In November 1985, The Jesus and Mary Chain released their debut album, Psychocandy, blazing into the public consciousness with subverted pop melodies and a cacophony of feedback. Brothers William and Jim Reid had created an alternative soundscape for the future from a bedroom in East Kilbride.
Their family had been transported from Glasgow, moving to the planned utopia of Scotland’s first new town, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.
“We went up in 1966, I was only four years old, William was seven. Pretty much everyone in East Kilbride at that time had quite recently moved from Glasgow. It felt like a more civilised extension of there with more open space” Jim says. The family lived on Angus Avenue in Calderwood.
When punk rock happened, the brothers started to hear the clarion call of London music clubs. “We felt like we were on another planet from where it was all happening.
"That was the beginning of our ideas of getting away from East Kilbride, not being satisfied with what it had to offer. We couldn’t be there and form a band that was going to take on the music scene. We tried Glasgow and it wasn’t happening, so it ended up being London.”
Everyone who arrives in London bring something with them, what did The Jesus and Mary Chain bring from East Kilbride? “We felt like we were outside of the music business, outside of everything and we kept that when we moved to London.
"We never really fit in anywhere, I used to hate that about us, but looking back on it, that’s a very important ingredient. If we had moved and been embraced with open arms, it would have been a completely different band.”
Alongside Jim and William for the band's seminal first album were bassist Douglas Hart and Bobby Gillespie on drums before he left to continue with Primal Scream. “The sound of the band, the ethos of the band, that was all formed in East Kilbride” Jim says, remembering the early days.
“We were writing Psychocandy when we were trying to get gigs in Glasgow. Our first gigs in London, we were still living with our parents. We’d go down for the weekend, play a few shows, upset some people and then get the bus back up to Scotland with no money. I remember a woman on the bus buying us all sandwiches because she felt sorry for us.”
They quickly went from rehearsing in community centres and wheeling amps in “those old trolleys that pensioners used for their shopping” to releasing their debut single Upside Down and meeting music manager Alan McGee who signed the band to Creation Records.
“We felt pretty good about what we were hearing” Jim says. “That’s where the confidence came from. The first time we went to London we went to the NME’s office and asked them to come to our show. We told McGee and he said it would never work but they sent someone and we got the review.”
The early recordings launched The Jesus and Mary Chain into a chaotic touring schedule, with the band often performing with their backs to the audience, swathed in feedback. The Darklands album revealed a guitar pop core that earned the band more US attention with the release of Honey’s Dead in 1992.
After disbanding in 1999, a reunion to perform at Coachella in 2007 has continued into occasional, more orderly and engaging live gigs. A seventh album, Damage and Joy, was released in 2017. They are curently working on a new record.
Music they manifested in the West of Scotland at the start of their career opened the door to this second act.
Jim says “Compromise wasn't in the vocabulary back then. We wanted to get into the music scene and make it, at least from our point of view, a little bit better. We hated the music we heard on the radio at that time and we thought, well, let's fix it. Let's get our music on the radio. It's naive and it was never really going to happen, but we thought we could change everything.”
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