is how Wayne can
sing this po-faced, pompous
bilge with a straight face.
Their epic vision is limited to
myopic gestures pilfered from
the archives – those halcyon
days when people judged
the stature of a band by the
length of the drum solo. Only
once on the whole album
(the astonishingly affecting
‘Heaven On Earth’) do the
grandiose sweeps of guitar
actually sound heroic.
Using relics to create new
relics, The Mission have
probably made the finest
Zeppelin record Led Zeppelin
never made, but one man’s
memory lane is another man’s
blind alley. It’s surely time to
detonate the ruins.
Ted Mico
NNMMEE OORRI IGGI INNAALLSS 119
??
 The Garden
With a debut album and a national tour about to explode,
dream lovers All About Eve teach Chris Roberts about
Liz Cocteau, Cilla Black, Pandora’s Box, feminism and
anything connected with clouds
b
“ eauty And The Beast,
definitely. If it didn’t have
such bad implications
– which one’s which? – that could
easily have been the name of the
band. I love… the feel of it, yes.
It can still move me to tears if
I’m in a certain frame of mind.
It encapsulates everything that
matters in life. I’m a sucker for
romance, so I want the beauty
to love the beast. Then when he
turns into a handsome prince at
the end I’m very disappointed.
I prefer him as the beast because
he’s more hopeless. It’s too much
of a happy ending.”
“That Melody Maker
cartoon about me sitting
outside my house while it
was burning down and I was
looking at the clouds – it’s
not a representation of the way I run my life
but I do get phases of it. And they are what
keeps me sane. It’s not insanity. You need
those moments and I won’t apologise for them.
And I know it makes for fruitcake accusations,
but they can only be from people who don’t
know what it’s like. I recommend it!
“It is the kind of thing you can switch on
and off. You don’t have to be through the
gates of madness and trapped in Fairyland
and never come out. You can step in and out
of that little world, and I enjoy being there. It’s
just that I used to live there, and now it’s an
occasional holiday.
“I’m capable of depth and shallowness,
and recently I’ve been living on a shallow,
pleasure-seeking level. My last stint of shallow
has lasted a long time. It never seeps into the
music, that is deep. So I stress I’m going to go
through a hermit-hood for a while soon, and
come out renewed. Tim always worries when I
say this: he thinks I’m going to get the blanket
out and read Nietzsche again. That doesn’t work,
that’s too much. Don’t worry, it’s not going to be
one of those grey ones again. Really.”
All About Eve took their name from the sharp,
epigrammatic film, dominated by Bette Davis,
TLFeBOOK
about a scheming starlet who lusts for fame.
“No, it doesn’t fit at all. We should’ve chosen
Camille, perhaps.”
All About Eve are a contemporary pop-folk-
rock group, all the more contemporary for
having rejected all the consumerist trappings
of “nowness”. Their apparently reactionary
passivity is proving to be the most effective
resistance imaginable to the Reich-like stomp
(not flood, not surge, not sweep) of hip hop,
technology, computers, word processors (what
are they writing? Ready-cooked chickens?) Eddie
Murphy, Oliver Stone, Linda Lusardi, and Lady
Di of The Grinning Walkman.
The Primitives go timeless, The Sugarcubes
go left-handed, while All About Eve go dream
dreamy dream, and suddenly we have a viable
new pop vanguard which isn’t exactly what any
of us had in mind, but for which I at least am
very grateful because I’m sure as hell going to
pretend it was. I won’t waste time now debating
about Eve as a sub-cultural phenomenon.
Innovative they’re not, disarmingly incongruous
they are. Besides, when The Stud Brothers wrote
after Thomas Wolfe that the group strive not
to escape from life but to prevent life escaping
them, they netted, shall we say, a big one, the
pre-emptive bastards.
The only thing that’s disappointed me about
All About Eve’s rise to prominence since the days
I would see them churning out ‘White Horses’
down the 100 Club (not so long ago really, but
then a minute is a century in pop, of course),
has been the restraint of their innate mysticism
(for want of a less devalued word). For All About
Eve to really be All About Eve there must be
more haze, enigma, and poeticism, less Mission-
style high jinks, less “rock lives ’n’ how’s your
father”, less jovial deflation of the beguiling and
the bedazzling.
Julianne, a friend with aesthetic gumption,
used to send me roses and pictures of angels
and birthday cards with Andrew Marvell poems
on (usually because I’d asked her to) and that’s
the kind of star we need in these charisma-
shunning days.
“I never said I was Liz Cocteau. I’m not Cilla
Black either. Perhaps I should blush and look at
the floor more to please reviewers. But a fault of
mine is that is nine people say you’re great and

Of Eden
one says it’s shit, and it’s the one who says it’s shit
that I focus on and try to convert. I think, ‘I’ve
got the nine, I want the tenth.’”
This is determination, old-fashioned
conviction, rather than greed. Faith.
“I never thought it wouldn’t happen. It
wasn’t ego, it was that I never let it cross my
mind for fear of what on earth I would think
about then. Now things are a lot easier thanks
to the good fairy Phonogram, but we’ll never
become complacent. We’re staying firmly in
obsessive perfectionist mode.”
“Remember that the most beautiful things in
the world are the most useless: peacocks and
lilies, for instance.” So said John Ruskin, in
The Stones Of Venice in 1851. Given a choice
between a peacock, a lily, and a digital
synchronised oscillator, I’d have no need for
batteries. Unless the peacock wanted to carry
a torch.
What about Eve? What sort of person do
you think she was?
“Not this scheming temptress she was
supposed to be; I think she probably offered
Adam the apple just out of kindness, as a nice
gesture, and she’s been slagged off for it for
centuries. I don’t think she’s evil, nor do I hold
to the idea that all women are intrinsically evil.
Maybe I’m biased because I am one! I know what
I’m like; I’ve got an evil streak just like anybody
else, regardless of sex.”
You always wanted it to sound more
“beautiful”. That’s the word.
“Yes, so we found the courage to do things
“Frustrated Vikings”
All About Eve recover
from another bout of
TOM SHEEHAN
burning, shooting,
raping and looting
MM, 20 February 1988, p28
which would either be received as beautiful or
namby-pamby. Without vanity, I think some of
the things we do now are so beautiful I feel in
awe of them. Sometimes I just smile to myself.
If you do believe that any creativity comes from
within, it surprised us that that was what we
were like inside.
“You know you’re ordinary, but you’re
doing something that’s out of the ordinary,”
adds Julianne. “I can stand our music being
worshipped, but not us. It’s a scary responsibility.
You often feel you’re letting people down if
you’re not quite as goddess-like as they expect
you to be.”
Are you a “tough” woman?
“I suppose so. No. No I don’t like the idea of
being thought of as a hard person.”
Where do feminism and you meet?
“I don’t like it. I really surprised myself when
I ‘fell in love’ – sorry about this, but this is
important. I surprised myself because I thought
I was quite a strong-minded individual – but,
erm, I became ‘the girl’. I could’ve quite easily
sat with a posy in my hand for the entirety of the
relationship. Somebody once said something
to this effect: a man falls in love with a woman
because of the strange mysteries about her, and
then the very fact that he has got her means she
loses those things. I’m not talking about the
chase and the kill; she actually becomes quite in
awe of the person just because he’s a man.
“I haven’t though this out well enough to
relate it, but I think I only discovered a while
ago that I was a woman! And as to a Woman In
Rock, er, no. When I think of Women In Rock
TLFeBOOK
1988
I think of the ‘gutsy’ ones like Madonna, who
seem to use and abuse men with all the abandon
of a packet of tissues. Er, that isn’t me at all. The
kind of woman I like is one of the lads without
being butch. Like Sandy Denny. Keeping her
femininity, but not a barrier. Using it in the
songwriting rather than the press shots. Which is
using it in a pure way, not a manipulative one.”
All About Eve have taken more risks than their
critics tend to realise. What could’ve been more
perverse than ‘Flowers In Our Hair’ (although
it included 1987’s prime piece of pungent
philosophy in pop: “We only dare to say please
love me/At the seventh glass of wine”)? What
could’ve been more quietly confident than
revamping ‘In The Clouds’ (still their finest
cascade of moments) as their first “major”
release? And what in the name of Lorraine
Ellison is ‘Wild Hearted Woman’ doing in
between Johnny Hates Jazz and Was Not Was?
I take great delight in their trembly pauses and
sensurround choruses, emotion recollected in
tranquillity, in Julianne’s unerringly silver and
blue voice, in the way they make Triffids and
LL Cool J fans snort belligerently, in the astral
connection between the tantalising halt in ‘In
The Clouds’ and the way my right leg itches every
time I cross the road ever since it was bashed by a
car, and in seeing a nuance of dawn, and of dusk,
breathe over the hastily arranged lunchtime of
our popular charts.
I also grasp a link between All About Eve’s
evocations of childhood and nostalgia and the
works of Proust, a stodgily styled but ultimately
wildly romantic visionary. (Though this is
possibly just me going a bit daft.) And isn’t there
something gloriously bizarre happening when
Julianne waffles on about “positive magic” and
Carl Jung on Blue Peter, like the mad Lorelei
of Cherbourg or something? Isn’t that just
fine? “And for our next guest, Dante Gabriel
Rosetti…” Isn’t that great? Well?
I hope All About Eve don’t become just
another commodity. Fleetwood Mac are already
booked into the top shelf for another few
decades; you know how the tune goes. (“Futility:
playing the harp before the buffalo” – old
Burmese proverb.) What I hope, as ever, is that
All About Eve will be all about mermaids and
emeralds and autumn and bleeding hearts and
sunflowers and Pegasus and ghosts and falling
for the wicked witch instead of Snow White
and arms that come through walls holding
candlesticks. Plus the peacocks and the lilies.
The subliminal wants the sublime. Fables, please.
“They’re attractive to me, as I’m not very keen
on reality or confrontation. My favourites are
the romantic ones where the prince does get
the girl with the very long hair out of the tower.
But also less girlish ones – I do like stories about
enormous great Vikings raping and pillaging
and murdering. Perhaps I’m a frustrated Viking!
“And even the totally unfeasible – Pandora’s
Box. You know, you’re attracted to myths
because you role-play them subconsciously
in your life. The spiky hedgehog thing, that’s
one. That can keep it all wrapped up in a nice
little box that gets so full up that when the link
comes open one day it’s just going to be too
devastating for words.”
NME ORIGINALS 121
 Pop Valhalla
NME, 3 September 1988, p31
FIELDS OF
THE NEPHILIM
The Nephilim
(Situation Two)
Bob Harris, The Mission, Tottenham
Hotspur – surely there is more to
ridicule than Fields Of The Nephilim.
Yet the consensus reaction to this
treasure chest will doubtless be the
same as preceding Neph records:
“You must be mad!” I am, in fact,
horribly inflamed.
Gladly accepting a
Fields record is looked
upon, in many circles, as
the equivalent of asking
for a contagious disease.
But this from dolts too
soft to listen to their
bloody records first.
I’ve been guilty
of it myself, but
strangely my ears have been
bleeding all night to this. If this LP’s
not at least good, then my body is
malfunctioning more than I feared.
You have to appreciate how far this
murky bunch of desperadoes have
come in the past four years.
From rags to more rags, from
supporting Chelsea to headlining
tours. The Neph have grafted
without complaint. They’ve won
their spurs and now here they sit
rubbing them clean, polishing their
gritty melodies into a perversely
haunting collection of songs.
It is less Spaghetti Western and
more ‘movie mystery’, shivering
and spine-tingling with some tricky
guitar that fiddles round while Carl
McCoy’s throat burns. The gruff
vocals, rather than grating, have a
haunting and eerie edge.
They’ve maintained a brooding
power, but dispensed with
gratuitous ‘gothy’ anthems. Only
‘Phobia’, like Motorhead’s ‘Ace Of
Spades’ in drag, sees their elbows
flying into a frenetic dance routine.
Elsewhere the rumbling
rhythms have an almost sublime
style. ‘Endemoniada’ has a lightly
atmospheric build-up before
branching out into an excitable
climax while ‘The Watchman’ –
possibly the best track on the album
– simmers with tiny explosions
going off in the form of fire-cracking
guitar and heated vocals.
Side Two has a mere three
songs on it, but they’re epic in
length. Trampling on incessantly,
‘Celebrate’ leads into ‘Love Under
Will’ with its scything beauty, which
in turn opens the door for ‘Last Exit
122 NME ORIGINALS
Of The Lost’, the colossal climax.
It swirls, creating a melodramatic clarifying chaos by paying it
haze, the real McCoy being replaced lip service with that gloss. The
by the Sinatra version, a Banshees remain coolly dependent
mixture of growling on the slyest of feminine touches.
and crooning. ‘Peepshow’ is hesitantly
A shock, but hypnotic. It seduces you back.
more reassuringly They’ve not come up with any
‘The Nephilim’ is smashing new tunes, but the
their assertion that click and tut of Siouxsie’s tongue
beneath the muck is more intimate, forsaking
and the dust there are aloofness for sincerity.
aspirations to beauty. More than ever, the
Steve Lamacq composition credits go to Sioux
or Severin individually. Sioux’s
‘Turn To Stone’ and ‘Rawhead
MM, 10 September 1988, p37
And Bloodybones’ are simply
SIOUXSIE & disquieting, ‘Burn-Up’ is flushed
with Eros. Severin’s ‘Rhapsody’
THE BANSHEES allows some stirring
Peepshow melodrama but the infinite
(Polydor) pinnacle is
It’s still pretty vague. their one
Pretty and vague. joint effort,
It’s not about love or the bravura
annihilation. Siouxsie hymn ‘The
& The Banshees Last Beat Of
avoid meaning like My Heart’.
the plague, and this As Martin
feline wisdom has McCarrick’s
always served them accordion
well. Grace, they understand. and Budgie’s
If ‘Peek-A-Boo’ is hip hop, I’m LL directly intelligent
Cool J. The Banshees are strolling rhythms underline its
further away than ever from force, pathos, this elegy is
from brutality. Their eleventh album translated by Sioux
doesn’t set fire to my palms, but is with capital beatitude.
quivers with psalms and it knows It’s the Banshees’ most
how to breathe while kissing. courageous arabesque
As voyeurs, they are more in some time. If they
discreet. They’ve recognised have enough
which floorboards creak and don’t majesty in their
condemn idiosyncrasy. Still the guts to put it
words are nursery rhymes (nursery out as a single
rhymes always involve insidious we really will
violence and strategic cruelty), but be witnessing
sonically, the blue angels of punk a renaissance.
are sending out splendid sonorous The lady is
rafts, touching new glittering too vaporous
banisters with soluble fingernails. to vanish. In this
There’s a kind of gentlemen’s Valhalla, her valour
agreement to gloss over the nest of derides prattle and
difficulties any careful reflections subtly strives for
might unearth. The imaginative scintillation. You can
sophistry and romanticism of The see the woods because
Banshees can therefore mean all of a warm breeze. The ice Siouxsie:
doesn’t do
things to anybody, embarrassing field is melting. hip hop
the gospel of rationality and Chris Roberts
TLFeBOOK

NME, 17 September 1988, p37
COCTEAU TWINS
Blue Bell Knoll
(4AD)
There’s a bit in Trains, Planes And
Automobiles where Steve Martin
and John Candy, thwarted on
their tortuous journey home
for Thanksgiving, are holed up
together in yet another seedy
motel. They have reached a kind
of truce, formed a warm affection
for one another bred from mutual
adversity and they’re slobbering
around in their room, the mini
bar open, travelling the world via
miniatures – rum takes them to
Jamaica, vodka to Russia, that sort
of thing. They’re transported from
their crisis by these little nips of
intoxication. Momentarily, they’re
gone. ‘Blue Bell Knoll’ reminds me of
this bit over and over. Each sip takes
you someplace utterly else.
It was two and a half years in
the making, two and a half years in
which Robin, Liz and Simon have
made their peace with pop, listened
to a lot of Prince and Madonna
and let themselves go a little. And
they’ve inadvertently rediscovered
a path that leads them back into our
consciousness. All of a sudden they
count. Again.
With ‘Blue Bell Knoll’, without
wishing to suggest anything so
stupid as the Cocteaus adopting
anything as gauche as a strategy,
they have, to use the modern
terminology, arrived right in our
face. Not since the exalted ‘Head
Over Heels’ have they so brazenly
toyed with our affections, delighting
in astonishing us by touching pop
base every so often, only to soar
immediately and coquettishly into
earth, air, fire, water, any element
they choose, achieving the giddy
heights of pop Valhalla most of us
had given up dreaming about.
Oh, the places it takes us to!
It’s like a brochure of ecstasies, a
travelogue of possibilities. ‘Athol-
Brose’ is French, a baby
doll bruised nursery
rhyme with a cutting
edge that climbs a stair,
wobbles on a diving
board, and launches
itself, beautifully, into
the ozone above the
Riviera. Suddenly
we’re tripping at the
cinema, experiencing
one of those lush early ’70s Martini
ads, our heartbeats thrumming in
our ears. ‘Cico Buff’ is like surfing
over Herculean orchestration,
‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ is a Benidorm
beauty with a cr-r-risp, cherubic
twitter and an unintentional nod
to Brotherhood Of Man’s ‘Angelo’.
‘Ella Megalast Burls Forever’ (please
don’t let the titles put you off) is like
praying in Bermuda shorts and the
chorus goes “Tear tear tear tear tear
tear tear tear”. Sheer bliss.
There is nothing cold on ‘Blue
Bell Knoll’, nothing stark or dark,
save, perhaps, the start of ‘The Itchy
Glowbo Blow’, which whisks us into
a labyrinth of potholes but pretty
swiftly hurls us, breathless, up over
the downs like a kite caught up by
the wind. This is a holiday record, a
promise of pleasures unknown.
‘Suckling The Mender’ sends me
shrieking to Spain where Liz, fully
adorned in black lace, is performing
a clicking flamenco with the most
sensual speech impediment in
the world. It’s as if her tongue is
glued to the roof of her mouth with
honey while she spins, ankle deep
in a shallow pool, her toes and lace
caressed by Robin’s tiger-fish until
he unleashes mosquitoes and she
scampers ashore. And ‘A Kissed Out
Red Floatboat’ has me on a hill over
a beach, Robin’s jets scoring the
sky with sonic vapour
trails.
If we weren’t
already aware of the
Cocteaus’ brilliance,
we would proclaim
‘Blue Bell Knoll’ one of
the greatest records
we’ve ever heard. Well,
we shouldn’t let their
unearthly standards
blind us or deafen us to how utterly
unique they are. This is a triumphant
return. As I think Liz sings over the
coconut shuffle of ‘Spooning Good
Singing Gum’, “Happy Again!”
TLFeBOOK
Nick Cave
at his most
lovable
Surely this band is the voice of
Cliff Michelmore. (Is that better
Robin, huh?)
Steve Sutherland
MM, 24 September 1988, p41
NICK CAVE &
THE BAD SEEDS
Tender Prey
(Mute)
As Nick Cave goes further and
further out, his
music comes more
confidently in. Nothing
on ‘Tender Prey’ is
especially esoteric or
inaccessible, but most
of it bristles with vain
beauty and power
and pride.
Singing from
a comfortable
position halfway down the
lion’s throat (ah, home at last!),
Cave has created easily his most
lovable record to date. It boasts
an astonishing diversity and spits
in the face of most known deities.
Profane, passionate, poignant,
the masochistic leper has given us
one of the landmark albums of the
decade. Nick Cave’s abused muse
is beginning to sprinkle something
important on his 100 per cent proof
breakfast…
Those of you divorced from your
spirit for so long that you haven’t
yet absorbed Wim Wenders’ Wings
Of Desire will not be aware of the
expression that overtakes Solveig
Sommartin’s supernaturally pale
face as she listens to ‘The Carny’.
It would be hackneyed if she was
shivering by any other torch, but
Cave’s voice is somehow bitter
enough to match the homage to the
1988
void that goes on here. Cave sounds
lonelier than a dodo.
Nowhere is this more effective
than on the fractious stateliness
of ‘The Mercy Seat’, a matrix so
unbelievably staggering that when
it first came out I had to allocate
certain times of night at which it
could be played. I mean, you can’t
have a peak experience between
getting out of the shower and
running for the bus, it’s just not on.
‘The Mercy Seat’ is both hypnotic
and jarring, rhythmic and loose,
demonic and devout. It’s as near to
humming the executioner’s song as
anyone will ever get.
I love the blind joy and accidental
beauty of cheap pop jamborees
because Staring Death In The Eye
is so very rarely done with any true
courage. ‘Tender Prey’ finds Cave
in arrogantly romantic top form. By
Harry if he doesn’t force the grim
reaper to extra time – and then
penalties!
‘Up Jumped The Devil’ begins
like a Gaelic pub singalong but rises
through smoke then flames – “O
My O My what a wretched life /I was
born on the day that my poor mother
died/I was cut from her belly with
Stanley knife/While my daddy did
a jig with the drunk midwife” – to a
transcendent eddying. New single
‘Deanna’ cracks the whip,
The Bad Seeds giving it
that extra jolt.
‘Watching Alice’ is a
more restrained piano
sigh, Cave eulogising
his voyeurism as the
lady in question dons
fetish gear. He sing this
with uncharacteristic
compassion.
Now we’re running through
gutters of blood to the ‘City Of
Refuge’, hooks like claws and
imaginations riotous; this is
another barnstormer. ‘Slowly Goes
The Night’ shuffles in on a mock
vaudeville vamp; if you’re not
sold on this remarkable record’s
bloodshot commitment by now
you’re an accountant in Telford. As
I’ve just used my two-hundredth
superlative adjective of the night I’ll
simply wave you towards ‘Sunday’s
Slave’, ‘Sugar Sugar Sugar’ and
‘New Morning’ with a note saying
they’re an esplanade after a maze of
eschatological escalators…
If you or I retained any doubts
about Nick Cave’s artistry, they
should be banished forthwith.
‘Tender Prey’ is a classic, a tour
BLEDDYN BUTCHER
de force. Canonise this resolute
mortal now.
Chris Roberts
NME ORIGINALS 123
 Black Eyes And Bruises
NME, 6 February 1988, p9
THE MISSION
Tower Of Strength
(Phonogram)
Poor Wayne Hussey. All that
time spent waiting his turn in
the Looks Dept and all they gave
him was a mouth like a monkey’s
bum. Let’s face it, fellow beautiful
people, nobody looks uglier than
Wayne Hussey. On good days he
resembles an unhappy walnut.
At other, sadder, more poignant
moments, Wayne stands accused
of indecent exposure every time
the wind blows his hair off his face.
The Mish are bland, loud,
as old and friendly as your
dad; and unable to count past
five. Needless to say ‘Tower Of
Strength’ is as pompous and facile
as everything else The Mission
have produced since having their
fingers prised away from Eldritch’s
infinitely more stylish skirts.
Mind you, Wayne’s tribe of blind
groupies will LUUURRRVE it.
Barbara Ellen
NME, 13 February 1988, p15
THE CURE
Hot Hot Hot
(Fiction)
Ye olde Smith’s antics are
reminiscent in many ways to the
curious ramblings of Adam Ant.
He treads some desperate, lone
path through inspiration and mire
alike, but occasionally sticks his
head out of a pothole to proclaim
the discovery of gold. The dance
mix of ‘Hot Hot Hot’ is spuriously
welcoming, but basically a
124 NME ORIGINALS
tragedy of trench foot; soggy old
boots exercising to a hoof-like
jauntiness. Even I know he’s better
stuff hidden in that mop of his.
Steve Lamacq
NME, 20 February 1988, p19
SISTERS OF MERCY
Dominion
(WEA)
And from the eagle has landed
to the ego has landed and here
we go with Andrew Eldritch and
Patricia Morrison and The Sisters
Of Mercy, who are probably the
most enigmatic post-goth group
in Britain. It’s not mere accident
that Eldritch has shifted his base
to Hamburg. It’s a move that taps
into a vein so deep we could even
suggest that the thin white spook
is to contemporary pop what
Wagner was to the composers of
his day. Such a claim would at least
be within the same boundaries
of camp satire that flit in and
out of the ‘Floodlands’ LP and
indeed most of the Sisters’ work.
Throughout ‘Dominion’, Eldritch’s
vocals and music roar with
enough confident pomp to silence
any critic’s whinge in seconds.
If Alvin Stardust had ever read
Byron then he would have cut it to
this day like the Sisters do.
James Brown
MM, 4 June 1988, p32
SISTERS OF MERCY
Lucretia, My Reflection
(WEA)
Like a shrouded owl and a tattered
pussycat sitting claw in paw in a
barge made of weeds, Andrew
Eldritch and his reflection essay
the bare bones of a furious,
curious passion. Torment, terror,
tears; black eyes, bruises, some
blood; reckless driving, one way
or another. Isn’t it all about this?
I’ll never stop listening.
Carmen Keats
MM, 11 June 1988, p32
NICK CAVE &
THE BAD SEEDS
The Mercy Seat
(Mute)
A timeless, watery swirl of organs,
a guitar chasing its own tail and
Nick Cave presenting us not
with a moral dilemma, but with
a moral maelstrom. ‘The Mercy
Seat’ is the electric chair, and
Cave’s protagonist is caught in
that mortal coil that links the base
with God, by which spiralling logic
every condemned man is a martyr,
nailed up alongside Christ.
This song rotates in your head,
especially as it moves towards
its crescendo as the moment of
truth arrives, heralded by Blixa
Bargeld’s shock electric bolt of
guitar. This cyclical construction
is a masterstroke as Cave’s own
value-system is a circuit, without
beginnings or ends, with truth,
Jesus, death, all eventually up
each others’ arses.
Neither behind nor ahead
of the times, ‘The Mercy Seat’
is a magnificent, disgusted,
imaginative leap outside the
times. You need this.
David Stubbs
NME, 23 July 1988, p12
ALL ABOUT EVE
Martha’s Harbour
(Phonogram)
Dogshit. This drivel was done
better the first time around, and
it wasn’t worth listening to then
either. How a goth band can
become sentimental MOR is no
mystery; a rootless and brainless
music is bound to float about like
a homeless leech until it finds
something to clamp onto. The
fraudulent fag-end of the hippy
era is therefore a perfect resting
place for the equally brainless All
About Eve.
David Quantick
NME, 23 July 1988, p12
SIOUXSIE &
THE BANSHEES
Peek-A-Boo
(Polydor)
Oriental marching band hip hop
with farting horns and catchy
accordion. If we were served by
a decent pop radio station, ‘Peek-
A-Boo’ would be a huge hit. This
record was made by people with a
sense of humour. It was not made
by Goths: phew.
David Quantick
 Chapter 11
1989
DEREK RIDGERS
Bad Medicine
By the end of 1987 The Cult had achieved enormous success but were on
the verge of splitting up. Two years on, they return with a new single,
‘Fire Woman’, and a new album, ‘Sonic Temple’. Carol Clerk reports on
how Ian Astbury and co survived alcoholism and nervous breakdowns
and rediscovered rock’n’roll religion
MM, 18 March 1989, p28

d o you know the one about the bulls?”
asked Billy Duffy, stretching out along
the sofa, cigarette hand trailing on the
carpet beside the ashtray.
The bulls?
“There are two bulls sitting on top of a hill,
one old wizened bison and a young bull full
of exuberance. The young bull says, ‘Let’s run
down that hill and fuck a couple of those cows.’
And the old bison says, ‘Oh no, let’s walk down
the hill and fuck all of them.’”
He smiled significantly. The Cult, of course,
are the old wizened bison, walking down that
hill with a confidence born of sometimes
bitter experience, sure at last of their place in
the present and future, proud to have learned
from the mistakes and traumatic upsets which
accompanied the international success of their
last album, ‘Electric’.
While the world may well assume that The
Cult have spent the last couple of years basking
in the glory of the sudden upturn in their
fortunes, soaking up the adulation of audiences
on the world tour that followed ‘Electric’, the
reality was rather different.
The gigs were great, by all accounts, but
The Cult, as individuals, were going right off
the rails. For the whole of ’87 there were drink
problems, money matters, line-up difficulties,
business worries and trouble with the police.
And there was a cloud around the whole sorry
set-up, an all-encompassing numbness induced
by tour-lag.
When they finally woke up sober in 1988, The
Cult were faced with a
damned fine mess to sort
out. That they did so to “A rock concert is the place people go to
relate to other people. It’s a kind of spiritual
their own satisfaction
and went on to record the
LP they describe as “the
definitive Cult album” is
the source of their new-
found self-assurance.
experience. The rational barriers go down”
“We lost our virginity,” announced Ian
Astbury. “We really got broken. We got fucked by
an elephant. That ’87 tour was like our exorcism.
If you can go through that and still be together
and strong as a group and as a songwriting team,
you can go through everything.”
Jamie Stewart , Duffy and Astbury – wearing a
disconcerting amount of hair on his face – were
in a suite at the Swiss Cottage Holiday Inn
discussing their latest recordings.
First release is the new single, the wild and
bouncy ‘Fire Woman’, which is the bearer of
all sorts of glad tidings, very typically The
Cult but, at the same time, a handsome stride
onwards from the deliberately simple aggression
of ‘Electric’. The Beggars Banquet press release
informs us that it’s all about Ian’s “’67 crazed
firehorse lady”. It is?
“It’s about my girlfriend and her fiery spirit
and our relationship,” he explained. “’67 is when
she was born. Also, in the oriental Japanese/
Chinese astrological calendar, she’s a horse.
Firehorse only comes up every 30 years or so,
and when it comes up, the orientals go and kill
all their children. There are a lot of abortions in
TOM SHEEHAN
firehorse year. It’s kinda weird…”
‘Sonic Temple’, the album title, is intended to tell
us something about its entire musical content,
namely that The Cult have effected a marriage of
their two favourite qualities.
From their collaborations with Rick Rubin
on ‘Electric’, they’ve adopted the policy that it’s
no sin for a rock band to be heard to be a rock
band. At the same time, they’ve built on the bare
bones of Rubin’s direct approach, rediscovering
the idea of texture and layering, subtlety and yes,
even mysticism, things which date back to their
earlier ‘Love’ era.
“‘Sonic’ represents the blatant rock side and
‘Temple’ the more cerebral, spiritual overtones,”
agreed Astbury.
‘Sonic Temple’ also stands for one of his wider
notions. “It comes from the second line of one of
the tracks, ‘Medicine Train’. It goes, “All fired up,
a desolation angel shootin’ from the hip in the sonic
temple”. I just had this vision in my mind’s eye
of the way, especially in the States, the venue has
become more like a temple.
“I don’t think a lot of young people have
got focused religious beliefs. A rock concert
is one place where people go to relate to other
people, to relate to a band. It’s a kind of spiritual
experience. We’re not setting ourselves up,
saying we’re some sort of deity to be revered.
But there’s a certain point in the show where
everybody forgets, the rational barriers go down
and it’s total communication. That religious
aspect is there.
“It’s flattering when people use me and The
Cult as a backdrop for a lifestyle. I went through
a period when every experience I had each day
could be related to a Rolling Stones song. That’s
kinda cool for The Cult to become that now.
It’s really exciting we’re in the situation to be
ambassadors.
“I live my life and I have experiences and write
about them, not just ‘boy-meets-girl’ but more
undefined things that people don’t talk about
every day – sensitive, spiritual subjects. I see
sensitivity as a strength. Other people see it as
a weakness.
“People are so much more concerned with
superficial values these days, rather than
experiencing life and talking about it and
sharing it. I like to conjure up images that
provoke people to use their imagination.”
The band are now based full-time in LA.
Despite their disregard for its superficiality
– “Los Angeles could be put in a plastic bag
and taken away” – The Cult are inspired by its
cosmopolitan character, its relaxation, its open-
mindedness towards all forms of rock music.
They also enjoy the “like-minded people”
they meet there, people like Steve Jones, who
recently invited Astbury to be an “odd-job man”
on his new album, contributing harmonies,
1989
tambourines, percussion and a bit of help on the
lyrical arrangements.
“Steve Jones went to the States and people
said, ‘What a sell-out’,” said Ian. “They wanted
him to rot in England so they could pick pieces
off the corpse. Build ’em up and knock ’em
down. But why? It’s kinda sad.”
Britain has been something of a culture
shock for The Cult, who are horrified anew by
its emphasis on all things hip, on its eagerness
to follow, its snobbery towards rock music, its
charts, its “amorphous Euro-pop diarrhoea”,
its cynicism and its “old boy network” – the
Claptons, Collins, Dire Straits and Stings.
“It’s bringing out the worst in us already,” said
Astbury. “We come home and we slag things off
and people get really up in arms – ‘You’re bloody
living over there, and you come back here and
you slag it all off.’ I’m just in a position to be able
to travel. One of my concerns is that the general
public of Britain do not get peeved at The Cult.
I’m trying desperately hard to fly the flag in the
States, defending British music.”
“All we did was go where we felt we could do
our thing,” said Billy. “We’re the only ones that
are looking out for us. It’s self-preservation.”
The Cult are equally enamoured of New York,
immortalised on ‘Sonic Temple’ with ‘New York
City’, brash and up-tempo as befits its subject.
This is one of Astbury’s more straightforward
documentaries, an account of his first
memorable visit to the Apple.
“It was incredible,” he enthused. “I was totally
flabbergasted. I was an English kid, 22 years of
age, and I got out of the cab,
dumped my things at the
hotel, ran down the street
and banged into this guy
and knocked him flying. As I
helped him up, his sunglasses
fell off and it was Tony Curtis.
The first American guy I met
in America, Tony Curtis, and
I knocked him flying.
“I went into this delicatessen round the corner
and Alan Whicker was in there. I met several
celebrities in the first 10 minutes.
“There was nothing I could really focus on in
that town. I remember I got into a cab and the
fare was $3.75. I gave him four dollars. I said, ‘It’s
alright, don’t worry about the change.’ He took
the quarter and threw it at me – ‘I don’t need
your fucking charity, asshole.’ I didn’t realise you
have to tip them well.
“I remember seeing a New York cop with
a New York Yankees baseball cap on, with a
cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and his
police uniform on. I remember when I first saw
the size of the buildings, Times Square…”
America, as the band’s adopted home, is a
recurring theme in the lyrical content of the new
album. ‘Sweet Soul Sister’, a steady, insistent
headbanger laced with a mutation of the
‘Paranoid’ riff, explores the Americanisation of
the French in particular and Europe in general.
“It’s kinda strange,” mused Astbury. “We
gave America more kind of spiritual things like
depth, experience, culture. And they’re giving
back a hamburger. A hamburger, Guns N’Roses,
Budweiser, American football, skateboards and


baseball caps turned backwards.”
NME ORIGINALS 127
 Creepies From Crawley

When Bon Jovi/Aerosmith engineer Bob
Rock was called in to produce the new Cult
album, his brief was to “take a sonic photograph
of the group”. And the photograph he took is
memorable for its lights, its shades, its colours
and its space, enough to accommodate Billy
Duffy’s increasingly accomplished guitar and
some occasionally extravagant arrangements.
NME, 8 APRIL 1989, P32 There’s the dramatic sweep of the big slow
number, ‘Edie’, with its eight cellists; the
THE CULT powerful, emphatic ‘Soul Asylum’, complete with
Sonic Temple its shades of ‘Kashmir’.
(Beggars Banquet) “Everything with that kind of excellent
Sonic temple: The drum sound and beat is going to be accused
Cult as sensitive of sounding like Led Zeppelin,” huffed Duffy,
all-seeing rock clearly anticipating the reference, but still not too
legends. No, willing to like it.
Gods. ‘Stairway To “The tempo was dictated by the way we’d
Heaven’ without already written the song, the chords
a niff of devil and the melody. I’m perfectly
worship or hint of willing to defend it as long as
demonic inspiration. But The necessary. Is it in the same
Cult’s triangle of souls – Duffy, Astbury, Stewart key? No. Same chords?
– wouldn’t illuminate Jimmy Page’s left eye. Very few. The song itself
‘Sonic Temple’ is the way they’d like to see is so good that if it’s
themselves, but the music in reality is little gonna get compared to
more than a pastiche. Still, ‘Sonic Temple’ is a one of Led Zeppelin’s
noble attempt to pair the ‘cerebral’ side of the best tunes, I can’t
‘Love’ album, its feminine nature and haunting really complain.”
spirituality, with the parched, fleshless bones of “It was
‘Electric’. Like Mary Shelley they’re attempting completely
to recharge an emaciated corpse. uncontrived,”
The spirited ‘Fire Woman’ has already burnt added Astbury.
a hole in the Top 40, Astbury’s neighing vocals “It’s probably the
calling out in tribute to his girlfriend, born in most romantic song
the Chinese year of the firehorse. A love song on the record, even
that’s as aggressive as you can get before you though we took the
run towards the battered wives’ home. opening line from a
‘American Horse’ is the nearest they’ve piece in The Times. The
come to perfection since ‘Sanctuary’. The song editor wrote this article
stands, slides and slithers to the conclusion about the Stones when
that the subtle, sensitive spirit which possesses they got arrested in
Astbury’s lyrics has to overspill into the music, ’67. He was saying,
before the nectar can become as spellbinding ‘How dare the
as this. The Cult at their most haunted. establishment use
On ‘Edie (Ciao Baby)’, Astbury sings to the Stones as the
an angel with broken wings with a gothic focal point for the
reverberance that carries her from freedom drug problems of
to drug abuse without glorifying her self- the country?’ And
destructive traits. It’s as fragile as life itself. the headline was
HM compromise leers through the lacy ‘Who Would Break
underskirts of ‘Sweet Soul Sister’ and reveals A Butterfly On A
a twisted version of the ‘Paranoid’ riff. It’s still Wheel?’”
beautiful though. A spacey pulsing heartbeat The conversation drifted
hangs on a single ethereal note, until pierced by around fragile things which are
Duffy’s guitar and drawn out of its body like the easily destroyed,
blood of a vampire’s victim. Perfect.
The focus of ‘Sonic Temple’ is summed up
“un-macho”
things, “spiritual” “I was a victim from the
in a line from ‘Medicine Train’, with the image
of a worshipped artist performing in a venue,
a latter day temple: “All fired up, a desolation
things, and rested
on the topic of the
vulnerable artist.
day I became a punk”
angel shootin’ from the hip in the sonic temple”. “It’s amazing how a lot of beautifully creative
In The Cult’s sonic temple they sing of angels, people at some point confront the flak,”
Gods and fire, purifying images of goodness. remarked Ian. “A lot of them falter by the wayside
All the little ol’ devils that inhabited ‘Electric’ and die in really horrible circumstances, used up
have been exorcised. Now the only thing that and spat out so the machine can continue. That’s
is haunting and holding them back is a lack of what ‘Edie’ is about – and that’s Edie Sedgwick,
self-confidence in some of their older wisdoms. the definitive poor little rich girl.
Why continue plagiarising when they can do “She was one of Andy Warhol’s things, and she
angel, but she gradually lost her power to fly. She
lost her freedom through drugs and the abuse
and people using her like a fucking fashion
accessory. She fell from grace. She died.
“I felt there was a parallel between her life and
my life. I was a victim. From the day I decided
I wanted to be a punk rocker until I got my
band together, I was having things consistently
thrown in my face. I was very self-destructive
’cos I couldn’t deal with rejection. I was nearly
murdered in Glasgow. Kids who decided to
dress and express themselves that way had a lot
of guts, ’cos they had to confront violence every
day. There were people always waiting outside of
concerts to beat other people up.”
The Cult are watching the progress of British
artists in America and Yankee reaction to them.
“In America, they’re mildly bemused by the
names that are springing forth out
of Britain into popular American
consciousness,” said Billy Duffy.
“The Pet Shop Boys, Rick
Astley, Samantha Fox – and
these from the country that
produced the greatest
rock music ever.”
“And then you’ve
got bands who are
regarded as almost
gods in Britain,”
said Ian. “The
Sugarcubes, The
Mission, The Nephilim,
who come to LA and realise
they’re only starting off.”
“You get the feeling that
all of those bands think that
all they’ve gotta do it is put a
record out and they’re gonna
be megastars in America,”
said Duffy. “And the reality
hits them like a ton of bricks. If
they had a struggle in Britain,
it’s 10-fold in America.”
“You have to go on the road,”
said Ian. “We’ve been on the
road since 1984. We’ve had
guns pointed at us, all the way
to playing Long Beach Arena in
front of 12,000 people.”
“We’ve just got our foot in
the door,” said Duffy. “It’s a big
mountain to climb, and we’re just beginning to
need oxygen at the moment.”
The bang on the door
was an interruption, a
hint, a nuisance.
“Do you know,” said
Jamie as we vacated the
suite, “my dad was a violinist with the London
Symphony Orchestra? He played on a whole
series of ‘Classic Rock’ albums, and the first
one included ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Whole Lotta
Love’. At the time I was thrashing around in a
garage trying to be a punk rocker. I didn’t have
the connection then. Punk rock was a rebellion
against everything including Led Zeppelin and
TOM SHEEHAN

so much better on their own? was a victim. She was extremely naïve and she classical music. Now I can see the relevance of all
Helen Mead went along with it. I perceived her as a desolation rock music, from when it started to now.”

128 NME ORIGINALS

 1989

TEN YEARS
INLIPSTICK
AND POWDER
NME, 8 April 1989, p15 The Cure (l to r): Boris
Williams, Robert Smith,
Roger O’Donnell, Porl
Thomson, Simon Gallup

he Spiderman is recounting
Lock up your lipstick, The Cure are back.
t his favourite tale of horror
and woe. It’s a long and strange
and infamous story, and I have heard it
many times before, but never like tonight, and
With a brilliant new single ‘Lullaby’ and
never from the Spiderman himself.
It begins in Blackpool three decades ago
an LP ‘Disintegration’ to follow, they’re
and ends in Baker Street in three hours’
time, and that’s as much truth as you need on their best form in years. In James
to know. A bizarre stew of lies and dreams,
and as compelling as hypnosis, it has the
most fantastic soundtrack you could want.
Brown’s interview, Robert Smith reveals
And the plot? That’s up to you.
Robert James Smith of The Cure stretches
why he sacked Lol and why The Cure will
his eight long great black arms around me and
we begin.
“I wanted something like the really bad
never play live again after the next tour
Marvel characters with really stupid powers. tension and fear and dread and treats them to changes than the England squad, but who hasn’t?
Like The Candy Striped Man, who could turn a coat of musical finery. Cloaked in Eastern The Banshees, The Fall and Joy Division/New
everything into candy stripes.” string arrangements and rattlesnake percussion, Order all have. And as our interview came to
Smith is describing The Spiderman and The ‘Lullaby’ will do for bedtime stories what ‘Close an end Smith told me he had recently asked Lol
Spiderman is describing Smith. Both appear, To Me’ did for furniture care. The creepies from Tolhurst, the only other original Cure member
as monster and victim, in The Cure’s haunting Crawley are well and truly back. remaining, not to bother being involved any
new single ‘Lullaby’. Whispered from the more – but more of that later. With the release of
depths of Smith’s most tortured memories and The ’80shave been a memorable lifetime for The ‘Disintegration’, their eleventh LP, next month,
DEREK RIDGERS

set in the heart of nightmare land, ‘Lullaby’, Cure, one of the few interesting bands to start you’ll discover that The Cure are being as regal
like all The Cure’s best works, takes nervous and finish the decade. They’ve had more line-up and chilling as ever.

NME ORIGINALS 129

 Shambling Monster


Developing their ability to demolish people’s
expectations, The Cure have spent the last
decade changing from a dark and intense
underground band into a glam but imaginative
Top Of The Pops accessory. Their singles have
been as unpredictable as their LPs are solid, and
Smith himself has become the thinking man’s
Sixth Former’s crumpet.
Strangely this metamorphosis happened
while Britain experienced the biggest teeny-bop
explosion since the early ’70s. The band’s web of
success has spread throughout the world. There
have been over eight million
album sales, tours that have
stretched from Australasia to the “I resent people you grew up admiring turning
Middle East to South America
and back, and there’s an ever- out to be tossers – like David Bowie. I just wish
growing mass of US support that
was built almost entirely on the he’d been killed in a car accident after ‘Low’”
130N MN EM EO ROIRGIIGNIANLASL S
??
popularity of the videos on the fledgling MTV.
The United States have fallen for The Cure in
such a way that of the two million sales of their
last LP ‘Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me’, half of them
were American, and Spin magazine recently
included them twice in their Hundred Best
Singles of All Time.
“We met a girl in America who was at college
doing her thesis on us,” says Smith. “She
did things like counted all the references to
drowning in our songs and said, ‘Did you know
you’ve died 74 times in your songs?’”
Smith is jubilant as
he plays ‘A Forest’
on stage for the
14,763rd time
Strangely Smith is just as likely to discuss the
end of The Cure as an actuality.
“Each time I think it’s the last time we’ll do
something it’s obviously closer to the last time I
will do something. Also things that bother me
seem to crystallise rather than go away.
“I think I’m back where I started from – very
normal,” he says. “And that’s why I think the
group will stop. This tour has become a huge
tour because I wanted to go to places like
Hungary and Bulgaria before we stop. I know
we’ll never do another tour again, I’m not even
sure if we’ll play live again. If I
even leave it as an opening we
would turn into The Troggs.
I don’t want to turn into a
shambling monster.
“From an observer’s point of
view I can understand why this
will look like an ‘end’ because
I’m so intrinsically linked to The Cure, but in
real life I’m not. I don’t carry it round with me
during the months away. I don’t think, ‘I’d better
get The Cure out of the cupboard it’ll be getting
lonely or rusty.’
“I resent people who have a patronising
attitude to their audience, keep feeding the same
old shit. I resent people you grow up admiring
who turn out to be the biggest tossers, like
David Bowie. I just wish he’d been killed in a car
accident after he’d finished ‘Low’. No, I shouldn’t
say that about anyone.”
Maybe Smith has a thing about motorway
fatalities: the day before we spoke he had told a
Japanese magazine that Lawrence Tolhurst had
died in a road accident. Robert Smith has never
been one to worry about changing his line-up
but he had also been heard to say that without
Lawrence The Cure wouldn’t be The Cure.
Obviously it came as a shock all round when
Smith told the one musician that had stood by
him all the way that it was time to sling his hook.
“His position as the victim had become
ludicrous,” confesses Smith. “He had always
been the safety valve of the group, whenever rows
broke out we’d pick on Lol, but it had become
really depressing that the focal point had become
this constant harassment.
“I said to him at the start of the recording
that if he didn’t assert himself and get involved
then there was no way I could carry on seeing
everyone using him. Also, he was drinking
so much, he was the only one who couldn’t
moderate it to any degree. He was out of step
with everything. It had just become detrimental
to everything we’d do.
“I don’t know if you’d call it amicable. I think
he was shocked by it, everyone was shocked
that I actually meant it. When we go away he’s
not coming with us because it’s just become so
predictable and detrimental. It would be stupid
to be all jokey two minutes before going on stage
and then go on and try to manufacture that kind
of emotion.
“It will be a different tour, more draining
I should think. There’ll probably be a lot of
rowing going on; I’m looking forward to it. He’ll
probably be back by Christmas. He’s getting
married, maybe that’s his comeback. I don’t
know what he’s doing now – he’s gone all quiet.”

Smith’s relationship with his wife Mary is clearly
the most important thing in his life. No matter
how diverse a topic it might be, be it Hendrix,
or Rushdie, or JD Salinger or Midweek Sports
Special, Smith inevitably steers the conversation
around to his marriage.
“No one knew the venue,” he tells me of his
wedding in a Benedictine monastery. “Everyone
had to get on a coach and be taken there in
secret. Some people thought we’d gone a bit over
the top but the wedding had nothing to do with
the group and I wanted it emphasised that it was
just about me and Mary. If just one journalist or
one bunch of fans had been there it would have
ruined it for both of us and both sets of parents.”
Unsurprisingly, when the wedding photos
were released The Cure looked like Honey
Monsters in suits – all collars, creases and
enormous white training shoes.
“We had to wait until marriage wouldn’t
change anything before we would wed. It was an
old-fashioned romantic thing really. I’d always
promised Mary that one day we’d get married
properly. She hasn’t changed her name and we
don’t intend to have
any children, in fact
I often still think of “The group is there to escape
her as my girlfriend
rather than wife. the oppressiveness – so we don’t
“The choice
about children,” he
continues, “is more
have to work for other people”
up to the girl, I think. I’m glad we haven’t had
children. I couldn’t face up to the responsibility.
You lose that freedom of being able to say,
‘C’mon, we’re going away for a week tomorrow.’
You can’t even do that with a pet. It’s hard
enough having to think about two people, never
STEPHEN SWEET/DEREK RIDGERS
mind three. The songs are my children and the
group are my pets.”
Smith was born in Blackpool, which explains the
more recent lust for day-glo glamour and tack,
but before then? From high-waisters to
jumpsuits to lipsticks to kimonos,
Leigh Bowery must have been groaning
with jealousy.
Today, with his hair teased vertically and
scrawled lipstick, the man has a settled and
identifiable image. Stability within insanity,
if such is possible. And the appeal of The
Cure is balanced between their musical
originality and Smith’s mystique. Initially
inspired, according to one of the old press
releases, by “punk and Penguin Modern
Classics” Smith created a sort of English
Literature for Music Lovers and has never
looked back. Nowadays he has few worries
about the role of his band.
“The group is there to escape the
oppressiveness, it’s a way of screaming,”
he says. “The reason we formed the group
wasn’t for all those usual reasons like ‘being
bored’. It was so we didn’t have to get up at
nine in the morning. So we didn’t have to
work for other people. Whereas now I try
hard for The Cure never to be seen to be
involved with banality.
“I don’t give a shit if Bros sell 20 million
LPs next year; I know that I won’t be buying
them so why should I care? I don’t really
listen to us, I find it too difficult. I’m still inside
‘Disintegration’. There are songs that I really like
by the group, but it’s like a diary. It makes me
upset to think it’s gone.”
Despite seeing The Cure as part of “the
coloured zone where people go to escape”,
Smith has regularly used the group to help raise
money for political and socially concerned
organisations but has never attempted to fuse the
two creatively. The band have performed benefits
for Greenpeace, mental health, victimised
homosexuals and CND, yet such causes have
never screamed from the lyric sheets of their LPs.
“I like music that has a lack of reality to
its musical content,” he admits. “The Cure’s
music doesn’t reflect the material world in a
very obvious way, which I think is its strength.
I almost feel embarrassed by music that has a
social and political edge because it always seems
so diluted that it’s utterly pointless.
“I suppose it is of some worth if you decided a
certain percentage of your audience are complete
morons and they need to be told certain
elementary things about the world. I don’t really
meet that many
people that I could
illuminate on certain
key issues. I’ve never
been in touch with
a lot of the normal
world.
“I still know a lot
of the people I used to know before The Cure and
they’re doctors and bank officials and they like
Dire Straits and I think they feel sorry for me.”
Even though he’s about to roll The Cure out
around the world – “Going to Budapest might
be a really liberating event” – Smith discusses
it with a finality. He is also currently pondering
what to do with the solo LP he has recorded,
ready to release.

hesitant dinosaurs.
“Each time I do another LP I wonder
1989
MM, 6 May 1989, p34
THE CURE
Disintegration
(Fiction)
Robert Smith
reckons
‘Disintegration’
isn’t a miserable
record at all.
Right. Meanwhile
Van Gogh says
Starry Night was
a cartoon, Francis Bacon claims he’s a disco
king and Joan of Arc announces she was only
cutting down on heating costs.
‘Disintegration’ is about as much fun as
losing a limb. How can a group this distressing
and disturbing be so popular? Surely it’s not
allowed! ‘Lullaby’ is much too intricate and
interesting to loll about in the Top Five. Yet
there it is. Inexplicable. Robert’s not that
steamily erotic, is he? Is he? Oh.
You’ll be lucky to find a tune on here. Or a
gag. But when you think about it, that last one,
that one about snogging, that was bloody long
and mostly forlorn too. The Cure have almost
invisibly stopped making pop records. This is
exactly what Smith denies it is – a return to the
bleak inner landscapes of ‘Pornography’ and
‘Faith’. The first line? “I think it’s dark and looks
like rain”. The last line? “I’ll never lose this pain”.
Here comes summer.
The words which lumber to mind as you hear
The Cure bottling out of topping themselves
are all the words now devalued and used only
to mock goths: doom, gloom, barren, despair.
It’s an utter refusal to fight, to take the bull by
the horns. They have nothing to say except:
please help me I don’t understand a thing
about the world oh actually it’s not important
don’t trouble yourself go back to sleep.
Most of the tracks float sorrowfully into
each other. ‘Pictures Of You’ is as jaunty as
it ever gets, ‘Prayers For Rain’ as aggressive,
the title track as witty. Listless rhythms and
rhymes abound, glissando guitars whisper,
Robert mumbles and wonders whether he can
be bothered to plead. The closer, ‘Untitled’,
decides: “And now the time has gone, another
time undone/Hopelessly fighting the devil
futility/Feeling the monster climb deeper inside
of me gnawing my heart away…” Pluck it out
boy! Smith mopes. He’ll never send a letter-
bomb when his wounds are easier to lick than
an envelope. He’s a touchstone for millions.
It’s decent of him to share all this with us.
It’s challenging and claustrophobic, often
poignant, often tedious. It’s nearly surprising.
You’ve heard of the cowardly lion. Meet the
Chris Roberts
NME ORIGINALS 131


whether it’s worth releasing it
because I could just do it at home
and keep it for myself. I have the
tapes of the material I was going
to do as a solo record that I’ve had
for two and a half years now. It
becomes more and more ridiculous
as to why I should go out and do it
for other people to listen to.
“Mind you, when I am singing
in my own studio I invent people
listening, an audience.
“They’re not a set list of
characters – some of them are
real – and when I’m singing
I have them in mind.
For certain types of
song I always have
the same person
in mind.
always find out what they think and quite often
they don’t like the songs.”
A solitary character who claims to have made
few real friends since he’s been in the band,
Robert Smith’s past slide into alcohol-orientated
decadence has been well charted. His “I’m
almost an alcoholic now. I haven’t had one
night this year when I haven’t been drunk”
has become legendary. Describing that time as
“hollow” and “unmemorable”, Smith still drinks
but his excesses are kept “more normal now.
More celebratory than a lifestyle.”
“I wanted to get away from myself as this
morose and deeply tortured person, I found that
really stressful. I was never really very bothered
with that image. What’s frightening is that I find
it so unimportant and yet people are writing
virtual suicide notes to me. That’s something
I’ve never been able to grasp and I think it would
If you’re going to be a pop star and wear lipstick
and tarantula crops then it’s important for the
public image to be seen to be deep, mystical
and attractive. Whether or not he will admit to
having cultivated The Robert Smith Persona
and all the deadly nightshade, suicide notes and
butterfly wings that go with it, that image is there
and Robert Smith of The Cure appears to now
cope with it very well.
Detached but addicted, “becoming more
sponge-like as I grow older”, he’s just as ready to
live within a warm and stable set-up as he used
to be ready to live within a wine bottle.
For the future, Robert Smith suggests, like
every other bored musician, that film scores
might lie ahead. More interestingly he also
claims he would like to divorce himself from
music and go and work in a mental hospital.
For the moment he sees no new bands
jamming a spur up his backside, attempting to

“I wanted to get away from myself as replace The Cure. This he finds both remarkable
and disappointing.
“My stuff has always come from lack of faith
a morose and deeply tortured person” in anything,” he reckons, yet he takes pleasure
in cooking, the works of Denton Welsh and
“I know that have upset me if I had come to terms with it. Dylan Thomas and his ever-increasing catalogue
they eventually “I think a lot of people around me at the time of old records.
listen to the of ‘Pornography’ seemed to enjoy seeing me in Is it really possible to be both a pop star and
records, but that state. It’s so much easier and more enjoyable normal? Or do we have to presume a basic lack
they don’t know now than it was five years ago. I know now that of sanity is required for both?
I’m thinking about I could turn round and tell them all to fuck off. Robert Smith of The Cure – one of the few
them listening to it I could do that before but I used to worry about remaining everyday nutters capable of crooning
when I’m recording it. I what we’d do next.” a decent tune.

MM, 19 August 1989, p15

AndThe Ass
SawThe Angel
A
nd The Ass Saw The Angel,
Nick Cave’s debut novel, has
consumed a large part of his
last four years. He drags us feet-first
into a dimly-lit ghost town in the
American South, territory previously
excavated by William Faulkner,
Cormac McCarthy and Flannery
O’Connor. Here, amid the festering
swamps, grim phantoms and rolling
thunder, we find Euchrid Eucrow
relating his tale of murder, incest,
betrayal, vengeance and love in
stark jumbled burst of recall.
out. Eucrow survives
to tell us the tale “Could you sign it:
of the swamp, a ‘To Yummy Bunnikins,
love from Nicky-Poo’?
dark and menacing Er, it’s for my sister”
parable that screams
from the page. Cave’s His characters are vile and spectacle and, once again this
anti-hero believes in misshapen. They cannot becomes a disturbing experience
angels but his soul win our sympathy. Yet, Once more, it seems Cave has
is “one big fuckin’ somehow, one suspects that taken his obsessions as far as they
black twisty knot compassion lurks among will go. This reads like four years
planted in the backest these grim phantoms. And of madness. Every last thought is
backwoods”. He lies The Ass… returns to haunt thrown down to shrivel and perish.
on his deathbed and documents his most remarkable album, 1985’s Cave’s dissenters will dismiss it as a
the grim atrocities of his life with an ‘The Firstborn Is Dead’. There’s a grand folly. But if you take a morose
DEREK RIDGERS/ STEVE DOUBLE

At the beginning we find Eucrow
being ripped from his mother’s
womb with a broken liquor bottle,
watching his twin brother die. His
brother is the lucky one, as it turns
unfailing eye. Every last abominable
act is recorded, and relished.
Cave is no Cormac McCarthy, but
his pose has a raw-boned quality
to it that’s surprisingly effective.
similar sense of desolation, and,
like the album, at times it gets so
insufferable you want to howl with
laughter. Then, all of a sudden,
you are drawn back to the awful
pleasure in seeing this edge-of-
the-frame man scribbling his own
prescription for the blues, you’ll find
some delight in here somewhere.
Jonh Wilde

132 NME ORIGINALS


All About Eve:
tra-la-la and
fol-de-rol
MM, 21 October 1989, p38
ALL ABOUT EVE
Scarlet And Other Stories
(Mercury)
Twelve months ago All About
Eve seemed happy to travel the
hippy road to salvation, but
they’ve consulted the map since
then and aborted the journey.
It’s almost impossible
to dream your way
out of trouble these
days and Julianne’s
discovered that the
twin foundations of the
Aquarian ethic – mind-
expanding drugs
and the rural retreat
from Mammon – are
hopelessly nostalgic means
to a peaceful end.
In recording this album, All
About Eve found they had no way
forward and no way back. The Kate
Greenaway/Laura Ashley idyll they
seemed to inhabit is ravaged during
‘Tuesday’s Child’, which reveals the
darker side of nursery rhymes and
the hidden threat of fairy tales.
Julianne appears to have found
the notion of maturity as fallible
as retracing the umbilical cord,
and the sprightly ‘More Than The
Blues’ concludes: “Are we getting
TOM SHEEHAN/DEREK RIDGERS
wiser/Or just getting older/ When we
know the shoulder/We’d most like
to cry on”. Love offers little hope
– the gorgeously tender rock ballad
‘December’ pictures a woman
romancing her
memories but can’t
bring itself to chide
her as so many people
end up alone.
‘Scarlet’ declares
with poignant
purity that lust is an
unsatisfying exercise
in self-deception while
‘Hard Spaniard’ is an embarrassingly
frank catalogue of the events
that befall a girl so desperate for
company she submits to the abuse
of the one-night-stand.
Musically, though, the band are
content to rummage among the
roots of rock. ‘Scarlet…’ sounds
standard, gently melancholy and
occasionally twee
(there’s a cute fiddle fol-
de-rol in ‘More Than The
Blues’) when it’s really
a very harsh album
indeed. It’s ironic that
their coltish beauty
betrays their darker,
deeper intent.
Steve Sutherland
MM, 11 November 1989, p40
THE CREATURES
Boomerang
(Polydor)
When an established group takes
time off for extra-curricular
activity, it’s usually an attempt
to flee the creative inertia that
sets in mid-career. So when
Siouxsie and Budgie chose to
revive an earlier alter ego/escape
route, The Creatures, you could
be forgiven for taking it as a
sign that the Banshees had
succumbed to an irreversible
enervation. But listening to
‘Boomerang’, my yawn turned
quickly to a jaw dropping in
astonishment.
This is Siouxsie’s
most inventive and
invigorated music
since ‘A Kiss In The
Dreamhouse’.
What’s interesting
about ‘Boomerang’
is how Siouxsie has
incorporated her
1989
new holistic, health-conscious,
“gyn-ecological” concerns within
her established, predatory persona.
‘Standing There’ is a feminist
tirade against the ghoulish males
who voyeuristically revel in the
carnage of the bullfight; Budgie’s
stampeding rhythms gloss over
some rather ungainly phrased
polemic (“How funny to see/How
path-et-ic/Some grown men/Can
be”). ‘Fruitman’ tries to imagine a
nurturing, kindly, Green-fingered
masculinity that’s in touch with
“the rhythms of nature’s ticking”.
Even ‘Pluto Drive’ conceals, within
its asteroid-funk swirl and images
of “oceans of methane and petrified
grass”, a distinctly Green sentiment
(Pluto is “an unleaded dream”).
Musically, Budgie is the star.
‘Manchild’ has Siouxsie’s voice
swooping through canopies of
chimes and tintinnabulation. ‘You’
churns and seethes like the low-
riding funk undercarriage of ‘Pull
Up To The Bumper’, and ‘Pity’
even sees Budgie reinventing the
Jamaican steel drums.
But sometimes the duo veer
dangerously close to camp. I can
do without the Porgy And Bess
pastiche of ‘Killing Time’ and
‘Willow’. But happily, ‘Boomerang’
ends with two songs as lulling
and lovely as ‘Pity’. ‘Venus Sands’
describes itself perfectly, Siouxsie’s
voice abandoned and unhinged in
vast empty space. And ‘Morrina’ is a
shimmering carpet of dew, a Milky
Way awning for Siouxsie’s reveries.
It’s the most serene she’s ever
sounded.
‘Boomerang’ abounds with
scarcely anticipated brilliance.
Simon Reynolds
Siouxsie and
Budgie:
“gyn-ecologists”
NME ORIGINALS 133
Merrie England
MM, 18 March 1989, p32
THE CULT
Fire Woman
(Beggar’s Banquet)
Ian Astbury reckons that ‘Fire
Woman’ is about his “67 crazed
firehorse lady”. Just what the fuck
that means is anybody’s guess,
but there are references to
his lil’ honey, his lil’ sister, his lil’
baby and a cat on a hot tin shack.
Take your pick. The words are
howled, growled and barked,
each gullible syllable given the full
wolverine works; the beat is bull-
headed and Billy Duffy’s guitar
playing is typically opulent if not
intricate, ever on the brink of FX-
exaggerated extravagances.
Despite being The Cult’s
first release for 18 months,
‘Fire Woman’ does not mark
anything of a departure in
approach or execution and it
slips neatly into the pattern
initiated with the ‘Love’ LP. The
fact that the producer, Bob
Rock, has previously
worked with Aerosmith
and Bon Jovi is the
best indication of their
overriding caution, but this,
however, is not to suggest that
it lacks numerous strengths. It’s
certainly their finest effort since
‘She Sells Sanctuary’.
It’s also worth noting that while
‘Automatic Blues’, the seven-inch
B-side, sounds exactly like Led
Zep’s archaic interpretation of
the blues, ‘Messing The Blues’,
the additional track on the
12-inch, is somewhat
refreshing. The music
is entirely acoustic
– double bass, slide
guitar, harmonica
and the swipe of
brushes against the
snare – and Chuck
Berry, Bo Diddley,
Big Joe Turner
and even Billy
Idol are given
supposedly
improvised
namechecks.
If they’d been
so bold as to
select this song
for the A-side,
they’d have
made Single
Of The Week.
Of course
I’m lying.
Push
NME, 15 April 1989, 19
THE CURE
Lullaby
(Fiction)
BE: At the first play of ‘Lullaby’
Guy’s suspicion visibly withers.
It’s a terrific single. Sexy, scary,
fascinating, murky and just casual
enough to enjoy its own sense of
ridiculousness. Is Guy a Love-Cat?
GC: “When they first started
they were my favourite group.
I’ve always like The Cure, I’ve
always like the idea of them. And
listening to ‘Lullaby’ is brilliant.
The strings are exquisite. Just
beautiful. Utterly beautiful.
Success has affected their music in
the best possible way…”
Barbara Ellen & Guy Chadwick
(The House Of Love)
NME, 1 July 1989, p10
THE CULT
Edie (Ciao Baby)
(Beggars Banquet)
BE: First it was American Indians,
then Led Zep, now Ian Astbury
has read a Ladybird book on Edie
Sedgwick and this – bless him – is
the surprisingly tender result.
MMc: “It’s an amalgam of
everything else I’ve heard in this
genre of music over the past 15
years so I’m afraid I don’t quite
understand it. The Cult have
never been dangerous enough to
cross my path, except I remember
once when I was compering The
Tube and they were desperately
pleading for wine back at the
hotel. I thought it was odd how
such big, blustering rock’n’rollers
should want wine. How poetic – as
is, I suppose, this idea of writing a
song about Edie, whose entire life
was a romantic tragedy.
Barbara Ellen & Malcolm McLaren
MM, 9 December 1989, p32
ALL ABOUT EVE
December
(Mercury)
Cast splendidly adrift in their
ambivalent emotional hayloft, the
Eves, abrim with mordant passion,
ridicule all other festive filth, and,
as usual, the listener immediately
feels at home in the song, even
if miffed by the décor, knowing
the video has to be a treat. Andy
in the workhouse, hanging up his
stocking, Mark in the outhouse
(luxury), kissing Santa under
the mistletoe, Julianne beaming
inside her speeding sleigh, and
the wretched Tiny Tim, getting
it all horribly wrong, earnestly
setting off to complete his bob-
a-job errands.
“Remem-BURR, Decem-
BURR”. A brilliant, almost oafish
chorus, flowers on Julianne’s
strident trellis-work, deep bass
thumbprints abound on the
crisp drum slabs, and the song
ends abruptly after the sort of
gratuitously violent guitar solo
you’d expect from a man who
habitually crosses the Astoria
threshold, accompanied by an
“18-stone friend”, specifically to
make rude remarks to security
staff. Rude, Tim?? He has to go
confessional after reading one
page of Viz.
TOM SHEEHAN
Merrie England everybody!
Mick Mercer
 Chapter 12
1990-92
DEREK RIDGERS
 Love Missiles

NME, 3 February 1990, p31

THE MISSION
Carved In Sand
(Phonogram )

‘Carved In Sand’
catches The Mish
on the crest of
another wave
of phenomenal
ordinariness.
Hung with all the
usual accessories
– junk shop
mysticism, Sesame Street metaphor and
finger-dancing chintziness – this ten-strong
mountain-mover is a prime cut indeed.
For all the glib criticism flung gaily (and
daily) at The Mish, their noise remains both
graceful and rugged; a well-worn, in-bred
hybrid of pomp rock and Avalon nursery
rhyme. Divorced from Hussey’s parabolic
prose, yer average Mish song has a tea-and-
slippers familiarity to it.
‘Butterfly On A Wheel’ is a superior love
Tony James and
song – true, its title is nicked from an old Andrew Eldritch:
editorial in The Times, and yes, the idea of 21st Century boys
love being as fragile as a butterfly wing is
nothing if not shite – but Wayne sings it
with such an unflinching honesty only a
professional whinge merchant could fail to
be touched by it.
Elsewhere, ‘Grapes Of Wrath’ pushes its
luck a bit, with its lyric about toiling on the
land and reaping the harvest, but a modest
pearl like ‘Sea Of Love’ ultimately wins you
over with its beautiful ‘Dear Prudence’ guitar
upholstery. ‘Deliverance’ is the album’s
Sister Sputnik
he Sisters Of Mercy have recruited a new bass
MM, 3 February 1990, p3

Sisters’ record company, WEA, have been trying to

obvious keystone – a purpose-built epic that
starts like a John Carpenter soundtrack and
ends up delivering the stuff that nation-
wide Mish-understanding is based on: “Give
me/Give me/ Give me/Deliverance”.
But ‘Amelia’ ought to make even the most
ardent Mish-fit choke. Attacking the delicate
subject of child abuse with a mallet, Wayne
sings, quite clearly, “Daddy says come and sit
on my knee/Daddy loves his little girl”. Now
it is obviously a passionate diatribe against
‘Daddy’, but it is also the most ham-fisted
attempt at writing a wrong I’ve ever heard.
Stick to the farmyard noises in future. The
final track, ‘Lovely’, is an acoustic ramble
recorded in a field (true!) in which we learn
that Wayne believes in colours, sunshine,
laughter, crying, magic and dreams.
That’s more like it!
‘Carved In Sand’ then, is a vast oasis
with a little desert in the middle of it, if
you’ll forgive the duff metaphor. And
t player: Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s Tony James.
And the announcement of a full Sisters
line-up has fuelled speculation this week
that a long-awaited tour may be in the offing.
The surprise news came in a statement from the
Sisters’ management. It stated simply: “Andreas
Bruhn has joined The Sisters Of Mercy. Andreas
Bruhn plays electric
guitar. Tony James has
joined The Sisters Of
Mercy. Tony James
Eldritch has consistently
plays bass guitar.”
Any further enquiries refused to tour, with the excuse
were met with a tight-
lipped silence, and no one
will discuss bass player
that it’s bad for his health
Patricia Morrison’s role within the new band.
Extraordinary though the collaboration
between Andrew Eldritch and Tony James may
appear, the pair have been friends for a long time
and Eldritch was once asked to front Sigue Sigue
Sputnik. They are now believed to be in Norway
persuade the band to tour. Eldritch has consistently
refused, with the excuse that too much touring is
bad for your health! There have been no live dates
since the original Sisters line-up split, leaving
Eldritch and Morrison as the nucleus of the band.
Eldritch spent most of last year writing material
in Hamburg and The Only Ones’ John Perry played
guitar on the demos.
The recruitment
of Tony James would
apparently spell the
end of Sigue Sigue
Sputnik, although their
spokesperson this week
responded with a curt,
“No comment.”
Except for Ray Matthews’ recent appearance in
the national press, where he complained of being
broke and working on a building site, the rest of
Sigue Sigue Sputnik have been lying low lately.
Vocalist Martin Degville said this week: “I’ve
been so busy on a solo project that I cannot
STEVE DOUBLE

if you’re a top Mish fan, you will. working on material for the next Sisters LP. comment on Tony James’ latest activities.”
Andrew Collins Ever since the success of ‘This Corrosion’, the Watch this space…

136 NME ORIGINALS


NME, 14 April 1990, p33
NICK CAVE AND
THE BAD SEEDS
The Good Son
(Mute)
So this is the new, narcotic-free
Nick Cave. Novelist, poet, film
star, all cleaned up
with somewhere to
go. In a sense, this is
his very own tribute
album, a nod and a
wink towards that
great chemical dump
in the sky. Where
Hendrix and Joplin
so miserably failed,
Cave somehow
succeeded, although ‘The Good
Son’ is predictably devoid of self-
congratulatory adulation.
This is where Cave anoints the
sleeve, glaring at a grand piano with
an audience of four enraptured
young girls in a perverse translation
of the Abbey National advert. This
is where the Bad Seeds succumb
to strings and Cave’s desire for
tradition over idiosyncratic
experimentation. And where
‘Kicking Against The Pricks’ was
a timeless covers paradise, this is
where Cave turns the tables and
creates his own potential hand-me-
down classics.
In ‘Lament’, he has created quite
possibly the finest pop song of
the year, wherein false
jaunts swing into a quite
gorgeous chorus: “So
dry your eyes/And
turn your head
away”, croons Cave,
wandering over
Scott Walker’s
memory and
losing himself
in his own
massive,
magnificent
melody. ‘The Ship
Song’ is similarly
dramatic, one breath away
from being overblown.
Cave, unembarrassed by his
frankness, is floating proudly on
the swelling sophistication.
And tragedy taints every
tear: the family-aimed fury of
the title track is wracked and
sneering; ‘The Weeping
Song’ is noise torture, an
STEVE DOUBLE/CHRISTINA BIRRER
unforced document
of a dispirited
community;
while ‘The
Hammer
Song’ allows the Seeds
NME, 15 September 1990, p39
a rare opportunity
to let loose, Cave
sprawled across distant THE COCTEAU
twangs while discord TWINS
takes a hair-raising hold. Heaven Or Las Vegas
The orchestration is (4AD)
lush and the songs are Let’s get one thing straight.
immaculately crafted. I am not a ‘fan’ of The
There is hardly a single Cocteau Twins. Music
bow tie askew throughout the entire can be a passionate,
performance. And yes, ‘The Good terrifying, mysterious
Son’ does threaten self-parody, but thing and still feel
if this is showbiz, Cave is still lurking cold to the touch but
in the shadowlands. The Cocteau Twins
It’s still more gritty than glitzy have always struck
– smooth surfaces have a sandpaper me as being the very
underlay. And the likes of ‘Lucy’ are antithesis of musical
too floored by honesty to fall victim truehearts. Like vinyl
to contrived campness. Marie Antoinettes, they have
Memories fade, but Cave’s scars spent their entire career believing
still linger. Rest (un)easy – the good – rather stupidly – that your sweet
son is still the black sheep. tooth houses your entire digestive
Simon Williams system and that the fat, squashy
cakes they bake, flavoured with rich,
dark chocolate to hide the taste
of bromide, are enough to keep
you going.
Furthermore, after
trivialising life’s absolutes –
pain, fear, the death of love
– into sprays of Frazer’s
hieroglyphic warble-
baubles, the Twins’ next
step is always to stand
back from the pretty
wreckage, refusing to
clear up or explain the
mess they’ve made.
Our minds are supposed
to do all the talking,
and while it is right and
good that music should be
left open to interpretation, let’s
not fool ourselves that anything
other than our own sense of
melodramatic self-importance
is connecting with the self-
important melodrama in them.
Worse, it’s all quite
intentional. Exactly the
opposite of their
affectedly queer,
ethereal media
‘image’, The
Liz Frazer: Cocteau Twins
hieroglyphic are actually
warble-baubles
1990-1992
Nick Cave:
still the
black sheep
experimentally minded pop
scientists who make white mice
of their listeners, forcing them
into The Subjective
Corner when
communication, not
inscrutability, has
always been the axis
for true genius.
I cannot be so
presumptuous as to
tell you what ‘Heaven
Or Las Vegas’ is like,
but I can tell you what
I think. Definitely their best since
‘Treasure’, occasionally a hairy
(outsider’s?) fist does try to thump
long-overdue clarity into the lyrics.
But these moments are few and
far between – the rest is standard
Cocteaus fare. Giant steps forward,
fairy steps back, cruelty and passion
homogenised for consumption
inside plastic bubble psyches, and
of course, Frazer dribbling party
streamers, fog and razor-blades
out of her ever-versatile facial
orifice. The title track, ‘Cherry
Coloured Funk’, ‘Frou Frou Foxes
In The Midsummer Fires’ and the
single ‘Iceblink Luck’ benefit hugely
from having rock hearts with pop
arteries, and ‘Heaven Or Las Vegas’
is a beautiful sounding album. But
it’s spoilt for me by what I interpret
as a stench of pomp and dishonesty.
So, listen and enjoy by all means,
but play the naughty twins at their
own game. Remain detached, do
not be duped into believing their
music means anything. At the end of
the day The Cocteau Twins are little
more than cold-eyed midwives who
make music for people who wish
they’d never been born.
This mortal coil is not a cosmic
contraceptive device. It is life itself.
When The Cocteau Twins realise
this, they will scream their first
honest breath. Then the birth rate
– for which some already hold them
partly responsible – will really soar.
Barbara Ellen
NME ORIGINALS 137
 Southern DeAth
Existential Elvis Cult
t
‘ he Sisters Of Mercy, Mark Three I guess,
are back, and facing up to reality like
goth always did. The highly confusing
new line-up is Andrew Eldritch, Tony
James (formerly of Generation X and Sigue
Sigue Sputnik), Tim Bricheno (formerly of All
About Eve), and Andreas Bruhn. There’s a new
single called ‘More’, co-written by Eldritch and
Jim Steinman, and an imminent album, ‘Vision
Thing’. And a tour. The previous ones have been
legendary; one recalls the “farewell” fog-fest at
the Royal Albert Hall in 1985. And anyone that
covers Hot Chocolate’s ‘Emma’ deadpan is cool
as fuck, let’s face it.
The records are pretty much what you’d
expect, ‘More’ being a shameless rewrite of
Bowie’s ‘Cat People’, and the album setting
streets of suitably dark and decadent imagery
to every Bowie/Iggy trick in the book.
The Sisters’ vinyl return is not bad at all – in
fact it’s probably about one-twentieth as good
as Eldritch thinks it is.
His attitudes and motives are wholly
commendable. Eldritch plays The Star from
dusk to dawn. To interview he’s a dream – smart,
wry, laconic, erudite, deluded but not deluded,
and just a little bit nasty. He may, however, have
underestimated popular antipathy towards his
new collaborator Mr James. To most, he’s that
bloke from the Sputniks who hung out with
Janet Street-Porter.
It’s difficult to picture Tony James ascending
enigmatically on a black cloud above Hades,
a veritable horseman of the apocalypse. The
forthcoming shows will require large quantities
of dry ice to make that one wash – enough
smoke to hide the portable phone, anyway.
As if to hang himself, Tony James starts on at
me about my review of the last Sputnik album,
tells me Martin Degville is after my blood, all
that sort of stuff. I gaze at him in disbelief – how
could any grown man defend that tosh? – so
after a 20-minute lecture on the life-affirming
EXCESS ALL
It’s been two years since ‘Floodland’ reinstated Eldritch
as the Godfather of Goth. Now he’s back with a new
single, a new band and a new album. Chris Roberts
discovers why he’s the last great rock’n’roll star
MM, 6 October 1990, p32
138 NME ORIGINALS
merits of Sigue Sigue (“the first to do this, the 1959 (a vintage year) and adores cats, women,
first to do that, we invented sampling, Prince drugs, and old Bowie records, we get along like a
said hello to me”), he comes round to today. fairly warm house. After a few minutes he even
I tell him I came here as a Sisters person. takes his shades off.
I thought that was the game. He agrees to Eldo is fantastically, magnificently, withered,
agree. He reckons the difference between him and talks like Michael Caine. So, where’s he been
and Eldritch is that he reads GQ magazine and since the ‘Floodland’ album?
Eldritch doesn’t, though they both respect “Hamburg. I like the people. I like the
the erotic potential of gas masks. James’ guest list cigarette machines that work. Where I live
for the Wembley show was so big that another everything’s open all night, but not dangerously
night was added. This may or may not be a joke. so, just civilised. With a little bit of an edge.”
Tony is actually quite funny. He makes us all Would you get bored if there wasn’t an edge?”
laugh. I just worry that laughing is not entirely “Yeah, I would. I couldn’t live in Holland or
what The Sisters Of Mercy are all about. Sweden or any of those places where everybody’s
“What do I do in this band?”
James asks. “I’m in charge of
going out. You see, you can
have the misery and the
pain – that’s him – and the
fun too. That’s my side;
the two co-exist. We’ve
known each other years.
It can work.”
Tim Bricheno reckons he
was always leaning towards
the rockier side of All About
Eve, used to be a Sisters fan,
and “never dreamed I’d end
up being one of them”. Tim
is sweet and ingenuous. Or
maybe he’s just as jet-lagged
as everyone else, their plane
back from an LA video
shoot for ‘More’ having
landed this same day.
Eldritch doesn’t know the
meaning of fatigue. Or
rather he possesses such
an abundance of willpower
that he can conquer it with
ease. He soon relaxes his
innate superiority complex.
As the man was born in

sensible and knows what they’re doing.”
What preoccupies you?
“Same as everybody else really. Women.
Drugs. Newspapers. My attitudes have shifted
a little. I’m drinking again now. I spent a long
time not drinking as a reaction. By the time we
finished touring last time I was doing almost a
litre of gin a day. I’m keeping an eye on it this
time ’cos alcohol’s not very good for me. It doesn’t
turn me into a better person; it just makes me fall
asleep in public more. Or fall over.”
Are you giving the punters what they want?
“Oh, I hadn’t really thought about that. I’ve
Sisters Mark Three:
(l to r) Tony James,
Andreas Bruhn,
Andrew Eldritch,
Tim Bricheno
AREAS
always taken the view that what I want to give
them is what they need. What they want is
neither here nor there. I know what’s best. That’s
my job. And my brief. To do what I want.”
Is that the role of ‘the rock star’?
“It’s the role of a great one. That’s not to say
that anybody that does it is great.”
Do you set out to enlighten, or pervert?
“I’ve never taken the view that any form of
art is really to tell anybody anything they didn’t
know. Particularly in a medium as wonderfully
ludicrous as rock’n’roll, I don’t think you can
convince anybody of anything they didn’t think
or know already.”
“Last time we toured I was doing almost
a litre of gin a day. Alcohol doesn’t make
me a better person, it just makes me
fall asleep in public more”
1990-1992
When did you first think it was ludicrous?
“When they first put me at the front. When
I was the drummer I thought, ‘This is all
right’. And then I found myself at the front,
probably because I was one of the world’s worst
drummers, and I thought, ‘Oh dear, this is
pretty uncool’. And, er, it’s still pretty uncool.”
You seem to have taken to it like a duck to
water.
“No, it terrifies me. And the more people turn
up the more terrified I get. I still go out there
terrified. And preferably out of my skull.”
But you seem… immobile in your calm.
“It’s like a rabbit in the headlights. Well…
rabbits probably move, don’t they? I don’t know
much about nature…”
Rabbits do freeze in headlights, apparently.
“Yeah? OK, like a rabbit in the headlights.
Only thing is, I’ve got a steel core and when the
car hits it comes off worse.
“This sounds outrageous, but I truly believe
that you can tell how intelligent a woman is by
the ways she moves her hips. I really do think
you can. And I hope there’s something about my
hips that screams intelligence at 10,000 people
every time I take the stage.”
Like an end of the millennium Elvis?
“Uh-huh. Elvis meets Kierkegaard.”
What’s your ideal of beauty?
“Do you know, the record company is still
keeping me apart from Ofra Haza. I suspect Ofra
Haza is probably it, Joanna Lumley having made
it past her sell-by date.”
Aren’t women the most beautiful things on
this earth?
“No.”
Oh. Then what is? (Thinks: if he says cats, I’ll
say the album’s great.)
“I find cats the most beautiful thing.”
The album’s great.
“You can tell the intelligence of a cat also by
the way it moves. It’s the same kind of flowing
grace when it’s just right, but with a kind of
slyness in the great cats.”
So does beauty fade with age for you?
“Yes but you can still tell it in the eyes. Beauty
changes. It gets rechannelled. I mean if Joanna
Lumley walked through the door now, you’d be
outta here in a flash, I can tell you.”
I ask the by now immensely likeable Eldritch
if he realises he’s missing a Manchester United
game on telly as we speak and he grumbles,
“Yeah, thanks to you.” His is an innovative and
charming way of winning one over.
Can you have a good time without drugs?
“Oh yeah. I have to.”
What’s perfect contentment for you?
“A quiet room, four blank walls, and a cat.
TOM SHEEHAN
I could sit happily in that room for a very
long time.”
NME ORIGINALS 139
 Dogs On Heat
NME, 27 OCTOBER 1990, p40
THE SISTERS
OF MERCY
Vision Thing
(Merciful Release)
There was nowhere to go after
‘Floodland’. Eldritch stood on the
brink of the void, posing an ever
more crushing question: what to
do when you’ve
grasped the glory of
the global death kick
and the holocaust just
don’t come? ‘
So Eldritch did a
whole lot of nothing.
He hung around
Hamburg and
laughed his hollow
self hoarse at the
black joke he’d played upon himself
until, well, finally he had to do
something. So he did what the rest
of us do. He plunged headlong into
life’s little pleasures – sex, drugs and
rock’n’roll – all the sideshows that,
whether we care to admit it or not,
we employ to distract us from our
inevitable end.
And guess what? When the
smoke cleared and the sweat dried
and Eldritch stood there blasted
and brazen and sore to his soul,
he realised something that raised
a pulse in his dead creativity. He
realised that all our little pleasures
fuck us up too.
At last Eldritch had stumbled
upon the rudimentary impulses
of rock, something his intelligence
had shielded him from before
– betrayal and revenge in all their
devious guises.
So ‘Vision Thing’ is a beauty of
vindictive bile, a self-inflicted bruise.
It’s a paradigm of self-delusion,
Eldritch apparently under the
impression that, if he adopts a cruel,
devil-may-care attitude, that bitter
power will serve as a temporary
salvation, a vacation from the
doubts that gnaw at his vanity. It’s
probably the best he could hope for.
I think it is quite magnificent.
With a truly epic petulance,
Eldritch has cast himself in a series of
imaginary movies so audacious, one
can do nothing but crack a grin and
salute him. “Twenty-five whores in
the room next door” – that’s the way
it starts! The Sisters’ characteristic
brooding is blasted to shreds by
a riff ransacked from Eldritch’s
favourite comic book heroes, The
Screaming Blue Messiahs, and
kamikaze driven into a collision of
sweet ass and brutal assassination
by ex-Only One John Perry.
140 NME ORIGINALS
Cut to the perv
parlour game
– ‘Ribbons’, in which
Eldritch, a victim
of his own desires,
is taunted for his
weakness by the god
of his disgust. “Love is a
many splintered thing”,
he puns, smug bastard,
and men with more
sin than sense nod knowingly. If
‘Detonation Boulevard’ is more Billy
Idol napalm thrill than Iggy Pop
art nihilism, ‘When You Don’t See
Me’ is a wicked conceit. “Get real”,
he advises the babe he’s using,
“Get another”. This macho Eldritch
is one wounded beast and, when
he makes emotional demands in
‘More’, the single Steinman spiced
up with wailing chicks, it’s as if his
spite is leading some poor stray
into committed suffering. If I can’t
escape the pain, he seems to be
saying, it amuses me to pass it on.
My favourite fantasy Mr E is
‘Doctor Jeep’, where, across a riff
like an accelerating Harley, our
wretched matinee idol St Vitus
dances through a rush of TVOD,
the inanity, the corruption, the
hypocrisy, the lies all embraced
as evidence amassed in his case
against the world. It’s ridiculously
petulant, of course, puerile even,
but what great rock’n’roll ain’t?
Eldritch wants us to think he’s
beyond worrying – it’s his greatest
con yet. He’s calling the trials
and tribulations down upon his
head because it makes him feel
alive. That’s why he’s hauled out
Tony James, a figure unfairly but
hopelessly ridiculed by many. It’s
Andy’s big ‘Fuck you’.
Even when he gets vulnerable
in ‘I Was Wrong’ and ushers us
into a bar-room confessional, he
draws us in just close enough to
slip a metaphoric blade down his
sleeve and deliver devastation. “I
can love my fellow man”, he says in
an awful whisper, “But I’m damned
if I’ll love yours”. His quick wit even
betrays the crisis of heartbreak and
‘Something Fast’, a melancholy
anthem to the elixir of hedonism, is
a fragile masterpiece of
staged suffering. “I’ve
seen the best of men
go past”, he sings in a
pained contradiction
of resignation and
melodrama, “I don’t
wanna be the last”.
It’s harrowing and
hilarious and, behind
the theatricality, more honest
than he ever hopes we’ll know.
Steve Sutherland
NME, 27 OCTOBER 1990, p36
THE MISSION
Grains Of Sand
(Mercury)
Much as I love Wayne Hussey
because he is perhaps the very
last great rock’n’roll romantic, it’s
only fair to advise the discerning
consumer that ‘Grains Of Sand’
is neither a fluent nor cohesive
Mission release.
The album is mid-priced, and
made up of outtakes from the
original ‘Carved In Sand’ sessions.
Several of its tracks have already
been released as B-sides.
‘Grains Of Sand’ really does
expose The Mission’s most hopeless
and hilarious moments that the
band have been quite careful to sift
from all previous album releases.
It is, however, worth a bluey
simply on the strength of Track Five,
Side One – written
in brass and ivory for
a music hall chorus
line, ‘Mr Pleasant’ is
the Mission’s most
magnificently ludicrous
moment ever.
Another priceless
track is ‘Heaven Sends
You’ in which we find
Wayne pontificating
over the female orgasm: “I’ll run
my tongue between your legs/I’ll
kiss you, kiss you, kiss you on your
sex/And I’ll take, take, take you in my
mouth/I’ll kiss you until heaven sends
you”. Phew! Erm, shuddering stuff,
readers, honestly!
The lows are Wayne’s crap
acoustic Lennonism ‘Love’ and the
dour, pompous ‘Sweet Smile Of A
Mystery’, featuring what appears to
be a London Philharmonic wheel-
through. Both tracks should never
have been allowed any form of
public access.
Mary Anne Hobbs
The Cult: Ian Astbury
rocks the gay Native
American Nazi ‘look’.
Again
 1990-1992

bonkers. The light and

NME, 21 September 1991, p32
THE CULT
Ceremony
(Beggars Banquet)
It’s comforting to know that here we
are, it’s 1991 and The Cult still aren’t
afraid to rock. There are no shifting
sands of ambiguity with these guys
– you know where you stand with
Duffy and Astbury, and it’s on very
solid ground. They’re very, very
good indeed at being a rock’n’roll
band (and hey – don’t forget, it’s just
a job). Unlike Guns N’Roses, they
don’t let it get out of control. The
Cult play it straight by the rules.
“Ceremony/Rock’n’roll music got
you good now people” just about
says it all. And that’s Track One, Side
One. Cue Astbury giving it plenty
of “yaayah” and “baybee”, Duffy
carving up the fretboard, and you
can rest assured that
you ain’t gonna get
lumbered with any
dodgy covers of old
Wings tunes here.
You get all the Red
Indian vibe of course
– but we can live with
that, eh, me braves?
Because this might
seem piss-easy, but
it’s a craft, this Cult thing. Astbury’s
impossible dreamer on the wild
plains where the eagle flies is
tethered to Planet Earth by Duffy’s
driving riffs, harnessing him to the
rock beast that earns them a living
before he floats into Navajo heaven.
Non-rock fans like The Cult
because their noise is what they
imagine rock should sound like
– bad motor-scooter guitar frenzy
tempered with nifty picking, full-
throated wails, alternating with
touches of melodic delicacy and
quasi-mystical lyrical tosh. Just
like in ‘Wild Hearted Son’, in fact.
The best rawk doesn’t experiment
or venture into self-indulgence. It
constantly reinvents itself, even
if it dances on the knife-edge of
pastiche. It’s a gut centred, visceral
thing. And Billy and Ian know that.
The endless bleak vistas of
the epic ‘White’ lend themselves
immediately to extended work-
outs, false endings, tempo changes
and all, Astbury (almost) rapping
his holistic message, “We have lost
touch with our spiritual nature/ ‘Cos
we are wrapped up in too much shit”.
PETER ANDERSON/TOM SHEEHAN
shade is provided by Ian’s
autobiographical ‘Heart Of
Soul’, and ‘Indian’ even has
a cello part, preparing the
way for the unexpectedly
gossamer territory of
‘Sweet Salvation’ (Ian’s
tribute to his latest flame)
and the restrained finale,
‘Wonderland’.
Despite the fact that
Astbury does sound
unnervingly like Freddie
Mercury in his more ridiculous
moments, ‘Ceremony’ delivers
what it promises – riffs, noise,
hollering, but also deftness,
delicacy, a haunting quality.
The important thing is that it is
not bombastic or portentous
– it has a sense of humour
without spilling over into
parody, and they are pleased
to be haunted by the
ghost of Led Zep.
The Cult are a
very, very good
rock band indeed.
They are also
very, very funny.
Cue Ian: “This hip
young dude stood
passionately/
Succumbing to the
he-dog sound of the mystifying
The Mish: keep
beat combo/That breaks down the masks on
your door” (‘Wonderland’). in future, if you
Hilarious yes, but this dog, he don’t mind
is on heat.
Betty Page which unite whole tribes of people is The Mish at an OAP’s tea dance,
into a happy mass of sweating attempting the goff cha-cha. It is
apathy. This time around, they’ve cute and very frightening.
NME, 13 June 1992, p31
released ‘Masque’, their alleged Which is different, but many small
“dance” album. The Mission’s idea things are different about ‘Masque’.
THE MISSION of a dance album is not like yours Everything may be infused with the
Masque or mine, largely because you can’t patent Hussey screaming passion
(Phonogram) dance to half of it at all and the about anything that comes into his
Ah, The Mission. The goth’s goths. other half consists of stomping goth head, but ‘Masque’ is imaginative
What in the name of God are The anthems with drums, which you in a Mish kind of way. And at least
Mission for? Like, in a world where can dance to, but not in the popular one song is cracking; the charming
the bands who are supposed to be techno sense of the word. Which is ‘Like A Child Again’, in which
good at pomp rock – step up to the fine, but strange. Wayne loses his fear of the dark and
mic, U2 – are shite at it, what hope ‘Masque’ opens with ‘Never gambols like a spring lamb through
is there for The Mish, who have Again’ and ‘Shades Of Green’, both fields of melody.
never been good at anything other thumping dance-rock things that So perhaps ‘Masque’ is the sound
than operating dry ice machines sound a little like an elephantine of The Mission lightening up and
and wearing hats? The EMF. It goes on to crash throwing open the curtains in the
middle ground below through horror Cure dusty ballrooms of their soul.
the Bono space station goth waltzes like ‘The In three albums’ time, The
of loud but mysterious Spider And The Fly’ Mission will be dressed as clowns,
toss and somewhere and classy Wayne-isms fighting a beaming war against
above Fields Of like ‘From One Jesus To the sore-encrusted leviathan of
The Nephilim is a Another’, which asks PompBono as U2 suck the living
financially profitable the question: “Jesus brains out of small children. For

No macho strutting here – these are
positivity fops in corduroy kecks.
‘Full Tilt’ kicks in Stones-style
just so we don’t forget why we’re
here, and proceeds to go metal
but artistically glum
place.
Still, The Mission
forge on, caring less than one jot
about the critics and making records
walked on the water/But
did he walk on the air?”
There’s a barmy crooning
song with a Kinks-style beat called
‘She Conjures Me Wings’, which
now, however, they are still The
Mission as we know and sort of love
them, only with a few new ideas and
a sequencer. Hurrah for that.
David Quantick

NME ORIGINALS 141

 The
Mansion Family NME, 18 April 1992, p24

Between thinking of buying small Cornish villages and uncharted Islands, The Cure have
recorded their ninth album in all its sticky-up-haired glory. Reformed goth Andrew Collins
is granted an audience with the world’s most lucrative pantomime

t
he embers of six months crackle in
the fireplace. A fine old chessboard
sits unattended. The tang of freshly
percolated coffee mingles with the
comforting funk of Irish wolfhound and oak.
The grandfather clock is stuck permanently at
12. The ghostly sound of piano keys being jabbed
filters through into the empty snooker room.
On the sideboard sits a bottle of Sandeman’s
port, a single daffodil, a discarded archery arrow
and a garish tube of Living Nightmare Glow-In-
The-Dark Make-Up. Someone upstairs is playing
‘Loveless’ by My Bloody Valentine.
We are in the heart of verdant Oxfordshire.
The clock might, if it was working, strike four.
So, who lives in a house like this?
It’s The Cure – or, as Roger Daltrey had it on
last year’s Brits, when he presented their Best
British Group award – “The Kyoo-aarhh!”
The Manor studio, at Shipton-on-Cherwell,
owned by Richard Branson (as hinted at by the
embarrassing hippy mural of Phil Collins, Mike
Oldfield, Feargal Sharkey and Peter Gabriel
halfway up the stairs) costs around £6,000 a
week to rent. But The Kyoo-aarrhh can weather
that. They are, after all, the most popular and
successful cult band in the world.
And this, for the time being, is their house.
There is a rumour going about the place that
a) Branson is thinking of selling up; and b) The
Cure are thinking of buying. This would be
good. Robert Smith and his quaintly dishevelled,
forever-adolescent thirtysomething pals should
live together in the same elegant country
mansion with tons of wolfhounds and chess and
grouse-shooting.
You wish.
The 1980s: now there was a funny decade for
our old pal pop music. The Smiths, Madness,
New Order, The Human League, Frankie Goes
To Hollywood, ABC, Public Enemy, The Stone
Roses, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Margaret
Thatcher, acid house. You were there. But
something else happened between the years
1980 and 1989, and it was somewhere between
a fashion movement and a creeping
mould on the underside of post-punk
Britain. It was gothic rock, or goth, “I’ve never actually liked goth
bands, ’cos the music’s shit”
so called because it investigated the
grandiose and the macabre, the dark
and the doomy.
From out of the
disenfranchised sneer of
punk it came, a more verbose,
decorative incarnation which
borrowed its greasepaint and
finery from glam rock, and
its morose indulgence from
European metal machine
music. David Bowie, Edgar
Allen Poe, Morticia Addams
and Frank-N-Furter went to
the carnival and someone
turned the lights out.
Your goth was an
apolitical animal, nocturnal,
PAUL COX/ DEREK RIDGERS
introspective, tribal, almost
“Hey, great hair!
hermaphrodite. The goth The job’s yours”:
was also about 19, world- Perry Bamonte
weary without having (second right) joins
Bob’s happy band
actually seen the world; teen angst gone mad.
But goth music was filling the Albert Hall by
1986, in the stark, skeletal form of The Sisters Of
Mercy. Many of the goth bands gave the genre a
bad name, though some of them extracted high
drama, cut-price kicks and even some humour
from the goth manifesto of unforgiving railroad
rhythms, guitar histrionics, Hammer imagery
and lost chords.
But it was The Cure, from Crawley in Sussex,
who took it out of the belfry and into the front
room. It was Robert Smith whose own particular
brand of back-combed foppishness found a place
in the glossy pop papers.
The Cure grew into a goth hit machine (19 to
date), an international phenomenon and, yep,
the most successful alternative band that ever
shuffled disconsolately about the earth. Their
only contender in the profit-margin stakes at
record company Polydor is James Last. And he
makes two albums a year.
To deftly write goth off as a peculiarly
’80s phenomenon is to deny the existence of
hundreds of black-clad, aromatic, asexual
gormtroopers who huddle in coffee shops and
refectories and branches of the Body Shop
up and down the land to this day. The goth is
(despite appearances) alive and unwell.
All About Eve are not a goth band. Nor are
The Sisters of Mercy. At least, that’s what they
say. Being a goth means, well, never having
to say you’re a goth. Goths think ‘lazy’ music
journalists invented the term. They did.
The question is, will The Cure admit to
being a goth band? Are they embarrassed that
they invented – or at the very least popularised,
legitimised, patented – goth?
Robert: “Do you think we did really? When
we were making ‘Pornography’ there wasn’t any
such a thing as goth, we were just miserable, not
like goth with the flour and the hats, all that.
I’ve never actually liked goth bands. I’ve always
despised The Sisters Of Mercy.”
Why?
“’Cos the music’s shit.”
“I always use gel, not hairspray. It’s called KMS
1990-1992
and it comes with hexagons on. I backcomb it a
lot too. I did use mousse for a while, but it used to
drip onto my nose when I was on stage.”
– Robert Smith, Just 17, August 1985
Face it, The Cure’s ludicrous look has been their
fortune. Robert Smith, in his over-generous
fluffy sweater, wrinkled black drainpipes and the
undone trainers of a much larger man, crowned
with that award-winning ha-ha-ha-have-you-
had-an-electric-shock hairdo, is, whether he
likes it or not, a modern-day icon.
On the day I meet up with The Cure at Chez
Dick, they look very much like The Cure. Smith
may have trimmed his head-topiary recently, and
the blind man’s lipstick is absent, but he is still a
satisfying caricature of himself.
Large, bird-like bassist Simon Gallup claims
that all five of them happened to wear black
because, “It’s the most practical colour, you don’t
have to wash it till you smell,” but this is clearly
a reflex cover-up (and a typical dose of laddish
hygiene bravado to boot).
If The Cure changed, thousands of sprayed
teenagers the world over would feel cheated
and betrayed. The Cure are loved and invested
in and stuck onto walls because – since their
commercial watershed in 1984 – they NEVER
CHANGE.
‘Wish’ – despite the band’s protestations
– is another Cure record. This is no put-down.
Another Cure record is a good thing. If ‘Wish’
were a film, it wouldn’t win any individual
Oscars, but would probably scoop one of those
Lifetime Achievement Awards. That’s the sort
of album it is. In short, masterful slowie ‘Trust’
on Side Two made me want to weep in an
underpass, and the single ‘High’ miraculously
cured my flu when they put it in the office.
‘Disintegration’, The Cure’s last LP in 1989,
sold in excess of three million copies worldwide.
So why make another record?
“Why did we make the last one?” asks Robert,
rhetorically.
Is there any thing else you can get? Any more
fame, any more satisfaction, any more cash?
“It’s not about continual gain.
We don’t think, ‘It’s about time The
Cure made another album, if we
make one more the bank balance
gets a bit bigger.’ I look forward to
our new records. There are very few
things that you genuinely look
forward to hearing.”
The Cure are still going
because they tend not to shed
their audience. You can always
spot an older Cure fan – they’ve
grown out of having the funny
sticky-up hair.
The band themselves pull it
off because they are The Cure.
It’s harder to have funny, sticky-up
hair when you’re 30 and living in
the real world.
Robert: “I haven’t got funny
sticky-up hair.”
It’s quite funny.
“There’s a lot weirder-looking
people – older than us – walking
around in Oxford. They shout


NME ORIGINALS 143
 Let’s Get Happy
NME, 18 April 1992, p26
THE CURE
Wish
(Fiction)
In some ways, The
Cure embody
everything
appalling about
rock music. They
make sulky, selfish
singles about how
great it is being a kitten and
then follow them with maudlin albums
about how everything is dark and the
crows are pecking at one’s gangrenous
eyes. But here is ‘Wish’ and once again
The Cure are forgiven, the bastards.
‘Wish’ makes you talk about how
Smith is a master of rock writing and
an eclectic pop talent. The 12 songs
here are, almost without exception,
bold displays of genius. Every kind of
Cure music is in here, done better than
ever. We get: cute songs about kittens!
Raving death and gloom rock anthems!
Noodling dance pop! New Order rip-
offs! Beatle rip-offs! Jovial optimism!
Major glumathons! And lots more.
We begin with the astonishing ‘Open’,
which has a guitar part that sounds like
the “Hello, hello” bit off ‘Teen Spirit’ and
rocks like six tons of iron, and we end
with, erm, ‘End’, which actually sounds
like Nirvana themselves attempting to
play ‘Are Friends Electric?’ backwards.
Along the way, Bob goes for jangle
pop with ‘Friday I’m In Love’, vomitously
sings “sticky as lips and licky as chips” on
‘High’ and even says “Fuck” on the nearly
twee ‘Wendytime’.
The charming ‘Doing The Unstuck’
is full of such jaunty aphorisms as “It’s
a perfect day for making out” and “It’s
never too late to get up and go” and Bob
even feels compelled to sing “LET’S GET
HAPPY!” occasionally. Conversely, the
slow and haunting ‘Trust’ is a dignified
plea for love wherein Smith solemnly
sings, “There is no one left in the world
who I can turn to/You are the only one”.
‘Wish’ is an album in the old-fashioned
sense of loads of songs that don’t sound
much like each other, but do sound like
they’ve all got some kind of sensibility
in common. It has an enormous amount
of quite justified faith in itself, and best
of all, where it has no tunes, it has a
monstrous amount of noise.
Once again we have to conclude that
there is no one like The Cure. And ‘Wish’
may even be their best album.
David Quantick
144 NME ORIGINALS


things out to you!”
Simon: “But they are social misfits.”
Robert: “On the whole, yes.”
The Cure look healthy. Why?
Robert: “You should’ve seen us in all our cycling
kit round September time, that would’ve blown all
the myths.”
Yep. The Cure have been mountain-biking
around Oxfordshire while at The Manor, a regular
six-mile circuit to their fave pub and back. How,
exactly, did they get back from the pub?
“Slowly.”
Ha ha.
The Cure are funny. Prone to lucrative
miserablism, sure, and we love them for that, but
as five people, they can be summed up by the
scraps of paper stuck to the studio wall. There are
snippets of Emily Dickinson, true, but these are
very much outnumbered by childish cartoons
of The Cure’s driver and odd-job man, Bruno,
drawn by the band and usually portraying him as a
balloon-like perv with a ten-foot knob.
That’s the duality of The Cure. A colleague
of mine who wouldn’t piss on The Cure’s music
during a water-shortage admits that we need them
because they are stars and artists (ie flamboyant,
visual, pretentious, enigmatic, all that good
and forgotten stuff that pop stars used to be
contractually obliged to bring along). Meanwhile,
the new breed of indie ‘star’ is utterly bereft of the
pizazz and danger and mystery which The Cure
old-fashionedly prescribe to.
“Ah, but we were like that when we first started,”
reasons Robert. “I can see why a lot of groups do it
– we actually did it ourselves, that non-image. By
the time of the ‘Kiss Me’ album, it’d reached the
other extreme,
we’d become a
pantomime act. “ By the time of ‘Kiss Me’ ,
But we don’t look
like this now and
then, and like
we were a pantomime act ”
something else when we’re not doing this. Unlike
you, I would go shopping with my hair up, and I
could have my hair like that at home.
“Anyway, we had some quite bright cycling
outfits! See and be seen!”
Was your hair up when you went cycling?
“That’s actually the reason why I cut it all off.
We used to come home from the pub on this tow
path, and there was a low hanging bit, and I came
off twice, because it went into my hair. So I cut it
off. I’ve cut it off three times in the last five years,
each time for a different reason. Cycling is the most
absurd so far.”
The Cure have a licence to print money. They could
stick out any old toss at this stage, put a squiggly
drawing on the front and call it ‘Spiders In My
Eyes’ and the cash would roll in. Surely there is a
fiscal reason for them being here…
Robert: “The only thing I’ve wanted to buy on
any grand scale in the last few years was an island
in the middle of the Channel which came up for
sale. There was a big concrete fortress on it,
built during the war, it was fucking excellent.
But it was four and a half million pounds or
something. It’s not on the maps or anything, ’cos
it was a secret.
“A village once went up for sale in Cornwall for
a pitiful amount of money, and we toyed with the
idea of buying that. That would take the unreality
to an extreme. We’d put road blocks up and
diversion signs.”
“I would love it if everyone was forced to listen to
at least one Cure record,” says Robert.
Which one?
“It depends whether it was
to upset them or not.”
One of each.
“‘Disintegration’, and ‘Friday I’m In Love’.”
The clock, were it working, would strike five.
My 60 minutes of The Cure are up. I pack The Cure
interview away into my little black army surplus
bag (a legacy, I dare say), and ask Robert why they
should go on the cover of New Gothic Express.
“Sometimes I think, ‘Why should we be on
the cover when
there’s other
groups who are
getting their first
chance, or their
only chance to be
on the cover?’ But then I think, ‘Why shouldn’t we
be on the cover? We make a fucking sight better
records than at least 40 of the groups who are on
the cover.”
Hurrah! The next journo in line is wearing a
suit, I inform them.
“That means we’ll all stand up when he leaves.
DEREK RIDGERS
Unlike you. Ha ha ha ha!”
Cheers.

NME, 13 January 1990, p15
THE MISSION
Butterfly On A Wheel
(Myth)
Puke universe! The “butterfly
on a wheel” reference is taken
from a ‘60s Times editorial which
asked whether it was worth using
the full force of law every time
a pop star was caught taking
drugs. Of course it is! Wipe out
the drug supply and you wipe out
the ‘music.’ The Mish, however,
demand more direct action. I
want you all to put on balaclavas
tonight, sneak into your local
record shop and smash with
hammers every copy of this record
you can find.
Steven Wells
NME, 1 September 1990, p16
COCTEAU TWINS
Iceblink Luck
(4AD)
Thankfully the Cocteaus have
discarded the “Noddy and
Tinkerbell indulge in sensual
massage” approach that so
exasperated semi-fans like me
who always wanted Liz Frazer to
kick vocal ass a little.
JC: “That’s quite good for them.”
BD: “The Cocteau Twins have
never given a fuck about what’s
happening around them. They just
get on and do what they do and
they seem to the getting better at
it. Attitude matters just as much as
the music in most cases.”
Barbara Ellen with Bill
Drummond & Jimmy Cauty (KLF)
MM, 22 September 1990, p35
THE CURE
Never Enough
(Fiction)
Profoundly baggacious, ‘Never
Enough’ trips and flops around
the room like an army of wazzy
rejects gone AWOL. Fuzztone
Roses guitar and lobotomised
Mondays bass, topped off with
Robert Smith’s overripe hiccups,
stutters and whoops. Arguments
about who’s ripping who off end
here,as do questions about the
extent to which Smith’s tongue
is penetrating his cheek. Because
‘Enough’ is enough. A hit.
Paul Lester
MM, 15 September 1990, p34
NICK CAVE &
THE BAD SEEDS
The Weeping Song
(Mute)
“This is a weeping song/A song
in which to weep”. These days,
Nick Cave songs are epic, stagey,
deliberately contrived – as if, after
all those years of filthy, shrieking
catharsis his battered spirit
needs protecting from the strain
of spontaneous effusions, like
a heart weakened by too much
smoking. It’s as if Nick Cave is no
longer up to being direct with us.
Hence the formalities, the archaic
restraint of ‘The Weeping Song’
Over a trolling, downcast
shanty backbeat, Cave and
Bargeld engage in a ‘There’s A
Hole In My Bucket’-type dialogue
in which all the world weeps for
our sad lot. Touching if you’re
willing to go along with the
courtly rituals that lead you to the
heart of the song. Unfortunately
the word that springs to mind
when considering listening to
new Nick Cave records is “should”
rather than “want”.
Nick Cave sounds like a man
who will never scream again.
David Stubbs
NME, 20 October 1990, p22
THE CURE
Close To Me
(Fiction)
From the heavy metal brain
surgery of ‘Never Enough’ we
flop back in time to ’85’s ‘Close To
Me’, a preview for Bob and co’s
‘Mixed Up’ album, with that Paul
Oakenfold doing the remixing
here. The panting, snuffling,
claustrophobic original remains
pretty much intact (although I
don’t remember the daffy, jazz
sax solo) and Oakenfold wodges
on a fairly standard shuffle dance
rhythm. Not one of the triumphs
of dance/rock interbreeding.
Roger Morton
1990-1992
MM, 13 October 1990, p40
SISTERS OF MERCY
More
(Merciful Release)
I don’t mean to be a killjoy. I do
realise that Andrew Eldritch is the
funniest cartoon character this
side of Bart Simpson and Bart’s
big brother Billy Idol. But I have a
horrible suspicion that there are
people over the age of 12 who
take this laughable nonsense
seriously, and that’s truly sad.
‘More’ is the usual dull, gruff,
absurdly pompous rumble
punctuated with plastic soul wails
about needing love – as if Eldritch
didn’t adore himself with more
than enough torrid passion to
make any other lover redundant.
Dave Jennings
NME, 23 May 1992, p17
THE CURE
Friday I’m In Love
(Fiction)
Another Cure single. Usual
Cure tune, always liked it. It is
remarkable only in that Robert
makes no reference to either cats
or Japanese babies, but Cure fans
will be reassured by the fact that
Robert goes “Dooby dooby doo”
at least four times and sings at
one point about spinning around
“like a sheep”. And he doesn’t take
drugs like the crappy Mancy Shite
Wankers and those other rubbish
bands. He also goes “Owy owy
ooooh!” That’s my favourite bit.
Steven Wells
NME ORIGINALS 145
 Let Sleeping Dogs Die?

Queens of noise:
Originals Editor Steve
Sutherland with Wayne
Hussey of The Mission at
the Metal Gurus’ video
shoot, London, 1990

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