Forty Years Ago this week: The Sisters of Mercy released the final single of the 1980-1985 era, “No Time To Cry”

 Just days before the release of their debut album First And Last And Always, The Sisters of Mercy put out the second teaser single from it, No Time To Cry, on Merciful Release via WEA . The single was selected by Andrew Eldritch himself, as revealed by Wayne Hussey in his excellent Salad Daze autobiography, and many would agree with Wayne’s assessment that this was “an errant choice in my opinion, mine being either Marian or First And Last And Always.” 

There has always been some confusion about the exact release date of the under-rated single, which the band’s official press release described as “utterly bastard groovy” (a phrase which Eldritch would return to in later iterations of the project). Despite music press clippings from the time detailing the release date as 1st March 1985 (a date quoted by Trevor Ristow in his fascinating history of the band, Waiting For Another War), Discogs lists it as “Feb 1985” and The Sisters of Mercy unofficial wiki gives the date as 8th March, a date which Mark Andrews also uses in his seminal band biography Paint My Name In Black and Gold. The single first featured in the UK official charts on 9th March 1985, which would arguably make the 1st the more likely date that copies were unveiled in record stores nationwide.

NTTC was of course a song with which many fans of the band were already very familiar, with an embryonic (and now officially available) version of the track having featured as one of the songs on the band’s final John Peel session for BBC Radio One in June 1984, and the fully fleshed-out draft having been played extensively on the Black October tour, receiving its first playing at the Caley Palais venue (now a Wetherspoons pub) in Edinburgh on the 4th of that month.

Although clearly one of the standout songs from the album, No Time To Cry was also the track for which Eldritch most struggled to find a mix that was totally acceptable to him, having a further attempt at remixing it at Eel Pie studios prior to its release as a single (according to Merciful Release office manager and close Eldritch confidant Boyd Steemson, as quoted in Robert Cowlin’s essential blog article on the recording timeline for FALAA and its accompanying single tracks, All I Know For Sure:The Making Of First And Last And Always). Many fans agree that the 12” single “Eel Pie” version, rather than the ones included on the FALAA CD (the latter known as the “Japanese” mix, as it featured on the Japanese vinyl release of the album) or indeed the alternative Reinhold Mack December 1984 remix, which featured guitar much lower in the sparser mix and a rawer Eldritch vocal, was the strongest of them all, and it was subsequently also used for The Sisters’ “greatest hits” compilation A Slight Case Of Overbombing and then again on the 2006 CD remaster of FALAA.

To help to promote the single, a video (available on YouTube here) was released, based on the shorter 7” Eel Pie mix of the track, which shaves around forty seconds off the full version (thanks to a truncated intro and outro and a not-so-subtle instrumental cut before the second verse). Described by Trevor Ristow as “frankly uninspired”, the video clip did however manage to capture some of the band’s engagingly mysterious stage presence and highly effective light show, being shot in faux-concert style at London’s Electric Ballroom venue (at which the Hussey/Adams version of The Sisterhood unveiled their new name The Mission during a concert the following year), and despite its simplicity, it is arguably the best and most convincing of the three videos shot for the WEA singles of this era, “a massive improvement on its predecessors” in the words of Mark Andrews. In a second clip which has survived, the band mimed to the track for German TV show Formule Eins the following month (when Marx had left the band prior to the European tour), with Hussey (bedecked in his famous poncho) clearly struggling to fake both guitar parts simultaneously in the close-ups!

The single came in a sleeve which returned to the now-traditional Merciful Release template, after the notable experimental design of Walk Away, and to the casual record shop employee the 12” version would have looked annoyingly similar to the cover of the band’s debut LP which was released later that month, given the pair’s red and black colour scheme. Unlike previous singles (the Bacon on Body Electric and the Matisse on the Alice sleeve, for example),the pattern on the cover didn’t come from a famous artwork, but apparently from the fabric of an armchair!

Having emptied the coffers of completed left-over tracks from the album sessions as b-sides for the previous Walk Away single in October 1984, the increasingly fragmented band needed to produce new material as extra tracks for the new release, a task which Eldritch undertook more or less alone, with assistance from Wayne Hussey on guitar. Although Hussey is credited as a co-writer on Blood Money, the b-side of the 7”, in Salad Daze he reveals that this was part of a writing credit “exchange” with Eldritch, in return for the singer taking all the credit for 1984’s Body And Soul, which had in fact been co-written by them both (Eldritch authoring the lyrics and the guitarist composing the melody and arrangement). Hussey wryly reflects: “I bet Body And Soul has earned Andrew a whole pile more than Blood Money earned me.” That both of the new tracks are in fact solely Eldritch compositions came as little surprise to many seasoned TSOM fans, as the songs (in terms of structures, dynamics, melody and composition) have far more in common with those from the Floodland era than with those from the other FALAA-related sessions.

 Copies of different mixes of No Time To Cry and other album tracks on cassettes which were for in-house use at WEA.

Blood Money and its fellow b-side on the 12” single of NTTC, Bury Me Deep, were both initially recorded at Good Earth studios on Dean Street in London’s Soho district, before being remixed and tweaked for release at Livingston studios. Blood Money’s lyrics have been interpreted in various ways, with some lyrical analysts suggesting that it is about the realities of signing to a major record label (as Ristow points out, it is surely not a coincidence that it was played live for the first time in 1997 just after the band’s contract with WEA finally expired), others have argued that the main theme is drug addiction due to certain obvious references, and there have even been theories that it continues oblique allusions to the internecine battles which raged in the band at that time. Gary Marx was not involved in the recording of the songs, although he did visit one of the studios on one occasion, whilst a reliable source has revealed that Craig allegedly stormed out of both the studio, and temporarily, the band (a feat which would be repeated definitively later that year), such was his frustration with Eldritch. The singer’s response was apparently to replace his parts with a synthesised bassline… Although he didn’t play on the tracks either, the ever-magnanimous Marx was quick to praise Hussey’s own playing when questioned about the recording session by Cowlin for his blog piece: “Wayne played some great stuff on those tracks, and Blood Money is a tune I really love.”

       Proof for an advert for the single for the NME, from the collection of Robin C via Bruno B 

If Hussey was the star of Blood Money, then Eldritch takes centre-stage on Bury Me Deep with his basso profundo, particularly on the a Capella opening, reminiscent of his spine-chilling performance on Afterhours. The song itself seems to be very one-dimensional song about sex, another lyrical theme from FALAA, and has certainly attracted little attention lyrically from Sisters ‘scholars’. Livingston studios engineer Tony Harris worked on the mixes with Eldritch, and his studio diary for 10th January 1985, which he shared with Cowlin, reveals much about the vocalist’s recording habits: “Rang studio about 11.00. Found out that The Sisters of Mercy were in at 12.00 so off I trot. Session is just Andy - we are doing vocals, guitars and mix of b-side  and extra 12” track for next single…Work til 8 a.m.” The following day, the task continued. “Working with Andy again. Worked 6 p.m. to 11 a.m. mixing the track now called Bury Me Deep.” Few band members of that era would have spent so much time on the mixing of a b-side. That this track was Eldritch’s work is borne out by comments made by Wayne to International Musician and Recording World in their July 1985 issue, an interview conducted after the single’s release: “We’ve only recorded one song since the LP (Blood Money, the b-side of Walk Away [sic]) but that was a really good exercise. It was the first time we’d ever arranged a song around the vocals, rather than laying them over the top of the track. What we normally do is write, using guitars, on a Portastudio. Generally someone comes up with the music as a very rough demo on the Portastudio, and Andrew puts words and melody…er…”(Wayne raises his eyebrows at his own use of the word “melody” to describe Andrew Eldritch’s singing)”…vocal over that.”

Despite containing two new tracks and coming on the back of the highly successful Black October tour, the single sadly fared considerably worse than its two single release predecessors in the charts, presumably more a result of the proximity of the album release than of the predictably critical reviews which the single largely garnered in the London music press, with both Sounds (“This record won’t [brighten up a dull day]”) and the NME (“This miserable row…merits as much attention as their last single.”) dismissing the song itself in a few words whilst using most of the available word count to vilify Eldritch’s personality and look.

Entering the Top 100 at a disappointing number 63, the single stalled at exactly the same position the following week, and after a third appearance at a lowly 87, disappeared completely from the charts, making it the least successful of all the band’s official UK singles for Warners, including those of subsequent line-ups, hardly the pre-album boost The Sisters or their label were looking for. However, the combination of Eldritch’s vulnerable vocal and Hussey’s beautifully mournful guitar line produced on No Time To Cry one of the finest and most enduring songs of the 1984/85 era of the band, whose influence has resonated down the generations: not only did Cradle of Filth’s cover version bringing new (and younger) fans to the joys of The Sisters, but the classic timeless syncopated riff and deep vocal combination can still be heard today in the compositions of many of today’s most highly-regarded artists in the alternative genre.

My thanks for this post are due primarily to Messrs Cowlin, Andrews and Ristow for their meticulous research for their own publications on which this post is largely based, and to the band members and acolytes who spoke with them, as well as to Robin C and Bruno B and others who have shared items and information on Phil Verne’s wonderful unofficial Facebook fan page for The Sisters of Mercy 1980-1985 era.

Magazine Review: The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked! by Kelsey Media (“from the makers of UNCUT”)

 A new year, a new ‘history of goth’, this time in the guise of a magazine special (retailing at £9.99) entitled The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked!, promising a different take from the historical timelines offered in the recent summaries of the genre penned by Robb, Unsworth and Tolhurst. The continued media interest in the goth scene, fuelled no doubt by the return to live duties of Bauhaus, Siouxsie, Gary Marx, John McKay and The Cure amongst others, shows little sign of abating, much to the delight of those who feel that the scene has been ignored for too long.

No surprise who is on the cover!

Any list of this kind inevitably gives rise to gatekeeping debates (Is artist X really goth??), discussions about glaring omissions (a phenomenon known as “whatabootery” in my locale), arguments about provenance (what is ‘goth’, and what is ‘pre-goth’?) and queries about the position of artist Y in the overall ranking, and there will no shortage of these polemical debates with regard to this latest addition to the thinking goth aficionado’ bookshelves.

Unsurprisingly, the “makers of Uncut magazine”, who are behind this latest mini-tome, are keen to give the genre the widest possible definition, thus maximising their potential market, which means that artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Julee Cruise, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Berlin, Front 242, Mogwai and Soft Cell make the list. In a brief editorial, John Robinson somewhat pompously excuses some frankly inexcusable inclusions by stating that “a mind that is open to those sounds, those themes [“the tribal drums, reverberating darkness and tricksy arpeggios” of Siouxsie and the Banshees”] … will also find much to enjoy in some adjacent territories.” I suspect that his argument will find little favour with fans of core early goth acts like Play Dead, Balaam and The Angel, New Model Army and UK Decay, all of whom do not feature at all, despite the double century of albums included. The latter omission is particularly puzzling, given the critical roasting which John Robb was rightly given for his non-inclusion of the Luton-based masters of what was memorably termed at the time “punk gothique”. It would be interesting to learn of the grounds on which the 1981 classic LP For Madmen Only was dismissed.

More of these missing artists could have been included had the compilers not permitted more than one album per artist. Pioneering Belgian EBM act Front 242 feature no fewer than three times, whilst The Cure have an incredible eight albums in the list. Three of the first four Banshees albums make the cut, but curiously it is Join Hands, arguably their darkest and starkest LP, which misses out, and the bleak Tinderbox also fails to survive the editors’ blue pencil. Whilst Front 242 feature, there is no space for the arguably more goth-adjacent acts of their sub-genre like The Young Gods and Neon Judgement, and similarly fans of influential early 80’s acts like The Sound and The Comsat Angels will wonder why their favourites miss out given the broad “goth” definition, when Sad Lovers and Giants and The Chameleons make the Top 200, an issue which could have been avoided by restricting the number of inclusions per artist.

No definite article in line three? An easy mistake, as the title of this blog will testify!

In terms of the starting point of goth, few will argue with the listing of The Doors’ eponymous debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and Iggy’s The Idiot, and the inclusion of other goth-adjacent acts like The Cramps and The Psychedelic Furs will also surely have unanimous support. There is no space however for Suicide or even David Bowie himself,  both key influences on many of the early gothic acts. The top six albums in the ranking would likely feature in most Top 10 goth album lists, although not necessarily in this order, as Disintegration, First and Last and Always, Prayers on Fire, Closer, In The Flat Field, and Juju are widely regarded as classics of the genre. 

But whilst the compilers are generally reasonably solid on (the very simple task of cataloguing) goth’s early years, along with most who have tried before them, they appear far less confident on what has happened since the end of the 1980’s, with the recent published goth histories having failed to give them a proper steer on the past thirty-five years. Some of the classic acts of the 90’s do fortunately make the grade, but extremely low in the ranking: although The Wake (Masked at 83) reasonably well viewed, London After Midnight (with, curiously, Psycho Magnet as the chosen album at 165), Strawberry Switchblade (167), Rosetta Stone (175) and Corpus Delicti (177) all find themselves (seemingly begrudgingly) clogging up the ranking’s lower reaches. One must wonder why the likes of Type O Negative, Tiamat, Nosferatu, Paradise Lost, Suspiria and Dronning Maudland have missed out, given their standing in the scene during that decade. The answer probably lies in the very large number of merely vaguely goth-adjacent acts (Miranda Sex Garden, Eyeless In Gaza, Tuxedomoon, etc) deemed worthy of inclusion at their expense.

The contributors’ knowledge of the current scene seems to be even more embarrassingly lacking. How many of the following (very broad range of) contemporary artists would you expect to feature in a list of the 200 Greatest Goth albums - She Past Away, Then Comes Silence, Kaelan Mikla, Actors, Lebanon Hanover, Sweet Ermengarde, Molchat Doma, Whispering Sons, The Soft Moon, Shrouds, Twin Tribes, The Bellwether Syndicate, Angels of Liberty, Selofan, Ash Code? Most? Half of them? Just a few? The incredible answer is … not a single one of them. Surely having even just one person on the panel of contributors/editors with an abiding interest in the genre would have helped to ensure that the publication retained some credibility and the sense of authority which it clearly assumes for itself.

In fact, only eight albums from the past ten years are included in the Top 200: predictably two of these are the latest albums by The Cure and Depeche Mode, one is a recent Dead or Alive retrospective, another is (bizarrely) a compilation soundtrack album from Twin Peaks which includes such goth luminaries as ZZ Top, The Platters and The Cactus Blossoms, and three of the others are so broadly adjacent to the genre that I, for one, have never heard of them (Kali Malone, Anna von Hauswolff and Dean Hurley, for the record). This paltry and inconsequential list of recent offerings would lead any “elder goth” (surely the publication’s target market) to erroneously conclude that the genre is effectively dead, contrary to the contemporary reality of a dinsticntly undead, thriving and multifaceted goth community.

In terms of what you get for your money, the magazine provides potted summaries of each album selected, going from ten to a page for numbers 200 to 51, then five to a page until the top 20. Thereafter, each selection gets a picture-heavy two-page spread, culminating in a four-page tribute to Disintegration. Interspersed with the countdown, there are archive (i.e. previously seen but well worthy of inclusion) interviews with some of the biggest names on the original scene (Bauhaus, The Damned, The Sisters, The Banshees, The Cure and Nick Cave) and a new interview with Tim and Julianne from goth-adjacent folk pop stars All About Eve. The remaining five pages consist of a somewhat pointless Goth Miscellany of random space-fillers (example - “Just who were Love And Rockets?”).

Is it worth the cover price for Sisters fans? Well, two TSOM albums feature in the Top 20, The Sisterhood’s Gift also makes the Top 30, Wake is in the list of “20 Essential Goth DVDs”, and there is a Sisters miscellany which sadly contains no new information for seasoned TSOM obsessives. The genesis and content of FALAA is well-captured in Peter Watts review for the ranking’s second greatest album (“a genre landmark”, to quote Watts), although he fails to mention the album of two halves from a songwriting perspective which reflected the band’s inner turmoil at the time, and for those unfamiliar with the band, it might have been helpful had he pointed out the puns and deliberate ambiguities inherent in Eldritch’s clever wordplay in the seemingly straightforward lyrics briefly quoted in his well-written summary. The interview reproduced in the magazine is the Adam Sweeting-conducted chat first published in Melody Maker in January 1983, and creditably is here in its full version (unlike the abridged account in the NME Originals magazine which was quoted on the seminal Ultimate Sisters Guide website), and Tim Bricheno is also asked about his time with the band in the early 1990’s in the new interview. The top 200 also features albums by Salvation (Clash of Dreams), The March Violets (Natural History) and Ghost Dance (Gathering Dust), the latter two of which were effectively compilations of previous singles rather than genuine studio albums. 

Brown font and capitalisation for the definite article?

With Death Cult’s retrospective Ghost Dance set also being selected, TSOM fans will wonder why Some Girls Wander By Mistake does not warrant inclusion, yet another example of the somewhat erratic selection policy employed by the editors, which undermines what is generally a decent effort at cataloguing the much-maligned genre. Whilst the rankings themselves are inevitably subjective,  there do seem be some odd placings [surely most seasoned Bauhaus observers would rank Mask ahead of albums by Love and Rockets, Dali’s Car, Peter Murphy and Tones On Tail, contrary to their position here? Should The Sisterhood’s album really be twenty places higher than God’s Own Medicine? Does anyone with even a passing knowledge of goth music genuinely believe that Only Theatre Of Pain should rank lower than albums by In The Nursery and Nitzer Ebb?], the overall impression is of a flawed retrospective which could have benefitted significantly from input from someone authoritative (Mick Mercer, for example) who has been keenly observing and analysing the scene since the beginning and retains a keen interest in it. 

The magazine is from the same stable as the more generic current publication The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time…ranked! (in which, incidentally, Floodland features at number 261, with First and Last and Always trailing in at number 412), and with these one-off titles commanding both a longer shelf-life and a higher price point than traditional mags, there will surely be more ‘specials’ to follow in this series from Kelsey Media entitled The Ultimate Record Collection. Hopefully, by the time they come round to the genre again (The 100 Greatest Goth Singles…ranked! maybe??), both the history and the present state of our beloved musical style will be covered in a more comprehensive, consistent and even-handed manner.

The 200 Greatest Goth Albums…ranked! is available from Kelsey Media