“The power of finding solitude”: The Cult classic nobody expected to be a hit
There are some bands that put together a song and know instantly that they’re onto a winner. The room fills up with an undeniable atmosphere that is impossible to ignore, as everyone looks at each other in acknowledgement of a sound that will take their band to the next level. Led Zeppelin had this moment the first time they all jammed together as Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones realised they had stumbled upon something special.
“I remember the little room, all I can remember it was hot and it sounded good – very exciting and very challenging,” said Plant when discussing the first time Led Zeppelin ever played together, “Because I could feel that something was happening to myself and to everyone else in the room. It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it.”
It’s true that they were stumbling upon something special, and it was a sound that went on to inspire rock bands for the decades that followed. One of these bands was The Cult, who were carrying their Led Zeppelin influence with them when they performed on Saturday Night Live. They radiated with an energy that evoked memories of Zeppelin both visually and sonically, as they played a song which would later be described as one of the quintessential songs of the ‘80s.
‘She Sells Sanctuary’ was already doing well in the UK, and following their performance on Saturday Night Live, the song reached new heights in the US. The band were always happy with the track, but it wasn’t a song they ever thought would reach hit status because of its simplicity.
Like many great rock songs, the track only uses three chords: D, C and G. It’s also written in a 4/4 time signature, which was very common for your heavier and catchier tunes of the genre. The thing that made it stand out despite its simplicity was the strange combination of effects used by guitarist Billy Duffy.
“I just messed around with amps and discovered that the Roland JC-120, in conjunction with a valve amp, made this sound that gave me what I was hearing in my head,” said Duffy, discussing the track.
“Add a bit of delay, and chorus. I never used a chorus pedal on the floor and the only chorus I used was on the JC-120 amp. That was basically it, and I just experimented at looking at different amps to go with the JC-120. I ended up getting an Ampeg VT22, which was kind of a weird, rare bird. But I ended up getting a Marshall eventually”.
The song was all about solitude on some level, as Ian Astbury described the lyrics that seemed to resonate with people. There was an element of loneliness within the song, which was eased either by a relationship or something more spiritual.
“’She Sells Sanctuary’ was probably referring to the power of finding solitude in a woman’s arms,” said Astbury, “And the matriarchal energy, whether it be an actual physical person or in a spiritual sense, the greatest matriarch, and thinking of the cosmos as a female energy rather than a male energy. These are archetypal things I was picking up from discovering things like Joseph Campbell and Buffy Sainte-Marie or even Jim Morrison.”
