FEAR & LOATHING (AND STALE, WARM LAGER) When Eldritch heard them he flipped his lid and signed them to Merciful Release. When The Stud Brothers met them their blood kinda froze. What was it with JAMES RAY AND THE PERFORMANCE that makes even our bravest beware? JAMES Ray stands propped against a cigarette machine, staring coldly at some young skinheads playing pool. We’d gone to the Riverside, a nightclub in the heart of Newcastle. It’s a dark, stark warehouse that entertains the city’s punks and lowlife. To an outsider it might feel threatening but James is no outsider, he’s lived in this big whore of a town all his life and has visited the Riverside on numerous occasions. He treats both with the icy contempt that could only have been born from over-familiarity. He turns towards us, fixing us with the malice he feels for all the filth, drunks and smackies. “I wish I knew who’d bought our record in Newcastle . . .” His companion Karl nods, smiling. “So I could tell them to fuck off.” It’s suddenly grown very silent in the antagonistic noise of crowd and music. James Ray manages to inspire the most awful of feelings, unease. Karl looks up from a flat pint of lager. “You know that fiver you subbed me,” he grins. James acknowledges him with a glance. “I’ve lost it,” Karl says with a baffling pride. “Fucking prat!” Several hours earlier, sitting in a tiny Fiat parked somewhere outside town, we had watched both of them stroll across the bald, domed moors of the North East to have their pictures taken. The moors suit James more than the city. He smiles more on the moors. During the day he works on a nature reserve. “It’s the only thing I enjoy.” It’s easy to believe because among the bustle and bullshit, he seems to feel alienated. If he were a character in a film, it’s certain he’d be a Geordie Travis Bickle, washing the scum off the streets. If James Ray had his way a real rain would come. He’s a fierce contrast to Karl whose affable demeanour, with a penchant for misdemeanour, makes him a sort of New Age Stan Laural. Karl giggles constantly, watches hardcore pornography, listens to Chrome and Suicide and attempts, at any opportunity, to pick up young spiker-tops that hang around the clubs and shopping centres of the city. If their single, “Mexico Sundown Blues”, had not been such a democratic collaboration, it might be easy to dismiss him as a youthful session musician. But his warmth turns James’ introspection inside out and his quiet violence into high-velocity dance. It’s worth wondering whether their arrogance was surprised when, over a year ago, they received a postcard from a certain Andrew Eldritch expressing excitement and interest over a cassette recorded on a Portastudio and sent to Merciful Release some weeks earlier. “I was surprised it wasn’t sooner,” says James. “I thought he wasn’t worth his salt.” One track in particular captivated Mr Eldritch, “Edi Sedgewick”. Its black thumping repetition and bottomless production told the pitiful story of a 10-year-old hopelessly in love with the photograph of a girl that was soon to die. It’s a chill wind sweeping over the lonely heart of James Ray. The song now appears as the B-side of the current single but James, other than admitting its autobiographical elements, is reticent about past loves. “Love of what?” Girls . . . boys . . . love of girls. “I love ‘em and leave ‘em. Karl loves ‘em and keeps ‘em for years.” He pauses. “Actually I love ‘em and they leave me,” he adds with almost undetectable humour. If, when he speaks, this man betrays almost no emotion, when he sings he winds a savage, passionate croon. This is obviously the reason why Merciful Release should have picked him to lend his gift to The Sisterhood single, “Giving Ground”, a brilliant, unpardonably miserable, uncompromising attack on compromise, James Ray, without the balancing jocularity of Karl, would make Leonard Cohen sound like Paul Daniels. Consequently “Giving Ground” is very funny, it’s the song The Sisters Of Mercy never dared to sing. Driving back from the moors, we stop off for a drink. Friday is payday in Newcastle and at 5.30 the pub is already beginning to fill. James pushes a 50 into a fruit machine with the look of a man resigned to losing it. He occasionally glances left and right, assessing the young men and women that down pints of Scotch bitter as if it were going out of fashion. He joins us at our table where Karl is discussing the possibilities of strychnine and angel dust. Up till now, James has hardly spoken, he is possessed of the ability to look continuously disdainful and disinterested, but now he seems unable to contain a dangerously lurid obsession that is to become ever more apparent as the evening wears on. “Imagine if you decided ‘This is it, no tomorrow’. Hoist some of that stuff down you, get a shotgun, loads of cartridges, go straight out and blam, blam, blam.” Doesn’t everyone think like that sometimes? “I think like that all the time. I mean, get a shotgun, 50 cartridges, pinch a car. Just think how many people you could kill before anyone stops you.” Wouldn’t it be more gratifying to load a machine-gun and spray a supermarket or, better still, a massive gang of liggers? “Anybody, anybody . . .” he says, nodding voraciously, mistaking our fantasies for his ness. “It doesn’t matter, it’s better with a roomful of people you know you hate.” Who do you hate, specifically? “Just about everybody . . .” Looking back, it no longer seems strange that such a young man should be fuelled and driven by this acidic cocktail of love poisoned by loathing. “I’d love to sit and actually put a shotgun in somebody’s mouth and just sit there with them and talk to them. They can’t answer back. You just say why you’re doing this to them, why it’s them. Then, once you’ve finished, you say . . . ‘Goodbye’.” Later, in the Riverside, he watches girls dancing, occasionally shaking his head, wilfully unforthcoming. Then, later still, in a Mecca Ballroom, as we listened to the appalling Bon Jovi single and Karl chatted to two punkettes that ended up sleeping on the floor of the squat where we spent the night, we realised James hated everybody. There would seem to be a certain amount of antagonism between you and Newcastle, one of us forwarded tentatively. He grinned: “I just don’t like the people in it.” Then more of our fantasies: what would you do James, if you had a million pounds? “Buy some cigarettes.” And you Karl? “Probably lose it.” he said with resignation. There is no straightforward answer why Karl and James should have come together as musicians. If there is a core to be discovered then 24 hours in their company was not enough. Both of them were hospitable and, at times, ridiculously generous which, because of their contrasting personalities and James’ aloofness and unspoken convictions, made out experiences all the more unnerving. Since meeting them their single has hardly left our turntable: where, before, the interview was intended to offer a more poignant explanation of the sound now we hope against hope that their music may offer some clue to their character. But two confounding and clashing enigmas do not make for an answer and, eventually, it’s quite unnecessary to explain why someone fascinates you or why a pop record should obsess you. Surely the feelings are enough. Cramped and tired, we awoke the next morning with a collage of images: flashing lights, dirty jokes, a curry, silver earrings and peroxide hair bounding under strobes, walking a cobbled dead-end street, seven of us in a room, Karl’s two girls reading comics out loud, the story of an adder-bite, the stale smell of comatose bodies and the eerie “Edie Sedgewick” thumping through the halls of a Newcastle squat. Opening sticky eyes we saw, sitting in an armchair before a huge Victorian fireplace, now empty, James Ray, holding court - Silently. JAMES RAY AND THE PERFORMANCE DATE : 3 May 1986 DEPART : WAKEFIELD TIME : 9.30 HOURS DESTINATION : NEWCASTLE ARRIVED : 12.00 MISSION : INTERVIEW JAMES RAY (VOCALS ON SISTERHOOD PROJECT) CONTACTS : MIDDLE MAN, NAME AND DESC- RIPTION UNKNOWN. GO INTO THE THIRD TELEPHONE BOX THAT YOU PASS ON A69 (NEWCASTLE BOUND) AND LOOK UNDER SMITH IN THE DIRECTORY. A PHONE NUMBER WILL BE FOUND WRITTEN IN INVISIBLE INK. RING THE NUMBER AND ASK FOR ‘ERIC’. BEWARE ‘ERIC’ IS AN ARROGANT TWAT. The number is rung and the voice with a geordie accent answers the phone : "Hello". "Hello, is Eric in please?", "Yes, just a minute". Another geordie accent : "Hello", "Hello, is that Eric?", "Yes", "I'm from 'Viper' a fanzine based in Wakefield and we would like to interview you about your band 'James Ray and the Performance' and the record that you did the vocals on for 'The Sisterhood'. "Ah, do you know where the 'Barley Mow' is on Quayside?", "No, but I'm sure we can find it." "Right, I'll be there at 7.00 pm." "Cheers, see you later then." After putting the phone down I wondered how we would recognise the elusive Eric, and so another phone call back to the 'middle man', who informed us that Eric is usually clad in leathers, blonde hair and pissed out of his head. Should be easy for us then, there can't be many pissheads in Newcastle at 7 pm, especially when Newcastle Utd have been playing their last game of the season away from Leicester City. We arrive at the 'Barley Mow' (made famous by Viz comic) at the appointed time, order the drinks and have a look around the three rooms for the man himself. Many a blonde haired leather trousered male was to be seen but none pissed and none looking a likely rock 'n' roll cand- idate. We were just beginning to think that it was all a set up by our geordie friends when in walked a pair of brightly shining cowboy boots, leather trousers and a suede jacket, worn by a lad looking fain- tly like Max Headroom but definately not pissed up. He strolled up to the bar, ordered his pint and found a free table- space invader to sit behind. After a few minutes of debate we decided that he must be our final contact so we swooped on our suspect. "Hello, are you Eric?" "Yeah" he answered after a few seconds of deliberation. "We're from the Fanzine." He stayed cool, calm and collected, "Fine, won't you sit down." The tape recorder was turned on, and the interview, there on, went exactly like this : V - Have you given any interviews before this? E - No, well just one but it, er, went a bit wrong. I was supposed to meet him somewhere but I'd been drinking all day and when he turned up he started asking me these stupid ques- tions, and then he started getting stroppy with us and we ended up drag- ging him outside. I think that might have got us our bad reputation. V - Is this your local? E - No, it's just the nearest pub to where I've got to meet someone later on. V - Is the 'Performance' bit in your name anything to do with the film starring Mick Jagger? E - We actually got it from the first time we played just as 'James Ray'. When we were leaving these lads were standing at the door saying "What a fucking performance that was." - And it just stuck. V - How many members are there in James Ray and the Performance? E - There's two now. The other member is Carl, or Boris, or Bevan, he's got various names. He drinks lots of beer playing keyboards and percussions, I play guitar, bagpipes and sing. V - How long have you been together? E - About a year and a half. V - Were you in any other bands before James Ray? E - I just used to play by myself. I was in other bands b efore that but none worth speaking of. Carl was in a band before he left school, but the only highlight of that was they supported The Fall. V - Have you only played gigs in New- castle? E - No, we played our first gig at Finchley road in London, our others have all been in Newcastle. V - How many gigs have you done? E - Only four but they're very spectac- ular. The last time we played we supported The Nightingales, we had to leave rather sharpish because they had all their instruments set out on stage and they happened to leave the drum kit a little bit too close to us so we smashed it up. We've tamed down quite a bit since then although I don't think we will ever play live again. I hope not anyway. V - Would you call yourself a local band seeing as until The Sisterhood single and the odd gig in London no-one had heard of you outside Newcastle? E - Yes, I suppose we are a local band in that we very rarely play outside Newcastle but we don't think of our- selves as a local band because we don't sound like anyone else up here. All the bands here want to sound like The Cult, there's alot of good bands in Newcastle but no original ones. V - Have you had any singles released as James Ray and the Performance? E - No, our first is coming out in about three weeks time called 'Mexican Sundown Blues' which will be out on Merciful Release with Eldritch producing it. It's nine and a half minutes long, like a mega-single, it's got loads of per- cussion and bagpipes. It's nothing like you've heard before, it's chaotic, it's got two completely different moods. It's nothing like The Sisterhood single, the only thing that the two singles have in common is that 'The Doktor' features on them both. It started out to be three and a half minutes long but it ended up nine and a half because it was just so good we didn't want to stop. By the way it's not destined for the top five of the indie charts, it's aimed for the national charts. It's a real bouncy record but at the same time you can sit down and listen to it at home. It's not just a barage of noise. V - Do you believe that Merciful Release will back the single enough to get it into the national charts? E - Yeah, they're right behind us like, because Andy says it's the best thing he's ever heard. V - Who would you say were influences in your music? E - I don't know, I just take things out of life and put them together. I don't think you could listen to the record and say who it sounds like, it's just a sound. V - Have you got any rock 'n' roll heroes? E - Rock 'n' roll heroes, yeah, Andrew Eldritch, he's the only rock 'n' roll hero. V - What type of audience are you aiming for? E - Anybody who wants to listen to us. I can't see us appealing to any one particular audience. I mean I hope it doesn't only appeal the Sisters of Mercy fans, that would be a real downer. V - How did you come to do the vocals on The Sisterhood single 'Giving Ground'? E - Well I sent Andrew a tape of our stuff and one day he phoned me and asked if we'd go down and see him about recor- ding one of our own songs and when I was in the studio with him he asked me if I wanted to do the single with him. I liked it because it was completely removed from The Sisters of Mercy. I wouldn't have enjoyed singing on it if it had sounded like them. V - Who wrote the song? E - Andrew Eldritch wrote it. I wouldn't write something like that. Well if I did I wouldn't play it to anybody. I'd just play it at home. It was all done rather quickly cos he asked me to do it when I was in the studio with him and we did it in a day. I think it's quite good in that respect although I don't like the singing much. V - How did you find working with Eldritch? E - Er, different, very different, he works completely different to the way I work, but it was good, really interesting. V - Had you met Andy before he rang you up? E - I'd met him once before at the London Uni gig when they played there in '83. He was worse than when he's on stage. A complete and utter bastard. No, really he's a good laugh. There's only one problem with Andy and that's that he doesn't drink. He kept us working on New Years Eve in the studio at six 'o clock in the morning because he doesn't drink, but it was worth it I suppose. V - Have you anything planned to follow up The Sisterhood single? E - They've got another single coming out and probably an album but I don't know if I'll be singing on it. V - Do you get down to Leeds much? E - I've only been once or twice. I went to somewhere near the University. It was really funny 'cos somebody pointed out to Wayne and Craig where we were standing and we kept getting stared at over the tables. And I've been to the Warehouse, I couldn't believe that, I was expecting it to be really massive and it turns out to be just like any pub or wine bar in Newcastle. I've also been to the Queens Hall a couple of times, that's the fucking pits. V - What did you do when you left school? E - Er, I did a few things that I shoul- dn't have done, eventually I went to college, left, got a job in London, got the sack so I stayed in London. Then I moved back up here and tried to get a band together but it didn't work out too well so I went back down to London. V - Do you enjoy living in Newcastle? E - I don't live in Newcastle, I live where the women wear leashes and the men drink beer. V - Do you listen to much music or get to see many bands? E - Well I keep having to seel all my records. I recently had to sell off all of my Kiss collection - that was a joke. I suppose my collection is as varied as other peoples. I don't go to many gigs now, I get bored standing watching. I've been to so many it gets boring. V - Do you go to watch Newcastle United? E - Well I sometimes go to the match if I get pissed, you get in free at half-time you see. I used to go when Malcolm MacDonald played. I haven't really got the time or money to go to the match anymore. V - Are you a Sisters of Mercy Fan? E - Yes I am they were the first band that I could go see and just stand and laugh at and still enjoy it at the same time. V - Do you have a job? E - I only work when I want something. If I need something I'll go out and get a job. V - Do you think there'll be a James Ray and the Performance album out? E - Yeah, then another and nother, then I will retire to Peru or something.