Summary: Zoe Howe's 'The Jesus & Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses' is out now. (Courtesy of the publisher) As the 1980s became the '90s, a new sound from the UK began to rumble across the Atlantic: Built around countless layers of heavily distorted guitars and fuzzed out, yet melodic vocals, the music made by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive was eventually dubbed "shoegaze." But anyone who traced that sound back to the source would know The Jesus And Mary Chain, and its groundbreaking album Psychocandy, which is considered by many to be the first and finest in the genre. While The Jesus And Mary Chain is mostly known in the States for those radio-friendly, poppier songs like "Sometimes Always" and "Just Like Honey," the band had a far grittier reputation back in the U.K. "When the Mary Chain were finding their feet and doing regional gigs around London, they were very much associated with absolute white noise, lots of distortion, quite a lot of on-stage violence, and a lot of violence in the crowds," says Zoe Howe, author of the book The Jesus and Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses. "There'd be riots, and a lot of stirring up of the hype of what would happen at a Mary Chain gig. And it was always very unpredictable and, you know, trouble." In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Howe explains how the brothers William and Jim Reid started the band in suburban Glasgow, the decades of public bickering that persisted through the entire duration of their career, and why 30 years after Pyschocandy, it remains such a seminal and influential album for young bands today. The Jesus And Mary Chain is now reuniting for a series of 30th anniversary concerts, and will performing the whole album straight through.
