Page 81 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

Billy Duffy: The Cure turned into the goth Pink
Sonic Temple-era
Cult in 1989.
Wayne Hussey: Musically, part of the problem
for The Mission in America was that we fell
between the cracks – we weren’t pop enough for
the pop stations, we weren’t rocky enough for the
rock stations. We never had that one hit that every
other band had.
The influence of America irrevocably altered
the DNA of goth, propelling it to a commercial
pinnacle in the late 80s even as it drifted
further from its roots. The Sisters Of Mercy’s
second album, Floodland, found Andrew
Eldritch working with Meat Loaf
collaborator Jim Steinman on several
tracks and notching up a string of Top 10
hits in the process. Even bigger was The
Cult’s 1989 Sonic Temple, a full-blown
arena-rock album that would sell more
than three million copies in the US. Sales
of The Cure’s magnificently gloomy
Disintegration, released the same year,
weren’t far behind it.
Andrew Eldritch: [The Sisters’ 1987 hit] This
Corrosion is ridiculous. It’s supposed to be. It’s
a song about ridiculousness. So I called
Steinman and explained that we needed
something that sounded like a disco party
run by the Borgias. And that’s what we got.
Billy Duffy: I’d gone into another world.
You’d see Bon Jovi: “Hi guys, how you doing?”
Jim Morris: We were leaning towards biker
rock with [1988’s second album] Live Free Or
Die. I don’t remember thinking: “The Cult
GETTY x2 has done Electric or Sonic Temple, we want a bit
of that.” I think there was a move towards
that sort of sound anyway. We
come from the Midlands, we were
brought up on Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy.
Robert Smith: I got really depressed, and I started
doing drugs again – hallucinogenic drugs. When
we were gonna make Disintegration, I decided
I would be monk-like and not talk to anyone. It
was a bit pretentious, really, looking back, but
I actually wanted an environment that was
slightly unpleasant.
Siouxsie Sioux
in 1992.
Floyd at that point. Good luck to ’em. It worked.
Carl McCoy: I liked the idea of being a cult act.
Huge commercial success didn’t interest me at all.
And I had a fear that things were going that way
around the time of Elizium, so I split the band up.
Wayne Hussey: The problem with any youth
movement is that when it starts to become more
popular, that’s what it starts to lose its essence and
vitality and power. That’s what happened at the
end of the eighties.
Billy Duffy: I was believing for a hot minute that
we were gonna be the next Led Zeppelin on Sonic
Temple. And why wouldn’t I? And [poorly received
follow-up album] Ceremony was: “Oh, that’s why
you’re not.”
Goth’s boom time was short-lived. As the
80s drew to a close, the musical and cultural
landscape in the UK was changing massively.
Many of goth’s key players had
either split up or changed their
sound beyond recognition, and
the scene was sidelined by the
triple threat of late-80s hard rock,
acid house and the emerging
Madchester movement. But
across the Atlantic a new
generation of bands were picking
up the torch and carrying it into
the new decade.
Christian Riou: I was at Nine Inch Nails’ first gig
at the China Club in New York, October 1989, and
I saw a band that would have been perfect for 1983
in London. There was about forty people in the
audience, but it shows the huge international
influence of goth. It was taken on by the next
generation who, on the whole, would have no
knowledge of where it had come from.
Kevin Haskins: [Nine Inch Nails’] Trent
Reznor told me that Bauhaus were a huge
influence on him. Kurt Cobain had all our
albums. Jane’s Addiction, Marilyn Manson,
Al Jourgensen.
Nik Fiend: I remember someone I knew
saying: “I went to see Marilyn Manson,
and he’s doing what you’re doing.” And
I said: “Mate, anybody is entitled to put
on make-up and do fucking rock’n’roll.”
Everybody is a bastardisation of what has
gone before, whether they are aware of it.
That’s a fucking fact.
Dave Vanian: Tim Burton seems to be
working his way through iconic eighties
frontmen. Robert Smith: Edward
Scissorhands; Dave Vanian: Sweeny Todd.
Who’s next? Flock of Seagulls?
Wayne Hussey: Thirty years ago, no one
was going: ‘‘Yeah, in thirty years’ time we’re
gonna look back at this and think: “What
a great movement.” But that’s what we’re
doing. Funny, isn’t it?
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