Eldritch is almost intellectually obsessed, loving foreign languages,
Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, an obvious influence on his vocal style.
He interviewed Bowie for a 1995 German edition of Rolling Stone.
Eldritch was studying French and German literature at the University of
Oxford before moving in 1978 to study Mandarin at the University of Leeds.
He left both courses without a degree but speaks five languages.
While attending college, he freelanced as a drummer (bad, according to him)
in the local Leeds punk scene. He met guitarist Gary Marx at the F-Club
in Leeds. They started playing together specifcally so that they could hear
themselves on the radio. They succeeded with the release of their single,
“Damage Done/Watch/Home of The Hit-Men.” Marx played guitar
through a practice amp on the single. Eldritch played drums, and each wrote
and sang a song. The band has been through 15 line ups since their start
and has at times included Patricia Morrison of The Gun Club (although she
only appeared in videos and sang on an album) and Tony James of Generation
X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
“The Sisters were fans of Gary Glitter, T-Rex, Motorhead, The Stooges,
Suicide, The Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu and The Fall and liked good disco
music,“ Eldritch writes about the band’s start in the FAQ he
wrote for their website. “Leeds, as the Sisters knew it, was a speed
town, charged with a broadly political kind of gang warfare...The subculture
in Leeds was clearly divided at the time. The punks were almost exclusively
left-wing (to varying degrees, but united in their contempt of the right
wing) and vaguely allied to the dub factions of Chapeltown and Harehills,
on the other hand was a right-wing alliance. The Sisters were not part of
the art school scene..The Sisters belonged firmly to the non-student city
end of things. Their immediate forbears were the Exelaires, Music For Pleasure
and Dance Chapter. Their counterparts in Liverpool were The Teardrop Explodes,
Pink Military and Echo and The Bunnymen..Sheffield - the Mighty Comsat Angels,
Clock CVA, Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League.”
The first real sisters line up consisted of Craig Adams on bass, Eldritch,
previously the group’s drummer, replaced by Doktor Avalance, a drum
machines (though the machine has been replaced a few times, it has always
kept this name. Eldritch, free to concentrate on vocals onstage, also began
writing lyrics, programming the Doktor and producing. He and Marx wrote
the music, occassionally with Adams. This line up played their first show
together in Leeds in Feb. 1981 at an uncertain location. (The anniversary
of this date has been reguarly celebrated by the band and their fans on
Feb. 16, usually at Vanburgh College in York, the site of the Sisters’
20th Anniversary show, complete with cupcakes.) Ben Gunn joined the band
as a second guiarist late in 1981. This group established the classic Sister’s
sound, with Eldritch’s deep, rich vocals, Adam’s pulsing bass
and Marx’ medlodic, flowing guitar backed by the steady Doktor beat.
The band’s early singles were regularly featured in UK independent
charts, some named single of the week in various UK indie mags. “Alice,”
an early classic, was produced for John Ashton of the Psychedelic Furs.
Furs frontman Richard Butler, a friend of Eldritch, is said to have been
instrumental in encouraging him to release the initial Sisters’ single,
and even to have financed its pressing. Eldritch wrote, produced and played
all the instruments on The Reptile House, an early Sisters EP. Sisters early
onstage covers included The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,”
“Ghostrider” by Suicide, “Louie, Louie,” The Stooges
“1969,” The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter” and Hot
Chocolate’s “Emma.” “1969,” “Gimme Shelter”
and “Emma” have all been recorded and released as B-sides.
The band signed with major label, WEA, a subsidiary of Time Warner, in 1983.
Around 1984, Gunn left due to conflicts with Eldritch. This is the reason
that every departed member of the band would give for leaving. He was replaced
by Wayne Hussey, formerly with Dead Or Alive. Hussey became a contributing
songwriter and usually played 12-string acoustic and electric guitars. It
has been said that his recording experince with Dead or Alive proved a huge
asset in the studio when the Sisters recorded their first full-length album,
First, Last And Always. The band went on the road successfully enough for
the Black October UK tour in Oct/Nov. 1984. But back in the studio afterwards,
, the alienation between Eldritch and the rest of the band was growing uncontrollably.
Most songs on the album were written and rehearsed by Marx, Hussey and Adams,
with Eldritch coming in at the end to write lyrics and add vocals. The album
was produced by David M Allen, producer of the Cure’s Disintegration.
Eldritch recorded 1987’s Floodland largely on his own. It was a shift
away from guitar based rock to the type of keyboard sound also displayed
on “Gift” and featured contributions from Jim Steinman (Meatloaf’s
song-writing partner) on two songs.
1990’s Vision Thing also featured one song co-written and co-produced
by Jim Steinman and featured a return to guitar oriented rock and an attack
on US Republican politics.
The Sisters of Mercy toured with Public Enemy in 1991 in an attempt to promote
unity. However, the tour was regarded as controversial, with several towns
banning the show fearing racial clashes between the two groups of fans.
Following an internal struggle at WEA, the band was assigned to East-West,
their subsidiary. Conflicts with WEA then led to a termination of their
US record distribution deal in 1992, so the last sisters albums are only
available as imports. WEA pressured the band into re-recording “Temple
of Love” (with Ofra Haza on vocals) to promote the release of a collection
of early Sisters singles, Some Girls Wander By Mistake. They also released
“Under The Gun,” a 1993 single to promote the Greatest Hits
collection, A Slight Case Of Overbombing. These would be the last releases
for the band. The Sisters Of Mercy stopped recording in 1994, when they
went on strike against East-West, accusing them of witholding royalties
and incompetence, although Eldritch would release more work for the label
under another name.
Gary Marx left The Sisters of Mercy during the tour in support of the album,
because he was no longer able to work with Andrew Eldritch. The group completed
the tour without him, saying “Good Bye” instead of “Good
Night” to their fans at the end of the final show at the Royal Albert
Hall in London on June18th 1995. The video Wake is a recording of this show.
Although videos were made for “Black Planet,” “Body And
Soul,” “Walk Away” and “No Time To Cry,” none
of these have been released to date.
After the Royal Albert Hall Show, Eldritch moved to Germany. Hussey and
Adams decided to form their own group, The Sisterhood, playing songs including
two, “Dance On Glass” and “Garden Of Delight,” which
originally written by Hussey for The Sisters Of Mercy and recorded with
Eldritch’s vocals, but then vetoed by him and never released. Eldritch
opposed the name Hussy and Adam’s had chosen because it was too similar
to The Sisters Of Mercy which hadcome to refer to their fan community as
“The Sisterhood.’ He stopped them from using it by releasing
his own single, “Giving Ground” as The Sisterhood, followed
by an album, “The GIft,” and reportedly grabbing a $25,000 advance
from WEA available to the first former member of The Sisters Of Mercy to
release any recorded output. The number 2-5-0-0-0 opens the Gift song “Jihad,”
which Eldritch has said is a thank you to the former Sisters for their generous
financial contribution. Some have speculated that the whole episode was
a PR stunt to promote Hussey and Adams new band, which they ended up calling,
The Mission.
Time Warner/WEA/East West finally let them go in 1997 after the label agreed
to accept the SSV album from Eldritch as fulfillment of the Sisters of Mercy’s
remaining two-album contractual obligation. SSV, said to be an acronym for
“Screw Shareholder Value,” or, by its full name, ssv-aotwmodaacotiatw,
for “Screw Shareholder Value, Another Opportunity to Waste Money on
Drugs and Ammunion Courtesy of the Idiots At Time Warner.” Time Warner
agreed to accept the album before hearing it. It is simply Eldritch almost
mumbling over electronic music with no drums. It was never released.
The Sisters of Mercy do not have a recording contract and refuse to release
new material independently. Unconfirmed rumors circulate that Eldritch starts
contract negotiations at $3 Million USD for 3 albums. Although there has
been no recent talk of it by Eldritch for years, fans talk of an upcoming
fourth release by the band, currently being recorded. Possibly because of
this years old statement on the official Sisters of Mercy website, which
has remained virtually unchanged since it was posted: “Now that the
moribund relationship with East West records is officially over, it seemed
to reasonable to bang out a few singles — independently — while
we’re putting an album together, (which usually takes a long time),
and getting someone to put it out with a bit of muscle (which usually takes
even longer). This series of independent singles was due to start with a
stronking (of course) version of “Summer.” The music to “Summer”
was written by Adam Pearson, the lyrics by Andrew Eldritch. It’s very
pretty and probably very cruel. It goes like a freight train painted in
the shiniest yellows and blues. We planned to add another version of it
(Adam supplying remix and Kleenex) and a third track which should have been
one of the other new songs, we didn’t decide which one. It might have
been something you’ve heard us play live, it might not. With one thing
and another, this was not to be. Sorry, we are working on an album, inter
alia, but the matter of single releases is currently on hold.”
Side-Line Music Magazine announced in October 2006 that the band was in
talks with Universal subsidiary W14 Music. In 2006 WEA International reissued
First Last and Always (1985), Floodland (1987) and Vision Thing (1990),
all with bonus tracks.
Eldritch explains that the band doesn’t release studio albums more
often,”because we do not believe in putting out albums with only two
good songs on it.” and “because at the moment, the record industry
is a complete self-destuctive shambles anyway.”
Although the band has had 11 guitar players, Eldritch denies claims that
he is impossible to work with. He has said, “I’m demanding,
but I don’t think I’m unreasonably demanding. I don’t
think I’m hard to work with because my demands are clear and reasonable.
I think they’re reasonable. They’re certainly clear,”
adding that he has “worked with far fewer guitarists than Elvis or
Sinatra did, and I”ve been in the Sisters for quite a while. Nobody
says you have to get married to your guitarists. Western marriages, by the
way, are increasingly shorter than the life of a Sisters guitarist.”
The band reunited in 2006 to open for the Sex Pistols at several shows.
In spite of having no new recorded material to promote, Eldritch has revived
the band for short tours every year since 1996, except 2004. The band plays
unreleased songs, obscure B-Sides and reworked old classics.
The Sisters Of Mercy are regarded by many as the ultimate in goth. Specifically
by the British Press, who not only frequently accuse them of being Goth,
but also of plagarizing The Joy Division. Eldritch rejects the title. The
band even has stipulations about it in their contract riders. In the reprint
of a 1997 Virgin.net interview with Alexa Williams on the Sisters website,
the word is spelled g*** throughout, like a dirty word. “I’m
not interested in what g***s think,” Eldritch told her. “I recently
declined the opportunity to do guest vocals on a single for somebody because
the lyrics were appalling — and very silly. I thought, if I sang that
rubbish, people would accuse me of being a g***!”
“The Sisters are occupied by politics and philosophy but we lack a
spiritual agenda,” he said. “Apart from the fact that we’re
not very spiritually-minded and only ever use the idioms ironically (when
we use them at all), it’s disappointing that so many people have,
in all seriousness, adopted just one of our many one-week-of-stupid-clothes
benders. Anyway, I’m constantly confronted by representatives of popular
culture who are far more G*** than we, yet I have only to wear black socks
to be sitmatised as a demon overlord.”
“If the songs are too difficult for you to concentrate on,”
Eldritch writes in the band’s FAQ, ”or you’re simply so
sad that you have to draw substantive conclusions from what we wear, you
should at least ignore those morons who need to discuss the kind of capes
we wear. Because we’ve never worn any.The best thing would be to ignore
us as well. Go find a band which is all about clothing. There are plenty
of them.”
Eldritch has said that he despises being asked by journalists how he chose
the band’s name, and that he despises journalists, but has said that
it came partly from a Leonard Cohen song with the line, “The Sisters
of Mercy, they are not departed or gone.” “There are an order
of nuns called The Sisters of Mercy, and signifcantly, the name is a popular
reference to prostitutes,” Eldritch explains, “Leonard Cohen’s
song can be heard in the background of a scene from the film McCage and
Mrs. Miller’ in which Julie Christie leads her bedraggled troupe of
whores up the muddy hill which is the main street of a shanty town in the
wild west.” He says he used the name for a rock and roll band bacause
“dogma and prostitution go hand and hand in rock and roll.”
According to Eldritch, “People should think of the Sisters with awe.
They should think of the Sisters with a savage smile in the higher cortex,
and a certain moistness in the lower gusset.”
In this election year, it is also interesting to note his strong opinons
on American Politics. Eldritch clains to have a hate-hate relationship with
the US Republican party, caused by the Bush dynasty, Christian Fundamentalists
and the military-industrial complex. In a 2002 interview with Glasperlenspiel,
Eldritch elaborated: “I didn’t ...foretell the nonsense that
started in the banana republic of Florida and ended up in the Supreme Court.
I thought Bush was going to win it, but I think Gore did win it, or probably
would have, which is much the same thing as winning, when your opponents
prevent a count/recount. ...The tide is so strong that Gore was persuaded
to back off when he was obviously being f***ed over by a chain of Republican
muppets from the Floridian Secretary Of State to Bush’s brother in
the gubernatorial mansion to the Supreme Court. At any given time, two million
Americans are in jail, and only two states will let them vote while they’re
there. America puts more of its people in prison than any other country
in the world, apart from Rwanda. I’m not going to get into the many
iniquities of America’s mass-incarceration policy right now, but it’s
worth noting that the slope of the pitch is increased by the so-called War
On Drugs, which has systematically contravened the Universal Declaration
On Human Rights and the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments
to the American Constitution in its drive to ensure that one third of all
black American men will spend some of their life in prison. And a lot of
Hispanics. (And more than a few white people.) In a quarter of American
states (including Florida), nobody with a felony conviction is ever allowed
to vote again. Other US states make it possible, but difficult, to regain
the right to vote after a felony conviction. In Florida, one third of the
black male population already cannot vote. Half a million people are disenfranchised
in this way in Florida alone. Bush “won” the American election
by “winning” Florida by 537 votes. Go figure.
... If the elections on a Caribbean island had been run like those in Florida,
the Republicans would probably be sending the marines in to restore democracy,
i.e. a thug/dealer/fascist/puppet more to their liking. In Florida, they
didn’t have to, having already engineered the place to their liking.
