Heartland

I was thirteen and my still very best friend from the UK, her friend's sister was Goth asfuck and thanks to those friends heard TSOM along with all that came from the UK at that time, shipped and posted to our shores! A few years later because of demand all the cd's available were out there to find....TSOM came in a wave with so many of the 80's rock, punk, goth, metal and all that alternative movement, hit us too! Some bands were from the USA but they were amazing too!

We were just also all labelled from the dark side or more Satanic side as we would all always wear black! Oh how we had the last laugh as it's all flooding over us again....

Life ain't it grand!

I remember being intrigued by the Sisters long before I actually heard them. It was around June or July 1984 and I was an avid reader of fortnightly pop bible Smash Hits, although I was starting to dip my toes into "weird" stuff like the Cure and Siouxsie - i.e. the sort of "weird" stuff that still got in the charts and on TOTP and covered in Smash Hits. One particular issue's letters page that summer was full of irate letters from Welsh readers, most beginning with variations on the "Dear Andrew Eldritch, who the hell do you think you are?" theme. Well, who the hell did anyone think he was? I'd never heard of him but, even at the innocent age of 13, I must have found something attractive about someone who could p!ss off so many people, and so a detailed search through recent back issues led me to a one page interview with Mr Eldritch wherein he pithily dismissed the idea of ever playing in Wales with the line "I don't think sheep are very interested in rock music". The accompanying pic was great - Andrew in black hat. And shades, Wayne with big, backcombed hair. In shades. They looked like they fitted my "weird" requirements down to a tee. The only snag was being able to hear what they actually sounded like, what with me living in the wilds of nowhere. I only had Woolies to buy records at and their "weird" selection was rigidly restricted to the stuff that got in the charts and on TOTP. Simply being covered in Smash Hits sadly wasn't enough. So that was that.

A couple of years later, I'm still in the wilds of nowhere but have graduated (?) to occasional reads of Melody Maker and the NME (until the newsagent comes out with his "this isn't a library" line and chucks me out) and, with like-minded friends, am able to look further afield for our "weird" music with regular trips to Newcastle, where they have an HMV and a bit more of a selection than Woolies. One of these friends plays me his newly-purchased First And Last And Always. Ooh, The Sisters of Mercy! I remember wanting to like them! Thank God after all this time waiting the music isn't rubbish! In fact, it's far from rubbish.... It's fantastic. Marian, especially. My New Favourite Band, I think. "They split up last year," the friend tells me. Bugger.

Ah, Smash Hits. They reviewed Gift by saying that "Andrew (for they thought it was he) still sings like a goblin being sick into a cauldron."

stufarq wrote:Ah, Smash Hits. They reviewed Gift by saying that "Andrew (for they thought it was he) still sings like a goblin being sick into a cauldron."

Ha! That's a great line - although it sounds rather more like a description of Carl McCoy's vocal style!

I was introduced to the Sisters of Mercy while at my Community College. My lab partner and I would hang out in his car between classes and he had Floodland on tape. I borrowed it and have been lucky enough to see them in concert and have almost all of their material. I was heavy into Depeche Mode and also into the Cure. I'm still digging the SOM 20 years later.

Memory fades.... but

1987: I kind of liked This Corrosion, and because of that my super-goth friend got me to go see Ghost Dance for their Xmas gig at the Marquee. I liked Ghost Dance, so my friend said "listen to this" and lent me Wake. I think it was the first time I heard the the celtic intro of FALAA, I was hooked.

oh, and I also miss the goth girls. And the lycra. My god, those days were good.

What got you into the Sisters then?


Obviously their prolific output over the years!

was into bauhaus initially, which led naturally on to the Sisters (and specimen, sex gang children etc...) with my weekly consumption of Sounds (RIP).

They played bournemouth academy the night before my english lit mock O level and I was forbidden from going But checking the date I was just 14 though.

You still in Bournemouth?

kinda - live about 12 miles east - been working in bmth for the last 20 years tho.

First saw the sisters in 1984 in pallieterhal Lier. Been a fan sinds then. always a pleasure to see "younger" people get into it! The 18 year daughter of my sisters came along with my in the AB in 2006 and is a commited fan!
Thanks for this site !!!

She should join Heartland!

robertzombie wrote:She should join Heartland!

"el Condor pasa"

mate at college gave me a cassette with 'heartland' on it in '85 I guess a few months after the split and it kinda grooved onwards from there, well, until the nephs. had heard some sisters stuff in 1984 like 'floorshow' but I was more into electronic music and (mainly) the banshees from a bit before then in '83. i'm 40 now :-/

Attitude = lots of it

Age 15 - a bad case of unrequited love and the fortunate auspices of an older brother's record collection.
Back then ('87) seemed cool as fuck to me; intelligent, educated, uncompromising, a leather clad rock god (stop me if this is getting too homoerotic). The music rocked and the words were to die for.

Recently, one has learned the truth of the expression "love and hate are two sides of the same coin".

The records IMHO remain untouchable.

I was a metal fan.Had seen the name for years but never heard them.One of my fave bands(Stillborn) early songs said to be a mix between SOM and Black Sabbath..so I thought I gotta check them out..but never did...And so after a few ears, in the summer of `90..Was laying listening to the radio and I heard this great piece of music.."More" by the SOM it turned out to be..Rushed to the record store..they didn`t have it in yet..went to a used record store and bought "Alice and the reptile house ep ..was hooked from then on...

I was caught with an Airedale and hard-on, the cops told me to listen to The Sisters. I did.

Policing was different "back in the day".

Promo copy of This Corrosion laying around in the station's basement. Later on a couple of g*th girls reminded me of them at a bar. Started listening again with Temple Of Love 1992. Then went back and bought everything else in order of release, starting with SGWBM.

Hearing "Alice" and the like at parties started it but seeing the band on "Whistle Test" was the one.

I'd been a mid teen Metal head at that point but had developed severe leanings towards The Cult and EATB and was always looking for something different. That night the Sisters were everything.

Last performance with (for me) the definative line up, the Bunnymen were past their best and The Cult soon turned into pastiches of all the bands I'd got bored of. "Too Late Too Late" as the man sang as I sat around waiting for someone to invent The m*****n...

a camping trip with an older cousin. the dude had such wicked tapes with him and especially Temple of Love blew me away. I was hooked from then on!

sistersvisions wrote:One thursday evening, was watching OGWT .I was only watching it for the early ultravox song. Then the sisters came on, & bang i was hooked. I'd never heard of them up untill then. Sad really.
And the rest they say is lost in an old gezzers head.

It was a Tuesday

quite simply it was "I hear you calling Marian" = the dawn of realization. Oh and This Corrosion - always a sucker for a good defined set of cheekbones...and the leather, wet-look-hot-mess kinda thing. No surprise then that I thought Keanu Reeves in The Matrix looked pretty good!

Geez, I can't remember. I was a huge The Cure fan, that's for sure, and all the rest (Siouxsie, the Sisters, Fields of the Nephilim, DCD) came later. I think I heard the Sisters in the Cure fanclub, and started investigating myself. There were some amazing records stores in Budapest back in the days (talking about early 90s), and as I couldn't afford the originals, they were willing to copy the records on tape. Then came a boyfriend, who had a huge influence on my musical taste (couldn't get me into the Mish though... ). Aww, those were the days.