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

Forty Years Ago today: First and Last and Always was released.

Forty years ago today (11th March 1985) on the third day of their ‘Armageddon’ tour across the UK (which was revisiting University of Sheffield that evening after the traditional tour openers in Glasgow and Edinburgh), The Sisters of Mercy finally released their debut LP, First And Last And Always, on the WEA label. FALAA, to give it its usual acronym, went on to become one of the true monoliths of gothic rock, recently ranking as high as second in the Uncut magazine special, The 200 Greatest Goth Albums. But as we shall discover, intriguingly the album might have enjoyed similar success in the main UK album charts, which would clearly have helped to reduce some of the pressure on the band for commercial success, with their three WEA singles all having failed to dent the official UK Top 40 singles chart.

Advert for FALAA in the German magazine Spex

In the same way as there were very few other bands who clung to the punk DIY spirit of putting out their own records for so long before signing with a major label, The Sisters of Mercy were also unique amongst their peers in taking well over four years from releasing their debut single to producing their first album. This is usually attributed to Eldritch’s “perfectionist’s perfectionist” reputation, which possibly explains not only why there has been no new album over the past thirty-odd years, despite there being a gigging band with a multitude of unreleased new songs (a topic to be covered in Mark Andrews’ much-anticipated forthcoming book Here), but also the over-long genesis of FALAA once recording and begun. Jane Simon referred to this in her contemporary interview with the band (published in Sounds on March 30th 1985): “people make albums every day,  but the length of time between The Sisters’ rather messy birth and their debut into this well-trodden adult territory makes this something of an Event.”

Photo from the gatefold sleeve limited edition of FALAA, taken by the late Ruth Polsky

FALAA was originally intended for release to tie in with what became the Black October tour in October 1984 (with an advert in the York Rock Festival programme in September 1984 announcing its release), before being put back to a potential January 1985 launch, a date which was eventually further put back to March 11th 1985. The reasons for these delays - Andrew Eldritch’s health issues and ongoing attempts to secure mixes of these songs which the various parties could agree to - have been very well-documented in Mark Andrews’ essential biography of the band (Paint My Name In Black And Gold) and Robert Cowlin’s seminal blog article on the recording process and the various mixes in existence, All I Know For Sure:The Making Of First And Last And Always. In this post, we will focus instead on the contemporary reaction to the much-delayed album, the band’s first release to make a significant impression on the UK Official Charts and one which brought them more column inches than the previous nine single releases combined.

US promo cassette version of the album

As was the case for many albums now considered to be absolute classics of their genre, FALAA was met with more hostility than acclaim on its release, but unusually, much of the disappointment came from diehard fans of the band in addition to the more expected source of the music press. This was acknowledged by the band themselves in the Jane Simon interview, with the journalist summarising the point before quoting Eldritch’s himself. “They think this LP will possibly lose them quite a bit of their old following, and if they’re not exactly worried about that, perhaps concerned isn’t too strong a word. Andrew: ‘A lot of people didn’t realise that once we’d found the ability to do it, we’d be quite happy to make records where you could hear all the instruments and all the words and it would sound ok on the radio. A lot of people get pissed off when you make records like that - they figure you’ve changed somehow.’”

Argentinian cassette release of FALAA with an attempt at translating the song titles into Spanish

Personally speaking, I was not alone amongst long-term fans of the band of my acquaintance who found FALAA to be a profound disappointment on first hearing, although not unexpectedly so after the previous two singles had set the tone for the band’s enhanced but less powerful sonic template. The overall sound seemed tinnier, weedier and less attention-grabbing than the earlier singles, the lyrics on some songs seemed a bit more simplistic (on Walk Away, for example), and the band seemed to have somehow mislaid the drive and the attack in their music (which, to be fair, still very much characterised their live shows at that time) on the way to the studio. In Paint My Name In Black And Gold, the band’s then-manager and long-term Eldritch’s associate Boyd Steemson expresses similar misgivings: “It should sound enormous…but it’s like listening through a seashell”. The band’s case was not helped by the fact that the very same month Red Lorry Yellow Lorry had released Talk About The Weather, which featured the same muscular FX-heavy guitar and whip-smart primitive drum-machine sound which had been the hallmark of The Sisters’ outstanding 1983 single releases.

However, to a certain extent, this was part of the natural cycle of the 80’s alternative music fan, always looking for the next big thing to discover, only to leave the bandwagon they had (in a very minor way) helped to create when the artist began to find commercial success and became public property. This factor was alluded to by NME journalist Paul du Noyer during his interview with The Sisters of Mercy that March: “Already, the fanzine boys have turned on him [Eldritch], as we all do when our pet products go public.” And there is certainly evidence that any departing fans were quickly being replaced by a wide army of new followers who were attracted by the band’s image (FALAA was the first TSOM release to feature photos of the band), live performances and yes, the new, more accessible sound. 

The album’s chart trajectory seemed to follow an established pattern for ‘cult’ acts, with a high first week placing (no. 14 in the chart in this case), followed by fairly rapid decline (second and third week sales placing The Sisters at number 21 and 38 respectively in the UK’s official album charts). Strangely, at that point, with the Armageddon tour having ended, the album’s chart trajectory recovered to the number 31 position the following week, possibly on the back of word-of-mouth spread amongst those who had seen the band in concert or on their UK TV début on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2, then fell again slightly to 45, spending a further three weeks in lower reaches of the Top 100 before leaving the countdown, not a bad overall run for a band without a Top 40 single. By way of comparison, Killing Joke, who had charted with five previous albums (Revelations, peaking at 12, being their most successful at that point), only reached number 11 in the album charts (the same high point attained by another well-established act The Damned’s Phantasmagoria later that year) with Night Time during an equally brief nine-week stay starting a month earlier, despite the advantages of both already being better-known and of having a hit single Love Like Blood, which reached number 16 in the singles chart. 

Interestingly, FALAA seems to have fallen foul of rules brought in after early 80’s chart-rigging scandals, whereby record companies had inflated the sales figures of their releases by a variety of means (bribing record shop employees, dispatching sales teams to buy their own record, offering discounted copies or special editions of a single only in chart return shops, etc) in order to boost a chart position so as to gain more airplay/coverage and potentially increase future sales. As a result, records which recorded suspicious variations in sales across the country would be “down-weighted” in the chart, and this was the case with FALAA in its release week, as confirmed by Wayne Hussey in an interview with International Musician and Recording World. The guitarist told the magazine, “We sell a lot of records in places like Birmingham, and none in Cornwall, so they figured that we were being hyped up North. But what happens is our very diehard following go out and buy it in the first week; it’ll go down from now on, though it seems we sold as many records as Howard Jones in the first week.” As Jones was also a WEA artist, the record company would have access to detailed actual sales figures for both LPs in the week both were released, when Jones’ album Dream Into Action entered the chart at number two! Even allowing for some exaggeration of The Sisters’ comparative sales in the in-house information shared with Hussey, in terms of actual sales it is likely that FALAA merited a place in the national top 5 in the week of release, a feat which would in turn have lead to much greater airplay for No Time To Cry, which had disappointingly and somewhat embarrassingly entered the singles chart a couple of places lower than comedian Billy Connolly’s rendition of the Super Gran children’s TV theme song.

Neil P’s amazing FALAA collection which contains 55 items!

FALAA also made the album charts in Sweden (peaking at a respectable number 23) and scraped into the (West) German Top 40, but only really became a big seller retrospectively, finally gaining a silver disc (60,000 sales) just after the release of Floodland in 1987 before being certified gold (100,000 sales) two years later. Floodland itself made number nine on its initial release, on the back of This Corrosion’s breakthrough, but left the charts having clocked a mere seven weeks, before the singles chart success of both Dominion/Mother Russia and Lucretia, My Reflection added a further thirteen weeks to the album’s stay in the Top 100 LP listings.

Gold disc for FALAA

The contemporary critical reception from the music press was as mixed as the response from fans had been. Chris Heath of glossy fortnightly chart hit mag Smash Hits seemed a little confused about the album, not least because of his reference to the title as First and Last and Everything (a subtle gravel-throated Barry White reference?!?), awarding the LP the lowest score of albums reviewed that issue (six and a half out of ten) but ending with one of those ‘damned with faint praise’ but supposedly encouraging phrases that Eldritch would have been familiar from his grammar/public school reports: “Quite a promising start”. Heath appears to have spent longer studying the band’s individual photos on the sleeve (“The Sisters of Mercy have long, unkempt hair, always scowl in photos”) than on the music, for having stated “[They] generally look like the sort of people who’d make an unpleasant din. Thankfully, they don’t”, goes on to complain of “ten repetitive tunes,” some of which are “very ordinary”. Few fans would agree with the Smash Hits scribbler that Marian would fit into the latter category, but here it is decried as “endless.”

Readers of the other UK small format music magazine, Record Mirror, would have little idea of the contents of the album, with reviewer Jim Reid spending three short paragraphs to state his theory that bands like The Sisters perform a social service for suicidal teens. The only evidence that he actually might have listened to the record was that “it’s sung through a tunnel darkly and it’s all pretty inoffensive”, before awarding it a very banal three stars out of five.

Perhaps the most enthusiastic review came from Kerrang!’s Dave Dickson, a genuine fan of the band’s music, whose piece was stuffed with superlatives and hyperbole - “the arcane splendour that is the Sisters’ first album”, “one of the most frightening albums I have ever encountered … because it works on fears, real fears, that we all have and try to keep hidden and in check”, “most of all, it’s the Stygian chill of Andrew Eldritch’s voice…this is the beast that Jagger raised and quickly abandoned, this is the moment of no return”, with the rather pompous parting shot (with a subtle reference to the lyrics of the album’s title track): “This is music for those on the very edge of the abyss, this is music of power, of black and liquid romance, this is music for the end of time…and I am awed by it, Gimme Shelter.”

Ted Mico’s review of FALAA in Melody Maker, March 1985

Ted Mico of Melody Maker was only slightly less effusive in his praise, stating that FALAA “is packed with glistening gems, unsullied by overproduction”, as Eldritch’s “baritone-drone rivets the attention - in turns commanding, then inviting, following a path wrought with morbid depression and reeking with misery.” Mico also praises Hussey’s “infectious guitar slopes and spirals” which would go on to successfully sustain The Mission over the following four decades, and the songs themselves, with the telling prophecy “These songs are almost explosive enough to launch a gothic revival (the third this year!)”, a comment which will raise many a wry smile in 2025 as the annual “Goth Is Back!” articles filter through the mainstream media’s late winter gloom. Deliberately misquoting the LP’s final track, Mico comments “All I know is that here, all past promises have been fulfilled. With First And Last And Always, The Sisters of Mercy have successfully accumulated a startling array of timeless jewels. It can only be a matter of time before they accumulate success.”

Sadly if predictably (particularly in the case of the NME), the other two main music weeklies at the time took a very different view. Sounds had been the first to give the band a main feature (a mere fifteen months after their appearance at Futurama 3) and a front cover slot in December 1982, but by March 1985 reviewer Dave Henderson was clearly uninspired by FALAA, despite awarding it a very specific three and two-thirds stars out of five, accusing the band of merely being effectively an amalgam of the genre’s past, citing Bauhaus, Banshees, Velvets, Joy Division and Doors amongst others. Failing to predict the hordes of second-rate second-generation gothic bands trailing in The Sisters’ sonic wake (pun intended), Henderson erroneously proclaims “No generations will breed from THIS diamond. Let’s merely shelve the platter as a classic over-produced and over-dramatic outing.” Contrary to conventional contemporary wisdom, the writer further states that with FALAA, The Sisters are “preaching to the converted”, but admits that they “do sound convincing, they’ve done their homework well”, although in the final analysis, “the album’s a reasonable enough collection of semi-commercial rock, but the raunch is AWOL.”

UK music press reviews, 1985

David Quantick’s review for the NME is best remembered for its multiple Joy Division references which so angered Eldritch (and which was discussed in a separate post on this blog), and he states that the album is an “oddity”, but the same could be said about Quantick’s critique. After a lengthy double-paragraph dense introduction in which he attempts to deconstruct the Sisters by focusing on their look, sound and alleged influences, there is some relevant analysis of FALAA, as he points out the obvious differences between the two sides of the album - side one being “a good piece of rockist pop”, containing “natural singles”, whilst side two is “a different kettle of flash”(??) and “thinly produced”, before proceeding to a further lengthy concluding paragraph which suggests that by ditching the “post-79” element of the sound and adding some “hammy glammy rock”, they could be both “tongue in cheek” and “tongue in charts”. For those struggling with Google Translate to make sense of Quantick’s neo-English, it would appear that in this passage he is effectively advising Eldritch to do exactly what he proceeded to do next with This Corrosion.

The international response to the album was also rather mixed. (West) German magazine Spex, who had been following the band closely for two years, called the album “highly recommended as a mysterious introduction to the mystical world of black cloaks”, and focussed on the similarities between FALAA and The Cult’s most recent album at the time, Dreamtime. This was because of the bands’ modern take on psychedelia-influenced rock, with the journalist stating that these were the best two albums to come out of the genre, but bemoaning the lack of a follow-up hit to Temple of Love and Body and Soul, which were seemingly gaining mainstream airplay locally.

Review from De Volkskrant, March 1985

Peter Koops in respected Dutch daily paper (with the third largest circulation in The Netherlands) de Volkskrant agreed with the more lukewarm UK reviewers, stating that Hussey’s songs on side one were “better” than Marx’s on side two, that the “intense melancholy” that emanates from the Sisters’ sound makes them “unmistakeably part of the Joy Division school,” with “Somberman” Eldritch’s vocal rising from the deep “just like Ian Curtis.” Dutch magazine Oor felt the timing for the album was good, with Si leaving their “main rivals” The March Violets, and felt that FALAA was “a strong record…that shows that The Sisters of Mercy have developed into a mature and progressive rock band that has finally shaken the post-punk monkey off its back, without losing its sources of inspiration.” The reviewer, Swie To, feels that the band is “equipped with a clear and powerful production for the first time,” contrary to the view of most UK reviewers and fans, and is impressed with band’s “new driving force”, Wayne Hussey, praising his “smooth and graceful songwriting as well as the “goose bump” 12-string guitar work on No Time To Cry and “the moving Marian”. The critic is less impressed with Eldritch and his “cheap textual clichés” which reveal his “obsession” with “human decay, sexual aberrations and death.” As a result, the reader is advised to “think carefully before buying” the album!

Review from Oor magazine, 1985

The LP was generally well reviewed in the US, although there were usually diametrically opposed views on the production and on Eldritch’s vocal, as was also the case elsewhere. On the former point, in Heaven Down Here fanzine, Robert Roman Conway began by saying “I, for one, don’t find this record as weak as everyone made it out to be,” hinting at disappointment amongst longer term fans of the band. He goes on to criticise Dave Allen’s production which “did its best to blunt the band’s sharper edges…but the material for the most is so strong that it can sidestep Allen’s blanderisms.” 

Music press advert for FALAA, March 1985

Over the subsequent forty years, whilst debate has continued about the merits of Allen’s production, First and Last and Always has become arguably the most quintessential album of the gothic rock pantheon, although the band was even then keen to avoid the “goth” name tag. No doubt aided by the visual accompaniment of the Wake concert video filmed live at the Royal Albert Hall finale three months later (although not released until the following year), FALAA came to represent  a key strand of the a dark aesthetic which continues to thrive to this day, granting Eldritch his much longer-for place in the mythical rock’n’roll hall of fame.

Review of Wake from Smash Hits, 1986

My thanks for this post are due to the usual suspects: Messrs Andrews, Ristow and Cowlin for their outstanding publications, and to Ade M, LG, Neil P and other members of the unofficial TSOM Facebook fan page for the 1980-1985 era of The Sisters expertly run by Phil Verne.