Ghost Dance Biography

Most biographies of the band past and present are drawn from press releases and the like where factual accuracy can give way to more fanciful expression, and by necessity the information has to be concise. Here we attempt to put some flesh on the bones and make sense of the sound-bytes.

All names remain unchanged to protect the innocent.

While others wait for guidance from above...

The start point is reasonably well documented, Gary Marx left THE SISTERS OF MERCY at almost the same time as Anne Marie left the SKELETAL FAMILY, Anne Marie contacted Gary suggesting they join forces either for a one off venture or a more permanent set-up. They knew each other by sight from the Leeds/Bradford music scene and had toured together when the Skeletal Family supported the Sisters on their Black October UK tour in 1984.

The idea appealed to Gary on a few levels - a female singer was a sure-fire way of avoiding Sisters’ comparisons, and Anne Marie was a ‘name‘, (giving any new venture potential "super-group" status), perhaps most importantly she was great fun, seemingly the perfect antidote to post Sisters' neurosis.

They met up in Bradford and Gary played an early version of him singing CRUEL LIGHT (it was actually called Gabrielle at the time). They agreed to have a go at working together using that track as a try-out, Anne Marie going into the studio with a re-written lyric to replace Gary’s vocals. They began piecing together more material and discussing names, personnel and the like. Given their ‘post punk pedigree‘ there was some discussion of securing other members who had a similar profile. The ‘super-group‘ idea may have been in everyone’s minds at the time given that the fledgling MISSION emerged around the same time and the various off-shoots of THE SOUTHERN DEATH CULT were out there, it seemed the elite of the Yorkshire underground were all about to merge at one point.

Steve Smith had left RED LORRY YELLOW LORRY some short time before this and was poised to help out in any new venture Gary put together. In that early period Gary also worked with a number of drummers (another attempt to put the Sisters’ comparisons to rest). These included two mates from Wakefield, Sean Turner and Jason Wilde, who was thanked on the River 12" sleeve. Also name-checked is Aky Nawaz who tried out on drums, and for a while it looked a distinct possibility that he would join the band. Stuart Morrow was also in the middle of parting company with NEW MODEL ARMY and that would have clinched the ‘super-group’ heavyweight crown if he had come on board but it didn’t quite pan out. Aky was being pulled in a number of directions and couldn’t commit to the band. Discussions with Morrow were conducted through a third party and it is still unclear whether he was even aware of any invitation.

All this early jockeying died down fairly quickly (though the ‘super-group mentality was to play a part in later decisions about personnel) and Etch emerged as the perfect candidate for bassist despite having limited notoriety outside of his hometown Wakefield.

A period of rehearsing and recording followed with several attempts to capture the early songs – a trip to the Slaughterhouse in Driffield where RIVER OF NO RETURN and WHEN I CALL were demoed. When I Call was pitched so low in key for Anne Marie that she sounded about 100 years old. The actual sessions which formed the debut 12” single were recorded in late ’85 and early ‘86 by which time the first gigs had been played (both in London). The first few live shows featured a largely mid-tempo set with ONLY THE BROKEN-HEARTED, WHEN I CALL AND RIVER OF NO RETURN all included, as were covers of SHE CRIES ALONE and POISON DOOR.

One by one the lights go on again...

1986 was a landmark year for the band with three 12” singles released and the line-up changing until finally settling with the five people who would work together for the next three years.

First to arrive was Richard Steel (Steely Riff) - the band had got used to the two guitar line-up, and with Steve Smith’s departure had to advertise for a replacement. Gary Marx takes up the story:

Anne Marie knew Steely’s brother, and there were another couple of people who auditioned that one or other of us knew vaguely.

14th May we set up in Allathea music shop in Wakefield to run through them all – Steely was almost like an android, he was so precise in his appearance and his playing was flawless. The other main contender was Paul Southern (another ex Red Lorry Yellow Lorry member) who was completely rock ‘n’ roll – his playing wasn’t as good but he really looked the part and again the idea of his ‘reputation’ appealed. Finally we settled on Steely and he played his first gig under a fortnight later at the Bay 63 near the Westway in London. The performance was video-taped and was made available soon after. Richard went on to play the next few gigs, but the feeling in the band was that while his playing was great he was too young and too clean-cut. In a fairly messy period we told Richard that we had decided it wasn’t working out and went back to Paul Southern to invite him to join. He only played one gig at the Leicester all-dayer June 29th. The word ‘play’ is used quite loosely since the majority of the gig was spent crouched over his pedals seeing what wasn’t working. In a hasty about face Richard was asked to re-join and installed in time to play on the recording for THE GRIP OF LOVE 12”.

The decision to audition drummers led to a similar scenario – the two main candidates were John Grant (a mate of our sound engineer Danny Mac) and Marcus Gilvear who was considering leaving GENE LOVES JEZEBEL. Marcus was already in an established band who our audience would be aware of but backed out, but we invited John to come and see us play at Telford Ice Rink and see how he fitted in on a personal level – that was of course the clincher. We went into rehearsals with him three days later – Sunday 21st he played his first gig with us in Holland. I think the idea was that the European dates were a probation period for John, a chance to try him out away from our UK audience. We very quickly agreed to make it permanent and that trip and the UK dates that followed brought a much greater sense of fun to the shows and our off-stage antics. With the arrival of John we really were a band in the true sense for the first time.

And if it takes twice as long again...

The ‘band’ sound proved difficult to capture and a number of aborted attempts were made to record material which demonstrated Richard and John’s input. For a while people had to be content with just seeing the band live. It was noticeable through ’87 that the original audience of old fans of The Sisters and Skeletal Family coming out of curiosity had given way to an actual following who weren’t necessarily that interested in past glories. Referred to lovingly as the Uglies, THE SPOOK SQUAD started to come into its own around this time giving each gig a sense of occasion.

A WORD TO THE WISE was finally recorded and released at the end of ’87 and went some way to show what the band could do – it was well received and sold reasonably well, even making the lower reaches of the national chart despite only being available in specialist shops.

Despite all this there was a feeling within certain quarters that perhaps we had come as far as we could with KARBON and Nick Jones as manager and ’88 saw the release of the GATHERING DUST compilation before saying a painful farewell. Nick had been there from before day one, working with Gary in the Sisters, but the new members had no ‘history’ with Nick and were frustrated by continually seeing bands leap-frog over us into major deals and the charts – the manager and record company proved a fairly convenient scapegoat.

Our tour manager Simon Parker (Sparky) agreed to take over managerial duties and brought reasonably swift results - the CHRYSALIS deal was finalised by the end of 1988. With the band’s reputation as a fantastic live act and a sack-load of songs to choose from everything seemed to point to a bright future, but a combination of the record company’s short-sightedness, Simon’s inexperience as a manager (he was fantastic at clinching the deal but had little idea of what to do beyond that) and the differing musical outlooks of the five band members brought the whole house of cards tumbling down within a year.

And when it all comes down...

Following the disastrous sales of the Celebrate single (and lukewarm response to the album which followed) Chrysalis decided not to take up their option on the band informing them of this decision a couple of dates into a tour of Europe supporting THE RAMONES. Simon had been promptly fired almost as soon as Celebrate had hit the shops, a number of replacements had come forward – the most prominent being Chris Cooke who came out to see the final dates on The Ramones tour. The shows were far from truly representative with the band choosing to play only their fastest material in an attempt to ‘fit in’. Chris made a number of suggestions regarding the direction the band would have to take to throw off the Chrysalis flops tag.

A group of new songs were demoed which became known as the 10CC tapes (ten songs and Chris’ initials). Richard and John took no part in the recording of the new material and instead started work on a more overtly rock outfit of their own. The new songs were good but had no real place in the Ghost Dance repertoire and when Chris Cooke’s enthusiasm for working with the band waned that was pretty much it.

There was no collective decision to call it a day, everyone just started work on something new. Etch went on to join LOUD and had a brief period in THE MISSION, Richard and John formed PURE DEAD BRILLIANT with John singing (before Richard re-located to New York to join SPACEHOG), Anne Marie started working with one of the other managers who had approached the band after Simon’s departure on a more pop/rock set of songs and Gary started work on the short-lived BLOODSHOT AND JUNGLE RED project, prompted by the direction of one of the very last tracks they had recorded for Chris Cooke (a funk/rock song co-written with Richard called Every Trick In The Book).

There is no definite end date to the story but the final gig was in Amsterdam on December 4th 1989 a little over four years after their very first gig at N.E. London Poly.