The Story Behind The Song: The Vaselines’ anthemic ‘Molly’s Lips’
In 1988, The Vaselines unveiled their much-anticipated Dying For It EP, the follow-up to 1987’s delightfully haphazard Son Of A Gun. Later included on the group’s retrospective compilation The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History, it features not one but two classic recordings: the distinctly anti-Christian ‘Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam’ and its surprisingly nostalgic contemporary ‘Molly’s Lips’.
When Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee released ‘Molly’s Lips’ in 1988, they’d been writing songs together for just two years. Though their original intention was to craft a fanzine, they decided to form a group instead, albeit without a live drummer. After a run of early shows, they signed to Stephen Pastel’s 53rd and 3rd label and released Son of a Gun in the summer of ’87. Even with the addition of Eugene’s brother Charlie Kelly on drums and James Seenan on bass, the band continued to hone the lo-fi recording style and unpretentious song structures that had defined their debut EP.
‘Molly’s Lips, the second track featured on Dying For It’s A-side, is a shining example of the group’s uninhibited, joyful and unaffected approach to songwriting. At a time when Duran Duran were writing songs about glamour models and filming music videos on yachts in the Algarve, The Vasalines were using their music to pay tribute to fringe figures. The latter included Molly Weir, a Scottish television personality best known for playing Hazel The McWitch in the BBC children’s show Rentaghost.
As children of the 1970s, Kelly and McKee were familiar with Weir from her stint as one of the presenters of Teatime Tales, a pre-news Scottish TV show in which the actor recounted stories from her youth. “She always struck us as a great character, so we just wanted to sing a song about kissing her,” Kelly told NME in 2010 [via Songfacts]. Clearly, he was still trying to shake the image of Hazel McWitch’s blood-red lips in Rentaghost.
In 1991, the Sub Pop label released a split single featuring pioneering American rock bands: The Fluid and Nirvana. Looking across the Atlantic for inspiration, the latter contributed a live rendition of ‘Molly’s Lips’, recorded live in Portland’s Pine Street Theatre. Though Cobain would – according to Michael Azerrad – later try and block the song’s release, feeling that Nirvana’s version wasn’t strong enough, the single was eventually released on the Incesticide compilation.
You can listen to The Vaselines’ original and Nirvana’s 1991 rendition below.
