As far as the Cult’s fans are concerned, “She Sells Sanctuary” is their defining anthem. Released in 1985, it was the group’s most successful single from their second full-length release, Love. Certainly, guitarist Billy Duffy is under no illusions about its importance in the band’s canon.
“In retrospect, it was definitely the song that changed everything for the Cult. Obviously, it’s impossible to say what would have happened for us if we hadn’t come up with it, but I think we would have never done as well otherwise.”
The Cult — then consisting of Duffy, singer Ian Astbury, bassist Jamie Stewart and drummer Nigel Preston — had plans to redefine themselves in the early ‘80s U.K. scene and wanted to up their game.
“The general atmosphere around the band was that we were doing quite well, pulling decent crowds and doing good business,” Duffy explains. “But there was a bit of pressure on us because we were almost seen as some kind of goth supergroup. It seems ridiculous now, I know, but I’d been in Theatre of Hate and ian had been in the Southern Death Cult. There was a lot to live up to and we had to establish ourselves in our own right.”
My whole idea at the time was to make as much noise as possible because I was the only guitar player.”
— Billy Duffy
The song’s distinctive droning riff evolved organically for Duffy. “The first time I played the riff to Ian, he wasn’t entirely convinced,” the guitarist says. “He thought it sounded a little like Big Country or the Skids. That’s possibly true, given my Irish heritage, but that’s obviously the noise that comes out of me when I pick a guitar up. I am of Celtic descent,” he says, with a laugh.
“I’d been playing around a bit with drones on ‘Horse Nation’ on Dreamtime, our first full-length album. My whole idea at the time was to make as much noise as possible because I was the only guitar player.”
“She Sells Sanctuary” was conceived as a single before the band recorded the Love album. “Up to that point, we hadn’t come up with a definitive single to reach a broader audience,” he explains. “It was a trial single, basically. I think we were floundering around a bit for a couple of years before we recorded this. I always felt that the earlier songs that we recorded never quite clicked, although a few were close.
“So we had a meeting with our publishers and they suggested we try doing a cover of ‘China Girl,’ by Iggy Pop.” The song was one of the tracks Pop and David Bowie wrote and performed for Pop’s 1977 album, The Idiot. “This was before Bowie released his own version of the song,” Duffy explains.
“But we thought, If Iggy can’t have a hit with it, why would we?”
Instead, Duffy and Astbury offered up their new co-write, “She Sells Sanctuary.” “It was the very next thing we did,” Duffy says. “Thank god.”
But we thought, If Iggy can’t have a hit with it, why would we?”
— Billy Duffy
The Cult knew they were on to something special and planned to recruit top producer, Steve Lillywhite, to help realize their vision. Things didn’t quite go as they had anticipated though.
“We got the wrong producer!" Duffy explains. "We ended up with Steve Brown, who had produced Wham! and a lot of dance acts." In fact, the Cult had been hoping to get Steve Lillywhite, who was famous at the time for his work with U2 the Psychedelic Furs and other hit groups of the ere.
"Steve Brown shared management with Lillywhite," Duffy says. "We’d left a note at their reception, along with copies of our previous records, asking whether 'Steve would be interested in working with us.' When Steve Brown saw the note, simply addressed to ‘Steve,’ he thought it was for him.
“He asked us to take a meeting with him, even though we were a little doubtful, thinking he was either out of his mind or it could be genius. Once he’d told us that he’d cut his teeth as an engineer on a lot of great, classic records by bands like Thin Lizzy and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, we kind of thought, Why not?”
As huge fans of the bands of the classic rock era, the choice of studio was a no-brainer. “We recorded it at Olympic Studios, where so many legendary albums were recorded by the likes of Hendrix, the Stones and Zep,” Duffy says. “We did do a demo of it before the record was cut. The only real difference was that the demo version of the song came straight in after the snare hit. I think it was Steve’s idea to play what was the middle section on the demo as the intro, and it was also his idea to add the acoustic guitar at the last minute. I was just about to pack up when he suggested trying the acoustic hook. I think it must have been his acoustic, and it was just the one chord. I actually think he may have sampled it, as I don’t remember playing it through the whole song.”
Duffy does have clear memories of what electric guitar and amplifiers he used to achieve his iconic sonic signature. “I was playing my White Falcon and I had a couple of old Boss delays running: an old silver digital one [the DD-2 Digital Delay] and the maroon analog model [the DM-2 Delay]. They were going through a Roland JC-120 with the amp chorus turned on, with two mics panned left and right and a Marshall, I think, down the middle.”
Released on May 17, 1985, “She Sells Sanctuary” reached number 15 on the U.K. Singles chart and certified Platinum in Britain in March 2023 for sales and streams above 600,000. The song had a second run of chart success in January 1993 when it was reissued as “Sanctuary MCMXCIII.”
Duffy knows how important the song is to fans, and never tires of playing it. “It’s the one song that everybody knows, particularly in Europe,” he says. “In the States, a lot of people got into us after Electric came out in1987, so they would have been going back through our catalog to discover the older stuff. We’ve played it at virtually every show and I’ve never not wanted to play it.
“We only ever dropped it once, way back when we supported Guns N’ Roses in Mexico. It didn’t go down well the first night so we yanked it for the second night. That’s the only time I can ever remember us not playing it.”
"We hit this one lick, and the lighting director came rushing forward: 'Don't change a thing!”’ Billy Gibbons reveals how a soundcheck jam turned into ZZ Top's breakthrough hit
“Bob heard I was the ‘young Hendrix of London.’ He said, ‘How did you do that!?’ " Junior Marvin on being picked by Bob Marley as his lead guitarist on 'Exodus,' the album that brought reggae to the world
