Thirty-five years on, the very earliest
gigs by The Sisters of Mercy in the early Spring of 1981 remain shrouded in
mystery, with those concerts that are listed in gigographies largely based on dates on
cassettes which may or may not contain tracks recorded on those particular
days.
The very first gig, supporting The
Thompson Twins in a college JCR at the University of York, was often referred
to by the band in interviews in the 80s, and even on stage by Eldritch, and the
date of the show (16th Feb) subsequently featured in 10th,
20th and 30th anniversary shows and celebrations.
The probable date and location of the
second gig was for a long time unknown, but research by Phil Verne of the 1980-1985 TSOM FB group a few years ago confirmed that the band played a very
early gig in support of Altered Images at the F Club in Leeds on March 19th
1981, unearthing a review from the Bradford fanzine Wool City Rocker to prove
that the gig had actually taken place. This concert was also discussed in the
earliest known interview with the band from spring of 1981 which featured in
local Leeds fanzine “Whippings and Apologies”. “Without a decent PA, we sound
really crap. Like when we supported Altered Images at the F-Club, that was a
real balls-up because of the bad sound,” was what a not-particularly-eloquent
Eldritch remembered of the show.
Earlier in that W+A interview, Eldritch
had stated, “We’ve only ever played three gigs before,” so it seemed reasonable
to assume that the Altered Images gig was the band’s second ever concert, and
their first in their home city of Leeds, a supposition repeated by Mark Andrews
in his fantastic recent article on the early days in The Quietus.
However, this month (December 2016), the
8085 Facebook group has been holding an impromptu Gary Marx retrospective, with
members sharing artefacts and memories of one of the two founding members of
the band who rarely gets the credit he deserves these days. Looking through his
extensive collection for more material to share with the group, Phil Verne came
across a cassette which he had had in his possession for some time, containing
a fanzine interview (Artificial Life) with Gary from 1985, which he had purchased off leading
Sisters historian Mark W... some time before. Background noise from a
blaring television during the interview makes it difficult to pick out some of
the comments, so Phil asked me to have a listen through a couple of sections to
see if there was anything of interest amongst the usual well-known facts and
opinions.
The interviewer mentions that he had
seen TSOM supporting Brilliant and The Smiths supporting TSOM, and how the
band’s fortunes had been reversed since in both cases. Marx tells him (in this extract kindly uploaded onto YouTube by Phil) “When we
first started out, in our first gig we supported the Thompson Twins….The second
or the third... It was something like The Thompson Twins, then Altered Images,
and then the band that are now King – they were called The Reluctant
Stereotypes I think at the time. So that was.. our first three gigs,” before
going on to discuss Brilliant and The Smiths.
To me, this was incredible new
information- no Sisters gig with Reluctant Stereotypes is currently listed. Reluctant Stereotypes singer Paul King, after his five minutes of fame with “Love and Pride”,
eventually washed up as a VJ on the rapidly expanding MTV satellite channel, and surprisingly to
many people became their in-house "alternative music" expert, hosting the “120
Minutes” show, for which in 1991 he ended up interviewing .... none other than a
Vision Thing era Andrew Eldritch, during which as usual the TSOM frontman ironically had to spend much time defending their position as reluctant (gothic) sterotypes.
The former police cadet King did have a more
alternative past himself however, with the Reluctant Stereotypes. As they were
from Coventry, the avant-garde jazz ska art-rock ensemble had become caught up
in the Two-Tone wave, taking part in a second wave seaside tour in the summer
of 1980 with the likes of the Bodysnatchers. By 1981 however, it was clear that
they were unlikely to break thorough, and they disbanded after a final show at
the Reading Festival (still in its Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts phase) that year.
Earlier in 1981, however, they had
undertaken a few dates in the early Spring, and Phil Verne has unearthed this
poster from the Leeds Warehouse (again from Wool City Rocker) advertising gigs in March of that month, with
the Reluctant Stereotypes clearly listed as playing on 10th March, a
week before the TSOM gig with Altered Images (which took place on the same
night as the Orange Juice gig at the Warehouse). That the gigs were close
together makes it totally understandable that Marx would have been uncertain
some four years later about the exact sequence of events.
Although no other evidence yet exists
for this gig, and TSOM are not even listed as support, Marx’s reminiscences
make it clear that this Warehouse gig was in all likelihood the band’s second gig and
their home town debut, as it is unlikely that a band like Reluctant Stereotypes would have played twice in the area within a matter of weeks. (Edit : However, evidence uncovered after the publication of this post has established that the Warehouse gig did not feature the Sisters - the Reluctant Stereotypes gig referred to by Gary Marx, with TSOM as support) in fact took place on 7th May 1981 at York University. - edited by NVL, October 2017)
It is incredible that three and a half decades on,
significant new facts continue to emerge about the band’s early days, with the recent interview with Jon Langford, Mark Andrews’ Quietus piece and John Robb’spiece for LTW all adding to the picture. I would like to once again pay tribute
to the generosity of Phil Verne for sharing items from his archive and allowing
us to piece together another section of the 1981 jigsaw. If anyone can confirm this informed speculation, we would be delighted to hear from you!
