Second And Last And Always Pt. 3 - Eldritch's Left On Mission And Revenge

(This is the final of three posts on what the second album by The Sisters of Mercy might have sounded like in 1986, had the First and Last and Always line-up continued to record)

In the first two posts (here and here) on the likely sound and content of what Gary Marx had jokingly called “Second and Last and Always”, we’ve looked at riffs and demos which the band’s twin songsmiths in the 84/85 era, Gary Marx and Wayne Hussey, would have brought to the recording sessions for the follow-up album at the end of 1985.

For the third post we will look at the very different vision which singer Andrew Eldritch had for the band. By the summer of 1985, he was certainly heading in a very different direction than the rest of the band: as Wayne Hussey said, “He was listening to things like Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks and Foreigner and there was us listening to Motorhead or whatever. And it showed.” However, this had often been the case in the past, and can be seen in the very eclectic range of cover versions which TSOM had attempted in the 1980-1985 period, not to mention the many different musical genres over which the band’s output ranged, from Afterhours to Sister Ray.

Up until very recently, only two things were known about Eldritch’s vision for the Sisters sophomore studio set: first, the title, Left On Mission and Revenge, which was referenced in an arch Merciful Release press release in February 1986 when The Mission’s new name was announced (“We assume that their choice of name is entirely unconnected with the forthcoming Andrew Eldritch album that for some months has had the working title Left On Mission And Revenge”). And second, that the song Torch, which would figure as a b-side on the This Corrosion comeback hit of 1987, was being worked on when Craig Adams walked out on the band (shortly followed by Hussey). As Eldritch later recalled, “"The others didn't want to play my new songs, such as 'Torch' for instance. The song has some unusual chord changes. Craig thought it was crap, he said 'I'm not playing it, I'm going home.' And there he stayed."” Other than that, there was mainly just speculation that the songs which ended up forming the core of The Sisterhood's Gift LP (Eldritch's next release, in 1986) would have been on LOMAR, whilst others claimed that the non-release of This Corrosion, though much demo'ed around the time of Gift, was a sign that he was saving the better songs for a more fully rounded next TSOM LP.

However, three recent revelations on social media by close friends of Eldritch at the time have added a lot more detail to how the Machiavellian Eldritch saw the LP. Daniela Giombini of the Italian Tribal Cabaret fanzine shared a photo of a Merciful Release compliments slip which she had been given in the summer of 1985 at MR HQ by Eldritch, with the track-listing of the second album written on it in Eldritch’s own hand-writing! After being kept private for thirty years, this photo was re-shared by Phil Verne on his The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 Facebook fan page to great excitement, as there were a further nine (NINE!!) tracks alongside the afore-mentioned Torch !

One of these, Bury Me Deep, was well-known as it had already been released as the b-side of the final FALAA single, No Time To Cry, in March 1985 as Eldritch rediscovered his taste for song-writing after recuperating from the exertions of physical illness and mental exhaustion as well as the stresses of the subsequent lengthy UK and European tours in October and November of 1984. Eldritch had written and recorded Bury Me Deep and Blood Money (the other b-side on that release) virtually as solo projects, and their critical acclaim despite (because of?) the departure in style from what had come before will have encouraged him to reassert his status as lead songwriter.

Other familiar titles are also present on the LOMAR tracklisting: Giving Ground would of course become the spoiler Sisterhood single to lay claim to that band’s name and to guarantee continued access to lucrative publishing details, and both This Corrosion (which was almost released as the second Sisterhood single with James Ray on vocals in the Spring of 1986) and Driven Like The Snow eventually made it onto Floodland in 1987.

The exact identity of the other five songs, and whether or not they made it onto Gift or Floodland under a different title, has been a source of much speculation since this document was discovered (and will remain so until Eldritch breaks his silence on the issue), but even if no recordings of these demos have seen the light of day, this tracklisting shows just how far advanced Eldritch’s vision for the second album had already become.

Inevitably, there were some who refused to believe the authenticity of this artefact, but any such doubts were extinguished when Howard Thompson, an A&R man close to TSOM and Eldritch in particular in the early 80’s, shared a similar image on his Instagram account. This tracklisting, written out in front of him by Eldritch on a napkin at the Gramercy Hotel in New York in 1985, not only features exactly the same songs and running order, but also identified the singles to accompany the album, with b-sides listed for both 7” and 12” versions!

To most fans’ great surprise, these b-sides featured tracks not known to have existed as early as 1985, such as Untitled (later a b-side of Dominion/Mother Russia), Avalanche pts I and II (presumably although not necessarily Flood I and Flood II) and Dominion, meaning that most of the songs which would eventually feature on the global breakthrough album (Floodland) and its accompanying singles had already been written or at least conceived by the suddenly prolific Eldritch by the time of the final split.

Even more incredibly, there was also to be a release of a Hussey-penned lyric, Garden of Delight (see previous post), in which Eldritch could clearly see some merit, although it was to be relegated to a b-side. Furthermore, it is clear that Eldritch intended to finish the Wide Receiver demo (which has subsequently surfaced). For many years many fans doubted whether this was in fact a Sisters demo, but on Heartland Forum, chief administrator Quiff Boy obtained confirmation from Gary Marx that it was indeed an Eldritch original, reporting: “Not long after they’d got back from the States, circa 1984, the band had begun writing material for FALAA. The story goes that Von was really into American Football after this trip and he turned up at rehearsal one day with a cassette tape, saying that he had this fantastic track he wanted to work on. It was Wide Receiver. The only lyric Von had come up with was something about a “wide receiver,” and then some dodgy sixth-form rhyme about “…deceive her.”” Despite the derision of his bandmates Eldritch clearly thought that there was sufficient merit in the track to include it on a planned single over a year later.

Even at this stage, with the track list now widely debated, there was some speculation (probably based on the very few new songs to have been written by the singer over the past twenty-five years) as to whether Eldritch had actually done anything other than come up with titles for songs, but Thompson shared a further photo on Instagram which proved beyond doubt that Eldritch planned to continue with his plan for LOMAR at this point: a tape of a recording session which Eldritch had undertaken at Slaughterhouse Studios in December 1985!

The MR statement about the break-up reported in Sounds at the beginning of November 1985 suggested that Eldritch might even employ Hussey as a session guitarist for his next release, as it seems that the pair were still on relatively amicable terms. However, by the time he himself headed into Slaughterhouse studios the following month to record some demos, Hussey and Adams were talking more boldly about their plan to use first The Sisters and then The Sisterhood as their new band name, and this plan had clearly been shelved. Back in that first week of November, Wayne Hussey was asked about the news in Sounds of him possibly contributing to Andrew’s new album as part of an interview for Mass Murder fanzine, to which he replied “I would have helped if it had been a Sisters of Mercy album, but it’s not, it’s an Andrew Eldritch album, so I’m not helping.” In the same interview, Wayne also (helpfully for us) comments on the new material that Eldritch was working on: “The stuff Andy’s doing now is softer and slower”, before adding a more surprising comment: “music you can dance to.” He confirmed that “We really did split up because of musical differences. I’ll reserve judgement on what he’s doing until he’s finished. He’ll pull something out of the bag – he always does!” Hussey was not quite so charitable after the subsequent legal battle over the band name, penning a cuttingly negative and deeply personal (but very amusing) review of “Gift” for one of the music weeklies.

On Thompson’s cassette (labelled once again in Eldritch’s distinctive handwriting), the singer refers to the artist as “Andrew Eldritch” and not “The Sisters of Mercy”, giving some credence to his claim at the time that there was an agreement that neither side of the split would use the TSOM name in the future. Eldritch told Melody Maker in September 1987, “The people who are now The Mission and myself had an agreement that no one would use the name when the band went its separate ways.” Wayne further acknowledged this in the February 1986 Sounds interview, “Andrew wanted to start making songs as himself, and to kill off The Sisters.” However, when Hussey and Adams began using the names The Sisters and The Sisterhood (the latter with the expressed permission of the ex-TSOM fan following of the same name), the well-documented legal battle over the name began.

Although Thompson revealed the photo, he could not recall the contents of the cassette, but hopefully one day he will find time to listen to it and report whether Ritual is a familiar song (Rain From Heaven ?) under an unfamiliar title or a previously unheard song. What the tape also proved was that all three groupings from the former Sisters of Mercy had indeed worked in the same provincial studio within a couple of months of the final split.

(the building formerly housing Slaghterhouse Studios)

(contemporary photo of Slaughterhouse Studios)

As its name suggests, the Slaughterhouse in Great Driffield was indeed a former butcher's shop and abattoir which had been converted into a residential recording studio, one of very few in the North of England. It was run by Russell Webster, who was barely older than Eldritch himself, with on the sound-desk an equally youthful sound engineer Colin Richardson, who was beginning to make a name for himself, having worked with The Chameleons at Cargo Studios in Rochdale. He had also worked at KG studios, and knew Pete Turner (Sisters live sound mixer since 1981) who also worked at Slaughterhouse occasionally, meaning that it was only natural that the post-punk bands would gravitate to the unlikely setting of Great Driffield.

The studio subsequently became famous as the venue of the legendarily crazy recording sessions of “Bummed”, the seminal Happy Mondays album produced by Martin Hannett, and then as the home of hardcore metal as Earache records stars (Napalm Death etc) flocked to have their work produced by Richardson, an equally legendary name to metal fans.

Vinyl evidence would tend to suggest however that both engineer Richardson (on drums) and studio manager Webster (on vocals) were more personally impressed by their earlier customers, as the pair became unlikely stars on the European goth circuit in the early 1990s thanks to the ever-increasing popularity of the song Shadow Dance by their studio project Eyes of the Nightmare Jungle, a “band” still remembered fondly by many German goths in particular (their FB page has been “like”d by a number of high profile Sisters fans who are probably unaware of the connection – until today!).

By the time that The Slaughterhouse suffered a devastating fire and closed in the 1990’s, Eyes of The Nightmare Jungle were touring Europe, although they split shortly afterwards. Lead singer, studio owner and serial entrepreneur Webster was last in the news (in the Bridlington area at least) a couple of years ago, as he sought crowd-funding for his latest venture, a family board game which sadly never reached mass production.

(picture of Russell Webster launching his board game from Bridlington Free Press, 2015)

So, to summarise the last three posts, by mid-1985 Gary Marx had a head full of riffs but few finished songs (which would ultimately resurface in very different form in the recorded output of Ghost Dance) and no desire to work with Eldritch, Hussey or Adams ever again; Hussey (and his faithful side-kick Adams) had a whole host worth of commercial goth pop/rock riffs, some with lyrics attached, which would make up both The First Chapter and God’s Own Medicine, whilst Eldritch had at least in embryonic form a whole further raft of rather different songs, which would go on to fill most Gift and Floodland.

As a result, in 1986/1987 fans were able to enjoy simultaneously three different acts, two of whom (The Mission and with Patricia Morrison on board, a new version of The Sisters of Mercy) would become fixtures in the charts, whilst a pair of them (Ghost Dance and The Mission) were popular ‘live’ acts on the UK and European circuits.

However, it is clear that the musical and personal differences between the four were such that no magical synergy would be likely to take place, and that rather than being a compilation of the best of the five albums-worth of songs which we have analysed in these three posts, an album that in all probability could have propelled the band to long-lasting global superstardom, the actual “Second and Last and Always” would have been a tortured mish-mash of influences and opinions (not unlike Bauhaus' famous 1983 break-up album, Burning From The Inside) by a group of highly talented individuals who were clearly at their creative peak, yet were, in the words of the bootleg which contains some of the fragments, Victims of Circumstance.

My thanks for this final post in the Second and Last and Always trilogy are once again due to HT, to LG, to Daniela G, to Ade M, to Graham C, to Praver B and to Phil Verne of the 1980-1985 TSOM Facebook group, and to all fellow TSOM fans who continue to support this blog. Fans of The Sisters of Mercy should definitely consider subscribing to Mark Andrews’ very exciting project, a biography of the band’s formation and early days. This will be an essential read and a definitive independent account of one of the most interesting and enigmatic rock phenomena of the past forty years. Rise and Reverberate!

Second and Last and Always Pt 2

(This is the second of three posts on what the second album by The Sisters of Mercy might have sounded like in 1986, had the First and Last and Always line-up continued to record)

Of the three elements into which The Sisters of Mercy fractured in 1985, the pairing of Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams were the first to show publicly how the second TSOM album may have sounded had the band stayed together. Despite the long-term disputes within the band, followed by Marx’s departure in April, and the increasingly frosty atmosphere between Eldritch on the one hand and Hussey/Adams on the other, it appears that all three remaining members were still prepared to give a second TSOM album a go, and history records that they gathered together initially in Hamburg in the late summer of 1985 to work on demos. Hussey later told Sounds magazine (January 1986) “As far as Craig and I were concerned, we’d resigned ourselves..we’d not been enjoying it for a while, but we’d resigned ourselves to sticking it out, and maybe it would’ve got better. But in fact it was getting worse. I went to Hamburg for a month with Andrew to try and write songs for the second Sisters album, and we came back with all my ideas rejected and Andrew’s very skeletal…Andrew said, “I’m not singing any of your songs. That’s what it boiled down to. Craig walked out of rehearsal [having famously refused to play the bassline for the song which became “Torch”] and a day later I did.” The following year he would tell Germany’s Spex magazine, “Andrew rejected all my songs and let me work on one single chord the whole time – E minor!”

On Hussey and Adams’ return to the UK, they immediately went into a new 24 track studio which had opened in Yorkshire, Slaughterhouse Studios in Driffield, a sleepy market town between Hull and York. It was both cheaper and nearer than Stockport’s Strawberry Studios, and given that Ghost Dance and Eldritch also recorded (separately) at the Driffield studios in the latter months of 1985, it is clear that this was the venue where the band had planned to record the follow-up to FALAA during late autumn (Sounds in November 1985 reporting that the departure of Hussey and Adams “has scuppered recording plans for a new album this month”). Presumably WEA had booked the studio time in advance, and therefore by design rather than coincidentally all three shards of the early 1985 incarnation of The Sisters of Mercy independently recorded their first post-split demos there before the year was out!

(Slaughterhouse Studios)

With what at the time seemed almost indecent haste to some, although more understandably given that Hussey had a whole host of almost finished songs ready to go, the band that would become The Mission were first through the recently-opened Slaughterhouse doors. At this stage (October 1985), the group had no permanent drummer as Mick Brown had yet to officially join from Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, doing so formally after one final RLYL gig on 29^th November 1985, but he played drums on the Slaughterhouse sessions. These sessions would yield the songs Wake and Naked and Savage, both of which feature in their original form on the B-side of the debut Mission release in May 1986 on the independent Birmingham-based Chapter 22 label, along with A-side track Serpent’s Kiss, which as we discussed in a previous post, he had already recorded as an instrumental in preparation for Eldritch’s added lyric and vocal on Easter Monday 1985, immediately after Gary Marx’s departure, with a view to it being the next Sisters “A” side. The October 1985 version (this date features prominently on the back of the record sleeve of the first Mission single) of course features Hussey’s own lyric and vocal, and rather than the next TSOM single as originally intended, it became the lead track to launch the new band, picking up the airplay which would see the vinyl release rocket up the indie charts the following spring. 

Wake (RSV) in particular attracted attention because of its lyrical content, which has been interpreted as a (very) thinly veiled attack on both Eldritch's inactivity and his increasing isolation ("Pillar of wisdom and soul of iron, Alone in the crumbling tower of power" etc). The fact that the title is the same as the name Eldritch had given to the Royal Albert Hall gig, that there was an RSV (Revised Standard Version) of the Sisterhood's debut single and these three letters did not appear on the demo tape version of Hussey's song, and the run-off groove of the A side stated "Keeping the Faith, not Giving Ground", another seemingly direct reference to Eldritch's rushed post-split single, only served to confirm these suspicions. Presumably Hussey penned these waspish lyrics in the studio and sang them over a melody originally intended to have Eldritch's words on top - "It's a taste of your own medicine. God's Own Medicine for you!" Hussey was obviously particularly pleased with the latter lyric fragment, using it as the title for the Mission's debut LP, even though Wake (RSV) wasn't selected for the album! Conspiracy theorists with a detailed knowledge of the events of this era will also spot the words "victim" and "circumstance" in close proximity to each other in the lyric, plus a reference to "revenge", all of which presumably did not escape Eldritch's notice either.

Also recorded at that initial Slaughterhouse session was another song presumably intended for The Sisters, Bridges Burning (a different version of which would be on the debut LP God’s Own Medicine) and the original Slaughterhouse demo (Burning Bridges) finally saw an official release in 2007 on the extended reissue of the band’s The First Chapter compilation album. Wayne Hussey makes it clear in his sleeve notes for that release that ex-Artery guitarist Simon Hinkler had not yet joined the band for the Slaughterhouse session, although he does feature on the sleeve for that first Mission EP, having joined the group in late December 1985 (Hussey told Sounds “We only got Simon three weeks before this tour” when The Sisterhood’s live dates began) between the recording of the first single and its eventual release once the Sisters/Sisterhood name wrangle (a very well-known tale) was resolved. The lack of a second guitarist for these first recordings, and the presence of a stand-in (at that time) drummer, are furtehr evidence of the good faith of Hussey and Adams in attending the initial writing sessions with Eldritch, as they clearly had no fully realised Plan B at that stage.

A fifth song which Hussey had originally intended for the Sisters was of course Garden of Delight, which would ultimately become the Mission’s second single and their final release for Chapter 22 before they signed to the major Mercury label. An earlier version of Garden of Delight featuring Eldritch singing Hussey’s lyric had been recorded at Strawberry Studios earlier in 1985 following the recording of FALAA (and not during the FALAA recording sessions in 1984 as is often claimed), and is one of the best-known TSOM bootlegs. Of all the existing material, this track gives the biggest (and indeed only definitive) clue as to how “Second and Last and Always” might have sounded had Eldritch been in a more democratic mood and accepted Hussey’s songs (including lyrics) without question. Incidentally, Eldritch himself referred to his Garden of Delight vocal directly in a Swedish TV interview in the early 90’s, saying “There are a few bootlegs in existence of me trying to sing Wayne’s words, and you can hear that I’m not convinced by them. I can’t breathe any meaning into them!”

(Mass Murder fanzine interview)

Eldritch was not the only one unconvinced, with WEA rejecting the initial Slaughterhouse demo recordings because Hussey’s vocal was not deemed to be strong enough. Hussey had hoped that the single would be released as early as January 1986 on WEA according to an interview conducted in early November 1985 for Mass Murder fanzine, but “we’ll know at the end of the week, they haven’t heard the tape yet.” In the same interview, Wayne states that “There’s a 12” which will have two tracks on each side,” which explains why there was a finished Bridges Burning in the vaults, as the ultimate Chapter 22 release only featured the one track (Serpent’s Kiss) on the A-side. He also states that the band will be called “The Sisters, just The Sisters, me and Craig. It’s going to be really good, it’s going to be brilliant” he adds, in the style of a certain modern self-praising president!

Speaking to Mark Musolf for a YouTube interview a couple of years ago, Hussey explained the process by which he ended up fronting the project, light-heartedly acknowledging that his vocals were at least initially not the best : “At that point [having split from Eldritch in September 1985] we wanted to get someone else to sing…We auditioned a couple of people, it didn’t work ,it didn’t feel right and Warner Brothers suggested a couple of people, and we said “Really? You’re not really getting this are you?” So Craig and I went to see Simon Denbigh and he said “You do it. [jokingly adds] You’re better looking than him.” I looked at Craig and [said] “Shall I?” and [he said] “Yeah go on. Don’t worry about the words, you can string together any old rubbish, it’ll be fine. It’s only journalists and other singers that worry about the words.” And I said “Ok, I’ll have a go.”  I came into it by default and it took me a while to warm to the role.” Within a couple of years, Hussey would be winning “Best Singer” accolades in readers’ polls in music magazines, so it was little surprise that when I posted a link to the video of the Musolf interview on the TSOM 1980-1985 Facebook Fan page, highlighting March Violets’ singer Simon Denbigh’s part in Hussey becoming the frontman, the former commented “Je ne regrette rien!”.  

There will have been many other ideas which the Hussey/Adams combination had in mind for The Sisters’ FALAA follow-up, and one of these surfaced as recently as 2017 on The Complete Another Fall From Grace, the deluxe repackaged (fan-fleecing!) version of the recent Mission album which Hussey had trailed as a return to the mid-80’s sound of The Sisters, even suggesting that it was “the missing link” between FALAA and God’s Own Medicine. The bonus track Sleeping Pills was in fact a new vocal and guitar over-recording of a demo made for the Sisters in 1984/5, and a most intriguing track it is too. Featuring a much slower and more languid melody, with psychedelic tinges, it has more in common with, say, Body and Soul than with the Hussey-penned tracks on FALAA. The track starts with a Dr Avalanche-style drumbeat followed by a repeated minor scale guitar riff which is typical of that period. When Sleeping Pills first emerged, to a disappointingly muted reception it has to be said given its historical significance, I likened it to one of the tracks on (Salvation’s MR album) Clash of Dreams, or a low-fi Poison Door, as it had a B-side feel to it, ironically not unlike Giving Ground in fact. Hussey played the song several times live, and videos of these performances have been shared on the web (including on the Mission Fan Club Fan Page) for those who want to hear it in its refashioned form.

Phil Verne, the main administrator of the TSOM 1980-1985 fan site and a TSOM obsessive who also keenly followed the Hussey/Adams-led new ensemble, has also shared (originally from the same tape as the Some Kind of Stranger instrumental version) this incredible rare version of the epic Wasteland, which would go on to become The Mission’s breakthrough hit (and fourth single overall) when it reached the UK Top 20, far outperforming any of the TSOM releases up to that date. The multi-layered instrumental demo version which Phil shared was recorded by Wayne alone in 1985, and therefore the tune presumably featured amongst those song ideas offered to Eldritch. What is particularly interesting is that it features a drum machine, meaning that it not only pre-dates Hussey’s work with Mick Brown, but that it was clearly intended for The Sisters. There is informed speculation that this was just one of many songs which Hussey had worked up into almost complete demo versions for (what we are calling for the purpose of these blog articles) “Second And Last And Always”, but this version of Wasteland is the only song to have been shared. This version of the Mission’s breakthrough hit is therefore very likely to be the very one which Eldritch rejected! God’s Own Medicine indeed! 

Hopefully Hussey’s much-anticipated forthcoming autobiography will shed substantial and definitive further light on the precise chain of events of autumn 1985 and what his (and largely silent partner Craig Adams’) contribution to the potential second Sisters album might have been. However, as we have seen, the contents of The First Chapter and God's Own Medicine clearly give a very precise indication of how the musical backing and structrues, if not the vocals and lyrics, of the songs of "Second And Last And Always" would have sounded after Gary's departure, had Eldritch's FALAA writer's block continued and the susequent split not occured. 

The final of this trilogy of blog posts about the likely sound of a follow-up to FALAA by the 84/85 line-up will focus on the relatively recent major revelations about Eldritch’s own plans for this sadly mythical release –  which he gave the working title “Left On Mission And Revenge”.

My thanks for this post are due to collector LG, DJ Mark Musolf, legendary Sisters fans Lee EMWK, Nigel W, Kutna H, and Phil Verne of the 1980-1985 TSOM Facebook fan group, and to ever-affable Mr Hussey himself who has patiently confirmed some of the above details to various fans over the years.

Fans of early-era TSOM who have not yet done so should seriously consider subscribing to Mark Andrews' forthcoming history of TSOM.

Second and Last and Always – Part 1

(In a series of four previous posts, we examined the events that resulted the definitive splits in the band in 1985, shortly after the release of debut album First and Last and Always. In this and two subsequent posts, we are going to look at how the band’s follow-up might have sounded, if the “classic” line-up had managed to stay together, beginning from the perspective of the first member to leave that year, Gary Marx).

“I’d like to see the second album go to number one in the LP charts…Second and Last and Always…we’ve got the title already!” – Gary Marx, Artificial Life fanzine interview, March 1985. Although founder member Marx was clearly joking about the LP’s title, it was obvious that for a long time he still planned to stay in the band before his decision to leave the band after the Old Grey Whistle Test recording on April 2^nd 1985.

Had he stayed, and had the format adopted on FALAA remained the same (i.e. a side of largely Hussey compositions, followed by a side of tunes primarily penned by Marx), then we can have some idea of how the songs may have sounded, thanks to the very detailed notes which Marx produced for a Recording Diary for the sadly now defunct Ghost Dance website, for followers of the band which he formed with Ann-Marie Hurst, former vocalist with Bradford band Skeletal Family who had been the support act on TSOM’s legendary Black October tour the previous Autumn.

In these detailed accounts, Marx explains that a number of Ghost Dance tracks had their genesis in riffs which he had originally created for use with The Sisters, and although Eldritch’s lyrics and melody would clearly have been different to the finished GD versions, these nonetheless give an insight into the direction in which Marx would have wanted to take the band.

(Leeds Student preview April 1986, written by Gordon Taylor)

Yesterday Again (recently played live again by the now-reformed Skeletals) is one such song which had a noble lineage, as Gary explained: "The Sisters minus Eldritch had actually recorded a version of the song which became Yesterday Again in Strawberry [Studios}. It was originally titled Frail and Torn and Wayne sang my half-finished lyric one afternoon along with the first draft of The Mission’s Garden Of Delight. We used to refer to Frail and Torn jokingly as a potential Christmas single for the Sisters." This would indeed have been a welcome alternative to 1985’s actual Christmas number one hit, Merry Christmas, Everyone by Shakin’ Stevens. Sadly, no version of Frail and Torn has yet surfaced amongst collectors, so we will just have to take Gary’s word for its commercial potential, which does not seem over-fanciful given the typically epic spaghetti western guitar riff underpinning the song.

Another relic from the Strawberry Studios sessions for FALAA was Ghost Dance’s debut single in 1986, River Of No Return, of which Marx wrote : “The songs and the recording came about fairly quickly and Anne Marie and Etch pretty much stepped into ideas I carried over from the Sisters. The lineage is fairly evident in the songs and the packaging. I had the ideas for the original songs mostly in place by the Summer of 85 - I came up with the riff which features in the middle section of River… sitting in the reception area in Strawberry Studios during the first phase of recording for First And Last And Always. At the time I thought it would form the main part of a new track, but I played around with some variations and came up with the bass line which is the real focus for the verses in River. The chorus guitar line is pure Sisters (‘ ..all on one string and job’s a good un’ as Choque from Salvation was keen to point out). The way the riff steps up a string halfway through the verse was also something we did on the early Sisters stuff - Floorshow, Alice, Good Things…kind of a nod to bands like the Cramps who we all loved. The artwork followed the formula the Sisters had used to some extent with the famed Lady Of Shallot unceremoniously nicked and planted on the front cover. The back featured the wings logo I’d drawn based on a picture I’d seen in a book about American architecture (the full photograph formed the cover for Gathering Dust).”

(Live review by "Papi" in Leeds Student, May 1986)

A third idea originally sketched for the Sisters which Gary may have developed for the FALAA follow-up had he remained in the band surfaced in a further Ghost Dance song, Cruel Light, and the recording notes (written in the early part of this millennium) shed further light on one of the more curious episodes of 1984/5. “"[Ghost Dance producer] Steve Allen ... originally had a tiny studio in a rehearsal complex off Armley Road where I’d been with Wayne to record some new demos with him singing. We attempted the track which became Cruel Light but never finished it....The lines ‘I see them cut and die, see the flowers bleed..’ from Cruel Light was actually first used as part of a draft of another Sisters’ song I’d written called Temple Of Love (not the song we now know and love by that name)." You certainly don't need to be a musicologist to spot this as a Sisters-style riff. Whilst Eldritch may have suffered (and still does) from writer's block, Marx's creative juices were certainly flowing strongly (albeit with variations on a similar theme) in the mid-1980s. Eldritch mentions in a later interview (in Q magazine in 1988) how the other members of the band had had a go at singing at a time in 84/85 when he was thinking of withdrawing from the role to become the band's svengali manager (“and so discreetly, abroad, everybody had a go at singing, and decided that they weren’t very good”) and the original Cruel Light demo with Wayne singing may well be the kind of experiment he was referring to, albeit much closer to home.

A fourth Ghost Dance song which in a different guise might have featured on Second And Last And Always is A Deeper Blue, one of the strongest melodies in the Ghost Dance canon. It obviously made a similarly positive impression on Wayne Hussey, who borrowed the chorus melody (with song title repeated) note-for-note on The Mission’s UK Top 40 hit Beyond The Pale a couple of years later. The intro has shades of FALAA’s title track, but Gary’s comments in his Recording Diaries reveal that a different song of that era was the main source : “A Deeper Blue was one of the last of the ‘carry-overs’ from the Sisters. I had written a lyric to the tune which became Nine While Nine which started with the lines ‘the colours fade somewhere inside…’ I had the tune in my head long after and just finished it without a guitar while walking in Wakefield – it all happened very quickly, I was imagining the guitar hooks and coming up with the words at the same time. I always think of it as a Wakefield song. I went back to the guitar and figured out the riffs I’d been whistling and found they worked with roughly the same chords as Nine While Nine.” Intriguingly, a later post (by Marx) on the Ghost Dance Forum revealed that A Deeper Blue has more in common with an early demo for Nine While Nine with a different working title which has yet to surface: “I have often wondered how the Marianne (Red Skies Disappear) song leaked out on bootleg, and naturally assumed that if it was doing the rounds, then the Nine While Nine version recorded at the same time was out there too. It has the working title Child of Light and contained a line which mentions “the children of the dust.” When we were deciding on a title for FALAA I pitched that one in, even though it didn’t seem likely that the [i.e. Marx’s own] lyric would surface on the finished version. Quite reasonably, Von then pointed out that we were over-egging the “something of something” being called The Sisters of Mercy after all.”

The final Ghost Dance song with a TSOM link is probably the one which would have been most likely to gain Eldritch’s approval back in 1985, given that he was listening to a lot of soft rock in the Stevie Nicks vein, and is evidence that the original duo’s musical tastes were not that far apart. When the song When I Call finally came out in 1987 on the A Word to the Wise EP, Ghost Dance were still on indie label Karbon, but had they saved this song for a few months until they had the commercial might of Chrysalis behind them, they might have achieved the chart success which The Mission, All About Eve and The Sisters were by then achieving, a source of considerable frustration to the band. In his Recording Diaries, Marx states that When I Call was one of three tracks on the EP that "were among the first I’d written and date back to that period in ’85 when it wasn’t clear if I was going to carry on in the Sisters or go my own way....When I Call was there from day one of Ghost Dance – we played it in the first gig when we were still a three-piece, we demoed it in the Slaughterhouse in late ’85, and although it assumed epic proportions in the final recording, the core ingredients were much the same. Again there are fragments of lyric which had surfaced on Sisters demos – the original version of the song FALAA [Marianne (Red Skies Disappear)] had contained the line ‘only you can say the words I need to hear’ which forms part of the chorus to When I Call...The version of When I Call [on the EP] included multiple guitar tracks, Hammond organ and guest vocals from Daniel Mass of Salvation. Richard and John both proved to have decent voices so they feature on backing vocals as well. The producer allowed Anne Marie to sing in the control room without headphones, something she’d been keen to try for a while and he got some good performances out of her."

Poignantly, there is one further Ghost Dance song with a clear link to The Sisters of Mercy, but not musically. Gary Marx's birthday thirty three years ago might have been a personal celebration with friends rather than the expected final appearance at the RAH with the Sisters, but at least we got another great song out of it. As he later explained : "Celebrate was sort of written in my head on my birthday while out in the Black Swan in Wakefield. My birthday was the same day as the Sisters’ Royal Albert Hall Show, recorded for posterity on the Wake video. I was going to play the gig and then didn’t (far too hideous a tale to go into here). I knew by then it was going to mark the end of the Sisters as a real band and knew a good many of the crew and the following who would be at the gig and the emotion surrounding the evening – Celebrate was sort of a song for and about the event I wasn’t taking part in. I viewed it fairly positively – it wasn’t meant to be a rant by the injured party or anything. Lines like ‘and on this hallowed ground..’ were really about the reverence the venue and the occasion seemed to invite and a sort of mental picture I had of the human pyramids, arms aloft and the smoke reaching up into the dome. I probably wrote the first verse separately at a later date after I’d sobered up!" 

Imagine if Gary had had a change of heart and had rejoined the Sisters after the Albert Hall gig, and the band had kept the same songwriting split as for the first album: what better way to close the second Sisters’ album than with a song about their greatest live show?

My thanks for this post are due of course to Mr Gary Marx for his wonderful recollections on the old Ghost Dance website, and to the many fans (Don, Martin, etc) who are always keen to ensure that Marx's key role in the band is fully acknowledged. This one's for you! The next post will look at the Hussey/Adams pairing and what their contribution to "Second And Last And Always" might have been.

First West Coast US gig - L.A., 29th October 1983

Today sees the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Sisters of Mercy’s first-ever gig on the West Coast of the USA, one of three concerts the band played as a three-piece following the departure of Ben Gunn after the East Coast shows the previous month. Just three days after the Stockholm show, the remaining jet-lagged Sisters arrived in California with just their instruments for equipment, as Craig Adams told The Quietus for this excellent feature by Mark Andrews: “We didn’t even have guitar cases. You had a guitar in a plastic bag with your cable, fuzzbox and your other cable. That’s how we landed in L.A.”

Adams’ fuzzbox was of course one of the key elements in The Sisters’ sound, and one which would take an even greater role in these three gigs where they were just down to the one guitarist. As Gary Marx drily observed to Mark Andrews in the same Quietus article, “The idea to carry on and do the few shows we’d got booked in the autumn may have been partly to do with whatever relationship was going on between Andrew and Patricia Morrison.” Eldritch and the Gun Club bassist had become close friends when the two bands had toured the UK in April that year, and this may well have been a contributing factor in the very well-informed preview that appeared in the prestigious L.A. Times the week before the gig, which stated that The Sisters’ use of drum machine, throbbing bass and fuzztone guitar re-energised “the often dreary gloom of Britain’s post-punk sound with a revitalizing charge. With his deep low voice, Eldritch summons a psychodrama theatricality in the best Jim Morrison tradition. The Sisters’ set ranges from kinetic, melodic melodrama to dreamy, eerie textures.”

The author of this purple prose was none other than Craig Lee, a former bandmate of Patricia Morrison in seminal L.A. punk band The Bags, who was then playing his trade as a writer best known as the editor of Flipside magazine, as well as his regular contributions to the L.A. Times and L.A Weekly. Lee, who sadly passed away in 1991, wrote an equally positive review of the gig itself, published two days after the show, ending with the comment: “The recent loss of a second guitarist has left the band sounding a little thin. However, with strong originals like “Temple of Love” and an inspired reworking of Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”, The Sisters exhibit a vibrant rock’n’roll heart.” Marx too felt that the slimmed-down line-up still worked well. He told The Quietus, “The shows were actually great with the three of us. I knew I was going to be more exposed as a guitarist but by then it wasn’t quite the problem it would have been in ‘82”.

(items from the collection of Bruno B and LG respectively)

Apart from Craig Lee’s enthusiastic pre-publicity, another factor for the gig’s popularity would have been due to the promoter Gary Tovar'sGoldenvoice, who produced a plethora of flyers and posters for the show, many of which have survived and are now in the hands of well-known TSOM collectors. Goldenvoice went on to become major players in the gig promotion world, as Wikipedia will testify, but back in 1983 they had only been around for two years and were an enthusiastic team desperate to give punk bands the opportunity to play. Nowadays, they are AEG’s “cool” subsidiary which promotes the world-renowned Coachella Festival.

The Sisters’ LA gig featured no less than three support bands, all interesting in their own right. Legion, playing their first gig, featured future members of better-known bands whilst Cathedral of Tears was the new post-punk/new-wave outfit of legendary punk vocalist Jack Grisham, former leader of the band T.S.O.L, which had broken up earlier that year. The final act listed is the most intriguing, Unit Three featuring Venus. This was an incredible act, a kind of punk Partridge Family making music in the style of the B52’s, featuring Mom Patty Bondage on bass, Dad Henree Herd on keyboard and their pre-teen daughter Venus DeBaun on vocals. The latter had been only eight when singing B.O.Y.S.on the 1981 compilation Rodney on the Roq, which also featured the likes of Black Flag, Social Distortion, Minutemen and Redd Kross. The band is probably best remembered for “(I don’t like) Beer”, the single of the following year. Thanks to the wonders of social media, I managed to track down Venus, who went on to have a career as a PE teacher. Understandably, given that she was only ten at the time, she sadly had no recollections of the show.

(Pics - an early postcard view of the original lobby, and a fan photo courtesy of Paula H)

Craig Lee’s contemporary review of the gig makes reference to the “less-than-exclusive downtown” surroundings, and Craig Adams’ memories of the show, quoted in the Quietus piece concur : “It was a no-go area”. This might come as a surprise to those who have seen photos of a bearded Eldritch at the show, performing under an incredibly ornate ceiling. The Hotel Alexandria had been the jewel in L.A.’s crown when it had opened in 1906, playing host to Presidents and Hollywood stars alike, drawn to the Egyptian-themed opulence of its public areas. As can be seen from the above postcard, the roof under which Eldritch performed was originally above a two-storey lobby, but an extra floor had been inserted in a 1930’s re-design, leaving an incongruously low mixture of lighting fixtures and pipes, and has over the years, the "Green Ballroom" has become a favourite of film-makers and rock video crews (as in these famous examples featuring Lenny Kravitz and Adam Lambert). The Alexandria continued to operate as a hotel until earlier this decade, and the room where the Sisters’ played can be seen (renamed the “Mezz”) on this video footage of a tour of the hotel by a well-known chef, Ilan Hall (4 minutes 20 in). Since the 2015 redevelopment, with the upper floors turned into condos, the Mezz is now one of the Alexandria ballrooms, an events space currently booking for 2020.

Back in 1983, however, the downtown area was, like the hotel itself, decaying rapidly, much like the infamous Tropicana Motel where Marx and Adams were marooned whilst Eldritch hung out with Morrison’s gang, as the guitarist told The Quietus. Adams’ memories of the show itself were that “the promoter had put out folding seats - well that didn’t last long!”

The gig was recorded and the bootleg tape is well-known to Sisters fans, containing a full record of the set, which opens with a reverb-drenched Burn, with Eldritch’s echoey vocal, which misses a few notes towards the end of the song, very much to the fore. The overall sound is impressively full and the song is well-received, despite the singer’s concerns about the lighting level: “Sorry about all these house lights, nothing to do with us.” Before launching into a perfect rendition of Valentine, he gives the audience his first impressions of L.A.: “People in Los Angeles have no legs – too many cars”. After the relatively slow start of a pair of songs from The Reptile House EP, the pace picks up immediately with a speedy version of Anaconda, with Eldritch’s vocal again very echoey, much like on the psychedelic demo version of the song a year earlier. Disaster struck in the middle section of the song, with Craig Adams breaking a string on his bass, leaving just Gary and the Doktor to carry the instrumental section of the song. Eldritch returns for the final vocal section, the first time the two (Marx and Eldritch) had been heard as a duo since the release of the debut single! There then follows one of the lengthiest pauses ever in a Sisters’ set, presumably whilst a new string is located and then fitted to Adams’ bass (we can all relive this episode thanks to Phil Verne of the 1980-1985 The Sisters of Mercy Facebook fan group who has uploaded the extract to YouTube). Eldritch complains about the mix: “I can’t hear myself”, before unwisely taunting those members of the crowd who are still seated – “You know you can get bed sores if you stay there too long.” To pass the time, Gary plays an extended solo version of Ghost Riders in the Sky, before Von shared the band’s latest news: “Next time we come there’ll be four people because we’ve got a new guitar player.” However, the crowd are clearly growing impatient, and bored punters begin to throw the chairs at the band. “Anybody got any more furniture ? I just stand here like a lemon,” quips the singer, clearly not fazed. Marx begins playing Yankee Doodle in a forlorn attempt to pacify the crowd, whilst Eldritch again tries humour to try to defuse the situation: “I’m perfectly happy with the number of teeth I’ve got, thanks. One less would not be very good for me. So that’s the last chair I’m going to accept up here. If you could just pass them the other way from now on….” Finally, Adams' bass is fixed, so the gig can resume, but sadly things get even worse. Flagship new single Temple of Love starts disastrously, with Eldritch missing his entry cue, and singing the opening line completely out of sync with Marx’s guitar. “We’re going to try again when this frank exchange of views has finished. We’re going to be very reasonable about this.... We’re blowing this amplifier up…We haven’t got another one you see...Maybe we should tell you some leper jokes, like we did in Boston. Are there any lepers in the house?” Not a “joke” which he would attempt in 2018, I suspect. After making their way – just – through Temple of Love, Eldritch jokes: “Sounded better like that, doesn’t it?”, before again complaining “I can’t hear myself up here. I can’t hear myself at all,” which evokes more jeering from the crowd, who even after an excellent Heartland are still very lively, as L.A. punk audiences were apparently wont to be. “So this is what sunshine does to you, huh? I think that I can live without it” is the singer’s cutting verdict, before announcing the “tear jerker” Emma, with its buzzing bass intro, and Gary using a flange effect on his guitar during the chorus to flesh out the sound, of the song, which nevertheless becomes a little loose towards the end.

With the next three songs the band finally win the crowd over, a punky Adrenochrome with a spectacularly good Eldritch vocal followed by Floorshow, with its usual powerful intro, but whose sound overall is noticeably thinner, suffering more than most from Gunn’s departure, and then a bass-driven canter through Body Electric . Eldritch engages in more banter with the audience who have requested songs which the band no longer play live “No we don’t play Jolene anymore.” Instead, the crowd are treated to Gimme Shelter, which works surprisingly well, with Marx skilfully switching between the two guitar parts, and it ends with a very lengthy Von/Craig drum machine-free coda. With the band having left the stage, there are enthusiastic cheers for an encore from an individual near taper, which are duly rewarded as the band return. “I’m Taurus” the singer replies to an unheard question, before the band launch into Alice, with the buzzing bass sound again dominant and the second guitar barely missed. Finally, Sister Ray brings what in many ways was a memorable show to an end, as wild as ever, and although the middle section is a little truncated and thin-sounding, Eldritch is at his Vega-esque best as he whoops and screams through the finale.

The Sisters would not return to LA until the late spring of 1985, when again they would be down to just the three human members, having not made it as far as the West Coast on their two 1984 visits to the States, although the California area had clearly influenced Eldritch's lyrics on Black Planet.

As ever, this post is very much team effort, with many fans having contributed to build up a picture of the events of October 1983 - especial thanks go to LG, Bruno B, Phil V, Paula H, Mark A, Venus, Being645 and everyone else who has helped.

Sisters Mysteries VII - Damage Done live, Leeds Warehouse January 20th 1983

Last week’s discovery of the location of the church featured on the sleeve of The Sisters of Mercy’s first single brought to an end one of the greatest Sisters’ Mysteries, and this week we can solve another one and finally definitively date some wonderful photos of the band playing at Leeds Warehouse in 1983. The Sisters of course played Mike Wiand’s legendary club no fewer than three times in the first four months of their “golden year”, but up until now, no-one was sure at which of the shows these photos were taken.

In them, Eldritch is iconically dressed in black, with Marx in a chequered lumberjack shirt, Adams in a floral print t-shirt, and Gunn also in a black shirt. This first photo, taken from the review of the band’s gig on 20^th January 1983 published by the weekly newspaper Leeds Student, and which I recently rediscovered on their digital archive, is clearly from the same set, and allows us to confirm the date of those that follow, which have emerged from various sources since that date.

Additional photos courtesy of Steve B and “’Appy”

That gig was the first time that I had paid to see The Sisters, having stumbled across them by default three months earlier, and this show was very much the triumphant homecoming for the band, with the double A-sided single Alice/Floorshow everywhere at the time –  riding high in the indie charts, on Radio One’s evening shows, and even increasingly on the dancefloors of generic (i.e. not specifically “indie”) student discos - and this was the first hometown gig since the early October '82 gig in the University Union's Riley Smith Hall, prior to the ground-breaking single's release.

I was not the only one there to see the new name on everyone’s lips, with hundreds turning up to pay tribute to the hometown heroes. The following year, Eldritch would tell Mr Spencer in an interview : “ I don’t pay actually much attention to my physical appearance… There was a distinct time I think it was about January, a couple of years ago [i.e. at this gig], where the audience’s attitude changed to me, I could feel it over a period of six months, it changed drastically to the way I looked, particularly the way the girls were reacting changed a great deal, and I didn’t know whether to put it down to a change of wardrobe, or a change of venue, the fact that I was older, or the fact that I was healthy or not healthy or whether the status of the band was sufficient to turn me into a sexier person than I was before. But I knew that I hadn’t actually done anything in that six months.”

The contemporary review from Leeds Student by Sara Clarke clearly acknowledges the rapport between band and audience, and the reverence with which the former “joke” band was now being treated, alongside the complaints of “monotony” and “heavy metal” that still occur in live reviews of the band thirty-five years later! Clarke refers to the two encores, but omits to mention that the second of these was a virtually unique outing in the Gunn era for Damage Done, the band’s first single (in fact we know that it was also played at York university three months earlier). This was referred to by Gary Marx in an interview about the first single with Record Collector magazine in 2007 : “We only ever played Damage Done once to my recollection, and that was a hastily slung together third encore at Leeds Warehouse with me having to switch instruments with Craig because he always hated the bass line and refused to play it.” (Craig’s legendary stubbornness in this regard would prove to be the last straw in the band’s final implosion in 1985).

Fortunately, the gig was recorded and a superb quality version of Damage Done (despite the switching of instuments!) was shared on YouTube by Phil Verne of the TSOM 1980-1985 Facebook fan page, along with the photo above of an autographed poster of the gig, which if memory calls cost me two pounds to get in, with no support band. The poster was priced significantly higher when this photo was taken, in Vinyl Solution record store in London in the early 90s as Phil recalls : “I have never seen this poster since. I remember that had to put my wife on my shoulders to let her take this picture because the poster was set up very high on the shop wall. The guy who worked in the shop wouldn’t sell it to me because it belonged to the boss of the shop who was not there at the time.”

The whole gig can easily be found on download sites, and is best enjoyed along with these wonderful “listening notes” by another moderator of the 1980-85 Facebook group, Ollie C, who had kindly allowed me to share them here. Ollie correctly pinpoints this gig as a turning point in the band's history and writes :

This gig is special in several ways. The first thing is that the Sisters are playing in front of a “home” crowd, which creates a particular, familiar atmosphere. On the other hand, it is a headline show, not a festival gig or a support slot. So the Sisters can play an extended set, not the 30-minutes shows we know from the late 1982 recordings e.g. at the "Christmas on Earth" Festival some weeks previously.

The Sisters are at a turning point at this gig. If you read the fantastic article in the Quietus about the "Golden Year" 1983, this show presents us with the climax of how the Sisters were up to this point. It contains most of the very early classics in driving versions, including songs that will be kicked out of the set soon, to be replaced by the later highlights like "Gimme Shelter", "Jolene" or "Emma", so none of the latter are included here. So it's actually more of a 1982 setlist, very early in 1983. But it shows us what a perfectly oiled live machine the Sisters are at this stage. Some 1982 problems have been resolved - just think of the roughness of "Anaconda" and "Alice" as reported in Nik's post about the "worst gig" of the Sisters, just 3 months earlier.

Now let's have a closer look at the gig itself. Of course we start with "Kiss the Carpet", with a little trouble in the intro part, some "Mr. Marx trying to find the right tone"-thing, and some different views on the timing between Gary and Ben regarding when to start the guitar-riff, but when Andrew kicks in with the vocal, he sets the right cue point and the guitars follow. Proof that it’s the vocalist who keeps it all together, showing the right path to his sidemen.

Without a break we move into "Floorshow", a live classic from the very beginning and a great way to say "Here we are, move your asses" after the crawling intro track...and it works, as you hear people yelling after Andrew's introduction.This is even a kind of "extended version", as Andrew misses his cue to kick in in time after his screaming part. But the band waits for him and plays on...a good reaction, guess nobody in the audience at the time even noticed that.

The next song, "Watch", is introduced as an "old one"...yes from the very first single, originally sung by Marx, but here in a driving version carried by the Doktor's beat later recycled for "Heartland" and by a very groovy bass from Craig. Andrew’s vocals fit very well for this song, and I personally like this live version much better than the 7" version.

 The “classics” then follow with "Adrenochrome" and "Alice", both well-played standard versions. "Alice" again being welcomed by the audience after its introduction, showing that the audience already have their favourite tunes. And this time it's presented without any “off-piste” fretwork by Mr. Marx!

The following "Valentine" is presented as a "new one". There are only two known versions played before this gig, in the late 1982 Christmas setlists, so we can really say that it's genuinely a new one. After the previous two fast tracks, the audience gets confronted with a slow, dragging beat from the Doktor, leaving a lot of space between lines and chords; so the guitar lines can build an intense atmosphere, as they work brilliantly together. A Sisters piece par excellence, showing in which direction the new songs will go and giving a little taste of the soon to be released "Reptile House EP". Andrew’s vocal lines are demanding and hard to sing, and here we can notice him getting in a bit of trouble trying to reach the high notes...but he solves it very professionally, always getting back on key.

The next track is introduced as being the new single, "Anaconda", a song which had been first played several months beforehand in a more embryonic version which was played very roughly...now it works much better, but also here we have some fine moments of the "Mr. Marx trying to find the right tone"-thing. I can clearly see him running around on stage, hitting his string(s) nearly without looking at it and so sometimes missing the right fret when playing the famous melody. Andrew seems, when he starts to sing, to decide in the last second to sing it an octave deeper than in the October versions, making the song getting closer to the recorded and released version. It already shows the potential to become a Sisters classic, I guess the Sisters are convinced of it at that stage as well, as they put it into the later section of their main set, although it's an unreleased and still quite a new song.

Suddenly we move towards the end section of the main set. It starts with a routinely but roughly played "Body Electric", that morphs straight into the beginning of "1969", also a classic Sisters live track from the very first days. We can even talk of a medley here, as there is absolutely no break between the two.

"1969" is presented in the "extended" version, with Andy screaming to the Doktor's tricky programmed beat during the long intro section. In this song the Sisters show how great they are, although (or even because?) it's a cover song. Andrew’s high sung lines and screams above the driving bass and the stoically played power chords by Ben, together with Gary's wildly tortured guitar string...this is The Sisters at their absolute best! Raw power!

After a short encore break the Sisters return to the stage with the slow and creepy "Lights", a song that we know is from 1981, but up to this point only rarely played live in some encores. It shows again that the Sisters are also at home in more quiet and atmospheric tunes, a fact that will soon be proven with the release of the "Reptile House EP", including this song and of course as we all know, the opener and the "new" Valentine played earlier in the set. The song finds its climax in the end, with some desperately screamed vocals by Andrew. Shortly after its end, an audience member screams for "Good Things" with is answered by Andrew with an unfriendly "No!". At least he answered, you could say. But why was "Good Things" skipped completely, as it's a catchy song? It was played live in 1981 and even presented in their first Peel session. And people frequently ask for it. Maybe one day we will know the answer...

The following and usual last encore track is, as we know since 1981, of course VU's "Sister Ray". A highlight of any Sisters show that can't be missed. Of course again a great, wild version. But one little tragedy: the taper, obviously not expecting the gig could be longer than 45 minutes, did not use the encore break to turn over the tape. Aaaarrgghhh!!!! So the improvised guitar parts in the middle section are lost to the tape flip. But we are lucky enough that it was auto-flipped (or did the taper realize and turn it up? we never know), so we have the strong end with some heavy guitar and bass parts and Andy's screamed outro.

That would have been it - normally. But here, at home in Leeds, in another short encore break, the DJ encourages the audience at least to try to get the Sisters back on stage...and it works! As most tape collectors know, an encore after "Sister Ray" is extremely rare.But, what are the Sisters going to play for us? It's a groovy, floating live version of their first single, "The Damage Done" .It's introduced by Andy with the words "This is our first...greatest hit", covered by some feedback noise probably because he gets too close to the monitor box with his mike as he still does today, and when the Doktor starts, obviously a bit too slow, his speed is corrected while the song has already started. The first tones of the bass-riff are lost because the fader was down already and is put up in the last second. This all sounds a bit improvised and unrehearsed, I guess that "The Damage Done" was officially removed from the setlist already and it was played here as an absolute exception. But why? This version here is so great and groovy. I really love it! The "Glitterish" drum pattern, the melodic bassline, Andy's very cool vocals here, we even get some trashy high guitar notes. What an end to a gig! 

But as I mentioned earlier, we can see this gig as a turning point. Some of the songs presented here have been in the set for two years and are going to be replaced soon. We can say goodbye to "Watch" and of course "The Damage Done", and even the two famous covers "1969" and "Sister Ray" are going to be kicked out of the set. "1969" will be played the last time two months later at the famous Brixton Ace gig, also here we have a fantastic recording shared on YouTube from Phil's archive , it is introduced as being played for the last time. Also "Sister Ray" is announced also as to be played the last time, it will be partially replaced by the new cover-medley "Ghostrider" by their famous heroes Suicide, crossed over with the 1950's rock and roll classic "Louie Louie", originally performed by Richard Berry. But unlike "1969", "Sister Ray" was allowed to celebrate a comeback.

But back to the point. As this is more a 1982 setlist as I said earlier, this is a great document of how the Sisters were before the "Golden Year" started. The typical songs played since 1981 are presented in such perfection and routine, and the band are so on fire that it even hurts listening. You can smell the development burning under their skins. In the near future the set will consist of even more slower songs like "Heartland" and "Burn", the before mentioned new covers that will help them to get more attention, proving their sense of humour and courage ("Jolene", "Emma") and of course changing rock history by showing the Stones how their song goes ("Gimme Shelter").
To me, it's absolutely amazing how great the Sisters already were even before these milestones, and here we have a fantastic document of that!

My thanks for this blog post are due to all those who have contributed, whether directly or indirectly - Phil V, LG, Richard N, the Leeds Student team, Rob C, 'Appy, Steve B and of course Ollie for the wonderful review. As usual, a fantastic team effort to try to keep the unique memory of this wonderful band from Leeds alive!