Interviews

Virgin.Net Interview

Sisters of Mercy
6 June 1997

Introduction

Even though they haven t released any new material for seven years, when the Sisters of Mercy play a concert, it still sells out. Such is the case with their upcoming gigs at the Brixton Academy on 9 and 10 June (the 11 June date at the Apollo in Manchester still has some tickets left), which will kick off their mini-tour of Europe and the States this summer.

Who are the Sisters of Mercy? They re still well known on the independent music scene. In the Eighties there was usually not a week that a Sisters single didn t become Record of the Week in Melody Maker or some other alternative music publication. However, because they have refused to record anything for their record label East West since 1990, their back row seats in the arena of popular culture have long since been re-allocated.

Because we think the Sisters are worthy of introduction to a new generation of music listeners we tracked down elusive Sisters frontman, Andrew Eldritch, for an interview. Contrary to popular belief, he is not dead. Nor does he now earn his living as a cab driver in Stoke Newington named Alf Eldritch. No, in fact he splits his time between his residences in Hamburg and Amsterdam, pursuing advanced computing, re-mixing music for bands such as industrial unit Die Krupps, and whatever else an insomniac savant can get up to at four in the morning.

Via e-mail, we asked Eldritch 15 questions about such things as the Sisters latest tour dates, the Internet, his cats, and Edward Elgar. Mr Eldritch returned us over a dozen pages worth of text. Because his answers are so fabulously elaborate (and refreshingly original), we ve decided to print every bit of them. And the way you read his responses is the way he wrote them - we haven t sub-edited them.

Without further ado, Virgin Net presents the man whose name brings back "Aliens Among Us" discussion pages when you enter it into our search engine...

©1996.
Sisters of Mercy
Andrew Eldritch: describes himself as "Kierkegaard meets Elvis"

Andrew Eldritch
Interview

What has prompted you/the Sisters to play these current UK dates (as well as the initial Birmingham Good Friday date that was cancelled)? What will the lineup be? Has anything changed in your relationship with East West and can we expect any new material at these concerts or to be released in the near future?

We decided to play the NEC because we were asked to, and because we actually rather like the place: we've always enjoyed doing it before. We don't often get sensible offers to play in the UK, so most years we just play on the mainland, with the occasional exotic detour. Ticket sales for the NEC were going fine, so by the time it was cancelled we had a more positive approach from other UK promoters than we usually get. They'd suddenly stopped asking their usual reflex questions about how much money the record company is pumping into promotion (which in our case is nothing) and when we're going to be on the front of the NME (which in our case is never).

The line-up is the same as last year, except that Chris Sheehan's currently helping some friends on a tour and may decide to finish it, in which case Michael will beam down with this year's away team:
Adam Pearson guitars with whammy bar
Michael Varjak guitars without whammy bar
Andrew Eldritch "we have our own prime directive"
Doktor Avalanche as himself
Ravey Davey Nurse to the Doktor

A whammy bar is that prong which allows one to trash a perfectly fine chord by making it sound like you're about to meet your lunch a second time. I've wired Adam's up to the mains (the prong, that is, not his lunch) in a Pavlovian attempt to restrain him. Seems to be working quite well.

Nothing has changed in our relationship with East West. We have no relationship with East West. We've been withholding our labour for almost seven years now. Your website is too small for a full explanation of East West's uselessness - and everybody who cares knows anyway. There is apparently no chance of East West dropping me, so there is no chance of me participating in a new Sisters album.

As for the set, we haven't decided yet. We usually throw in a few surprises every year, but obviously our stage-time is limited and we still have to play Ace Of Spades, Capricorn, Metropolis and all our other hits. Wouldn't want anybody getting sad on us.

In a UTR interview (Issue 13, title: Free State Declared - if this rings any bells) from late 94 or 95 (?), the Sisters are referred to as "legendary techno rock gods", while many Goths consider the Sisters to be one of the original bands of the Gothic rock movement, and on the phone you referred to the Sisters as that "Northern pop band"? How should people think of the Sisters? Should they classify them at all?

How fabulous that you should be aware of pop's finest organ. No, people, I refer to the late-lamented "Underneath The Rock", house magazine of Leed's deepest and widest thinmen. I'm not interested in what g***s think. I gather Mick Mercer keeps revising his Book Of G*** to include ever-more-ascerbic comments about us because we still refuse to talk to him. Go figure.

I recently declined the opportunity to do guest vocals on a single for somebody (who shall remain nameless) because the lyrics were appalling - and very silly. I thought "If I sang that rubbish, people would accuse me of being a g***!". (The artist who shall remain nameless was not, of course, accused of any such thing.) Turns out the lyrics had been written for her by David Dorrell, a prime originator of the "Sisters are g*** and therefore crap" smear. There's a nice irony for you. Pot calling kettle black, I'd say - except that we're a stainless-steel kettle and very shiny. He remains a dimwit, and he's scraping a living writing crappy g*** lyrics for mainstream pop artists. Better than the *** (word cut on advice of Virgin Net lawyer) professional-****** (word cut on advice of Virgin Net lawyer) who now does the annoying adverts for washing powder, I suppose, or the *** (word cut on advice of Virgin Net lawyer) professional-****** (word cut on advice of Virgin Net lawyer) who went off to write for the Sun. They didn't like us either. British music journalists never die, they waddle off to reveal their agenda for a derelict spiv nation in a media half-life more grotesque than anything I've ever been accused of.

The Sisters are occupied by politics and philosophy but we lack a spiritual agenda. Apart from the fact that we're not very spiritually-minded and only ever use the idioms ironically (when we use them at all), it's disappointing that so many people have in all seriousness adopted just one of our many one-week-of-stupid-clothes benders, just like it's currently disappointing that the rest of the nation is in all seriousness wearing those crappy seventies clothes that we wore for a week in '84 because we'd taken enough drugs to find it funny. Well, okay, we wore crappy seventies shirts for more than a week, but that's because we kept taking the drugs. And it really was funny.

Anyway, I'm constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more g*** than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord. Luckily, this is a particularly British misconception, so we don't usually have to deal with it much. Mainland journalists very rarely ask questions like the one above, and then only in reference to British media practices...

People should think of the Sisters with awe. They should think of the Sisters with a savage smile in the higher cortex, and a certain moistness in the lower gusset. Thank you.

Are there any myths about the Sisters that you'd like to dispel? Or any facts that people commonly get wrong that you'd like to set straight

Millions.

(not necessarily including everything that the British press has written about the Sisters)?

Okay then, none.

Also, you've been quoted as saying in a February, 1996 interview with the Dutch publication (I read an English translation of this), Hardrock and Heavy Metal Magazine, "the young people of today just don't have the ability to review a text, with some level of intelligence", hence they don't understand the "the ironic subtone" or "images and symbols" in your lyrics? Do you still find this?

It varies from place to place, culture to culture, and generation to generation. I don't remember whether the Dutch interview was referring particularly to Britain, America, heavy metal fans in Holland or the child prostitutes of Bombay. Overall, things certainly seem harder than they were twenty years ago, when Dylan, Cohen and the rest could unselfconsciously refer to things which are no longer familiar to people, thereby speaking a language with a larger vocabulary, without the need to spell everything out.

David Bowie was telling me recently how great Damien Hirst is, and how Damien was very excited when told about the minotaur myth. I was shocked that Damien didn't already know it. Sorry David, but how can Hirst be such a great artist if he lacks a basic knowledge of history/myth/symbolism, if he lacks the vocabulary, the ability to insert visual shorthand like a hypertext link? And how much less rich an experience is it for the viewer who lacks the ability to recognise and follow such links?

Postmodernism surely requires an even greater grasp of symbolism, as it's increasingly an art of gesture alone. If Damien's at all clever, it's because he's recognised that modern art has disappeared up its own backside, and drawn the only logical conclusion about his place in the scheme of things. There's a boy that's going places, even if he smells funny.

Anyway, back to business... Leonard Cohen tells me he would no longer bother to write a song about Isaac, because people wouldn't know what he was on about. That doesn't only diminish the vocabulary of songs, it has wider implications. If the reference points for our whole belief system are forgotten, we find it that much harder to understand a shared belief system, or even to disagree coherently with a shared belief system. We end up in a vicious circle of incoherent, half-baked individual utlitarianism where nobody has any belief system at all and we lose the ability to communicate with each other. I think that's one reason why football is so popular again - it's a game which the citizen can focus on, where the rules are defined. Unlike his life. The citizen is becoming a pawn in a game where nobody knows the rules, where everybody consequently doubts that there are rules at all, and where the vocabulary has been diminished to such an extent that nobody is even sure what the game is all about. Hence the concomitant rise of fads like astrology, spiritualism, and generic "I want to believe"-ism. I'm a humanist. I believe people should be able to sort themselves out, as does the Judeo-Christian tradition, obviously, but for rather different reasons. Even for Western-European humanists, it's helpful to know about Isaac and Abraham for any discussion of belief/hope/obligation, especially if we wish to join a discussion which has been developed over two thousand years. It's a bit tedious to have to start the discussion from scratch every time by mulling over yesterday's soap-opera with the few people who actually watched it.

Certain extraneous developments have helped in ways one might not expect. Let's get back to hypertext for a moment. Remember that the Web is basically "text for people who can't read" (Trenchant Remark, copyright: A. Eldritch), but it's merely hypertext coupled with the physical hypertext of the Net's hardware. Now that hypertext is widely familiar, it's easier to explain how allusion works to people who would otherwise be completely flummoxed by the very concept. That's why I just tried it.

It's nevertheless hard to talk to Thatcher's Children. Apart from anything else, they have no concept of right and wrong beyond an apathetic and half-baked utilitarianism. I was recently asked if we are "relevant to them". Probably not. Proust is probably not relevant to them. He's clever and funny and useful, but they haven't got the faintest idea what he's on about. I've been described (by myself, of course) as "Kierkegaard meets Elvis". They may have heard of Elvis, but he didn't wear adidas, and they probably think that Kierkegaard is about as much use as a dead Danish philosopher. Which he is. Is he relevant to them? I think so. Would they agree? I doubt it.

The problem is, the things that decide their lives are not "relevant" to them. The nuances of emotional politics are not "relevant to them". They have lost touch with the fabric of their lives and they don't even know how to have a good time without falling victim to the corporate fashion fascists and the evil social engineers of Thatcherite Britain.

That makes the Sisters more necessary, but it does make things difficult. It means our tunes have to be that much better than everybody else's ...but of course they are.

If so, how does it make you feel about hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pissed-up teens dancing their backsides off to Sisters songs every Friday and Saturday night just because they have a good beat?

Hundreds of thousands, actually. Billions on a Saturday. The entire population of China, and people on planets you've never heard of... ...but even on planets you've never heard of, it's hard to discuss Hegel on a 98 decibel backdrop after thirteen pints of Tetley's when the object of your desire is wobbling his/her/its body parts at you. There's a time and a place for everything.

It's been claimed that the Sisters were one of the most boot-legged bands of the Eighties.

The most bootlegged of all, it's said.

Do you think that the Internet has increased this assertion ten-fold to also make the Sisters one of the most bootlegged bands of the Nineties?

Er, what? We've played bigger concerts in the nineties, but fewer of them, so unless you're talking about the unabating traffic in older Sisters bootlegs... we're unlikely to be the most bootlegged band of the nineties.

In regards to new material and you personally - aware of you 'releasing' was some remixes for Die Krupps in 1994. What are you up to lately? Anything new since then - or in the works? Rumour has it that you've produced a couple of techno albums under various pseudonyms - any truth to this?

You are very well-informed. That is a rumour I will not deny (although I prefer the description "ambient-pop-industrial-techno hybrid with tunes and intelligence"). Nor would I confirm it if it were true - because rumour has it that I actually performed the albums in question.
My contract with East West prevents me from being a featured artist in any other arena, and East West are prepared to spend a lot of money in court to uphold their belief that the contract is still in force. Even if I had a pathological need to openly perform on records, I would need an awful lot of money to assert my freedom. I have neither, so it's not much of an issue.

Actually, East West are preparing to spend a lot of money in court to uphold their belief that I should be forced to make records for them. Most labels give up when the artist has been on strike for four years or so. East West are so desperate that they won't give up ...after seven years. That really is desperate.

Cats: You were quoted, in an interview in April's Mojo as saying: "I spend 10 months at home with my cats, locked into my computer", and in the brief Sisters history which appears at the back of the booklet in the Some Girls Wander by Mistake album you mention, Claire and Spiggy The Cat. Are they still with you? If not who are the feline folk mentioned in Mojo - and what breed are they? Would you agree, in your case, that a pet's personality reflects its owner's?

These days they're not my cats, as I'm a little too vagrant. Computers are liberating and horizon-expanding if used properly, so "locked up" is not as bad as it sounds.

Spiggy has left the building as permanently as Elvis. Rather more so, if you believe the stories about Elvis in Kalamazoo. Claire is still going strong, but Claire is not so much a cat as an ex-girlfriend. As a breed, ex-girlfriends are a mixed bunch. Some of them are as friendly as Claire; some of them will only hiss at you (or, indeed, at the mere thought of you).

After extensive research, I can confirm that ex-girlfriends require considerably less maintenance than girlfriends. Unless, of course, you've married any of them - which I haven't.

You also state in the back of the Some Girls album, that you had moved to Leeds to (late seventies?) learn Chinese. You're noted by many Sisters fans as being a bit of a linguist. Exactly which languages do you speak and to what level of fluency?

It doesn't traditionally occur to the English that one might perhaps speak a few other languages. It's embarrassing that so few of us even speak Welsh, which is a truly lovely-sounding language.

A lot of Europe knows I'm a bit of a linguist. I never took up the offer to co-commentate football matches on German TV, but I've written regular columns about computers which were read so widely that I had to stop or lose the depth. I stopped, but not before I'd written a lot of public German. And you don't have to be a Sisters afficionado to sense that the lyrics have been written by a polyglot philologist.

There's nothing so unusual about my doing interviews in German, French or Italian. Journalists like an easy life, and the English ones certainly expect foreign bands to talk to them in English.

Actually I'm a bit of a linguist ...because I'm not much of anything else. It's not unusual for mainland Europeans to speak at least three languages - two of them fluently - but they're noted for doing the other worthwhile stuff they do, like being a postman, car mechanic, or (remember this?) actually making things.

I had to go to Leeds because there were only six universities in the UK which taught Chinese; the people at Oxford wouldn't let me change from French and German.

For the record, I spent thirteen years of my life learning French, which is enough for anybody ...to get rather good at it. My Italian was adequate. I did Latin, of course. I didn't get very far with the self-taught Russian or Serbo-Croat, and I've forgotten practically all the Mandarin Chinese I learned, mostly because the Euro-Chinese tend to speak Cantonese instead.

On a good day I can speak absolutely perfect German. As you might imagine, I can get the gist in written Dutch/Flemish/Afrikaans, Plattdeutsch, Spanish and Portuguese, but I can only speak three languages fluently until I brush up the Italian. And I'm no good at making things.

I heard that you grew up in the village which Edward Elgar used as inspiration for the Enigma Variations, and at the beginning of some of the Sisters' concerts Nimrod is played. What do the Variations signify to you? Several people I've discussed the Variations with feel that they represent a certain type of "pure Englishness" (in the same way that Jerusalem does) - that many are trying to keep hold of in the face of the European Union coming of age. It's almost a surrogate national anthem. Would you agree with this?

As a child I spent some time in Malvern (where my maternal grandparents lived, and Elgar too), but then I've lived in a lot of places. And the Sisters have used all kinds of stuff as walk-on music.

"Pure Englishness" is a ridiculous and dangerous concept, but it's true that Elgar touches a chord within the English folk-subconscious. Case in point: Elgar's Cello Concerto, as played by the late Jacqueline du Pre, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

The European Union is not a threat to the folk-subconscious, only to the pestilence which is nationalism. "Jerusalem" would be a frighteningly good national anthem. At least it's about building a better place, but it can stir up a dangerous nationalism in the most reasonable of people. Until we have a sensible attitude to the folk-subconscious and are able to savour it without getting all nationalistic, I think we'd be better off singing something else. I vote for "Rock And Roll Part 2", by Mr G. Glitter.

And talking about the EU are you a euro-sceptic at all? Also, I don't know if you still hold a British passport, but if so did you vote in the last election - which party drew your support?

I am not a euro-sceptic, I am a euro-fanatic, for reasons which I could go on about for weeks.

I hold a British passport but my official residence is in the Netherlands. I am traditionally a Labour supporter despite my anarcho-syndicalist tendencies. Anarcho-syndicalism is all very well, but, as they say, "You can't get there from here".

I had my doubts about New Labour and Tony Blair's presidential sliminess, but the new government is showing so much common-sense (so far) that I'll forgive him. Britain could turn into a sensible modern place after all, although the damage done by the Conservatives cannot be overestimated. What a bunch of spivs. It'll take a long time to sort things out.

Getting back to the part of that Mojo quote, "locked in with my computer", how much have you used the Internet? You stated on the phone that you are not an "avid" Internet user. Is this because you're jaded by it? What is your opinion of the Net as a medium for communication - do you think it's a good thing - a bad thing? William Gibson stays far away from it (although you'd expect the exact opposite after reading his books) because he thinks it's consuming all aspects of established culture.

If you haven't reached a point where you're anti-Internet do you have any favourite Web sites that you visit often? Or would recommend that others check out?

In the days of fidonet it was all quite exciting. The Internet itself is one of the Umpteen Wonders Of The Modern World, but the Web has been variously described (by me) as "text for people who can't read" and "the fastest way to get from where you wouldn't want to be to where you wouldn't want to go". American colleges seem to have a relaxed admissions policy (to put it mildly), so the Net is overpopulated by morons with free access and nothing better to do all day. Consequently, it's like being in a library with twenty million people shouting at each other. These are people who have never had sex and probably never will.

William and I haven't really talked about the Internet; we've tended to correspond more by fax and letter. I suppose that's a judgement by default.

I don't have any sites to recommend. I recommend that people join libraries, or - better still - buy books and thereby encourage others to write them. Others like William, who is Really Rather Good. I thought "Idoru" was easily his best book yet. Go out and buy it (says the man with a free copy).

You also mentioned on the phone that you don't like some of the Sisters fan sites on the Web? Why are you opposed to them? Is there a particular reason(s) why the Sisters don't have an official presence on the Web?

I haven't visited any of them, but I have an obvious problem with people who breach my copyright, and I have a huge problem with any sites that may be giving the impression that they're official - because none of the Sisters ones are.

I suspect also that most of these sites are using the Sisters to bolster some cretinous lifestyle statement that has nothing much to do with the band. I suspect that certain misconceptions are being perpetuated by people who just don't get it. We might be flattered - but we're not.

I'd like to say that we're not in the business of pandering to pondlife, but that's a moot point. We don't have an official presence on the Web because every half-baked net-rumour would gain credence if we didn't immediately deny it, because there are too many idiots who would try and cluster-fuck us with dim emails and then get upset if they got no response (let alone free sound clips and the like), because it's a medium which is irrelevant to the music itself, because we don't have the staff and because there's no chance of our useless record company (East West) subsidising a Sisters site.

Nevertheless, we recently put the last issue of Underneath The Rock to bed, and it may behove us to find another way of communicating certain information and opinion. Watch this space, but don't hold your breath.

What music are you listening to at the moment? You said in Mojo that you were a big fan of Martin Gore? Do you like Depeche Mode's latest album, Ultra?

At the moment I'm listening to the national anthem, because Radio 4 is about to shut down for the night and give way to the World Service. The national anthem sucks. I like the American one: it's got groovy key changes and words like "rocket" and "bombs". It's about the rights of the citizen. God save our gracious Queen? I don't think so.

Martin's great. We need more perverts in the Top Twenty. Nevertheless, I heard Ultra at a friend's house recently, and it sounded very dreary.

Do you think that current technology restricts or liberates the creation and distribution of music?

Depends how you use it. Clearly, buying a sampler and merely recycling chunks of other people's master tapes is not going to win you a lot of brownie points on Eldritch Boulevard, however fashionable it may be.

On the other hand, it's nice that I can write a piano song like "1959" or a saxophone track like "New World Order" without being able to play the actual instruments involved, and without having to let a session player get in the way of things.

As for distribution, any distributive technology which makes it difficult to collect royalties is going to discourage development and committment in certain areas. It would certainly discourage music which is expensive to record or music which is written with due care and attention. The same thing applies to greedy record companies, though. Record companies can invest huge amounts of money in the marketing of records (except ours), but very little in the making of records. This discourages artists who actually care about the records, and the public gets increasingly disinterested in generic product which is nothing more than its marketing campaign - hence the shrinking market in the UK where the entire currency of music has been devalued, or the ridiculous state of affairs in America where an artist lives or dies by video, which is a peripheral medium at best.

Furthermore, record companies have kept the increased profit margins of CDs to themselves, despite the maturity and consequent drop in cost of the medium. The artist is now required to produce 70 minutes of music per album (instead of 40 in the days of vinyl) and the music has to be of better sonic quality than it did in the days of vinyl, so more of the artist's time and money is expended on the recording... but the artist's royalty rate has not increased, although CDs are now cheaper to manufacture than vinyl ever was.

It would be nice for record companies to get screwed by the Net, but that won't benefit the artist until there is a mature royalty collection system which encourages the artist to invest in the quality of the music.

There has always been a steady ebb and flow of interest in literature and music that reflects the darker side of human nature - your music being a prime example. In recent years, books like 'The Butcher boy', Alan Warner's 'Movern Caller' or the so called 'Miserablist school' are blazing the way - do you think this darkly witty form of self expression is a type of millenium-itis? Or is there another reason for it's resurgence?

I haven't heard of any of the stuff you refer to, so I can't comment on it.

Our stuff doesn't just reflect "the darker side of human nature", it reflects the whole of human nature. We thereby include "the darker side". I suppose that shocks some people into focussing on it, in the same way that idiots believe the Net is all about the distribution of pornography.

The Sisters of Mercy
A band biography and basic discography

1980
The Sisters Of Mercy are formed in Leeds by Gary Marx (guitar, vocals) and Andrew Eldritch (guitar, drums). With one guitar, a three-watt practice amp and no money, they record a single "to hear ourselves on the radio". The Merciful Release label is founded to issue it and one thousand copies are pressed. The record gets played on the radio. Described by the band as "unobtainable and even more unlistenable", "THE DAMAGE DONE / WATCH / HOME OF THE HIT-MEN" is now worth hundreds of pounds - and it's still rubbish.

1981
Sensing that something horribly huge is within their grasp, the duo decides to "start again, properly". Andrew Eldritch, by his own admission "a very bad drummer", becomes by default the band's lead singer as Gary Marx concentrates on guitar and Craig Adams is recruited on bass. An essential move seems natural to the Sisters but is to set them crucially apart from (and ahead of) their peers: they are now anchored and driven by the legendary Doktor Avalanche, drum machine. The band makes its live debut on February 16th, somewhere between The Stooges and Suicide, or Motorhead and Chrome. Marx has connected his guitar to a record-player pre-amp which feeds back uncontrollably and Eldritch has turned the echo to maximum. The first-ever set kicks off with a twisted cover of Cohen's "Teachers" and ends with a juggernaut howl which might have been "Silver Machine" but was in fact "Sister Ray". The audience gets the point. The Sisters Of Mercy gradually refine their noise and their ability to be loved and hated. Towards the end of the year Ben Gunn is added as a second guitarist.

1982
The second record, "BODY ELECTRIC / ADRENOCHROME", is Single Of The Week in Melody Maker. It will be almost three years before a Sisters single does NOT become Record Of The Week somewhere. Unfortunately, the backlash will last for ever. The Sisters Of Mercy eventually deign to play London, and Tony James of Generation X asks Mr Eldritch to join a band ( - offer declined, with thanks). A radio session for the BBC foreshadows the next classic single and the Sisters tour Britain with the Psychedelic Furs. November sees the release of "ALICE / FLOORSHOW", that now-familiar blend of persistent and irresistible melody, hypnotic technoid riffing and a vicious hook shining seductively above the riptide.... The band begin to dominate the independent charts like nobody else before or since.

1983
Early months are spent touring the country with an army of supporters. A set of Sisters standards is variously spiked with an audacious selection of covers, including "Gimme Shelter", "Jolene" and even Hot Chocolate's "Emma". A second radio session follows the release in March of the new single "ANACONDA / PHANTOM". The twelve-inch EP "ALICE / FLOORSHOW / PHANTOM / 1969" is also the band's first American release. In May, instead of capitalising on their notorious brand of melodic overdrive, The Sisters Of Mercy issue "THE REPTILE HOUSE EP", some of the finest and most haunting Sisters songs swamped in a magnificently perverse mix of slithering cruelty. After the first extensive tour of Europe, and before a short series of concerts in America (Ben Gunn's last), it is decided to spend the proceeds on the band's first trip to a 24-track studio. Despite every effort to invest the whole sum in multi-tracking guitars ad infinitum, the Sisters come out with a three-track single in October. "TEMPLE OF LOVE" is in every respect a monster. Backed with "HEARTLAND" and "GIMME SHELTER", it is destined to be their last independently released record.

1984
Wayne Hussey joins the Sisters. Concentrating upon the acoustic and twelve-string guitars, he makes his debut in April. Prior to a UK tour in May, the band announces that it has signed to WEA. "BODY AND SOUL / TRAIN / BODY ELECTRIC (re-recorded) / AFTERHOURS", a four-track single described by Eldritch as "a vision of heaven with everyone on speed", narrowly misses the UK Top Forty, and a third BBC session showcases some of the material which will later comprise the Sisters' first album. Demos are recorded and the band travel to New York in August to play two sell-out dates. Work on the LP is postponed due to Eldritch's exhaustion yet the band continues to play live, culminating in the 'Black October' tour. The Sisters' European audience continues to grow, particularly in Germany and the UK. "WALK AWAY / POISON DOOR / ON THE WIRE" is released. There are, however, barely concealed tensions within the band. Many are tempted to read into the lyrics of "Walk Away" a public appeal to Gary Marx. Worries about Eldritch's exhaustion and his not-so-private leisure pursuits are fuelled by the lyrics to "On The Wire".

1985
Another single, "NO TIME TO CRY / BLOOD MONEY / BURY ME DEEP", is issued in February and the 'Tune In, Turn On, Burn Out' tour opens in March. Gary Marx's departure is announced as the debut album goes straight into the Top Twenty. Flawed and scarred it may be (certainly from a production standpoint), but "FIRST AND LAST AND ALWAYS" is still regarded as a collection of classic songs. The Sisters stage an end-of-tour concert in July at London's Royal Albert Hall as The Sisters Of Mercy celebrate the first pinnacle of their existence. Eldritch is expected to leave the stage with his usual "Goodnight!" but tonight it's "Goodbye". He has already decided that this will be the only Sisters performance to be filmed, that the resulting film is to be titled "WAKE". It will be five years before The Sisters Of Mercy play live again.

1986
Craig Adams and Wayne Hussey have left the band; disagreements over material and touring were understandable, particularly those arising from Hussey's desire to launch a separate career (taking Adams with him). The split was amicable enough. Nevertheless, an understanding was breached when the duo's demo tapes began to re-appear under various permutations of the Sisters' name. Disputes therefore arose and were settled with extreme prejudice until the dear departed are advised that they have a legal right to call themselves "The Sisterhood". In a matter of weeks they are due to play live under this name. As a recording artist, Eldritch has an exclusive recording contract with WEA, who protect their option on the other band, and Eldritch currently has no way of making a challenge via the concert platform. Even worse, RCA (who are publishers to all involved) plan to give half of the Sisters' publishing advance to the other band. Thoughtful parties follow the logic, look at the calendar and realise that the whole advance will go to the first party to make an album. Eldritch is presently a vocalist without a band, new songs, or any record company support. But he is thoughtful. He issues a polite warning to the other parties, which is ignored. By swift coincidence, Merciful Release unleashes "GIVING GROUND" by its own "Sisterhood". An Eldritch production, the single streaks to the top of the independent chart. Now there is effectively only one "Sisterhood", and the other band will be forced to change its name. The album "GIFT" follows quickly. Performed by a loose coalition of forces allied to Merciful Release, but written by Andrew Eldritch. As they write his cheque, RCA are left pondering the exact meaning of the opening line "two five zero zero zero ... jihad!" Some say that RCA earned so much money from the various Sisters that they should have paid each band the whole advance. Some say the album was recorded impossibly fast, and written to be unlistenable, to sting RCA and escape the contract ( - Eldritch was promptly dropped). One thing is undeniably true: Eldritch was by this time in Hamburg. The German word for 'poison' is 'Gift'.

1987
Eldritch had thrown everything in the air and it had not come down. The Sisters Of Mercy were the most bootlegged band of the decade, but had completely stopped playing live when they seemed at the height of their power. Eldritch had set up camp in Germany, so the English press pronounced him retired or dead. After "Gift" they should have known better. Ahead of its time, this dense soundscape extrapolated some of the most important elements of the Sisters' psyche. Without losing sight of the original Sisters' vicious trash aesthetic, it assimilated the advances in continental dance music, and developed them further. The layers of ersatz Elgar and chant added an aching poignancy to the terse and savage wit of the lyrics. Insistent and tuneful, the songs were harnessed to a menacing synthetic groove somewhere between the New York underground and the hardcore techno-beat of Brussels and Berlin. Eldritch was enjoying his new-found freedoms. Rumour fed on rumour, and in the apparent absence of the band the legend just grew. As it always does. The Sisters were bigger than ever before, and in a position to refocus with confidence on the future. Expectations rose to fever pitch as the next phase was launched.
THIS CORROSION / TORCH / COLOURS" is released by WEA. The single enters the UK Top Ten and becomes the #1 Alternative Record in America, despite the lack of record company support - as usual. It is announced that Patricia Morrison has been recruited and that the band has no plans to enlarge further. This presages a phase of video-based promotion. Video is a gratuitous and expensive medium which the band has traditionally scorned. Nevertheless, on TV screens all over the planet, the torrential rain of "This Corrosion" sets the pace for a series of spectacular videos. The second album "FLOODLAND" is released in November. "Floodland" places the guitars of the first album against a backdrop of keyboards inspired by the experimentation of "Gift". A fifth-generation Doktor Avalanche drives a body of songs which highlight Eldritch's maturity as a singer and songwriter.

1988
A dramatic video set in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra heralds "DOMINION / EMMA" which charts at number 13 in the UK. LUCRETIA MY REFLECTION / LONG TRAIN" then provides the Sisters with their third chart single from the "Floodland" LP.

1989
A compilation video ("SHOT") is issued, featuring the three singles from "Floodland" and an additional clip of "1959" which was filmed in India during the shooting of "Lucretia My Reflection". Incidentally, "1959" is still the only Sisters video produced and directed by Andrew Eldritch, and the absence of anybody else's agenda makes it different from (and better than) all the others ....although it can be remarked of the later videos that "Dr Jeep" is funny, "Detonation Boulevard" is eminently watchable, and Eldritch is a enuine love-god in "Under The Gun".

1990
Guitarist Andreas Bruhn joins the band; he and Andrew Eldritch write songs for the next album. Tony James replaces the recently departed Patricia Morrison. Guitarist Tim Bricheno completes the line-up, as the third LP "VISION THING" is being finished. "Vision Thing" is released in November. It is preceded by a single, "MORE / YOU COULD BE THE ONE", which continues the band's hard-earned tradition of international chart success, particularly in Germany. Compared to its predecessor, "Vision Thing" is a stripped-down affair. Half of the finished mixes for the album are shelved in favour of rough mixes from earlier stages of the recording session, 'monitor mixes' which retain the immediate feel of the songs. The guitars are more direct than they were on "Floodland" and there is far less emphasis on the layering of sound which characterised the previous Sisters album. Keyboards are kept to a bare minimum, and the baritone voice of Eldritch is clear amid the storm. The lyrics retain their usual oblique sub-texts, but there is a new directness of language on the surface. It has been noticed that there is no sense whatever of 'victim' on the "Vision Thing" album (maybe because this had too often been fallaciously inferred from the overlooked ironies of previous records). "Vision Thing" is confident to the point of arrogance, commanding to the point of sheer callousness, an intellectual tour-de-force of beautiful cruelty. The band play surprise concerts in Ireland. "DOCTOR JEEP" is released as a single, coupled with rare live tracks. Brazilian warm-up dates are followed by a European tour starring two nights at London's Wembley Arena.

1991
The Sisters Of Mercy mark the tenth anniversary of their live debut with two shows for the members of The Reptile House (the Sisters' information service) in their birthplace of Leeds. There is a tour of southern Europe. "WHEN YOU DON'T SEE ME / RIBBONS (live) / SOMETHING FAST (live)" is released as a single in Germany. A North American tour opens on March 25th in Ontario. The first concert sells out in two hours. Another trip to northern Europe follows in April and May, Poland and Hungary fall to the Sisters before an arena-tour of Germany.
The band returns to the States for an arena-tour on which they are supported by Public Enemy. By the time the tour starts some promoters have unfortunately decided that a mixed-race audience is a dangerous thing. Radio City Music Hall is sold out, but the authorities in Detroit refuse to allow a concert to take place at all. The Sisters cut loose in Miami, and seal their year with a guerrilla-raid on the European festival circuit, most particularly at 'Rock Am Ring' and a headline appearance at the Reading Festival. Another day, another thirty thousand people. Tony James decides this is a suitable moment to move on in his quest for howbusiness Valhalla.

1992
The compilation album of early material "SOME GIRLS WANDER BY MISTAKE" is released in May. A completely re-recorded "Temple Of Love" (featuring Ofra Haza) is released as a an accompanying single: "TEMPLE OF LOVE (1992)" crashes into the UK chart at number 3, and becomes the Sisters' biggest international hit so far. Summer festivals in Germany are followed by a sellout show at Birmingham's NEC. The final gig of the year is in front of thirty thousand Belgians at the Pukkelpop Festival, preceded by a warm-up show in the living room of a Reptile House member in Oberhausen. Bricheno and Bruhn initiate solo projects, and the band takes a sabbatical break.

1993
Summer shows supporting Depeche Mode in Europe are followed by the first Greatest Hits album "A SLIGHT CASE OF OVERBOMBING". A single featuring new guitarist Adam Pearson "UNDER THE GUN / ALICE (1993)" is released simultaneously, and assumes its automatic place in the top ten. The compilation video released in 1988 is updated by the addition of the "Vision Thing" promos, and re-released as "SHOT REV 2.0". The year ends with a tour of Germany, supported by The Ramones, and three British shows in Brixton and Birmingham (at the NEC again). For a time there will be silence...

1994
...while Eldritch argues with East West. Aren't record companies useless? Aren't East West the most useless of all? Signing to WEA was one thing, finding oneself with East West is another. Since "Vision Thing" the band have been "seriously underwhelmed".

1995
Still arguing with East West, or rather: not talking to East West any more. As far as its recording contract goes, the band has effectively been on strike for five years now. Andrew Eldritch starts remixing industrial dance records and is rumoured to be active in trance music.

1996
No progress at the record company, but live goes on: guitarist Chris Sheehan joins up. Ravey Davey starts playing nurse with the Doktor as The Sisters Of Mercy swing into another summer of festival appearances in Europe.

1997
The band is available for weddings, barmitzvahs and any discussion involving both Gary Glitter and Kierkegaard. They are:
Andrew Eldritch - vocals
Adam Pearson - guitar
Chris Sheehan - guitar
Ravey Davey - nurse to the Doktor
Doktor Avalanche - drums

Some personal information:
Andrew Eldritch went to Oxford University. He is frighteningly clever, and can speak lots and lots of languages. He was studying Chinese at Leeds University when he got waylaid by the first Pere Ubu album. His current interests include advanced computing, cognitive science and FC St Pauli.

Adam Pearson tries to avoid pain and gain pleasure. He enjoys discovering which of his actions lead to one or the other. During his experiments, he has worked extensively with Johnny Thunders, Andrew Eldritch, and small children. He lives in hope.

"Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of (Chris Sheehan's work) is how deeply it succeeds when it veers toward queasily unpleasant moral territory. Not only can you feel the hate, but - a very odd sensation - you can share a glimmer of it as well." ...Musician Magazine.

Ravey Davey claims that his relationship with Doktor Avalanche does not involve the exchange of body fluids. He's lying.

Doktor Avalanche is God.
The best Sisters songs, according to Andrew Eldritch:
1. the next one
2. Under The Gun
3. I Was Wrong
4. Ribbons
5. Temple Of Love (1992)
6. 1959
7. Driven Like The Snow
8. Possession
9. Dr Jeep
10. Motorhead / Ace Of Spades / Capricorn / Metropolis

The best Sisters t-shirt, according to everybody:

1. "Utterly Bastard Groovy"
©The Reptile House