Chart entered : 3 March 1990
Chart peak : 16
Number of hits : 21
Here's another landmark record in the rapprochement between indie rock and dance and a larger step forward for Creation Records.
We've already met prime Screamer Bobby Gillespie who met Alan McGee at secondary school and formed a short-lived punk band The Drains in 1978 which also featured teenaged guitarist Andrew Innes. When the band broke up , Andrew and McGee moved to London while Bobby remained in Glasgow. He formed the first incarnation of Primal Scream in 1982 with another old school friend Jim Beattie making "elemental noise tapes". While the band remained a going concern, Bobby joined the Jesus and Mary Chain as a drummer in 1984.
Bobby then expanded the line up to include bassist Rob "Throb" Young. They signed to McGee's new label Creation and released their debut single "All Fall Down" in 1985. it's a pleasant enough Byrdsian jangle despite Bobby's off key vocals but doesn't leave a lasting impression. It was however enough to trigger an ultimatum from the Reid brothers and so Primal Scream became Bobby's sole concern.
Their second single, "Crystal Crescent" came out in April 1986. It's essentially more of the same except with the addition of some tinny brass and drum tattoos to give the illusion of more musical backbone. On the B-side was "Velocity Girl", a brief but tuneful ode to a junkie which was licenced by the NME for the C86 cassette, in fact it became the opening track and means that Primal Scream are the second and final band from that compilation to qualify for this blog. The band loathed the association with the so-called "shambling" scene believing many of their supposed peers to be musically incompetent.
This was part of the reason for switching to McGee's new label Elevation which was a Warner Brothers subsidiary. They started recording at Rockfield with Smiths producer Stephen Street but were unhappy with the results. The sessions also resulted in the rhythm guitarist and drummer quitting. Andrew came into the ban to fill the former vacancy. American producer Mayo Thompson who'd helmed a lot of Rough Trade recordings took over the producer's chair.
Their next single in June 1987 was "Gentle Tuesday" which had a bit more bite to it. Bobby's singing and the lyrics remained fey but there was a crunching backbeat and more guitar overdubs which in places sounded like Johnny Marr. A stronger chorus and we might have been discussing them a bit earlier. It was followed in September by "Imperial" an Eastern-flavoured drone produced by Clive Langer and Colin Fairley that sounds too like The Mission.
Their debut album "Sonic Flower Groove" came out the following month featuring Felt keyboard player Martin Duffy who would later join the band. It's a frustrating record because it starts really strongly with two more good songs following "Gentle Tuesday" and then runs out of ideas and loses its grip. Nevertheless, their sound at this time is very close to The Stone Roses. It got to number 62 in the album chart which wasn't bad for a hitless group.
It disappointed the group nonetheless and resulted in Beattie quitting the band. As he was the co-writer of all their material to date, this heralded a substantial shift in musical direction. Rob stepped up to second guitarist and the band took on a new rhythm section of Henry Olsen ( bass ) and Philip Tomanov ( drums ) who'd previously played together in Nico's band. The band re-located to Brighton and re-signed with Creation.
In July 1989, they released their first single in nearly two years " Ivy Ivy Ivy". Beattie's jangly guitars had been put to bed and instead you had a hard rock track not too far removed from The Cult although Bobby's diffident delivery and melodic backing vocals prevent it going too far down that route. Lyrically it takes the well-worn route of assigning a girl's name to the drug of their choice.
The album "Primal Scream" followed two months later, divided between pummeling rock tracks and drowsy piano ballads on neither of which Bobby's vocals are adequate. It lost them more fans than it gained and didn't chart.
It did however garner one important fan in football writer and club DJ Andrew Weatherall who gave it a good review in his fanzine. The band then invited him to re-mix the track "I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have" for a second single. Weatherall's re-shaping of the track was radical. The song itself was almost entirely discarded; he just worked on the brassy two minute instrumental coda strongly influenced by the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. He spliced in a drum loop sourced from an Italian re-mix of Edie Brickell's What I Am, a vocal line from The Emotions I Don't Want To Lose Your Love and a generous sprinkling of Peter Fonda's libertarian dialogue from the biker film The Wild Angels and the result was "Loaded". The band , particularly Bobby, had been marginalised on their own record . It didn't make too much sense to me; like 808 State's Pacific it seemed like an extended intro that never developed but then I wasn't a raver
Never a raver myself, but I did quite like this when I first heard it in the mid 90s - might have been the strong bassline. When I heard the original track from the second album, I found it too much of a Stones parody.
ReplyDeleteI do quite like "Imperial", though (as with a lot of Primal Scream's work) I struggle with Gillespie's weak vocals and the suspicion that he's a bit of a berk.