After the back-to-back publications of two great biographies of The Sisters of Mercy a couple of years ago after a forty year drought, it will come as no surprise to seasoned Sisters watchers that we now have two equally complementary Histories of Goth, with Cathi Unsworth’s volume (Season of the Witch -The Book of Goth) appearing just a matter of weeks after the publication of John Robb’s dissection of the UK goth scene of the 1980’s.
Unsworth was herself a goth (unlike Robb), a point which she
makes in both the introduction and the conclusion of her book which is published today, and she has also enjoyed a
thirty-five year career as a professional writer, initially on music weeklies
such as the Melody Maker, before launching a successful career as a novelist
specialising in contemporary dark fiction, and as a result her gothic
meisterwerk is not only well-observed but beautifully written.
Most importantly, she is well-known amongst Sisters diehards
as a huge fan of the band herself, not to mention a close associate in the 1990’s,
when they were at the height of their commercial fame, making this new book of
particular interest to long-term TSOM aficionados.
However, as Unsworth was only born in 1969 (ok!), she was herself only
ten years old when her Book of Goth begins, and was only able to travel to
gigs from her family home in the “flat fields” of Norfolk once the main artists
of the genre were already well-established and arguably past their creative peak.
Her book usefully seeks to site goth within the prevailing
social and political context of the UK, so it begins with the election of
Margaret Thatcher in 1979, (the year of Bela Lugosi’s Dead, the first
Killing Joke EP and the debut Joy Division album Unknown Pleasures), and
Unsworth compares the dominant and most wilfully divisive political figure of
the 1980’s somewhat surprisingly with Siouxsie Sioux, as two female radicals
breaking the mould in male-dominated professions through not dissimilar tactics.
Writing at a time when Britain’s contemporary Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
shared a moon-faced tousled haired look with the then King of Pop Ed Sheeran,
this similarity must have seemed more than coincidence, but despite Unsworth
unearthing Sioux quotes which seem to suggest that her politics were not as far
from Thatcher’s as one would imagine, the singer will be no more flattered by
the comparison than Robert Smith, whose own background is compared to a
notorious serial killer from Crawley.
With the chapter on Leeds beginning with the reminder that
the Sisters formed at a time when fear reigned in the city where the Yorkshire
Ripper was still at large, one half expects Unsworth to compare Andrew Eldritch
to the serial killer on the grounds that he once grew a straggly beard, but
instead the chapter turns out to be one of the most free from personal
reminiscences. As elsewhere, Unsworth quotes heavily from other publications but
also has comments from key Leeds figures such as Jon Langford, Annie Hogan and
Claire Shearsby, rather than the band members themselves. Unfortunately, in a
rare error in an otherwise meticulously researched book, Unsworth states that the
York gig where Langford stepped in for the absent Craig Adams took place in May
1981, rather than the actual date of 5th February 1982, but otherwise
the chapter is suitably effective, although the other bands on the Leeds scene at the
time – with the exception of The Three Johns -
are barely mentioned. Entertainingly, some of the best quotes in the
TSOM dominated chapter come from novelist David Peace, then an aspiring God
Squad member who states: “I know it’s a Sisters cliche but the Ben Gunn line-up
was the best….The Sisters WERE the Gothic, industrial, Ripper Leeds…and I still
think that The Reptile House is the most Leeds record you can ever
listen to.” Amen to all that.
This kind of insider analysis – like Unsworth’s
identification of Magazine’s Secondhand Daylight and The Banshees’ Juju
as other gothic masterpieces – is exactly the kind of knowledgeable narrative
that readers would have been hoping for, and in all artists held up for major
analysis, the detailed biographical research is impressively forensic.
Elsewhere, Unsworth does not shy away from some of the more
unpalatable aspects of early goth groups, particularly what appeared even at
the time as an unhealthy interest in Nazi iconography (eg the band name
selection of Joy Division and New Order, Theatre of Hate’s SS Record label or
Siouxsie’s sporting of swastika armbands for shock), or to evidence coercive
control by individuals within their private relationships.
As one might expect for a novelist, the well-read Unsworth
has a particular interest in the literature which inspired the first generation
of goth artists, and the book has a lengthy and impressive appendix suggesting
further fictional reading material and a filmography for those wishing to have
a greater understanding of the cultural context of some of the main players.
The book also successfully and uniquely links key artists within their genre and their music
with the key events of the 1980’s whether the election of Ronald Regan, the
Falklands War, the Greenham Common Protests, or the Miners’ Strike in a manner
which rarely feels contrived, and which seems more relevant than it did at the time, although the occasional passages where Unsworth
brings the overall narrative back to her own personal circumstances at the time
are a little less well-integrated.
In terms of being an accurate history of the genre, Unsworth gives greater prominence to key artists (including, fortunately, UK Decay, bizarrely omitted by Robb), at the expense of less well-known acts (the March Violets and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry for example), avoiding the rushed, list-based catch-all effect of the Blackpool media pundit’s own tome, but therefore the book is not as comprehensive as some might have wished.
In other ways, however, there are strong parallels between
Unsworth’s book and Robb’s: the former also details at length some of the
“Godfathers and Godmothers of Goth” (with, notably, an equal number of each),
but neatly inserts them as mini-chapters between the main sections of the book.
Unsworth’s appraisal of the non-UK scene also focuses on many of the same acts
as Robb did, with Nick Cave, Einsturzende Neubauten. The Cramps, Diamanda Galas and The Gun
Club getting particular prominence again.
After Goth’s annus mirabilis of 1985, with She Sells
Sanctuary, Love Like Blood and The Shadow of Love all in
charts and First and Last and Always a staple on bedsit turntables, the
scene began to fragment, and Unsworth gropes around for the strands to draw
together, with a scattergun approach that gives brief biographies of such
strange bedfellows as Zodiac Mindwarp, Cardiacs and Crime and The City Solution whilst
focussing on the latter careers of the Cocteau Twins and New Model Army amongst
others, who were no longer at their most potent and innovative at that time
Those hoping for coverage of the last three decades, scenes
outside the UK, US, Australia and Berlin, or even early UK “second wave” bands like Balaam and The Angel,
Gene Loves Jezebel, Play Dead and Fields of the Nephilim will be disappointed
to hear that they do not feature, but Unsworth’s is very much a personal and
political take on the scene, and a welcome and essential addition to the bookshelf of any
self-respecting goth.
Season of the Witch - The Book of Goth is published by music specialist Nine Eight Books (part of www.bonnierbooks.co.uk) with a RRP of £22 and can be ordered via links on Cathi's own website.
My grateful thanks to Cathi and to her publisher for the advance PDF copy of this excellent book which I read in a weekend!
