The Mission are an English gothic rock band formed in 1986. Initially known as The Sisterhood, the band was started by frontman Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams. After an aborted recording session with Andrew Eldritch in the summer of 1985, they left The Sisters of Mercy. Based in Leeds, the duo continued to work on various musical ideas and recorded them over the autumn. Dismissing the use of a drum machine, Adams and Hussey asked Mick Brown to help out with the sessions. By the end of the year, he had joined the band on a permanent basis. With Hussey as both the frontman and principal songwriter, the trio required a second guitarist to facilitate a live setup.They eventually recruited Simon Hinkler, who also contributed keyboards and thus completed the four-piece.
Their debut album, God’s Own Medicine, was then recorded in six weeks with novice producer Tim Palmer, an acquaintance from Hussey’s Dead or Alive days. In October, the single “III” (“Stay With Me”) was released, preceding the album that appeared the next month. The band set out on a three-month World Crusade I UK/European tour, with their dedicated followers, ‘Eskimos’, in tow. They also appeared on British television a number of times and recorded a session for BBC radio. The single “IV” (“Wasteland”) charted at No. 11 in January 1987.
he World Crusade II tour brought the band to North America, where they were known as ‘The Mission UK’. The 41-date trek was characterised by substance abuse and led to the collapse of an inebriated Craig Adams in Los Angeles, resulting in him temporarily quitting the band. Sound tech Pete Turner filled in for one show, before they enlisted the help of Chris Bocast to play bass with them for the remainder of the tour. In March 1987, the single “V” (“Severina”), with guest vocals by Julianne Regan, was released.
By the summer of 1987, Hussey had already written some new material that was first aired during the band’s summer festival shows and U2 warm-up performances. The Mission enlisted the help of John Paul Jones to produce their second album, Children. In October of the same year, Hussey became a father to a girl named Hannah, an event that inspired much of the lyrical content. Musically, the band moved more towards a hard rock style. In January 1988, the band recorded some additional material in London together with Stent. In February, the first single, “Tower of Strength”, was released, reaching number 12 in the UK Singles Chart. At the end of the same month, the album appeared and charted at number 2 in the UK album chart.
The rest of the year was taken up by the Children Play world tour, which included a six-night residency at the London Astoria, Theatre where John Paul Jones made a guest appearance on keyboards. The rest of the tour included a support slot for Robert Plant, the first dates the band played in Latin America, and a small tour of Japan. A second single, “Beyond the Pale”, made less of an impact and a third scheduled for the end of the year was cancelled. At the end of 1988, The Mission embarked on an eight-date arena tour around the UK, while a collection of their music videos, From Dusk to Dawn, was released.
In the first half of 1989, Hussey spent some time writing new material in the Black Mountains in South Wales before the band reconvened in April to start the recording process. They once again enlisted the help of Tim Palmer to produce the record. Slated for an early-1990 release, the recording of the Carved in Sand album had been completed by the end of August 1989. The first single, Butterfly on a Wheel, was released in January 1990 and narrowly missed the top ten. The new album appeared a month later, together with the Waves upon the Sand video that documented the recording sessions and Scottish tour of the previous year.
The release of a second single, “Deliverance”, coincided with the UK arena dates. In March 1996, the band set up in Bristol for eight weeks to record new songs that Hussey had been developing. When the resulting album, Blue, was released, it received mixed reviews from music critics but left portions of the old fanbase rather unimpressed. Future interviews would see Hussey hating the album, with only the reworked B-side “Evermore & Again” ever becoming a regular staple in subsequent tours. A short stint around the UK, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands afterwards turned out to be a farewell tour: after ten years, Hussey and Brown decided that enough was enough. The band finished it all off with festivals in Spain and South Africa, the latter being their final gig, at the Kyalami racetrack in Johannesburg.
