Adrian Slatcher

The Girlfriend Who Got Me Into Mazzy Star


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Ok. This is a story. Believe it if you like. Because girls don’t get boys into bands, do they? Well, wrong. I had a girlfriend who got me into Mazzy Star, the ethereal American band who were the missing link between the Velvet Underground and the Cocteau Twins. A missing link, I’m sure you’ll agree that was waiting to be found. David Roback had been in the Rain Parade, a band I loved with a passion, so I don’t say I’d have never got into Mazzy Star, but sometimes your love for a previous band blinds you to the charms of the next one (I’m talking more Microdisney-Fatima Mansions than Beatles-Wings here.) So I’m there in her tiny flat in Fallowfield, on her bed, half-sitting, half-lying, and she’s at the window with a cigarette because I don’t smoke and she doesn’t like the smell even though she’s ten a day, more with alcohol, and the record player’s next to me, with its lid up, and the previous record has come to an end. I’m wanting her to finish her cigarette and come back and lie next to me, I’m trying to think of things to say which won’t mess things up. I rifle through her record box (it’s 1994 and she’s still not got a CD player – this is why I love you, I remember thinking) and pretty much everything’s second-hand and enough to make a sensitive boy feel a little low in the testerosterone department; Hendrix. The Doors. The Cult. Led Zeppelin. AC/DC. Guns N Roses. “Hey, what’s this?” I say, taking out a record I’ve not seen before, the purple sleeve of “So Tonight That I Might See”, by Mazzy Star. She’s still looking out the window as I put the record on. First track. Side One. As the music begins, she turns round faster than anything. “Don’t play that,” she says and runs over and pulls the needle off the record, violently. “Hey,” I say, “that sounded good.” I guess you could call “Fade Into You” our break-up record. Still play it to this day.

Adrian Slatcher is based in Manchester and writes poetry, fiction and music. He blogs regularly about literary matters at artoffiction.blogspot.com and advises arts organisations about new technology. He will be reading creative non-fiction at the Lancaster Literature Festival in October.