Never Understood cover art

Never Understood

The Jesus and Mary Chain

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Never Understood

By: William Reid, Jim Reid
Narrated by: Jim Reid, William Reid
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 AN UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

For 5 years after they'd swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents' East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination over endless cups of tea, with the music turned down low so as not to wake their sleeping sister. They knew they couldn't play in the same band because they'd argue too much, so they'd describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The rest was not silence, and picking up those conversations again more than 40 years later, William and Jim tell the full story of one of Britain's greatest guitar bands for the very first time - a wildly funny and improbably moving chronicle of brotherly strife, feedback, riots, drug and alcohol addiction, eternal outsiders and extreme shyness, that also somehow manages to be a love letter to the Scottish working-class family.©2024 William Reid, Jim Reid (P)2024 Orion Publishing Group Limited Entertainment & Celebrities Music Funny Witty Alcohol

Listeners also enjoyed...

 In One Ear cover art
Tenement Kid cover art
Dark Luminosity (The Expanded Edition) cover art
In the Jingle Jangle Jungle cover art
Fingers Crossed cover art
Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 cover art
Spaceships Over Glasgow cover art
How to Run an Indie Label cover art
The Art of Darkness cover art
Echoes cover art
Creation Stories cover art
Strange Things Are Happening cover art
Tomorrow's Here Today cover art
Art Sex Music cover art
Pandamonium! cover art
Uncommon People cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
JAMC were a band I was not that fussed about. But hearing their backstory, I really appreciate the purity of their approach. The story is honest and were brutal, it’s mainly brutal about themselves rather than others.

A great music book. Bow off to re-listen to Bobby Gillespie’s book!

The switch between the two brothers as they narrate this is great, especially where their memories vary wildly!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Bought and listened to on a whim. Well a whim informed by a fair amount of enthusiasm for the music of the Mary Chain. It's well worth checking out. The Reid brothers have famously had a few falling outs over the years and this memoir explains how and why this happened. It's frank and often amusingly contradictory as both brothers give their sides of various milestone events.

Their meteoric ascent (okay everthing's relative) is fascinating even if you already know it.

I emerged from their book feeling quite protective towards them both. Social anxiety has really messed with so much of their lives along with the resultant dependencies. Turns out they'd rather stay in the background or (in Jim's case) be walking the cliffs in Devon, or (in William's case) watching Coronation Street. I want to give them both a reassuring hug, something they'd probably hate.

In a hole, indeed

In a hole

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
One of the best music autobiographies I've read, brutally honest account of their career and interesting insights into how it all began. A great book, even if you're not familiar with them.

Great music autobiography

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great performances from one of my favourite bands, amazing to hear just how bad, and how good it got for the brothers Reid

Charming, witty and acerbic, like their feedback

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great story of one of the greatest Rock & Roll bands of all time told by the brothers. Really interesting insight into one of the most underrated bands of all time.

Fantastic Read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Uncompromising and never dull. Fascinating insights into the workings of this one of a kind band. I couldn't turn it off.

The best audiobook I've ever listened to

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Braw to hear Jim and William read their frank, honest down to earth memoirs about being in the quintessential and seminal indie rock outfit but never quite getting invited to the party. Excellent structure, great performances and just a cracking good listen.

A Good Reid

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I no longer need to meet my heroes. This is one of the most honest accounts I’ve ever heard/read. You end up hoping they’ll both be okay. And then you realise they always are.

Two big hearted men with a genuine belief in love.

I cried in parts. I came to the realisation that whatever your path in life, it’s the personal battles that unite us all. And in the end, the very end maybe, none of us really know what will satisfy us. And that’s really alright.

A Tale of Outsiders

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a great listen/read, partially because the brothers are very different and bounce off each other in an engaging and often funny way in the book.

One of the best autobiographies I’ve came across in a while, and unexpectedly funny too

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really enjoyed this being a fan of the band since I was 16, I’m now 56 years old and still a fan.

Really enjoyed this being a fan

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews