PRIMAL SCREAM

PRIMAL SCREAM LED THEIR GENERATION TOWARDS THE NEW ERA OF DANCE BY COMBINING CELEBRATORY BEATS WITH A ROCK STAR SNEER. TACTICAL AND PERFECTLY TIMED, IT SUCCEEDED BRILLIANTLY. BUT THERE WAS ALSO A HEART BEHIND THE HEDONISM…

MARK LINDORES

The late 80s were a bleak and frustrating time for Primal Scream. Their self-titled second LP had been a disappointment; feeling that they lacked direction, Creation boss Alan McGee booked them on a tour of “any shithole that would have them”. Jokingly dubbed the Tear Up The Atlas Tour, the jaunt saw them play tiny venues in far-flung corners of the UK – but, crucially, during the tour the band met DJ Andrew Weatherall.

“I didn’t know much about them, I only knew the odd track,” Andrew recalls. “I’d been asked by Helen Mead, the live editor of the NME, to review one of their gigs, and I thought they were great so I gave them a rave review. We met again a couple of weeks later in Heaven and I got to know them and they asked if I wanted to have a go remixing one of their tracks.”

Although Weatherall was a successful and influential club DJ, he admits that he was daunted at the prospect. “I’d only been in the studio a couple of times and was a bit hesitant at first,” he says. “I knew what I wanted to do with I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have, but I didn’t want to offend them by stripping away the vocal and stuff. So I did a version and thought it was okay, but when I played it for them they looked disappointed and said ‘We wanted it more screwed up than that. Do what you like. Don’t worry about us.’ So I went back and did what became Loaded.”

“I loved what he had done with it,” Bobby told Absolute Radio in 2011. “I was blown away. I’d grown up with the disco extended 12” mixes and I loved dub versions where The Scientist or Errol T or King Tubby would take the vocal reggae track and strip it back, or make it instrumental and add odd noises and samples, and to me that’s what Loaded was. It was a dub version of our song. We wanted Andy to take the track and make it into something he could play during his sets. It was an experiment and I loved the result.”

The following weekend Andrew dropped the track during his set at London’s Subterranea, where it met with a shocked and then rapturous reception. Until now, the band had been known for punky garage rock influenced by The Stooges, New York Dolls and The MC5, but having been introduced by Alan McGee to the pills and thrills associated with a Happy Mondays gig, ecstasy and the acid house scene, Bobby’s musical horizons were expanded.