RSD vinyl release – The Sisters of Mercy – BBC Radio Sessions 1982-1984 (Warner/BBC)

Die-hard fans of The Sisters of Mercy have had slim pickings in the 36 years which have elapsed since the split which followed the band’s final 1980’s gig at the Royal Albert Hall on 18^th June 1985, an event covered in the most recent post on this blog. Whilst aficionados of other contemporary cult (no pun intended) bands have seen the vaults raided for previously unreleased tracks or alternate studio takes of know songs, apart from a couple of live B sides released on the flipsides of the two 12” versions of Dr Jeep in 1990 which were taken from 1984/5 bootlegs recorded at gigs in Bremen, devotees of The Sisters of Mercy’s 1981-1985 heyday had to wait until 2006 and the Rhino extended edition of First and Last and Always to hear something new, the Early (and very different) version of Some Kind Of Stranger, the sole escapee from the Eldritch archive from that era...until now. Whilst the Cadiz label continues to stall the vinyl re-release of The Sisterhood’s Gift, which originally looked as if it many contain additional, previously unreleased mixes, the announcement of this year’s Record Store Day releases shocked and delighted TSOM fans with the news that the band’s radio sessions for the BBC recorded for broadcast on Radio 1 in the UK in 1982, 1983 and 1984 would be issued as a double LP set on smoky (clearly a tongue-in-cheek reference to dry ice rather than the singer’s Marlboro addiction!) grey vinyl.

These recordings had existed in bootleg form in various formats (and with varying degrees of sound quality) over the past thirty-five years, most notably on the Psychedelic Sessions boot, and were recently added to digital streaming services. The vinyl release for Record Store Day last Saturday, limited to 4000 copies for the UK edition, saw fans queuing for hours for what was the first official album of previously unreleased material by the band since 1990’s Vision Thing, with scalpers also out in force in the hope of making a quick profit on the release, although the high recommended retail price (£42.99) will presumably reduce their margin somewhat. The price seems a little steep for what is only a three-sided release, especially as the US version retails for under half the price, and the coincidental (?) release of The March Violets’ BBC radio sessions (containing twice the number of tracks) on Jungle Records also retailed for roughly 50% of the cost of The Sisters’ set . Experts in sound reproduction will no doubt fully analyse the technical quality of the new Sisters release, but given the lack of liner notes on the new release, in this blog post we are going to examine in more detail the content of the sessions and the circumstances in which they were recorded.

BBC Radio Sessions had existed before John Peel’s programme, but became synonymous with the legendary DJ given the quality and range of artistes he was able to tempt into the studio for his Radio One shows. Long before the Sisters’ first session in August 1982, acts as diverse as Bob Marley and The Wailers, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Joy Division had accepted the challenge of recording four tracks in one day with a BBC in-house engineer and producer, and The Clash had famously walked out half-way through their day’s recording, allegedly giving the rather non-punk reason that the studio wasn’t good enough!

                                            (Maida Vale studios, London, UK)

When Andrew Eldritch led his band through the grand entrance to the BBC’s famous Maida Vale studios in West London, now a Grade II listed building, he must have felt that things were finally happening for a band which was already two years old, a long time indeed in the ever-changing fashions of the post-punk era. Many of his idols, from David Bowie to the Birthday Party via Motorhead, had recorded Peel sessions en route to success, and the studio itself, although disappointing technically to opportunistic, corporate punks like The Clash, was nevertheless a significant step up from Ric Rac Studios in Wortley and Ken Giles’ glorified shed in Bridlington which The Sisters were familiar with. With another AE hero John Ashton on board to produce their forthcoming new single Alice, and having just played prestigious support slots to The Birthday Party and The Clash, things seemed to be on the up as they entered studio 4 at Maida Vale where most Peel sessions were recorded (Maida Vale 1, the largest studio, being the preserve of the BBC Symphony Orchestra). Robin Dallaway of The Cravats, contemporaries of TSOM, gave an amusing insight into how Maida Vale was different to other studio settings in this memorable quote: “Entering the warren of studios and corridors was like stepping into another world, a kind of time-warped, Ealing Films kind of world where blokes in brown stockmen’s coats scurried around fixing stuff and plugging our gear in. It felt like a thrilling culture clash, taking our abrasive jazzy punk mash up sound into this genteel, serious world. It felt like being in school after hours, wandering the corridors, … sneaking into vast orchestral studios, weird rooms and cupboards and going to the canteen that felt like stepping back into the 1940’s. We loved it. Being invited to record a Peel session felt like a badge of honour, like a huge endorsement, it meant everything to us.” One can easily imagine former public schoolboy Eldritch revelling in such an atmosphere, but in fact the lack of control over the band's sound was a source of major frustration, as revealed in the band's 1990's fan magazine Underneath The Rock in response to a question from a fan (which were encouraged in a section entitled Correspondence Thing where Eldritch would reply directly to fan queries) regarding a potential release for the BBC Radio Sessions:

However, all in the Sisters’ own garden was not rosy. The singer’s pride would certainly have been wounded, and doubts about his own prospects would have arisen, by seeing his proteges The March Violets surpassing his own project’s level of success within the first few months of their own existence: not only had their debut four-track EP become the first Merciful Release to reach the independent charts that month, but they had been invited to record their own debut Peel session the previous month, doing so on the very day The Sisters supported The Birthday Party at the ZigZag Club, a mere ten minute walk away (no pun intended) in West London. In addition, Merciful Release continued to have funding problems which had resulted in the previous single (Body Electric/Adrenochrome) being released on CNT Productions, and according to an interview in Cartel magazine Masterbag published that month, the second Violets single looked as if it would also be released under that imprint (although Grooving In Green would ultimately also surface on MR in fact).

For that first Peel session, recorded on Wednesday 25^th August 1982 and first broadcast the following month, The Sisters were allocated the hugely experienced Roger Pusey as producer, who had been with the BBC since before the advent of Radio One in 1967, and would continue to work there on a variety of largely light entertainment shows over the rest of his career. Alongside him was the more youthful Mike Walter as engineer, and between them they successfully captured the essence of the band’s sound in the limited time available, with the broadcast versions now available on the new vinyl release of significantly higher quality than the band’s own demos (available as bootlegs), but not quite as polished as the versions of three of the featured songs (Alice, Floorshow and 1969) which were ultimately recorded with Ashton at the production desk and released later that Autumn (or on the 12” version the following Spring in the case of 1969). Eldritch’s vocals are rawer overall, and the Marx’s guitar sound punier and lower in the mix, but the buzz of Adams’ bass is rendered in full effect in particular on Good Things, the song which finally gets an authorised physical release this week after forty years as a fans’ favourite, despite Eldritch’s own apparent antipathy to the song.

The second session, recorded a month prior to the Gun Club tour on 6^th March 1983 (and first broadcast just four days later), was for the David Jensen show (the DJ having reverted to his full name rather than the “Kid” Jensen nickname which he had used in his earlier career, as he now sought to establish himself as a diviner of new independent talent after years of purveying chart fodder) which went on air between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on BBC Radio One, i.e. immediately prior to Peel’s own two-hour slot, and which played a narrower diet of “alternative” fayre than the hugely eclectic and personal mix the bearded DJ proffered. The major difference between Peel and Jensen’s shows was in terms of sound quality as much as musical diversity: Radio 1 did not have access to FM apart from certain weekend slots (such as the Top 40 countdown late on a Sunday afternoon) with the exception of John Peel’s nightly (Mon – Thurs) show, meaning that Jensen’s programme was transmitted only on Medium Wave (on 275 and 285 metres at that time) at a time of day when the signal was famously unreliable and subject to interference from the powerful transmitters of northern European stations, meaning that my own recording of this session in 1983 sounded as if the whole output was being phased through a flanger.

For this session, again recorded in a single day, the producer was former Bowie collaborator and ex-Mott The Hoople drummer Dale Griffin, and one can imagine keen music student Eldritch using Griffin as a source of anecdotes and advice as much as for sonic assistance. The band selected two tracks from the recently recorded Reptile House EP, Burn and Valentine, with Eldritch’s vocal a little pitchier on the latter and the backwards section somewhat different on the former on what are ostensibly very similar versions to those which were Merciful(ly) Release(d), along with a slightly shorter Heartland (which would surface later in the year as b-side to Temple of Love) and a stellar studio cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, which was briefly a high point of the band’s live show (although like other covers, is was retired early – in June of that year – so that it didn’t overshadow the band’s own compositions). The psychedelic swirl of the guitar, the Doktor’s metronomic beat and Eldritch’s impassioned vocal on this unlikely choice of song, which is the second (and final) song on the new release to finally get an official vinyl outing this year, make this retrospective an essential purchase for many fans of that era.

The final BBC session was recorded the following year on June 19^th 1984, two months after the band resumed activities after the five-month hiatus caused by the recruitment of Wayne Hussey and the signing of the WEA deal, but this time in Maida Vale 5, a smaller studio more recently used as Radio One’s Live Lounge. Recorded again for John Peel, who would sadly pass away aged 65 in 2004, the producer’s chair on this occasion was occupied by ex-Skrewdriver drummer (before the band embraced Nazi ideology) and future DJ Mark Radcliffe, who would brieflymake the unlikely move to Radio One breakfast show host alongside ex-Fall guitarist Marc “Lard” Riley over a decade later. Eldritch’s writing method is clear in the fascinating early version of No Time To Cry in particular, with the early verses not yet finalised, leading to an over-reliance on the “just a feeling” lyrical fragment and the singer’s own rather dubious falsetto vocals. That the song was in this state on the eve of entering the studio to record the band's debut album should have been a hint of the troubles which lay ahead. Walk Away, which would of course be the next single and also feature on FALAA, is in more finished form, the lyrics having been finalised during the European tour which preceded this recording, although the Doktor’s part and certain vocal inflections are different from the FALAA version, notably at the start of the chorus, as is the more muscular sound with Craig’s bass more prominent, leading to many fans preferring this version to that ultimately released by Warners. Like the previous sessions, the main brace of songs were accompanied by a future b-side Poison Door and a cover version, Hot Chocolate’s 1974 hit Emma, the centre-piece of the Sisters’ live set at this time, as the BBC often encouraged bands to try something slightly different for the Radio Sessions, to differentiate them from acts’ existing releases and offer something new to the audience. The version of Emma certainly captivated the Peel audience's attention and would become the only unreleased track in that year’s Festive Fifty (the listenership’s collective favourite songs of the year), but despite several attempts, the 84/85 line-up never managed to produce a studio version of this live favourite which they felt was worthy of release, although of course Eldritch did eventually release a virtually solo effort of the song (with Hugh Jones producing) as the b-side to Dominion three years later, ensuring the latter’s chart success as older fans flocked to finally get a vinyl rendition of Errol Brown’s masterpiece.

This session could have provided a rare opportunity for fans to hear someone other than Eldritch sing, as Gary Marx almost ended up doing the vocal for Poison Door, as he later told Glasperlenspiel: "I can remember singing Poison Door at the BBC for a session we were recording (because I’d just written it and I was teaching Andrew how it went). I came into the control room where the band and some of our friends were listening back to it – it sounded great. Andrew suggested leaving it with my vocal on, but I told him to have a go at a take and see what it sounded like. Needless to say as soon as he opened his mouth there was no contest. I was never a frustrated singer in those bands - I was frequently frustrated by the singers in those bands."  Marx had of course sung on two of the three songs on the debut single (Watch and Home of the Hit-Men), and Eldritch famously disliked singing others' lyrics (including, famously, Garden of Delight) except for those cover versions which he had personally selected, so Marx was pleased that his lyric had been accepted on this occasion without the need for changes by Eldritch. 

The BBC radio sessions were never destined for commercial release, although in the mid-1980’s Clive Selwood’s Strange Fruit label negotiated the vinyl release of many contemporary sessions, but sadly The Sisters never featured on their roster. The eventual release of these recordings in 2021 has seen a big response from the band’s continuing global fan base, raising hopes that more songs from the band’s considerable live and studio archive may one day see the light of day, with or without the singer's approval. In the meantime, the BBC Radio Sessions album will be released on CD at the end of next month.

My thanks for this post are due to Matthew F for sharing the Violets interview from Masterbag, to the legendary Lee EMWK for reminding me about the Poison Door anecdote, and to members of the unofficial 1980-1985 TSOM Facebook page for other comments.