The Collapse Board Interview: Jim Reid (The Jesus and Mary Chain)
The Jesus and Mary Chain is a Scottish alternative rock band formed in 1983 by brothers Jim and William Reid. Known for their distinctive mix of abrasive guitar feedback and melodic pop sensibilities, the band quickly became one of the defining bands of the 1980s, and one whose sound continues to influence and inspire.
After releasing their debut, Psychocandy, in 1985, widely acknowledged as one of the decade’s greatest albums, they released a further seven albums until acrimoniously breaking up in 1999 during the tour in support of 1998’s Munki. The Jesus and Mary Chain reformed to play at Coachella in 2007, with further tours re-establishing the band, before finally releasing new music with 2017’s Damage and Joy. Their eight album, Glasgow Eyes was released in March 2024.
Ahead of the band’s upcoming 40 YEARS tour of Australia we spoke to Jim Reid about shyness, confidence, and dealing with a music industry in the 1980s that hated the band.
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As someone who comes from Exmouth, I was kind of surprised to find out you’ve been living 30 minutes away in Sidmouth for a few years. So how did you end up living there?
Oh, you come from Exmouth, did you say? Oh, wow. Well, we were starting a family and, you know, I just thought it might be a nicer place to bring kids up out of London. I’d always liked the southwest of England and the original idea was Cornwall and then we kind of bottled it a bit because we thought, maybe we want to be a bit closer to London just in case we spend more time there. The idea at one point was St Ives and it’s like five and a half hours on a train to London. We started to edge closer to London and then we started to look round about Exeter and we’d spent a day or two in Sidmouth, just driving around looking for places to live and we quite liked it and that was it. That’s how I ended up here and I do like Sidmouth.
My aunt lives there so I’ve spent a fair bit of time there over the years but it’s just about the least rock and roll place I can think of.
Nobody recognises me here except for when I first moved here, and my postman did. He was like, “You’re the guy out the Mary Chain!” and I was like, “Yeah,” and he was going, “What are you doing here?” And I was like, “Well, I don’t know, why shouldn’t I be here?” But he seemed to think, like you, that it was the most bizarre thing that you could imagine.
You said you did it for family reasons, but is it somewhere you find creative or does that not come into it?
You can live anywhere really, can’t you? There’s beautiful walks along those clifftops. If you want inspiration, that sort of feeds your soul. I wouldn’t say it matters wherever you live, to be honest with you. You get inspiration from anywhere really, can’t you? Out of a bottle, usually.
Do you miss living in London?
I thought I would, but I actually don’t. I lived in London for 20 years and I thought, “Am I really ready to move out?” And I did it, the whole thing. I sold my house there and everything and I knew that as soon as you sell up in London, you can’t move back because the prices just keep going up and up and up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back, and I was a bit nervous about whether I would regret it or not. I love living here and I love the change of pace of life.
I find that when I go back to London, I actually appreciate London a lot more than I ever did when I lived there. I used to sit there sitting, drinking whiskey and taking drugs in Kentish Town and never really stray too far from the pub on the corner, the Queen’s Head on the corner and that was it. And then, you know, sometimes I’d stumble into the West End and maybe go to the occasional art gallery, but that would be once every 15 years or something.
Did you sell your studio [The Drugstore] as well?
Yeah, yeah. I think we would have sold that no matter what though, because nobody needs a big, giant 24-track mixing desk in a dedicated space to record anymore. We were aware of the fact that technology was making those kind of studios redundant, so we would have got rid of that no matter what, I think.
I’m always curious by that yours and William’s shyness is well documented and you don’t you know, you’re very upfront about it, but do you think it held you back in getting to do what you wanted?
Oh, that’s an interesting question. Yeah, I think it probably did. Everything about the Mary Chain was awkward. I mean, the music was bold and loud, but everything else was awkward. We made videos, it was plain that we didn’t want to be there. Sometimes on stage, it looked like we didn’t want to be there. You know, people thought because we turned our backs to the audience and all that, showed contempt for our audience. We were just terrified to be there.
It’s the reason why we’d get absolutely plastered on stage, because the idea of me being a front man and a rock and roll man, it was ludicrous, you know what I mean? I wanted it, but as a fantasy. It sounded great but in reality, it was utterly terrifying.
I read about that Douglas Hart had said that you were a reluctant singer when the band first started and kept saying he should sing your songs.
Well, I mean, there’s a well-known story that the tossing of the coin, did you ever hear that one? We were at the very beginning of the band, nobodies’ role hadn’t been decided yet, and we tossed a coin to see who would be singer and I lost. That’s absolutely true.
I didn’t want to do it. William didn’t want to do it. We were the only two that could have, and he was like, “No way am I doing it.” So we tossed that coin and I bloody well lost. But then a couple of months later, after everybody started going, “Jim! Jim!” he was like, “I want to do it now,” and I was like, “The coin has spoken!”
Do you still consider yourself a reluctant singer?
Well, not so much anymore. I get stage fright, but I think I probably would, no matter what I did in the band. And when I say stage fright, it’s not crippling or anything. You hear about some people that really, really, really are nervous wrecks. I just can’t relax until I’ve been on stage for a couple of songs. A couple of songs in and I feel okay. But the first couple of songs and the lead up to the show, I get, I get very nervous.
I’m not a performer. I’m not Iggy Pop. I’m not Mick Jagger. And I spent years trying to be and realising that I could never be. That’s just not what I’m cut out to be. And so once you kind of accept that and just say, “Well, fuck it, I’m not Iggy, I’m Jim, I’m Jim Reid from the Mary Jane, and yeah, I’m a bit awkward on stage, I find it difficult to talk to the audience, but they’re coming back. There’s still an audience there.” So you kind of think, “Well, bloody hell, why am I getting so stressed out about this?” It’s kind of worth it though.
I relax a lot more because there are people out there and if it was that bad, there wouldn’t be, so it gives you a little bit of confidence, I think that 40 years down the line, there’s still a healthy amount of people that seem to want to watch us do whatever it is we do so you get confidence from that.
I was going to ask you about talking to the press as well, because you seem to get the majority of that on behalf of the band. Historically you were sort of known for lying in interviews and winding interviewers up. Is that something that’s different now?
I don’t really think that we’ve been that guilty of that. I mean, it might have happened once or twice over 40 years, but no, no, I treat people as I find them, really. You know, if someone treats me with a decent amount of respect, that’s what they’ll get back.
Watching and listening to some of your old interview, despite the shyness and awkwardness it’s amazing just how confident you and William were in what you were doing, what you wanted to achieve, and your ambition.
A lot of those early interviews, you’ll notice that there was certainly bottles lying around us where we did them! I mean, a lot of those early interviews, I can’t watch because the only way you could do them would be to get drunk. And then it just seemed that nobody’s saying what needs to be said about us, so we’ll do it, “Oh, we’re the best band in the world.” I mean, it’s cringeworthy stuff, and it’s all fuelled by drink or speed in those days.
Although there was that hyperbole, you still had that ambition. You still seem to have the confidence in what you wanted to achieve.
I think it’s kind of easy doing interviews. I don’t think it requires a lot of confidence to talk about what you do. What I struggle with is small talk, really. When you do an interview, there’s a kind of blueprint, a pattern. You just walk in that direction. When you talk about these things, you know the answers.
But I remember doing some radio interview once in Australia, I think it was, and it was cringeworthy because I was just sitting there jabbering away about the band, and then the interview was over, and the guy shut the mic down, and it was me, the journalist, and the PR guy. And they were just sort of jabbering away, and I sat like an idiot, I had nothing to say, and I could see them kind of looking at me like, “What’s up with this guy? A minute ago, he was just waffling on about this and that”. But they didn’t realise that while we were talking about the band, I was comfortable and as soon as the interview was over, and it was down to small talk about the weather and stuff like that, I just couldn’t join in, you know, and that’s me.
I mean, I’m a bit better than I used to be, but that’s kind of how it tends to be. I’m not very good at small talk. I’m not very good at gatherings of people getting together when it’s just talking about things that people do. I’m a bit autistic when it comes to things like that.
Yeah, I get that. Small talk’s the worst. I kind of admire people that can do it really well, it’s like some special skill.
Yeah, I can’t at all.
Prior to the band, you were working at Rolls-Royce…
Yeah, I worked for two years in Rolls-Royce in East Kilbride.
…and then you moved to London and were on the dole. Was there ever a Plan B in case the band didn’t work out?
As crazy as it sounds, Plan B was always the band. It was always like whatever happens, whatever goes wrong, we are going to have this band, and it is going to work, and it is going to be successful. I mean, did I, did we really believe that? I think we did. But it was so long ago that I can’t really remember whether we were actually just fooling ourselves or not because it’s not much of a Plan B, really, is it? I mean, you make a plan for what you are going to do with the rest of your life, and it’s being a successful rock band. I mean, that’s pretty unrealistic. But I remember at the time thinking, “This will happen. We will do this.”
The initial rise of Jesus and Mary Chain is so completely random. You sent a tape to get a gig at the Candy Club, put it on a mixtape with some Syd Barrett songs, it got given to Bobby Gillespie because he liked Syd Barrett and when he turned the tape over, he liked your songs, Bobby gave it Alan McGee and the rest is history. It’s like a fairytale or a film script.
Well, it kind of is. But that’s exactly as it happened. You might think that we made it up but we didn’t. And you have to remember that we were getting rejected all over the place. We sent demos to every record label that you can think of, and we took tapes to all of the clubs in Glasgow to get a gig. We couldn’t get anywhere. We spent, well, I mean, it was probably not that long, but it felt like ages for us handing out tapes and being told to F off by everybody that we were confronted with. It was only just that bizarre piece of luck. Syd Barrett on the B side, on the other side of our demo tape. Had that not happened, God knows. Who knows how it would have panned out but thankfully it did happen and here we are.
Looking back towards those early days again, it seems so bizarre because your label hated you, Radio One hated you, Top of the Pops hated you, the engineers who did the John Peel sessions hated you, the venues hated you. Did you deserve any of this?
But the thing is, though, all of those people you just mentioned there, they hated loads of bands. You know what I mean? Unless you were like Kajagoogoo in the 1980s, yeah, you were going to be hated by Warner Brothers Records, Radio One, you know. So were like the Birthday Party and so were the Bunnymen, they were hated by those people too. It was the 1980s.
It was like, Radio One’s idea of a good record was, “Her Name is Rio” [sic] by Duran Duran, or something by Kid Creole and the Coconuts. That’s what we were all up against. That decade was the worst decade to exist in, to have as your time.
And we used to say that, me and William were sitting going, “Bloody hell, why did we get the 80s? What were we supposed to do with this?” So yeah, we were hated by all of those people, to us it just proved that we were on the right track. I mean, guys in their bunny suits at Warner Brothers Records, do you think when we walked down there with our arses hanging out our leather trousers, that they were going to go, “Yeah, I really get you guys.” No way. And we would have been shocked if they did.
There was eight, nine years where the Jesus and Mary chain didn’t exist and you were doing Freeheat and William was doing Lazycame. What did you miss about being in the band? Did you miss anything about being in the band?
I suppose we’ve all got egos. So yeah, the attention, you know. I didn’t miss it that much, but it did start after a while, you just started to think, “Well, is this it now? Is this the rest of our lives? Just kind of talking about the band that we used to be in.” And I couldn’t think of anything else that I wanted to do. Neither could William. We were into music. Music was our lives. That’s the reason why the band got back together. After like nine years, you just thought, “Well, I don’t really want to talk about this old band that I used to be in anymore. I want to be in the band.” And that was it.
I recently talked to Tim Butler from the Psychedelic Furs. They took 20 years after they got back together to record their most recent album and he said they were just worried about whether they could be as good as they were in the 1980s. Did you have any similar feelings when it came to writing and recording new Jesus and Mary Chain music?
Not really, because, well, lots of reasons. One, does it matter? I mean, as long as you feel good about the records you’re making now, why compare it to other records you’ve made? You know, that was then.
We made Psychocandy for a reason in 1985. That was nearly 40 years ago. This is a different time. Just make a record you feel good about and the rest should fall into place, and that’s what we did. We went out and made a record that we wanted to make.
If nobody would have bought it, or if nobody would have been interested in it, I’m not saying that would have been good, but we could have lived with that. Better that than make some record that you think everybody wants to hear, and then it sinks without a trace. At least, no matter what happened to that record, we could hold our head up high and say, “Well, that was the record we wanted to hear.” I think there’s no point in comparing what you’re doing now to what you’ve done before. It’s just futile.
The upcoming shows in Australia are celebrating 40 years of the Jesus and Mary Chain. There’s been some hard and difficult times for the band so do you have any regrets when you look back or think of things you should have done differently?
There’s a lot to be proud of, but yeah, there are regrets. But you can’t change them, no point in dwelling on them. But yeah, there are certainly regrets.
What are you most proud of achieving in those 40 years?
It sounds obvious to say, but the records that we leave behind, I think will last for like many years after we’re no longer here. That’s the thing I think we’re more proud than anything else. Or the fact that we’ve made records that other people seem to, you know, bands that are going around now, seem to name check. People start bands in 2024 because of things that we did in 1985. That’s incredible to me.
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‘40 YEARS’
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2024
Presented by SBM
Tue 30 July: Powerstation, Auckland LOW TICKETS
Thu 1 Aug: Enmore Theatre, Sydney LOW TICKETS
Sat 3 Aug: The Tivoli, Brisbane
Sun 4 Aug: Forum, Melbourne LOW TICKETS
Tue 6 Aug: Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide
Thu 8 Aug: Astor Theatre, Perth LOW TICKETS
Tickets on sale now: sbmpresents.com/tour/the-jesus-and-mary-chain
