106. Fields Of The Nephilim - Blue Water (Situation Two)

One week at number one on 14th November 1987

On a scorching summer day in the mid nineties, I was sat in the park with an ex-goth, swigging from a cheap bottle of wine, testily asking him about the old days. I was merely curious and didn’t intend this to be a form of psychological torture, but I watched his cheeks get steadily pinker in tone as he stammered his way through the ‘old lifestyle’. I began to feel unnecessarily like a BBC documentary filmmaker interviewing a departed member of a cult.

While we were talking about the music, I mentioned that of all the groups, I liked Fields of the Nephilim best. His face lit up, not with approval, but with sadistic glee. “Oh,” I could tell he was thinking, “you’re going to sit here listening to me embarrassing myself with my teenage vampire stories, then you’re going to openly declare that you enjoy the work of men from Stevenage in apocalyptic cowboy fancy dress? You’re getting both barrels now, laddie!”

And his rant began. Fields of the Nephilim weren’t a goth band, they were a joke. A tired, second-rate Sisters of Mercy tribute act in children’s fancy dress. A band for provincial goths, stunted goths who had never left their hometowns to visit a city, goths who had read far too much terrible pulp horror fiction, goths who were barely goths in fact – just weirdos with spaghetti western fixations. “Nobody,” he jabbed at me, “Nobody who was an Actual Goth ever liked Fields of the Nephilim!”

“Yeah well, they were my favourite goth band, so that figures,” I said, then changed the subject to something else, very very quickly.

I’ve thought about that weird moment a lot since, and have gone on to meet other goths with similar views (although others who also disagree; I saw a goth in a Nephilim T-shirt only last week). I can understand the vitriol. The Nephilim were, at root, somewhat silly. Andrew Eldritch and Robert Smith were arch and knowing, regularly falling back on plausible deniability, whereas The Nephilim built an entire backstory, a self-constructed myth which was too rich to ever be a joke. Their name referred to the angel-human hybrids of the same name in the Hebrew Bible, and they shot music videos which felt like five-minute apocalyptic horror b-movies – impressive looking (their director Richard Stanley later went on to make numerous feature films) but lower budget than a Garth Marenghi cast-off, featuring the band over-acting, as musicians will inevitably do.

They covered themselves in Mother’s Pride flour to achieve that dusty desert cowboy look, and were occasionally hauled to one side by customs officers keen to check it wasn’t cocaine. Oh, and they had a drummer called Nod. Apocalyptic desert cowboy groups should never have drummers with the name Nod. It’s always going to become a punchline, far more than the most ridiculous stage name ever would.

At the time – and even now – I thought that these discrepancies and incidents were far more Heavy Metal than Goth, and the Nephilim’s sound and lyrical content sometimes veered closer to Iron Maiden than The Mission or The Sisters; but that said, the dramatic Morricone inspired twangs that occasionally whined through their songs were coming from neither place; seldom have rock groups sounded so epic, so thrillingly, openly sixties Saturday afternoon picture-house.

If fate had taken a different course and he hadn’t shot his landlady and himself, Joe Meek would have locked Fields Of The Nephilim in his house in the eighties and demanded to produce them. Not only did they share similarities with two of his previous acts (The cowboy-dressed Outlaws and the undead Screaming Lord Sutch) thereby saving on costume costs, they also tapped into stories of psychic planes, and growled stories about radioactive contamination and unforgiving, howling deserts. There’s a fancy dress, boxed-in Englishness at play here – high-budget ideas, epic in scope, forged on low-budget trickery (the video for “Blue Water” cost a mere £1,500. Coincidentally, a freak hurricane interrupted proceedings, perhaps brought on by singer Carl McCoy pointing upwards and growling about the sky falling in, or maybe not).

The group also sometimes produced music which was truly great, and “Blue Water” is up there. The full twelve-inch version utterly sprawls, as drums clatter and cymbals expressively splash, and those guitar lines restlessly reach and descend and whine; even without a video, there’s a whole cinematic experience going on in your mind’s eye. Carl McCoy’s growling lyrics are almost secondary; the real appeal lies in the instrumentation behind, the sound of a group of frustrated soundtrack writers painting every corner with a new flash of detail. Brilliantly, the group’s visual direction also married perfectly with their sound – if you showed an uninitiated individual a photo of them, they would probably correctly guess their general direction, even though I don’t think there are many other rock-goth-Morricone groups out there.

94. The Primitives - Stop Killing Me (Lazy)

Three weeks at number one from 21st March 1987

BAMALAMALAMALAMA…. Rarely do singles begin with such an abrasive attack of guitars, right from the very first second, before putting their bristles down again. Most groups, even alternative ones, are aware of the need to consider the delicate sensibilities of radio listeners and save their noisiest moments for later on in the single. Coventry’s The Primitives couldn’t have given a damn in this instance, though, putting their loudest attack right at the start of the single, then never quite hitting that peak again.

That said, The Primitives were an odd bunch to start with, creating slightly misshapen alternative pop whose influences were obvious (and tantalisingly fashionable) but were stretched into an unforced coolness of their own. Early songs liberally utilised the feedback screeching beloved of the Jesus & Mary Chain, the simple pop attack of The Ramones, Motown choruses, and the scratchiness of the Shop Assistants and The Flatmates, topped off with their own unique weapon in lead singer Tracey Tracey. While other female vocalists in the indie chart communicated with anger, conviction, sweetness or heartbreak, sometimes all in the same song, Tracey usually rolled her eyes with impatience. You can hear the disdain in almost every Primitives song at this point (bar “Thru The Flowers”) – perfectly enunciated, softly sung. Previous single “Really Stupid” is a prime example, taking its very title from the tired, understated insult that peppers the song.

It’s close to punk rock, but punks tended to sneer forcefully rather than seem utterly, offhandedly above whoever they were addressing. Tracey’s vocal style is actually quite chilling as a result; she feels like every woman who wearily sighed at your weak jokes, or gave you steely glances across a club dancefloor to pre-warn you that your chances with her were nil. Whether her style has the same effect on women (making them feel as if she is unapproachable and cooler-than-thou) is something I’ve never asked, but from a male perspective there’s something inherently but relatably threatening about it. She gave the impression of being somebody who Took No Shit without needing to heavily articulate the fact.

“Stop Killing Me” combines her vocals with guitars which skid off in various directions at different moments, beginning with that immediate machine gun fire, then settling on a distorted Ramones riff, then chiming beautifully in the chorus, then get steadily more gnarly until feedback starts to bleed around the edges. It is a very sharp, short and simple pop song at heart – Tracey even “ba ba ba bas” in the chorus, like a back-up singer with a soda pop in one hand – but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in its many flavours of menace. Insouciance and noise meet melody and friction, and it manages in two minutes what some singles fail to achieve in five; something that’s thrilling and hooky but also a little bit alienating and challenging at the same time. “Just keep away from me/ ‘cos you’re killing me” sings Tracey, and you believe that not only might she mean it, but she may be directing it at you.

By this point, the music press were beginning to get seriously excited by the group, which seemed to represent everything about British alternative rock they loved rolled together into one package. Tracey’s charisma and the rest of the band’s obvious love of pop hooks made them seem like one of the few groups in the late eighties indie charts who stood a strong chance in the outside world, and the media cuttings piled up quickly.

In time, they would be referred to as being part of the “Blonde” movement, a particularly unimaginative and press contrived scene which rather reductively grouped vaguely alt-leaning bands together who had blonde female singers. As a result, The Primitives found themselves lumped in with Transvision Vamp, The Darling Buds and The Parachute Men, despite only really having anything in common with one of those acts.

Such idleness and borderline misogyny from the music press was fleeting and quickly forgotten, and the group ended up floating far above it when they finally signed to RCA and managed a major Top Five hit with “Crash”. Its parent album “Lovely” sits in my record collection, and sands down the rougher edges of their sound slightly, but places the abrasion alongside flowery pop-psych, bright sunshine melodies and occasional bursts of almost Cocteaus-styled haziness (“Ocean Blue” feels almost as if its pushing at the shoegaze door three years too early). A cynic might argue that the group were having their cake and eating it – trying to be all things to all the different kinds of inky music press reading people – but they never quite lose their sense of self throughout, and the final results make for a surprisingly even listen. Even “Stop Killing Me” finds a natural home right next to the tranquil buoyancy of “Out Of Reach”.

The album only just failed to follow “Crash” into the national top five, but sold incredibly well for an alternative record, bagging the group a gold disc and a lot of music press and major label goodwill. By the following year, though, their follow-up album “Pure” only just managed a place inside the Top 40, and a crisis meeting was allegedly held at RCA asking if Tracey’s new deep red hair colour was to blame. Seldom in rock history has hair been regarded as such a central factor in a group’s successes and failings.