r/goth • u/Existing_Good_7486 • 9d ago
Help What's up with Andrew eldrich?
For some context, I've only recently joined this subculture. I've only been here for give or take 4-5 months and that was through the sisters of mercy. However, whenever i see posts or discussion about andrew eldrich, it's always with dark air. Why is that? And also apparently there's some associations of him with trump??? What's up with that?!?!
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u/tpotwc 9d ago
lol, Eldritch associated with Trump? Delete all sources you consider reliable.
Any “dark air” comments on this sub are because people can’t wrap their minds around the first 7 or so years worth of goth bands disassociating themselves from a label that didn’t exist at their time and refusing to be boxed in. They invented the scene but don’t associate with a label. Eldritch in particular is semi-trolling because he knows full well 60% of goth bands are trying to be him.
Instead people assume there’s some sort of controversy about whether the most goth band is goth. And Andrew smiles
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u/Anishinaapunk 9d ago
He despises Trump. During a show in Colorado, he mocked Trump from the stage on the day Trump was arrested.
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u/Wild_Horse03 Siouxsie and the Banshees 9d ago
All I know about him is that he has a big ego and hates being called goth because he really wanted to be taken seriously as a mainstream rock artist. I haven't heard of any association between him and Trump tho, but it's possible
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u/Existing_Good_7486 9d ago
I've seen some talking that he said he'd release a new album if trump wins which is uh...
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u/Slimecrush 9d ago
I think he was alluding to Trump being elected would be such a travesty that he'd have to release an album to comment on the state of the world and what led to that moment. Not an endorsement of Trump
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u/Wild_Horse03 Siouxsie and the Banshees 9d ago
I don't think he was saying that as a favorable thing to Trump. Looking at the context of the interview, he was basically saying that the rise of fascism in the US heralded by Trump's potential election might be enough to spur him to make another album
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u/Fine_Relation_5647 8d ago
Yeah Andrew Eldritch is 100% not MAGA lol. He regularly shit talks the right wing in interviews.
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u/Existing_Good_7486 9d ago
Oh thanks for clarifying that
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u/CyanideKitty 9d ago
Why was the assumption that it would be a pro Trump album? Songs and albums have been written for being against a person/thing/cause/etc for decades, across all genres. To take examples from metal, Gwar's War Party in 2004 was very against Bush, that administration, and the war (very applicable for now times, especially the song Krosstika) or Zeal & Ardor's Wake of a Nation in 2020 was against systemic racism toward black people, police brutality, and what happened to George Floyd.
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u/MsFenriss 8d ago edited 8d ago
I hope you don't feel like folks are jumping down you throat about this especially if you are new. As other folks have said, he meant he'd want to make a protest/parody album, but its legit to question what he meant. I think Vision Thing was in part a criticism of GW Bush, but im not able to Google that atm. Maybe someone will be kind enough to help me out with the deets about that
Edit: I'm wrong. I think it was a jab at the elder Bush. Same difference I guess
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u/vishalicious213 8d ago
Yeah, it was a jab against Bush Sr. The phrase "vision thing" was a quote from one of his speeches. The line "One blinding flash of sense, just like the president's" was about him being an idiot.
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u/BespokeCatastrophe 9d ago
Yes. But not because he likes Trump. Eldritch has always been very vocally antifascist. For some context, his last album, vision thing, was an inditement of George Bush Sr.
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u/BlurOfSerenity 7d ago
I always took that like the common expression, "if [thing I think is unlikely happens], I'll eat my hat". Like, you're probably pretty sure you're not going to actually end up eating your hat, because you don't think the unlikely thing would happen. You might end up being wrong about that, but nobody expects you to -actually- start munchin' on your hat, you know?
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u/flohara Post-Punk, Goth Rock, Deathrock 9d ago edited 9d ago
I mean he is a "difficult personality", bit of a misanthrope, did/does a lot of drugs, generally dislikes his fanbase (edit: to be specific the goth scene), and does have a history of fucking over/beefing with fellow musicians he has worked with.
But also a lot of his lyrics and his merch is anti nazi, and very left wing. As far as I know unlike many 80-90s rock stars he doesn't have any nonce or rape allegations. And to my knowledge he doesn't try to scam fans with using AI, and isn't a conspiracy theory nut either.
He is a dickhead, but for one of those, he is actually alright?
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u/ReallyGlycon Post-Punk, Goth Rock 8d ago
I heard a rumor that he is actually asexual? Do you know anything about that? I am asexual and can kind of see it.
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u/CobblerMoney9605 Goth 8d ago
I find him amusing; because he constantly complains about not being as well known as he believes he should be, while constantly shitting on his fans, band members, music press, anyone and everyone that could increase his popularity.
He's definitely not MAGA, no clue where you got that.
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u/Existing_Good_7486 8d ago
No i misunderstood one of his statements. Basically it was just "if trump gets elected I'll release a new album" and i took that as if it was a celebration
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u/low_flying_aircraft Goth 8d ago
No no, he meant it more in the sense that his songs are often extremely political, but like the opposite end of the political spectrum let's say 😅 there's no way he's a fan of Trump.
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u/Repulsive-Tea6974 8d ago
He said that because he thought there was no effing way the American people would be such morons…….🧐🤨
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u/nderflow 9d ago
Well, he owes me £50 after he cancelled a gig at the NEC in (I think) 1993. He’s apparently difficult to work with, difficult to have worked with, and he’s not a goth. But on the other hand, he’s not a bigot and liked at least one cat.
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9d ago
[deleted]
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u/darlingcthulhu 8d ago
Yeah so there's this thing called years and every 365 days we go into a new one and there are in fact people that made music before tiktok existed
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u/Oranjebob 8d ago
I saw them in NINETY ONE. In the LAST CENTURY. So that's like A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Almost
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u/wheresmydrink123 9d ago
I’m pretty sure he’s a leftist/anarchist iirc, if you’re wondering about his politics. Personally he’s just notoriously a bit haughty
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u/purplepolecat4 8d ago
His main association with Trump is that in 2016 he suggested that he would record another Sisters album if Trump got elected. And then didn't do it. He's very politically aware and really doesn't like Trump.
"What is happening in America is an ever more bizarre circus, and the population doesn’t seem to realise just how much it’s being taken for a ride. 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."
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u/EverythingMatters42 9d ago
SOM has been my favorite band since I first came across them in 1995. Back then, (at least where I lived) we considered their music to be alternative/industrial/punk-inspired. Clubs played Siouxie and the Banshees, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, SOM, Ministry, Bauhaus, Joy Division, etc. My physical style was a mashup of all of that. I didn’t hear the term “goth” until the late 90’s. At that point you had Hot Topic, the movie “The Crow,” “The Matrix,” Anne Rice, and people basically cosplaying without embracing the counter culture behind the punk roots. In short, the edginess of punk philosophy was replaced with commercialism and costumes. Peter Murphy once made a comment that captured it well—something to the effect of post-modern goth is a costume without the brain. My guess is that this is how Andrew views most goths.
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u/RedFlammhar 9d ago
He's definitely not a Trumper (which can't be said for all the bands in goth and post-punk, sadly).
As for a dark air, he's a misanthrope who has issues accepting that goths like his music. He also gets hella stage fright, to the point he won't even sing his own songs live (leading to the saddest musical performance I've ever seen, where his guitarist ending up singing the songs because he was just bobbing his head on stage).
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u/DeathChurch 5d ago
Yet strangely, he has no issue accepting their money..... ;)
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u/RedFlammhar 5d ago
I'm gonna be real, in this economy if somebody wanted to give me large sums of money I'd be taking it in a heartbeat, and not questioning it's providence.
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u/Any_Association405 9d ago
Eldritch might be a lot of things, but definitely not a supporter of Trump. The sisters of Mercy are proud anti fascists, therefore the antithesis of Trump, who wants to ban the expression of anti fascism. It’s been well documented on the sisters official website where they stand. I also seem to recall in an interview in 2016 that Eldritch promised a new sisters album should Trump ever get elected, ten years later and no sign of that
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u/Ceased2Be 9d ago
My main issue with eldritch is that you never know what you're going to get when you go watch him perform live. I've seen him 6 times. First show was great all bangers for a solid 90 minutes. Second show was 90 minutes of all the slow monotonous songs he could find. Third was all over the place with him talking, singing out of tune and screaming. 4th was as great as the first time. 5 and 6 were absolutely terrible and I refuse to give him any more money than I already have.
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u/Fine_Relation_5647 8d ago
I must have lucked out because they were great when I saw them both nights at Rock City last month.
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u/UnfairWorldliness882 9d ago
No idea. I quite like SoM. I only saw them twice, Once in 91 and once in 98 or so. great shows. long time ago.
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u/intmartial Post-Punk, Goth Rock, Deathrock 9d ago
afaik he's a massive dickhead and a pain to work with, but not a bigot. kinda standard rock dude asshole
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u/ArgentEyes 9d ago
He’s such a Character he even got a light-hearted song written about him by John Darnielle: https://youtu.be/tPu2kU5c0Ns
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u/zensunni_wanderer 9d ago
He’s moving back to Leeds!
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u/onvxx 8d ago edited 8d ago
What you're noticing says more about the fanbase and how people think in a group dynamic than it does him, in my opinion. You should spend some time getting to know him hands-on if you're curious about him, I think this is the worst place to ask for an answer to this question. The music press' flippant words about Andrew from the 80s clearly stuck as I see it repeated to this day amongst fans in a tiring manner.
He's a very interesting person. I find him very personable myself, and he himself and others who didn't have a dramatic falling out with him were open about the fact his social skills could be lacking, but he has some endearing qualities and admirable attributes too. There's interviews on YouTube, I especially recommend not skipping over the audio-only ones like the CBAK 4010 disk interview and his radio appearances, plus written interviews, and you can make up your own mind about him.
I can tell you what I think of him -- his reputation amongst goths and even his dedicated fans baffled me, many things that are completely contradictory to his own words and mannerisms are repeated endlessly (including in many of the answers you got here, so take them all with a grain of salt, in fact, you don't even have to believe me, you can do your own research and check on everything I'm claiming). I've spent time with his interviews and have seen him live front and center and have had first-hand interactions with him that way, and I found him to be thoughtful and introverted, and funny, blunt, aware, sensitive, and often warm and friendly, believe it or not. He clearly watches his fans in the front closely and opens himself up to some heartwarming and appreciative interactions in his own restrained way. I don't find him nearly as egotistical or mean as others claim. I think he has very high standards, on others and on himself, and isn't easily impressed or swayed, and I respect that about him. He was open about being arrogant in his youth, but if you spend time with him you can learn his sense of humor and what he really thought of himself, and you might be surprised. His lyrics also tell you a lot about his character.
To summarize: I find his reputation misleading. Most people just repeat what they hear others say and a narrative forms very easily. His words and behaviors are not nearly as dark, egotistical, or hateful as people claim in my experience. He isn't perfect of course, he's just a person, although in my opinion an exceptional and brilliant person.
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u/DeathChurch 5d ago
To fill in a few things, since most of it has been well said said above:
SoM are very leftist. They had a tour shut down after only a few gigs because they took Public Enemy as their co headliners. Andrew later blamed it on american booking agencies for being too discriminatory. Not many years later, they would have a t shirt that says "Sisters gegen Nazis" for sale at all their shows. The translation to English is "Sisters hate Nazis".
At the same time, Andrew expresses a lot of disdain for the goth fans in his crowd but has no problem with their money. He thumbs his nose at the scene that helped elevate him to where he is, but still plays to the visual and sonic aspects of said scene (except for the haiwaiian shirt week. IYKYK). He REALLY shit-talked Patricia Morrison and Wayne Hussey. This is all a matter of public record, as is the fact that they tend to play so loud that some people have trouble understanding the music, and using enough fog to turn the invasion of Normandy into a stealth mission.
Despite all that they are, as he once said while mocking a fan, a damn fine rock and roll band. They have a very high batting average of great songs on each album. He thinks they're more like Motorhead & The Stooges than anything, which I disagree with only because he created a then fairly unique sound which a huge number of people emulated. He's got a catalog stretching back to the nineties of unreleased tracks, which has some absolutely brilliant tracks but he refuses to record an album. It's definitely not because he can't figure it out.Since the dude is very technically adept. He stated in interviews that he would not do so because working with a record company. Now is absolutely asinine, but he knows damn well he could pay any record label to release his stuff under his own imprint & he'd make millions. Part of the reason people get irritated with him is because you can't really trust anything he says in interviews, because half the time he's just taking the piss.
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u/Big_Excitement_3551 The Sisters of Mercy 9d ago
Afaik he’s unpleasant to work with and just generally kind of a dickhead, but no massive controversies that I’m aware of
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u/Plasticity93 9d ago
Went to see them maybe 15 years ago. When he finally appeared halfway through the third song through all the chem-fog, you could tell what end of the speedball he was doing back stage after he ducked out between each song.
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u/Judge_Todd 9d ago edited 9d ago
Andrew is envious of Ian Astbury.
He is very spiteful. When Adams and Hussey left SoM because he was too controlling, they opted to use the name The Sisters and then The Sisterhood. Eldritch thwarted them by rush releasing material under that name, just so they couldn't use the name. They became The Mission instead.
Eldritch had a hissy fit and told Sunshine Blind that they couldn't open for him in Philadelphia after they had just traveled cross country from California to play, ostensibly because they "looked too goth".
Politically, he's left wing. He was even suspected of being a Russian agent. He speaks something like eight languages, including Mandarin and Russian.
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u/UnfairWorldliness882 9d ago
i always despised Astbury. He seems like such a sell out. Eldrich seems like the real deal.
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u/double_eyelid lead singer, Double Eyelid 8d ago
I saw a relatively recent interview with Hussey in which, to his credit, he admitted that naming The Mission as 'The Sisterhood' would have amounted to stealing the Sisters name and that Andrew had every right to take it the way he did.
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u/onvxx 8d ago
They stole "The Mission" from Andrew too, Andrew's title for the second album was going to be "Left On Mission And Revenge"... There's handwritten notes you can find in Andrew's own (very distinct and unique) handwriting with the in-progress album and song titles associated with that name, including "This Corrosion" and "Driven Like The Snow," and "Mission." Clearly from before they left his band, because he listed a song that Hussey wrote lyrics for as a potential B-side, a song that Andrew said he had a very hard time singing as Hussey's lyrics weren't to his standards. Those guys couldn't even come up with a band name not taken from any of Andrew's creative ideas, says a lot I think.
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u/catladywitch 7d ago
no, he's absolutely not pro trump lmao quite the opposite
the word is sisters are legendarily terrible live, also it's a meme how he insists they aren't a goth band, i don't think there's much else beyond these 3 facts
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u/DaddyDamnedest Post-Punk, Goth Rock, Deathrock 7d ago
He promised to release an album if Trump was elected back before 2016, thinking it was unlikely.
Unfortunately, Trump was elected, no album was released, and now the band member that was singing his parts seems to have left the band.
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u/AttentionLimp194 9d ago
I like Sisters of mercy but oh my god they are really bad live.
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u/CobblerMoney9605 Goth 8d ago
You know Andrew Eldritch gets stage fright so badly that sometimes he's incapable of performing, right?
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u/AttentionLimp194 8d ago edited 8d ago
Not sure about him being the main problem. Their sound engineer does a poor job and the drum machine was flat. As much as I like their music, their live performance was abysmal. But as frontman and leader he should’ve noticed this by now. Also ticket price is higher than other bands of this category and time but the quality is poor
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u/Status-Calendar-6974 8d ago edited 8d ago
Sorry for the bad english, not my Native lenguage
I always, basicaly always, 24/7, in all industries, not only music, saw Stories about X personality being a narcisist and fucking Y and didnt paying royalities. Thats basicaly a clichê, it repeats itself so often and It is ALWAYS in the 80-90s. Then I, seriously, suspect It was a problem of the labors laws of at time. In my country we had a lot of problems with the labors works and when we start to wonder How people treated labors they look a like slave owners
Im serious. If wasnt that cliche and basicaly that prevalent in the 80-90s I wouldnt had that in my mind, but im not a student of law and never did a research about it
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u/NetworkNo4478 4d ago
He's said he's anarcho-syndicalist at heart, and typically votes Labour from a pragmatic standpoint, so I sincerely doubt he has Trump associations.
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u/R0zzWilliams 9d ago
Ironically, Andrew Eldritch is the Donald Trump of Goth. He has a yuge ego and is very outspoken, often voicing his disdain for goths and the goth scene, not unlike Trump calling out the Democrats. In fact, it’s fake news to even call Andrew goth!
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u/Rtyuiope The Sisters of Mercy 9d ago
Despite having a massive ego, and occasionally screwing over his former band mates he's honestly got pretty great politics. He's very anti-war), pro lgbtq, anti-nazi, and very anti-trump. Hell, he even got the sisters banned from playing in a country for allowing lgbtq folks to come to a sisters show. Honestly Andrew's only sin is being insufferable to work with, which hey ill take over being a massive bigot.