When The Sisters of Mercy
arrived in Switzerland for their first ever gig in the cantons towards the end
of April in 1985, one can easily imagine their state of mind. The first leg of
the gruelling Armageddon tour was now behind them, with ten gigs in Belgium, Holland
and (West) Germany completed in the past thirteen days, their first as a
three-piece after Gary Marx’s departure, so there must have been a palpable
sense of relief. This was evident a few days beforehand when Wayne Hussey had
taken part in a phone interview with a Swiss radio station, where he discussed
how well the band were coping with him as sole guitarist, to the extent of the very strong likelihood that Gary would not replaced. Wayne was even compos mentis enough to correct the radio DJ on the date of the forthcoming Zurich gig.
The Zurich gig (advertised on Swiss copies of FALAA by this sticker, from the collection of LG) was very much
in the middle of a brief lull in the middle of the touring schedule being the
only gig in a four day spell between gigs in Munich and Milan, with a further dozen dates in sixteen days in
Italy, Germany (again) and Scandinavia to follow (tour book extract courtesy of Graeme Salt who shared it on the TSOM 1980-1985 FB group). One can imagine how relieved Eldritch and co must have been to see the words "Band and crew: NO TRAVEL".
The band certainly seem to
have been in relaxed mood during interviews around the gig, with a further
Swiss radio interview featuring all three remaining members also broadcast and with
this presumably also being the venue for Judith Ammann’s interview with
Eldritch which featured in her 1987 German language book of interviews with
post-punk acts, Who’s Been Sleeping In My Brain? (Ammann being
originally from Lucerne).
The interview focusses on the
lyrics of two of the tracks on the recently released debut LP, No Time To
Cry and Possession. A live version of the latter was one of two
tracks (Body and Soul being the other) which have been widely bootlegged
from the gig at the Zurich Volkshaus on Friday 26th April 1985,
featuring on both the Echoes series of LPs and the Acid Rain 12”. Eldritch,
clearly tiring of touring and feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the
figurehead position which he had rapidly attained, speaks with great candour
about the “Possession” lyrics (the Zurich version of which has been kindly uploaded to Soundcloud by Phil Verne of The Sisters of Mercy 1980 – 1985Facebook group) in the Ammann interview.
Lines in the song such as :
I'll be your imagination
Tear apart what you believe
Make a mess of your conviction
Take away my pride and leave
Nothing, but the debris
Cuts, two ways.
Tear apart what you believe
Make a mess of your conviction
Take away my pride and leave
Nothing, but the debris
Cuts, two ways.
take on extra meaning in the
context of Eldritch’s comments in reply to Ammann who had asked him if he felt
like a screen on which the audience projected their own dreams and desires that
were not a true reflection of Eldritch himself. “Not if you play the game the
way I do,” the singer replied (if my approximate translation of the German is
correct). “Our song Possession is about this very subject. I’m simply
trying to show an image of the relationship between the writer, the singer, the
song and the audience. If singers and audiences continue to insist on sticking
to their roles as they are normally understood, nothing remains [after the end
of the song].” Ammann asks Eldritch what he IS trying to project, eliciting the
answer: “I'm just trying to be a responsible puppet for other people’s
emotions; no matter what you try to represent, this is what it always comes
down to. That's what the audience demands and understands …It can be
soul-destroying. Sometimes you almost feel contempt [for the audience]. In this
particular song [Possession] I was trying to say: Please don’t trust me
too much, because this is still me [Andrew] and not something that you want to
see in me. Be careful, because if you trust me even more, I may just become
what you want to see in me, and that won’t help anyone. So there’s this balance
between contempt and the responsibility that anyone feels when standing up
there and singing about pain. That's exactly what we sing about.” This probably
helps to explain why the vocal on the FALAA version of Possession
sounds particularly raw, as Eldritch strove to convey the extent of his emotion
on the issue, rather than the more polished and enhanced vocal on most of the
rest of the band’s canon.
But back to the puppet show. Possibly as a result of the
radio pre-publicity, the fact that it was the band’s first ever show in
Switzerland, and this rather fine and unique advert for the show which appeared
in Swiss magazines, the show at the Volkshaus was very well-attended, as can be
seen in the wonderful contemporary photo below ((c) Sonja Flurry) According to reports from those who
were there, it wasn’t just the cramped audience conditions and the apparent
heat (see the sweat on the face of the Jordan Pickford lookalike at the bottom right of the photo) which made the gig an intense experience for those in attendance, but also
the sheer volume at which the band played that night.
Tom G Warrior of contemporary
and highly influential Swiss “extreme metal” band Celtic Frost (and therefore
something of an occupational expert in loud concerts) was at the gig, and spoke
about it in an interview with The Quietus’ Jimmy Martin in 2017. “I saw The
Sisters of Mercy with Martin Ain from Celtic Frost in Zurich in April 1985 on
the tour [for FALAA]. It was the loudest concert I’ve ever heard in my life. It
was so loud that you had to leave the hall periodically because it was so
painful. But at the same time we witnessed something that we had never
witnessed before. When we stood there and we saw Marian and …First
And Last And Always live, with that heaviness, that darkness, that volume,
it was amazing.”
Blogger JHG Shark was also at
the gig, and also found it a unique experience amongst the many shows
catalogued on his website : “It was a strange gig, because people screamed and
whistled between the songs, but there was no applause! I’d never experienced
anything like it. I don’t think it was because of the band’s sound or the show
on stage, it’s just how Sisters fans were. I personally really enjoyed the gig,
even though the sound was thinner than on the record.” [This could of course be
due to the fact that there was only the one guitarist, with Marx back in West
Yorkshire] “After the gig I had to go to the Big Apple Club to do my DJ shift.
The Sisters and some of their fans also found their way to the club, and some
fans requested that I play a few TSOM tracks. I thought, “No way,” and just
played the usual records. Eventually, the members of the band got up to dance …
and to the great astonishment of all their fans present, they were dancing to…
SIMPLE MINDS”. Sadly no video evidence of this event has yet surfaced…
The gig itself was however
recorded by several attendees, and listening to a copy of the show (kindly
provided to me by Phil Verne of the TSOM 1980-1985 Facebook fan group) the volume
issues and the strange atmosphere are immediately apparent. Doktor Avalanche is
incredibly high in the mix, the beats bludgeoning the senses, and this is
probably the only gig of this era I have heard where Eldritch doesn’t utter a
single word during the entire show between the songs, save for the title of the
next number. The Volkshaus acoustics are particularly effective on Body and
Soul, with Hussey’s guitar reverberating around the arena, whilst the
thin-ness of the guitar sound is all too apparent on Walk Away. Hussey
makes a guitar pitch error during his “No…No…No…” backing vocals section on No
Time To Cry, but Eldritch makes an even bigger gaffe on Amphetamine
Logic, coming in two lines early and singing the chorus over the verse
backing, leaving Adams and Hussey to play the chorus as an instrumental on the
first play-through. The singer was in notably finer form on Emma and Marian,
and the recording ends with the best live version which I have heard of Train,
sadly and suddenly curtailed on this copy of the recording.
So a distinctive
as much as a legendary gig in one of the more attractive venues on the tour (pic above, credit Wikipedia) and one which I'm pleased to report is still going strong today (as is the Seegarten Hotel where they stayed, now charging around £175 a night for a standard double room - the band had clearly arrived!). Having originally opened back in
1910, The Volkshaus’ 1200 capacity hall hosted recent gigs for As I Lay Dying
and Vampire Weekend amongst others, but many bands, including TSOM, now play at
the city’s “Rote Fabrik” (“Red Factory”) instead.
My grateful thanks for this post are due to LG, to Phil Verne of the TSOM 1980-1985 Facebook fan group, to Graeme Salt, to JHG Shark and all others who have contributed.
