The Mission (band)
The Mission are an English gothic rock band formed in 1986.
Initially known as the Sisterhood, the band was started by frontman Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams, soon adding drummer Mick Brown and guitarist Simon Hinkler. Aside from Hussey, the lineup has changed several times over the years, and the band has been on hiatus twice.
The band's catalogue consists of ten studio albums: God's Own Medicine, Children, Carved in Sand, Masque, Neverland, Blue, Aura, God Is a Bullet, The Brightest Light, and Another Fall from Grace, with several live albums, compilations, and other miscellaneous releases.
History
Incarnation
After an aborted recording session with Andrew Eldritch in the summer of 1985, Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams left the Sisters of Mercy. Based in Leeds, the duo continued to work on various musical ideas and recorded them over the autumn. Dismissing the use of a drum machine, Adams and Hussey asked Mick Brown to help out. By the end of the year, he had joined the band on a permanent basis. With Hussey as frontman and main songwriter, the trio required a second guitarist to facilitate a live setup. They recruited Simon Hinkler, who also contributed keyboards. The name "the Sisterhood" was chosen as a nod to the past. Rehearsals for the first shows started in January 1986. The new name became a point of discussion in the UK music press, giving the four-piece significant publicity. As the Sisterhood, the band made their live debut on 20 January 1986 at the Alice in Wonderland, London.While the band was on tour as support to the Cult around Europe, Eldritch released a single as the Sisterhood. Back in the UK, Hinkler was briefly dismissed and reinstated for three dates where the band revealed their new name, the Mission. Although Hussey and Adams were still under contract with WEA, manager Tony Perrin prepared their material for a release. In May, the EP I appeared on the Chapter 22 label as the Expedition I tour took the band around Europe. Two months later, II was released on the same label and supported by a number of festival slots that culminated in an appearance at the Reading Festival.
Crusade
Hussey and Adams were released from their WEA contracts and the band signed a seven-album recording contract with Phonogram in July 1986. Their debut, God's Own Medicine, was recorded in six weeks with novice producer Tim Palmer, an acquaintance from Hussey's Dead or Alive days. In October, the single "III" was released, preceding the album that appeared the next month. The band set out on a three-month World Crusade I UK/European tour, with their dedicated followers, 'Eskimos', in tow. They appeared on British television a number of times and recorded a session for BBC radio. The single "IV" charted at No. 11 in January 1987.The World Crusade II tour brought the band to North America, where they were known as 'the Mission UK'. The 41-date trek was characterised by substance abuse and led to the collapse of an inebriated Craig Adams in Los Angeles, resulting in him temporarily quitting the band. Sound tech Pete Turner filled in for one show, before they enlisted Chris Bocast to play bass for the remainder of the tour, which included an opening slot for the Psychedelic Furs. In March 1987, the single "V", with guest vocals by Julianne Regan, was released. Back in England, Adams returned to the band to play a handful of European festivals, and two support dates in Leeds and Edinburgh on U2's Joshua Tree Tour. A live video entitled Crusade was released, capturing the band at the early stage of their career. It coincided with the release of The First Chapter in June 1987, a collection of material from the first two EPs.
''Children''
By 1987, Hussey had written new material that was first played during the band's summer festival shows and U2 warm-up performances. The Mission enlisted Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones to produce their second studio album, Children, engineered by Mark 'Spike' Stent. In October of the same year, Hussey fathered a girl named Hannah, an event that inspired much of the lyrical content. The band moved more towards a Led Zeppelin-inspired hard rock style. In January 1988, the band recorded additional material in London with Stent. In February, the first single, "Tower of Strength", was released, reaching number 12 in the UK Singles Chart. At the end of the same month, the album appeared and charted at number 2 in the UK album chart.The rest of the year was taken up by the Children Play world tour, including a six-night residency at the London Astoria, Theatre where John Paul Jones made a guest appearance on keyboards. The rest of the tour included a support slot for Robert Plant, the first dates the band played in Latin America, and a small tour of Japan. A second single, "Beyond the Pale", made less of an impact, and a third scheduled for the end of the year was cancelled. At the end of 1988, the Mission embarked on an eight-date arena tour around the UK, while a collection of their music videos, From Dusk to Dawn, was released.
Deliverance
In the first half of 1989, Hussey wrote new material in the Black Mountains in South Wales, before the band reconvened in April to start recording. At the end of the same month, they played two shows, one in support of the Lockerbie bombing and another for the Hillsborough disaster fund. The latter featured guest appearances by Pete Wylie and Mick Jones of the Clash. Hussey, a lifelong Liverpool F.C. fan, was keen to support the victims. In between recording, the band played a number of European festivals supporting the Cure. In contrast to the large shows the band had put on during the Children Play tour, they embarked on a low-key Scottish Highlands tour. The last commitment of the year was a headline appearance at the Reading Festival, before the band returned to the studio to complete the album.They once again enlisted Tim Palmer to produce the record, while Reeves Gabrels, Baluji Shrivastav, and Guy Chambers also made contributions. Slated for an early-1990 release, the recording of the Carved in Sand album was completed by the end of August 1989. To kill time, the foursome formed a glam rock tribute band, the Metal Gurus, playing support for the Wonder Stuff towards the end of the year. The first single, "Butterfly on a Wheel", was released in January 1990 and narrowly missed the top ten. The new album appeared a month later, together with the "Waves upon the Sand" video that documented the recording sessions and Scottish tour of the previous year.
The Deliverance tour in support of the album was problematic. The band hired David Wolfenden as a supplemental guitarist to give Hussey free rein as the frontman. An inebriated Hussey showed up on the James Whale show and reports of their debauched behaviour continued to appear in the press. The release of a second single, "Deliverance", coincided with the UK arena dates. Hinkler contracted scarlet fever, leading to some cancellations. Personal tensions led to a confrontation during the North American leg of the tour, and Simon Hinkler left the band after a show at Montreal's Metropolis. The remaining members continued with a variation of stand-ins that included Tim Bricheno before he joined the Sisters of Mercy. A third single, "Into the Blue" was released in May 1990 to coincide with a number of festival dates, including a headlining slot at Pinkpop and indoor dates to replace the cancelled French dates from earlier in the year. The band played in Australia and New Zealand for the first time in their career. For the second half of 1990, they enlisted Paul "Etch" Etchells on keyboards and guitars. This last leg of the tour, which included a performance filmed for the Rockpalast programme, saw Hinkler returning twice as a guest during the encores at Leeds and the final night at the Brixton Academy.
The Mission had a lot of surplus material after the Carved in Sand sessions and had difficulties deciding on the running order of the album. In October 1990, the companion album, Grains of Sand, was released. It contained the rest of the candidates, some of which had already surfaced as B-sides, supplemented by acoustic renditions and cover versions. A single, "Hands Across the Ocean", co-produced by Andy Partridge of XTC, became a minor hit and was backed by a live version of "Amelia". The band and Hinkler were on friendly terms again and they resurrected the Metal Gurus project to record a cover version of "Merry Xmas Everybody" with Noddy Holder and Jim Lea from Slade for the Childline charity.
After a break to recuperate, the band teamed up with engineer Joe Gibb to create a high-tech studio setup. Brown had been soaking up the Leeds dance scene, while Hussey explored folk music. The band, asked to perform a lucrative headlining show at Finsbury Park in 1991, brought out quite a different side, joined by Maartin Allcock of Fairport Convention and Anthony Thistlethwaite of the Waterboys. Some fans left the gig worried about the direction of the forthcoming release, Masque. Masque was intended to be a solo release by Hussey. However, the remaining band members contributed to the recording, and the album was released under the group name. Hussey later said, "with Masque, we attempted to break down these preconceptions that people had of us but it didn't go down very well". Adams left the group subsequent to the release of the album. Reduced to a duo, the Mission searched for new members, even placing an advertisement in Melody Maker.
Childhood's end
The second incarnation of the Mission consisted of Brown, Hussey, Mark Thwaite on guitar, Rik Carter on keyboards, and eventually Andy Cousin on bass. This lineup's first release was a fanclub-only flexi disc cover of the Osmonds song "Crazy Horses" in early 1993. The recording of a new album started, while a BBC live album, No Snow, No Show for the Eskimo, was compiled by Hussey and Joe Gibb. For the first time in three years, the band decided to tour, and a warm-up was arranged as the "Off the Street" benefit for the homeless in Leeds. As Andrew Eldritch signed up, completely unfounded press speculation about a Hussey/Eldritch reunion became rife. The Club Mission tour played smaller venues around Europe, with new tracks "Afterglow" and "Raising Cain" becoming a regular feature in the set.The end of 1993 saw Hussey remixing "Tower of Strength" with Youth, and revisiting some of the past material for a greatest hits compilation album. A remixed version of "Tower of Strength" appeared in the UK Singles Chart in January 1994, and the band made their last appearance on Top of the Pops. The compilation, entitled Sum and Substance, was released the next month and featured two new tracks: "Sour Puss" and a remix of "Afterglow" by Mark "Spike" Stent. The latter was also released as the final single through Vertigo/Phonogram. The seven-album contract was now up, and neither of the parties was interested in a continued relationship.
Recordings proceeded slowly, while the band negotiated a new independent record deal, and Hussey produced a collection of three BBC sessions as Salad Daze. In late 1994, a single, "Raising Cain", was released on Equator Records. Early in 1995, the single "Swoon" paved the way for the next studio album, Neverland, more or less a Mission signature sound but with a much heavier production. The Neverland tour saw a slight revival in popularity, with two of the concerts being filmed for German television, a promo-only live EP released, and a handful of summer festivals played.
In March 1996, the band set up in Bristol for eight weeks to record new songs that Hussey had been developing. When the resulting album, Blue, was released, it received mixed reviews from music critics but left portions of the old fanbase rather unimpressed. Future interviews would see Hussey hating the album, with only the reworked B-side "Evermore & Again" ever becoming a regular staple in subsequent tours. A short stint around the UK, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands afterwards turned out to be a farewell tour: after ten years, Hussey and Brown decided that enough was enough. The band finished it all off with festivals in Spain and South Africa, the latter being their final gig, at the Kyalami racetrack in Johannesburg.