Balaam and the Angel: 'For about 20 years I forgot I was in a group'

As indie music fans developed a taste for gothic rock in the mid-1980s, Balaam and the Angel were one of those that flourished. Following the success of the EPs World of Light and Love Me on their own label, Chapter 22, they were courted by Virgin and found an audience in the US, where they toured with The Mission and Iggy Pop.
Balaam and the Angel.placeholder image
Balaam and the Angel.

They broke up in 1993 but now, 40 years on from their debut release, World of Light, singer and bassist Mark Morris is back touring with his brothers Jim and Des.

The shows coincide with a vinyl-only EP, Forces of Evil, which is the first new music that they’ve released since the 1993 album Prime Time. Talking to The Yorkshire Post, Mark Morris says it feels “exactly” like the band have come full circle both in terms of their current sound – which is more aligned with their goth roots than their later hard rock leanings – and the fact they are now a fully independent concern again.

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“We released three four-track EPs back in the day and combined it into an album (Sun Family) before we signed to Virgin. I’m not sure how many we’ll release this time, but we thought we’d start here,” he says. “That’s why it’s initially only on vinyl, to mirror what we did back in the day.”

In recent years the Morrises have occasionally dipped their toes back into live performance with appearances at festivals such as Tomorrow’s Ghosts in Whitby, but feeling they’d become a “human jukebox” revisiting old material, they thought that now was the moment to air some new songs. “It’s not something we’re relying on to make a living out of, we want to do it rather than have to do it, so we thought we’d tickle it along with a few new tunes,” Mark explains.

Mark has fond memories of the Futurama festivals, organised by Leeds promoter John Keenan in the early 1980s, which partly inspired him and his brothers to form Balaam and the Angel. The first one they attended in Stafford in 1981 featured Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and Theatre of Hate alongside Gang of Four and Simple Minds. “We also went to one in Leeds (in 1983), that was Killing Joke, Play Dead, The Armoury Show and I think the Bay City Rollers were on there as well,” Mark recalls.

Back in Motherwell, when they grew up, they’d been in a band with their father. “Then he said ‘I’m too old to sing with you lot, I’ll manage the band’ and we got a girl singer in and played all the social clubs,” Mark remembers. “That was our grounding and then punk happened and that’s what we got into.”

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By 1983, they were well aware of the goth scene in Leeds. “When we went to Futurama, I think we dossed at one of the Sisters (of Mercy’s) houses. We hung out with them up there and New Model Army and Joolz the poet. We knew all the Leeds crowd and then of course Chapter 22, our label, signed The Mission.”

Balaam’s first UK tour was with The Cult – “We did three sets of dates, it was when they were pushing Spiritwalker,” Mark recalls – and they toured the US with The Mission. They also did a North America tour with Iggy Pop. “We were actually touring America ourselves at the time and dates were getting put on at the end. We were initially out there for a few weeks and it ended up being a few months, and I remember at the Plaze Suite in LA we bumped into Andy McCoy from Hanoi Rocks who was playing with Iggy at the time – I think it was in the laundry room, everyone was washing their black clothes – and he knew the guitarist we were using, Ian McKean, so he said, ‘I’ll have a word with Iggy and see if you guys can get on the bill’ and sure enough, he did. It was that simple, it didn’t even involve any agents. Our face probably fitted because at the time Live Free or Die was number one in the AOR charts in the States.”

Mark also has fond memories of touring with The Cult but denies that Balaam’s shift towards hard rock was influenced by Ian Astbury & Co. “I’d sometimes bunk in with Ian in the hotels and we’d be listening to old (Led) Zeppelin records and Free and Bad Company and stuff like that,” he recalls.

“It looked like we followed them out of the traps with getting a harder edge but we were sort of heading in that direction anyway. I think from a distance it looked like we copied them to a certain extent, but we didn’t. We were all listening to the same thing and getting the same influences. It sort of went from that hippy goth thing into more hard rock.”

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The change of direction was backed by their new US management. “They had big acts – Prince and Rod Stewart and The Bangles as well,” says Mark. “The problem with the American market is Europe doesn’t really enter (their thinking), certainly back then. We were doing a bit in the UK and Europe, but it seemed as though the concentration in time for them was always America, but there agin, that’s probably why we did well there.”

By the time the band made their last album, Shame on You, in 1993, they swimming against the musical tide of grunge rock. Mark recalls they’d lost their record contract and did a couple of club tours “to pay the merchandise guys and the taxman and whoever else because the band was in debt at the time”, but the first time he heard Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana – “I think it was in Birkenhead Stairways” – he knew Balaam’s time was up. “I went, there you go, it was fun while it last,” he remembers. “It was a pivotal moment, clearly the sea was changing across a decade, and I think we did the right thing. We hung up our guitars and for about 20 years I forgot I was in a group.”

His brother Jim went into teaching, eventually becoming a deputy headmaster, Des became and accountant while Mark ended up owning and operating several bar-restaurants.”

Thirty years on, Mark says their appetite for songwriting has returned. “It’s just interesting,” he says. “After Life sort of sums it up on the EP: we’ve done the kids, everyone’s grown up, what do we now? It’s a privilege to be given another opportunity to go out and give it a go. We’ll play the old songs as well, stuff people expect to hear, but (the new songs give us) a reason to get in the van and go out and do it again.

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“Once upon a time you had to be young to be in a band, whereas now I think the alternative rock ’n’ roll generation is still there. I think we’ve all gone, we could do with a bit more of that, really.”

Balaam and the Angel play at Network in Sheffield on November 22 and The New Adelphi, Hull on November 23. https://balaamandtheangel.co.uk/

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