Name Mark Crozer

Best known for Being the long-suffering bass guitarist in The Jesus and Mary Chain. Also as that guy who wrote and performed the song Broken Out In Love which was later renamed Live In Fear, going on to become a surprise hit as the walk-on music for the late lamented WWE superstar Bray Wyatt. Also, something I’m not at all known for but which is nevertheless true, is that I performed something like 15 different characters (including God and a flatulent seagull) in the audio comedy-drama Eternal Strife, series 5 of which is coming out very soon.

Current city Well, I’m just leaving the town of Goring By Sea on the south coast of England to return to my home in Brooklyn where I’ve lived for the last 13 years.

Really want to be in As a touring musician I’ve played all over the world and have actually even seen some of it, mostly in-passing through the steamed-up window of a tour bus. This is going to sound really boring to most people but if I could be anywhere right now it would be in a hammock on the deck of a tiny cottage in the Catskills about 2 miles outside of Woodstock, swinging happily, keeping an eye out for bears, drinking cider and not thinking about how the world is utterly fucked.

Excited about I’m pretty bloody excited about my new record Homecoming. It’s my 7th, 8th, or maybe even 10th album – I’ve kind of lost track – and it’s really quite good if I may so myself. Different from anything I’ve done previously I would say. It’s far more experimental and interesting sonically and lyrically. I recorded the whole thing myself in my bedroom (cliched but true.) I hadn’t really intended making this album at all though. I’d sort of given up on the idea of releasing albums as, quite frankly, I thought nobody would care if I did or didn’t. But then somehow this song called Everything Must Change popped out and I thought it was pretty good. Then Cara at Dusty Mars in San Diego heard it and got in touch to say she’d be really interested in releasing an album if I ever felt like it. I was amused, flattered and skeptical at the same time as nobody’s ever really asked me anything like that before. Normally it’s me badgering record labels and being ignored or politely turned down at best. So I carried on tinkering, with the idea that maybe I would make an album and perhaps someone might hear it for a change. Then after a while something began to take shape and the few trusted people I shared it with were very complimentary. So I thought, why not put it out? My approach to making the album was quite contrarian though as on the one hand I wanted to make something I could love and be proud of and on the other I decided not to over think any of the instrumentation or song structures and retain a loose and even quite sloppy approach to how I performed it. Many of the guitar and keys parts were just made up on the spot, played once and recorded.

My current music collection has a lot of New music in what I call the classic guitar-driven pop genre. I really do try to listen to as much new music as possible. Current obsessions include the latest Twilight Sad release. Everything they do is just brilliant. I was turned onto them by Michael Brennan who is (or was) their front of house sound engineer and worked for the Mary Chain for a long time too. Then, rather wonderfully, I got to work backline for them on their last US tour in 2023 where they supported The Cure. They (The Twilight Sad) were absolutely brilliant night after night (as were The Cure.)

I’m also massively into a UK-based band named Ciel. I’ve loved them for about five years and managed to get them on tour with the Mary Chain a couple of years ago. Another great live band with amazing pop songs and a sound that is both nostalgic and fresh and exciting.

And a little bit of Reggae, calypso, Bulgarian folk music.

Preferred format Oh man… vinyl will always be my first love as that’s what I grew up with. It’s just so satisfying to put on a vinyl record and look closely at the artwork and liner notes. Having said that, I’ve fully embraced streaming because it’s so much more convenient. I don’t really get a lot of time to sit at home and listen to music so most of my music-listening is done on the move. You can’t really beat streaming for that. I guess I’d call it a necessary evil.

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Abbey Road, The Beatles

It’s really, really hard to name just five records I can’t live without, but this first one is easy. I first heard Abbey Road in 1982 when I was 11. I’ve never once tired of listening to it in almost 45 years. I love every word, every guitar part, every drum fill, every little nuance. It’s one of those albums you can have listened to your whole life and then unexpectedly find something new to marvel at. It’s definitely one of the albums that made me want to play music. Even though it doesn’t really feature more than a couple of what you’d called “classic” Beatles songs (“Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together”) and most of my favorite Beatles songs are on other albums, it’s such a fantastic listen because the musicianship is out of this world and the production is as good as it gets.

2

Misplaced Childhood, Marillion

When this first came out I was 14 I think and in a confusing phase musically. I’d been listening mostly to U2, The Alarm, Big Country, the Beatles (of course), and whatever was in the charts back then. I was also starting to get into bands like Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Deep Purple… Something about Misplaced Childhood really caught my ear. The combination of the chiming, delayed guitar, twiddly ‘80s synths, weird time signatures and Fish’s unique lyrics and vocal delivery all added up to a very intriguing listen. And boy do I love a concept album, apparently.

Once I got into shoegaze and indie rock in the early-‘90s though this album went on the back burner and was pretty much forgotten until about 18 months ago when I rediscovered it and realized once again how bloody brilliant it is. Subsequently I’ve listened to it almost every day for the last year and a half.

3

The Top, The Cure

For me The Cure are like my first girlfriend and they’ll always have a place in my heart. I’ll be honest, there are better Cure albums but none that I love as much as this one. It was the first album of theirs I heard and at the time I was 16 or 17 and it totally blew my mind. The song titles alone were enough to make teenage me fall in love with the band: “Piggy in the Mirror,” “The Caterpillar,” “Bananafishbones.” Plus to me, who’d never had a decent haircut in my life, they looked totally wild. The hair got me. I was hooked from the opening drum fill and maniacal laughter of “Shake Dog Shake.”

The Top reminds me of a time in my life when I was becoming more and more introverted and generally pissed off at not being old enough yet to do the things I wanted to do with my life. Like be in a successful heavy metal band on Top of the Pops. Hearing The Cure for the first time was a major game-changing moment for me as a fledgling guitar player. I’d spent all my time trying to learn how to play like Eddie Van Halen and Richie Blackmore without success and here was a band making much more interesting music using gorgeously out-of-tune guitars, oddly-scraped violins, lush and often simple riffs, and general sonic dissonance. It was definitely a lightbulb moment.

I saw them only once back in the day at Birmingham NEC in 1989 and it was a great show, but then when I worked for The Twilight Sad in 2023 I got to see them perform something like 30 times from every conceivable angle. It was brilliant! I had several opportunities to chat to Robert Smith but was always far too shy to say anything beyond “hello.”

4

16 Lover’s Lane, The Go-Betweens

Just a gorgeous record from start to finish. I discovered this when I was working at Our Price (then a retail chain) in 1989, right after leaving school. “Streets of Your Town” is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I’d been so into bands with singers who pushed their voices to the brink of screaming and here was a band doing the opposite. Both singers seemed so coolly detached yet their words and melodies were utterly compelling and evoked so much longing. Something which I think is true of a lot of Australian artists including the Mary Chain’s own Scott Von Ryper who’s a brilliant songwriter and artist. It was another turning point for me who’d always thought that you had to wail like Robert Plant or Bono to be a “good” singer.

5

Spirit of Eden, Talk Talk

Choice five…. Urgh. So many great records that I’m going to have to file away for another time (The Chameleons Script of the Bridge, Kitchens of Distinction Love is Hell, Deep Purple Deep Purple in Rock, Radiohead A Moon Shaped Pool, Yes Close to the Edge, to name a few.

Album 5 is one of the greatest records ever made (in my humble-ish opinion). I was already somewhat of a fan of this band when Spirit of Eden came out, having thought “Life’s What You Make It” (from 1986’s The Colour of Spring) was pretty great. But this one’s in a league of its own. I don’t even think of it as a collection of songs. Side One is one movement as is Side Two. A lot of what makes it great is the space between the notes and the way it ebbs and flows, building to a crescendo only to drop back down to near silence again. From what I’ve read it was quite a difficult album to make but it doesn’t come across that way. And of course the record label famously had a meltdown when presented with the final album as they thought it had no commercial potential. Which is kind of totally missing the point of the album. It’s art rock at its absolute finest with so much depth and passion. Mark Hollis was a genius. I have a particularly fond memory of listening to this late at night with my best friend Max on my 18th birthday after knocking back a bottle or two of Malibu. I remember at the moment thinking that I was listening to the best music ever to have been recorded to tape.