Everything about My Bloody Valentine totally explained
My Bloody Valentine are an
alternative rock band formed in
Dublin, Ireland in 1984 and predominately based in
London. The founding members were guitarist/singer
Kevin Shields and drummer
Colm O'Ciosoig. The band's lineup during their heyday also included singer-guitarist
Bilinda Butcher and bassist
Debbie Googe.
My Bloody Valentine's use of reverse reverb
distortion,
vibrato, and
digital reverb placed them as part of the
shoegazing genre among other bands like Ride and Lush whom they sonically really had nothing in common. Their 1991 album
Loveless took two years to make due to funding problems, but once released it was critically acclaimed. Following
Loveless, My Bloody Valentine became inactive, with Shields scrapping albums worth of follow-up material. In 2007, Shields announced that the band had reunited and was recording new material.
History
Early history
Colm O'Ciosoig and Kevin Shields met in the late 1970s as teenagers in Dublin. They quickly became friends and joined a local
punk rock band named The Complex. Toward the end of 1983, Shields and O'Ciosoig formed their own band with singer Dave Conway. Conway, who went by the stage name Dave Stelfox, suggested names such as Burning Peacocks before they settled on My Bloody Valentine. The band was completed by Conway's girlfriend Tina, who played keyboards.
Gavin Friday of Dublin
post-punk band
The Virgin Prunes gave the group contacts that secured them a show in
The Netherlands. They stayed in Holland for three months before a dearth of opportunities and a lack of correct documentation meant they'd to leave. The band then moved to Berlin, where they recorded the mini-LP
This Is Your Bloody Valentine for Tycoon Records. The record failed to have the expected impact, and, after four months, the band left Berlin, returning to Holland briefly before settling in London around the middle of 1985.
Settling in London
After a period when My Bloody Valentine members lost contact with each other as they looked for places to stay, the band regrouped and decided to audition bass players. The band lacked a regular bassist and Conway's girlfriend had decided to leave the band, not feeling confident in her abilities as a keyboard player. Having been given the telephone number of a bass player in London,
Debbie Googe, they invited her to audition, and, ultimately, to join the band, fitting in rehearsals around her day job.
At this point the band were rehearsing at Salem Studios, which was connected to the record label Fever Records. Impressed by what they heard, Fever agreed to release an EP. On the strength of this, Googe left her job, and the EP, titled
Geek! was released in December 1985. The band soon began to play on the London gig circuit, but the record failed to make as much of an impact as the band had hoped. With the band's slow progress, Shields contemplated moving back to New York, where some of his family were living.
However,
Joe Foster, an associate of
Creation Records, had decided to set up his own label, Kaleidoscope Records, and persuaded the group to record for him. The EP,
The New Record by My Bloody Valentine, was the result, released in early 1986. The band also began to step up their live appearances, developing a small following and venturing outside London for gigs.
The band's next record was
Sunny Sundae Smile, an EP released in February 1987 by Lazy Records, a label set up by
The Primitives with their manager Wayne Morris. The label had been interested in My Bloody Valentine for a while, and the band turned to them this time due to Foster's indifference. The band then spent a few months performing in London and managed to secure a support slot with the
Soup Dragons. During the shows with the Soup Dragons, Conway announced his decision to leave the band; he'd been ill for a while and felt he wasn't reaching his potential with the band. Conway has since pursued a career as a writer.
Conway departs; Butcher joins
Conway's departure left the band without a vocalist, a situation they decided to remedy by placing advertisements in the music press. This process proved torturous, Shields noting, "It was pretty dangerous, I made the mistake of mentioning
The Smiths because we liked their melodies, the whole thing was disastrous and excruciating, you should have seen some of the fruitballs we got."
The band eventually turned to recommendations and experimented with having two vocalists: Bilinda Butcher and Joe Byfield. It soon became apparent that Byfield was unsuited to the band, and Shields took on second vocalist duties alongside Butcher; he noted she "sounded all right and she could sing one of our songs which sounded fine, we just had to show her how to play guitar."
Under pressure from Lazy Records to produce an album, the band compromised, citing the need for time to stabilize their line-up. The band agreed to record an EP followed by a mini LP. The EP,
Strawberry Wine, consisted of three tracks and was released in August 1987. The mini-LP, titled
Ecstasy, followed soon after. The EP has been described as "certainly the better of the two releases."
Ecstasy has been criticized as showing "a group who appeared to have run out of money halfway through recording," which was indeed the case.
Ecstasy also suffered from production difficulties, as Shields described errors in mastering the recordings. These hardships were not surprising as the band were funding the studio time themselves; The deal with Lazy was that the label would do the promotion, the band paying for the recording.
Creation Records
In January 1988 My Bloody Valentine played a gig with
Biff Bang Pow!, a band that featured
Creation Records owner
Alan McGee as a member. The performance convinced McGee that they were the British equivalent to American band
Hüsker Dü, and he approached the band after the show. The band decided to record a single for the label. My Bloody Valentine recorded five songs at a studio in
Walthamstow in east London in less than a week. Released as the EP
You Made Me Realise, the release was the band's first to be largely well-received by critics. The group followed with the EP
Feed Me with Your Kiss and the LP
Isn't Anything (1988). The multi-layered guitar sound developed by My Bloody Valentine became a major influence on a number of new bands who the British music press grouped together under the
shoegazing label.
My Bloody Valentine began work on their second full-length album in February 1989. Shields said that Creation thought the album could be recorded "in five days"; he later recalled, "But when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, they [Creation] freaked." Work continued throughout the year. Shields and McGee agreed to release an EP prior to the album's release, so the band recorded
Glider, which was released in 1990. In May 1990 the band recorded a second EP,
Tremolo (1991). The band halted work on the album in order to tour behind the release of
Glider in Summer 1990.
It ultimately took My Bloody Valentine two years to finish their second album
Loveless (1991). The making of the album was rumored to have cost £250,000 and to have nearly bankrupted Creation Records, claims which Shields has denied. Reviews of
Loveless were almost unanimous with praise. The
NME review of
Loveless declared, "...however decadent one might find the idea of elevating other human beings to deities, My Bloody Valentine, failings and all, deserve more than your respect." However, the album failed to perform commercially.
Loveless peaked at number 24 on the British album charts, and failed to chart in the United States, where it was distributed by
Sire Records.
Post-Creation
My Bloody Valentine signed with
Island Records in October 1992, reportedly for £250,000. The band spent their advance on constructing a studio in a house in
Streatham. The studio was completed in April 1993, but problems with the studio and attempts to repair them cause the group to go into "semi-meltdown", according to Shields.
The group recorded very little, which included the contribution of a cover of a
James Bond theme song to a charity compilation, and a cover of the
Wire song "Map Ref. 41 Degrees N 93 Degrees W" for the
tribute album Whore: Tribute to Wire. Unable to finalise a third album, Shields isolated himself and, in his own words, went "crazy", drawing comparisons in the music press to the behavior of musicians such as
Brian Wilson of
The Beach Boys and
Syd Barrett of
Pink Floyd. Googe had been sighted working as a cab driver in
London and formed the
supergroup Snowpony in 1996, O'Ciosoig joined
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, while Shields collaborated with
Yo La Tengo,
Primal Scream, and
Dinosaur Jr.
Rumors spread among fans of albums being recorded and then shelved. In 1999, it was reported that Shields had delivered 60 hours of material to Island. Shields later said to
Magnet magazine, "We are 100 percent going to make another My Bloody Valentine record unless we die or something," and attributed the band's sparse output to a lack of inspiration.
Reunion
In 2007 Shields announced that the band had reunited and that a new album they'd started recording in 1996 was "3/4th finished." In August 2007, internet rumors claimed that the band were negotiating a performance at the 2008
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or were planning a world tour. Vinita Joshi, Kevin Shields' manager, said "there are no confirmed shows at all."
On November 15th 2007, My Bloody Valentine announced three upcoming live gigs in the UK for 2008. According to the festival's website, they're also confirmed as part of the 2008 edition of
Festival Internacional de Benicàssim (
Spain, July 17th- 20th.),
Roskilde Festival (Denmark, July 3rd- 6th), Fuji Rock Festival 08 (Japan, July 25th-27th), Øyafestivalen (Oslo, Norway, August 5th- 8th) and The Electric Picnic Festival (Ireland, August 29 - 31st). They are also confirmed headliners for Bestival 2008, which takes place on the Isle of Wight in September. On April 23rd,
Pitchfork Media
announced MBV's inclusion in the
All Tomorrow's Parties festival scheduled for September 19-21, 2008. A small North American tour was announced on May 6th.
Discography
Studio Albums
