Spacemen 3 were a psychedelic rock band who grew to widespread infamy and cult status in the British music press on the back of their open, frank discussion of their heavy drug use and their unique, heavy trance-rock sound. However, band tensions grew in the band rapidly until they succumbed to conflict and collapsed in 1989.

Their genesis occurred at Rugby Art College when a teenaged Pete Kember met Jason Pierce. The two quickly became close friends. On the back of a shared love of The Stooges and The Cramps, the two decided to form a band in 1982. They recruited a rhythm section, rehearsed in their drummer’s house and started to show a bit of promise. However, as Pierce graduated and moved on to another art school in a different town, the rhythm section dropped out. By the time he’d returned two years later, the group was pared down to a trio with a new drummer.

At first, they just called themselves “Spacemen” after their tendency to yell “We’re spacemen!” to introduce themselves at concerts. Then, for one gig, they designed a poster that read “ARE YOUR DREAMS AT NIGHT 3 SIZES TOO BIG?” (a coy reference to the mystic theory of the third eye). The oversized 3 stuck in the band’s mind and soon, they were re-christened Spacemen 3.

The band were known at first for their confrontationally loud, heavy shows, in which they’d try to weed out anyone in the audience who wasn’t specifically there to see them. Fortunately and unfortunately, it worked: they grew in infamy, but their concerts became more and more sparsely-attended.

On the weight of their second demo tape (later bootlegged as Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To), they were signed to the independent Glass Records in 1986. Through their time with Glass, the 3’s sound gradually progressed as their roots as a drugged-up garage rock band gave way to the neo-psychedelic space-rock sound they truly made their name with. Kember & Pierce decided to adopt stage names: they became Sonic Boom and Spaceman, respectively.

With their third album, 1989’s Playing with Fire (and the singles that preceded it a year earlier), the band became darlings of the British music press—a relationship that only deepened when they used their interviews to shed bright light on their own frequent drug use (to the point that Kember took a Melody Maker journalist with him to pick up a methadone prescription). The band, in turn, gained a fervent cult-like following in the UK.

However, relations within the band had disintegrated when Kember’s ego (and rampant drug abuse) got the best of him and he began alienating Pierce. Tensions got to the point that the two physically fought each other in their new label’s office (having dropped Glass for Fire) over shared songwriting credits. During the recordings for their final album, the two purposely recorded at separate times. Kember’s behavior grew more and more erratic; despite using more than twice the studio time as Pierce, he hadn’t finished recording by the time mixing began in 1990. Kember spent months on end re-recording his parts until the band’s manager finally seized the tapes from him and mixed the record without his input.

In the meantime, Pierce had departed with the rest of the band and formed his own group out of Kember’s ashes: Spiritualized. They convened for a session in the same studio as Kember’s re-recordings. They swore everyone involved to secrecy so he would have no opportunity to get involved in any way. Their first single was released in 1990 with a sticker that proclaimed “SPACEMEN 3”. Kember was pissed at this attempt to take the band out from under him and effectively ended Spacemen 3 on the spot. The album was finally released one year later as Recurring.

Pierce continues to record music under the Spiritualized name and tours to this day. Kember went on to create a series of short-lived solo projects (like Spectrum and E.A.R.), later bouncing from band to band playing with the likes of Stereolab and Yo La Tengo. Lately, he’s been seen producing albums for some of his band’s direct descendants in the neo-psychedelic scene: MGMT and Panda Bear.

The chances for a Spacemen 3 reunion remain completely out of the question, as Jason Pierce continues to want absolutely nothing to do with Pete Kember.