Two weeks at number one from 11th June 1988
It may have been a constant feature of the NME Indie Chart from day one, but commercially speaking, goth rock was truly at its zenith in 1988. The Mission scored a number two album (“Children”) with John Paul Jones as their producer, All About Eve had a gold-certified top ten album, and The Sisters Of Mercy had emerged from the undergrowth the year before to become serious international contenders.
While the music magazines of the period talked endlessly about grebo and indiepop, in alternative rock terms nobody was coming close to outscoring the men and ladies in black (except perhaps The Primitives). The Smiths were finished, and nobody had yet emerged who seemed fit to take their crown. That meant that if you went into a provincial alternative nightclub in ‘88, you were far more likely to be greeted by “This Corrosion” and “Severina” than “Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm” – and this situation actually lasted way beyond 1988. At the Rayleigh Pink Toothbrush, for example, Friday night was unofficially "goth night" until at least 1992, and God help the DJ if he tried to change tack for any great length of time.
If The Fields of the Nephilim weren’t quite up there with the others on the scene yet, “Moonchild” finally saw them in the National Top 30, getting a brief moment in the “Top of The Pops” Chartbreakers section (a very cowardly move from the Beeb, I’d say – their emergence in the mainstream should have resulted in a studio appearance). They were never the most obviously commercial goth band, having tendencies to sprawl and meander. Carl McCoy would never snarl “Hey now, hey now now” where “radiation, contamination” could be used instead. He wasn’t a man given to glam rock cries of stadium or dancefloor unity, instead preferring to sound like some kind of harbinger of doom and gloom; The Nine O’Clock news from the year 2053 if read by a frail desert anchorman suffering from leprosy.
We’ve already explored why that made the group both so ludicrous and so special in the entry for “Blue Water”, and “Moonchild” is really more of the same, except perhaps a little less ambitious in its scope. If “Blue Water” sounded like the entire soundtrack for a film compressed into five minutes, “Moonchild” grips tightly to an admittedly solid central riff instead. They even jangle in a way which might get Johnny Marr’s ears to prick up on this one, so after each distorted run of guitars and slow creep of McCoy’s growls there’s a beautiful, glistening melody, adding some glittery sweetness against the sour.
What the hell “Moonchild” is actually about is utterly anyone’s guess, because the lyrics are as vague as Nostradamus’s proclamations - “Take your prisoners to the promised war/ You'll die for this,” McCoy promises harshly. “It's a righteous day but I'll remind you/ Don't live your life supply,” he reckons. It’s hard to understand what it is we’re actually being warned about, and as usual the group do most of the colouring in, each riff and every punch of emphasis giving his delirious worldview a semblance of meaning.
What is certainly true is that ex-Leamington Spa resident* (the town from which I’m currently typing this blog entry) Aleister Crowley did write a book called “Moonchild”, and this seems to have been the inspiration. Quelle surprise. Morrissey may not have had Crowley’s novels on his sickbed table, but the man has probably had more influence on rock music than any other author. I’ve never read the book, but according to summaries online it involves a Black Lodge and an unfortunate girl who is caught up in a magical war between two rival men; this gives us more of an inkling than McCoy’s guttural cries.