The Jesus and Mary Chain: Have they got a prayer?

THE GAUNT, black-leather-clad members of the Jesus and Mary Chain are perched about the dressing room of the I Beam in San Francisco like four crows, looking dour and ill at ease. "What are you writing?" demands lead guitarist William Reid, whose matted black hair poufs out from his head in every direction. The somnolent William and his slightly more perky, red-haired brother, Jim, are the masterminds behind the latest U.K. rock sensation, an eighteen-month-old Scottish band that's been dubbed "the new Sex Pistols" by the ever-hyperbolic British music press.