The Slow Decline of Andrew Eldritch

Corvina

Seriously, what happened to him?

Obā-san

oldness, fatness

Obā-san

also "the beard of acquiescing to baldness" which is never a good look

Corvina

The weird thing is, his interviews implied that a lot of the changes were self-inflicted in order to dissociate himself with the goth scene, which pretty much his entire fandom belongs to. This has the effect of only furthering said associations as he's considered to be in denial for the past 20 years.

(For example, he's not bald but shaven)

Corvina

Also, naney: Bald + beard can work, just so long as you wear it Lenin style or Patrick Stewart style (or Patrick-Stewart-as-Lenin style), not Walter White style

Obā-san

he really needs to grow his hair back

like not even long or anything but jeez man

Corvina

Agreed

Morven

Hint to Andrew Harvey Taylor: if you don't want a Goth fanbase, start a new band and use your real name, not your pretentious Gothy name.

Morven

But damn, he was one hot motherfucker when he was younger.  But that voice ... 

Morven

Seriously, all I'd need for permanent satisfaction is a man with the voice of young Andy.  He wouldn't even have to put out.  Just the voice.

Corvina

Morven said:

Seriously, all I'd need for permanent satisfaction is a man with the voice of young Andy.  He wouldn't even have to put out.  Just the voice.

Yeah, I wish I had that voice. The closest I get is imitating it in my tenor pitch and then using Audacity to lower it down to a bass-baritone. Then again, I might still get deeper, I'm not yet 20.

Section42L

Morven said:

Hint to Andrew Harvey Taylor: if you don't want a Goth fanbase, start a new band and use your real name, not your pretentious Gothy name.

It would help for him to actually record new material that reflects his post-Goth attitudes, too.

Corvina

Section42L: He tried, it was called Vision Thing.

Corvina

Top 10 Sisters of Mercy Songs:
10. Temple of Love

9. Black Planet

8. Marian (Version)

7. A Rock and a Hard Place

6. No Time to Cry

5. This Corrosion

4. Dominion/Mother Russia

3. Colours

2. Driven Like the Snow

1. Lucretia My Reflection

Morven

Corvidium: I think he would have been long-term happier to sever the connection entirely and not try to take an existing stage name / "band" name in a different direction.  One keeps the name if one wants to keep the fanbase. 

But I think part of the issue is, and has always been, that Andy loves to hate his fans.  And he'd rather have fans that he hates than be a nobody.  Look back to the lyrics of "Floorshow" to see how far back his contempt for his audience goes.  But he has a psychological need for them.

Imipolex G

I hear the roar of the big machine

Corvina

Imipolex G said:

I hear the roar of the big machine

Two worlds and in between

Corvina

Driven Like the Snow has to be one of the best songs around. The bassline, the haunting guitar line, the vocals. The sound is one which reminds me of the woods I call home

Morven

While This Corrosion isn't well understood by the audience, I just have to admire the sheer bitterness and bitchiness of it.  It's a breakup song.  Between Andy and Wayne Hussey who quit and formed The Mission.  It's also written as a mockery of Wayne's lyrics and their dramatic triteness, but every line has a dagger in it.

Corvina

Morven said:

While This Corrosion isn't well understood by the audience, I just have to admire the sheer bitterness and bitchiness of it.  It's a breakup song.  Between Andy and Wayne Hussey who quit and formed The Mission.  It's also written as a mockery of Wayne's lyrics and their dramatic triteness, but every line has a dagger in it.

I really like that it sounds like meaningless Wayne Hussey lyrics (which it's meant to mock), but every line has a double meaning (e.g. "On the loan and on the level" -> Hussey's "loan" of the Sisters' name, comparison of the Mission to Ozymandias's colossal wreck).

Given how I recently severed connection with a poisonous friend, I also really like Eldritch's bitter anti-Mission songs.

According to Eldritch, The Mission didn't piece together the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0" on Gift (an under-appreciated and in retrospect prescient album) for two months.

Morven

I've met Wayne, and at least the 2000s older, chilled-out, California-living, married Wayne doesn't seem like a bad guy or anything.  I think it's more that their personalities clashed like a bad marriage and they were all taking way too many drugs.

Yeah, Gift by The Sisterhood was very prescient.  There's a lot of things in that album that presaged trends in dark-themed music in the next decade or more.  Some of those tracks are definitely proto-Industrial, for instance.

Corvina

I don't think Wayne is bad. It's just that the bitterness of the lyrics really appealed to a very bitter Corvidium, and they continue to do so to this day. I largely agree with what you're saying.


And holyshit you met Wayne?! How?

Morven

Before one of his SoCal shows.  He lives in Huntington Beach now, y'know.  And looks like a surfer, or did in the mid-2000s.  Some people I know are friends with him (small local gothy scene, and all that) and I was DJing a Goth show on local public radio at the time which helped in terms of getting connections to things ...

As far as The Mission's works, I love some of them despite the cheese and find some of them cringeworthily bad.  Most of God's Own Medicine was actually OK, though much of it were really the Sisters songs that Wayne wrote and got after the divorce (there are demo tapes of Andy singing Garden of Delight, for instance).  And I actually love "Deliverance" and its melodramatic Arthurian-ness.

But yes, I love the bitterness Andy's capable of, and that he manages to give almost every line he writes at least two meanings.  

I was on a Sisters mailing list in the 90s on which there was someone who was either close to Andy or maybe even him, because they knew a frightful lot about behind-the-scenes stuff and predictions that came true and all that.  Lots of deep lyrical analysis.

Obā-san

I always selt like i should have gotten into goth rock at some point but the trajectory of my listening habits never went there for whatever reason

Corvina

Morven said:

I was on a Sisters mailing list in the 90s on which there was someone who was either close to Andy or maybe even him, because they knew a frightful lot about behind-the-scenes stuff and predictions that came true and all that.  Lots of deep lyrical analysis.

Oooh! Do you still have any of them?

Imipolex G

now I wanna listen to Floodland again

I could never get into goth rock but for some reason that album resonates with me

Corvina

....did I just re-awaken a gloom of goths?

If so: good, good......

Imi: Floodland is my all-time favourite album.

Obā-san

i still have my trench coat from high school with the screws i added to the epaulettes i can dust off my copy of VIVIsectVI and my Walkman and relive my rivethead days

Corvina

Now I feel young. I'm just a babybat, really.

Someday I should go in full regalia and post a picture here: ushanka, overcoat, gloves, eyeliner, and all...

Obā-san

keep in mind when I say that I had a walkman this was because I was poor not because I was in high school around the time where people had walkmans (walkmen?)

...ironically enough I look gothier now than I did then on account of my falling under the sway of boris bidjan saberi and the like and having dosh to actually spend on clothes

(I'm 20 for future reference)

Corvina

(18)

thenamelesssamurai

Corvidium said:

According to Eldritch, The Mission didn't piece together the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0" on Gift (an under-appreciated and in retrospect prescient album) for two months.

Not really familiar with The Sisters of Mercy, so I kind of curious what the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0".

naney said:

I always selt like i should have gotten into goth rock at some point but the trajectory of my listening habits never went there for whatever reason

Same here. What little I know about Goth Rock is stuff I either picked up from my sister or from JHM when he introduced me to The Virgin Prunes, which was mostly their early performance art stuff.

Corvina

thenamelesssamurai said:

Corvidium said:

According to Eldritch, The Mission didn't piece together the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0" on Gift (an under-appreciated and in retrospect prescient album) for two months.

Not really familiar with The Sisters of Mercy, so I kind of curious what the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0".

     £25000, the amount The Mission had to pay to The Sisters of Mercy in legal fees

thenamelesssamurai

Corvidium said:

thenamelesssamurai said:

Corvidium said:

According to Eldritch, The Mission didn't piece together the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0" on Gift (an under-appreciated and in retrospect prescient album) for two months.

Not really familiar with The Sisters of Mercy, so I kind of curious what the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0".

     £25000, the amount The Mission had to pay to The Sisters of Mercy in legal fees

Pffffthahaha, that's amazing.

Corvina

thenamelesssamurai said:

Corvidium said:

thenamelesssamurai said:

Corvidium said:

According to Eldritch, The Mission didn't piece together the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0" on Gift (an under-appreciated and in retrospect prescient album) for two months.

Not really familiar with The Sisters of Mercy, so I kind of curious what the meaning of "2", "5", "0", "0", "0".

     £25000, the amount The Mission had to pay to The Sisters of Mercy in legal fees

Pffffthahaha, that's amazing.

I know, right? Eldritch is a master of this sort of thing

Corvina

Corvina

Also

Corvina

Corvidium said:

Top 10 Sisters of Mercy Songs:
10. Temple of Love

9. Black Planet

8. Marian (Version)

7. A Rock and a Hard Place

6. No Time to Cry

5. This Corrosion

4. Dominion/Mother Russia

3. Colours

2. Driven Like the Snow

1. Lucretia My Reflection

In retrospect, Nine While Nine is a much better song than No Time to Cry

Miss Miko Mayonegg

I like goth rock and I used to listen to it a lot maybe.

Corvina

What *are* the Sisters up to these days? In 2014 they went on tour, but there's been no news whatsoever since that tour ended...

Morven

Andy is probably sulking in a German bar.

Corvina

So apparently Andy's been in denial since before Wake