Page 75 - Classic Rock (February 2020)
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Southern Death Cult
on The Tube in 1982.
Jonny Slut (Specimen keyboard player): It was landscape. It has that really romantic side and that
a light bulb for all the freaks and people like myself really depressed, miserable side.
who were from the sticks and wanted a bit more “The London scene was
from life; freaks, weirdos, sexual deviants… Andrew Eldritch (the Sisters Of Mercy): I was
much more fashionable; in a band when every other person was in a band,
Nik Fiend: What attracted me? Alienation. maybe because of the Cold War and we didn’t
I realised I was not gonna fit into normal society the Leeds club scene was expect to live for long. We didn’t expect
as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse. all the post-punk stuff.” employment, because half of us had no skills and
the other half didn’t know how to apply the skills
Jonny Slut: At the time, the Batcave wasn’t Simon Denbigh, The March Violets that we had, and we reacted to the world because it
a doomy, gothy, droney, grungey sort of place. It weighed heavily on us.
was more Gotham City than Aleister Crowley. becoming its twin northern epicentres,
home to bands such as the Sisters Of Mercy, Billy Duffy (Theatre Of Hate/The Cult): The
Nik Fiend: It was all a mish-mash of music and The March Violets, Skeletal Family and first time I met Ian [Astbury, Southern Death Cult
cultures. Specimen asked me to run it while they Southern Death Cult. singer/future Cult frontman] he was running
were out on tour. I’d be playing Alice Cooper or through the woods at Keele University, wearing
Cabaret Voltaire or Psychedelic Furs. It all felt like Gregor Mackintosh (future Paradise Lost buckskin chaps that he’d made himself and
a ball of energy and friction. It made no sense to guitarist): I got into goth when I was twelve or a blanket loincloth he’d wrapped with a belt so it
me at all, which was what I loved. thirteen, through my older brother’s record looked like a nappy. And moccasins with bells on
collection: Sisters, Skeletal Family, Southern Death them. He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in Last Of
Robert Smith: When it first started up I used to Cult, that kind of thing. Plus a lot of it was from The Mohicans, except he jangled when he walked.
go, but I only went a handful of times, mainly around our area. We’re from Halifax, and it was I thought: “That’s a bit interesting.”
because the bar was open till two in the morning. happening in Leeds and Bradford.
Roger Nowell: Southern Death Cult appeared.
Nik Fiend: Alien Sex Fiend played there loads. It Simon Denbigh (The March Violets): The They were mates with Sex Gang Children. Then
was a chance to expriement and free-form. We London scene was much more eyeliner, a much the Sisters appeared, then we appeared. Then
picked up a load of TVs that people had dumped, more fashionable scene; the Leeds everybody’s running around
knocked the guts out of them, then we’d put heads, club scene was all Gun Club, loads looking like Bauhaus and it’s
hands and cobwebs in them. of Bowie, Stooges, all of that kind good times for everybody.
of stuff, all the post-punk stuff.
Gregor Mackintosh: With By the time of Bauhaus’s
This nascent scene wasn’t exclusive to
Yorkshire, you have that mixture of
SHUTTERSTOCK London. In West Yorkshire, the neighbouring the rolling hills and countryside and fourth album, 1983’s Burning
From The Inside, they had
cities of Leeds and Bradford were rapidly
these industrial blots on the
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