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Who's the most influential Irish act ever?
Van Morrison? U2? Thin Lizzy?
For many, it's a less mainstream act, one that brought a totally new sound
to pop music.
KEVIN SHIELDS
Guitar, vocals, sampler
Kevin: Everyone used to form groups in late 78/79, but they wouldn't actually buy instruments, but they just put on their jacket. Everyone was doing it and it seemed like it was all the cool people who would form these groups and I actually was asked to be in an actual group. What all the nerds and weirdoes actually do, as opposed to the cool people who have the leather jackets and all that. So, some twelve year old kid asked me to play guitar in his group and I sort of got a guitar a few months later and we started rehearsing every Sunday. This was about 1980.
Kevin was in a variety of bands before eventually forming My Bloody Valentine in 1984.
Kevin: Our singer lived in Finglas, and Gavin Friday lived in Finglas, and I used to often walk by him. So, one day I just got the courage to say 'Look we're in a group and have got any advice?' and he just said 'Get out of Dublin'. That's what he said. At the time, the Virgin Prunes used to do these mini-tours of Europe - Holland and Germany and stuff. So he just gave us a whole list of address of people to phone. And one person rang back and offered us a gig in Tilberg in Holland. So we just emigrated with one gig. We arrived in Tilberg and asked the guy is there anywhere we can stay, 'cause we left the country forever. The guy freaked out 'cause he felt all of a sudden responsible and worried. And we just sort of meandered around Europe for about eight months and then we kind of went to London.
Over the next 4 years, My Bloody Valentine released several EP's but made little impact. However, they did enough to attract the attention of Creation Records who signed them in 1988. 'Isn't Anything', their first album, was a new direction for the band. It was unlike anything heard before.
Kevin: People perceived it as studio trickery or something 'cause in their head they could just hear this twisted music, but it was just the guitar. I just tuned the two strings together and used the Tremolo arm. So it's very simple, very straight-forward kind of stuff. We kind of suddenly got kind of popular and there was a lot of expectation. So we went into the studio in September '89 to make the new album, that we were going to make in eight weeks. And everything went horribly wrong. We kind of lost the plot majorly really. But in the meantime I had this vision, or whatever you want to call it, like I knew what I wanted to do. We worked very slowly, it wasn't like being a perfectionist, as in doing things over and over again. We just did everything very slow, a few hours a day kind of thing. Very unhealthy and Creation were always nearly bankrupt and our relationship with the record was getting more and more like that {Kevin makes a Y shape with his two hands]. So that was it really. We kind of lost it but they kept us going by not pulling the plug, and in the end they got a record out of it.
'Loveless' was released in November 1991 after over 2 years in the studio. It received rave reviews virtually everywhere.
Kevin: At the time, it was in an era were journalists were trying to out do themselves with flowery writing and stuff, so we were pretty much the main focus of that kind of attitude. I genuinely rarely understood more than a third of what people were trying to say about the record.
'Loveless' is still name-checked as a favourite album my many musicians and regularly appears in 'Best Album' polls.
Kevin: In my head it exists as a thing that in a way I'm now distant from. I kind of respect it. I think on another level it feels like a half-formed version of something that could of happened that would of been a lot bigger. It's like if you did something when you're completely pissed or something, and it was actually quite a good thing. So you kind of know how you did it, 'cause you kind of half-remember, but you really are never going to be there again.
In recent years, band members have been working on separate projects. 7 years after 'Loveless', fans still await the next My Bloody Valentine album. Watch this week's No Disco on N2 for more music by M.B.V.