One of the most influential bands of their generation and beyond, The Jesus and Mary Chain mark their 40th anniversary in 2024 with a return tour to Australia in August!
From the moment the Reid brothers (Jim and William) first pressed the record button on their Portastudio in the early 1980’s, the intense, sometimes brutal, often darkly romantic music they made has always felt like past, present and future smashed together, alchemising into something startling.
Consistently defying musical boundaries, blending intense melodies with raw emotion to create a mesmerising sonic experience, JAMC anthems such as Just Like Honey, April Skies and Happy When It Rains are timeless statements of artistic excellence. Shaping the post-punk landscape with a legacy that continues to inspire awe and reverence.
With new album, Glasgow Eyes in hand, the duo continue to seamlessly fuse electronica and rock with as much innovation as they’ve always had. Embracing their punk roots, while maintaining their anarchic spirit.
I chat by phone with Jim Reid and find out about the music, the new album ‘Glasgow Eyes’, the band and the upcoming 2024 tour…
Markus Hamence: Hey Jim, thanks for chatting with me today. Hope you’re well.
Jim Reid: Thanks Markus, yeah great. Really ready to get this tour on the road now and get back to Australia.
Markus: Congratulations on the new album ‘Glasgow Eyes’, it’s a killer, a couple of my favourite tracks could possibly be ‘Venal Joy’ and ‘Discoteque’. Have you got a fave our two?
Jim: It changes on a daily basis actually. ‘Venal Joy’ is always up there, it’s a great one to play live.
Markus: And thus far you have a good 10 odd albums under your belt and a few compilation albums too. ‘Psychocandy’ from 1985 still is a go to album for me, it’s bangin’. Have you got an album that you enjoy looking backing to?
Jim: Well again, it’s kind of like children, it’s hard to choose one, but having said that, I feel like I have to single out ‘Munki’ because it’s the one we recorded at a time when the band was breaking up, me and William couldn’t stand the sight of one another. It was in the climate of Brit pop and grunge and The Mary Chain should have fitted in and made sense to both of those movements but we seemed to have fell in the cracks. 1n 1998, or whenever t came out, nobody was interested and we were at least lucky if it even got reviewed. It just seemed like everything was over for the band. And on top of that we were screaming at each other constantly me and William. But considering the odd I think the album is as good as, if not better than some of the other we’ve had. But, it got seriously overlooked is all. There was a little clique of fans that though there should have been a tour. So i will single that one out as it was a great album that got majorly overlooked.
Markus: Jim, let’s go back to the early days. Who were some of the artists that you were listening to and getting inspired by when you first started created your own sound?
Jim: I mean, it was all quite obvious for us, we layed it all out on the table, we had Velvet and The Stooges, Suicide from New York, then New York Dolls and there was just so much. We were into glam rock big time. Before punk that was it for us. And it was punk and then after that, well you know, we weren’t that much into the eighties sounds to be honest with you. But there were bands like the Bunnymen, Cocteau Twins and The Birthday Party – So it wasn’t all bad for us in that decade, but we preferred the sixties and the seventies.
Markus: And so forty years on, how do you find the industry from when you started out to what it is now, is it still as enjoyable, it is more difficult, is it easy to keep up with the changing landscape?
Jim: Well I mean luckily for us, we are kind of in a cacoon, we’ve kind of do it. We’ve got a certain reputation and with it comes the freedom to really do whatever the hell we want to do. How it would be if we were startign out right now, I’m really not sure. I don’t really understand how the music industry operates these days. It’s weird for me, bands bring out records and then people buy about 25 copies and then the rest is all streamed on Spotify. I don’t get that. I don’t understand how that works. Not sure if that’s particularly healthy because bands to be be properly paid for what they do and I feel the current set-up is not able to pay bands accordingly. It’s going to eventually strangle creativity. I think if you can’t afford to go on the road or you can’t afford to pay your band it’s just going to be the end of it. No ones gonna start anymore, they’ll just go off and do something else creative that pays money. I do think they are strangling music creativity, it makes it very difficult to be paid and sustain a career.
Markus: You kind of touched on something and that is you never fitted a mould. This of course has worked out great for you but a various points early is this somethign you actually wanted to do?
Jim: Well at the very beginning we did want to be a part of something or everything. I mean, the idea of The Mary Chain, we didn’t like the msuic scene in 1984 when we started so we wanted to change it, we wanted to be the spearhead of a new musical movement and we didn’t understand that the music coming out of the radio sounded so bad when it used to sound really good. So we wanted to correct that but it was a bigger problem that we realised. We soon realised it was just good enough to make records that WE felt good about and if some people ‘got it’, that was good enough for us. So, yeah, we started off wanting to fit in, and then we got confused by the fact no matter what we did, we just didn’t haha. There appeared to be a whole bunch of people that seemed to want to keep The Mary Chain on the outside. And then it slowly dawned on us that THAT was our strength, that we were always outsiders. And that how people identified us and connected with us through. Their was a following of people that were like ‘yeah, they represent me, I don’t fit in either, this band are here for us, we are mis-fits too’. And that’s what became our strength. And now we’re like ‘who gives a fuck’ you know, just make music taht some people get if other don’t we just get on with it.
Markus: Again you mentioned a bit of this, but over the course of the forty year you’ve had band member come and go and the arguing etc with William you brother, do you think this has made what The Jesus and Mary Chain what it is today, and in fact a stronger band?
Jim: Well yeah, everything that has occurred has definitely gone into making the band what it is today. Because we did break-up in 1998 for nine years and that’s part of our story and part of the process. In 1998 William and I couldn’t stand the sight of each other. And I look back and think what we could have done to make things different. And I realise that in 1998 what we needed to do, me and William, was we needed to get away from each other for six months or a year and if we had sympathetic management around at the time, they would have said, ‘Forget about their career for a while, let’s get them to go in seperate directions and we’ll come back in ayear and see what it’s like then’. That’s what SHOULD have happened, haha. What ACTUALLY happened was management booked on a fucking tour of America so we found ourselves on a tour bus wanting to kill each other – a tour bus is a bloody claustrophobic environment and that tour lasted I think two days before we did actually lunge at each other and then William lft the band and I finished that tour with William but it was depressing as fuck. It wasn’t The Mary Chain without William, it couldn’t be. But we were told at the time, ‘You’ve got to finish the tour because you’ll basically lose your house if you don’t becasue all these people will sue you’, so I just though I’ll finish the tour. It was hell depressing and then that was the end of the band. Well, so at least we thought and then nine years later the wounds had scabbed over and suddenly people were trying to get the band back together and as much as I though it couldn’t happen it actually seemed like it could and was a good idea. It was like, we, why not. And then oddly, we were like, well – why did we break-up? We actually couldn’t remember.
Markus: So Jim, what advice would you give to a band starting out today based on the vast knowledge you’ve acquired over the years?
Jim: Ha, just don’t listen to anybody else. I mean as ironic as that sounds because I’m telling them what to do… I mean, everybody will tell you what’s best for the band and have their opinion but nobody know better than the people in it. Don’t listen to other people telling you how your music should sound. Make music for yourself and the rest just follows. If you start making music for anyone other than yourself, you fucked. It will just never work.
Markus: JIm, who’s playing on Spotify or on the Record Player today for you?
Jim: It changes every day but I mentioned them before, I’m currently listenign to the Cocteau Twins quite a bit at the moment – I love them, we were friends with them back in the day but I haven’t seen them for many years.
Markus: And last question for you Jim, what can we expect from the Forty Year Anniversary The Jesus and Mary Chain 2024 Tour?
Jim: It will be us doing what we do best, they’ll be something from EVERY record. If you like The Mary Chain, you’ll love what this tour is. They’ll be stiff from the new album too, ‘Glasgow Eyes’, but we won’t over do that. They’ll be bits of Psychocandy, bits of Darklands and so-forth. There’s no record that won’t be represented. So if you like our music, you’ll like the show.
Markus: JIm, thank you so much for a great conversation, I’m super looking forward to catching the tour when it hits Adelaide in August. See you soon!
Jim: Thanks Markus, it was fun, see you in a month.
