WE ARE BIG fans of the Jesus and Mary Chain at the Idler and were delighted when Zoë Howe sent us this extract from her superb new biography of the band. You can buy the book by following the link on the right. Zoë is a music author whose books include the official Slits biography Typical Girls?, How’s Your Dad? Living in the Shadow of a Rock Star Parent and Florence + The Machine: An Almighty Sound . She also co-authored and collated former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson’s memoir Looking Back at Me. Her writing has appeared in The Quietus, Company, Notion, BBC Music, Holy Moly, Classic Rock and NME. Zoë also has made music radio series for stations including the award-winning Resonance FM, and she has been heard chatting about rock n roll from time to time on BBC 6 Music, Absolute Radio and Planet Rock.

The book has received great reviews from the music press and amongst musicians. Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite said: “It’s f***ing brilliant. Get it, read it people.” We couldn’t agree more.

From Chapter 10

 “I  want them to be everywhere, to be like Coronation Street.” – Alan McGee to The Face, June 1985

The Ambulance Station gig in November 1984 was the latest milestone in the Mary Chain’s trajectory, yet again polarising the audience and, crucially, attracting the attention of Geoff Travis. The Jesus And Mary Chain were already Creation’s biggest-selling artists at this point, but now they had an opportunity to move to a bigger label and fulfil further ambitions beyond the so-called indie scene. As Jim Reid admits, ‘I wanted to be Marc Bolan. I wanted to be Johnny Rotten. I didn’t want to be this little oik in a Fair Isle jumper playing in some indie club with just my friends in the audience.

‘We all wanted to shake things up quite a bit.’ Jim continues. ‘The worst thing I can imagine is just being another band that gets ignored. We were into the whole rock star thing, Bowie, T. Rex. That was nowhere in the picture at that time, and that’s what we wanted to bring back to the table.’

McGee, who would continue to be the group’s manager, was philosophical about the next necessary step. ‘We couldn’t really carry on,’ he admits. ‘We had no money with Creation, it was such a little label. We were used to doing 7,000 copies and suddenly we’re doing 45,000 copies, and Geoff . . . you know, it looked like the best deal. We’d done well to press up 40,000 records, never mind pay everybody, so to think we were going to hang on to The Jesus And Mary Chain against the weight of Warner Bros, that was never going to happen.’

The chance to go with a major label, but with Geoff Travis at the helm, seemed ideal at the time. The Mary Chain knew Travis was serious about his music. He also had indie integrity, but they would be getting major-label support Blanco Y Negro had already released records by the Monochrome Set, Marine Girls, Everything But The Girl and Subway Sect’s Vic Godard, and had worked with Lawrence from Felt. It seemed like a good home for the Mary Chain.

Jim Reid says: ‘Had Creation Records been what it later became, there would have been nothing to think about, but you have to remember that at that time Alan was still working for British Rail. We got “Upside Down” out, we physically bagged all of those records. That’s what it was; you were never going to get on Top of the Pops, or if you were, it was going to take some time.”

A meeting was arranged between Travis and the Mary Chain at Alan McGee’s parents’ house in the Glasgow suburb of Mount Florida (‘Something of a misnomer,’ observes Douglas Hart), complete with cups of tea and French Fancies. Despite the chintzy surroundings, for Travis this was ‘the most difficult meeting with a group I’ve ever had in my life.

‘They were all sitting on the sofa, all in a line. They sat staring at the floor for about an hour and a half. Didn’t say a word. It was really insane.’ (Alan McGee remembers it well, although he ‘thought it was just normal Mary Chain madness, to be honest.’)

The idea was that Geoff would sign The Jesus And Mary Chain on behalf of Blanco Y Negro on a one-single deal for the song ‘Never Understand’. The Mary Chain might not have piped up much, or indeed at all, but their minds were whirring with the possibilities. ‘He said he was going to sign us and gave us £1,000 each,’ says Douglas Hart. ‘We were like, “Wow!” Just for one record. It just seemed surreal, like a film. And we were all in Alan’s very prim and proper mum’s house, dressed like beatniks, all sitting there on our best behaviour with our little china cups and French Fancies …’

 To buy Barbed Wire Kisses: The Jesus and Mary Chain Story from the Idler bookshop, follow the link on the right.