Mathew Clayton put one other question to me, which I answered. It didn't make it into the Unbound catalogue which was sent to booksellers, but here it is.
Q. The book came about because of a number of long pieces you wrote about the Sisters for the Quietus; what motivated you to first write about them?
A. It’s a long story that goes back to autumn 1984 when someone put ‘Floorshow’ on the record player in the school common room. It was exactly what I was looking for at the time.
The shorter story is that in 2016 I started reading an amazing blog called “I Was A Teenage Sisters of Mercy Fan” by a gentleman who calls himself Nikolas Vitus Lagartija. At that time I had turned my back on the Sisters. Nik’s speciality is forensic research into Sisters history pre-1985. That was my route back into the band and their music.
The next thing I knew I had joined The Sisters of Mercy 1980-85 Facebook group curated by another amazing fellow called Phil Verne. I was also trawling through the Sisters Wiki run by a German lady called Sabine. These are essentially massive archives of primary Sisters material. I found I was spending hour after hour in there. In the words of Al Pacino: “I thought I was out but they pulled me back in.”
So I pitched an article to John Doran at the Quietus about very early Sisters and Leeds. I didn’t ask to be paid, so he went for it. I interviewed John Keenan in Leeds, as well as a couple of the folks from Salvation.
Then I was able to contact Andrew Eldritch. For whatever reason, he decided he would talk about old Leeds.
For the next article, Gary Marx and Craig Adams agreed to be interviewed. That was the beginning of a long-running on-off dialogue I’ve had with them. Marx has been especially vital. Without him the book in its current form would not exist.
Eldritch said nothing else to me - on the record - prior to the manuscript of Paint My Name In Black and Gold being submitted to Unbound.