The first demo tape 1981

One point of interest in the first-ever TSOM interview published in Whippings and Apologies and featured on a recent post in this blog is the reference to the demo tape sent to John Peel which was “out at the moment”, and “which just about covers the whole range of what we do,” according to Eldritch speaking around 20^th March 1981).

This is highly likely to be the cassette which became known as “The Floorshow EP” (after a bootleg vinyl version), containing early versions of Floorshow, Lights and the Teachers/Adrenochrome segue. Weighing in at around sixteen minutes, this is probably also the “eighteen minute” long tape referred to in the band’s first national interview (with Adam Sweeting in Melody Maker in February 1982), which Eldritch had played to Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis, who had dismissed the band (much to Eldritch’s uncomprehending disgust) as sounding like Bauhaus! “We made a tape once and took it down to Rough Trade. GeoffTravis gave it one listen, it was 18 minutes long, lots of tracks, tapped his feet all the way through and turned round and said, “It’s like Bauhaus.”

Although an original copy of this demo tape has yet to be found, a copy of a cassette MR2 has emerged from sources close to the band, which contains the Floorshow EP plus the tracks of the Damage Done single (including the brief but uncredited Home of the Hitmen fragment), along with some live tracks recorded in the later spring of 1981 (i.e. after the W+A interview). These feature on “Side B”, but the listing of these tracks is printed at right angles to those on the other side, and there is no mention of Side A at the top of that list or track lengths or details of composers as for the first side of the tape, which has given rise to speculation that the cassette MR1 would have indeed only originally contained the Floorshow EP tracks.

The Floorshow tape was certainly popular, and I recall it being listed in a 1981 Top Ten chart provided by The Warehouse club in Leeds (and presumably compiled by Eldritch’s girlfriend Claire Shearsby who was a DJ there) and printed in one of the music weeklies (probably Sounds, but I no longer have the cutting, sadly).

The opening bars of Floorshow reveal the dramatic change in the band’s sound since Damage Done a few months earlier, with Craig’s buzzing bass starting proceedings off and the original Doktor rattling away in the background. Eldritch “sings” the first verse an octave higher than normal, before returning to his now-familiar baritone for the second. His full dramatic range is well in effect in what became his traditional reverb-heavy style, with blood curdling screams echoing round the rehearsal room. Lights is remarkably similar to the version that would appear on The Reptile House EP some two years later, showing that the band understood the dramatic power of slowing their music down even at this early stage of their career. The Leonard Cohen cover, Teachers, is the closest in style to Damage Done, all jagged guitars and mumbled vocals, whilst a slightly-slowed down Adrenochrome is the most conventionally rock song of the four, and was unsurprisingly chosen as the next single the following year in barely changed form.

The source of the tracks listed on side B of the demo tape, which was shared in great quality for the first time by Phil Verne on Dimeadozen along with the 1979 Gary Marx Naked Voices tape (and was later the opening post of the unofficial TSOM 1980 1985 Fan Page), have long been the subject of speculation, with most having been released on two bootleg vinyl 7” singles in the mid-1980s on the Portuguese Pan Vox label. 1969 and Sister Ray are listed as having been recorded at York University on 7^th May, and listening to them some crowd noise is evident, with Eldritch interacting with the audience, thanking them for their applause at the end of 1969 and then telling them “this is the last one, that’s all you’re getting!” at the start of Sister Ray, with the usual “Good night!” scream at the end. This was the only current evidence for this York gig having taken place, until this very week when further details have emerged thanks to John Spence, former engineering assistant at KG Studios in Bridlington, where TSOM famously recorded their classic singles in the early 80s. Addressing the 1980-1985 unofficial TSOM FB group, Spence spoke of his early involvement with the Sisters : “In 1979 he [Ken Giles] asked me to fill in as a monitor engineer on his PA system for four nights. I stayed two and a half years. During this time on the PA we were doing a gig at York University with a band called Reluctant Stereotypes. The support band was The Sisters of Mercy. When we’d sound-checked the main band we asked the support band to get their gear on stage. One of them (probably Andy) pointed at a small guitar combo amp and said, “That’s our gear!” So one amp, with four inputs into which were plugged a drum machine, a bass guitar, a rhythm guitar and a vocal mic … all overloaded and distorted, but they seemed happy enough. That meeting may have been the catalyst for them recording at Bridlington … possibly.” 

Advert from "Beaten to the Punch" fanzine

This, then was obviously the Reluctant Stereotypes support which Gary Marx had referred to in a 1985 interview, and which I had erroneously assumed must have taken place at The Warehouse in Leeds on 10^th March. I asked John if he could confirm the date of the gig as 9^th May, as listed in the advert attached. He promised to check his records, and incredibly shared this photo of his diary for the month, revealing that the date of the gig was in fact 7^th May 1981, the exact date and venue listed on the demo tape. He also revealed that at this time he was working on the PA with another sound engineer named Pete Turner… a name familiar to TSOM fans, as he mixed The Sisters of Mercy’s live sound from their early WEA days up until the mid-1990s. So it appears that this one York University gig not only provided the band with a live recording of a couple of cover versions for their demo tape, but also introduced them to both (indirectly) the studio where they would record their breakthrough singles and to their future live sound engineer.

Photo courtesy of John Spence

The other five tracks on the “Live” side have always intrigued me, being listed as having been recorded at “St John’s, Leeds” some three days earlier on 4^th May, 1981, although that night is listed as “Leeds Warehouse” on the band’s own website’s gigography. I have always been somewhat sceptical of the name of the venue (“St John’s Hall” on some listings), as there was no such venue when I arrived in Leeds to study a year later, and in the Whippings and Apologies interview Eldritch had made it clear that the band had no intention of “playing in every toilet every week,” ruling out more parochial venues. There is also, curiously a complete lack of crowd noise on the five tracks, even allowing for the fact that they have been edited together, apart from right at the end of a truly amazing Sister Ray, the end of the “set”, when two whooping voices can be heard (through the echoing mic), one male, the other (presumably Claire’s) female.

Photo from Google Streetview

The demo cassette lists the band’s contact address as 12, St John’s Terrace, part of a grand row of Victorian four storey terraces just off the northern end of the university campus. Number 12, pictured here with a light green door, was by the early 1980s (as today) a HMO (house of multiple occupancy), divided into a series of study flats, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that these tracks were recorded at a live rehearsal for the forthcoming York gig at the flat on St John’s Terrace, effectively a trial run after the self-confessed disaster of the Altered Images support at the Warehouse on 19^th March.

The contact phone number provided for the band on the demo cassette insert is the same as on the insert for Damage Done, although the address provided on that occasion was the Hares Avenue house which also features on the invoices for the first single, associated with Gary Marx. St John’s Terrace was in fact the location of the “flat” shared by Eldritch and Claire at this time which friends of the couple have referred to, its handy location just off the university campus on Bellevue Road making it a more likely stopping-off place for passing visitors than the rather distant house in Village Place, Burley which became MR headquarters by the time of The Reptile House EP. In Jon Langford’s 2016 interview on his links with the Sisters, the bassist stated that “Andy lived on the same street as me as well. On Bellevue Road,” thus confirming that the demo cassette address was the singer’s residence.

Only a band member or one of the immediate early entourage would know whether or not my hunch that the "St John's" alleged "live gig" was in fact just a taped rehearsal round at Andy and Claire's place, but the power of the tracks is undeniable and the recording clearly helped to grow the band's reputation both within Leeds and with out of town promoters, and the fact that (if St John's was just a rehearsal) the first three gigs would be supporting The Thompson Twins, Altered Imaged and Reluctant Stereotypes, exactly as Gary Marx stated in a 1985 interview already discussed on this blog. Any confirmation of the theory or evidence to the contrary would be very gratefully received!

My especial thanks are due to Phil Verne of the unofficial FB group The Sisters of Mercy 19801985 for his huge help with this post, and to Mark Andrews and other researchers who have delved into the very earliest days of the band's history as a going concern.