Some 40 years ago, Alan McGee, co-founder of the influential British record label Creation Records, which discovered Oasis and other major British rock groups, made a bold statement: The Jesus and Mary Chain were the best thing since the Sex Pistols. The music press soon echoed the comparison due to Mary Chain's pop nihilism, avant-garde style, and chaotic live performances, some of which lasted only 15 minutes.
Founded by Scottish brothers Jim and William Reid, the Jesus and Mary Chain released a bulletproof debut single in “Upside Down” (1984) and proceeded to hone an individual sound in which Shangri-Las, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and the Stooges converged harmoniously.
Despite all the obstacles of classic rock 'n' roll (including drug and alcohol abuse, savage infighting, band changes, short-sighted industry demands, and the death knell that is the passage of time) , the band far outlived the Pistols and is arguably more influential.
Mary Chain's albums “Psychocandy,” “Darklands,” and “Automatic” became the sine qua non of the 1980s alternative rock movement and carried the band well into the 1990s. In the new millennium, While on hiatus, the group experienced an unexpected revival after director Sofia Coppolla used Mary Chain's “Just Like Honey” in the final scene of her second feature film, “Lost in Translation.”
On March 22, the band released their eighth studio album, “Glasgow Eyes.” Written and recorded in Mary Chain's signature style (just the Reids alone with their instruments and vision), the album follows the disaffected pop template beloved by fans, although there are far more synths than screeching guitars. It also finds Mary Chain on an independent label and making her own decisions, decades removed from the McGee-induced hype.
“We immediately wanted to shut him up about that because it's hard to live up to,” Jim Reid recalled of the comment. “We could see it was a dangerous comparison and we wish he hadn't said it.”
Ahead of his performance at the Cruel World festival in Pasadena this weekend, the singer, songwriter and guitarist spoke about the Reid sibling rivalry, reunification and his hatred for streaming, music documentaries and the term shoegaze, from his home in Devon, in the south-west. from England.
The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
You're about to release the Jesus and Mary Chain's eighth studio album. I imagine you and William have an almost telepathic understanding at this point.
We've always had it. It's pretty well documented that our relationship broke down at one point, but it was based on that complete understanding of how to make a Mary Chain record. There was no one else who knew. She knew it. He knew it. And that was it. That's what made it work.
Was there a time when sibling rivalry hurt the record-making process?
At the end of the 90s, when we were no longer getting along, curiously that did not interfere with the making of the “Munki” album. I think it's as good as any record we've ever made. But it was starting to get difficult to do anything. We couldn't stand to see each other.
Is it true that you broke up in Los Angeles, at a 1998 show at House of Blues?
We had already broken up before that. We played in San Diego and had a massive fight in the van on the way back to Los Angeles. He went crazy. We were yelling at each other. There were knocks and William said, “That's it. “Tomorrow I’m playing in Los Angeles and then I’m getting out of Dodge.”
I was pretty bad on drink and drugs at the time, so I spent the next 24 hours getting completely wasted. When we went on stage at the House of Blues, I just didn't know where I was. I looked and saw William, I walked up and started yelling at him. He had a strange look on his face, so I turned around and realized there were all these people looking at me. I thought, “Oh my God. This is a concert. “I’m on stage.” They dragged us off the stage and gave the money back to the audience. To this day, I am eternally grateful that it was in the days before smartphones and YouTube because it was a public humiliation, but at least it was only in front of a few hundred people.
Were alcohol and drugs the problem or did they exacerbate existing problems?
I've thought about it many times over the years and all I can say is that alcohol and drugs didn't help. Was it the only reason? Probably not. To be honest, I think we started to drift away from each other.
You reformed in 2007. How can you leave those tumultuous days behind?
We hit the wall in 1998, so now we know when it's coming. Also, I barely drink and I don't take drugs. He is a social drinker and does not take drugs either. So that is no longer an obstacle. We kind of know the warning signs. We both learned from having those heated discussions. There is a line in the sand and we don't cross it.
You've been around long enough to see a major shift in the music industry. What do you think about streaming, YouTube and smartphones at concerts?
It's annoying when you play a concert and all you see are 100 phones pointing at you, but YouTube is also the reason there are a lot of younger people coming to see Mary Chain. A younger band can name Mary Chain and, with a couple of clicks, other young people can find a lot of our stuff on YouTube and decide for themselves if it's good or not. That's been good for us. Sea of phones, not so much.
Has the Jesus and Mary Chain benefited from the so-called shoegaze resurgence fueled by Generation Z and TikTok?
Maybe. I really do not know. To be honest with you, I don't know what shoegaze is. I know what it's supposed to mean, but it was something some clown from the NME [the English magazine the New Musical Express] fixed up. There was no scene called shoegazing.
What is that supposed to mean?
The bands that were a little introverted and a little bit showbiz. I identify with that. And the bands that are supposedly shoegaze, I like them. I used to write my lyrics on my shoes so I could look down and see them. Maybe I made it up?
Maybe you did.
Hmm. Maybe.
And the transmission?
That's just a disaster, as far as I'm concerned. Imagine she went to work for a week and then at the end of the week the boss told her she wouldn't get paid. How would you feel? We put everything into making an album. It takes months, and we put our heart and soul into it, and in the end we practically give it away for nothing.
What is the solution?
I think something has to give, but I don't know what it is. It can't go on like this. You can't run a band from nothing. You have guys to pay. If you don't pay a band a decent wage, they won't be doing it much longer.
You're also publishing an autobiography this year, right?
A journalist called Ben Thompson spoke to me and William separately. He asked us the same questions so you understand William's and my point of view. Sometimes they are the same and other times tremendously different. It's warts and all. If you like Mary Chain, you'll probably find this fun.
And is there also a documentary coming?
To be honest, it's very early stages. It hasn't been shot much. A guy, Ben Unwin, who did some of the Mary Chain videos in the '90s, approached us interested in doing a documentary and we immediately said, “No.”
Because?
Many people have asked us to do that. When you stay on Amazon or Netflix and watch all these second-rate documentaries about anyone you've ever heard of, I hate it. I think they are all horrible. And they all make you want to No listen to that band's music.
So no documentary?
Well, we asked him to make an imaginary trailer for an imaginary documentary that had already been made. That was our audition. And he did. He made a trailer and we thought, “Oh, that's pretty good. Let's make that movie.”
What do you think of Todd Haynes' documentary about the Velvet Underground? I know you're a big fan of that band.
The thing is, it was too serious. The Velvet Underground was one of the best bands in the world. Even though they were a very serious band, I think there was a lot of humor in the Velvets, and that's not reflected in that movie.
How did you discover them?
In the early 1970s, a copy of “Transformer” arrived at our house. I think William bought it. But Velvet Underground records were really hard to find in Glasgow. When they started to be reissued, we bought the banana album. [“The Velvet Underground & Nico”] and I just played it from start to finish. We thought, “This is how music should be. This is what it can be.” From that moment on, we thought, “We want to be this good and even if we can't, we're going to try.”
Mary Chain has been around for about four decades. What is the most important lesson you have learned along the way?
We are like a lab rat that keeps grabbing the piece of cheese that is attached to an electrical wire. We are not very good at learning from our mistakes. There are a lot of things I wish I could do again and do well. We signed with Warner Bros. in 1985 and I wish we hadn't. But you can't undo these things.
Was there a time in your career when you felt like things had become too commercial or that you had strayed too far from your original vision?
Not really, because that was always our struggle: that we were never commercial enough for the people we worked with. I remember taking “Psychocandy” to Warner's, and they heard it and started laughing. It was like that with every album we made. It was always a struggle to make and release an album.
So are you happy with your current position in life, on a smaller label and doing your own thing?
It makes a lot more sense to us now and it's a lot more our style. We are alone. That's how I would have liked it to have been in the past. In the '80s and '90s, there always seemed to be someone behind us with a cattle prod telling us what to do. So now we make a record whenever we feel like it. We tour when we feel like it. If there's something that doesn't make us feel good, we just say, “No way.”
