John McGeoch, RIP

John McGeoch, who founded Magazine in 1977 and played guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees in the early 1980s, has died at the age of 48 in his sleep.

Scot-by-birth (Greenock, 1955), the musical journeyman formed Magazine with front man Howard Devoto (ex-Buzzcocks) in 1977 and invested six months in rehearsal before making a debut on the final night of legendary Manchester punk club, The Electric Circus. Combining intelligent-but-despair-loaded lyrics with ice-cold keyboards and spiky guitar vignettes, Magazine were a junction of punk, art-rock and Roxy Music (McGeoch was also a sax-player) aesthetics for the post-modern youth, a generation too early.

Often cited as an influence by leading guitarists such as the Edge from U2, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, McGeoch moved to the Manchester area in his teens. In April 1977, he answered a small ad placed in a record shop by Howard Devoto who had just left Buzzcocks after the ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP and was looking for musicians "to play slow music, again". In January 1978, the urging, menacing ‘Shot By Both Sides’ nibbled at the lower reaches of the Top Forty while ‘Real Life’, Magazine's seminal LP début, made the charts as the group toured the UK for the first time.

A great foil to Devoto and keyboardists Dave Formula, McGeoch shone in that setting and Magazine released a string of classic singles such as the sneering ‘Rhythm of Cruelty’, the panoramic ‘A Song From Under the Floorboards’ and the jaunty ‘Sweetheart Contract’, all co-written by the guitarist. The albums ‘Secondhand Daylight’ (1979) and ‘The Correct Use of Soap’ (1980) were all-defining epic manuals for couch-miserbilists and Magazine would go on to influence Simple Minds, Morrissey and Radiohead.

However, McGeoch began drifting away from the group in 1980. "I was doing a lot of sessions like Generation X and the Skids. I thought that Magazine's direction seemed less focused on guitar - wrongly as it happens - but I felt footloose and fancy free," he said later. Indeed, he was in great demand, helping Generation X - or Gen X as they had renamed themselves in a bid for power punk appeal - finish sessions for the album ‘Kiss Me Deadly and thus providing the blueprint for Billy Idol's solo career.

McGeoch also jammed with Formula and Adamson as well as the drummer Rusty Egan and Ultravox members Midge Ure and Billy Currie to provide the soundtrack behind Steve Strange as Visage. "It was a bit of a joke but we all made a lot of money," admitted McGeoch. The Visage project paved the way for New Romantic acts such as Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet across Europe, with hits like ‘Fade to Grey’, ‘Mind of a Toy’ and the eponymous single and album ‘Visage’.

Page in a generation

In 1980, the "guitarist for hire" came to the attention of Siouxsie and the Banshees, then a trio of the singer Siouxsie Sioux, bassist Steve Severin and drummer Budgie, with occasional help from the Cure's Robert Smith. "I was surprised to get the call," said McGeoch. “Steve Strange told me to wear black and we met up in a pub in Notting Hill. They invited me along to their rehearsal studio in Camden and within two days, we'd routined ‘Happy House’. They really liked that guitar line, that was the clincher. I was going through a picky phase, as opposed to strumming. ‘Happy House’ was lighter and had more musicality in it. They invited me to join. I was sad leaving Magazine but the Banshees were so interesting and it felt like a good move.”

“We began to tour a lot. There were plenty of sell-outs and everybody enjoyed what we were doing. By the time we went in to record ‘Juju’, the dynamics had already been perfected on stage. We were a pretty damn heavy pop group and a successful one. We were having hits but there was still a certain hauteur, a feeling of us against the rest of the world.”

Siouxsie Sioux says: “John McGeoch was my favourite guitarist of all time. He was into sound in an almost abstract way. I loved the fact that I could say, ‘I want this to sound like a horse falling off a cliff’, and he would know exactly what I meant.”

McGeoch would have probably remained a Banshee much longer but again he managed three albums only - ‘Kaleidoscope’ (1980), ‘Ju-Ju’ (1981) and ‘A Kiss In The Dream House’ (1982) - due to the problems within the band. Banshees ousted their manager Nils Stevenson just before the recording of ‘A Kiss In The Dreamhouse’ and McGeoch's fondness for fine wines also caused trouble:

“I really ruined a gig in Madrid in October and that was it basically. I was definitely out of control. I was having a hard time coping with the demands of it all. I had a bit of a burn-out, that's the easiest way to sum it up. I ended up in hospital and I didn't get a second chance. By the time I'd got myself sorted out, it was a done deal.”

McGeoch then packed his amp for a stint with The Armoury Show with the vocalist Richard Jobson and the bassist Russell Webb, both former members of the Skids, and the ex-Magazine drummer John Doyle. They issued the album ‘Waiting for the Floods’ in 1985 to a fairly wide indifference.

"Then John Lydon scalped me," said McGeoch. "There were a lot of fireworks around PIL but we had quite a lot of success, except in fickle Britain." He played on three PiL studio
albums ‘Happy?’ (1987), ‘9’ (1989), and ‘That What Is Not’ (1992) and toured on a regular basis with Lydon's band between 1986 and PiL’s disintegration in 1992.

After 10 years in Los Angeles, McGeoch moved back to London in the mid-Nineties, attempting to put together a group called Pacific, with the former Spandau Ballet drummer John Keeble, and later also working with Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17. He trained to become a qualified nurse and also recorded background music for television programmes.

A distinctive player, greatly admired for his use of textures rather than his solos, but able to dream up dramatic riffs, chord changes and blistering fills, McGeoch was described as "the New Wave Jimmy Page" by Mojo magazine and figured in their ‘100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time’.

When Siouxsie and the Banshees decided to reform for Coachella Festival in 2002, McGeoch, to his eternal credit, decided not to join them.

Budgie, the Banshee drummer and husband/partnering Sioux in The Creatures, told us during a recent interview, “We talked to John but he refused to rejoin because he knew how it would be and he was right - it was difficult, too restrictive and too steeped in the past. The wise old John…”

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Words for John

"Prior to leaving for London last Thursday, Siouxsie & I had been talking about inviting John McGeoch to guest with us on stage. We hadn’t spoken in ages but we had a mutual acquaintance whom I was going to get in touch with. I’d even had a daydream about us playing a version of ‘The Light Pours Out Of Me’ or ‘Shot By Both Sides’, actually just thinking of those guitar riffs brings a lump to my throat.

It wasn’t until we arrived back home last night that we knew for sure that it would indeed remain a dream. John was gone.

Without any disrespect to all the other guitarists we have worked with, none had the relaxed mastery and such a depth of expression as John McGeoch. No amount of scrutiny of filmed ’Live’ performance tapes could reveal the subtle economy of technique that made an apparently complex phrase look so deceptively simple. Exasperated guitarists would often comment, “But his hands don’t even move!”

His signature style was what made the intros to songs like ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Happy House’ so unique, the guitar break in ‘Israel’ swing & the feedback in ‘Night Shift’ scream. I remember in pre-show soundchecks John would move around the stage locating the ‘harmonic sweet spots’ which he would employ like a magician, literally conjuring sounds out of thin air. I also remember him entertaining the road crew we shared with Motorhead with a manic rendition of ‘The Ace of Spades’ or a note & tone perfect version of Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’.

On a recent trawl of the web looking for clues, I came across an interview with the ‘Chilli Pepper’s’ John Frusciante, who cited John as one of the guitarists he’d studied religiously, I think ‘The Edge’ & many other guitarists were listening too.

John was also an entertainer and a charming gentleman, his smile was sincere and his voice which I can still hear, had a gentle Scottish lilt which would make the adjective ‘apparent’, sound like the noun for a mother or father.

Sometimes the mild mannered Scot from Greenock could get a bit Glaswegian. When playing as ‘Janet & the Icebergs’ in 1980, John was about to show some baiting idiot in the crowd a bit of Scottish etiquette but not before first retiring stage left to change out of his soft shoes. Much to our relief the coward made a hasty exit while John put his boots on. Of course we teased him endlessly for being on stage in his ‘Slippers’ in the first place!

It was nice to see John in a recent documentary, remember his time with the band so fondly but also heartbreaking to hear him recount the events leading up to his departure so acutely. We can all be grateful that he agreed to add his part to the band’s recent biography with the intelligence and dignity that were always his outstanding characteristics.

I’m honoured to have shared some special moments with John McGeoch and I will always love & remember him as a warm & caring friend.

Budgie, March 10th., 2004

..to paraphrase Siouxsie from 2003’s biography;

“My abiding memories of John are good ones. He was always fair and would discuss things with me. He was easily, without a shadow of a doubt, the most creative guitarist we ever had.”

Our thoughts & sympathy to his daughter Emily & family."

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The x-Banshee bassist Steven Severin wrote on his site (www.stevenseverin.com):

“I was chocked and saddened to hear that John passed away in his sleep last Thursday.

Although we hadn't worked together for a long time and I hadn't seen him for a couple of years he was always in my heart and often in my thoughts.

Without doubt the most inventive guitarist of our generation and my favourite Banshee.

Love to all his friends and family.

Bye John

~Steven~”