Being the drummer in the Jesus & Mary Chain would be enough for most people, but not Bobby Gillespie. When he wasn't sitting behind the drum kit for the East Kilbride noise-makers, Gillespie was fronting his own band, Primal Scream. Formed in 1984, the band had followed the JAMC in signing to Creation Records and had already released a debut single, All Fall Down, when Gillespie quit his drumming day job to concentrate full time on his own project.

As with the parent band, Primal Scream quickly signed to a subsidiary of major label WEA and released their debut album Sonic Flower Groove in 1987. While the JAMC had attracted almost universal praise from the music press, however, Primal Scream's raw sound drew unfavourable comparisons with the Rolling Stones, and although the album reached a creditable peak of 62 in the national chart, the band soon returned to Creation. Their eponymous second album was released in 1989, but failed to make any impression on the chart.

Sensing that their unpolished rock style was out of step with the current trend of indie-dance crossover bands such as the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, the trendy club DJ Andrew Weatherall was brought in to remix the track I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have from the unsuccessful album for possible single release. Weatherall took a single line of backing vocals from the track and looped it over a shuffling dance beat, throwing in a insistent trumpet line and some snatches of movie dialogue for good measure, and christening the result Loaded. The track was quickly adopted as something of an anthem by the early '90s ravers, and took the band to number 16 in the chart early in 1990. This unplanned journey into clubland became the basis for Primal Scream's greatest work, their third album Screamadelica. The rock guitars remained, but nestled among trippy dub rhythms and euphoric lyrics on tracks such as Movin' On Up and Come Together. The music press unanimously voted it the best album of 1991, and the following year Screamadelica became the first album to win the Mercury Music Prize.

After the universal acclaim heaped upon Screamadelica, it was almost inevitable that the follow-up would be a disappointment, but when the next album Give Out But Don't Give Up finally arrived in 1994, the blissed-out ravers suddenly found that they were no longer catered for. Primal Scream had gone back to being simply a rock band, and although the lead single Rocks¹ reached number 7, the music papers were generally unimpressed and the old Rolling Stones comparisons resurfaced, particularly towards the end of 1994 as the Stones' Out Of Tears single jostled with the Scream's (I'm Gonna) Cry Myself Blind for position at the lower end of the top fifty.

The band retired to lick their wounds for the next couple of years, but in October 1996 they made the inspired move of recruiting the Stone Roses' former bass player Mani into the ranks. Apparently rejuvenated by Mani's arrival, the band's fifth album Vanishing Point was released the following year and was heralded as a return to form, spawning another top ten single, Kowalski. They followed this in 1999 with another, equally well received album, the confusingly titled Xtrmntr. Although the demise of Creation in 2000 has left Primal Scream without a record label², it seems safe to assume that the band will continue to push back boundaries for some time to come.

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