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.