The Jesus and Mary Chain

Bio

A cult band from the eighties, The Jesus and Mary Chain revolutionized the scene of an entire generation with its style and its music. A point of reference of the post-Sex Pistols London music scene, inspired by bands like The Stooges and Velvet Underground, JAMC breathed life into a new musical genre, the shoegaze, becoming the leader of a movement that can count between its adherents’ artists like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive.

The band hailing from Glasgow was founded by brothers William and Jim Reid (respectively guitarist and singer) in 1984. Soon the two moved to London where they were immediately noticed by the great Alan McGee, from Creation Records, and by Bobby Gillespie, singer of the Primal Scream, that joined the band as the drummer for their first single, “Upside Down”.

After publishing their debut album, Psychocandy, in 1985, The Jesus and Mary Chian soon became a legend for the international press that elected them a cult band: a record that is a must in the English alternative rock world and that changed the history of music. Psychocandy presented classic songs like “Just Like Honey” and “Some Candy Talking”.

Darklands was the second episode signed The Jesus and Mary Chain. It was 1987 when the Reid brothers gave to the press this decadent jewel charged, like always, of reverberations, but that differed greatly from their first record. The album reached the fifth spot on the English charts, the highest spot ever achieved by The Mary Chain, and it was subsequently included in the compendium “1001 records to listen to before you die”.

In 1999 the band broke up due to the heavy tension between the brothers but JAMC got back together for the first time in 2007 for a memorable, and at this point legendary, live set at the Coachella Festival, during which Scarlett Johansson, a great fan of theirs, joined the band on stage for “Just Like Honey”.

Their single “Amputation” with Creation Records, the same label that launched them in 1984, anticipated their new original album Damage & Joyin 2017. The record, which was followed by a world tour that saw them as protagonists of the most important European festivals, came nineteen years after their last album Munki, and it was the seventh studio album for the Scottish band which shook up the movement more than thirty years before with its noise/pop sound, becoming a veritable icon of style.

website

Photos

• Share
  

all
artist