80. The Mission - Serpent's Kiss (Chapter 22)

Three weeks at number one from 14th June 1986

During my final year of sixth form college, I developed a slight crush on a goth girl in the year below (Cliche alert - I realise this isn’t remotely uncommon. Almost every male friend my age has suffered a similar predicament, and almost every female goth has had to toss away unwanted Valentines). Shamefully, I can’t remember her name for certain – which indicates that she obviously didn’t work her way into my affections to an unhealthy degree – but I can still remember how studiedly and absolutely she embodied ‘the look’, even getting angry when she ‘caught some sun’ and freckled her nose at an outdoor gig, ruining her pale skin plan. I also loved the confident way she played up to her dorkiness rather than trying to hide it under self-conscious posturing. She seemed friendly, quietly funny and unbelievably cool in a way almost everyone else I knew wasn’t.

I thought I’d kept my admiration for her on the downlow, but obviously not, because one night outside the local nightclub one of my friends drunkenly blurted out “Oi Dave, it’s that goth girl you fancy!” while she was within earshot. Clearly my poker face needed work. After she split with her unbelievably lanky, long-faced and permanently weary looking boyfriend, who it seemed had been her other half since birth, she awkwardly initiated further conversations with me and gave the impression she might be interested.

Reader, as I’m sure you’ve already gathered, it didn’t happen. I can’t remember the reasons, but her finding another suitor who was just more gothic than me was almost certainly the prime factor. I had something of a quiet aversion to the key things that made her world revolve, feigning interest whenever we spoke but probably never being able to successfully conceal my doubt. Some time before this, a friend or acquaintance gave me a C90 compilation tape of current goth sounds and I listened, trying to get to grips with it. By the thirtieth minute, I was bored shitless and realised I was never going to commit to a lifestyle that had so much dreary sludge as its soundtrack. 

Thanks to this blog, I’ve been thinking back to that sliding doors moment a lot lately, and wondering if maybe my friend did me – and goth in general – a disservice. He focused on the long, soporific aspects which leaned towards the seriously morbid and epic. While ploughing through the indie charts for this blog, I’ve been forced to remember that musically speaking, goth was actually a much broader genre than that, to the point of near-meaninglessness. Besides the punk originators (The Damned, Siouxsie And The Banshees) and their Batcave heirs, there were also groups who performed camp electronic nonsense (Alien Sex Fiend), arena-eyeing rock God goths (The Cult, Gene Loves Jezebel, *coughs* The Stone Roses) and also a bunch of groups I now think of as paisley bloused goths, adding loose-fitting hippydom to their sound (The Cure, The Bolshoi, All About Eve). These little sub-genres don’t necessarily always make sense or fit, and the groups I’ve mentioned tended to jump between them periodically, but they’ve helped me to make sense of a movement which stylistically sprawls in a number of directions.

This was perhaps demonstrated by Wayne Hussey and Andrew Eldritch's falling out while both were members of the Sisters of Mercy (which we’ve already covered in quite dramatic detail). One of the issues seemed to be that Eldritch had written new songs for the Sisters Of Mercy which were far too minimal for the rest of his group’s tastes, whereas Hussey’s were seen as too unusual. It’s not really clear how much of that eccentricity found its way into his subsequent group The Mission, but on the strength of their debut single “Serpent’s Kiss”, it would seem not much.

It starts predictably enough, filling your ears with dank guitar lines, wilted flowers and lyrics like “Ash on the carpet and dust on the mirror/ Chasing shadows and the dreaming comes clearer”, proving that Hussey had the poetry of his audience down pat. Where it suddenly shifts gear and shows its true colours – which aren’t entirely black – is in that zippy, celebratory chorus. “Screaming howl and the children play/ Serpents kiss for the words you pray” may be words which sound as if they need a reverberated steady backbeat and a gravelly vocal, but The Mission launch into them as if these child-bothering snakes are actually a good thing. It’s closer to Jim Morrison celebrating the dark arts with a forceful chorus than Bauhaus, shimmying and shaking its tight-trousered butt around the imagery rather than screaming about it.

Hussey, like Robert Smith, also gave the impression that taking the piss and even misleading the public was one of his motivations in life as well as trying to write great songs. When asked if he had “a type” when seeking out ladies, he responded with glee that his slogan could be “Wayne Hussey – he’s not fussy”. You can’t imagine Andrew Eldritch giving his game away so easily. The cheap and cheerful promo clip for “Serpent’s Kiss” is a thing of strange colour and joy too, filled with lipstick kisses from Uncle Wayne, while the group twirl multi-coloured umbrellas, and leap, lark and generally tit around in the country. Visually it has more in common with a Dukes of Stratosphear video than the rainy, rockist visuals which accompanied The Sisters “This Corrosion”.

74. The Sisterhood - Giving Ground (Merciful Release)

One week at number one on w/e 22^nd February 1986

When we last visited the NME Indie Number One spot, we bore witness to a group riding the wave of some arguably unjustified hype with a nonetheless marvellous single. If Easterhouse have since become largely forgotten, nobody could fairly begrudge them their one moment in the sun. “Giving Ground”, on the other hand, is a bird of a different feather, a one-off indie hit created through gossip and confusion with some of the public potentially not understanding who the group even were.

The Sisters Of Mercy began to have some serious wobbles while recording their second (aborted) album, the prophetically and provisionally titled “Left On Mission And Revenge”. Guitarist Wayne Hussey offered a series of songs to Andrew Eldritch for potential inclusion, all of which were promptly rejected by either Eldritch or guitarist Craig Adams. Eldritch then put forward his minimal ideas, one of which, according to Hussey, consisted of just one chord. Adams and Hussey promptly left the group due to the usual (and in this case not inaccurate) claim of “musical differences”, and formed their own group The Sisterhood, announcing their plans to the music press and releasing news of a forthcoming live show and radio session with Janice Long.

Eldritch, however, was rattled by this, seeing the name The Sisterhood as a deliberate continuation of The Sisters of Mercy brand, which all parties had agreed not to use after the group’s dissolution. As a result, he considered his limited options, and decided to put a single out using that band name himself – later stating in Melody Maker that they “patently had to be stopped. And when they wanted to be called the Sisterhood, there was nothing I could do but be the Sisterhood before them – the only way to kill that name was to use it, then kill it.”

He promptly registered a company under the name and spent five days recording the single “Giving Ground”, playing all the instruments himself and giving lead vocal duties to recent Merciful Release signing James Ray (of James Ray & The Performance) to avoid any contractual complications.

Meanwhile, Hussey and Adams were left at a sticky wicket, and had to record their Radio One session under the ungainly pub rock name The Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams Band, reverting to the name The Mission at the end of February. Eldritch responded with a press release stating “We assume that their choice of name is entirely unconnected with the forthcoming Andrew Eldritch album that for some months has had the working title ‘Left on Mission and Revenge’”. This might have suggested further legal brouhaha was to follow, but fortunately the bickering stopped there (in public at least; Hussey has since said that various solicitor’s letters still circulated in private).

This soap opera played out in the press and on the airwaves across a number of weeks, and gave both parties more gossip column and news section inches than they would ordinarily receive – for some reason, there is little music fans enjoy more than two stubborn, egocentric band members at loggerheads with each other. Such things are usually the preserve of rock monsters rather than cult goth bands who had yet to score a single hit, but the subsequent publicity seemed to drive fans into record stores out of curiosity. As well as those swept along by the press, there may also have been a few confused fans in the mix who thought they were buying Hussey’s new record due to his earlier announcement.

And what were these unfortunate souls getting for their money? Not much. “Giving Ground” suffers from being a rushed creation recorded with a strategy, rather than a strong creative outcome, in mind. Opening with a minute of Numanoid synths before introducing a somewhat tedious bassline and basic drum machine track, it takes an indulgent two minutes to bring Ray’s vocals properly into the mix, which are hesitant and slightly too bright, failing to sell the idea (such as it is). The song then spends seven-and-a-half minutes going nowhere in particular. You wait and wait for something to emerge – a chorus, a change of mood, a rush of adrenalin or fury, or even some ambience - but the track bumps along the seabed, a flatulent seacow mooing along a dull, non-divergent course.