It was a cold November night in 1989 when I finally cornered the Cult. All in all it was a strange kind of courtship, filled with false starts and missed gigs, but we finally managed to meet up in (the now refurbished) Wembley Arena.
Naturally I was excited to catch up with the band who’d released the best rock album of the previous year. However, this gig was so much more than that, and it was as though I and the rest of the audience could feel the chill winds of change on that cold weekend. The shadows had lengthened in the empire of the eighties, while the destructive digital compressions of grunge and nu-metal were already buzzing through long-range receivers.
But on that night, those things had not yet come to pass, although I think that many of us felt some sense of a last chance of sorts as we gathered to celebrate great music before the landscape heaved and shifted forever.
I hardly need mention that the guys delivered in spades that night, so much so that I went back and bought a ticket from a tout for Sunday night’s performance. Yeah, I’m not proud of it, but that’s the truth. The real problem with doing that is the way that time and alcohol have kind of fused both performances together, melting them into a single, deliriously brilliant musical memory.
The standout moment on both nights was the epic kettledrum intro to Sun King, some percussion bothering I’ve never seen bettered. Hell, none of us even minded when they played Sweet Soul Sister twice for a live recording. I think maybe that ended up on a B-side or something; and if you ever listen to that version, then my voice is one of the thousands.
Here’s the really weird part though. Despite the fact that both nights were spectacularly good, one of my most abiding memories of those head-pounding and heart wrenching performances was the certainty of missing the last connection and being stranded on the London Tube’s semi-detached badlands. That’s how Nine While Nine by the Sisters of Mercy has woven itself into the mix of two hugely memorable Cult gigs.
Anyone who’s been there will know.
Ian Astbury image courtesy of Jon at cultcentral.com
