When Jim Reid was in his 20s he hated “old f**kers who were in bands that used to say things like, ‘I don’t listen to new bands any more’”. At 62, the Jesus and Mary Chain frontman is forced to accept that he is now one of them.
“And I understand it now,” he says with a resigned chuckle. “Because what happens is that all rock music is a cycle, and when you’ve been around as long as I have you’ve heard all of the elements. There’s almost nothing new now. And there probably wasn’t when we started, either – but you have to live long enough to understand that.
“Now if I hear a bunch of young kids who are getting together to start a band I usually just go, ‘Oh, God. That bit’s Joy Division, that bit’s Echo and the Bunnymen . . .’” He shrugs. “And I’m sure that when the Mary Chain started there were old guys going, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. That bit’s the Velvet Underground, that bit’s the Rolling Stones.’ That’s just the way it is. Rock’n’roll, by its very nature, is a recycled artform.”
Now an elder statesman whether he likes it or not, the dry-witted Reid is here to speak about his band’s new album. Glasgow Eyes is The Jesus and Mary Chain’s eighth album and the follow-up to Damage and Joy, from 2017, the record hailed as their comeback and their first since they split in the late 1990s. Reid and his older brother William have had an infamously turbulent history, but it was always the plan to do another album – although Covid put the stoppers on their initial sessions in 2019 and 2020.
Then, after the pandemic, “We found ourselves out on the road for quite a long time, so getting back into the studio to finish the record just kept getting shelved,” he says. A suggestion by their manager, David McBride, proved a turning point. “He used to manage Mogwai, and he’s still pals with them, so he said, ‘Look, go and try out their studio in Glasgow, and see if you like it’. So we did, and we did – and that was really where the record started to come together.”
The album’s title, inspired by the digital artwork that William created for its cover, is an obvious nod to their hometown, although neither lives there any more (William is in the United States and Jim is in Devon), and recording in Glasgow again wasn’t particularly revelatory. It was more about finding a comfortable studio space, says Reid.
“The mission statement was really just what it always is: we just wanted to make the best possible Mary Chain album at that particular time,” he says. ”It’s always been that way. The only difference this time is that we had an idea to use more synths, and we had in the back of our minds that it was going to be a bit more experimental than the usual Mary Chain fare. But, I mean, if we went in with bagpipes it’d somehow just end up sounding like the Mary Chain, because we’d end up taking bagpipes, setting fire to them and stabbing them with a butcher’s knife, all while recording it,” he says, laughing. “But, this time, the vague idea was electronic.”
Those electronic traces can be heard on songs such as the album’s frenetic opener, Venal Joy Fast, and the twitchy Jamcod, but their trademark fuzzy guitar sound remains intact on the likes of Chemical Animal and Pure Poor. The brothers were on the same page when it came to writing and recording.
“I think [William] was the one who suggested synths,” Reid says. “I love synth music, and I always have done, so I thought, ‘Yeah, that could be a bit different’. [But] there’s not really any rules with the making of a Mary Chain record. There’ve been times in the past where we’ve been at a loss of what to do next; we’ve literally handed a musical instrument to whoever walks in the door of the studio. Some guy might be delivering a pizza, and we’re going, ‘Can you do it, pal? We seem to have run out of ideas,’” he says with a laugh. “So there’s always kind of an anything-goes attitude.”
He admits that there have been some slight changes to the way that he and William work together, however. “Now one of us might take charge, and the other takes a back seat here and there,” he says. “That’s something that never really used to happen back in the early days.”
We just went for each other, and the audience had to be given their money back. We were chucked out the back door. So it was pretty extreme times
It sounds like a reasonably harmonious recording experience, but that hasn’t always been the case. The brothers’ famously fractious relationship, entailing on-stage bust-ups and long periods of estrangement, once saw them referred to as pop music’s answer to the Kray twins, and stories of their intermittent strife makes the Gallaghers look like the Osmonds. Reid accepts that the conflict has become part of the Jesus and Mary Chain narrative.
“I mean, I don’t want to say I enjoyed it – they were horrible times – but they’re still going to be there whether you talk about them or not,” he says. “And I understand why people want to know, because it was all pretty much done in public with us. It’s not like we had a few tiffs behind the scenes that nobody got to hear about. It was in front of the cameras – and sometimes in front of the audience.” He recalls how the band broke up during a gig at the House of Blues in Los Angeles in 1998. “We just went for each other, and the audience had to be given their money back. We were chucked out the back door. So it was pretty extreme times.”
He and William get on “well enough” these days. “I rehashed that whole last few weeks of the band [before the 1998 split] in my mind over and over,” he says. “Me and William didn’t talk for years after that, and I used to think, What went wrong? What happened? How did we get here? So by raking over it in my mind so many times, I think you come up with some answers and you start to realise, ‘Maybe when that argument happened, I probably shouldn’t have said this’, and I’m sure he did the same.
“So nowadays, when it starts to get heated – cos I’m not saying that we’re all lovey-dovey: we still scream at each other – you think, Right, f**k. I know from past experience that there are some things that can’t be unsaid, and it’s probably best to just stop it before you get to that stage. I think we’re pretty good at that now.”
Reid confirms a story from that final US tour that has gone down in Mary Chain lore, of the band and their crew getting into a punch-up with members of the Riverdance entourage. “That is true, actually”, he admits, explaining that they were contractually obliged to finish the tour despite having split at the LA gig. “It was just dismal and depressing, and everybody was just getting way too drunk. We found ourselves in the hotel bar one night, and one of our roadies was a f**king idiot, and he said something really nasty and horrible to one of the girls out of the Riverdance entourage. And some guy that was also part of their entourage was going to kill this guy. I actually smoothed things over, and it was all well and good, and then the f**king idiot said something else, and all hell broke loose.” He sighs at the memory. “It was kind of surreal. I remember sort of thinking, God, this doesn’t happen every other Tuesday.”
Another figure who has loomed large in the Jesus and Mary Chain story is Alan McGee, who first signed the band to Creation Records, in 1984, and managed them at different points over the years. “We have a weird relationship with McGee,” Reid says. “It’s one of those on-again-off-again ones. At the moment it’s off – we don’t talk. He managed us for a while, we asked him to not manage us for a while, and he wasn’t happy about that, so we’re not talking.”
If it sounds as if Reid has a hell of a lot of stories to tell, you’d be right: a memoir that he has written with the journalist Ben Thompson is on the way. “He’ll ask us about particular subjects, and then it’s my take and William’s take.” He grimaces. “Sometimes we remember a situation the same, and sometimes it’s entirely different.”
Much has changed over the past 40 years, while some things remain the same. With the benefit of hindsight, Reid can acknowledge the impact that his band has had. “When the band started, that’s kind of how we wanted to be thought of,” he says. “We made Psychocandy in 1985, and at the time we weren’t thinking, This is a record for now. We were hoping that in 10, 20, 30 years’ time there would be people in their bedroom thinking, F**k, this is great – I’m going to start a band. We didn’t see ourselves as just entertainment. We saw ourselves as a life message, almost.”
There is still fire in his belly at 62, he says. Rock, it turns out, is not necessarily just a young person’s game. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t feel that we can do it,” he says. “Our general rule of thumb was that if it starts to feel wrong, stop doing it. And it doesn’t. We go out there, I still feel that we put across a good show, and this record . . . I mean, hear it and just decide for yourself. It’s as good as anything we’ve ever done, 62 or not.”
Glasgow Eyes is released on Friday, March 22nd. The Jesus and Mary Chain play the 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Monday, March 25th, and the Limelight, Belfast, on Tuesday, March 26th
