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Confessional

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Article from One Two Testing, July 1985

how they get that fantastic noise


Darkness. We can just see William and Douglas from The Jesus & Mary Chain seated in the box. Jon Lewin moves in the shadows, all ears. Paul Spencer lights a candle. Now, when did you first feel the noise?

THE SCAM


Is that these boys are really bad. They're very loud, dirty and noisy. They steal things, they break things, they behave like real brats. And they tell stories, one of which is that they're the most exciting new group to have appeared in years.

THE MANAGER


The manager is Alan McGhee, a skinny, red-haired Scot who also runs Creation Records. Alan is the man who makes up The Scam and tells/sells it to the press. Some of it's true, though; the question is which bit?

THE HISTORY


For this information, we turn to guitarist William Reid, sitting with bass player Douglas Hart at Rough Trade's conference table. The name "William Reid" has already been etched into the polished mahogany at an earlier interview.

"We got together just over a year ago as a group, but we really date everything from our first gig last June." William, his brother Jim (who sings), Douglas, and drummer Bobby Gillespie come from East Kilbride, and have soft spoken Scottish voices.

THE DEBUT


It transpires that the Mary Chain's first live appearance was in London.

"It was at a tiny little room — The Living Room, above The Roebuck in Tottenham Court Road. We'd sent Alan McGhee an uninspired little demo, but he liked the songs and offered us the gig and he offered to put us on a compilation LP on Creation.

"So we went down for our first gig, and we did our soundcheck... we'd don' one song, 'In A Hole', I think, and Alan came over and asked us to do a single and an LP! We thought he was mad! And we got so drunk before we went on — we were quite nervous because we thought London was a big deal — megastardom. So we all got pissed out of our head, went on stage and turned everything up full. We were using Alan's PA, and he was screaming at us, 'No, don't, you'll blow it up.' I'd borrowed someone's Fender Twin Reverb, and I was sort of a bit nervous, and I thought, we may just as well make a noise, so I turned it up to ten..." "Of the 12 or 15 people there," Doublas interjects giggling, "seven were sick!"

William continues: "I thought we were very staid that night. Some people liked it though."

THE MYSTERY


The key to The Jesus & Mary Chain is their use of feedback — the tension between that angry uncontrolled noise and the sweet purity of their songs is what makes them exciting. There are tunes of classic pop simplicity lurking in there, but they struggle for primacy with the layers of feedback howl. But how did the Mary Chain discover this?

"I was listening to some old demos recently, and there's hardly any feedback on them, and the guitars sound really straight. Our recorded sound's come from a live sound; the way we got on to our first feedback was through practicing in this tiny room with amps and a wee PA amp all in a circle — everything made a giant mesh of noise "It was brilliant," Douglas smiled.

"...and we used to record on this little tiny tape recorder, and they'd sound great. We'd done a conventional demo tape thing on a horrible old 8-track and it sounded really uninspired, lifeless. After hearing what we sounded like in a little room with all this wailing feedback, we decided that was for us.

"We didn't 'discover' that sound — it happens to all groups. The sort of squealing feedback probably irritates most of them, but we thought it made the songs sound more exciting. We've always thought we had good songs; the problem is to make them sound exciting."

THE SOFTWARE


"Melody's very important. My brother Jim and I write together — there's no set pattern of who produces the words or tune, or the chords. We just see what happens. We use classic chords like A and D and E. There's been thousands and millions of songs written around those, and I think there's thousands more to go.

"As for rehearsals, we never rehearse. The main reason we don't is that we're lazy bastards." William sounds only slightly guilty. "On the second Peel session 'Just Like Honey', for instance was only a half-written song. On the Saturday night Jim and I sat up till 3am trying to finish it, but we were just too tired. So we went to the session on Sunday and recorded it straight off.

"Douglas and Bobby had never heard it before, and I was nodding my head telling him where to put his fingers... quite strange. We weren't all that happy with the way it turned out, though."

THE HARDWARE


William says, "I always use a Fender Twin Reverb, the one with the wee footswitch that gives you... what's it called... vibrato. I don't remember what settings I use, but they're different live from in the studio."

Do you turn the channel volume up for a rough distorted sound? "What's 'channel volume'? The way we get our feedback is with a fuzz pedal; it's not just an electronic signal type feedback, it's a feedback that bends and quavers. It's a real cheap fuzz pedal — a Companion, I think, an old-fashioned fuzz/wah with one of those things that goes like that." William rocked his hand in initiation of a wah-wah pedal.

"I use a Gretsch Tennessean Chet Atkins. Jim uses a Kay, or sometimes a Vox Phantom — the one with the built-in fuzz and echo, and all those knobs on it."

Douglas went on: "We don't believe in paying very much for our guitars. He got his Gretsch for £20! Some guy's dar..."

"Don't say 'dar'," admonished William, "it's 'dard'."

"... had one, and this guy sold it to us without telling his dard. Oooh, he got a beating!"

"I knew it was a good guitar, I knew I was getting a bargain," grinned William.

Douglas uses Peavey or Fender bass amplification, depending on which he can lay his hands on.

"And I've got a Gibson semi-acoustic bass — I don't remember the code number. The bass and drums are the backbone of the songs; and anyway, you can't get a very interesting feedback out of a bass, just a low hum that you can't vary. Mind you, we have done gigs with bass feedback — unintentional ones!"

Douglas and William are very specific about the strings they use. William? "I use very light gauge strings as they're much easier to play."

"I didn't even know there was different gauges of string until somebody told me," laughs Douglas. "There are only two strings on my bass anyway, the two thickest..."

"The E and the A," explains William. ("I'm the musician in the band: I used to tune all the guitars before we could afford a tuner.")

"... but I have them in the middle of the neck. It was the only bass I could afford, and it had two strings and a twisty neck. It was all right at the bottom, but the top... ugh!"

"It sounded avant-garde!"

"I couldn't afford any more strings at the time. Our songs only need two strings anyway; if we write a song that needs a third string, I'll put one on."

THE INTERFACE


"The good thing about feedback is that it's hard to control, it's strange," William mused.

"It keeps it spontaneous." "Sometimes it's actual notes..."

"...and they wail in and out."

"Like, there's a bit on 'Never Understand' that goes 'whooo!'..."

The whole song goes 'whooo!', though.

"...but there's one particular bit with a real note that came through — it's got a real melancholy quality. Sad. But the sound's always different, as it depends on so many factors. You just can't control feedback live."

Are there any special techniques that William uses for getting the best from his guitar? "What do you call that bit where the strings come over? The bridge? Anyway, when you hit the strings behind there, it sounds like a piano. Through the fuzzbox up loud, it makes a brilliant clanging metallic noise. Like Einsturzende Neubauten."

THE STUDIO


"We put a version down live, with my guitar like it is on stage. We'll use the drums and bass, and we might keep the guitar if it's got to fit in with the changes. We have trouble with engineers, because they think feedback's just feedback. Sometimes we use up to five feedback tracks, picking and choosing the best bits. This is what drives engineers mad, as we listen to each one on its own, noting down the good bits. We might do this for an hour or so..."

Douglas takes up the story: "Usually we mix on the little speakers, the Auratones, as they're more what it will sound like. 'Never Understand' we had to remix because we'd done it on big speakers, and it sounded weedy on ordinary tape machines."

Do you produce yourselves? William: "I don't understand how any group could let somebody else produce their records. No-one's going to tell us how our instruments should sound. We're not gonna put up with that. When we mix, our drummer Bobby's usually not there, as he's in another group in Glasgow; so there's the three of us, and when we disagree, it's usually two against one. And anyway, we're normally too busy arguing with the engineer to disagree amongst ourselves.

"But this new single, 'Trip Me Up', is the first time we've been allowed to touch the desk ourselves. John Loder, the engineer at Southern, is really brilliant, as he records the music, does the technical stuff, then lets us do all the rest ourselves. We have had some really bad arguments with engineers saying, 'You can't do this or that'."

THE PRINCIPLE


"The principle is just to make good records, whether they be noisy or quiet. We're not just a noise — noise is brilliant, but so are nice quiet acoustic type songs. Like 'Just Like Honey' on the Peel session, that's a really gentle song."

"Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass," ejaculates Douglas unashamedly. "I think 'This Guy's In Love With You' is almost perfect."

"That side of us often gets ignored."

THE MASTERPLAN


"Basically we don't have a masterplan. We're a pop group, and we think our songs are pop songs in the classic tradition. Beyond that, we just do as we please. I don't know why more groups don't do that."



Previous Article in this issue

Shredder

Next article in this issue

Overtones


Publisher: One Two Testing - IPC Magazines Ltd, Northern & Shell Ltd.

The current copyright owner/s of this content may differ from the originally published copyright notice.
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One Two Testing - Jul 1985

Donated by: Colin Potter

Interview by Jon Lewin

Previous article in this issue:

> Shredder

Next article in this issue:

> Overtones


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