Nineteen Ninety Five And Nowhere
The story goes something like this :
In early 1995 I was out in Leeds for the night and bumped into a friend of a friend who was working for the Sisters. We got chatting over one or two drinks and during the conversation I expressed my frustration at Eldritch's inactivity - a sentiment which clearly struck a chord with said employee.
I didn't think any more of it until a couple of days later when I got a call from Andrew - I hadn't spoken to him for at least nine years prior to the call. He told me how the word had got back to him that I was keen to work with him again and we discussed on what terms this might happen. He seemed to think I was interested in playing live which I wasn't. I didn't wish to go in the studio with him either, I simply wanted to write some new songs with him so it wasn't an eternity before his next album came out.
I didn't know any of this -- thanks. It's all very interesting.
It puts a different spin on the Sisters history for me. I thought that after the comparative failure of VT to conquer America, an attempt not helped by the abortive PE tour and the well-documented rubbishness of the record company, that Von pursued other interests and kept the band on something of a backburner.
This is a glimpse of another version, where he's casting around for inspiration, writing painfully slowly, soliciting material from former band members and it seems more like the actions of a desperate man who's lost his muse. Not quite the invincible Von of legend (which was mostly, it has to be said, his own legend).
I'm sure he'd have a different version of the story to Marx's, but the very fact that such conversation took place recasts Eldritch in my mind from the heroic figure striding across his own musical landscape with never a backward glance, to someone far less assured.
Hm.
LR
And something tells me that when nothing is left on this planet except nuclear waste
and cockroaches - there'll still be Lemmy -- AE