Heartland

"I had moved to Leeds to learn Chinese and I was living above the chemist with Claire and Spiggy the cat. One day I dared to set up the drum kit which someone had stored in the cellar.
I still can't play the drums but at least I was the only drummer in town who could be relied upon to avoid anything complicated.

Gary Marx and I knew each other from the F Club. He was a big fan of The
Fall, I was a big fan of Pere Ubu, and we both loved The Stooges.
Gary had no money and no equipment, but wanted to hear himself on the
radio. We pressed a few thousand copies, and sold a few. Even at the time it was hard to get hold of - and even harder to listen to. That should have been the end of it, but ...

We hooked up with Craig Adams, probably because he too lived over the
chemists. He was a big fan of Hawkwind and Motorhead, and he had this
bass sound that suddenly defined The Sisters - along with the drum machine that we brought because we all loved Suicide.
Everybody loved Suicide. The drum machine became Doktor Avalanche. Gary became a guitar player and I became the singer almost by default.

I think we spent the next few years in the back of a van. When it wasn't
parked above the chemist we were making the loudest noise possible in some of England's most disgusting clubs. we still had no money and no equipment - almost everything went on making the next gig louder than the last.

I like to think that it was the songs that made this band. I know it wasn't!
We used a lot of smoke, very few lights, stepped right back and just made a space where you could lose yourself (but more probably find yourself) in a tide of colour and noise.

It sounds simple, but no-one that wanted to be a rock n roll star could have done it. Apart from anything else, it took a long time and burned more than a few people out.

The records were never supposed to reflect that experience - it's a different medium and one we're still learning. Maybe some of it comes through.

Anyway, in those first 4 years, when we had the money (and often when we didn't) we would drop in on Kenny Giles in Bridlington. He had an eight track and he was the only person who would help us make records the way we wanted. Thanks ken.

They may not sound like anybody else's, they may not even sound like
records - but we loved them !
For what it's worth.

mh wrote:It amuses me somewhat that the band didn't actually use smoke during that era.

mh wrote:It amuses me somewhat that the band didn't actually use smoke during that era.

Andrew Eldritch wrote:Anyway, in those first 4 years...

mh wrote:It amuses me somewhat that the band didn't actually use smoke during that era.

copper wrote:INT: What's the presentation like live with the Sisters of Mercy when they're playing at the concert.

AE: We got into smoke recently. They gave us smoke last time we played in New York and we really got off on it. So we use a lot of smoke these days.

And we had a lighting engineer on the last tour who really knew how to light the stage with smoke and we had a great time wandering around in this fog. It was very effective, it was very very stupid, and very silly, but at the same time it really affected you like smoke is supposed to affect you in that sort of bozo gut-wrenching heavy metal way.

- July 1984

Cross-referencing to the Sisters gigography dates the NYC show at 13 April, 1984, at the Danceteria.

So that could be the first show with the smoke.

copper wrote:

mh wrote:It amuses me somewhat that the band didn't actually use smoke during that era.

I figured I had a date on this. And, indeedy.

copper wrote:INT: What's the presentation like live with the Sisters of Mercy when they're playing at the concert.

AE: We got into smoke recently. They gave us smoke last time we played in New York and we really got off on it. So we use a lot of smoke these days.

And we had a lighting engineer on the last tour who really knew how to light the stage with smoke and we had a great time wandering around in this fog. It was very effective, it was very very stupid, and very silly, but at the same time it really affected you like smoke is supposed to affect you in that sort of bozo gut-wrenching heavy metal way.

- July 1984

Cross-referencing to the Sisters gigography dates the NYC show at 13 April, 1984, at the Danceteria.

So that could be the first show with the smoke.

Johnny Rev 7.0 wrote:

mh wrote:It amuses me somewhat that the band didn't actually use smoke during that era.

Umm...

Andrew Eldritch wrote:Anyway, in those first 4 years...

So he's generalising over 1981 to 1985.

czuczu wrote:Looked like a genuine post to me, didn't even mention kitchens!