Primal Scream biography

But gearing up for their first proper album release, 1986's Sonic Flower Groove, Gillespie was becoming increasingly frustrated with the band's sound. "There was always something missing, musically or in attitude," says Gillespie. Sonic Flower Groove was released in October 1987, it got to No. 62 in the chart and was critically slammed. Beattie left the group and Gillespie took over the reins, taking the remaining members, Andrew Innes and Robert Young to the South Coast for a rethink.

They soon replaced their Byrds influenced jingle-jangle melodies with roaring, Stooges influenced, amphetamine-charged guitar riffs. The band's first release in nearly two years was a single, Ivy Ivy Ivy in June, 1989, followed by an LP, Primal Scream, in September. The reviews, as with Sonic Flower Groove, were less than complimentary. The NME called it "confused and lacking in cohesion".

It was the acid house revolution of 1989 that saved the band. Gillespie and Alan McGee became fascinated with both the funny white pills and the house music emanating from Ibiza. Former brickie turned DJ Andrew Weatherall, now at the forefront of the UK house scene, was sent a copy of the latest Primal Scream album and was knocked out by it. The relationship would take the band into the most exciting phase of their career: Screamadelica.

"If the first Primal Scream album was acid," says Gillespie, "and the second one was speed, then the third phase was E." Weatherall remixed the Primal Scream track Loaded, turning it into a stoned-funk shuffle, and after massive club hype the band had their first real hit. Loaded charted at No. 16 and almost overnight, Primal Scream had ceased to be, in Gillespie's terms, "a really unfashionable rock band," and became dance rock heroes for a generation. The trio of singles, Loaded, Come Together and Higher Than The Sun defined the era, bringing rave and indie kids together. Out went the guitar bass and drum rock format and in came synths, tablas, drum machines, sitars and gospel singers. The blissed-out, drugged-up Screamadelica album arrived in September 1990 to ecstatic reviews with the NME hailing it as "the most revolutionary music in ages."

"We felt we were really doing something new and special and exciting," says Gillespie.

Inevitably, the follow up album, Give Out But Don't Give Up was perceived as a disappointment by critics. Released in March, 1994 on the back end of a heavy period of drug abuse, it seemed as if, after the magic of Screamadelica, the band had blown it, turning into Rolling Stones copyists. The single Rocks may be one of the best tracks the Stones never recorded but the rest of the album seemed to lack originality. Despite negative reviews, the album became the band's most successful, selling 100,000 copies in three days.

Depressed and tired by touring the band retreated for the next two years. But in 1996 the band gained a new lease of life with the arrival of Stone Roses bassist Mani (Gary Mounfield).

The next album, 1999's Vanishing Point, seemed to reinvigorate the band, becoming the real successor to Screamadelica and a stark comedown to the rave generation of the early 90's. With filmic referenced tracks like Kowalski and If They Move, Kill 'Em and heavy dub effects, the album was full of dark, strung out paranoid grooves. "The songs on Vanishing Point are about life in Britain at the end of the '90s," said Gillespie.

The year 2000 saw the band return with the destructive album XTRMNTR, all post Millennial tension encompassing dark trance, sleaze funk, dub, hip hop and whirling dervish guitar. With tracks such as Kill All Hippies and Swastika Eyes the album was a squealing, disjointed affair. "It's about living in Britain right now, living in the cities, it's claustrophobic; a death culture," explained Gillespie.

2002's Evil Heat album seemed to be an amalgam of Primal Scream's previous incarnations, from the sleazy, electro rock leanings of Miss Lucifer to the industrial clatter of Cyberpunk and the Stones-like riffs of City. It underlined their ability to make vital, contemporary music while at the same time liberally borrowing from both music's history book and their own, idiosyncratic past.

Above all, the album consolidated the band's stance as 21st century rock anti-heros. "It's f**king anarchy, man," says Gillespie. "We do things our way, f**k anybody else."

Discography