When Waterboys founder Mike Scott was a teenager living in Edinburgh, he published a fanzine called Jungleland. The sixth issue, released in late 1977, had Richard Hell on the cover and teased articles about the Sex Pistols and Graham Parker. That Scott named his zine after the last song on the Bruce Springsteen album Born to run he suggested that the angry energy of punk—a force that exerted a huge pull on young people—was tempered by a yearning spirituality. For Scott, music offered a gateway to a new way of looking at the world, one full of romance, something you could get carried away with, where life seemed so full of excitement and possibility like an inflated container just about to burst.
Another cover for 'Jungleland' No. 6 is Patti Smith. When the Patti Smith Group came to London while on tour Easter In 1978, Scott, face to face, called the hotel where he thought the singer might be staying and asked to speak to her, and the front desk passed him by. He asked her if she had received a package of zines she had sent (she hadn't) and after a short chat she invited him to London to cover the show. He took the train down, met his hero, hung out with her band, befriended her guitarist, Lenny Kaye, and stayed in a room at the fancy hotel he had arranged. Five years later, when Scott placed an ad in the NME in the ads looking for bandmates, he described what he was looking for:
THE WATERBOYS NEED A LEAD/RHYTHM GUITARIST. 18-24. Patti Smith's ability, own style and appreciation required.
Some additional facts to help us understand Scott: While vacationing with his mother in London at the age of 16, he went to a studio advertised in Melody Maker and recorded a version of Bob Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone”, playing most of the instruments himself. He wanted to see how the records were made. Scott's first band was called White Heat, named after a Lou Reed song, and the name Waterboys came from a line in Reed's “The Kids”, from Berlin. Other fixations during his youth included David Bowie and Van Morrison.
This is Dylan, Patti, Bruce, Van, Lou, Bowie and punk rock – inspirations who all seemed in conversation with each other. Springsteen was once the New Dylan, and Patti took his rock 'n' roll poetry to strange places. Bruce and Patti had met each other on the song “Because the Night”. Springsteen's second LP was deeply indebted to Van Morrison, and Patti had naturally transformed “Gloria,” the signature song of Van's early days, into her album. Horses; Bowie had covered Reed and Springsteen both, and was, like the latter, a king of punk rock. Springsteen had appeared on Reed's “Street Hassle.”
