57. Jesus and Mary Chain - Upside Down (Creation)

Number one for four weeks from w/e 2nd February 1985

Success in rock and pop music occurs due to happy accidents more frequently than managers, artists or labels alike would care to admit. This has always been true, from Mick Jagger bumping into Keith Richards by chance at Dartford train station, to the Sex Pistols dropping swear words on the “Today” programme. Had the former not met in adulthood, or the latter found themselves without an opportunity to offend on prime time television, it’s difficult to say what holes rock history would be left with.

Similarly, the Mary Chain’s “legendary” debut bottom-of-the-bill gig at Alan McGee’s Living Room club in London in 1984 feels somewhat like the music of chance. As is well documented in the excellent biography “My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize”, McGee had very few plans for the Jesus & Mary Chain after hearing their demo tape; just the offer of a London gig and the possible inclusion of one of their songs on a (never realised) compilation of unsigned bands. By the time the group took the stage to soundcheck, though, addled by both overconsumption of alcohol and their own inexperience (they didn’t even understand what a soundcheck was) they churned out a curdled, feedback-ridden cover of Pink Floyd’s “Vegetable Man” largely by accident. Not all of the chaos and the piercing noise was intended to be a feature of The Mary Chain’s sound, and much of the mess was purely unintentional. The group left the stage feeling as if they’d failed, to be greeted by an over-enthusiastic McGee who offered them a deal, believing it to be one of the most mind-blowing spectacles he had ever witnessed.

The gig itself was, according to the dozen or so people who actually saw it, even more shambolic, the sound of a group who couldn’t play, taking their rudimentary abilities out on cheap instruments with missing strings. This shambles was submerged beneath a yelping screech of unintentionally vigorous feedback and a broken fuzz pedal, and the set ended with all the group members punching drummer Murray Dalglish, much to the amusement and entertainment of the small audience (who included a couple of music journalists). 

Under a different promoter and another set of circumstances, it’s probable this story would have ended right there, with JAMC sent back on the next coach to East Kilbride, asked to buck their ideas up – which you sense they were incapable of doing by themselves – or go back to their factory jobs. While they played their live set, however, Alan McGee worked overtime running around the quiet bar spaces in the venue trying to convince everyone that he had witnessed combustible genius, the next big sound. When the group had finished bruising each other (literally and metaphorically) he then wandered about swearing at the non-attendees for failing to witness the historic event.

As we’ve witnessed ourselves through this blog’s journey, Creation Records were a curiosity in 1984 rather than a fashionable indie label. Their roster of acts prior to 1985 issued under-produced but melodic records, each of which has waited decades to be reappraised, but ultimately hasn’t passed the test; they’re (mostly!) decent discs, but all are playing with very predictable and well-tested elements. The Jasmine Minks had a sharp pub punk edge, but even Paul Weller didn’t want to sound slightly like The Jam in the mid-eighties. McGee’s own group Biff Bang Pow sounded like that competent local indie band you knew, who might possibly have got somewhere if only they could have found That One Great Song down the back of their sofa – and there were no signs this was going to happen soon. The mysterious Revolving Paint Dream dribbled out pleasant but cliched psychedelic pop which, if it were suddenly put under another band name on Spotify tomorrow, would probably stand accused of being an AI created project. In short, McGee currently didn’t hold an impressive hand. This was music which might brighten the world of the obsessive record buyer, but wasn't going to be front page news in the music press.

He must have known that he needed a volatile, combustible group with the sound to accompany their mayhem to push Creation Records from the margins of the indie scene to the centre. In offering The Jesus and Mary Chain a contract based on nothing more than a demo tape and a live performance consisting of little more than explosive disarray, he saw opportunities to turn himself into Malcolm McLaren with the group as his Sex Pistols. And so the mission began. He fed bogus news stories about their antics to the music press and ultimately tabloid press, booked gigs where riots broke out – though in at least one instance, the word riot should probably have quotation marks around it – and issued this single.

As is often the way with rock classics, from The Kinks “You Really Got Me” to the Beach Boys “Good Vibrations”, the gestation period of “Upside Down” wasn’t necessarily straightforward. Two versions had to be recorded before the group came out with something they felt really represented their sound. In a strange inversion of the normal rules, though, the “right” version was one which had been recorded in a cheap 4-track recording studio rather than their initial attempt, which had been recorded in a more professional facility.

It sounds like it, too. “Upside Down” absolutely revels in its amateurism. Seldom has such a loud, confusing nettle soup of noise sounded both so low fidelity and also so dour. Beneath the squeals of feedback and on top of the metronomic drum patter grumbles a vaguely buoyant sixties melody. It feels like the levers were up in the recording studio on two things happening at once; a sonic art experiment akin to Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”, plus a few moody teenagers testing out their idea of a perky tune with an absence of feeling or commitment. They sing “uh-huh-huh” like Elvis, but it sounds reluctant and sullen, like a Teddy Boy muttering it under his breath as a policeman walks past.

What I’ve written above could be read two different ways. You can either see it as a savage blow or a towering compliment, and how you read it depends entirely on what you want from music. While I have a lot of time for Jesus & Mary Chain, I must admit that it’s not a track of theirs I play often; there’s both too much going on and not enough going on at the same time, a sense that two very simple ideas are in an unresolvable conflict with each other. There are times where that seems as if it weaves together, but then it almost untangles again, the squall and screech of the feedback feeling like an interruption rather than a coherent part of the whole. I know many people who find it thrilling for those reasons, but I tend to get most of my excitement from elsewhere in their catalogue.

If you were a certain age in 1984 and waiting for the next explosive musical event, throwing your lot behind JAMC would have been enormously tempting; however, given that a lot of teenagers were done with punk, their audiences skewed older as a result, with witnesses making the observation that they seemed like the yellow-eyed gangs of punks that hung around the bridge at Camden Lock. Once again, as with the X-Men, Creation appeared to have signed an act which had as much appeal to the people who bought records on No Future and Crass Records as they did the kind of students who read the NME and Melody Maker, though potentially there remained an imbalance towards the former.

This may be part of the reason that “Upside Down” ended up selling tens of thousands of copies rather than the standard 1,000 most Creation singles of the mid-eighties seemed to manage. What they were producing here was not a commercial record in the vein of most of the number ones we’ve covered so far, but a track that was of immense curiosity to many disparate groups of people who may ordinarily have been ashamed to be in the same space as each other – the punks, the goths who appreciated the darker shadows in their sound, the students, and even the hippies who just wanted to hear their cover of Syd Barrett’s “Vegetable Man” on the flip (Pink Floyd’s version at this point was only available on bootlegs – I didn’t get to hear it myself until Internet piracy became a thing). To some of the people above, “Upside Down” was invigorating, empowering and even interesting. There were plenty of groups making a fierce racket in the mid-eighties, but few sounded as shrill, frightening and disordered as the Jesus and Mary Chain occasionally did.

In time, of course, they would become more competent and their edges would be sanded down. “Upside Down” was their only indie release until the late nineties, as the ensuing press mania ensured all their following singles would be handled by a major label instead. Some of them are classics of their era; “April Skies” is the world’s finest Springtime blues anthem, “I Hate Rock And Roll” one of the greatest (and strangely seldom referenced) tantrums against the exciting possibilities of rock and roll being sullied by its sleazy underbelly. In fact, I’d rate “I Hate Rock And Roll” as the single “Upside Down” could have been. The noises the group squeeze out of their instruments halfway through that are no less violent, but the track itself feels much more restless and destructive and has a clear target for its irritation. 

What you ultimately make of “Upside Down” is up to you. As I’m typing this - way before you'll get to read it - the Glastonbury Festival is piping through the downstairs television and the tabloid press are, for the first time in decades, getting themselves into a tizz about what statements angry young bands on the bill have made. By comparison, “Upside Down” and the surrounding furore around JAMC in 1984 and 1985 wasn’t really based on what the group were saying but what they were perceived to be evoking in restless youth; a repetition of the old school “Slash the cinema seats” ethic from yesteryear. That'll work for some people, while others might find it all a tiny bit quaint. 

New Entries Elsewhere On The Charts

Week One


16. Ex Pistols - Land of Hope & Glory (Cherry Red)


Peak position: 4

And if you didn’t want to accept JAMC as the next Sex Pistols, perhaps this record might have been for you instead, though chances are you may have felt equally cheated. It was cheekily created by ex-Sex Pistols sound engineer and produced Dave Goodman, who assembled a bunch of anonymous musicians to create a convincing carbon copy of the Pistols sound.

“Land of Hope And Glory” is a fair forgery worthy of Mike Yarwood, and one which certainly tricked quite a few people at the time, but it’s a novelty nugget barely even worthy of the worst Virgin cash-in album. If a bunch of people doing an impersonation of The Sex Pistols performing “Land of Hope And Glory” is your idea of a top quality listen, knock yourself out, but to me this feels closer to being a swindle than anything truly rock and roll.

Nonetheless, enough people were sufficiently fooled (or perhaps even appreciative) to get the single to the none more appropriate number 69 slot in the UK charts.





Week Two


24. Ramones - Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La) (Beggars Banquet)


Peak position: 24

The NME’s continued belief that Beggars Banquet was a proper indie label allowed The Ramones their indie chart debut. By this point, they had succumbed to the same mid-eighties spit and polish as many of their forebears, and “Howling At The Moon” is essentially The Ramones attempting to write a bona-fide mid-decade hit. The same attitude was present, but the pulsing rhythms and keyboard sounds feel closer to Cyndi Lauper than gabba-gabba-hey. A bit like JAMC, it’s a slightly conflicting mix that will either feel thrilling or inappropriate depending on who you are and what mood you’re in. Unlike JAMC, though, it’s a lot closer to pop music.

27. Restless ‎- Mr. Blues (Big Beat)


Peak position: 16


Week Three


17. Foetus über Frisco - Finely Honed Machine (Self Immolation)


Peak position: 6


23. Ted Milton - Love Is Like A Violence (Embryo)


Peak position: 23


Ted Milton is a poet, jazz saxophonist and leader of experimental rock group Blurt, the kind of individual the independent charts should have had more space for – in reality, though, they were just as susceptible to fleeting trends as the official nationwide rundown.

“Love Is Like A Violence” snuck in, I suspect, because its fairly accessible despite its ambitions. While its challenging and minimal, the pulsing beats and angular sax riffs here are only really as out there as anything Cabaret Voltaire or A Certain Ratio were producing at the same time. The B-side, on the other hand, the brilliantly titled “It’s Only Recently That Stalins Have Begun To Roost”, is more challenging and exciting (as well as having one of the best titles of anything released in 1985).  




24. Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back (Demon)


Peak position: 14

You could argue that the Australian rock group Hoodoo Gurus occupied the kind of knowing, backwards looking but accomplished groove that Lemon Twigs do today. “I Want You Back” is full of close sunny harmonies and tight melodies and ultimately embarrasses most of the other wannabe paisley pop dispensers in the indie charts. This is accomplished stuff rather than the work of amateur enthusiasts, and is a much bigger glass of tonic as a result.

Week Four


26. Andi Sex Gang - Les amants d'un jour (Illuminated)


Peak position: 25


Andi of the Sex Gang Children has a go at being a torch singer for reasons known only to himself. “Les Amants D’un Jour” was originally performed by Edith Piaf, and depending on what you feel about her vocal stylings, this version may be an improvement. He certainly doesn’t embarrass himself, avoiding all attempts at ironic posturing and embodying the song with passion and confidence. Only the plastic electronic keyboard behind him weaken the illusion.




28. Opal - Fell From The Sun (Rough Trade)


Peak position: 17


More throwback rock, this time courtesy of this Los Angeles group who were on the more shambolic edges of the Paisley Underground. “Fell From The Sun” has an appealing shaky naivete, but never really finds its feet convincingly enough to take to your heart.

Member David Roback would eventually form Mazzy Star, and there are elements of “Fell From The Sun” that almost predict that direction without ever quite finding the resolve or coordination to commit to it.

For the full charts, please go to the UKMix Forum. 

Number One In The Official Charts

Foreigner: "I Want To Know What Love Is" (Atlantic)

Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson: "I Know Him So Well" (RCA)