“I suppose it was coming up for a landmark anniversary and we thought that if we didn’t do it now, it was really going to be too late to do it anytime in the future,” he says. “What we did was we decided to entertain the idea. The first thing we thought we should try out was to book some rehearsal time and see whether we could do it, whether it was going to work or not. Had that rehearsal gone badly, we would have just knocked it in the head. It just would’ve been an idea that we’d tried that didn’t work, but it worked out pretty well and we felt pretty good about it.”
The 12 months leading up to Psychocandy’s release was a heady time for the Mary Chain. Debut single Upside Down was released on Creation Records in November 1984 and quickly became one of the decade’s best selling indie singles. They UK press hailed them as “the new Sex Pistols” thanks to their antagonistic early shows where sets would last only 20-odd minutes and the audience would be blasted with relentless noise and verbal chiding. Some shows ended in riots, most famously at the North London Polytechnic and Camden’s Electric Ballroom.
The chance to make amends for the mayhem of the time was another reason to revisit Psychocandy. “It occurred to us that quite a lot of songs from Psychocandy never actually got played live at the time, or ever at all,” Reid says. “There was a big chunk of that album that we never performed onstage at any point, and that just seemed a shame to let that be the way it goes down. We’re playing songs that, if I’m honest, I can’t even remember how they came about. It’s just weird. You’re standing there and you’re playing this song and you’re thinking, ‘This could be somebody else’s.’ You just don’t remember this song coming into the world.”
Now that they’re over-50, the Reid’s were intially reluctant about returning to something made by their younger, more arrogant and angrier selves. “We just thought it’d be too weird,” says Reid. “It’s again why we booked the rehearsal time; to see how it was going to work out. I think a lot of it was to do with the attitude that we approached it, really.
“You just go out there and crank it up. You turn up the volume and just make as much racket as you can. It’s not rocket science, but at the same time it’s not that easy either.”
Since its release, Psychocandy has become a benchmark record for multiple generations of noise merchants, from shoegazers to industrial groups. There were times when the Mary Chain felt like the album was casting a long shadow over everything else they were doing. However, they’re now far more comfortable with its place in their history.
“When the band was around in the ’90s we kind of wished people would shut the fuck up about Psychocandy when we wanted to talk about other things that we were doing. But Christ, there’s not that many people who can make a record and 30 years later people still talk about it, never mind wanting to hear you play it live. It’s something I can’t feel bad about, and also, we do get enough interest in other records we’ve made for it not to be a problem.
“It’s always nice to be remembered in any way,” Reid adds. “It’s all about people picking up other bits of other people’s ideas and running with it. We’ve done that. That’s, in essence, what rock’n’roll is. If it becomes pastiche, then you’ve got a problem, but it’s great that there are bands around now that have learned a lesson from the Mary Chain.”
While The Jesus and Mary Chain have been back together for almost a decade, they’re yet to release a new album. One track, All Things Must Pass, was released not long after their first reunion shows. While he’s reluctant to give away much detail, Reid says the group’s first full-length release since 1998’s Munki is well on its way.
“We’re actually in the middle of recording it. It’s going pretty well. We’ve recorded most of the tracks, we just need to mix it now. It’s more or less me and William. We’ve had some of the band in playing bits and bobs on it. We’re recording with Youth, and he’s played bass on most of the tracks.”
In the meantime, the Mary Chain are set to make their first visit to Australia since 2008. As ever, they’ll be doing things in their own fashion.
“We do two sets. We actually do the non-Psychocandy set first. There’s no encore. Basically, we’re being rather presumptuous. We’re assuming the audience would want an encore, and rather than do it after the Psychocandy set, we decided to do it first. We just figured once you do Psychocandy, that’s kind of it.”
BY MICHAEL HARTT
