Primal Scream

Getting high and having faith. Rock and techno. Drugs and redemption. The passage from the Eighties to the Nineties, in the United Kingdom, is a period of great contradictions, of contrasts that end up coexisting, of rules torn down in the name of a good time that must never, under any circumstances, stop. It's a spirit born from the ashes of a series of revolutions (Sixties psychedelic rock, new wave, punk and post-punk, the recent rave culture), a new scene that borrows something from every possible past to invent a different language, a credible synthesis. House-rock becomes a religion, its cathedral is the Haçienda, its faithful legions of young people fogged up on synthetic drugs.

It's a period of extreme excitement and feverish recording activity. Tons of records come out, while the turnover on stages, in the charts and in public favour has never been so rapid. With its highs and lows, often mistakenly regarded as a mere bridge between the excesses of the Eighties and the return to Britpop's original blueprint, the period spanning the last two decades of the millennium sees a myriad of projects born, explode and vanish, some destined for fleeting glory, others, conversely, for a cult status able to transcend the narrow confines of the scene itself. Among the latter, Primal Scream.

My light shines on, my light shines on

That Bobby Gillespie was destined for great things becomes clear from even a quick glance at his biography. He's still a schoolboy when he meets the person who, years later, would build his success (and that of many others, in truth): Alan McGee. Together the two discover the universe of rock: they listen to the fledgling punk scene, attend the first gig of their lives together (Thin Lizzy), decide to pick up instruments, and in 1978 join The Drains, a very young Glasgow outfit that also features guitarist Andrew Innes, destined to become — alongside Gillespie — the backbone of the future Primal Scream. The band forms in 1982, and debuts in 1987 with the album "Sonic Flower Groove", the fruit of five years spent trying to give shape to their own sound. Work proceeds slowly, not least because Gillespie, in the meantime, is also moonlighting as drummer for the Jesus and Mary Chain, with whom he records the legendary "Psychocandy". Once the brief but important experience alongside the Reid brothers is over, he turns his full attention to the project he founded. The jangle-pop of their early days is followed by the still Sixties-indebted alt-rock of "Primal Scream", a critical and commercial flop that threatens to seal the Scots' fate. Until McGee decides to take matters into his own hands, in his own way.

Ecstasy was a religious conversion!

(Bobby Gillespie)

"Primal Scream" came out on Creation, the label founded in 1983 and run personally by McGee. It's clear that McGee believed in the talent of his old friends, but at the time he didn't fully share their stylistic vision. In 1988, while work on the self-titled album was underway, he introduced Gillespie and co. (Martin Duffy had by then joined the line-up on keyboards) to the world of acid house. The rest followed naturally: "McGee seemed mad," Bobby told the New Musical Express on the twentieth anniversary of "Screamadelica" – "one minute he'd be listening to Gram Parsons, the Stones and the Modern Lovers, the next he was one of those kids off his head on acid. It was like watching a religious conversion. In no time at all he was there begging us: 'Please listen to this music! Please try this new drug'".

The prayer, so to speak, was answered. And it's in this climate that the other conversion took place – not religious but musical: house music's imagery seeped into the Primal Scream sound, and nothing would ever be the same again. "Ecstasy opened all our minds," Gillespie would later say, and the result went by the name of "Screamadelica", the cornerstone album that, under the supervision of McGee and producer Andy Weatherall (arriving from the world of deejaying), ushered in the new decade in 1991 – an album that, to varying degrees, pretty much everyone would have to reckon with.

I was blind, now I can see/ You made a believer out of me

Opener and high point (alongside the equally celebrated "Loaded") of "Screamadelica", "Movin' On Up" packs the full essence of Primal Scream at their absolute best into under four minutes, both musically and lyrically. But let's take it step by step. Stylistically, "Movin' On Up" is article one of the new constitution drawn up by the Scots. It's what the Stones might sound like after a wild night at the Haçienda. Not house yet – for those cues, skip forward two tracks to "Don't Fight It, Feel It" – but swaggering in a loose blend of Stones-ish R&B, all the baggy influence and the debauchery of the Happy Mondays, pairing carpets of piano and acid guitars, while Gillespie's profane voice trades off and duets with gospel choirs that lend an aura of sacredness so out of place it fits perfectly into the fabric of the song. It's an ambiguity that finds its fullest expression in the lyrics devised for the occasion, where the sense of perpetual motion (the title translates literally as "moving upward") develops above all as a vertical idea, one of transcendence. It's the play on double meanings the whole song rests on: on one hand an almost religious feeling (“I was blind/ Now I can see/ You made a believer/ Out of me”, "I'm movin' on up now/Gettin' out of the darkness/My light shines on"), on the other the thinly veiled suspicion that these words of gratitude aren't addressed to a Higher Power, but to ecstasy and its hallucinogenic effects. A trick used in those very years, in those very same circles, by the Stone Roses on "I Am The Resurrection" and by The La's on "There She Goes". Religious conversion, as Gillespie would say twenty years later, is a matter of synthetic substances. "Movin' On Up" is its opening statement, the grand entrance, the absolute climax. A sabbath both profane and mystical, lasting until the night's end.

I was blind, now I can see

You made a believer out of me

I was blind, now I can see

You made a believer out of me

I'm movin' on up now

Gettin’ out of the darkness

My light shines on, my light shines on

My light shines on

I was lost, now I'm found

I believe in you, I've got no bounds

I was lost, now I'm found

I believe in you, I got no bounds

I'm movin' on up now

Gettin’ out of the darkness

My light shines on, my light shines on

My light shines on, my light shines on

My light shines on, my light shines on

My light shines on

My light shines on, my light shines on

My light shines on, my light shines on

I'm getting outta darkness

My light shines on

I'm getting outta darkness

My light shines on

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

18/03/2026