THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN: THE RIOT YEARS

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN: THE RIOT YEARS
Everybody loves a riot, and I am no exception. But real riots can be so unpredictable. It's all too easy to get a brick in the back of the head or a truncheon up the jacksy. One rioter once asked me if I could lend him a handkerchief with which to obscure his features, but the only I had had bogeys, so I was forced to pretend I hadn't got one. When I first started working in the Basque Country, Friday night was riot night. We would come out of work to be met by the huge hulking figures of riot police and would have to basically follow a line of them up to the railway station, which was being guarded to dissuade the disaffected youth from indulging in one of the favourite pastimes, setting fire to means of public transport. This is all very well, but it can (and did) go wrong, and the regular bouts of stone throwing were as unpredictable as forest fires. Good fun, I admit, but best to keep your distance if you value your freedom and/or physical integrity. So what better way to enjoy a riot than in the controlled environment of a small concert hall or nightclub? This was the brave social experiment carried out by followers of The Jesus and Mary Chain in the mid-eighties. Like May '68 without the slogans. The Jesus and Mary Chain made great records, records with cheese wire solos and dustbin lid drums. They were unavoidably exciting, and the experience of very loud feedback in a confined space could be quite agitating. Add to this the group's habit of playing for ten minutes or so before skulking off-stage and it is no real surprise tempers could be stretched to breaking point, if indeed this is what happened rather than just people "having a laugh" or whatever.

I went to see The Jesus and Mary Chain at Nottingham Rock City when the riot thing was still in the air. I was under-age and had borrowed my brother's provisional driver's licence. I had some kind of mental block at the door when the bouncer asked my date of birth and was ejected from the queue and put in some kind of holding pen, all my rock'n'roll dreams in the balance. I can't remember how I managed to convince my interlocutors that I really was over eighteen, but I did. Me in my cut-off donkey jacket. This was, after all, the time of the miners' strike (another false legend) or thereabouts and a cut-off donkey jacket seemed like a nice balance between a statement of solidarity and Duranee-baiting stylishness.

Once inside the venue (a fairly charmless place next to a car park, but by the far the most exciting place I had ever been) the long wait began. I think there were two support bands, but they were the kind that pay to get on the tour and everybody hates them. They must have got a fair bit of abuse that night. Someone's elder sister was working behind the bar (no doubt a glamorous student at Nottingham Poly), and gave my friends cheap drinks, but not me, because I had embarrassed myself in front of her in some drunken incident or other involving vinegar. I considered being mortified but... nah, no point. We waited. And waited. We had some chips. We waited, waited, waited. By now the venue was filling up and it was clear that quite a few people were there for a ruck - men with moustaches and white trainers, Terry-from-Brooksidealikes, Clough-era Notts Forest fans, definitely not people interested in The Jesus and Mary Chain and their clearly delineated scalpel slice through Warhol-fuelled selective rock'n'roll history. My clearest memory of the night is everyone, JAMC freaks and ruck boys alike, standing around trying to look tough when the DJ played Time Flies By When You're The Driver Of A Train by Half Man Half Biscuit at ear-bleeding volume. Try it some time, it's a pretty tricky pose to pull off.

Eventually the objects of our adulation shambled onto the stage. Obviously at the time I had a Bobby crush, so I was disappointed that Gillespie had either decided on a new sticky-uppy haircut or had been replaced. It later transpired (via the Hello Goodbye section of Mojo Magazine) that this gig was the début of John Moore. Bobby G was there, but backstage, giving his replacement moral support. Apparently he told him that all that was expected of him was to keep time, look good and dodge the bottles. Well, he didn't look good, and there were no bottles thrown. It was a disappointment, Bobby G not playing, and I find it hard to cling to the notion that this was some kind of historical event, a new drummer being baptised. I suppose in effect it was the beginning of a very slow end. The gig itself wasn't very good really, not after such a long wait. I think they were on for about half an hour, and I think they'd learned to defuse the latent violence by playing an excruciatingly long version of one of their more tuneless B-sides. Certainly the aforementioned Terrys from Brookside were hoping to start something by shoving and pushing and swearing and threatening, but the majority of punters were gentle souls more inclined to Pastelism than punishment, and nothing really happened. I'm glad I went, but to be honest, it wasn't much good. I loved the feedback, loved the melodies, loved the idea, but the vocals were almost inaudible, the shape and texture of the records was lost, and you couldn't help feeling that the band's obvious contempt for their audience was kind of deserved. That's not a nice feeling. So we all trooped out and some of us returned to the land of the tractor and the cow-pat, and went back to school next day with something to brag about and a legend to start building.

Years later I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain again in Prague. They were fantastic, but my abiding memory of that particular ghostly tube stop on the Revolution line from 1968 to 1989 was the wonderful sound of Big Star's Big Black Car hollowing its way from the PA in a cavernous venue as the audience trickled in. This time I was with people who'd taken real risks in the name of rock'n'roll, for which read freedom, people who'd run samizdat printing presses and so on, people who felt it was a really big deal to see The Jesus and Mary Chain. So I knew I was in the right place, and that I had been in the right place all along.

(I wanted to embed this, but I can't get it to work, but please click away.It is a video entitled The Jesus and Mary Chain North London Poly Riot)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hclcrEpui64