Leaders of Men - Joy Division and The Sisters of Mercy

Along with how they met and where they got the band name from, all emerging groups are always asked about their musical influences, as (lazy?) journalists try to pin down their sound for readers and potential fans, and The Sisters of Mercy were certainly no exception in their early days.

Andrew Eldritch (almost always the sole spokesperson for the band until the garrulous – and more experienced - Wayne Hussey joined the group in late 1983) had clearly anticipated the question, and kept a mental list of bands which he would trot out, perming any half a dozen from a list that included The Rolling Stones, The Stooges, Suicide, The Birthday Party, The Ramones, Motorhead, MC5, The Psychedelic Furs and Hawkwind, to name just some of the usual suspects.

Apart from the Furs and The Birthday Party, very few contemporary bands were mentioned as the singer deliberately tried to distance his band from any of the emerging “positive punk” bands, and interviewers comparing The Sisters to Bauhaus, for example, or any incarnation of The Cult were given very short shrift.

However, there was one very obvious comparison, a band whom the singer seemed reluctant to name-check in the 1980’s, but whose spectre haunted interviews and reviews of the band in the early days: Joy Division. There were some obvious points of comparison – both bands had reluctant but hypnotic frontmen, both singers sang in a low baritone, both had bass players whose buzzing riffs dominated their sound, both had a clinical, electronic drum sound, both came from and were resolutely based in the North of England, both favoured black record sleeves with no photos or details about the band, both built up fearsome live reputations based purely on word of mouth, and both played a mean live version of Louie Louie and of the Velvets’ Sister Ray. Both had ferociously loyal local followings built up by word of mouth, and knew where they were heading, maintaining some of the mystery essential for creating a buzz in the music scene, staying away from major label control. The Sisters early sound was dominated by the guitar of Gary Marx, who played a Shergold – a brand used by both Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook.

Surely an open and shut case, m’lud. That there were equally as many differences – whether in terms of influences, vocal tone, lyrical subject matter, use of humour and irony, guitar style and tone, song structure, visual image and band management and direction – seemed to matter little to those eager to pigeonhole TSOM as mere Joy Division copyists.

In the printed media, these comparisons were initially few and far between (to coin a phrase), but were discussed even in the breakthrough Sounds cover piece in December 1982, with Eldritch opining “The problem is these days that there are so few people who sing in a low voice…I mean, when I started singing people said “Ooh, he sounds just like Jim Morrison,” then shortly after it was “Ooh, he sounds just like Ian Curtis” and now it’s Pete Murphy.” Sounds was a particular guilty party, with a review of the Alice single saying that it was “more obviously JD-derived” , a phrase repeated by Geoff Barton when he made The Reptile House EP “joint single of the week” the following year, calling it a “deviant, JD-derived diabolism”. Keeping with the theme, the paper also including the (rhetorical question) “Is there a snatch of Ian Curtis?” in their review of First And Last And Always, by which time such comparisons were clearly redundant as the Sisters moved inexorably in the direction of Led Zeppelin and classic rock in the hats’n’dry ice phase which remains their visual (and arguably, musical) zenith.

With Richard “Mr Spencer” Newson (Sounds) and Adam Sweeting (Melody Maker) very much onside and getting decent copy published in their respective magazines on a semi-regular basis, the NME published only short reviews of live shows (normally when they had ostensibly gone to review another band on the bill) or singles, which were often less than flattering - ”Choked voice delivers indistinguishable..message” (Body Electric), “The singer looked like Joey Ramone and yelped like a dog” (“Christmas on Earth” gig review), “a bit too dense for extended listening” (Alice), etc.

Already low on Eldritch’s Christmas card list, the NME further blotted their copy book with Paul Du Noyer’s major interview with the singer in March 1985, at a time when the band were being widely feted as the “next big thing”. “An exact definition of their appeal eludes me, but they do have something” was the best he could muster about a band who had surely earned their spurs as belated cover stars, a role given to hyped London-based bands often before a single musical note had been recorded! But this was as nothing compared to David Quantick’s self-congratulatory review the same month of First And Last And Always, which broke new records by referencing Joy Division no fewer than five times in four paragraphs, including in particular a reference to the similarities between New Dawn Fades and Some Kind of Stranger, which are not entirely without foundation, it has to be said.

The over-the-top nature of Quantick’s repetition of the JD reference was picked up on by Piccadilly Radio (ironically based in Manchester)’s excellent interviewer (Tony “the Greek”?) in a fascinating encounter with the band during the tour that accompanied the album release. The singer was only too delighted to expound his views on the NME’s failings in response, as can be heard in this extract kindly shared online by Phil Verne of the unofficial The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 Facebook fan group. “I think that they [the NME] feel about us the same way as they felt about Joy Division. It all happened up here, they missed out on it, they never quite understood it, they knew it was powerful, but they chose to ignore it and looked silly afterwards and that’s pretty much the same with us. I think they lump us in the same category because of that. They regard us as being northern and industrial and nothing we can ever do will change that because they just aren’t really interested in promoting rock bands from this part of the world any more than they ever were, I don’t think,” continued the exasperated singer at breakneck speed.

With the press finding new bands to persecute about their likeness to their musical forefathers (hello, Fields of the Nephilim) and focussing on the Hussey/Eldritch Sisterhood spat, the Joy Division comparisons receded and have not been heard since. With the passage of time, Eldritch has become more willing to talk about Joy Division and their occasional similarities to The Sisters of Mercy, such as in this 2016 seminal interview with John Robb: “I don't do cover versions. It's the same with Peter Hook.  He can't play any other songs at all and he has the best bass riffs other than mine.....That’s where Hooky [Peter Hook, Joy Division bassist] and me are the same – we just played up and down on one string and wrote songs. Me and Hooky have done the same thing since then. I loved The Stooges and Suicide and found myself in a band. I never saw them [Joy Division – who played at the F Club in Leeds] and if I did, I don’t remember it, but I loved the first album [Unknown Pleasures]. I had their poster on the wall. We were not to the side of Joy Division – we came from the same place as them. We were from the same place with The Stooges, Hawkwind and Suicide as the background and from a similar part of the world, with similar pressures on us, and it was kind of natural that we came up with something vaguely similar, emitting the [same] moody vibe.” The singer then intones a familiar “northern powerhouse” monologue which regular interview readers over the past four decades will be familiar with. “There were whole swathes of the country that were making that kind of sound – the Sisters called it the M62 sound, because the motorway that connected us to The Teardrop Explodes, Comsat Angels and all the other bands that we grew up with…that part of the country is narrow and we were on the same trains and buses and we were connected.”

The final word though must go to Geoff Barton of Sounds, whose review of what for me was The Sisters’ finest moment, The Reptile House E.P., ended with the following line: “If Joy Division drew blood. The Sisters cut right through to the bone. It hurts, but it feels so good.”

Vinyl Fetish record store appearance - Los Angeles, October 1983

This post is the 150^th on this blog, which was originally intended as a way for me to note down and publicise for those who weren’t lucky enough to be there at the time, what life was like in Leeds in the early/mid 1980’s when The Sisters of Mercy were at the heart of the musical zeitgeist.

Before long, collectors and other old goths began to get in touch with their own memories and artefacts, with Phil Verne ultimately starting The Sisters of Mercy 1980 – 1985 unofficial Faceboook fan page, with the result that over the past few years we have managed to track down amongst other things full details of the band’s first gig, first single, first demo tape and first interview. What’s more, we’ve between us managed to confirm some new, long-lost dates on the band’s gigography of that era and eliminate other gigs for which some doubtful evidence had previously existed.

In the last eighteen months, the latter seam of information seemed to have been fully exploited, so you can imagine my delight when the picture above was shared on Flickr recently by US punk flyer specialist Superbawestside1980, referring to an apparent in-store appearance by The Sisters at legendary L.A. record shop Vinyl Fetish. The flyer appeared to refer to Sat 29^th October, date of the band’s West Coast debut show at the Alexandria Hotel in 1983, recently covered by another post on this blog.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noted that Vinyl Fetish was one of the record stores where tickets for the Alexandria show had been available, and this clearly hastily-made poster, with crudely drawn time and date in tippex around a promo photo of the band, implied that the band would be making an in-store appearance at the shop in the Melrose area of LA at what for the band at the time would have been the ungodly hour of 1 p.m.

In the conversation in the comments under the flyer, Flickr user Riot Nrrrd had stated “Weird….I don’t remember this. Was this before their Halloween (?) gig at The Alexandria Hotel? I went to that.” Superbawestside1980 reassured both Riot Nrrrd and the reading public with the reply “Yep! It happened, and Henry actually took the time to film it and take pics as well. Who knows where that stuff is now although it would be great to see it.”

This whetted my appetite further – video footage of the first TSOM US tour has yet to surface, so this would be an amazing find, if only I could find out who “Henry” was. In true “online sleuth” mode, I begin to research Vinyl Fetish, finding a great blog post by a former employee of the store, Michael L Compton who wrote with real enthusiasm of his time working at the seminal record shop. “This period was the beginning of the dark Goth scene, and while many of those people were embracing the likes of The Sisters of Mercy, Death Cult and Sex Gang Children, they would come into the store and complain whilst I was playing my current favourites, such a Virgin Prunes and Einsturzende Neubauten…People seemed to accept it as part of the Vinyl Fetish Experience.” Compton had begun his post by stating that “Vinyl Fetish was owned and operated by two local scene makers named Henry Peck and Joseph Brooks. They were well-known in the Hollywood post-punk crowd for running several popular late-night dance clubs around town.”

                                (pic on Flickr by Patrick Houdek)

              The Vinyl Fetish premises still stand today and still host a record store (Google Streetview)

Eagerly googling Henry Peck, I was saddened to learn that he had passed away a couple of years ago, and read the very affectionate obituaries that L.A. Weekly, the L.A. Post Examiner and The Los Angeles Beat had published in honour of a genuine pioneer of the alternative scene in California, which remains one of the movement’s bastions to this day. There was also this excellent pencil portrait by Mark Vallen, showing a smiling Henry outside the store, with the description adding more local colour to the Vinyl Fetish story. “Henry’s establishment was quite a hangout, with every punk (or curiosity seeker) in LA dropping in at one time or another. You could buy weird clothes, browse the hundreds of offbeat records – or just watch the never-ending cavalcade of humanity.”

This was exactly the kind of uber-cool shop that I can imagine Eldritch and co hanging out in, harking back to the singer’s days at Priestley’s in York at the start of the decade as he started up his band. The Sisters had certainly not yet reached the point in 1983 where they were in demand in the UK for in-store signing sessions, so this appearance would have been a new “first” for the band. However, with Henry’s passing, it seems as if the evidence of this momentous event would also have been lost forever.

As a final attempt to find out more about the event, I decided to track down Peck’s former business partner Joseph Brooks, which proved to be surprisingly easy as he has become one of America’s most collected celebrity jewellers, with clients including Madonna, Siouxsie Sioux and Samuel L Jackson. Clearly a highly busy and successful man, so it was without much hope of a reply that I emailed Joseph Brooks with a plea for more information.

However, I was astonished when he got back to me within five minutes! He told me that there was “really not much to say about it….Henry and I were the DJ’s for the Alexandria Hotel show but the band cancelled the Vinyl Fetish appearance. That night they came to our club called Fetish….Andrew just stood in the club watching people dance….I never really got to know him at all.”

Whether it was the early start, the distance between the Melrose Avenue store in Hollywood and the downtown Alexandria Hotel (see map above) or that the band had found other distractions on their first visit to L.A., the in-store appearance therefore didn’t take place, and Andrew’s image as a rather diffident conversationalist with those he didn’t know well accompanied him on a visit which was clearly in fact inspirational to him. The fact that the in-store appearance was in fact cancelled was confirmed to me by The Sisters of Mercy's premier unofficial expert on the band's history in the US, Trevor R, who told me that he had spoken to others who were in L.A. at the time and that they had told him that it did not take place.

Therefore the band's first known and confirmed in-store appearances are still those on the tour in support of the release of First and Last and Always in March 1985 when they visited stores in several towns, including HMV in Leeds, and the legendary Selectadisc in Nottingham (see photo below, courtesy of mega TSOM collector LG).

But if anyone does know anything about the video footage of the band from this visit, please do get in touch!

I would like to thank Superbawestside1980 for sharing the flyer on Flickr, LG, Phil Verne, Trevor R, Michael L Compton for his informative blog, and in particular Joseph Brooks for helping to elucidate events surrounding The Sisters of Mercy’s first visit to L.A.