This new post on the blog is yet another in a series about cancelled gigs which never took place in The Sisters of Mercy’s early 80’s heyday. With their star very much in the ascendancy, The Sisters of Mercy set off in the late summer and early autumn of 1983 for their first dates in mainland Europe and the USA, gigs which we have covered in earlier posts on this blog, which were an opportunity for the band to tighten up their live sound before their first main headlining tour in the UK, which was to be in support of what was always going to be their biggest selling single to date, Temple of Love.
Picture by Paul S of the 1980-1985 TSOM Facebook fan group
With the test pressings completed as usual by the Mayking
plant in France in August of 1983 for the release of both the 7” and 12” single
versions of Temple of Love, the first time that a new single of theirs had simultaneously been released in the two prevailing formats of the day including of course the significantly extended mix on the 12" (this was the year of Blue Monday after all), the band seemed poised to make their major
breakthrough on a national scale, but in the end, the single was released with
very little fanfare, despite achieving impressive sales figures which made it their first
number one hit in the UK Independent Chart.
That the accompanying tour was planned in some detail has been confirmed by this extract from a type-written letter from Andrew Eldritch to a fan back in the early summer, with the UK dates to straddle the two months of September (on the band’s US return) and October 1983, the tentative release date for Temple of Love. Incidentally, Eldritch has got his ex-Jam members mixed up, as it was drummer Rock Buckler's new band (Time U.K.) which The Sisters were on with in Sheffield, not Bruce Foxton's.
I personally have vivid recollections of seeing a TSOM gig
advertised in a list of forthcoming attractions at the legendary Rock City
venue in a local Nottingham newspaper during the summer of 1983, and of going to
the club the next day only to be told that tickets for the show were not yet on
sale. Before long, the gig was quietly dropped from the venue's schedule, and I have
never subsequently been able to track down the precise date for the gig,
tickets for which were priced at just £2.50, I recall.
The reason for the pulling of the proposed tour was, of
course, the sudden departure of second guitarist Ben Gunn, who had become
increasingly disillusioned with life in the band, as discussed by Eldritch in
one of the New York interviews just three days before the tour was due to have
started : "We've just cancelled a British tour that we were gonna go back
and do, because we need to write some new songs and restructure the band a
little. Ben's going, I don't know what we're gonna do about it, we could do
almost anything!" After a brief dabble as a label Svengali, promoting his
friends’ band Anabas, Ben Gunn withdrew from the back-biting world of the music
industry and became in some ways the Syd Barrett of goth, enjoying to this day a normal existence of work and family life in his native South of England, away from the crazed world
of goth fandom.
It was thought that one gig might have survived from the advertised UK trek. Allegedly taking place at Manchester’s Hacienda club, where the band had allegedly played a gig dressed fully in women’s clothing earlier in 1983 on the Gun Club tour (see above), although this may just be (we cannot but hope) NME humour and hyperbole extrapolating from Gary's choice of blouse that evening (and, as fellow Sisters fan Koen van T has reminded me, the tongue-in-cheek onstage apology made by Eldritch about the incident, the following night in Norwich).
This UK September survivor gig has long since been included in gigographies of the band, although there was and continues to be considerable scepticism about whether or not the gig went ahead, despite the existence of a poster advertising the gig alongside other future concerts at the legendary Manchester venue.
These doubts seem to have been largely removed, however, when Sisters fan Gary S looked into his archive and found a hand-written list (above) which he had penned, detailing gigs which he had attended in 1983/1984, with the September 22nd Hacienda not only clearly listed, but with a setlist attached –
Burn/Valentine/Anaconda/Heartland/Alice/Emma/Temple
Of Love/Floorshow/Adrenochrome/Gimme Shelter/Body Electric
When he shared this on the unofficial TSOM 1980-1985 Facebook fan page, group administrator Phil Verne pointed out that this is the
exact same track listing and in the same order as the New York Danceteria just
a week before, the 15th September, a recording of which only appeared in the
mid 1990’s. Whether this was a one off gig in the UK without Ben or whether it
was his swan song, or whether it took place at all, has not yet been formally
proven, however, and Mark Andrews’ outstanding recent biography of the band, Paint My Name In Black and Gold, is unequivocal about the fact that Gunn’s last
gig was the second Danceteria show in New York, with only the three overseas
dates (Stockholm, San Francisco and L.A.) being played at the end of the month,
once the band had had the time to work out a temporary Plan B.
Apart from the Rock City gig for which I personally saw an advert, other dates on the cancelled tour have emerged through flyers which have been shared on other Facebook pages in recent years. The most interesting are a pair of ads for the Tin Can Club based at Fantasy in Birmingham, where The Sisters would famously go on to play their first gig with Wayne Hussey on 7th April 1984. It appears that the Ben Gunn line-up had been booked to play at the same venue exactly six months earlier, listed as being on stage on Friday 7th October in the blurry blue image. Nearer the time, however, their place has been taken by Under Two Flags on the second (clearer) white flyer.
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The other date, midway between the Hacienda and the Tin Can gigs was due to take place on Friday September 30th according to the announcement listed on the bottom of this flyer from the Gala club in Norwich, which, like the Hacienda, had been a successful stop on the Gun Club tour in the spring of 1983, another gig already covered on this blog.
Clearly, other dates would have been sketched in – a hometown
Leeds date almost certainly, a return to Glasgow after the packed Night Moves
gig in April of that year, and a London show at the very least – but no
complete list has yet been assembled. Gary S’ hand-written notes do also refer
to a “cancelled” gig at Bradford University, but as he pointed out, in his own
short-hand this often meant that his own plans were cancelled, not the gig
itself, and it may be a reference to the May 1984 show at that venue.
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Almost certainly, the UK trek would have primarily visited
places where the band had a decent following (Birmingham being the most obvious
example outwith Yorkshire), and whilst gigs in Newcastle (with the Gun
Club) and Sheffield had been successful (and these cities would doubtless also
have received a return visit on this tour), dates in the south earlier in 1983
(such as Bournemouth and Swindon) had been far less well-attended, and as a
result there may well have been a northern bias to the tour overall. All this
remains speculation, with just Manchester, Birmingham and Norwich dates known
(in addition to the cancelled Nottingham gig from my own memory), but it is hoped that as more flyers emerge
from dusty attics and newspaper archives become digitised, other shows from
the cancelled UK sojourn will ultimately emerge…
My thanks for help with this post are once again due to Gary
S, Phil Verne, Paul S, Koen van T, LG and other members of the unofficial The Sisters of Mercy
1980-1985 fan group, where more information on this era is shared and discussed. New members and rare artefacts always welcome!
