Eldritch's crowning glory? - The Reptile House EP

No record sums up the unique and lasting appeal of The Sisters of Mercy more than The Reptile House EP. In his book on the genre, The Dark Reign of Gothic Rock (with the telling subheading In the Reptile House with The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and The Cure, author Dave Thompson states "All that Gothic Rock would ever become is captured on this one EP," and the deep resonance the release caused both at the time – released as it was, right in the middle of the key year of 1983 - and subsequently gives some substance to that claim. In every respect, The Reptile House typifies, exemplifies and to a certain extent defines the degree of Eldritch’s obsession with every aspect of the band’s development at this stage.  In interviews the singer always railed against the idea that “independent” was synonymous with “amateurish,” and explained his approach to Melody Maker’s Adam Sweeting in 1984: "I always took a very grandiose view of things. That was tempered with a willingness to see the bastard thing through and make it work."

After three amphetamine-fuelled fast-paced singles, Eldritch’s uniquely meticulous approach to his craft reached new heights with the slower-brning songs of  The Reptile House EP, in every aspect of the release, from the recording to the marketing of the new songs. Endless negotiations with a variety of major labels, wrangles with fellow band members, and personal health and relationship issues over the next two years would cast a growing shadow over the subsequent releases,as the pressures of being singer, lyricist and manager began to take their inevitable toll, but Eldritch's own perfectionism, a key feature of the band's rise to fame and future chart successes, seems to have reached its early zenith on The Reptile House.

The 12” extended play vinyl was released in the early summer of 1983, within six weeks of the 12” version of the penultimate Alice/Floorshow single, although the exact actual release date is, as with many Merciful Releases, a matter of some conjecture. Most sources list 16^th May for the EP’s arrival in the shops, but in fact that was the date of the second test pressing, necessitated because Eldritch wasn’t happy with the sound of the first (17^th March) at the Mayking plant in France, to where it had to be returned. It is hard to imagine that this was a frequent occurrence for cash-strapped independent bands, but such was the singer’s single-minded obsession with every detail of TSOM that he regarded the delay and extra expense as not only acceptable but essential.

This Machiavellian approach would cost Eldritch many band-mates over the years, starting with the departure of Ben Gunn before the next single (Temple of Love) hit the shops less than six months later. The increasing divergence of standards between the singer and the rest of the band had already become apparent in the studio, as comments kindly shared in The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 Facebook fan group by John Spence, who engineered the recording session at KG studios in Bridlington will testify. "I was involved from the beginning but Ken Giles spent a good bit of time showing me the set up he had used for recording the drums from the Roland TR 606…When I was happy with it, Andy would step in and start tweaking it. He would sit for hours listening to just the bass drum mic and fiddling with the EQ, then the same with the snare channel and the high channel. At first, I assumed that he was trying to achieve a certain sound, but I later realized that he didn't actually know what he was doing, he was just finding out what each frequency sounded like… The rest of the band spent most of the time lying around in sleeping bags on the studio floor and I don't remember who did what. Recording the vocal was challenging because Andy sang very, very quietly. I suspect it was the only way he could hold the pitch in the lower register. … He always wanted his voice to sound lower and deeper. The mixing process was not difficult but very time consuming. I would bring up the drum track on a desk channel, set a basic sound and level then Andy would sit for 3/4/5 hours twiddling with the EQ and sends into a couple of effects. During this time, I would hover around, smoke, drink coffee and read. When he declared himself happy with the drum sound, I would then bring up the bass and the process started again followed by the guitars and vocals. I would balance up as we went along and take care of the technical side. One very distinct memory I do have is of when we'd finished the mixing and I'd edited the 1/4" tape to make a Production Master (tracks in the right order with the right gaps etc), Andy brought the rest of the band in to listen to it. When it finished, there was no invitation to comment or offer any creative input...just "There it is"… I was still very much learning myself and was interested in Andy's approach. He did things I wouldn't do, some of them worked, some didn't. It taught me the value of experimentation.”

Eldritch would lay claim to having been responsible for even more of the finished product in 1992 interviews when promoting the Some Girls Wander By Mistake compilation album, which featured the entire The Reptile House EP alongside other early singles. “On records like 'Reptile House' or 'Temple of Love' they [Gary Marx and Craig Adams] didn't even play. They weren't into recording that much, they just wanted to play live. They were sleeping in some corner until I woke them up after I had played and recorded everything on my own. When they asked me how their guitar and bass parts had turned out, I used to say to them they performed very well. Gary didn't even listen to 'The Reptile House EP' until it had been released on vinyl and I handed it to him with the words, 'This is our new record, you'll like it!'" Eldritch told the German magazine Visions.

Earlier this year, a copy of the first Test Pressing of The Reptile House EP became available for sale on EBay, selling within a couple of hours for its £1000 “Buy It Now” price. What made the record unique was the extensive notes which Eldritch had hand-written on the plain white sleeve of the pre-release, a tactic he employed to great effect to communicate with the London-based movers and shakers of the UK music industry from his Leeds stronghold. This particular copy had been sent to a sympathetic journalist, Steve Sutherland, who was infamous at the time for an interview which he conducted with Bauhaus in front of the band’s baying audience immediately prior to the Northampton band’s October 1982 show at London’s Lyceum Theatre. Having taken umbrage at a scathing Sutherland live review published in the NME the previous year, Sutherland had bravely faced a very hostile Bauhaus audience in an “interview” at which he had to defend his thesis that the band were mere Bowie copyists, a viewpoint made considerably easier by the band’s contemporary releases of their Ziggy Stardust single.

In 1983, Sutherland was the lucky recipient of the following personal message from Eldritch on his copy of the (first) test pressing: “Dear Steve -  This record is completely unarguable: take it on its own terms bearing in mind that it doesn’t give a damn whether you like it or not. The mix is obtuse, the pace relentlessly, unyieldingly slow. The last track [Burn] especially promises something to hold on to and then proceeds to recede away before the reprise of track #1 puts you right back where you started – the door of The Reptile House has swung shut behind you again. Welcome.”

Another message elsewhere on the sleeve features more clues as to the musical and lyrical claustrophobia of the record’s contents. “There are no windows in The Reptile House, and there is no handle on the inside of the door. The rules of the game are house rules, and it will take you a long time to understand them.” “Such,” said Mr Eldritch with a pompous and smug leer, “is Life. Goodnight children.” Here endeth the twenty-third lesson.” A unique insight into the singer’s frame of mind and view of his own place in the wider scheme of things, and enough for a well-known Belgian collector to immediately part with a four-figure sum to add another jewel to his personal TSOM treasure trove.

Eldritch had sent similarly detailed, personalised missives to Radio 1’s John Peel, read out on air  by the DJ on 14th June 1983 (link), surely a date which is closer to the real release day of the EP:  “Dear John, Here’s The Reptile House EP, our exorcism of the slow and serious, although it’s working title was “Slither, you ..” and here follows a rude word, so I can’t say that on the radio so I’ll say “Kenny Everett” instead. We’ve since taken to calling it The Commercial Suicide EP and we’ll understand perfectly if you feel it’s too dirge-ridden to play on the radio. It seems to take most people about six plays to understand how and why it works, another six or so to like it, it’s available as of now with a retail price of £2.99. Don’t let it grind you down. Love from Leeds’ Finest.” 

Despite – or maybe because of – the “dirge-ridden” contents, The Reptile House EP remains for many fans their favourite of the band’s releases, and it continues to inspire Eldritch’s fellow musicians. For example, Mark Sayle of the currently touted darkwave band Mark E Moon told the online magazine White Light/White Heat, “One of the first records I bought was ‘The Reptile House’ EP by the Sisters of Mercy. It’s still one of my favourite releases and that dark, cold sound has informed a lot of my songwriting.” Asked about the band’s 2019 album Refer, Sayle added “If I had to pick a favourite song it would probably have to be ‘Abandon’. It’s an epic gothic dirge that would sit comfortably on an early Sisters Of Mercy record. The darkness and the bleakness is palpable. I just love the imagery and the music….”

This recent release certainly confirms Dave Thompson's view in The Dark Reign of Gothic Rock that "all that a hundred, a thousand bands have tried to recapture in their own variations was blueprinted across those five songs" (of The Reptile House EP), emphasising the significance of the release to the genre as a whole. Trevor Ristow's excellent recent biography of The Sisters of Mercy's golden age takes it title Waiting For Another War from the lyrics of one of the more overtly political songs on the EP, Valentine, and Eldritch has often said that it represents his most political writing of the early days, with one interview referencing the Houses of Parliament (as alluded to in the backwards section of Burn) and another stating that it was a modern day Pilgrim's Progress. Both lyrically and musically the band struggled to recapture the intensity they achieved on this EP, although sections of side 2 of First And Last And Always and some of the B sides of the singles from that era came close. With rumours circulating the current iteration of the band is close to breaking Eldritch's near thirty year recording silence, he would do well to reflect that he has yet to top what was largely his first solo effort - The Reptile House EP.

My thanks for their help with this post are due to Phil Verne, Bruno Bossier, Trevor Ristow, Mark and Phil of Mark E Moon, John Spence, Dave Thompson and others who have helped to shed light in this most seminal of releases.

The Sisters and The Cult

There was a certain inevitability that two bands emerging at roughly the same time, from neighbouring provincial cities, and appealing to the same cultural dynamic would be endlessly compared in the music press, and so it proved for The Sisters of Mercy and The Cult (originally The Southern Death Cult and then Death Cult), despite the very obvious differences in sound.

The Bradford band’s debut single, Moya/Fatman, came out in the same month (December 1982) that The Sisters of Mercy’s own breakthrough single Alice was climbing the indie charts and indeed in the same week that the Leeds band enjoyed their first cover article in a British music weekly (Sounds), and the bands’ fortunes followed a similar trajectory, with a series of well-received singles but no debut album (with the exception of the posthumous The Southern Death Cult compilation LP containing a mix of studio, session and live tracks) until September 1984, when The Cult released Dreamtime, originally to be followed the next month by the Sisters’ ultimately delayed debut set which of course had the working title Black October. By that stage, neither band had experienced the longed-for main chart breakthrough, and even going into the spring of 1985, despite all the extra column inches devoted to Ian Astbury’s band, The Cult’s top official chart position was when Ressurection Joe (sic) scraped the bottom reaches of the Top 75, whilst both Body and Soul and Walk Away had narrowly missed the Top 40 for The Sisters.

For all the similarities, the bands’ paths never really crossed, with TSOM and The Cult playing the Futurama festival in different years for example, and despite the increasing focus on the Yorkshire goth scene, the reality is that groups like The Sisters, The Cult and The Danse Society were all plugging away independently in their home cities rather than hanging out in some Batcave-type communal and mutually supportive lair.

Somewhat bizarrely for two bands whose origins were firmly in the punk movement, The Cult and TSOM began to converge over a shared and growing love of one of the old school rock titans initially swept away by 1977’s Year Zero ethic: Led Zeppelin. Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams would increasingly mention the Plant/Page-led combo in interviews, and even Andrew Eldritch was not immune to the band’s charm, enthusiastically intoning their classic Stairway to Heaven in soundchecks and namechecking the band himself on several occasions. In interview with Kerrang!’s Dave Dickson in March 1985, Eldritch spoke enthusiastically about Led Zep: "I think it's time we did a Zeppelin number just to show the public what's what!" enthuses Eldritch. "Wayne and I tend to raid the freebie cupboards at WEA more than anyone else - Wayne particularly is a whizz at it; he has a knack of walking out with hundreds of albums without anyone actually noticing that he's had his allowance! But Wayne took the whole of the Zeppelin back-catalogue out a month ago and neither of us since have been able to live without it! They wrote great songs, which is my primary criterion for what makes a great band, wore really silly clothes. And they were Gods, not only because of who they were and what they did, not because they could play something - apart from Jimmy Page - really fast, or because they did more drugs than anybody else...they were Gods because they were Led Zeppelin! They were awesome! If they'd cut all the guitar solos out of the records there wouldn't have been any question in the late '70s that they were still awesome, and I think they'd still be seen as the rule for what makes a rock band. But for some of us they still count for a lot; we have other criteria as well, but we haven't forgotten them. It's about time someone got up and said something as crass as: Led Zep - ace! We're a great deal thinner...and we're slightly younger.. we don't wear flared trousers, although our sleeves have been known to get very similar... our hair? Pretty much the same overall, I'd say; Craig's looking good these days and Wayne's certainly letting it all hang out...we don't have such a big backline but our crew is certainly groovier...and we have the same backing of Warner Com. So we shall see!"

This extremely overt endorsement of a band considered as pariahs by most punk and post-punk fans was echoed by The Cult, who were rapidly moving in a “rawk” direction, for which the May 1985 single She Sells Sanctuary would be the catalyst, moving on to the distinctly heavier album Love in November of that year and the out-and-out Led Zep-obsessed follow-up Electric in April 1987. With both bands now citing Zeppelin as a major influence, it was inevitable that The Sisters would be asked about their West Yorkshire contemporaries in interview. In the fanzine Day of the Ray Gun Cometh, interviewer Louise (a noted fan of The Cult) at one point states “You’re often mentioned alongside The Cult..” to which Eldritch immediately retorts, “Not by us we’re not.” In the Kerrang! interview he went further, when reminded that the Bradford act were laying claim to the same heritage and asked what made TSOM’s claim more legitimate, stating "I'm wearing the hat! … We do no get on with Ian Astburys (The Cult) of this world, or the Andi Sex Gangs (Sex Gang Children), or the Alien Sex Fiends, or the Nick Caves (ex-Birthday Party) of this world; we do not get on with a good deal of people as it happens. …But the fact is we find The Cult intensely embarrassing... Billy Duffy apart; Billy, every time I meet you I think you're a great bloke and it's never embarrassed me to talk to you, OK? But Ian… ouch!" 

Astbury himself was much more magnanimous about The Sisters, bigging them up on his apearance on mainstream UK breakfast TV show TV-AM in September 1985 in this clip kindly uploaded to YouTube by "Travis Bickle". As Mark Andrews highlighted on Heartland Forum, Astbury highlights (at around 5 minutes 15 into the clip) bands like The March Violets and in particular singles out The Sisters for praise when talking about how the scene was beginning to take hold.

Whilst Eldritch’s own view was clear, Wayne Hussey’s excellent and highly readable recent autobiography Salad Daze sheds a slightly different light on the personal relationship between the two bands, which he traced back to his decision to go to see The Cult at the Dortmunder Bierkeller on the outside of the Merrion Centre (the large brutalist mall which was also home to the clubs Le Phono and Tiffany’s) on their debut tour under that nomenclature in May 1984 (the 13th to be precise) when The Sisters enjoyed a rare night at home in Leeds during their own first major UK tour. "Craig and I donned our glad rags and caught the bus into town to go and see ‘em. With introductions made we shared a few drinks with them after the show and that was the start of a long association with The Cult for Craig and I. Billy Duffy, in particular became a very good friend of mine over the next few years. Typically, the ‘Dritch absolutely deplored the fact that we were fraternising with a band he considered the enemy.”

It was Astbury rather than Duffy, though, who lead Hussey astray on the night before The Sisters of Mercy’s crowning glory, the Royal Albert Hall gig in London on June 1985 that would prove to be his and Adams’ last with the band. The Cult’s singer had arranged to pick Hussey up to go to see The Damned at Hammersmith Palais, but on getting into the taxi Hussey discovered that legendary hell-raiser Lemmy was also along for the ride. Those who have read the guitarist’s account of that night out (in which the gig itself features only tangentially) will be amazed that he managed to put on such a stellar performance the following night at the Royal Albert Hall gig recorded for posterity on the Wake video, particularly as he believes (or perhaps it was a slip of the pen) that the headliners at the Hammersmith Palais gig he attended were Killing Joke and not The Damned!

Leeds Student review of The Cult at Leeds University

Astbury and Hussey’s friendship had probably been cemented the previous month when The Sisters enjoyed a few nights off after the extensive and exhaustive European leg of the tour to support the release of First and Last and Always. By coincidence, The Cult were again in town, this time playing on 25th May at the Leeds University Union Refectory (main hall) in support of their chart-bound single She Sells Sanctuary. Released the previous week, rather than being an instant success, the song actually took some considerable time to make the top twenty, as chart positions of 68-50-43-41-41-35 and 30 over its first seven weeks of release will testify. One can only imagine the band (and record label)'s anguish when it stalled at no. 41 for two weeks, tantalisingly close to the all-important top 40 and the potentially breakthrough Top Of The Pops appearance that would go with it (although in fact this didn't happen until the song reached number 19 in mid-July!).

Once again, the sociable Hussey was unable to resist the opportunity to meet up with his new friends, an event recently recounted by fan Nick W on The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 Facebook fan page. “A group of us had tickets to see The Cult at Leeds Uni on the She Sells Sanctuary tour. We were stood on the steps outside the Uni and I saw a guy stood next to a purple Volvo and recognised him as Wayne Hussey. Me being a confident 18 year-old went over for a chat. Having seen The Sisters play at the same venue a couple of months earlier, I asked him what they had been up to. I thought he told me they had been to the USA but now looking at the dates he must have told me they were going to go to the USA.  He was very polite, but not very talkative. I went back to tell my mates I had just met one of the Sisters and thought nothing more of it. Then at the gig, Wayne came on with The Cult and played guitar - what a gig! I remember they played Moya at the end which was an old Southern Death Cult song and we being from Bradford were also massive fans.”

Hussey’s appearance on stage with another band – a rare event for one of the members TSOM at this time, although by the autumn Craig Adams would be moonlighting with The Dead Vaynes and Eldritch and Hussey would appear briefly with Skeletal Family in Hamburg during the ill-fated meet-up to salvage a way ahead - was also mentioned in the Leeds Student review of the gig: “The highlight of the evening was Wayne Hussey joining the band on stage for… guess what? … renditions of Wild Thing and Louie Louie, and horror of horrors, I really enjoyed it. Now there’s an admission,” confided reviewer “Clem Snide”. Thanks to the largesse of the doyen of the TSOM 8085 FB group, Phil Verne, we can all now understand Mr Snide’s reluctant enthusiasm via this audio extract from the gig. Astbury introduces his special guest thus: "Now then, he needs no introduction....Quiet then....We have to start this collaboration this evening because, basically, we couldn't sell enough tickets in Leeds (!) ..... because of this **** here…And so, just for you, for one evening only...I Wanna Be Your Dog." The Stooges’ classic has only a three-note riff, but on the introduction the second note is misplayed, hardly the most auspicious start, but the band recover well and after some lengthy and rather tedious teasing of the crowd, they finally arrive at the Moya finale. In between the two, the band had played a segue of Wild Thing and Louie Louie, with drummer Nigel Preston slowing down and speeding up the rhythm as appropriate, a novel experience for Hussey who had spent the last eighteen months playing over the metronomic precision (or mechanical failure) of Doktor Avalanche. The gig ticket displayed here is, unsurprisingly for regular readers, from the voluminous collection of the ever-generous LG.

The Cult would continue to play a large part in the lives of Hussey and Adams after the 1985 TSOM split, with the pre-Mission version of The Sisterhood supporting The Cult on tour in Europe in early 1986, and of course Craig Adams went on to become a member of the Bradford ensemble in the early/mid 1990’s for a while, featuring on bass on their self-titled double LP in 1994. Following The Cult’s mid-1980’s rock phase, Eldritch would return with his own goth metal iterations of The Sisters in the This Corrosion/Dominion/Lucretia, My Reflection/More/Vision Thing eras, and although TSOM eschewed many of the more obvious excesses of the Bradfordians’ Electric period, it was only by reverting to a more traditional 70’s rock sound that both bands were able to achieve the chart success that eluded them in their most creative and musically satisfying eras.

My thanks for this post are due to Phil Verne, to Robin and Mark, to Nick W, to LG and to others who contributed knowingly or unwittingly.