Chain reaction

So who was the most influential British rock ‘n’ roll band of the last three decades? Joy Division? Stone Roses? Sigue Sigue Sputnik? This one’s a no-brainer, comrades.

The Jesus & Mary Chain’s first album Psychocandy still makes the earth move after 20 years – as seminal and intoxicating a beast as Funhouse or Junkyard. It’s now been re-mastered and re-issued in all its seedy glory (along with subsequent albums Darklands, Automatic, Honey’s Dead and Stoned & Dethroned) and constitutes mandatory listening for any pimply-faced tyros tempted to form their own garage gang.
To this day, any band who sounds fuzz-drenched, melodious and vaguely sleazy, from The Raveonettes to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, stands accused of ripping them off. Historians have already hailed the Chain as the first band to fully grasp the concept that savage walls of feedback noise could co-exist with gorgeous Spectoresque pop melody.
Nursing a Ballygowan today, Jim Reid modestly refutes the credit: “Wisnae us,” he says. “The Velvet Underground invented that concept. To me they’re the most influential rock ’n’ roll band in musical history. We learned a lot from them, especially their appreciation of how to contrast the light and the darkness. We were genuinely listening to Sonny & Cher and Einsturzende Neubauten at the same time. We were really excited by the possibilities. I remember thinking, ‘Why shouldn’t we sound like ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ performed by The Cramps?’ That’s what we were trying to get at. I still find that first Velvets album incredible, the way you can have something like ‘Femme Fatale’ on the same fucking record as ‘Heroin’ and ‘Venus In Furs’. The idea that that’s the same band doing both is astounding. We wanted to do something similar, and we tried as best we could.”
Has he checked out The Raveonettes?
“I haven’t heard a lot of their music. What I have heard, I tend to think, ‘I’ve already been there and I’ve done that,’ but no harm to them. I don’t mind admitting that as a 44-year-old man, I’m pretty out of touch with what’s happening in music right now. There’s no such thing as a completely new idea in music, and I don’t think there ever was. What happens is it goes round in cycles, and I think I’ve seen the whole cycle. Once you’ve seen that, there’s no point in staying tuned. I’m not dismissing every new band that’s around now, but what happens when I check out new bands is I tend to hear their influences rather than the bands themselves. And I’m sure a lot of people must have done the same with the Mary Chain; that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is, it’s a cyclical thing. So when I say I’ve heard it all before, that’s not a put-down. That’s what keeps rock and roll going: kids form a band, borrow the bits they like from the past, then throw in their own personalities and make it relevant to the present.”
After twenty years of daily and nightly sousing, Jim Reid has now forsworn the gargle, a life decision so profound and fundamental that its impact appears to have shaken him like an earthquake.
“Thankfully I’ve stopped drinking these days,” he says. “I’ve got a three-year-old daughter, and I haven’t had a drink for nine months now. I don’t know how long that’ll last. I keep thinking I’ll get my shit together any day now and it’s all going to fall into place, but unfortunately I keep thinking, ‘I want a drink, I want a drink’. I’d been dreading the whole experience for years, but I knew it was needed. I thought that once I went through the process, things would all click and eventually I’d be able to not think about it. But it hasn’t worked out that way, I think I miss drink more now than I did when I stopped. Unfortunately I just love drinking, and I find that I crave alcohol. I know I will drink again. As I’ve said to my wife, I think if I can do a year on the dry, then I’ll review the situation.”
Was London too full of toxic temptations?
“It’s too easy to blame London. I’m living in Devon now instead of London, and I don’t see all those people anymore, which helps. Toward the end of my time there I wasn’t going out much anyway, I’d just stay at home and drink. I moved to Devon and I was still at it. I drank on a daily basis for as long as I can remember, and by this stage it was all day long. It was starting to get out of hand, I was married with a child, which obviously puts demands on you, and then there was a series of unbelievably embarrassing major fuck-ups, I’d do gigs and be unable to stand, it was public humiliation. It reached a point where I had to do something about it. You know when you wake up the next day and realise, ‘What the fuck have I done?’ – it was like that, by about a million.”
Reid’s powers of endurance on the sauce constituted a double-edged sword.
“I didn’t get blackouts, so I’m not even allowed the luxury of not remembering how embarrassing it was,” he admits. “I remember every single minute of it. It was the ultimate wake-up call. When I was single, I’d spend all day every day getting pissed and I’d make an absolute tit of myself, falling off bar stools – but it wouldn’t bother me too much because most of the people I was with were doing pretty much the same. But to be on a stage without a clue how to play the songs, you feel like a circus clown… I could see people laughing, it was horrible, and I didn’t want to be the person that I’d clearly become. That was the 30th October, last year – it was my last night, and I haven’t had a drink since.”