the making of psychocandy by the jesus and mary chain - featuring jim reid and william reid 

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

The Jesus and Mary Chain formed in East Kilbride, Scotland in 1983 by brothers Jim Reid and William Reid. They had discovered punk rock and each planned to start their own band, but then decided to join together as one band. When their father was made redundant from his job at a factory, he gave them a gift of 300 pounds, which they used to buy a Portastudio 4-track machine. By 1984, they had recruited Douglas Hart on bass and Murray Dalglish on drums and were sending around a demo tape to try and get gigs. Their tape was passed on to Bobby Gillespie, who loved it and connected them with Alan McGee of Creation Records. After seeing them live, McGee signed them to a deal and they released their first single, “Upside Down,” in 1984. The single, along with their notorious live performances, generated a lot of interest and they ended up signing a record deal with a Blanco y Negro, a subsidiary of Warner. At this point, Bobby Gillespie replaced Murray Dalglish on drums and they released their next single, “Never Understand,” in early 1985. Their full-length debut album, Psychocandy, was eventually released in late 1985. 

In this episode, for the 40th anniversary, Jim Reid and William Reid reflect on how the album came together. This is the making of Psychocandy. 

Jim Reid:  Hi, my name's Jim Reid. I'm in a band called The Jesus and Mary Chain, and I'm here today to talk about the making of the album Psychocandy. I think it's to do with the fact that we planned this for so long. We didn't call it Psychocandy and we didn't call the band the Mary Chain, but we talked about this perfect band for so long, and “why don't people make records like,” and then we'd go on, we'd describe what was going to become Psychocandy. But me, William used to sit up all night just talking about, not just music. We'd be saying things like, you know, we'd have watched a film on TV that night, like some really weird shit that, you know, like your mum and dad would go, “Oh, this is a terrible film. You know, it's, don't watch that. I've seen that before. And I couldn't make head nor tail of it,” and we'd be like, “Ooh, this sounds good.” So we'd sit and watch something and it'd end up being like, If… by Lindsay Anderson. And we'd be sitting there thinking, “fucking, why don't people make films like that?” And then we'd start describing the film that we would make. And then it would be things like books. You'd be thinking, “Write a book. Imagine somebody says, ‘you've gotta write a book by two weeks and deliver it to me,’” and we'd start like coming up with ideas for books. And we just, we couldn't understand why everything was so shit. Music was shit. You know, the NME, you look at the cover of the NME and it's got Kid Creole and the fucking Coconuts on the cover, and we're going like, “ah, what's going on? Why is everything so fucking bad?” And you know, Margaret Thatcher was like Prime Minister. The country was going down the fucking tubes. Everything was bad. And we thought, “Well, we could try and fix it bit by bit.” We were very naive at the time. We actually thought that if you made a great record, it could start a revolution of kinds. You know what I mean? A cultural revolution, like people might start dressing differently. They might start making music that's similar to yours and get all of that other crap off the radio. It was hopelessly naive, but that's what we were thinking at the time. We were thinking that everything was dreadful and that we were the antidote to that.

Before there was a band, there was a guitar in the corner, which was owned by William. It was an acoustic guitar, and we used to just sit and play on that guitar and try and come up with some tunes to start a band. I mean, in the beginning, we didn't think we could be in a band together. 

William Reid: I'm William Reid and I’m a songwriter and a guitarist for the Jesus and Mary Chain. I'm three years older than Jim, and you know, you don't really, you're not really friends with your brother, and so me and Jim were just ordinary couple of brothers until, until punk music happened in 1977. It just blew us away. It was what was missing in our lives. We were both into music and we both had an interest in making music, but it seemed like, it seemed like impossible. Like all the bands at the time, all the famous big bands of Zeppelin or even the people that we liked, like the Beatles and the Stones. Everybody just sounded like, you know, like virtuoso musicians. And we were just starting and learning and then when punk came along, it came right at a perfect time for us. And because of that, me and Jim became friends, we became buddies. We never really, you know, were friends before that. It was like there was something missing and I didn't know what. And when punk come around, it was the thing that just fitted into place and Jim felt the same. And suddenly, my wee brother, my little brother was my buddy. You know, we were buddies in crime 

Jim Reid: At that particular point, there was two bands, no name, no other members, just his band and my band. And we would just sit and we'd try and come up with the songs to start a band with. And songs did start to come. And then the idea of these two bands and getting people to be in the bands with us. We would go out and sort of, kind of ask anyone, “Do you, can you play anything? Can you, do you want to be in a band with us?” And then it became, quite quickly, it became obvious that the idea of two bands was kind of absurd, really, because we looked the same way, the same sort of floppy hairdos we were all into the same kind of music. The demos that we were making at that time on a Portastudio sounded the same. You know, they sounded like it, it was the same band. 

William Reid: We didn't know anybody in East Kilbride that really liked that type of music like punk or like the Velvets and the Stooges. So it looked like it was going to be very difficult to get people to join our bands. And then one day the little light bulb above our heads says, “Well, why don't we just have one band?” We said, “Yeah, okay, fuck it. We've got, you know, we'll go do something.” We don't know anybody. We only knew Douglas Hart, who was Jim's friend, and he became the bass player in the Mary Chain. 

Jim Reid: When it was at the two band stage, it was me and Douglas were going to be my bands and William, and he didn't have any friends (laughs). No, he had a couple of mates that didn't want to join. But so Douglas, it was, me and Douglas had sort of kinda an idea of doing a band at one point as well, and there were a few other characters that drifted in and out. But as soon as we decided to pull our resources, that was it. That was the beginning, the real beginning of the band that would become the Mary Chain. 

William Reid: So that was it, we became a band because it was, not just expedient, but it was just right and it felt right. The songs he was writing, the songs I was writing, the way he wanted to record them, it was just the same band. We were almost of the same mind musically. So that's what happened and punk really was the engine that drove us.

Jim Reid: My dad got made redundant. He worked in a factory for, well, for years and years, and they gave him like a pittance. I mean, it was just something like he got three grand payoff, which even back in 1980, it was 1983 at that time, even back in 1983, that was an insult. But my dad, he was okay. He sort of thought, “Well, fuck it,” you know, he took my mum and, and Linda on holiday and he gave me a William 300 quid, and he said, “Do something with that money.” And he came back from the holiday and we were tinkering around on this rather high tech looking tape recorder. And he was really interested. He said, “Oh, what's that?” And he goes, “Oh, right, what does this button do?” And then it's a horrible realization sunk in. That he realized this is what we'd done with his 300 quid. And he was outraged. He was like, “Well, you fucking idiots!” “Well, you said we could do something interesting with it.” He goes, “I meant buy a car or something like that. Something to help you get a job.” So he was, he was not very happy about that. 

William Reid: But to my dad, that was like, you spent 300 fucking quid on a tape recorder. And we were like, “Yeah, it's not just a tape recorder, it's four tracks. We can record a bass and we record a voice and a guitar. We can do like a little drum track.” “What are you fucking talking about? It's a tape recorder.” And he couldn't understand. 

Jim Reid: But the Portastudio was an essential step in the formation of the band as well, because not until then, you know, it was kind of abstract. You've got the guitar, as I said, you kinda play these songs badly at people, and it didn't seem like, “Hey, this isn't. Are we in a band? I mean, is this really happening?” And then once you started kind of like put electric guitars on a little drum machine and scream over the top of it, it's, you start to think, “Well yeah, this, this sounds pretty good. This could work.” So that was the kind of the initial boost to our confidence that was essential was the Portastudio and the listening to us played back loud and screeching guitars. It sounded like, “Yeah, it's no longer abstract. This is real. That's what we sound like.” 

William Reid: That little tape recorder got us noticed with people because we made a couple of little demos. We did a couple of songs on a demo tape and we were trying to get a gig, try to do a show. And there was this place, I think it was called the Candy Club and Jim and Douglas went down to the Candy Club and gave the guy a tape, and the guy didn't like it. I don't even know if he listened to it. He was a friend of Bobby Gillespie and he said to Bobby, “These guys gave me a tape. And on the other side is like a Syd Barrett compilation, and you like Sid Barrett. So here take this tape.” And Bobby's like, “Oh, thank you.” And then Bobby listened to our demos and he really liked them. And so Douglas's name was on the cassette and his phone number and Bobby called Douglas that night. And the two of them spoke for three or four hours, you know, about music and life and books and films and art and everything. And we'd, we'd found somebody else who was, you know, a kindred spirit. Primal Scream were kind of like us at the time. They were kind of like a band in name only really, you know, I don't think they had played any shows either. 

Jim Reid: Bobby calls up, he's starts gushing about it and it was great because he's into all the same bands we are into, he's into this sixties garage music. You know, nobody had ever heard of the 13th Floor Elevators in our town. So to meet someone else that had was amazing. You know, you could just sit and talk about obscure punk rock records and he knows what you're talking about. So he says, I've got this mate in London called Alan McGee and you should send the tape to him. I'm sure he will do something with you. And we did that. And Alan, to be totally honest, Alan was rather underwhelmed by the tape. But he agreed because Bobby was his friend, he agreed to put the Mary Chain on at a club in London, called the Living Room, and he agreed to put the Mary Chain on. 

William Reid: He offered us a show if we could come down to London and we were like, “Oh Jesus, this is, this is it. We have to, we've got a show.” We had no money, we were all on the dole, which is welfare. We never had a lot of money. And the bus ticket was nine pounds to London and we all scraped together nine pounds. 

Jim Reid: So we'd get to the venue again, it's, when we say clubs, back then a club was a room above a pub. We were up there, there was no one there. We were just waiting around for McGee to show up. No idea what McGee looks like. So look, we're leaning out the window in a scorching hot summers day in London, trying to spot, well, you got your idea in mind what McGee's going to look like. You're kind of thinking, you're looking for Andrew Loog Oldham walking up the road. I go there, “There he is,” and there'd be some cool dude with a big floppy fringe and then he'd walk straight past the pub. And then this maniac with big flaming red hair that was literally drooling at the mouth, walked in the pub and we thought, “It can't be him.” And he walked up the stairs and sure enough, that was Alan. And then we plugged in and played a sound check just to give him an idea of what we were going to be like live. And everybody was a bit nervous, everybody was a bit tense. And me and William had been getting on each other's nerves all day. So we're doing this sound check, which just disintegrates with me, screaming at William, him screaming at me, lunging at each other, trying to, you know, it was almost a fight breaking out. And we're calling each other all sorts. Meanwhile the guitars are still screeching away in the background. And McGee thought this is just part of the show (laughs), but he just thinks that we are absolutely fucking insane. And he just, right there, and then he goes, “I want to do albums, I want to do singles.” We are thinking we've blown our big chance. And as it turns out, McGee, then he was on board and it all just took off from that moment. 

William Reid: McGee was like, “You’s are brilliant, you’s are the best band I've ever seen. Oh my God, you’s are geniuses.” He's, and if you know, McGee, McGee says that to anything he's interested in. And so it was kind of disheartening the more I got to know McGee, he would see something like a guy with one leg juggling tomatoes and he would go, “That's genius.”  And then you realize (laughs), “Oh, okay, when he was calling us genius, he was, that's just the way he talks.” We were flattered, you know, and he, then he said he would make a record with us. So that was your dream come true really. Me and Jim went from 1979, talking about a group to 1984, still talking about a group, and nothing happened. And then everything seemed to happen in like four fucking months.

So he invited us down to make a record, and we come down to London and we made our first record, “Upside Down.” 

Jim Reid: All we could afford to do was a single or all McGee could afford to, Creation Records was literally Alan sort of folding up paper record covers and putting them in boxes in a spare bedroom at his flat in Tottenham. So he could afford to do a single. And that's what we did. And we booked into a studio, it was called Alaska Studios in London, and we can only afford to go in at night. So we got in about midnight and we recorded three songs. And I think there was a bit of speed going on right about that session, which was a big mistake because we've recorded the tracks and playing them back, I'm thinking, “fuck it sounds great.” We're listening to them on Tannoy speakers that are about the size of a car, you know, and it sounds immense. It sounds like, you know, “This is exactly how we want to sound.” So we went away with our little cassette tape and the master tapes. The next morning we're sitting back at McGee's, put it on a tape machine, and it sounds terrible. It sounds like Dire Straits or something like that. I’m thinking, “fuck, how did that happen?” So we sent William and McGee went back in to remix it. And there was too many, it was the classic thing, too many cooks spoiling the broth. So the two of them went in, we said, “Put it through the ghetto blaster. Don't even get those Tannoys involved. Just mix it through the ghetto blaster.” And that's what they did. And if it sounds good on that, it sounds good. So they kind of just wiped up all the feedback, put up all the guitars, just some drums, you know, put a few effects on the drums. And it sounded like what it ended up sounding like. 

William Reid: Me and Jim still didn't like it, to be honest. It wasn't our favorite, but everybody else loved it. Our friends loved it. Our parents hated it (laughs). And so we went with it. We released it in October, I think it was, of that year. It was a little hit, it was a little indie hit. That's how it started. 

Jim Reid: We had Murray Dalglish, was our drummer at this point, and he's a nice guy, Murray, but he was about five years younger than the rest of us. And at that age, you know, I was like probably 22 at this time. And he just seemed that that bit sort of younger, he was into slightly different music from us. I mean, he was more into goth music than we had been at the time. It kinda didn't fit. He was too young. His record collection didn't match ours. And so from day one, I guess Murray's days were numbered. And then it just got to that point where he, I can't remember whether we fired him or whether he left. But I remember just after the second run of London shows, he was with us at McGee's place again, I think he just said, “I'm not coming back. You know, I've had it with this.” And we were like, “okay.” And so we thought, “We've got a drum machine, Murray don't worry about it.” And we kind of entertained the idea of playing with a drum machine, kind of fancied that idea actually. But then Bobby said, “Well, I can do it.” I said, “Can you play?” And he goes, “No” (laughs). And we were like, “Okay, we'll give you a try anyway.” He stood up, he said, “I can't play the whole kit, but I could do tom tom and snare Maureen Tucker style.” And we said, “Well, let's give it a go.” And he was like, he was like a machine, you know, it just sounded, two drums, it sounded so powerful. And again, it just felt like you could feel that the last part was falling into place. 

William Reid: From having a life of nothing to suddenly, you're in Germany playing in front of people and you're starving, but you don't care cause you're young, you can put up with these hardships when you're young. McGee was a good conman and he managed to get two guys from the, two reporters from the, one from the NME and one from the Sounds Magazine, to come and see us, which was great. And we played the show and we kind of forgot about it. We went on this 10 day tour of Germany and kind of forgot that we did this show. Douglas called his mother and she says, “You're in the music papers!” And we were like, “what?” And she says, “You're in the music papers! The sounds in the NME.” And Douglas says, “Well, what did it say?” And she goes, “Oh, I don't know, I never got them, I just…” and he said, “Go and buy them! Tell us!” And we never found out what was going on. So we just thought, “We'll get back and we'll see.” And then we get back in London and we went buy the music papers and the NME said, “We were the best thing since the Sex Pistols.” And the Sounds says, “We were the worst group that they'd ever seen.” So (laughs) so that was kind of amazing. And I remember not being able to sleep that night. I remember like lying on the floor, we were all sleeping on the floor in McGee's house. And I remember just not being able to sleep cause I was just so excited. I couldn't believe that we were written about in the music papers, but it was just, even though one of them had said, “we were the worst group,” we didn't care. We were just noticed. We were just seen. 

Jim Reid: And then there was a few sort of incidents at some of our shows. It became the thing that you turn up at a Mary Chain show looking for trouble, I don't know how it all came about. So there was headlines going around and that attracted people wearing Armani suits with checkbooks saying, “Oh yeah, we really want to sign you guys.” And it was kind of flattering, but looking back on it, those were the wrong people that we should have been talking to at the time. We kind of thought, “Well, all of our favorite records, like The Doors and the Stooges and all that, they were all on major record labels.” And that's what we wanted. We wanted to be on a show in Britain called Top of the Pops and we wanted a big bank roll behind us. Not money to go out and spend. We wanted just to somebody to spend money on the band so that we could get the message across.

William Reid: So McGee told us, you know, “There’s a couple record companies that want to see you.” We told McGee, “The only thing we want is complete control. And we want it in a contract and we won it ironclad.” And that's what we got. We decided we were gonna go we Warner Brothers, because even though they were a big scary record company, they were going to let us have complete control. When we were going to sign with Warners, we were actually going to sign with Geoff Travis's Blanco y Negro label, which was on Warners. It was really good for us cause it was a buffer, it was a buffer zone. It was almost like an indie label on a major. And we had in our contract that they couldn't remix our records, they couldn't make us use a producer. And we knew that if they didn't like our records, they would just bury them. They would release them and just, you know, whatever. But we were just adamant that whatever the record was gonna be released was gonna be the one that we recorded. So that's what we did. And we put out a single, “Never understand,” I think it was in February, and then the rest of the year we took recording Psychocandy. 

Jim Reid: Everybody said the next single was going to be “Never Understand,” which we agreed. We thought, “Well that sounds pretty good.” So there was a few aborted attempts to record that single. There was one with Stephen Street, actually, which was awful. It was absolutely awful. He did not get the band at all. I mean, a trick that a lot of people used to play with the Mary Chain is that they would get us to the studio really early in the morning thinking, you know, we wouldn't have the time to get, you know, stop off and buy drink and drugs on the way and stuff like that. But we just rolled up at the studio, not having been to bed, and like wreaking of booze, just going, “uhhhh,” ready to go and all of that. And he was a bit appalled by, I guess what he thought was a totally not very professional attitude. So William, he would record his guitar and then we'd maybe step out of the room for two minutes and you'd come back in and someone had turned down the guitars down in the mix. And you go, “Wait, Stephen, did you just turn all the guitars down when we stepped out?” “No.” And you'd go, “that's weird.” And then you'd slide them all back up and then just bit by bit, you'd see him, his elbow would be nudging the sliders and all of that. And just, you could tell right away that that was, he was never going to be recording our album. And then it was Travis again. Geoff Travis kind of came to our rescue. He said, I know this guy called John Loder. 

William Reid: So we said to Geoff, “We want somebody to make us sound as crazy as we sound live.” And he said, “Well, I know this guy who works with Crass and his name was John Loder.” When we were working with Stephen Street, we were kind of scared to touch a desk. You know, he was like a, kind of like, to us anyway, he was like a big time engineer, producer, whatever. And we were really, you know, for a start, we didn't know what the desk did. It's like a 96 channel desk. And we didn't have a fucking clue and we didn't want to touch it. But then we went, we went down to John Loder’s place. John would say, “Well, these are the Rs and these things here, like, control the reverb. Just do what you want.” And that was just incredible because that's what we did. 

Jim Reid: The studio was like a terraced house in Wood Green in London. And you know, his next door neighbors were just like people with cats and dogs. And it was a converted house. And so we got there and it was just such an unusual setup. And we went in there and he would just set up the desk and he'd show you and he'd say, “Well, you plug all these things in there.” And then he would just walk away and we'd go, “Where are you going?” And he’d go, “Oh, you, you can do it all yourself.” And I go, “Well, what if we can’t?” “Well, I'm just upstairs. I'm on the intercom. If you get stuck, just give me a call.” And then we would, we'd buzz him down and he'd come down and we'd go, “John,” we'd turn these, like these knobs up here and it's going kshhh. “I think we broke your desk,” and he was going, “No, the desk is okay.” And I go, “What about the sound?” And he goes, “Do you like it?” I'm like, “yeah.” “Well fine” (laughs). That was it. That was his attitude. There was no right or wrong way to do it. His attitude was almost helped if you didn't know how to work the gear, cause you had sort of no respect for the equipment. So we'd just be pushing all of these buttons and it'd go, you'd think, “Oh that sounds good.” You know, “I don't know if you should be doing that, but it sounds good.” And that's how we made Psychocandy. And John just left us like to our own devices and we had no clue what we were doing, but we knew what sounded good and we knew what sounded bad. And that was, that's all you need. 

William Reid: That's how we made that first record and that's how we made Psychocandy. Basically John coming in, setting things up, showing us how we go from track to track and record, put reverb on, and then just pissing off and doing his business until we wanted him. And it was fantastic.

“Just Like Honey” 

William Reid: Well, I wrote “Just Like Honey,” and I wrote it sometime early in ‘84. Well, for the start it was just, it was called, “Just Like Alice” at first. And I didn't like that because it sounded too much like Alice in Wonderland. You know, like “Alice takes a trip,” and stuff and so I was singing, “Just like Alice,” and it didn't sound right. It just didn't sound right. And I was saying to Jim, what girls name could we, and he's going, “I don't know, Carol.” I'm, (signs) “just like Carol.” And it's like, “no.” And it's like, this went on for a couple of months and like I had this song that I really liked and Jim liked it. And it was the “just like song,” you know? It was like, “just like,” and we're saying, “Let's do the ‘just like’ song at John Peel. And I would say, “Yeah, but we don't have a real title yet.” And it's like Jim's saying, “Well, it'll happen, you know, it'll come. We'll just go and record it and see what happens.” And that's what we did. We went and recorded it, and then Jim had to go and do the vocals. And me and Jim went away, we sat in a corner and we were just going, “uh Susan, Caroline, Heather,” and then I think one of us said “Cindy,” and that sounded better, “Just like Cindy.” And I remember saying, “Oh, that sounds cool, (sings) ‘Just like Cindy. Just like Cindy.’” And it was like, ‘No, it still doesn't sound right.” And then I just said, “honey, honey, just like honey, just like honey.” And Jim would say, “Well, doesn't Van Morrison sing, ‘just like honey from a bee?’” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, but it, it is totally different. It's like totally different. I don't think, I don't think anybody's gonna know. I don't think it matters, but, and we've got five minutes, we've gotta go and record this fucking vocal.” So that was it. We decided “Just like Honey,” we went, did it. He went and recorded the vocal and that was it. “Just like, Honey,” not “Just like Alice, Susan, Claire, whatever.” Every girl's name in the world was the name of that song. 

Jim Reid: “Just like Honey,” we knew there was going to be that part at the end. I mean, I was never gonna be singing that part. And we asked at the time, we asked Karen (Parker) and my girlfriend Laurence (Verfaillie) at the time that I was going out with, and they each recorded a part. And to be totally honest with you, Laurence didn't really quite make it. She gets credit on the record, but I don't think she's actually on that record.

William Reid: Jim's girlfriend, Laurence, she's a French girl. “Laurence” is how you say it, but we called her “Lawrence” cause we are, you know, unsophisticated Scotsmen. But anyway, Jim's, girlfriend Laurence come down to the studio to do the backing vocals, “Just like Honey,” and she couldn't do it and she was all self-conscious and she couldn't do it. So I got my girlfriend Rona down and she was saying all self-conscious and you know, not a real singer and couldn't do it, and couldn't project and it was just not very good. And then we were, we were all through the girlfriends and then we asked Bobby's girlfriend, Karen was coming down to London. And so we said, “Do you think Karen could do that backing vocal?” And Bobby asked her and she come down to his studio and she sang,(sings) “just like honey, just like honey.” But 20 times. We took one perfect, “just like honey,” sampled it. And that's one “just like honey,” just repeating over and over and over again. Nobody knows that cause samplers weren’t a big thing. And especially like rock bands didn't use samplers. So like people, if I would've said to anybody, my friends, “Oh, that's a sampler,” they would've said, “What the fuck's a sampler?” But anyway, that was Karen Parker, Bobby Gillespie's girlfriend. 

We were huge fans of like, as you say, Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, I didn't know even know about the Wrecking Crew in those days, but I remember like, we were huge fans of the Beach Boys, huge fans of Phil Spector and that whole sound, you know, the whole huge sound that Phil Spector had and the Beach Boys. They had a huge sound. But we loved, we loved the Ronettes, we loved the girl bands. And I think it was Jim who come up with the Ronettes drumbeat. In fact, it was, it was definitely Jim and I remember like, I wrote it, but I used to play it faster. I would play it mid tempo, like (sings) “Listen to the girl,” I would sing “Just like Honey,” like that. And I remember when we did go into the studio, I remember Jim did say, “Make it slow, do the Ronnettes drum beat.” And that was it. That was the, you know, the thing that made it from a good song like, into a great song. It just, it was the part that was needed. And then we went and recorded that, Bobby did the drums. 

Jim Reid: “Just like Honey” was one of the early ones that we recorded. There was a bunch that we recorded more or less in one day. I think we recorded about five songs. Not mixed, but recorded. And I think “Just like Honey,” “You Trip Me Up…” God, it's so long ago now that I just can't remember how it all went down. 

William Reid: Well, for a start, everybody was shocked when we were recording it. Creation Records was run by McGee, Alan McGee and his partner Dick Green. I knew, I knew we'd made a really good record because when we were recording Psychocandy, we really didn't like people coming down to the studio. People would come down, Dick and Alan would come down, and maybe another couple people from Creation would come down. And we didn't like it to be honest. We just liked to be left alone and we didn't like to be disrupted. But every now and again, somebody would come down and Dick Green come down when we'd just finished “Just like Honey.” And I remember we played it to him and he was just like, his reaction was just unbelievable. It was kinda like slightly insulting as well (laughs), because it was saying basically, “I never thought you guys could make a record like this. It's so good. I can't believe this record you just made. Oh my God.” And he phoned up Alan and go, “you've gotta come down to the studio. This song they just made, it's like, it's a hit record.” And we were like, “what?” And it wasn't a hit record. It was definitely never gonna be a hit record in the eighties, you know? It was, in a good fair world, it might have been, but not in the 1980s. But anyway, Alan come in and he listened to it and he was like, “Oh my God, this is like a hit record.” And we all go, “it's not a hit record,” you know, like these sorts of songs never been,” anyway, everybody loved it. And when we were sequencing the album, you know, me and Jim were saying, “Well, everybody was really shocked when they heard this. Why do we make this the very first song? Because it shocks people. Because whether they're expecting this feedback, whether they're expecting this, you know, an angsty vocal or, or whatever, but they weren't, they're not going to expect this. They're not going to expect, ‘Just like Honey’ to sound like this.” They're going to, it's going to be a big surprise to them the way it was with Dick Green and Alan McGee and everybody else who heard it first time It was like the slightly insulting phrase of, “I didn't think you’s could make a record like this.” So that was why I think that's why we did it just for the shock value. It is probably our most popular song. And it wasn't always that way. It wasn't that way until that, that movie, Lost in Translation. 

Jim Reid: Sophia Coppola, the Lost in Translation film, “Just like Honey” being used. It really worked for us because there was a type of person that come and see the band. And with that film it kinda really mixed things up. There would be a lot younger people would be out there and it brought a whole new kind of section of the audience that might not have really thought about coming to a Mary Chain show before. So thank you, Sophia, that was great. 

William Reid: To be honest, we never even played that live before in the eighties and nineties. We never played it live. We thought it was too slow for a live set. We never, we just never played it. And we only started playing it when we got back together in 2007 because people were demanding it. You know, so we arranged it for live and it turned out pretty good. And then when we started playing it live in 2007, we noticed that a lot of people in the front row would start making out. It became like, it became like a make out song for loss of people, you know? But we play it all the time now. We play it every show now because it is our biggest song and we like playing it.

Jim Reid: To us, it was all one package. I mean, we didn't have to talk about it. It's not like we all looked at each other and went, “Douglas motor bike boots.” “Right.” You know, like “William, you know, those big funny creeper shoes.” You know, we didn't do that. It was so obvious. It was all, it was like the band operated with a kind of telepathic communication back then. It's like you didn't need to tell anybody, “that guitar's too quiet.” We were almost like one being, you know, it was almost like an elevated splitter. We were like, we were kinda making decisions all at the same time, you know, and it all just seemed to click. It was, there was something kind of supernatural. I know it sounds bullshit, but it was, I tell you, it's like we were all one, a shared mind. We all thought the same things. We all liked the same things. We all dressed the same way without discussing it. The record covers, we did all of that. You know, we decided what the record covers ought to look like. We used to drive video directors mental, because we would, directing films was something we were very interested in, but we didn't have the confidence to tell people. We didn't know how to technically do it. So there would be a guy called the director, and so we'd just be standing there directing this director and he would get, you know, there's a guy called Tim Broad. He was a lovely guy, but we used to drive him up the wall because he would go and edit the videos and we'd all show up and he'd go, “What are you doing here?”

Going, “Well, it’s our fucking video. What are you doing here?” And we'd start telling them physically every single edit that needed to happen and they'd be going like, “Look, there's a fiver, just go to the pub across the road,” and we'd go, “no way.” We'd be driving these people mental telling if this has got the Mary Chain written on it, we are deciding how everything goes. If it was going out as the Mary Chain, we wanted to do it all.

“The Living End” 

Jim Reid: Well, the fuzz pedal was, I mean, I keep talking about all these key elements, but that was a huge one. I mean, we, at the beginning of the band, technically we weren't that great. It was all about attitude. We knew we liked the sound of, and we wanted everything to be as kind of spare as possible. We couldn't play guitar that well. We didn't really care, you know, I mean, at the time, my and William’s idea of a great guitar player would've been like Johnny Ramone, you know, a great bass player would've been Dee Dee, you know, that's all you needed at that time. I mean, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young weren't on our turntable. They are new actually (laughs), but they weren't then. So it was all kinda, you know, “How are we gonna make these guitars sound like an orchestra? How are we gonna make them sound immense?”

William Reid: This little guy called Queenie, who used to live on our street in East Kilbride. I heard that he was selling this fuzz pedal thing. He was a guitar player and he brought it around the house. And I had a Gibson guitar copy, must have been about 40 quid at the time, 40 pounds. And it was a terrible guitar. And I had a Marshall solid state amp. I didn't know anything about amps at the time. And I went and bought this solid state amp. It was just awful. It just gave me the worst sound. And I was really depressed with that. And I just didn't see how we could ever, you know, I could ever start a band with it, you know, with this guitar amp. And I had no money to buy a new one. But anyway, Queenie came down to the house. I plugged in a Shin-ei pedal that he was selling, and oh my God, it was like the heavens had just opened and God had shined his light on me. And me and Jim just looked at each other and we go, “fuck.” We’re all going, “fucking hell.” 

Jim Reid: And it fucking started playing Psychocandy by itself, you know? And we were going like, “Whoa!” You know, like you just touch the guitar and it just starts going “pshhh” and like, “Oh wow, this is amazing. This is the sound that we've actually been sitting here trying to describe,” trying to find a piece of equipment that would do this. And this guy just looks, mysteriously, walks into your room and tries to sort of like, rip us off, he thinks. And he doesn't realize that, you know, this thing's like exactly what we've been searching for. 

William Reid: And I give Queenie 10 quid and Queenie went about telling the neighborhood that he sold me a broken fuzz pedal. And what it was is Queenie didn't know how to work this. Shin-ei fuzz pedal because they’re real fucking, they’re real bastards, it's really hard to get a real good sound because if you plug a guitar in and you're too close to the amp, then you just go crazy with the squeals and everything. But I loved it and Jim loved it. And then like every day I would just play that and I'd learn how to get sound out of this, this crazy fucking Japanese pedal, this Shin-ei pedal. And that didn't change my sound, that gave me a sound. This is how this band's going to sound. We’re going to sound ultra fuzzy and all these noises and feedback shit that comes through this pedal, we are gonna use it.

“The Living End.” What I remember about it is Jim playing the bass. I think Douglas was our bass player, but I don't want to put him down, but he was not the greatest bass player, he would admit that as well. When we made the record, anybody could come up with an idea, like John Loder, for instance, once come up and said, “Why don't you use this as a snare drum?” I forget what it was, but it was a side of a bucket or something. And I remember like, it had a really good snare drum sound. And so like anybody was free to go and play the guitar if they wanted to, but it was really me and Jim and if there wasn't enough like clangs or noise on it, one us would go and do it.

Jim Reid: There were B-sides that that we recorded on those sessions, but like, I think the song called “Cracked,” I can't remember what it was the B-side of, but it's literally the backing track of I think “The Living End,” but slowed down. It's “The Living End” played at half speed with a new vocal on. So that was it. That was our attitude towards B-sides for a while. I mean, I'm kind of ashamed of it now because you know, people are buying these things and you've got some sort of like duty to sort of do the best you can. 

William Reid: It is my song and I did most of the guitars, but I do remember Jim played a lot of the feedback and clangs on it. See, I don't think people know that Jim's a pretty good guitar player, and when we recorded Psychocandy, we would record everything just like, you know, the usual way, like a backing track, put down a drum and a bass. And the difficult thing was from then, “How do you fill this song when you're not a virtuoso?”

“Taste the Floor” 

William Reid: I do remember that. I remember like, we DI-ed the guitar straight into the desk for that one. And we'd done that because I had made a demo of it with my Portastudio. And I remember, like, one of the things the Portastudio taught me about was DI and with putting guitars straight into the thing where you got like a huge sound without any space. Because it's like, I don't know if you've ever seen Nine Inch Nails live, but I feel like that's, well, I did a whole tour with them actually, and I know what they do and that's what they do. And that's why like if you go see Nine Inch Nails, the guitars hit you right in the fucking face because there's nothing in between them that's like, they don't, a lot of the time they DI the guitars, which that's what we'd done with “Taste the Floor.” 

I remember like, this was 1976, 77, and I had a guitar and I could hardly play it. And it used to just depress me listening to the Stones or whatever, you know, great musicians, the Eagles,  Frampton Comes Alive. And you would just, it would just be like, “Oh, this is great, but I could never do this.” And then when I heard the Ramones, I was like, “What the fuck? This is just beautiful. This is amazing, but this sounds like something I can do. You know, this is barre chord stuff. I know how you play a barre chord.” And from there, you know, your confidence grows. You start to realize like, you don't need guitar solos, you don't need to play like Joe Walsh, you know, as great as he plays, I'm never gonna be like that, but I could maybe be like Johnny Ramone or Ron Ashton from Stooges or something, you know?

“The Hardest Walk”

Jim Reid: We were very much into sixties pop bands at the time, but also sixties garage bands, and we kind of thought, “Wouldn't it be great if somebody just mixed up the two? If somebody did, took the key elements of both of those musical genres and made them into one band.” We thought, “Well,” and you know, at the time it was like we were any bands like NEU! and Can and Einstürzende Neubauten and we again, we thought, well imagine Neubauten like doing a Shangri-Las song or something like that. We thought, “Oh, well we could do that. We could do something like that. We could make it the Supremes of the Shangri-Las, but with the Velvet Underground as the backing band.” And that's kinda what was going through our mind at the time. I mean, I always thought that the Velvet Underground were like that. I always thought that Lou (Reed) was really into Motown. If you listen to a lot of Velvets and girl bands like sixties girl bands, if you listen to a lot of the basslines on the Velvets and the melodies, that they're not that far off a lot of Motown stuff. I mean, “Just My Imagination” is like, you know, could have been a Velvet Underground song.

“The Hardest Walk,” I can't talk about the writing of it, but I can talk about the recording of it. I just remember, I think it was one of the early ones that we recorded. I think it was recorded right at the same time as “You Trip Me Up” and “Just like Honey,” on that first couple of, the first day.

William Reid: I actually do, I remember like actually playing the guitar. I went years where I was playing guitar and it was just the barre chords really, because I wasn't recording. And then when you start to record, you realize there's parts of it that maybe need something, you know, a lift or whatever. And I think what my job especially was, was making up little guitar riffs and making up little lead parts. And my biggest heroes when it came to me, the simplest guitar, but the best guitar parts was Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner of Joy Division and New Order. I mean, they wrote the best fucking bass and guitar hooks ever. And they were so simple. Just so simple, you know, like (sings) “down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down.” That's Bernard Sumner and I just for myself, “Well, that's what I'm going to do. I can't play like Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, but like Bernard Sumner, I can write interesting things with three or four notes. So yeah, that's what happened in “The Hardest Walk,” I did the guitar solo there.

“Cut Dead” 

William Reid: You should be able to write soft, melodic songs and you should be able to go ape shit noisy if you want as well. It was something that the best bands did. Well, we thought, were the best bands. I mean, the Beatles did “Penny Lane” and they also did “Helter Skelter” and the Stones did “Ruby Tuesday” and they also did “Gimme Shelter.” And I don't even need to tell you about the Velvet Underground. They were like hard and soft. And so we thought that was the blueprint for a great rock and roll band. But in the eighties, people weren't doing that. People were making noise and they made noise. People were being pop and they were being pop. And for some reason people weren't bringing the two of them together. You know, like pop was pop, noise was noise. And we were like, “Well, fuck it. That's not the way it used to be in the sixties.” Like the best bands could also be the gentlest balledest bands. Even going into the seventies, Led Zeppelin were like that. You know, Led Zeppelin could be. They weren't a noise bound, but they could really rock out and they could really like bring it down and sweet and soft as well. And that's what I've always liked and that's what Jim's always liked, being hard, being soft in the same package.

Jim Reid: I remember writing songs, I remember writing “Cut Dead,” but (sighs). Again, it was very much, I mean, I suppose it'll be no surprise to people to learn that we're big fans of the Velvet Underground. So we were listening up to a lot, we made mixtapes for everybody to listen to on the tour buses. It was jam packed full of stuff by the Velvets, “Candy Says,” and all of that. You kind of think, “My God, you know, punk music,” but you know, the Velvets would do something like “Heroin,” but they could also do something like “Candy Says.” So we'd be thinking, we'll do that. 

William Reid: “Cut Dead” is the only Mary Chain song that I've never, Jim played everything on that, everything that is like a Jim Reid solo song, and it didn't piss me off. What happened was I went somewhere with my girlfriend and I felt bad because we were recording like “Cut Dead,” and I come in the next day and it was recorded and everything was done, and Jim had done it all. I was like, “Oh, great, thank you.” And I was slightly, a bit peeved because I'd never, I hadn't played on it. And so me and Jim said, “Okay, we, we will never tell anybody that you never played on ‘Cut Dead.’ This is going to be a secret for the rest of our lives.” And it's fourty years later and now I don't give a fuck.

Jim Reid: William wrote songs and I wrote songs. The fact of the matter is he's much more prolific than I am, but we wrote songs separately and, you know, everybody thinks we write songs together, we don't. And we've written songs, like tends to be B-sides that were unfinished. And then we finished them together in the studio. But when we make an album, we come to the, we each bring songs into the studio and we record the ones that we think are the best. 

William Reid: I was listening to the songs Jim was writing, I was impressed. And he was listening to the songs that I was writing, and he was impressed. And we were like, I trusted Jim. I trusted Jim's taste, and if I wrote a song, and Jim said it was really good, I knew that Jim wasn't just saying that and vice versa. So I think our confidence came from each other really. And if you don't have confidence in yourself, I don't think you're going to really get anywhere in the music business. You know, it will destroy you if you don't have confidence because it will, if you don't have confidence in the way you look, they will give you an image, they will tell you how you look. If you don't have confidence in the way your band sounds, they will give you a sound. It'll sound like Duran Duran or whoever's famous that week, you know, whoever's number one. If you don't have confidence, they'll step in and shape you. So I think our confidence was probably just natural because, cause we were cockylittle bastards as well.

“In a Hole” 

Jim Reid: “In a Hole,” that's William’s song, but can I remember recording it? I think “In a Hole” might have been one of the Denmark Street recordings that we started doing there. There was a period before we hooked up with John Loder and after Stephen Street, that we kinda thought, “Well, we'll just get any studio and we'll just try and do this on our own.” We booked a little recording studio in Denmark Street in London, and I don't know about it, but I think it might have been the Sex Pistols used to have a place in Denmark Street in the seventies. I think this might have been it. It was a real shit hole. But we recorded the basics, like the bass rhythm guitar and drums, three songs we recorded in that studio, the beginnings of, and we took those multi-tracks to Southern and finished them off there. And I think that was one of those ones. With the recording of Psychocandy, we actually, strangely enough, like we, we'd got a little bit fucked up when we were doing “Never Understand.” We kinda came to an agreement that we would not get wasted while making records. And I think that we stuck to that with the exception of one gram of speed that I bought. And I think that I was kind of like speeding while we were recording or doing the overdubs on that. And it was a big mistake. I kind of, yeah, I just didn't want to do, I wanted to go out and go to a club, didn't want to be in this little fucking dungeon making a record.

William Reid: I remember like thinking it was going to be a single and it turned not to be a single. But when we did the album, we weren't going to do any B-sides. It was all going to be the best songs we had at the time. We weren't going to keep any songs for the future for singles or whatever. Everything was going into this fucking album, and that's what we did. You know, no B-sides, no fillers, all our best songs, but it turned out to be all of our songs. As soon as Psychocandy was finished, it was like, “Oh fuck. Now we have to write songs for that.” That's the way it is in the music business. That's the way it is. Every time we finish an album, there's that, “Oh fuck.” You know, “I have to write songs again.” But that's what happened. All those songs get used up for that album. 14 of them. 

Jim Reid: I mean, at the time when we were making the records, we wanted it to be that if you were going to choose a single, you were going to struggle to tell which one couldn't be. We wanted it to play as a best of, if you know what I mean, that nothing was a waste of time or space on that record. And every single song that we put on, I mean, people may disagree, but at the time we felt as if every recording in its own way perfectly represented the band at that moment in time.

“Taste of Cindy” 

Jim Reid: “Taste of Cindy?” Hmm, there was no demo of that. That was one of the ones that got written quite late in the game. Kinda wrote that song when I was living in my little flat in London. That kinda came out. I don’t know where it came from, came out of nowhere. I remember sitting in my dingy little flat in Fillum with an acoustic guitar. It's always an acoustic guitar and it just came about. And we did an acoustic version afterwards, but when we recorded Psychocandy, there was no demo of it. So it was just me playing the rest of the band, how it went. 

William Reid: I remember like, Jim couldn't write the lyrics for it and he asked me to write the lyrics for it. I went and wrote a bunch of lyrics for it, and then when I got into the recording studio, I was too embarrassed to sing them cause it was so bad (laughs). It's like, I'm not bad at writing lyrics, but I find that hard to write lyrics for Jim’s songs. And I wrote these lyrics and I don't think I even sang them. I sat down with Jim and he said, “Well did you finish those lyrics for my song?” I said, “yes.” He goes, “okay, sing them for me.” And no, I did, I started singing them and I was like, “I think they’re shit I don't like.” And he goes, “oh, okay, well I think I wrote some lyrics anyway.” And I said, “Well, you sing your lyrics.” And he sang his, and I say, “Yours are 10 times better than me.” 

“Never Understand” 

William Reid: The thing with the feedback is it's hard, it's very hard to control. It's easy to control, like, the bass, the darker rumbling feedback notes. But the high frequency ones, they're very difficult to control. But a lot of what we were doing was relying on the luck of the universe to be honest. Like we would record maybe four feedback tracks, four or five feedback tracks blind, like meaning, not listening to like the other ones, and then put them all together. And sometimes they just went together and it was like a fucking miracle, I swear. And I really, really feel that when you're making music that you should allow for the universe to step in. And so many accidents happened on that album. So many things just fell into the right place that it was almost supernatural. I mean, I know it was supernatural. I know it was. Because me and Jim were just never been in a recording studio before really. We were never left alone in a recording studio, let alone be in one. And so many accidents that just turned out to be so fortuitous, so exactly in the right place that it was just incredible. It was like, I should have been praying to God every fucking night when I went home.

Jim Reid: I mean, “Never Understand.” I remember that I wanted to write a song. A punk song that sounded like Generation X. That's what I wanted to do. At the time, I was listening to “Dancing with Myself” by Generation X and I liked to write a song that sounded like that, and I probably shouldn't say that cause everybody's gonna go, “Fuck it sounds just like that.” But that's it. I mean, when I write songs, I tend to want to try and rewrite somebody else's song and I know that I'm not gonna do it right. And then it becomes your song. 

William Reid: That's Jim’s song. Well, that was the one, that was the one I told you we recorded with Stephen Street and it wasn't even working out too great. And we’re a band and we've got 40 years of making records. And every, when we go into a studio, engineers kind of know us. Or if they don't know us, then they just need to go on Spotify and find out. Do you know what I mean? But Stephen Street didn't really know a lot about, as we'd only made one single. And he was a nice guy, but he didn't really understand our music really. And I don't blame him for not being on top of things. Do you know what I mean? I don't blame anybody because people didn't know who the fuck we were. But yeah, that was, that was Jim's song. We recorded it with Stephen Street and it just sounded too, too glossy. Too normal rock and roll, you know? And that's me screaming at the end of, “Never Understand.” That's not Jim, that's me. So I'm singing on that kinda (laughs). 

Jim Reid: Quite a few of the songs didn't have any worked out endings, so we would just do what we did on stage and that would be one of those songs that where, you know, you just like, you just pretend it's a gig. You just like, just keep playing and stuff like that and then, you know, just let it fall apart. I mean, it takes a bit of discipline because if you're not careful, you can end up doing 20 minute versions of songs. But that wasn't really gonna help with us, I suppose. But yeah, we were just kind of, we'd been playing those songs on stage by that at that point. So we kinda knew it's not got an ending, but it kinda has got an ending because the ending is that you just stop when you're fed up.

“Inside Me” 

William Reid: (sings bass line) “do do do do do do do,” I'm trying, yeah, I'm trying to remember the song. “Inside Me,” that was my song. I've always loved minimalism in music. When I first heard Joy Division and New Order, I knew exactly what they were doing, less meant more. And I kind of think that was the same as like the Beach Boys and Phil Spector. I feel like there was virtuosity, but it was in service to the song, and there wasn't anybody showing after, like what was the name? Carol Kane, who was the bass player for the Wrecking Crew. I feel like all those people were in service to the song, and I think that's what I was doing as well. And I think if we were to got an accomplished guitar player in the Mary Chain, I think we would've sounded terrible. I really do.

“Sowing Seeds”

William Reid: That also had the, the drumbeat of the Ronettes drumbeat or the Phil Spector drumbeat or Hal Blaine drumbeat or whatever. “Sowing Seeds” was, I think the first song I wrote for that album. And I think I wrote “Sowing Seeds” two years before it and I made a demo and yeah, that was the first song written for Psychocandy. I wrote that before Jim wrote any his songs before we really had an actual vision, you know?

Jim Reid: William was kind of, he used to record versions of the songs on the Portastudio that were quite intricate. I mean, he was, he was always a better musician than I was. But I used to get really frustrated if I couldn't play something, you know, that I heard in my head. I would just get angry and make something loud, electronic racket and that would just do the job. William, you know, persevered a bit more than I did, and I remember he made a demo of “Sowing Seeds.” It's got loads of like really intricate guitar parts and all of that. 

William Reid: It was the first song I wrote that was in a style I think of the Mary Chain. Jim has never been as prolific as me. I think when Jim writes a song, it takes him a long time. And for every five songs Jim writes, I can write twenty songs. It doesn't mean they're all good, it just means that I sit more with my guitar and write songs. But yeah, I was writing songs and I wasn't pleased with them. I wasn't happy with them and I was thinking, “Well, this will never fly. This is not going to,” and then I wrote “Sowing Seeds” and I thought, “Fuck yes, this is what my group's going to sound, this is…” And I played it to Jim and he said, “Yeah, that's really good. Your group's going to sound really good if this is the songs you write for them.” And I'm saying, “Well, your group will be good when you write songs as well.” Cause remember there was going to be two bands.

I was like a little bit better than him at the guitar. So I was a guitar player and he was basically the singer by default. He didn't really want to be the singer. I didn't want to be the singer. And I mean, it worked too. He's a much better singer than me. He's a much better frontman than me. But no, I didn't want to be a singer. It's never anything I ever wanted to be. 

Jim Reid: I mean, I don't think of myself as a singer, I never have. And I didn't want to be the singer. I mean, this is all true, I’ve told people this many times, but it's true. Nobody wanted to be the singer. We're all pretty shy guys. I mean, I'm still very shy, you know, and the idea of like singing in front of people was like terrifying to me. Technically, I can't sing for toffee. I don't really give a fuck about it now, but then I was a bit intimidated by the whole idea of, you know what I mean? Like, can I sing in tune? Well, yeah, everybody can sing in tune in a studio, but you know, how's it going to go down? I just wanted to not make a fool of myself, that's what I was doing in the studio. And at the time it was kind of, I didn't know whether what I was doing was laughable or not, but nobody else would do it. You know, nobody wanted to be the singer. You know, it is a true story, but somebody needed to be the guitar player, somebody needed to be the singer, me and William tossed a coin and I lost. That's what happened. And so that's it. I became the singer of the Jesus and Mary Chain. It was not something that I really wanted to do.

“My Little Underground” 

Jim Reid: I wrote that song the day after, we've talked a lot about this acid trip through the years that we met up with Bobby and all of the guys from Primals came to East Kilbride and me, William and Douglas took acid. There was this old derelict factory that me and Douglas used to go to trip. And we all went down there and we took loads of acid and it was William's first trip and he totally freaked out. And so I had to sort of take William off somewhere and try and talk him down. It was, in fact, I think it was that day and I was coming down from acid and I just picked up the guitar and that song came out. 

William Reid: That's Jim's song. Well me, it was me that freaked out. Everybody else had a good time. But I mean the acid trip was, fuck, it was actually really fucking scary. And I had a flashback a year later from that acid trip cause I saw a man jumping off a Battersea Bridge in London and I was with my girlfriend and we were walking along the embankment by the river and a man with a briefcase case stood up. Stood on the, the edge of the bridge or whatever, and he jumped into the river and it gave me an acid flashback from a year before. And I started to hallucinating a year later. Have you ever heard of that? Oh, it's fucking real. After I saw the guy jumping into the river, I thought it was a hallucination and I went nuts. And my girlfriend was going, “I saw it too. It's not hallucination. Calm down, calm down.” And then I started seeing all these bats flying everywhere and it was like a real horrible panic attack. And then she had to sit me down and say like, “No, I saw a man jumped into the river, A man with a briefcase, a professional looking, respectable man, jumped into the river.” Suicide probably.

“You Trip Me Up” 

Jim Reid: “You Trip Me Up” was probably the first song that was recorded intentionally for the purpose of making an album. And that was, I remember setting the equipment up in that little dingy living room with no windows in Wood Green and it was boiling hot that day and I remember just slept with the headphones on. And again, everybody was kinda getting on each other's nerves and there's no window to the control room because that's in a garage in another part of the, you know, the house. So, and we're all just sort of standing there trying to talk to John in the control room. And that was it. That was the first song we did. We did a, the first take I think was totally fucking awful because we were just like, I think we might even have been playing different songs, I don't remember. But eventually a little bit of a, you know, with a little bit of trial and error, we finally got there. 

William Reid: I wrote that song and I thought it, the backing track was great. I thought it, the backing track was just perfect and I thought Jim's voice sounded terrible. And Jim thought his voice sounded terrible. And we went back in and he recorded it and it was much better. That's all I can really remember about that. Just the voice being bad because I think he had a sore throat when we recorded it.

The Gretsch guitar, the Fender Twin Reverb and the fuzz Shin-ei, it's a perfect combination for Psychocandy, I think. Obviously you can do it on other amps, but the Twin Reverb with that weird spring reverb I've got, I think you can hear that all over Psychocandy, like that spring going, you know, you can hear the spring and if I was going to do Psychocandy again, you couldn't do it with a Marshall, I don't think I could do it with a Marshall or an Orange amp. The Twin Reverb with that crazy spring reverb is the only thing that we could have used. It just had this amazing quality and John, John had a reverb that that cost him about fucking five grand or something in the eighties, but nothing, no guitar sounded good for that for some reason.

“Something’s Wrong” 

Jim Reid: “Something's Wrong,” I can't remember “Something's Wrong,” and recording it. I remember recording the demo of it more than I do on the Portastudio. That was one of those songs that we, or that I made up while recording on a, I had a couple of ideas for songs and again, I mean, I was trying to rewrite another tune. I don't want to tell you what it is because I think it's better than the song that I was trying to rewrite, but I don't want to, I don't want to cheapen it by saying I stole somebody else's song. But I was trying, and thankfully I wasn't very good at stealing the other person's tune and “Something's Wrong” came out of it. I remember just sitting up in the bedroom and trying to figure out, I had the words and the tune and the little drum machine thing going on, but I had no idea what instruments to put on it. I'm not a musician, I’m not now, and I certainly wasn't then. So the only thing I could think to do was just do it a little slide, this sort of droney slide thing. And I don't, I can't remember, I think I stole that from someone as well, but I've forgotten who it was. And I made up the little guitar intro thing for it that we ended up using also for “Happy When it Rains.” The other strange thing that I forgot to mention is that while we were recording Psychocandy, we were recording it during the day and then Ministry were recording during the night. So Al Jourgensen would be sitting, you know, we'd get in in the morning, he'd been up all night with big lines of speed on the control desk. And it is crazy cause you, we had to like wipe the, bring the desk down. Each of the bands had to just bring all the sliders and reset the desk. Whether you had a mix there that you wanted to go back to or not, fuck it. You gotta get it done by the end of the day. And if you don't, you know, John's gonna come in and slide everything down in time for Ministry at like midnight. “Ministry at midnight,” that's like a song title.

William Reid: That's Jim's song and that probably the only song that we used a synthesizer on the album. When we were recording Psychocandy during the day, Ministry were recording at nighttime. Did you know that? Did Jim tell you that? Yeah, it was crazy. So we would come in about midday and Al Jourgensen was just finishing his shift, his night shift, and we'd say hi and he'd say, hi, bye and stuff. But Al did tell us that we could use any sequences or synthesizers that we wanted to. And so when we were doing “Something's Wrong,” we did, we used one of his synthesizers in the studio. 

“It’s So Hard” 

Jim Reid: That was one of the ones that I think me and William recorded most of that on our own because Bobby wasn't around. We recorded just a drum machine and we wanted it to be kind of mechanical. Anyway, so that kinda worked out and it was just, there was a lot of experimentation going on and I think it was just me and William in his studio. John was upstairs doing his thing and we were just fucking around trying to break his equipment. 

William Reid: Well, that's the only one where I sing. That's me singing it and it's my song as well. And I wish, I wish I would've let Jim sing that one. I mean, I'm not really a singer and I'm, yeah, it's okay, but I'm not that keen on my voice. I wish I would've let him sing it. I think if we could go back, if we could go back, that's just, that's about the only change, major change I would make. Let Jim sing “It’s So Hard.”

Jim Reid: When we took the finished mixes of Psychocandy down in Warners, they just said, “it was a piece of shit.” They said, “these are the demos. When are you going to make the record?” And we're going, “Look, you don't get it. This is the record and there won't be another one. This is it.” And we'd heard all sorts of horror stories about bands that get tied up in, you know, legal situations. I mean it, they can't go forward and they can't go back, they can't release the record and they can't go to another record company. And we'd had stories about record companies that just completely remixed their multi-tracks. So we had to play it very, very, very carefully. And then we kinda did, and it was always like, we'd go in and we'd sit with Rob Dickins, who's running Warners at the time, and I remember thinking, “Look, this is a record we have to get out of our system. Just let us put this record out and we'll see. We'll take it after that. We'll see what happens next.” And he said, “okay.” And every record we made, it was the same deal with them. “Look, look, just, this is a, you know, just let us put this one out and we'll make your big radio friendly record after this.” And then, you know, it just went on and on and on like that. And eventually they just stopped caring on any level. So they didn't care what we sounded like. They would just say, “Right, give us your record.” They'd stick it out. And they would do absolutely no promo whatsoever for it. It was just a terrible relationship, artistic and business wise, it didn't work on any level.

William Reid: I think when we were cutting it and we were playing it back, I think we really did feel that if we died today, this record would be like our masterpiece or whatever. There was one thing that scared me and I remember went up to Warners one time and there was somebody at Warners. He’d said, I don't remember this guy's name, but it was at some meeting and he says, “Maybe you should get a producer.” And that scared the shit out of me. So when we were presenting the record to Warners, I don't think they were really that pleased with it, to be honest. I remember like at Creation, people that we knew, friends and all that thought it was fantastic and we thought it was fantastic. We thought we'd done great. But I just remember at Warners like, just a couple of people whose faces weren't fucking showing like that they liked a record. And I remember being scared because somebody said, “What if they go and remix it behind your back?” Cause one of the guys, this is what it was, I remember we had a meeting and one of the guys at Warners says, “It's such a shame that you've made a record full of pop songs and wasted them with all this noise” or “wasted them with the production,” something like that. And I was, I remember thinking, “Oh my God, does he think, does this fucker think that this is a hit record? But the only thing stopping it being a hit is the production?” And I remember saying to Geoff Travis, “Geoff, if Warners think this is terrible, can they refuse to release it?” And he said, “no.” And I said, “Can they make us go and reproduce it with a producer?” And he says, “no.” And I took him at his word and he didn't lie because Warners didn't like it. And I think the consensus was that we had a bunch of pop songs and ruined them until, until the record was released to the press, and the press were unanimous that it was a great album. But I think we were on the verge of being kicked off Warners. 

Jim Reid: We felt really very good about the end result. I mean, at the time we thought we couldn't have done a better job. We felt very confident about it and we really did think that we did what we set out to achieve. I mean, listening to it back now, I mean, it's a different thing now because when you make a record, it's like a photograph. You change, the photograph stays the same. Well, it's the same with the records. You look back on it now, it's a bit like looking at an old photo album, like, I don't know, like when you're wearing funny clothes that you wouldn't wear now. I love the record cause I remember why we made that record, but we wouldn't or couldn't make it now because we're just different people now. But at the time we felt like, “Christ, you know, this is it. We've tried to do this and there were a few false starts where we were working with people that just did not get it and were not going to help us to get what we wanted to get. But we got there in the end and this is it. This is like, this is our idea of a perfect record.” And we felt very, very confident about it. And we're still talking about it all these years later so job done really. 

William Reid: It was so obviously a really good album that I only ever really read one bad review of it. And even then, I think the person was, it was a personal thing. I think they knew McGee. I remember McGee saying, “the only bad review is basically this guy.” And he said, I think he said he fucked his girlfriend or something (laughs). Something like that. Something scandalous. But I don't remember seeing any fucking bad reviews yet. And you can't wish for anything better than that, really, that you released an album and everybody says it's great. You can't get any better than that. 

Jim Reid: Around about the time when the record came out, there was a kind of a, there'd been a lot of negative press. There'd been so-called riot gigs, and it felt a bit like the music press were out to get the Mary Chain as like, you know, “our time was up.” We'd done a couple of singles that everybody loved, but it kinda almost been decided by someone that the knives were sharpened, “We're gonna get these guys now. They've gotten too big for their boots.” I think a lot of those got, those journalists that were coming to see the band live weren't hearing that there was actually a great album being played because it probably didn't come across at that time. Cause live, it was very chaotic, it was very, very noisy and there was loads of violence. So I suspect a lot of those, the, you know, sort of the people that were coming up with the negative stuff in the music press were like sort of hiding up at the back by the bar when all that was going on and weren't really listening. So when the album came out, there was a kind of almost like, “We wanted to finish these guys off, but we kind, you know, the record is good and we can't deny it.” You know what I mean? It was sort of a begrudging, you know, “Oh fuck, okay, it's a great record.” But there was a feeling that, you know, had it not been such a great record, they would've gone, you know, sort of sticking the boot in. So I definitely feel as if the people had decided that our time was up. But the record being the record, it was kind of kept us going.

William Reid: Plenty of people have told us that it influenced them and for us to know that it actually, you know, has influenced bands and so it should be. You make music and you pass it on because it is an original sounding album, but like they say, you stand on, you stand on the shoulders of giants, don't you? You stand on the shoulders of everything that was great and it came before you, and if it influenced anybody, then great. That's the way rock and roll should be. 

Jim Reid: I definitely hear that a lot of bands have learned from the Mary Chain. And again, that's what the Mary Chain, that was partly the idea that we felt as if that if we made that record Psychocandy and it was entertainment for the year that it came out and that's older, it was it, it would've been a huge failure in our eyes. If it would've sold shitloads of records and then everybody forgot about it, there'd be no point of it. We wanted, at the time we were digging out, we wanted dusty little record shops and finding records by the 13th Floor Elevators going, “Whoa!” And then getting back and going go, “Oh fuck, that's just great.” And we were thinking, “Wouldn't it be great if like 30, 40, 50 years time people are digging out Psychocandy out of dusty little record shops thinking, “I want to start a band. This is great music and I want to do something like it.” And that is what it was all about. So listening to bands now 40 years later, that seemed like they got it. Like kids that were nowhere near born at the time and that they sent, sort of got a message from Psychocandy again, job done, job fucking done. And all you fucking idiots back in the eighties that were saying, “Oh, you'll be finished in five years. Fuck you all (laughs). Here we are still talking about Psychocandy and other great records we made.” 

William Reid: Well, the record was Psychocandy and it was made by the Jesus and Mary Chain, me and my brother Jim and sometimes bassist Douglas Hart and our sometimes standup drummer, Bobby Gillespie. And when I say standup drummer, I don't mean like he's a standup guy (laughs). He is a standup guy, but I mean, like, he stood up and played the drums and that album was Psychocandy. And this is 40 years later and it still stands up. And if people are still listening after all these years, then there you go. Another miracle.

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about The Jesus and Mary Chain. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Psychocandy. Instrumental music is the song “Kelly Anne” by Davy Drones. Thanks for listening. 

Credits:

"Just Like Honey"

"The Living End"

"Taste the Floor"

"The Hardest Walk"

"Cut Dead"

"In a Hole"

"Taste of Cindy"

"Never Understand"

"Inside Me"

"Sowing Seeds"

"My Little Underground"

"You Trip Me Up"

"Something's Wrong"

"It's So Hard"

Recorded at Southern Studios

Engineered by John Loder

Produced by The Jesus and Mary Chain

Backing vocals: Karen Parker and Laurence Verfaillie

Jim Reid: Vocals, Guitar

William Reid: Guitar, Vocals

Douglas Hart: Bass

Bobby Gillespie: Drums

Words and Music by William Reid and Jim Reid

© & ℗ Blanco y Negro, WEA Records Ltd.

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Kelly Anne” by Davy Drones, from the album, CRASH

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam