As far as debut albums go, there are few more provocative than Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain’sPsychocandy.
Released in November 1985, the LP’s melding of primal, abrasive noise and pop melodies is, even today, a menacing and beautiful blend that either enthrals or ostracises.
To mark the album’s 30th anniversary, the Mary Chain, led by brothers Jim and William Reid, have embarked on a run of shows in which they perform Psychocandy in full. Since reforming in 2007, the Reids have been approached a number of times to do such a tour, but had previously declined all offers. As Jim Reid explains, the band’s decision to do it now was a matter of timing.
“I suppose it was coming up for a landmark anniversary and we kind of thought that if we didn’t do it now, it was really going to be too late to do it anytime in the future,” he says. “What we did was we decided to entertain the idea. The first thing we thought we should try out was to book some rehearsal time and see whether we could do it, whether it was going to work or not. Had that rehearsal gone badly, we would have just knocked it in the head. It just would’ve been an idea that we’d tried that didn’t work, but it worked out pretty well and we felt pretty good about it.”
The 12 months leading up to Psychocandy’s release in 1985 was a heady time for the Mary Chain. Debut single ‘Upside Down’ was released on Creation Records in November 1984 and quickly became one of the best-selling indie singles of the decade. They were soon hailed by sections of the UK press as “the new Sex Pistols” thanks to their antagonistic early shows where sets would last only 20-odd minutes and the audience would be blasted with relentless noise and verbal chiding. As a result of the goading, some shows ended in riots, most famously at the North London Polytechnic and Camden’s Electric Ballroom (footage of both are online).
The mayhem of the time was another reason the brothers felt it a good idea to revisit the music made during this era. “It kind of occurred to us that quite a lot of songs from Psychocandy never actually got played live at the time, or ever at all. There was a big chunk of that album that we never performed onstage at any point, and that just seemed a shame to let that be the way that it goes down,” Reid says. “We’re playing songs that, if I’m honest, I can’t even remember how they came about. It’s just weird. You’re standing there and you’re playing this song and you’re thinking, ‘This could be somebody else’s.’ You just don’t remember this song coming into the world.”
He adds: “The Psychocandy period of the band was a very chaotic time in our lives both onstage and off. If we’d have tried to recreate a 1985 Mary Chain show, it’d be a disaster. So what we decided was, ‘Let’s make it just about a celebration of the album.’ It’s all about the album, really. It’s not about recreating riots that happened in London in 1985. It’s about, ‘Hey, 30 years later, people still seem to think that this is an important record. It seems to have had a life of its own, so let’s just make it a celebration of that album.’ It seems to have worked out.”
As is often the case with album shows, the strangeness of returning as over-50s to something made by your younger, more arrogant and angrier selves was something the Mary Chain took into consideration when preparing for the Psychocandy shows. “We just thought it’d be too weird,” says Reid. “It’s again why we booked the rehearsal time; to see how it was going to work out.
“I think a lot of it was to do with the attitude that we approached it [with]. You just go out there and crank it up. You turn up the volume and just make as much racket as you can. It’s not rocket science, but at the same time it’s not that easy either. Going back to that rehearsal, we weren’t sure if we could sonically reproduce that album now. We just had to get it right, equipment-wise, in order to make it as loud as possible.”
Since its release, Psychocandy has become a benchmark record for multiple generations of noise merchants, from shoegazers to industrial groups. There were times for the Mary Chain that it felt like the album was casting a long shadow over everything else they were doing. However, they’re now far more comfortable with its place in their history and the effect it’s had on others.
“Certainly, when the band was around in the ’90s, we kind of wished people would shut the fuck up about Psychocandy when we wanted to talk about other things that we were doing. But Christ, there’s not that many people who can make a record and 30 years later people still talk about it, never mind wanting to hear you play it live. It’s something I can’t feel bad about, and also, we do get enough interest in other records we’ve made for it not to be a problem. I love Psychocandy and I love the fact that people still care about it.
“It’s always nice to be remembered in any way,” Reid adds. “It’s all about people picking up other bits of other people’s ideas and running with it. We’ve done that. That’s, in essence, what rock’n’roll is. If it becomes pastiche, then you’ve got a problem, but it’s great that there are bands around now that have learned a lesson from the Mary Chain. It can only be flattering, really, I suppose.”
While the Mary Chain have been back together for almost a decade, they’re yet to release a new album, in spite of talk of one for almost as long. One track, ‘All Things Must Pass’, was released not long after they played their first reunion shows. Though reluctant to give away much detail, Reid says the group’s first full-length release since 1998’s Munki is well on its way.
“We’re actually in the middle of recording it. It’s going pretty well. We’ve recorded most of the tracks, we just need to mix it now,” he says. “It’s more or less me and William. We’ve had some of the band in playing bits and bobs on it. We’re recording with Youth [Martin Glover], and he’s played bass on most of the tracks.”
In the meantime, the Mary Chain are set to make their first visit to Australia since 2008 with shows in Sydney and Melbourne. As ever, they’ll be doing things in their own fashion.
“We do two sets. We actually do the non-Psychocandy set first. There’s no encore. Basically, we’re being rather presumptuous. We’re assuming the audience would want an encore, and rather than do it after the Psychocandy set, we decided to do it first. We just figured once you do Psychocandy, that’s kind of it.”
Divine Times at Spectrum Now 2016featuresThe Jesus and Mary Chain at The Domain onSaturday March 5, along with Seekae, Alvvays, U.S. Girls and Jonathan Boulet.
