Forty Years Ago Tonight: The Sisters of Mercy played a gig at the Paradiso, Amsterdam (14/04/1985)

 Forty years ago tonight, The Sisters of Mercy played their only Dutch date of 1985 at the legendary Paradiso in Amsterdam, and it’s pleasing to be able to report that both the band and the converted church concert venue are still going strong four decades later. For The Sisters, it was the third night of the Armageddon tour in Europe, a mere 97 mile drive from the indoor festival in Genk (Belgium) the previous night, with the promise of a blank (travel) day thereafter. As the band acclimatised to life on the road as a trio, the set list continued to change for every gig at this stage, with Train promoted to final encore for this show.

Gig poster courtesy of LG

Listening back to a YouTube audio of The Sisters’ performance at the gig, the impact of Gary Marx’s departure is ironically most clearly heard on Wayne Hussey’s own compositions, with Marian, Walk Away and No Time To Cry sounding “thin” with just the one guitar in the mix, although Hussey gamely tries to play both parts on the latter. Earlier, more frenetic songs, such as the Alice, Floorshow and Body Electric trilogy towards the end of the main set fare much better, but on other tracks from First And Last And Always, such as the title track and A Rock And A Hard Place, Eldritch’s struggles with his vocal range are more apparent in the more spartan sound, although with less aural competition, Craig Adams’ funked up basslines on Body & Soul and Possession get even more opportunity to shine.

Rarely for this tour there was a notable support act in the shape of Folk Devils, who (like Australian band The Scientists who had provided support on the then recently-completed UK tour) were signed to the Karbon Records imprint of Nick Jones, who had been in charge of The Sisters of Mercy’s London office in Notting Hill. Incidentally, Gary Marx’s next project, Ghost Dance, would also sign with Jones’ Karbon imprint. Featuring firebrand frontman the late Ian Lowery (previously singer with punk band The Wall), Folk Devils were enjoying some success at that time with their Fire And Chrome EP which features the track English Disease, and they enjoyed hanging out at the gig with The Sisters according to bassist Mark Whiteley, who offered this anecdote when asked to recount a touring memory in an online interview a decade ago: “Getting drunk with Andrew Eldritch and Al, Folk Devils’ drummer at the time, in a room that had been a Gestapo torture chamber with Al insisting on calling Andrew, Dave all night. “So Dave, do you like bein’ in this f***in’ band of yours then?”  Eldritch looks up and says “Do you think I’d wear this stupid f***in’ hat if I didn’t like bein’ in this f***in’ band."  T’was a moment of hilarity.” You probably had to be there…

Photo of Eldritch shared on the 1980-1985 FB group, photographer unknown

This gig was the first attended by noted Dutch fan Bert Mayenburg, who for many years has run his own website devoted to the band and their shows which he has attended down the decades (and continues to attend). For this Paradiso concert, Bert tracked down some excellent photos of the band on stage which can be seen on his website, which were taken by photographer George Bekker.

One of George Bekker’s shots of the gig on Bert Mayenburg’s highly recommended website

Maria Moore was another fan present, and she took these wonderful pictures of the fog-free soundcheck, which she kindly shared on Facebook. These clearly show the ecclesiastical interior which was the perfect backdrop for the band (and it was a Sunday after all), and the venue’s natural high ceiling allowed the sound to erm, rise and reverberate.

Two great shots from the soundcheck (no dry ice!), courtesy of Maria Moore

Another fan who attended the gig, Tomas Rejda commented on The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 unofficial Facebook fan group: “I was there too and I was lucky to get the poster too in my possession. Don't remember much about Folk Devils. But the gig was fantastic, purple haze with the logo zooming in and out of the smoke....”

But if fans loved the band’s performance, the reaction from the Dutch press was arguably the most negative the band had encountered to date, possibly partially as a result of the band’s reneging on other potential dates in the Netherlands. In the large circulation national daily De Volkskrant, the late Peter Koops reveals at the start of his review that this sole Dutch date at the Paradiso should have been followed by other dates in the country, but that the band had received a better offer from Germany and cancelled them. This would explain why the band were advertised to be playing a gig at Spuugh venue in Vaals on May 12th, a show which never took place, and other gigs in the Netherlands had similarly been pencilled in, at the Vrije Vloer in Utrecht on May 8th, and return trips to Rotterdam’s Arena on 10th May and Den Haag’s Paard van Troje the following evening. During that second week in May, the band in fact played a further six dates in West Germany, having already completed seven shows in the country immediately after the Paradiso gig.

Full list of planned Dutch dates from Het Parool newspaper, published at a time when the gigs had already been replaced by concerts in West Germany

The De Volkskrant review reveals that the Paradiso show was a near sell-out, but that it was not all good news, as the band’s tour van was broken into that evening. Like many contemporary reviewers, Koops bemoans the sheer amount of dry ice, so much so that “the group’s logo, projected onto four round screens, was barely visible.” In silhouette, Andrew Eldritch and Wayne Hussey, with their “black leather, their fashionably ripped jeans, dark sunglasses and hats” appeared to Koops to have made detailed studies of the Sandeman figure, “the man in the cape”. Because of the on-stage fog, it was only some way into the gig that Koops realised that Gary Marx was not present, and the well-informed writer quotes conflicting accounts for his absence (according to the band, Marx had missed the ferry, but the rumour circulating was that he had been sacked on the eve of the tour). Koops found the set highly derivative (of Joy Division) and found the cover versions no relief, going as far as to feel “vicarious embarrassment” at the cover of Gimme Shelter. He did however enjoy the “kaleidoscopic lighting effects” during Amphetamine Logic, “the anthem of a band known to be heavy users”, a blunt accusation one cannot imagine escaping the sub-editor’s blue pencil in the UK, if my rudimentary translation skills are correct. The journalist also felt that the lukewarm applause didn’t merit the lengthy encores which followed, especially the closing b-side Train, which was typical of the “monotonous doom-disco” (a phrase with which his review was titled) of the whole evening, before his parting shot: “It was a sign of the sense of humour of those in charge of the music at the Paradiso that immediately after all that artificially gloomy misery, they blasted ABBA’s banally cheerful Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight).” Presumably Koops was unaware that this was a previous Sisters cover version, played regularly at gigs the previous year, but he appreciated the contrast all the same.

Interesting comment on Amphetamine Logic in De Volkskrant. It’s hard to imagine such a comment being made in a UK newspaper at that time.

A second newspaper NRC Handelsblad (which is widely regarded as the “newspaper of record” in the Netherlands according to Wikipedia) had a correspondent, Jan Vollaard, at the gig, and his heading “Sisters of Mercy undone by humourless posturing” (again, I may be losing something in translation) indicates that the band is in for another bashing. This time, Eldritch is accused of copying David Bowie, a common charge which could have been made against most singers of the early 80’s, and The Sisters are accused of offering nothing new - “leaden doom rock from the prophets of doom.” Gary Marx’s absence is again commented upon, as it “drew attention to the banality of Wayne Hussey’s performance, ranging from heavily accented minor chords to finger exercises on the level of Farmer, There’s A Chicken In the Water” [a nursery rhyme whose simple five tone up and down scale forms the traditional first piano lesson]. Like Koops, Vollaard was equally unimpressed by both the band’s own compositions and their cover versions, and ended with a withering flourish: “There was plenty of smoke….but no fire was to be found.” Whilst less informative the the De Volkskrant review, the NRC Handelsblad piece was at least accompanied by an excellent photo, thanks to Lex van Rossen.

Atmospheric photo by Lex van Rossen from NRC Handelsblad

 A third newspaper, Het Parool (an Amsterdam daily paper) also covered the show, and if anything the review by Peter van Brummelen was even more damning, proclaiming three songs in that he knew that the gig would be a “long-winded event” rather than a “thrilling evening”. Believing that ‘positive punk’ (a proto-goth movement the Sisters were often lumped in with) was a mixture of doom, psychedelia and heavy metal, van Brummelen could hear traces of Joy Division, the Velvet Underground and Black Sabbath in the Leeds band’s sound. Whilst he thinks that on record this can yield “fairly interesting results”, on stage the band were “a downright horror”, “a bunch of pathetic poseurs” of whom drum machine Doktor Avalanche “shows the most character.” Eldritch’s look (“a degenerate Sandeman”), lyrics (“cliché-laden, about death, decay and other ‘scary things’”) and vocal style (“devoid of melody”) come in for the most personal criticism this side of Wayne Hussey’s infamous review of Gift, and for van Brummelen the band failed to create any sense of “tension” or an “ominous atmosphere.”

Het Parool’s review descends into character assassination!

These negative reviews, by three highly-respected music journalists it must be said - Van Brummelen and Vollaard are in fact still employed by the same newspapers to this day - are perhaps typical of the reaction of some of the more mainstream music fans stumbling across the Sisters ‘live’ for the first time, bewildered or frustrated by the shrouds of dry ice, aurally assaulted by the relentless pulse of Doktor Avalanche, and bemused by the crow-like figure with the sepulchral voice fronting it all. Whilst an amused Eldritch had enjoyed a wry smile whilst observing the clientele of the Warehouse club as retold in the lyrics of Floorshow, it was becoming clear that the 1985 version of the band would provoke a mixture of distaste, boredom and revulsion from some of those whose usual musical preferences resided within narrower or more traditional parameters, and this perhaps explains why greater commercial success remained beyond their grasp at this stage.

My thanks for this post are due to the photographers, collector LG, Phil Verne of the 80-85 FB group, and Maria Moore, Tomas Rejda, Bert Mayenburg and other members of that FBgroup quoted above.

Rare rediscovered 1981 fanzine reveals fascinating insights into the early days of The Sisters of Mercy

 With well over forty years having passed since the Ben Gunn era of The Sisters of Mercy, it’s a rare day that something new from those days turns up, and items from the pre-Gunn era are even rarer. So when the Tumblr blogger and fanzine archivist ‘stillunusual’ posted some more fanzine covers from the early eighties in his Flickr album, one item immediately caught my attention — the cover of a York fanzine, Getting Nowhere Fast, first published in 1981 and with a list of contents which included “a band called Sisters of Mercy”. 

A previous York fanzine (Beaten to the Punch) on stillunusual’s site contained the previously unknown review of The Sisters’ legendary first gig supporting The Thompson Twins (covered in a previous post on this blog), so I was intrigued to see what the content of this new fanzine might be.

As before, the curator of stillunusual responded very positively and quickly to my request for a scan of this particular ‘zine to be uploaded to his site, kindly agreeing to add it to the list of publications which he would be adding in 2025. Getting Nowhere Fast (named after a single by contemporary Leeds band Girls At Our Best) had a second brief mention of TSOM on page two, which included further details of the contents of that edition, promising “an interesting article about Leeds band The Sisters of Mercy.”

The article itself seems to be a manifesto penned by Andrew Eldritch (then still Taylor) himself, beginning with the constant - over the past forty years - refusal to align the band to “any musical faction” with the statement that they “categorically refuse to compromise themselves to any such party.” This point had already been made in the début interview with Whippings and Apologies a few months earlier, and forty years of denial later, Eldritch steadfastly clings to the concept of musical isolation.

The usual inspirations get an outing - Stooges, Motörhead, and the band all three members of The Sisters at that time were equally fond of, MC5 - with the city of Detroit (home to two of the aforementioned bands) preferred as a key “reference point”. More of which later.

The sound is described as “an apocalyptic union of fuzz and echo”, a highly appropriate description of the grungy bass-heavy backing and the singer’s reverberating yelps, as those who have heard the so-called ‘Gary Marx’ demo tape or any of the live shows from that era will testify. The October 1982 Leeds Student review of the band’s support slot to The Psychedelic Furs would begin with the phrase “Fuzz and Feedback”, still therefore an apt description of the band’s sound over a year later.

Eldritch was always keen to emphasise Craig’s fundamental importance to the band’s overall sound - indeed, he usually dismissed the pre-Adams début single Damage Done as being effectively the work of a different band - and in this early manifesto he puts the bass front and central, saying that “the live sound revolves around Craig’s bass.” Marx’s guitar work comes in for some tongue-in-cheek criticism, as it “rarely manages …to stay in the same key as the bass”, with the relationship between the two being described as “tangential“! Trying to remain impartial, the vocals are described as a “primal scream” which “always overrides” the best efforts of the singer to “say something coherent”.

Interestingly, the author then slips into first person (plural) mode, effectively confirming that these are indeed the band’s own spokesperson’s words, when describing the differences between the band’s sound for live gigs as opposed to in the studio. This is apparently due to the fact the band “never rehearse”, although the St John’s Terrace rehearsal tape from that era would suggest that this as not strictly the case. The next section of the article is for me the most fascinating, and sums up some of the genuine thrill of watching the band in their pre-WEA days. “Having learnt the basis of a songs we get on stage and work round it. This can be exhilarating or truly abysmal. It means playing by instinct, something that other bands shy away from. It means walking a tightrope: to reach the other end is a colossal achievement (and wonderful to behold)”, an image that Eldritch would return to three years later in the song On The Wire. This “let’s just jam it and see how it goes” philosophy remained in tact throughout the 1981-1985 period (despite the band’s ever-increasing professionalism) in terms of the final song, most often a jam of Louie Louie, Ghost Rider, Sister Ray or a combination of two of these songs.

The piece ends with the fact that the band uses a drum machine “at present, awaiting the return of Frederick “Hammer” Kinski, the legendary fourth Sister and drummer, currently doing five years in a German prison following an incident at a German ‘ceremony’ which we were invited to in Bavaria.” Whilst this invention of a named fictitious drummer is undoubtedly an in-joke for the singer’s own amusement, at that time there had indeed been a plan to recruit a human drummer to supplement Doktor Avalanche. 

A copy of the band’s first promo photo from the archive of Howard Thompson is inscribed on the back with the names of the band members as they were styled in 1981, as is the case in this fanzine piece: Eldritch at this stage was simply A, Mark had already adopted the pseudonym Gary Marx, and Craig Adams (refusing to use a nom-de-plume) was simply Craig! The singer is also credited with rhythm guitar in both lists at this stage, although this was solely for the studio, but the hand-written addendum confirms the plan to have live percussion in addition to Doktor Avalanche, but as Mark Andrews has confirmed in Paint My Name In Black And Gold, this proposal never came to fruition. The second guitarist at this stage for live shows incidentally was still Dave Humphrey, with Ben Gunn not joining until the following year.

The fanzine ‘manifesto’ is accompanied by a not hugely impressive drawing of Spiggy, as Eldritch was sometimes referred to at that time (before passing the name on to a cat), and a rather more disturbing drawing (in Eldritch’s hand?) with the legend “Hi there, disease lovers”, an attempt at horror/shock rock? The wavy cross on this item is the same as Eldritch had drawn on the band’s 1981 demo tape commonly referred to as the “Gary Marx tape.”

With another article filling the bottom half of that page, that seemed to be the end of the fanzine’s coverage of The Sisters, so it was a huge surprise to scroll to the next page and find a whole page of information again personally crafted by Eldritch using his calligraphy and graphic design skills.

There is much to dissect here:

 - The page begins with a playlist of Eldritch’s favourite songs, many of which have been subsequently referenced elsewhere. In Mark Andrews’ Paint My Name In Black And Gold, Gary Marx mentions Patti Smith’s Ain’t It Strange as being one of the songs he and the then Andy Taylor had bonded over, excitedly comparing the minor differences between different bootleg recordings of the song, a phenomenon with which most readers of this blog will be able to identify! Marx also referred to himself, Craig and Wayne as being the “dum-dum boys” when discussing different narratives that had been put forward about the 1985 split in a 2003 interview with Glasperlenspiel. Louie Louie would have course be covered by the band ultimately, whilst Eldritch has frequently namechecked Pere Ubu (“my favourite gig ever”) as being a primary influence on him forming a band. The final choice, Bowie’s Panic in Detroit not only references another of his idols whom he would get to interview in the 1990’s but the song title again pays tribute to the American city he felt the closest affinity with (and where the infamous “Sassy Cat” band photograph would be taken three years later). Detroit was the home of the American automobile industry (Motor City, Motown etc) which notably included the manufacturer Pontiac which is namechecked in the next line. Two years later, Pontiac was also inexplicably thanked on the label of the 1983 single, Temple of Love. and the Monkeemobile which featured in 1985’s Black Planet video was the company’s GTO model, but the car referred to here, the auto giant’s monstrous 6.6 litre engined trans am muscle car, had been the star of the 1977 surprise hit Burt Reynolds comedy road film Smokey and the Bandit, and Eldritch was clearly enamoured of the vehicle with what some might describe as somewhat gothic black paintjob, even more so than Red Shark, the rented Chevrolet Caprice convertible which was central to Hunter S Thompson’s 1971 classic Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. 

-The next section contains segments of the lyrics to the song Floorshow, a key track on the 1981 demo tape and a song which was still a year away from release. Eldritch was clearly as proud of the lyric as he would be of the track itself, which is also still Gary Marx’s favourite song (as told to Mark Andrews in an interview for The Quietus), with Craig’s inimitable fuzzbox bass in full effect.

-This section also mentions that the next gig as being the Futurama festival show on 5th September 1981. As The Sisters were a relatively late addition to the bill, and that there is a stop-press elsewhere in the fanzine regarding the band Orange Juice which is dated August 1981, it is clear that the fanzine dates from that month.

-Eldritch’s graphic art on this lower half of the page is also fascinating. Most obviously, there is a unique attempt at a different Merciful Release star, possibly an attempt to create different logos for the label and the band. The 3D effect is something which Eldritch would return to for other alternative graphic work, both with the “Andrea White” artwork in the 1990’s (if speculation on Heartland Forum is to be believed, this was possibly another Andrew Taylor pseudonym) and with the more recent head and star logo for the current iteration of the band. Amongst the shapes in the margins is a diamond pattern not dissimilar to that later adopted by Sisters protégés Salvation, whilst the wobbly cross gets another outing for the “rise and reverberate” label slogan at the bottom of the page. 

-The final written slogan refers back to issues flagged up on the previous page. “Free Frederick Kinski” is a reference to the allegedly incarcerated apocryphal Sisters drummer (Eldritch has spoken elsewhere of his admiration for the actor Klaus Kinski), whilst “Lock up Wayne Kramer” refers to the MC5 frontman who had in fact served jail sentences for drug offences in the 1970s.

Artefacts hand-written by Eldritch from the band’s early days are particularly rare, so this very welcome new discovery is further evidence of the singer’s single-minded determination to construct a convincing narrative for the band, and also of his own talent as a graphic artist. Together with the printed article, it provides further evidence of key influences as well as an insight into the band’s approach to rehearsals, which may help to explain why gigs in the early years wee such an exhilarating experience for both band and fans alike.

My thanks for this post are due primarily to the stillunusual fanzine archive. Thanks again for uncovering this hidden treasure and sharing it with us. Thanks also to Howard Thompson and to collector LG. I would be very interested to learn of the significance of any of the other graphics on the hand-written page, or further details about the Frederick Kinski character.

Recommended for fans of early Sisters of Mercy:

• the venerable Heartland Forum
• Phil Verne’s The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 unofficial Facebook fan page 
• Mark Andrews’ biography of the band’s early years, Paint My Name In Black And Gold
• Trevor Ristow’s biography of the same period, Waiting For Another War