More so than any of its predecessors, Electric had a long and difficult genesis. Work on the album had begun in the early summer of 1986, when the band had booked into the luxurious residential studio, the Manor, in Oxfordshire. Over the next three months, the band taped a whole album of new material, but it was widely felt that the recordings lacked the unfettered aggression that until then had been a central component of the Cult's sound. The mosaic of effects-laden guitars and superfluous overdubs (backing singers, horns) may have justified the £200,000 spent in studio fees, but it had stifled the inherent dynamic of many of the songs. And deep down, everyone knew it.

On one hand, it was a classic case of over-production, arguably a result of producer Steve Brown's brief to shape a more sophisticated version of 1985's worldwide chart success, Love. Yet matters had also been compounded by the increasing friction between songwriters Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, who were clearly becoming polarised as individuals. Now flirting with Nazi chic in true Bowie fashion, Astbury would spend hours locked away in his room with his girlfriend Renee Beach. The lyrics he was meant to be writing were slow in coming, and the general lack of communication between the two parties left a frustrated Brown, Duffy and bassist Jamie Stewart perhaps a little too long to toy around with the mixes. It was little wonder the results were over-blown and patently lacking in focus.

With the album ostensibly completed (it will be reconstructed and made available as Peace), a disheartened Astbury and Duffy approached former Clash engineer Bill Price to remix 'Love Removal Machine' with a view to issuing it as a single. It was around this time that the glummer-and-glummer twins were invited to receive a student award for 'She Sells Sanctuary' at a ceremony in America. Also in attendance was 23-year-old New York rap supremo and Def Jam label owner, Rick Rubin, famous for turning the Beastie Boys from a pugnacious hardcore punk band into the goofy rock-rap power outfit who cut the monumentally successful Licensed To Ill.

"I mean, how do you go about approaching Rick Rubin?", an incredulous Ian asked the NME in a 1987 interview. "He's like the NY Rap King and we're like this northern rock band pootering around doing our own thing."

But approach him they did, hitting it off with the producer sufficiently well to convince him he was the man to remix 'Love Removal Machine'. Several weeks later, armed with the mastertapes, Astbury and Duffy flew to New York to salvage what they considered to be a potential Cult smash. Rubin, however, was singularly unimpressed with the track's muddle of overdubs, and presented them another option: to re-record the song, plus a handful of others, from scratch. If they wanted sound like AC/DC, they'd have start all over again.

Ian and Billy concurred, and in late November 1987, Jamie Stewart and drummer Les Warner were summoned to New York from England. Ensconced in the city's famous Electric Ladyland Studios, the spirit of Hendrix no doubt looking on from above, the band were cajoled into re-arranging the songs, trimming off the unwanted fluff and cutting them down to a classic three or four-minute format. Billy was also robbed of his long-time stylistic comfort-blanket: his beloved effects peddles.

"I felt very ill-equipped to play on that record," recalls Duffy. "I was bullied into it by Rick Rubin and felt very uncomfortable. I was told here's a Les Paul, that's rented, and here's a Marshall. I remember sitting there for three hours playing the riff to 'Lil' Devil' differently, with a bend in it. With Electric two cultures collided - British rock culture and American rock culture."

Jamie supports his story: "Most of the gear was hired, as our stuff was in a lock-up back in London. We didn't really know what was going on. At the time, Rubin was just becoming notable for his work with the Beastie Boys, who had those very hard and straight guitars. The thought of doing that kind of stuff was very appealing."

Back in London, though, the Cult's management were getting cold feet about the whole affair. They were curious to know how much of the album was being re-recorded and, more importantly, how much it was costing them. Just before Christmas 1986, they jetted into to JFK to get some answers. To their astonishment, they found the group inspired and motivated, and Rubin working a 16-hour day. Furthermore, the tracks were redolent of the stripped-bare, turbo-charged rock that mainstream America loved. The bearded Rubin, and his obsession to transform the Cult into AC/DC, had apparently saved the day.

Astbury told the NME: "He just cruises through everything with a grapefruit and tuna fish sandwich in his hand, peddling away on his exercise bike, listening to AC/DC. You never see him smoke, he never drinks, doesn't do any drugs"

Having been given the go-ahead to complete the album in New York, the Cult worked through the Christmas break to bring the newly-refashioned Electric back to the U.K. on schedule. On their return, their efforts were universally praised. The album swaggered with a primitive lawlessness that had been absent in British rock since Black Sabbath first bludgeoned their way out of the Black Country, fifteen years earlier. The opening triptych of 'Wild Flower', 'Peace Dog' and 'Lil' Devil' were joyously heartfelt and unselfconscious rock monoliths, brazenly drawing strength from the fact that their riffs were second-hand and their lyrics a clichéd distillation of every two-bit road-movie script. To the Cult, it didn't matter: this retrogression felt like total freedom.

"No one's really got a copyright on the blues," says Ian. "Certainly not bands like Led Zeppelin. You can hear the roots of that music in field recordings made by the Smithsonian Institute earlier in the century. So what if we're using them? We're just updating it."

Elsewhere on the album, 'Electric Ocean' showed a moodier and more sprawling side to the band, while the uptempo 'Bad Fun' and 'King Contrary Man' displayed trace elements of the speed metal being popularised by Anthrax and Metallica. It was, indeed, as one music paper said, "the welcome return of the electric warrior".

With 'Love Removal Machine' unleashed as taster, the album - issued in April 1987 in a gatefold sleeve, with gnarled HM cartoon graphics courtesy of illustrator Storm Thorgeson - swiftly scaled the charts, reaching No. 4 in the U.K., and No. 38 in the States. The Cult, Rubin and their management had been vindicated for effectively scrapping a whole album and starting afresh; though, inevitably, the critics were divided about the results. (Tellingly, NME's Steven Wells wrote: "That's the thing about the folk who knock the Cult. Have you noticed how old they are?")

To promote the album, the group headed out on a U.K. tour, recruiting Zodiac Mindwarp's Kid 'Haggis' Chaos as a temporary bassist, to free Jamie to play rhythm guitar. Decked out in leathers, they looked every centimetre the rogue biker gang from hell. It was the beginning of eighteen months of relentless touring that were designed to break the band as a mainstream rock act. In the event, it very nearly split them up.

With supports slots with Billy Idol and a headlining American tour with Guns N'Roses opening, it was evident that rock'n'roll excess would be an omnipresent part of the touring set-up. Yet as the Cult rollercoaster thundered on, and 'Lil' Devil' and 'Wildflower' appeared as singles (reaching No. 11 and 24, respectively), the madness of the road reached a level than even the Cult found hard to tolerate. Matters weren't helped by the fact that Billy was having his reservations about Les Warner, or that some of the territories that had been previously enamoured with Love, were flummoxed by the wanton rawk of Electric.

"We had a glorious American tour, culminating with a big gig in Los Angeles," recalls Jamie. "Then we did a tour with Billy Idol and ended up in Hawaii. Then we did three weeks in Australia. They were having their worse storms in 50 years. There was a lot of negativity around."

The 'negativity' in question chiefly centred around Ian's increasing erratic behaviour. Desperate to make an impact at every town they visited, he got into the habit of smashing up Warner's kit at then end of every gig.

"I would inevitably walk off stage," says Jamie. "I wasn't feeling particularly frustrated and didn't want anything to do with trashing gear. Billy had a bit of a go for effect and the drummer joined in because he didn't have much choice."

Events finally reached their flash-point at a two-night stand, when the gear had to be replaced for a second night's trashing in the same venue. A shroud of depression settled around the group, when they realised that the cycle of destruction couldn't be stopped. It struck Jamie and Billy that Ian's transgressions weren't just anti-social - they were also costing them a lot of money.

Jamie: "I'd sit down the gym the next morning, talking to Billy about what Ian had been doing the night before - whether it was walking naked across his balcony railings at two o'clock in the morning or getting drunk and trashing some club. He was having a difficult time with success and, basically, it got to the point where no one could relate to him. Or to his girlfriend."

With the bills for wrecked equipment mounting, and the atmosphere in the band positively poisonous, it was decided to cancel the forthcoming Japanese leg of the tour, and fly home while the band were still in one piece.

Despite the mainstream success of Electric, the band were still in debt and their critics were increasingly vocal. Something was going to have to giveä and it did. In 1988, the band dispensed with the services of Les Warner and Kid Chaos, sacked their management and moved to L.A. The scene was set for their most bombastic and biggest-selling album of the late 80s - Sonic Temple.

Pat Gilbert, Record Collector magazine - London, 1996