Brothers William and Jim Reid, the backbone of shoegaze progenitors The Jesus & Mary Chain have announced the publishing of a memoir.
Titled Never Understood: The Story Of The Jesus & Mary Chain, the book is set for release via White Rabbit on August 15 in the UK, and September 3 in the US (via Hachette Books).
According to NME, in the memoir, both William and Jim will delve into the origins of the band, their rise to fame, and the personal battles they faced along the way.
“For five years after they’d swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents’ East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister,” reads a description.
“They knew they couldn’t play in the same band because they’d argue too much, so they’d describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally, they realized that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus & Mary Chain.”
“The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain’s greatest guitar bands for the very first time – a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.”
The Jesus & Mary Chain’s new memoir will be released later this year, September 3, 2024.
