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.