The Sisters of Mercy and the Battle for the Heart of Punk

 Labelling or pigeonholing of artists into specific genres and the development of youth cults along these tribal lines was very well-established by the time The Sisters of Mercy emerged in the early 1980’s. As mentioned in the band’s own online biography and examined in much greater detail in Mark Andrews’ seminal Paint My Name in Black and Gold biography, The Sisters developed very organically out of the Leeds punk and post-punk scene of the late 1970’s, which was very loosely centred around gigs promoted by John Keenan under the F Club banner.

Whilst The Sisters remained true to the quintessential tenets of the early punk movement, with the DIY ethic extending beyond the usual rudimentary inability to effectively master instruments (a charge however which Gary Marx readily admits to) into the more political elements such as founding their own record label rather than (as most of the original punk icons ironically had) signing deals with major record labels and effectively working for “the man”, the music scene had fragmented considerably with a number of competing musical movements fighting for dominance.

The Futurist trend, with its more synth-based sound and (Bowie-obsessed) androgynous looks was spreading out from its Blitz club base in London into the UK provinces at the turn of the decade, with Soft Cell the most prominent exponents in Leeds, whilst the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (dominant in the West Midlands and North-East of England), moving back to simpler song structures (influenced by punk) as expounded by Black Sabbath and Motörhead also emerged in the very late 1970’s.

Add to this the Mod revival (especially in the broader South-East region), with fans of The Jam also following the many groups (Purple Hearts, The Chords, Squire etc) inspired by sharp-suited 1960’s Britpop as exemplified by The who and The Kinks, and the multi-ethnic Two-Tone ska revival (again in the West Midlands as well as London – Madness, the Specials etc), and the UK charts were awash with an eclectic mix of styles and influences, with British reggae acts (Aswad, Black Uhuru and, erm, Musical Youth), American rockabilly revival (Matchbox, The Stray Cats)  and Travolta-inspired disco acts all enjoying increased popularity.

The ever-changing musical landscape was summed up by the lyrics to old skool punk band Vice Squad’s 1981 track (Another) Summer Fashion, bemoaning the fickleness of youth as their own favoured genre, punk, became increasingly distant from the mainstream. (“1977, be a punk, 1978 be a mod, 1979, be a skin, 1980 another summer fashion…”).

The complex and seemingly fragmented and compartmentalised musical scene confused the music industry, with shorter-lived trends making investment in individual acts and scenes more risky, with bands able to seamlessly shift from being considered avant-garde cutting edge acts to mainstream megastars almost overnight (eg Adam and the Ants, The Human League) in a way that would seem impossible today.

The reality was that many teenagers were happy to dip in and out of different scenes, with the emerging Futurist/Alternative nightclubs finding that their punters wanted not just synthpop, but also the harder-edged sounds of post-punk, and most music fans were happy to profess affection for bands of different genres beyond tribal lines.

Andrew Eldritch himself, or rather Andrew Taylor, is an excellent example of this. A Motörhead/Hawkwind fan whose favourite record in his final year at school (according to an old schoolmate on the website Friends Reunited a few years ago) was apparently Rainbow’s Rainbow Rising, by the time he began his undergraduate degree at St John’s College, Oxford, he was a Bowie obsessive in the words of a fellow student. By the late 1980’s, with Leeds dominated by the agit-prop post-punk of Gang of Four, Mekons and Delta 5, Eldritch had naturally gravitated to this movement, following the musical zeitgeist, with his appearance also evolving along the lines of punk icon Joey Ramone.

With the benefit of hindsight, The Sisters of Mercy have not only been categorised as Goths (a label Eldritch has always fervently rejected), but often lauded as the de facto leaders or quintessential act of the genre. But in their early years, certainly pre-1984, a combination of factors (the band’s insistence on staying in the North) and the difficulty in squeezing them into any musical pigeonhole (with the band publicly distancing themselves from the Batcave posi-punks) can be seen as a significant factor in the music industry’s inability to recognise a major new talent despite rave live reviews, rapidly increasing sales and an ever-growing number of t-shirts and leather jackets sporting the famous head-and-star logo amongst the nation’s youth.

That The Sisters of Mercy were shunned by the punk scene from which they developed might be considered surprising, given that they clung to the DIY ethic longer than the vast majority of bands (Crass being a notable exception), but by the time the Sisters released their first record in December 1980, punk had itself fragmented. Whilst many of the original more opportunistic art school or ex r’n’b pub rock punk bands were still recording and making the charts at that time, they had moved away from the three powerchord blueprint to explore other genres (The Clash’s street reggae obsession being a prime example), leaving a gap exploited (pun intended) by working-class provincial acts who were almost a bleaker, no-nonsense, uncomplicated caricature of the original “can’t play” “no future” mantra, such as the bands on Bristol’s Riot City label (such as Vice Squad), Stoke’s Clay Records (GBH, Discharge), Nottinghamshire’s Rondelet Records (Anti-Pasti), and the main label likes of Angelic Upstarts, UK Subs and Cockney Rejects, not to mention the capital’s whole skinhead Oi movement with its (to my view as an outsider) strong British nationalist (i.e. racist) undercurrent. As the studded leather jacket and mohawk look became a more prominent punk uniform in shopping centres up and down the UK at this time, the music itself had also become less creative and more cartoonishly formulaic, meaning that the original shock and outrage had long since lost its lustre. (Incidentally, this would be mirrored in the late 1980’s with the second generation of “goth” bands gleefully adopting the epithet which the original artists shun to this day, and willingly draping themselves in the most obvious lyrical and visual tropes of the genre).

Derided “hippy” affectations and concepts which the Year Zero mentality of 1977 had seemingly blown away made a steady return for those prepared to move away from the “destroy” caricature of punk, with original punks Siouxsie and the Banshees, John Lydon’s P.I.L and Howard Devoto (ex-Buzzcocks, now Magazine) using more sophisticated time signatures and chord progressions to maintain the original excitement and novelty which punk had aroused in its listeners, earning the label “post-punk” at the time.

A further group of bands had independently taken these baby steps away from hardcore punk sounds and developed ideas further, such as Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Theatre of Hate and UK Decay, whose records and gigs would appeal to many of those who had originally been fans of bands from the darker side of punk, such as The Stranglers and The Damned.

On the other flank, The Exploited’s spring 1981 release Punk’s Not Dead was seen as a clarion call of defiance to those still clinging to the original punk ethic, but to more causal observers it appeared as a more desperate exercise in self-delusion, a counter-intuitive admission that the genre was in fact by now a busted flush.

Nevertheless, the phrase certainly galvanised elements of the music industry into believing that punk was a cash cow from which further filthy lucre could effectively be milked, the various Pistols releases from Sid Sings to The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle being high-profile examples of this phenomenon, and one further very tangible example of this was the launch of the glossy Punk Lives! magazine, which ran for eleven issues between 1981 and 1983, launched by the same publisher (the exclamation mark as well as the magazine format is the giveaway!) who was by then already enjoying success with the zeitgeist-riding metal-obsessed Kerrang!

The existence of this wonderful complete online archive of all eleven issues of Punk Lives!, combined with the known fact that The Sisters of Mercy were themselves at their artistic peak in the “golden years” of 1981-1983, allows us a retrospective insight into the complex scene at that time, and hints at reasons why the Leeds band’s rise to the top was slower than should have been the case.

Like Kerrang!, Punk Lives! was a tried and trusted mix of bedroom wall-friendly full page posters, band interviews, record and live reviews, and a lively letters page which makes for fascinating reading over four decades later.

Those familiar with the perennial tiresome “gatekeeping” debate amongst fans of what is currently described as “goth” on the contemporary scene (which in a nutshell means that fans of guitar-based “trad goth” deride darkwave Depeche Mode-inspired acts as “synth pop”, whereas fans of the latter would consign Sisters-influenced acts to the “heavy metal” category) will be saddened to learn that this mentality seems to be inherent in the inveterate music obsessive, as Punk Lives!’s readership let the editorial team know in no uncertain terms whether they should be focussing on more creative, “positive punk” artists like Southern Death Cult or Sex Gang Children, or whether these make-up wearing clothes horses should instead be banished from the magazine’s pages.

The front covers of each issue certainly give some indication of the very broad spectrum of bands contained within – would fans of The Danse Society be interested in Resistance ’77? – and this growing rift as the newer bands began to prosper was probably a reason for the magazine’s eventual folding, hastened by the positive punk lurch of (“new”) ZigZag magazine in autumn 1983. The divide is best summed up in issue 4 of Punk Lives! by guest journalist Al A of fanzine Kill Your Pet Puppy, who traces the dichotomy back to “1980: What was there? The Psychedelic Furs, The Cramps, Bauhaus: music without morals. Crass: morals without music.” A square the Punk Lives! journalist team vainly continued to attempt to circle, a financial necessity apparent after the lengthy absence between issues 2 and 3 with a (coincidental?) lurch away from traditional punk towards greater inclusion of what would retrospectively be termed “goth” bands.

Astonishingly, looking back through the editions, even though most of the proto-goth bands get frequent mentions in Punk Lives! as the editor attempted to ride several horses at once, The Sisters of Mercy merit only one mention throughout the eleven issues, a brief and not particularly informative review of the Anaconda single in the spring of 1983.

The Sisters should have been ideal fodder for the magazine, with a singer (still pre-hat) who would appeal visually to old Ramones fans, and an incendiary live show that was blowing established punk bands off-stage at gigs. Other bands of similar standing at the time – who, one might cynically add,  would have enjoyed the plugging of bigger record labels - fare significantly better. Alien Sex Fiend for example feature in five issues of Punk Lives! with live reviews, an interview and a poster as well as two cover mentions. Xmal Deutschland also feature in five issues and get the poster treatment, whilst Sex Gang Children, Theatre of Hate/Spear of Destiny, (Southern) Death Cult, Flesh for Lulu and even Skeletal Family feature significantly more prominently than TSOM, who had of course been cover stars of Sounds already by December 1982.

Ultimately, the real reason for The Sisters’ lack of column inches is revealed during the Punk Lives! interview with New Model Army, with Justin (still known by the DHSS-confusing nickname of Slade the Leveller in those days) in particular explaining very coherently the essential laziness of London-based journalists and labels who thought that talent would naturally beat a path to their door, an attitude deeply entrenched in the much-loathed (in the North, at least) editor of the first issue of Punk Lives!, the Oi-championing London-centric Garry Bushell. The NMA interviewer, “Old Shatterhead”, sadly dismisses the whole North v South issue as “pretty much old hat, one of those interview subjects which tends to arise now and again.” But instead of perhaps contemplating why that might be the case, Justin’s patient explanation that “it does create a bit of bad feeling” and the irony of the interview with the Bradford band taking place in a London pub is seemingly lost.

With gig reviews being based on shows in the capital or, somewhat randomly, at the Gala in Norwich (one of the journos visiting his parents on expenses?), Punk Lives! was destined to appeal mainly to London-based readers or those wanting to wallow in 1977 nostalgia, as provincial UK82 streetpunk scenes were also largely ignored as the magazine failed to move with the times.

The same charges of being both out-of-touch and somewhat obviously desperately searching for an audience (presumably no coincidence...) can also be levied at some of the other glossy music mags at the time. Although ZigZag magazine had always been always been a broad church, some of the issues by the early 80's would have struggled to find a regular readership amongst audiences who were increasingly identifying with sub-tribes. It's hard to imagine fans of Wham! being keen on reading about the Virgin Prunes, or Belle Stars aficionados being keen to find out more about UK Dekay (sic) in the July 82 issue, and the similarly eclectic mix of November that year (Dollar and the Damned? Bauhaus and Shalamar anyone?) continued a decline which continued until the magazine went "full goth" under Mick Mercer's stewardship in October 1983. 

Another somewhat bizarre and short-lived publication of that era which didn't survive into 1983 was Noise! (it's that exclamation mark again!), which eventually merged with the Record Mirror, having failed to find an audience for it's claimed holy trinity of "Pop, Punk and Metal", the middle genre sadly once more largely restricted to the skinhead and mohican bands of that era on the pages within, although some of the newer bands did feature, as can be seen from this great Kirk Brandon cover from the spring of 1982 (a couple of months after the infamous wobbly mic TOTP performance had briefly made them the talk of the nation's living rooms). Needless to say, The Sisters did not feature within Noise!'s glossy pages...

Whilst TSOM were featured in the Washington Post and other well-respected national media in the US throughout their 1983 to 1985 tours, and Temple of Love would garner a half-page review (see below) in Belgian’s high circulation comic strip magazine Tintin Weekly (Kuifje Weekblad), the Sisters were largely ignored by even the specialist music media in the UK even after signing to Warners in 1984, with their only UK TV appearance coming after Gary Marx had ultimately left the band and the first coverage by mainstream national papers tragically only beginning with the Royal Albert Hall gig, the original band’s last rites).

Andrew Eldritch’s own intransigence and frustrations when it came to the London-based music industry were clearly contributing factors when it came to the lack of wider exposure which the band should have been able to command in 1982 and 1983, but the music media industry itself, and its inability to spot what was happening around the country, as seen through the prism of the short-lived Punk Lives!, was clearly the major issue.

 My thanks for this post are due (once again) to TSOM fan and archivist Ade M for the Tintin cutting, to Tony P for the My Archive FB collection of magazines of the era and to the curators of the excellent Punk Lives! archive,  which is well worth a browse. Those with a keen interest in the early years of The Sisters of Mercy are most welcome to join the unofficial Facebook group covering that era.

 

 

Book Review - The Art of Darkness - The History of Goth by John Robb

2023 will surely be looked back upon as the year of the “Goth book”, with Heady Daze, the second volume of Wayne Hussey’s autobiography hot off the press, publications on the wider movement promised by journalist Cathi Unsworth and The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst, and this wide-ranging 540 page tome intriguingly entitled The Art of Darkness - The History of Goth by musician, journalist and media personality John Robb. But is the latter volume an essential purchase for die-hard fans of The Sisters of Mercy?

As bassist in the Membranes, the agit-punk Blackpool band since (on and off) the late 70’s, a time when he also founded his seminal Blackpool Rox fanzine, and in addition to his more modern Louder Than War website and magazine and his other books on music, Robb is a well-loved and respected media talking head on cultural and musical affairs.

The natural musical enthusiast has therefore been a keen follower and student of the alternative musical scene since the beginnings of what became later referred to as “goth”, and the fact that he was an active observer of the North of England alternative music milieu at the very time The Sisters of Mercy developed, allied to his band’s more recent touring experiences of the current iteration of Eldritch’s band, mean that he is in a unique position to comment on the band’s standing within and importance to the goth movement.

Crucially, most followers of “goth” in the 1980’s would not have considered Robb’s band or fanzine to be particularly relevant to the scene, as both seemed to focus on a more fundamental, angular and overtly political version of the punk and post-punk scenes, and it is this slight detachment whilst being so close to the epicentre of the scene itself which enables Robb to avoid some of the pitfalls of the rabid fan writer, leaving no place as a result for sycophancy or favouritism.

An outstanding fictional opening chapter (entitled "Floorshow"!), in which a young goth couple are followed through the stages, sights, tastes, sounds and smells of a typical night out in a goth club in a town in Northern England in the early mid-80’s reveals that Robb has both a real eye for detail and a way with words, recreating with ease an authentic ambiance which nostalgic elder goths will readily recognise (“Nighclubbing was the beating heart of goth … the audience was now the dark star!”). Any expectations that it will be Bela, Bats and Banshees all the way from here until Von’s inevitable appearance are immediately dashed by an impressively grandiose and ambitious attempt to examine the origins and development of the darker side of culture over several millennia, whether in literature, art, music or architecture. From Coleridge to Crowley, Dionysus to Nietzsche, Ragnarok to Artaud, Carl Orff to Screaming Lord Sutch, it's all there. This Wagnerian undertaking means that the reader has to wade through several hundred dense pages of impressively researched and linked cultural pre-history before the sacred cows of 1980’s goth music eventually get their own biographical chapters. As a history of alternative culture, it’s impressive stuff, but those who buy the book to read about The Sisters, Nick Cave and Killing Joke will be growing increasingly impatient as the interesting but not always directly relevant chapters continue to pass.

The book therefore loses its thread somewhat as the obsessive Robb disappears down cultural rabbit-holes, giving disproportionate amounts of space to artists who may have had a key role in the development of alternative culture as a whole, but whose relevance to what most potential purchasers of the book would consider to be “goth” music is incredibly tangential.

This criticism would be invalid were the scenes of the 1980’s/1990’s and beyond covered in similar detail, but bands which readers of this blog might consider to be key players at different times in the development of what became known as “goth”  – UK Decay, say, The Rose of Avalanche or Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – are dismissed in a couple of sentences or a mere mention en passant, far less space than the likes of Robert Johnson and Pink Floyd are accorded.

Having said that, it would be impossible to write about The Sisters without due reference to Iggy, Bowie, Bolan, The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Hawkwind, Cockney Rebel et al, and Robb excels in drawing together these different threads and their essential role in the development of goth, with a particular focus on Bowie. He is also correct to stress the links (largely fuelled by Bowie obsession) between the synth-based New Romantic scene and the guitar-based post-punk bands whose music was played back-to-back in the alternative clubs of the early 80’s, mirroring the current scene’s darkwave/coldwave divide.

With the very lengthy pre-History over, Robb finally arrives in the late 1970’s and after a chapter on the North/South divide based on contrasting analysis of The Batcave in London (where all the bands knew each other, as had been the case in punk) and The Phono in Leeds (in the northern region where bands like The Sisters, The Danse Society – largely overlooked here, New Model Army and Joy Division all developed independently of each other), we eventually arrive at the chapter entitles "First, Last and Always" on The Sisters of Mercy and the Leeds “scene”, such as it was.

Most of the chapters on the main players of the 1980’s scene (The Damned, Bauhaus, the Banshees et al) are enlightened by Robb’s own interviews with band members, some previously unseen, and so it is with TSOM. As well as some familiar quotes from Eldritch, there are extensive quotes in the twenty-six page chapter from a new interview with Gary Marx, who is as laconic, pithy, incisive and generous as ever, and these alone are worth the price of admission for the Sisters obsessive (sample quotes “Floorshow remains the peak of Mk 1 Sisters for me”; on why he called a halt to the FALAA sessions: "He was my friend, and he was ill"; and on a fourth member upsetting the band equilibrium: "it mattered not whether it was Ben or Wayne, really."). Robb successfully conveys the main reasons for the band’s enduring appeal, based on both image and music, and as with other artists his own enthusiastic admiration for the band is as clear as it is contained and proportionate.

Of other bands linked to The Sisters, The Gun Club and Suicide get similarly effective summaries, whilst anyone whose knowledge of some of the more fringe media-ignored players on the alternative scene is scanty, for example DAF, Coil, Throbbing Gristle and Laibach, will certainly find the book highly educational, and this wider context makes it easier to see the central role which TSOM played as the “goth” tag began to stick by goth’s annus mirabilis, 1985.

Like the movement as a whole, the latter two-thirds of TSOM’s forty-plus year career is barely focussed upon in Robb’s treatise, and those attracted by the tome’s main title, The History of Goth, may be disappointed to learn that it is largely a pre-History of Goth with a few potted biographies enhanced by interview snippets, with only a brief, half-hearted examination of the last three decades which seems like a succession of lists with very little analysis, despite attempts to briefly cover Europe and the US in chapters which seem like add-ons.

Robb’s book is therefore like most goth music itself, imperfect (there are many typos in this first edition), sprawling and sometimes lacking in focus but at the same time it is undeniably an epic work from the mind of a creative genius. Like any list of the most important goth songs/albums/artists, by the very nature of a scene which didn’t coin its own name or rules, there will always be considerable disagreement about any book on this history of the scene’s terms of remit, and Robb’s take on this is arguably more valid than most, but had the book’s title been “A History and Pre-History of 1980’s Goth”, the book would have received the more unanimously positive reviews that Robb’s ambitious, informative and highly readable account merits.

John's excellent book, which helps to place The Sisters of Mercy within the wider rock pantheon, as Eldritch would demand, as well as cementing their reputation within the upper echelons of the gothic musical universe, can be obtained here.