The Jesus & Mary Chain could reform for new material and further live shows, Jim Reid has argued.
The Jesus & Mary Chain have rarely been so relevant. The East Kilbride noise terrorists took The Velvet Underground’s love of feedback and ran with it, adding some honey sweet melodies in the process.
Inspiring a new generation of fuzzed up indie pop, the band are being name dropped left, right and centre. A recent re-issue project ignited interest in the group’s back catalogue, with some fans left longing for a full Jesus & Mary Chain re-union.
Reforming for a handful of shows in 2008, the band have only played together once since then – at the funeral of Earl Brutus lynchpin Nick Sanderson.
Speaking to The Quietus, Jim Reid explained that he could envisage further activity in the future. “The Mary Chain will do more stuff whether that will be records or whether that will be tours,” he said. “We still have a few fences to climb before that happens.”
Continuing, the songwriter said: “The idea of doing another Mary Chain album is always around, but it’s sort of difficult with me and my brother; we still have a difficult relationship. And he lives in Los Angeles and I live in the South West of England. So it’s kind of difficult to get it together.”
“We will probably do another record at some point and we do talk about tours and stuff like that. It’s just so difficult to agree with each other. I mean I’m not saying it’s all his fault but we have problems basically.”
Expanding on the nature of the relationship with his brother, Jim Reid stated “it’s better than it was”. The pair endured a truculent spell in the late 90s, with an onstage fight leading to the disintegration of The Jesus & Mary Chain.
“We went through a year or two where we didn’t actually speak to each other when the band was breaking up in 1998. So it can’t be worse than that. It’s not ideal but it’s not terrible. We can talk now whereas at one point we couldn’t even do that.”
The re-issued versions of The Jesus & Mary Chain’s back catalogue are out now.
