Anyways, here's three TSOM interviews I haven't found anywhere on the web, but have had for quite some time.
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THE SISTERHOOD OF TERROR
"From Deotroit, 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.
MM, 27 February 1982, p11
Unleashed 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 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 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 like a theme for the band really," Spiggy
reports, "inasmuch as I wake up a lot of mornings, and I'm not sure
if it's the wall or the ceiling, 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 says."
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 we're better than
The Birthday Party. That makes us pretty damn Good."
Adam Sweeting
THE DEVIL'S FLOORSHOW
Adam Sweeting unravels the stream of consciousness
gushing forth from The Sisters of Mercy.
MM, 15 January 1983, p20
"Our 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 from room. I
vetoed the full all-nighter around 3.30am. Andy probably spend 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. Chinese
was the best. Latin helped to no end - I don't know whether it helped
my brain any, but as a linguist it was certainly vital. And I can do
the 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 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 hom 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 sounchecks, 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
to 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 slapstick."
Because you make them that way or because of the places you 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 realize 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 it 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 fixated 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 that
suicide is necessarily a 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 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.
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 f**k 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."
Adam Sweeting
CARLESS WHISPERS
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.
MM, 16 March 1985, p30
The 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 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."
I tell this Mr Eldritch that I think he's a damn good actor,
creating for himself the classic role of romantic victim. He rather
likes this notion too.
"I've spent so long doing this that I can't distance the two. And
it's more interesting than what I was before. I was so shot when I
wrote the lyrics on the album that there's no distancing of persons
at all. It's not a problem to live up to it, it's just a problem to
live, period. The way I seem to end up living these days, I'm very
aware of how fast the blood's going round and how high the sugar
level is because I've been forced to be aware of it."
I now decide it's time for Mr Eldritch and I stopped beating around
the bush and started talking serious drugs so I inform him that, in
my humble opinion, the second side of 'First And Last And Always' is
about being wasted, finding it hard to cope and relishing every
agonised second.
He smirks: "It would be dishonest to write anything more homely. I
don't think the band's particular pleasures are destructive. It's
horses for courses. At out age, you generally know what's good for
you and what's isn't and, most of the time you stick to what's good
for you. None of the songs on the album are about being a victime of
one's own pleasures except in the case of getting emotionally
involved with people who aren't very good for you."
So what sort of irresponsible heroi is this man in black who stalks
the streets of Leeds 4 in a battered cowboy hat?
"The sort of irresponsible hero who makes it very clear that
certain things are irresponsible. There's no actualy propagation of
irresponsibility on the records and that's why you need detachment,
irony with a capital I. You have to be clinical about certain aspects
of portraying any persona, even if it's your genuine self.
"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 wind-up and I, too, have
had my moments so we joust a bit and I ask him what he'd say to
somebody who considered his antics pathetic because some people
really are ill while his maladies are generally self-induced?
"I'd probably tell them to f**k off." He rasps and I take it to be
laughter. "Telling people to f**k off, that sense of glorious
vindication, is a primary, motivating factor, I think."
Rock'n'Roll outlaws, eh?
"Aren't we just! No! We have appetites! We're human! We have needs!
It's about time we were pandered to."
Such as?
"Such as the 12 fresh lemons I have to have every night on the next
tour."
This is exactly the stuff of which legends are made and, of course,
Me Eldritch forever keeps an eye on legend. But I wonder, can someone
so crpytic with such an advanced, nay, chronic, sense of irony ever
attain that status?
"No, because I always let people know just that bit too much. It
disturbs them."
Mr Eldritch's favourite word is "oblique" and yet his followers
tend to be the new Goths, the ersatz Sioouzsies. Strange. Mr
Eldritch's fantasy is much more subversive. He likes to flirt with
cliches. He likes twisting his sources. Goddamn, he even acknowledges
his sources! The Sisters once recorded 'Gimme Shelter'.
"Everybody's doing exactly the same to a greater or lesser degree.
We're just rather shameless about it. People don't like to be
reminded of it. They'd much rather we went out there like messiahs
from another planet who'd never heard of Chuck Berry or..." he
whispers this bit - "...Led Zeppelin."
If it's only rock'n'roll, is this Mr Eldritch really happy being a
Sister?
"Smug might be a better word. We're in a good position. We can step
in and out of the mainstream and the band decide what's required, not
someone else."
Is there anyone else, I ask, who Mr Eldritch reckons is doing
anything worthwhile?
He pauses that pause:
"Roy Kinnear, always."
My, he is a smug bastard, isn't he?
"Well, yeah. Why not?"
TEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT MR ELDRITCH
1. His favourite film is The Blues Brothers
2. He supports Manchester United
3. He is currently courting Josie from Vicious Pink
4. He owns a spiffing collection of Likely Lads videos
5. He idolises Jack Thackeray
6. He's currently launching a campaign to get Reg Varney as the next
Dr Who and, failing that, Eleanor Bron
7. He studied French and German at St Johns, Oxford and then Chinese
at Leeds University
8. His black coat/cloak was given to him by The Gun Club
9. He owns the 12-inch of 'Careless Whisper' although he doesn't own
a record player. "It's important to have the artefact if the
record's that good."
10. There's a picture of Jimmy White above his fireplace
Steve Sutherland
