The Vault: An Exploration of the Gothic

Part 3 – 1976, The Big Bang

(Author’s note: Apologies to all the readers of “The Vault” who wrote in wondering when the next chapter was coming. I promise I have not abandoned this series, and have been grateful for all the suggestions and critiques of the previous posts, which can be read here and here. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome at mpatterson.column@gmail.com)

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October, 1975. A Roxy Music concert in London, England. Budding bassist Steven Severin meets a striking young woman named Siouxsie Sioux. “She had some mad outfit that she had hired for the night and I had dyed white hair and a 1950s Lurex jacket,” Severin later recalled. “It was a match made in heaven.”

A few months later, in Sussex, classmates from St. Wilfrid’s Comprehensive School form a band. They call themselves Malice, and feature on guitar a young man named Robert Smith. In January, 1976, they begin rehearsing in a rented church hall on Thursday nights, cutting their teeth on David Bowie tunes; in April they are joined by guitarist Porl Thompson. Later that year they rename themselves Easy Cure before settling, eventually, on just the Cure.

Meanwhile, by February Severin and Siouxsie had joined a group of Sex Pistols acolytes dubbed the Bromley Contingent. “The Sex Pistols inspired us all,” Severin has been quoted as remembering. On the High Holy Day of September 20, 1976, Siouxsie and Severin form an ad hoc band – soon to be called the Banshees – and open for the Sex Pistols at a punk festival “We made all this noise while Siouxsie recited the Lord’s Prayer. It was horrible,” remembered Severin. Maybe. But a lot of people thought it was something else, as well.

Earlier that summer the Sex Pistols had stormed the midlands and played a gig up at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. In attendance were two twenty-year-olds, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. The next day, Hook begged his mother for the 35 pounds to buy his first bass guitar.

Sumner and Hook, friends since age 11, agreed there was only one thing to do in light of the Pistol’s incandescent performance – start a band. Summer later recalled that the Pistol’s “destroyed the myth of being a pop star, of a musician being some kind of god that you had to worship.” They could do it, too, and they would: Joined by singer Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris, they called themselves first Warsaw (after “Warszawa,” a dense dirge co-written by David Bowie and Brian Eno) and, finally, Joy Division.

The Cure, Joy Division, and Siouxsie & The Banshees all began their ascent in 1976. These three bands would become the nucleus of the gestating Goth movement, though both Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux would later work mightily to disassociate themselves from the monster they had helped to create (Joy Division, whose music first inspired the tag “Gothic,” did not survive long enough to feel the confining bonds of the label).

And in a sense, they were right to do so; none of these bands can be classified as “only” or “purely” Goth. The Cure and the Banshees, after all, went on to achieve significant chart success, appealing to a wide popular audience in decade-spanning careers (the Cure’s latest album as of this writing, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, is indeed their best work in ages).

And yet, and yet. Whether they like it or not, whether they realize it or not, without these three bands, no Goth, no way. All of the elements are there in the early works of these titans: The lyrical tendency toward morbidity; the focus on syncopated and/or primitive rhythms; the elevation of the bass to principle melody maker; the expansion of the guitar palette to include sharp, icy, and dissonant tones.

The early singles of these bands are transitional species – more than punk, not yet Goth. It is a tale of becoming. Inspired by the Pistols, grateful that they had torn down the bloated edifice that rock had become, these three bands were not content merely to take part in the creative destruction. They wanted to build something in its stead, something grand and grotesque, something that would connect the listener to the eternal mysteries: love and life, beauty and death. According to Severin: “We were trying to create music that you could get lost in, an intensity of sound that was hypnotic, ritualistic.” The Lord’s Prayer was a fitting first performance – Goth would make music sacred again, and embrace those emotions discarded by punk: longing and loss, loneliness and lust, dread and despair.

That Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith would distance themselves from Goth is especially ironic, since it was those two above all who set the style template for untold legions of Goths: Siouxsie with her skin-tight black PVC and gorgeous black gowns, her porcelain face framed by Medusa-like black hair; Smith (who would join the Banshees for a short time on guitar) with his teased and tentacled black hair and smeared lipstick.

Here, as in so much else, Joy Division stood apart. No Gothic dress for these boys – posters from the time depict them in white shirts and ties. Nice, normal English lads, the attire said. This was a brilliant deception, for their music was brutally, inescapably stark and chilling. In fact, when it comes to the exploration of extreme mental and spiritual states, no band, Goth or not, before or since, has ever come close.

Joy Division is in fact one of the most important bands of all time, because it is one of the most unique bands of all time. Their story is a sad and sombre one, and deserves telling in the full.

Next Time: Joy Division

Recommended Listening:

1) Warsaw – Joy Division

2) 10:15 Saturday Night – The Cure

2) Carcass – Siouxsie & The Banshees

3) Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure

4) The Leaders of Men – Joy Division

5) Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie & The Banshees

6) Charlotte Sometimes – The Cure

7) No Love Lost – Joy Division

Jigsaw Feeling – Siouxsie & The Banshees

9) Failures – Joy Division

10) Warszawa – David Bowie

Look for the entire iMix of “The Vault: An Exploration of the Gothic – Part 3″ in iTunes