Page 76 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

Balaam And The Angel
already split up. But there were plenty of
bands ready to step into the breach. The ranks
of the goth army swelled, increasingly
dramatic and flamboyant names added to the
roll call every week: Gene Loves Jezebel,
Balaam And The Angel, Fields Of The
Nephilim, Dead Can Dance, Salvation…
Wayne Hussey: At the time, the alternative music
scene was so broad and all-encompassing. There
weren’t the same genres as there are now. It was
absolutely exciting. But none of us had any idea
that there was a movement starting.
Gregor Mackintosh: The music had this
melancholy, bittersweet edge to it that you didn’t
get in normal pop songs that you listened to at
twelve or thirteen years old; you would have got
angry punk stuff or plain cheesy pop music. This
had a darker edge.
Nik Fiend: Nobody mixed heavy guitar with
synth and drum machines like Alien Sex Fiend.
Depeche Mode had the synth and the drum
machines, but it was a tiddly little sound. I’m
talkiing heavy – Girl At The End Of My Gun, Attack,
Dead And Buried. Nobody was doing shit like that.
Jim Morris (Balaam And The Angel): When
we started, around 1984, we wanted to create
something that picked up on the bands that we
liked – post-punk stuff like Joy Division, Magazine,
Killing Joke, but also things like The Doors, T.Rex.
We were attempting to marry all those kinds of
influences and create something that people like us
would enjoy on a Friday or Saturday night.
Although the music was still a kaleidoscopic
mix of styles, the look was beginning to
solidify. In every town there was a cluster
of disaffected, black-clad teens and
20-somethings, an array of Siouxsie Sioux or
Robert Smith mini-mes.
76 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
on The Tube in 1986.
Lisa Gerrard of
Dead Can Dance.
“You put on eyeliner, and
people start screaming at
you. How strange, and
how marvellous.”
Robert Smith, The Cure
Robert Smith: You put on eyeliner, and
people start screaming at you. How strange,
and how marvellous.
Greg Mackintosh: I used to see people dressed up
like Siouxsie around in the shopping centres in
Bradford and Leeds when I was a young. You
thought: “Wow, they’re really going
out on a limb.”
Nik Fiend: The Alien Sex Fiend
look came from mine and Mrs
Fiend’s repertoire of clothing. She’d
put leopardskin on my leather
jacket, or I’d get a T-shirt and slash
it up, potato print crosses and
skulls. You couldn’t get that stuff off the peg then:
“Oh, I want to be a goth this week.”
Carl McCoy (Fields Of The Nephilim): We had
to develop something, because we were such an
odd-looking bunch. We didn’t look like a band, so
we mixed the Victorian clobber that we tended to
pick up from charity shops for everyday wear with
some sort of Spanish/Mexican spaghetti western
vibe and basically covered it all in a load of shit, so
we at least looked like we belonged together.
Dave Vanian (The Damned): Long before I was
in a band, I had black hair and was wearing black
clothes and make-up. It’s nothing today, but back
then it would get you a whole barrage of insults.
I only bought a car because I was getting into so
many fights on the train at night. But I stuck with
it, because that is who I was.
Billy Duffy: I got by on a big white guitar and
a cool haircut.
Christian Riou: It was still dangerous to look
goth. Often, goth nights were situated in the
upstairs room of a bigger club, with
casuals wandering in to look at the
girls and then starting something
with a lad dressed to the nines.
Roger Nowell: There was a guy in
Chester who used to put on bands
like us. When people started SHUTTERSTOCK x1
chicken-dancing at the front, they