When Kevin Shields revealed My Bloody Valentine’s two biggest influences: “Really classic stuff”
When My Bloody Valentine released Loveless in 1991, their distinctive rendition of languid vocals and sweeping production championed a new kind of alternative music.
Debuted with its enduring, pink-hued album cover, a blurred, close-up shot of a barely legible guitar, Loveless was the Irish rock band’s second studio album, but it largely came from the brain of vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields, whose singular vision for the music could only be personified through his writing and performance, alone. Vocalist and guitarist Bilinda Butcher wrote a third of the lyrics sung on Loveless, but Shields dominated its output.
“It wasn’t collaborative at all,” producer Alan Moulder said of the recording process, as quoted in Spin in 2005. “Kevin had a clear view of what he wanted, but he never explained it.”
A partial explanation was given in 1992 when, three months after Loveless was released to the world, Shields spoke with Rolling Stone about My Bloody Valentine’s aspirations, both sonically and, in turn, towards changing the course of rock music. “We’d like to come out from the shadow of the greatest things ever done,” he asserted. “We’ll never do anything better than The Beatles, but what we could achieve is, if you play our thing and then play theirs, ours is different – ours is now, and theirs is then.”
Shields compares the act of musicians entering the studio and choosing a record to attempt to mimic, sonically, to the act of “getting up and looking in a magazine to see how you should get dressed”. Though he notes that My Bloody Valentine’s origins as a fledgling band in mid-1980s Dublin were “derivative” of their mutual favourite artists, including The Cramps and Nick Cave, they slowly garnered the courage to indulge in their impulses, coming out on the other side with a sound that felt truly original.
As a result, My Bloody Valentine are heralded as pioneers of “shoegaze” – named for the literal, unintentional act of gazing at their feet as they performed – standing apart in the midst of guitar bands of their era with their quiet vocals, lush guitars and penchant for experimenting with production techniques, creating pockets of sound that were then unheard of. Loveless may have emerged with a spirit of tapping into sonic visions yet to be discovered, but inevitably, core inspirations were at play, in the back of Shields and Co’s minds.
Though they sought to transcend the shadows of the Fab Four, they were, in a way, an inspiration for Shields, as he explains in an interview for KZSU Radio in 1992, when asked about his mentioning of The Beatles in Rolling Stone. “I mean, it just goes through phases,” Shields says, considering My Bloody Valentine’s influences. “Basically, it just depends what phase I’m in. You know, I go through a couple months of The Beatles and a couple of months of The Beach Boys. Only ‘cause they’re all classics, you know. It’s like discovering all this really classic stuff.”
Shields admits that, prior to the recording of Loveless in the early 1990s, his knowledge of The Beach Boys was limited. “Never heard them at that point in time except for ‘California Sun’ or whatever they were,” he fleetingly notes. “I didn’t like The Beach Boys at that point in time. It’s only when I heard Pet Sounds et cetera and all, that it kinda locked in.”
It is near impossible to resist the compositions of Brian Wilson and Tony Ashley that comprise Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys’ groundbreaking progressive pop album that, while easy to hyperbolise in its significance, holds true to its undeniable impact on popular music. Even a most reluctant fan, as Shields was, must admit that the expansiveness of Wilson’s vision would inspire any musician to dream beyond the conventions of a studio setting.
With formidable presences like The Beatles and The Beach Boys looming ahead, My Bloody Valentine sought to continue their tradition of curating sounds that felt like a discovery, rather than a continuation, of something thrilling, transcending the pop song mould.
