Andrew Eldritch

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Andrew Eldritch (born Andrew William Harvey Taylor, 15 May 1959) is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

He is the frontman and sole original member of the Sisters of Mercy, a band that emerged from the British post-punk scene and later flirted with hard rock. Eldritch, a drummer, also handles the tracks for the Sisters of Mercy's drum machine (also known as "Doktor Avalanche"), plays guitars and keyboards in its studio recordings, but goes straight to his vocal performance.

Eldritch is best known for his deep and melancholic bass-baritone singing voice, as well as his poetic (and occasionally political) lyrics. The Sisters of Mercy is regarded as a major influence on gothic rock, and Eldritch, with his (former) black hair, bass-baritone vocal style, and pale and thin appearance (with prominent cheekbones), has been described as a poster boy for the genre, earning him the nickname "the Godfather of Goth" in the media. Merciful Release was also established by the artist.

In 1986, Andrew Eldritch founded the Sisterhood of Mercy (to discourage former band members from using the word) but the Sisterhood was soon abandoned in favour of continuing to work under the Sisters of Mercy.

Early life and education

In 1959, Andrew Eldritch was born in Ely, Scotland's tiny cathedral city. "1959" was his first piano song, referring to his birth year and beginning with the phrase "Live as an angel in the place where I was born."

Eldritch studied French and German literature at the University of Oxford before heading to Leeds in 1978 to study Mandarin Chinese at the University of Leeds: he took both courses before graduating. He speaks fluent French and German, and has some knowledge of Dutch, Italian, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, and Latin, but has said he had forgotten the Chinese when he learned them. Eldritch, a freelance drummer in Leeds, was a resident during this period.

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Musical career

In 1980, Eldritch and Gary Marx formed the Sisters of Mercy. On the first single, "Damage Done/Watch/Home of the Hit-men", Eldritch played the drums, a task he was later relieved of by a series of drum machines referred to as Doktor Avalanche, allowing him instead to focus on his vocal performance. Over the years, nine members have left the group, several of them citing conflicts with the frontman as a reason for their departure. These former members include Patricia Morrison, who claimed she had been paid an average of £300 per month; and Wayne Hussey, with whom Eldritch had a personal feud which contributed to heavy criticism of both by the music press during the 1980s. Hussey formed a breakaway band called The Mission as a result of this conflict.

Following the release of the band's last studio album to date, Vision Thing, Eldritch initiated a 1991 US tour of the Sisters of Mercy in a triple bill with Gang of Four and hip-hop act Public Enemy. The tour was cancelled midway and the band relocated to Europe.

In 1995 Eldritch interviewed David Bowie and Leonard Cohen for the German edition of Rolling Stone magazine. He also contributed articles on computers to German magazines. That year, he briefly rejuvenated his working relationship with erstwhile Sisters of Mercy guitarist Gary Marx. Marx wrote an album's worth of backing tracks, to which Eldritch could contribute lyrics for release as a new studio album. Eldritch eventually backed out of the project and Marx released the tracks over a decade later as a solo album.

Prevented by contractual obligations from appearing under his own name, he is also rumoured to have produced a couple of techno albums under various pseudonyms during the 1990s, a rumour he would not deny when asked about it in an interview by Alexa Williamson in May 1997. Two musical projects Eldritch set up with his label, Merciful Release, have later been confirmed as Paris Riots (a collaboration with James Ray) and Leeds Underground. Both projects were abandoned before any tracks were released to the public.

In 1997 Eldritch produced the SSV album Go Figure, featuring his vocals over drumless electronic music. The album finally freed him from his contractual obligations, as EastWest agreed to waive their claims for two more Sisters of Mercy albums in exchange for the recordings. The SSV tracks were, however, never officially released. The full name of the band is SSV-NSMABAAOTWMODAACOTIATW, said to be an acronym for "Screw Shareholder Value – Not So Much A Band As Another Opportunity To Waste Money on Drugs And Ammunition Courtesy of the Idiots at Time Warner".

The Sisters of Mercy tour every year, but no new recorded material has been released for sale since 1993.

In 2009 Eldritch gave his first interview in 12 years to Classic Rock writer Joel McIver, in which he rejected the need for any new recorded material from the Sisters and talked at length about the band's career.

Speculation about a new Sisters of Mercy album release was renewed in November 2016 when Eldritch was quoted by TeamRock website: "I can tell you one thing: If Donald Trump actually does become President, that will be reason enough for me to release another album. I don't think I could keep quiet if that happened." As of June 2022, no new album has been released.

The devices in Eldritch's lyrics include literary allusions (notably to the works of T. S. Eliot, Leonard Cohen and Shakespeare), erotic imagery, and drug culture metaphors. He has made pointed criticism of the Republican Party of the United States, a group with which Eldritch claims to have a "hate-hate" relationship,. Politically, he has claimed to be "traditionally a Labour supporter" despite his "anarcho-syndicalist tendencies".

Though Andrew Eldritch has been called the "Godfather of Goth", for inspiring and defining the gothic scene musically and aesthetically, the Sisters of Mercy, despite being formed in 1980, were originally not very popular in the early-1980s post-punk subgenre of bands and music fans which the British press had labelled Goth. The Sisters of Mercy were, however, accused by the press of plagiarising Joy Division, who were marketed by their management as "gothic" in the late 1970s.

Since the early 1990s, Eldritch has publicly rejected associations with the Goth subculture. He describes the Sisters of Mercy as humanist, modernist, and implies he wants nothing to do with Goth, stating: "it's disappointing that so many people have in all seriousness adopted just one of our many one-week-of-stupid-clothes benders." He also notes: "I'm constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord."

Eldritch is the subject of the song "Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds" on the album Goths by the Mountain Goats, released May 19, 2017.

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