Rock She Wrote - Dest

Edited b:
Evelyn McDonnell
and Ann Powers
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About Ro ck
*wi» W
dream hampton
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Gerri Hirshey
Brownmill©^
SUS»n Sell hooks
& Lisa clones
Pamela Des Barrel
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Mary Gaitskill Palli Smith 3
Kim Gordon Ellen Willis
and more -^L
IN EVERY OTHER ROCK HISTORY OR
COLLECTION OF CRITICISM,
WOMEN ARE NOTABLY MISSING IN ACTION.
LANDMARK WORK BRINGS TO PRINT
THIS
MUSIC CRITICISM, FAN EXPERIENCE,
AND PERFORMERS' FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNTS FROM
MORE THAN SIXTY WOMEN WRITERS
FROM THE 1960s TO THE 1990s, INCLUDING:
"jazzwomen: they're mostly singers and piano players,
only a horn player or two, hardly any drummers,"
by hattie gossett with Carolyn Johnson (1979)
Performer and writer hattie gossett looks at jazz as a male preserve
to find out why there are so few female names in the great roll call
of jazz saxophonists, drummers, trumpeters, arrangers, compos-
ers, and orchestra leaders.
"White Noise: How Heavy Metal Rules"

by Deborah Frost (1985)
Armed with a musician's understanding of technique and a lethal
wit, Frost takes a sympathetic look at metal, a genre many critics
scoff at, and ventures inside the minds of Motley Criie.
"Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?"

by bell hooks (1992)
Groundbreaking feminist cultural critic bell hooks takes a look at
Madonna's success as the quintessential "white girl" and her ex-
ploitation of black culture and style —
a fresh, harsh, and provoca-
tive analysis of an icon.
"Masked Bawl" by Patti Smith (1974)

and groundbreaking, Patti Smith writes
Original, iconoclastic,
about Bob Dylan ... as a sex symbol and herself.
. . .
"k.d. lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist, Vegetarian

Canadian Win a Grammy and the Hearts of America?"
by Mim Udovitch (1993)
A deft, intimate profile of the good-natured pop heroine who talks
about her music, her interests, and becoming a reluctant poster
girl for a political movement.
ROCK
SHE
WROTE
Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers
Delta
Trade
Paperbacks
A Delta Book
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1995 by Ann Powers and Evelyn McDonnell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the
written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Delta® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and
in other countries.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rock she wrote / [compiled] by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers,
p. cm.
ISBN 0-385-31250-4
1. Rock music —
History and criticism. 2. Feminism and music.
I.McDonnell, Evelyn. II. Powers, Ann.
ML3534.R634 1995
781.66'09— dc20 95-5835
CIP
MN
BOOK DESIGN BY JEANNINE C. FORD
Manufactured in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada
November 1995
10 987654321
BVG
Grateful acknowledgment is made for the following:
Evelyn McDonnell: "The Feminine Critique," from The Village Voice Rock &
Roll Quarterly, fall 1992. Copyright © 1992, 1995 Evelyn McDonnell. Used by
permission of the author.
Marianne Faithfull: From FAITHFULL by Marianne Faithfull. Copyright © 1994

by Marianne Faithfull. Used by permission of Little, Brown and Company.
Jaan Uhelszki: "I Dreamed I Was Onstage with KISS in My Maidenform Bra,"
from Creem, August 1975. Used by permission of the author
Cherie Currie: From Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story, copyright © 1989
Cherie Currie. Used by permission of the author.
Georgia Christgau: "The Girls Can't Help It," from The Village Voice, Oct. 30,
1978. Used by permission of the author.
hattie gossett with Carolyn Johnson: "jazzwomen: they're mostly singers and
piano players, only a horn player or two. hardly any drummers," by Hattie
Gossett with Carolyn Johnson. Published in Jazz Spotlite News, August 1979 and
Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art &
Politics, issue no. 10: "Women and
Music", 1980. Copyright 1979 by Hattie Gossett.
Kim Gordon: "Boys Are Smelly: Sonic Youth Tour Diary, '87," from The Village
Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, fall 1988. Used by permission of the author.
Donna Dresch: On playing bass, from Jigsaw, winter 1989. Used by permission
of the author.
Margot Mifflin: "The Fallacy of Feminism in Rock," from Keyboard, April 1990.
Used by permission of the author.
Gretchen Phillips: "I Moshed at Mich," from The Village Voice, September 6,
Lisa Robinson: "The New Velvet Underground," from Creem, November 1975.
Used by permission of the autnor.
Caroline Coon: "The Sex Pistols," from Melody Maker,November 1976, and
1988: The Punk Rock Explosion, Omnibus Press. Used by permission of the
author.
Vivien Goldman: "The Rascal Republic Takes on the World," from New Musical
Express, October 18, 1980. Used by permission of the author.
Sheryl Garratt: "Lovers Rock," from The Face, March 1985. Used by permission
of the author.
Deborah Frost: "White Noise: How Heavy Metal Rules," from The Village Voice,
June 18, 1985. Used by permission of the author.
Leslie Berman: "On the Trail of the Blues," originally published in High Fidelity,
August 1988. Reprinted with permission.
Sue Cummings: "Spin Doctors," from L.A. Weekly, May 22-28, 1992. Used by
Tracie Morris: "on 'n' on." Reprinted with permission from "Chap-T-her Won:
Some Poems by Tracie Morris" © 1993 TM
Ink ISBN # 1-883676-00-2.
Holly George-Warren: "Into the Abyss," from Option, November/December

Nicole Panter: "Fuck You Punk Rock/1977 and 1979." Reprinted from "Mr.
Right On and Other Stories," by Nicole Panter, Incommunicado Books, 1994.
Susan Brownmiller: "Yoko and John," © Susan Brownmiller 1981. Originally

published in Rolling Stone, January 22, 1981. Used by permission of the author.
Lori Twersky: "Devils or Angels? The female teenage audience examined,"

copyright 1981 Lori Twersky. Originally published in Trouser Press, April 1981.
Used by permission of William B. Abbott IV, Cheryl Cline, and S.J. McCarthy.
JessicaHagedorn: "Motown/Smokey Robinson," copyright © 1981 by Jessica

Hagedorn, from DANGER AND BEAUTY by Jessica Hagedorn. Used by
permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
Donna Gaines: "Sylvia's Husband," from The Village Voice, June 9, 1987. Used
by permission of the author.
Christina Kelly: "I Hate Going Backstage," first appeared in Sassy, April 1991.
Written by Christina Kelly. Reprinted with the permission of SASSY Magazine.
Copyright © 1991 by SASSY Publishers, Inc.
Pamela des Barres: "Rock'n'roll Needs Courtney Love," from Interview, March
Danyel Smith: "Hip-hop culture," from Spin, May 1993. Used by permission of
the author.
Patti Smith: "Masked Bawl," from Creem, April 1974. Used by permission of the
author.
"Heavy Metal Will Stand," from Creem, May 1975. Copyright

Trixie A. Balm: ©
1975, 1995 Lauren E. Agnelli (aka Trixie A. Balm). Used by permission of the
author.
Karen Durbin: "Can the Stones Still Cut It?" from The Village Voice, June 23,
Is No Pretender," from The Real Paper,

Ariel Swartley: "This Prince March 1,
Carol Cooper: "August Darnell and the Creole Perplex," from The Village Voice,
July 27, 1982. Copyright © 1982 Carol Cooper. Used by permission of the
author.
Gcrri Hirshcy: 'James Brown: Presenting the One and Only Mr. Dynamite, Mr.
Sex Machine, Soul Brother Number One from Rolling Stone, Aug. 23,
(Part 1),"
1990. Reprinted by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright © 1990
by (urn Hirshey.
loan Morgan: "The Nigga Ya Hate To love;' from The Village Voice, July 17,
1^0. Used by permission of the author.
Gina Arnold: "Nelson Is as Nelson Does," from East Bay Express, 1991. Used
Karen Schoemer: "Old Blue Eyes, Young at Heart," from L.A. Style, April 1991.
Mary Gaitskill: "The Rose Taboo," from Details, July 1992. Used by permission
of the author.
Susin Shapiro: "Patti Smith: Somewhere, Over the Rimbaud," from Crawdaddy,
December 1975. Used by permission of the author.
Lisa Fancher: "Are You Young and Rebellious Enough to Love the Runaways?,"
from Who Put the Bompl, spring 1976. Reprinted courtesy of Greg Shaw/Bora/?
Magazine. Used by permission of the author.
Daisann McLane: "Heart Attack," from Rolling Stone, May 15, 1980. Used by
Carola Dibbell: "The Slits Go Native," from the Boston Phoenix, fall 1981. Used
Jan Hoffman: "Backing Up Is Hard To Do," from The Village Voice, March 18,
Tricia Rose: "One Queen, One Tribe, One Destiny," from The Village Voice
Rock & Roll Quarterly, spring 1990. Used by permission of the author.
bell hooks: "Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?," from Black Looks:
Race and Representation, 1992. Used by permission of the author.
Ann Powers: "Houses of the Holy," from The Village Voice, June 1, 1993. Used
Mim Udovitch: "k.d.lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist, Vegetarian Canadian

Win a Grammy and the Hearts of America?" By Mim Udovitch. From Rolling
Stone, August 5, 1993. By Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1993. All Rights
Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lisa Carver: "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton-John," from Rollerderby,

Sally Margaret Joy: "Juliana Hatfield," from Melody Maker, November 13,
Dana Bryant: "Canis Rufus." Used by permission of the author.
Kennealy-Morrison: "Rock Around the Cock." Reprinted from jazz and

Patricia
Pop magazine, October 1970 (Jazz Press Inc.) © 1970, 1994 by Patricia
Kennealy-Morrison. Used by permission of the author.
Thulani Davis: "The Blues Talk Back," from The Village Voice, July 9-15, 1980.
Cheryl Cline: "Little Songs of Misogyny," from Bitch #16, 1987. Used by
Terri Sutton: "Women, Sex, &C Rock 'n' Roll," from Puncture, summer 1989.
Lisa Jones: "The Signifying Monkees: 2 Live Crew's Nasty-Boy Rap on Trial in
South Florida." From BULLETPROOF DIVA by Lisa Jones. Copyright © 1994
by Lisa Jones. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Emily White: "Revolution Girl Style Now," from L.A. Weekly, July 10-16, 1992.
Lisa Kennedy: "Speedballing with the Home Invader," from The Village Voice,
April 13, 1993. Used by permission of the author.
Ellen Willis: "Records: Rock, Etc.," from The New Yorker, July 6, 1968.
Copyright © by Ellen Willis.Used by permission of the author.
Roberta "Robbie" Cruger: "Flashbacks to Boy Howdy's Prepubescence," from

Creem, 1994. Used by permission of the author.
Lori Twersky: "Why Bitch?," from Bitch, August 1985. Used by permission of
William B. Abbott IV, Cheryl Cline, and S.J. McCarthy.
Amy Linden: "Rock Mom," from NY Perspectives, July 31, 1992. Used by
Tinuviel: Kill Rock Stars press release, 1993. Used by permission of the author.
Susan McClary: "Same As It Ever Was: Youth Culture and Music," from
Microphone Fiends, 1994. Used by permission of the author.
dream hampton: "Confessions of a Hip-hop Critic," from Essence, August 1994.

In memory of Lori Twersky, 1954-1991
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
INTRO-Evelyn McDonnell, "The Feminine Critique," The Village

Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, fall 1992.
I AM THE BAND
Marianne Faithfull, excerpt from Faith full, 1994.
Jaan Uhelszki, "I Dreamed I Was Onstage with Kiss in My

Maidenform Bra," Q'eem, August 1975.
Cherie Currie, excerpt from Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie
Story, 1989.
Georgia Christgau, "The Girls Can't Help It," The Village

Voice, October 30, 1978.
hattie gossett with Carolyn Johnson, "jazzwomen," jazz

Spotlite News, August 1979.
Kim Gordon, "Boys Are Smelly: Sonic Youth Tour Diary, '87,"
The Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, fall 1988.
Donna Dresch, "Chainsaw," jigsaw, winter 1989.
Margot Mifflin, "The Fallacy of Feminism in Rock,"

Keyboard, April 1990.
Gretchen Phillips, "I Moshed At Mich," The Village Voice,
September 6, 1994.
ON THE SCENE
Lisa Robinson, "The New Velvet Underground," Creem,

November 1975.
Caroline Coon, "The Sex Pistols," Melody Maker, November
1976.
Vivien Goldman, "The Rascal Republic Takes On the World,"

New Musical Express, October 18, 1980.
Sheryl Garratt, "Lovers Rock," The Face, March 1985.
Deborah Frost, "White Noise: How Heavy Metal Rules," The
Village Voice, June 18, 1985.
Leslie Berman, "On the Trail of the Blues," High Fidelity,
August 1988.
Sue Cummings, "Spin Doctors: Jams for a Sleepless
Generation," LA. Weekly, May 22-28, 1992.
Tracie Morris, "on 'n' on," Chap-T-her Won: Some Poems by
Trade Morris, 1993.
Holly George-Warren, "Into the Abyss," Option, November/
December 1992.
FAN MAIL AND LOVE LETTERS
Nicole Panter, "Fuck You Punk Rock/1977 and 1979," Fiz,

1993, and Fuel, summer 1993.
Susan Brownmiller, "Yoko and John," Rolling Stone, January
22, 1981.
Lori Twersky, "Devils or Angels? The female teenage audience

examined," Trouser Press, April 1981.
Jessica Hagedorn, "Motown/Smokey Robinson," from Pet
hood and Tropical Apparitions, 1981.
Donna Gaines, "Sylvia's Husband," The Village Voice, June 9,
1987.
Christina Kelly, "I Hate Going Backstage," Sassy, April 1991.

Pamela Des Barres, "Rock 'n' Roll Needs Courtney Love,"
Interview, March 1994.
Danyel Smith, "Dreaming America: Hip-hop Culture," Spin,
May 1993.
BOY WATCHING
Patti Smith, "Masked Bawl," Creem, April 1974.
Trixie A. Balm, "Heavy Metal Will Stand," Creem, May 1975.

Karen Durbin, "Can the Stones Still Cut It?" The Village
Voice, June 23, 1975.
Ariel Swartley, "This Prince Is No Pretender," The Real Paper,
March 1, 1980.
Carol Cooper, "August Darnell and the Creole Perplex," The

Village Voice, July 27, 1982.
Joan Morgan, "The Nigga Ya Hate to Love," The Village

Voice, July 17, 1990.
Gerri Hirshey, "James Brown: Presenting the One and Only

Mr. Dynamite, Mr. Sex Machine, Soul Brother Number One
(Part 1)," Rolling Stone, August 23, 1990.
Gina Arnold, "Nelson Is as Nelson Does," East Bay Express,

April 12, 1991.
Karen Schoemer, "Old Blue Eyes, Young at Heart," E.A. Style,

April 1991.
Mary Gaitskill, "An Ordinariness of Monstrous Proportions,"

Details, July 1992.
WIMMIN, GRRRLS, QUEENS, AND DIVAS
Susin Shapiro, "Patti Smith: Somewhere, Over the Rimbaud,"

Craw daddy, December 1975.
Lisa Fancher, "Are You Young and Rebellious Enough to Love
the Runaways?" Who Put the Bomp! spring 1976.
Daisann McLane, "Heart Attack," Rolling Stone, May 15,
1980.
Carola Dibbell, "The Slits Go Native," The Boston Phoenix,
fall 1981.
Jan Hoffman, "Backing Up Is Hard to Do," The Village Voice,

March 18, 1986.
Tricia Rose, "One Queen, One Tribe, One Destiny," The

Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, spring 1990.
bell hooks, "Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?"

from Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992.
Ann Powers, "Houses of the Holy," The Village Voice, June 1,
1993.
Mim Udovitch, "k.d. lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist,

Vegetarian Canadian Win a Grammy and the Hearts of
America?" Rolling Stone, August 5, 1993.
Lisa Carver, "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton-John

(Because I'm a Troubled Young Lady)," Rollerderby, 1993.
Sally Margaret Joy, "Juliana Hatfield," Melody Maker,
November 13, 1993.
Dana Bryant, "Canis Rufus," Straight No Chaser, 1992.
TALKING 'BOUT A REVOLUTION
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, "Rock Around the Cock," Jazz &

Pop, October 1970.
Thulani Davis, "The Blues Talk Back," The Village Voice, July
9, 1980.
Cheryl Cline, "Little Songs of Misogyny," Bitch #16, 1987.
"Women,
Terri Sutton, Sex, & Rock 'n' Roll," Puncture,
summer 1989.
Lisa Jones, "The Signifying Monkees: 2 Live Crew's Nasty-Boy
Rap on Trial in South Florida," The Village Voice, November
6, 1990.
Emily White, "Revolution Girl Style Now," LA. Weekly, July

10-16, 1992.
Lisa Kennedy, "Speedballing with the Home Invader," The

Village Voice, April 13, 1993.
SOUND AND VISION
Ellen Willis, "Records: Rock, Etc.," The New Yorker, July 6,

1968.
Roberta "Robbie" Cruger, "Flashbacks to Boy Howdy's

Prepubescence," Creem, 1994.
Lori Twersky, "Why Bitch}
99
Bitch, August 1985.
Amy Linden, "Rock Mom," NY Perspectives, July 31, 1992.
Tinuviel, Kill Rock Stars press release, 1993.
Susan McClary, "Same As It Ever Was: Youth Culture and

Music," from Microphone Fiends, 1994.
dream hampton, "Confessions of a Hip-hop Critic," Essence,
August 1994.
OUTRO-Ann Powers, "Who's That Girl?"
Biographies
About the Editors

Aclcno-wleclcyitienlrsi
Thanks to those who made it happen: Betsy Bundschuh, Sarah

Lazin, Laura Nolan, Katherine Pushkar, and Magenta.
To those who kept us going: Lee Foust, Eric Weisbard, our fami-
lies, Claire Phillips, Kathy Silberger, Felice Ecker, and all the Strong
Women in Music.
To those who lent invaluable assistance: Joe Levy, Sara Valentine,
Ira Robbins, Anthony DeCurtis, Deborah Frost, Ethelbert Miller,
William Abbott, Silver, Bobby Ward, Tinuviel, Robert Christgau,
Greg Tate, Vince Aletti, Matt Wobensmith, and Frank Kogan.
To the editors who helped us break down barriers: Vince Aletti,
Kevin Berger, David Browne, Michael Caruso, Mark Coleman,
Karen Croft, Sue Cummings, Stacey D'Erasmo, Thorn Duffy, Dimitri
Erlich, Bill Flanagan, Graham Fuller, Michael Goldberg, Paul Gold-
berger, Andrew Goodwin, James Henke, Dulcy Israel, Gloria Jacobs,
Gary Kamiya, John Keister, Mark Kemp, Tony Lioce, Scott Malcom-
son, M. Mark, Craig Marks, Donald McQuade, Robert Newman,
Barbara O'Dair, Andrew O'Hehir, Lou Papineau, Jon Pareles, Me-
lissa Rawlins, Fletcher Roberts, Marcelo Rodriguez, Ray Rogers,
Connie Rosenblum, Andrew Ross, Wayne Robins, Tony Sherman,

Mary Kaye Schilling, Ken Schlager, Rob Seidenberg, Doug Simmons,
Ethan Smith, RJ Smith, David Talbot, Cary Tennis, and J.H.
Tompkins.
To those who helped make such a book a possibility: Lorraine Ali,
Arion Berger, Jennifer Blowdryer, Daina Darzin, Kim France, Gillian
Gaar, Pleasant Gehman, Lynell George, Ann Marlowe, Susan Mc-
Carthy, Joyce Millman, Kim Neely, Amy Raphael, Erin Smith, Victo-
ria Starr, Denise Sullivan, Chi Chi Valenti, Deena Weinstein, Janet
Wolff, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and Emily XYZ.
Preface
This book is the record of a search: the literal process of digging through
archives and tracking down old bylines, but also a metaphorical quest for a
history and a community. When we began working together as editor (Eve-
lyn) and writer (Ann) at San Francisco Weekly in 1991, we discovered an
affinity — political, aesthetic, and personal —that we hadn't found among
the male critics who surrounded us, both locally in the Bay Area music
scene, and nationally, through the strange network of misfits that is the rock
critic community. From New York to L.A. the growing number of women
in that community were becoming aware of each other's existence, and of
our shared experiences and concerns. Phone lines were buzzing, articles
were formulated, panels were convened. Our discoveries prompted the

journey that has led us to Rock She Wrote.
Evelyn had already begun research revealing that not only were we not
alone at the frontier, we weren't the first to pioneer this terrain. The article
that introduces this book documented for the first time the history of music
criticism by women; it appeared, in a different version, in The Village Voice
in 1992. Meanwhile, as a graduate student at University of California at
Berkeley, Ann was reading feminist theory and discovering a personal ver-
sion of the link between women's liberation and the love for rock 'n' roll
which she soon realized had been written about by such forebears as Ellen
Willis two decades before. After being approached by a feminist press to
write a book on feminism and rock, Ann called Evelyn about expanding her
article into an anthology. Both of us felt such a project was a feminist act
itself: a way of breaking into the canon and restoring the women who
belong there to their rightful place.

The need for this book was reinforced when a number of rock histories
and collections were published and women authors were notably MIA. We
—
2 preface
knew that voices were being omitted, and we knew who some of them were:
Lisa Robinson, Daisann McLane, Carol Cooper, Ariel Swartley. And judg-
ing by the many women who were our peers, and who were struggling
against hurdles, we suspected that there were women who had vanished,
too tired to continue or pushed out of the game. So we dove into back issues
of magazines, skimmed through books, collected 'zines, and talked to every-
one we could think of. At the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center we
paged through crumbling copies of Creem and Crawdaddy. Magazine of-
fices opened their archives to us. Ira Robbins invited us to his Queens
apartment to peruse the entire print run of Trouser Press. William Abbott
sent us much-prized issues of Bitch, "The Woman's Rock Mag with Bite,"
which had been edited by his late wife, Lori Twersky. We ordered 'zines
from Riot Girl Press. And we asked every woman we could think of who
had written about pop music to send us her favorite story.
We unearthed obscure gems by the known — Patti Smith, Susan

Brownmiller, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison —and the lesser known: Cheryl
Cline, Carola Dibbell, Lisa Carver. We were also shocked by what we didn't
find, as we leafed through whole issues of magazines with not one female
byline. We tracked down writers who had moved on to a wide array of
fields — lawyers, editors, rock stars, fiction writers, academics, filmmakers
and plenty who continued as music scribes. Our spirits were sustained by
the enthusiasm these women showed for the project of rescuing our shared
history from dusty shelves and file cabinets. And we felt like we were creat-
ing a new network, crossing generations and even sometimes reuniting old
friends.
We wound up finding too much, and selection became a painful process.

The piles of articles gradually settled into common themes, and we sepa-
rated them into seven chapters. "I Am the Band" opens the book with the
words of women artists themselves, who prove we can be subjects of the
rock 'n' roll dream, not just its objects. Writer Jaan Uhelszki found out what
it was like to be onstage with Kiss in 1975, while bassist Kim Gordon, who
occasionally dips into journalism, describes a 1987 tour with her band
Sonic Youth. Georgia Christgau and hattie gossett offer an overview of
women artists' experiences in two very different genres: Downtown New
York art rock and jazz. Cherie Currie, Margot Mifflin, Gretchen Phillips,
and Donna Dresch further contribute to the discussion of the performing
woman's triumphs and travails.
1 (appenings, trends, and life-styles have always been integral to the cul-
ture of popular music. In "On the Scene" writers investigate musical move-
ments: Lisa Robinson and Caroline Coon chronicle the birth of punk in
rock she wrote 3
New York and London, respectively; Vivien Goldman follows Fela's ex-
tended political family; Sheryl Garratt pens the history of Lovers Rock;
Deborah Frost cruises the heavy metal strip; Leslie Berman looks for pure
blues in the Mississippi Delta; Sue Cummings watches rave DJs at work;
and Tracie Morris gives a poetic shout-out to her hip-hop roots. Holly
George-Warren delves into a darker side of rock culture, uncovering the
ravages of substance abuse.
In "Fan Mail and Love Letters," women in front of and behind the stage
prove they're more than just passive onlookers. Lori Twersky, Jessica
Hagedorn, Donna Gaines, and Danyel Smith give voice to the complexity
and diversity of the fan's experience. Nicole Panter pays tribute to punk
rock as a friend and manager. Susan Brownmiller and Pamela Des Barres
explore the intimacies shared by musicians and their companions. And
Christina Kelly reveals that the backstage pass is no ticket to paradise.
In "Boy Watching" women show off their libidos and their expertise as
they turn their gaze to men. Patti Smith, Karen Durbin, Trixie A. Balm, and
Mary anatomy of the rock hero. Ariel Swartley heralds
Gaitskill dissect the
the arrival of a Prince. Gerri Hirshey, Gina Arnold, and Karen Schoemer
explore the iconic power of the pop idol. And Carol Cooper and Joan
Morgan analyze the intersecting dynamics of race, culture, and gender.
"Wimmin, Grrrls, Queens, and Divas" sets its sights on the female per-
formers we admire and relate to. Most of these pieces, including those by
Susin Shapiro, Lisa Fancher, Jan Hoffman, Tricia Rose, Lisa Carver, Ann
Powers, Mim Udovitch, and Dana Bryant, celebrate heroines and kindred
spirits, bell hooks's analysis of Madonna's music and message finds a more
problematic role model. Carola Dibbell, Sally Margaret Joy, and Daisann
McLane, while not shying away from the issues, take a sympathetic look at
the difficulties womankind encounters in the boys' game of the music scene.
Changing the rules of that game is the subject of "Talking 'Bout a Revolu-
tion." Patricia Kennealy-Morrison and Cheryl Cline examine the many
faces of sexism in music and chronicle various challenges to its power.
Thulani Davis, Lisa Jones, and Lisa Kennedy explore ways in which racism
may obscure the voices of artists of color. And Terri Sutton and Emily
White discuss different avenues women are taking to forge their own musi-
cal expression.
In the last chapter, "Sound and Vision," writers theorize about music and
reflect on their own creative process. Ellen Willis and Tinuviel trace the
parameters of a rock aesthetic. Susan McClary examines the ways in which

repressed desires — —
and oppressed cultures surface and resurface through
music history. Robbie Cruger, Amy Linden, and dream hampton detail
4 preface
their complicated lives as women journalists and music lovers. Lori Twersky
posts a manifesto that offers new designs for a music culture.
This multiphony of styles, sensibilities, and opinions only begins to open
the historical dialogue between female and musical experience. We've
mapped some of the issues and approaches women have taken in the past
thirty years, as popular music has exploded as a cultural force. But there's
much more life than we could enclose within these pages. Someone com-
mented recently that surely there'd be another volume of this book to come.
After what we've found, we know there could be a whole library full of
these vibrant, sassy, nasty, brilliant women's voices. Among the women
who are definitely a part of this history (and in many cases are still making
it), although we couldn't fit them in this book, are:
Kathleen Pirie Adams, Lorraine Ali, Victoria Balfour, Arion Berger, Jen-
nifer Blowdryer, Galen Brandt, Julie Burchill, Debra Rae Cohen, Sally
Cragin, Daina Darzin, Andrea d'Enthal, Katherine Dieckmann, Kris
Dilorenzo, Jancee Dunn, Sally Eckhoff, Robin Eisgrau, Liz Evans, Jen
Fleissner, Marisa Fox, Kim France, Gillian Gaar, Elysa Gardner, Pleasant
Gehman, Lynell George, Toby Goldstein, Robin Green, Chrissie Hynde,
Connie Johnson, Susan Eller Kagan, Jamaica Kincaid, Joan Kron, Marilyn
Laverty, Adrian LeBlanc, Lisa Lewis, Grace Lichtenstein, Janet Macoska,
M. Mark, Ann Marlowe, Janet Maslin, Sandy Masuo, Janine McAdams,
Susan McCarthy, Cree McCree, Kristine McKenna, Gwen Meno, Sia Mi-
chel, Debby Miller, Kathy Miller, Joyce Millman, Alanna Nash, Kim Neely,
Kris Nicholson, Barbara O'Dair, Deborah Orr, Elena Oumano, Chin-a
Panaccione, Rosemary Passantino, Claudia Perry, Ruth Polsky, Joy Press,
Charlotte Pressler, Amy Raphael, Melissa Rawlins, Lillian Roxon, Ellen
Sander, Karen Schlosberg, Jane Scott, Sara Scribner, Erin Smith, Julene
Snyder, Lauren Spencer, Lara Stapleton, Victoria Starr, Gloria Stavers, Salli
Stevenson, Sue Steward, Patty Stirling, Natasha Stovall, Denise Sullivan,

Chi-Chi Valenti, Penny Valentine, Judy Vermorel, Elisabeth Vincentelli, Mi-
chelc Wallace, Alona Wartofsky, Deena Weinstein, Susan Whitall, Valerie
Wilmer, Janet Wolff, Christian Wright, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Emily XYZ.
Intro:
Evelyn McDonnell,
"The Feminine Critique: The Secret History of
Women and Rook Journalism"
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Village Voice Rock
& Roll Quarterly in fall 1992.
Y ,ou love rock 'n' roll. You grew up in the
hundred Teen Beats and three Springsteen albums down the

American wasteland and
line,
a
you
dreamt that rock singers could take you away from small towns and small
minds. Or you grew up with a Catholic block: a rosary of forbidden desires
that you channeled into fantasies about rock star heartthrobs. Or just as
you were discovering that being female meant either surrendering to the
shadows or building a cauldron of resistance inside, you also discovered
that punk —or rap, or metal—could vent your anger. Or you didn't even
particularly care about music, but in a bar one night as you watched guys
trade album critiques like football scores, you butted in with your own
opinion and enjoyed their shocked reactions.
The more you got into the music, the more you saw that your options
were limited. You could be a musician: get dicked around by business
people, be treated like a sex object, then succumb to the drug culture that
6 evelyn mcdonnell
keeps artists under control. Or you could try your luck in the biz — become a
secretary, get harassed by your bosses, and, maybe someday, become a

publicist. Or you could be a well-loved groupie, maybe marry one of your
heroes and get dumped down the line for a model with seamless features
where your skin wrinkles.

You decide to become a rock critic, so that you can speak your mind,
maintain your independence, try to confront men at their own level. Be-
cause there are few women like you, you find work, but your pieces are
shunted to the fringes —you're a

token, a sop to charges of sexism. The
more you're marginalized, the more you think about feminism, and the
more you question your relationship to a field that is dominated by male
identities. If you are lucky, you profit from a predictably periodic spasm of
media interest in "women in music," and you write the appropriate fea-
tures. Maybe your star crashes with the fortunes of the artists you've come
to identify with. Music starts to mean less to you and you pursue other
interests, decide to get a real job, devote your time to your family. Five, ten,
twenty years later, you're forgotten.
Or maybe the sexual revolution actually takes hold. It's the year of the
woman —again — but this time, females are fighting back at many levels:
through electoral politics, in boardrooms, through the media, by direct

action. A small but strong number of women have worked their way
toward the top of the music business, threatening the bastions of power
with their proximity. Female artists are no longer accepting tokenization:
militant, angry, diverse, they understand the fight for power. You become
part of an emerging dialogue that changes not just conceptions of gender,
but changes music itself. You love rock 'n' roll more than ever, only it's not
rock V roll anymore: It's a new movement, and you're part of it.
Women have been writing about music almost since the birth of rock
criticism in the 1960s. In the late sixties and early seventies, Ellen Willis
broke critical ground as the pop music writer for The New Yorker. Since the
early seventies, Lisa Robinson has been rock's premiere style and personal-
ity reporter. Throughout the eighties and continuing today, Deborah Frost
has shown that women can provide a musician's understanding of rock. In
the nineties, Karen Schoemer and Ann Powers have been two of The New
York Times' youngest critics.
let, disregarded by many of the makers of the rock criticism canon, their
history is largely hidden. Women critics have only sporadically infiltrated
bookshelves stocked with Marcus, Christgau, Marsh, and Frith. Although

rock she wrote 7
Willis's first book is named after a Velvet Underground song ("Beginning to

See the Light"), only half of its essays are about music. The only other
collection of works by a female critic, Caroline Coon's 1988: The Punk
Rock Explosion, is no longer in print in the U.S. Gerri Hirshey's Nowhere
to Run, Julie Burchill's The Boy Looked at Johnny (coauthored with Tony
Parsons), Gillian Gaar's She's a Rebel, Ellen Sander's Trips, and Sue Stew-
ard and Sheryl Garratt's Signed, Sealed, & Delivered are, arguably, the only
significant pop music histories written by women (Pamela Des Barres's
groupie chronicle I'm With the Band may be as important, but it's rarely
taken as seriously). Women are sorely underrepresented in many antholo-
gies and histories, accounting for only four of forty-six contributors to the
Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, five of eighty-one to the
Penguin Book of Rock &
Roll Writing, and no contributors (but one
coeditor, Holly George-Warren) to the Rolling Stone Album Guide.
You could argue that's changing. A noteworthy number of today's promi-
nent and up-and-coming pop music critics are women: Frost, Schoemer,
Powers, Gina Arnold, Arion Berger, Danyel Smith, Ann Marlowe, Joan
Morgan, Kim France, Carol Cooper, Terri Sutton, Lorraine Ali, Kristine
McKenna, Kim Neely, Christian Wright, Daisann McLane, Daina Darzin,
—
Elena Oumano, Victoria Starr, Elysa Gardner the list goes on. There are
even some women in positions of editorial power: Rolling Stone senior
editor Karen Johnston, L.A. Weekly music editor Sue Cummings, Village
Voice music editor Ann Powers, Vibe editor Danyel Smith, and Us executive
editor Barbara O'Dair.
But there are no women's names in the editorial masthead of Musician,
only a handful out of the legions of daily music critics are women, and only
69 of the 1994 Pazz & Jop poll of 309 critics were females (the number was
an all-time high, which perhaps partially explains women artists' strong
showing in the poll). In 1975, Susin Shapiro wrote an analysis of feminism
in rock for Crawdaddy that opened with these observations: "The feminist
movement most heavily mainlined
in music: this year's lost chord, the
nonevent of the time. A media dream, feeding those who would bite into the
intriguing changes of a Sexual Revolution. Feminism is lip-service, a
. . .
Stone Age way from the realities of the music business and its subsidiaries
record companies, radio, concert promotion, magazines where virtually —
no females rule the roost, just lay eggs. A glance down the mastheads of
music mags and company rosters reveals men reveling in headline status
while women of the same age, capability, and sensitivity serve time as
secretaries —
and subscription managers the unsung, unslung heroes."
Has anything changed?
—
8 evelyn mcdonnell
.**,
From 1968 to 1975, Ellen Willis was the rock critic for The New Yorker.
Like her peers Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus, Willis thought that rock
V roll was as worthy of serious discourse as literature. Inspired by New
Journalism as well as critical theory, her analyses of how musicians shape
and reflect culture never seemed academic or dry. Willis saw rock 'n' roll as
a metaphor for world events, and criticism as a way of drawing out its
poetic subtexts. "It was part of this general larger atmosphere of revolt
against authority," she says now from her office at NYU, where she's a
journalism professor. "It very much had to do with extending pop culture
and mass culture as something that was aesthetically interesting in its own
right, and not something that was inherently inferior to so-called high art. It
was a polemical kind of writing."
Willis was a vanguard champion of the Velvet Underground, the New

York Dolls, and Jonathan Richman, when they were punks but not "punk."
(One of the reasons she left The New Yorker was because she and the
magazine's musical interests were diverging.) More importantly, Willis saw
through the sexual politics of rock 'n' roll in ways that were nothing short
of visionary. Her criticism was openly and avidly informed by her gender
she was always aware that listening experiences are shaped by diverse cul-
tural forces. Her awareness of her position as an outsider led her to observa-
tions that expressed the changing relations of men, women, and culture.
While it's predominantly been produced and propagated by men, rock 'n'
roll has always been consumed by both genders. Many feminist separatists
accused female rock fans of misidentification with male ideology, but Willis
—grounded equally in criticism, feminism, and rock fandom —articulated
the sense of freedom women could get from, say, the Rolling Stones. "I had
this filter of feminist analysis saw everything," she ex-
through which I
plains. 'There was the whole question of the paradox of why, despite the
music being sexist, I nevertheless felt that it was ultimately liberating for me
both as a person and as a woman. There was a very complex set of media-
tions involved there. It has to do with the idea that a liberating form can
transcend its regressive content." In a classic 1977 essay (reprinted in Begin-

ning to See the Light), she explained that she preferred the Sex Pistols to
1
"women's music' because ", . . music that boldly and aggressively laid
Out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock 'n' roll did
challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was an-
tiwoman, antiscxual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my strug-
rock she wrote 9
gle for liberation. Similarly, timid music made me feel timid, whatever its
ostensible politics."
Willis was quick, however, to promote women artists who challenged
stereotypes and bolted over hurdles. She saw Bene Midler as a camp diva,
Janis Joplin as a prefeminist heroine and countercultural tragedy, Ms.
Clawdy (a Bay Area singer/songwriter in the seventies) as a future feminist
hope. She understood that women listen to music not just for sexual fanta-
sies, but for empowerment. And while they could get power through rock's
form alone, Willis recognized that the was a union of form, vision, and
ideal
content —a woman singing fiercely about women's agendas. In part because

that ideal still seemed too far away, Willis eventually turned her attention
elsewhere, becoming a political/feminist essayist for Rolling Stone in the
late seventies.
Ellen Willis was one of the first of a school of women who, coming out of
the sixties into the seventies, saw rock criticism as a way of putting to work
many of the isms of the counterculture: New Journalism, feminism, rock-
ism. "New journalism, rock criticism, alternative press, counterculture peer
group reportage, came into being during these years and only the perspec-
tive of years to come will tell us what we have here in this curious little
nest," Sander wrote in Trips, her history of the sixties, published in 1973.
"Right after the heyday of the sixties," says Carola Dibbell, who was a
regular critic for the Voice in the late seventies a novelist, "when
and is now
it seemed like everything was possible,was becoming the
and then this
seventies, and everything wasn't possible, and you were figuring, well, what
—
can I do with whatever visions I have rock criticism was one way to focus
very small and write about this supposedly insignificant subject and see
everything in it and explore what it meant to avoid the traps of profession-
alism, the false ideas of objectivity in criticism."
Rock criticism in the seventies was diverse and often experimental,
spurred on by the gonzo journalism practiced at Crawdaddy and Rolling
Stone and by Creem's fevered irreverence. Creem in particular was a hotbed
of journalistic styles, providing a home for such notables as Dave Marsh,
Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, and Vince Aletti, as well as a number of
female critics: Robbie Cruger, Jaan Uhelszki, Georgia Christgau (Robert's
sister), Patti Smith, and Lisa Robinson, among others. In a memoir written
in 1994, Uhelszki recalled the sort of passion and predisposition that drew
people to Creem: "I was a fan of the first order and soon came to realize
that just seeing the bands was no longer enough —my fanaticism required
lO evelyn mcdonnell
expression. Maybe needed evidence that I was there. ... I don't think it
I
was real to me until wrote about it, and it was always better the second
I
time around."
Cruger and Uhelszki were Creem's first two female staffers, and though
they both eventually moved from menial positions to editing and writing,
they "shared most of the office work, taking the vestiges of sexism for
granted," Cruger, Creem's first film editor, wrote in 1994. Outside the
office as well, they frequently encountered chauvinism while in the line of
duty. "These were barbaric times for women music reporters, and often the
musicians you were assigned to interview just saw you as a groupie with a
tape recorder," Uhelszki notes. Once while on assignment to interview a
blue-eyed soul duo, the group's manager offered to send them up to her
hotel room for a little "undercover reporting." Uhelszki declined.
She nonetheless managed to get the kind of stories that made Creem the
most notorious and best loved magazine in rock history. In 1975 she went
onstage with Kiss in full makeup and leotard. In a 1976 story on Lynyrd
Skynyrd, a somber Ronnie Van Zant told her, "I don't expect to live very
long. ... I have the same problem Janis Joplin did, but worse." Eight
months later he died in a plane crash. Uhelszki proved that a woman could
get and write a story as well as any man, although she might have to
suppress her gender in the process: ". . . some of the best times I ever had
were when the band members treated me like one of the boys," she wrote in
'94.
Patti Smith is perhaps rock's most famous scribe. Along the way to rock
stardom in the seventies, she wrote record reviews and prose fantasies for
Creem, Rolling Stone, and Crawdaddy. A true poet, she fucked with form.
Her reviews were stream-of-consciousness flows of imagery where she
worked out her idolatry of rock 'n' roll. Russian poet Vladimir Mayakov-
sky was the first rock star, she explained in typically imaginative prose in
Creem: "a guy with huge piano teeth and a marshall amp installed in his
chest/'
Smith recast criticism as a creative springboard, rather than an analytic
forum, thrusting aside rules of narrative, nomenclature, objectivity, even
punctuation. Smith spoke from the inside of rock 'n' roll, she spoke in its
tongues, giving its myths her own peculiar, poetic, personalized twists.
Sometimes her writing was incredibly naive, believing, rapturous; it was
also brave, risky, irreplicable. "Rock n rolldream soup, whats your
is
brand? nunc has turned over, mine is almost at the bottom of the bowl.
early arthur smokey robinson. blonde on blonde,
lee. its gone, the formula
is changed, theres new recipes, new ear drums, rock n roll is being invented.
rock she wrote 11
just like truth, its not for me but its there, its fresh fruit, its dream soup,"
she wrote in a 1973 paean to Edgar Winter.
Where other women passed as men or celebrated women's viewpoints
and interests, Smith wrote as an androgynous but intensely sexual individ-
ual who tried to transcend stereotypes, often by speaking about the forbid-
den. She never denied what was between her legs; indeed, she thrived on
lust. "I'm a girl see and my eye zeroes in on boy beauty," she wrote in the
Edgar Winter review.
As in her music, Patti Smith created new possibilities for rock writing. Of
course, it takes a rare genius to pull off such experimental gambles, and
only a few have tried. A number of poets, particularly those influenced by
jazz, including Jessica Hagedorn, Ntozake Shange, Jayne Cortez, hattie gos-
sett, Dana Bryant, and Tracie Morris, have written similar musical paeans.
An intensely imagistic, personal prose turns up in fanzines of the nineties,
much of it written by such artists as Bratmobile's Molly Neuman and Al-
lison Wolfe or Bikini Kill's Tobi Vail and Kathleen Hanna. Sonic Youth
bassist and occasional critic Kim Gordon was specifically influenced by
Smith's criticism. "Whether there are differences or not, you're treated dif-
ferently, so you might as well take the opportunity to write differently," she
says, "and exploit it."
If Willis wrote about rock as culture and Smith wrote about it as myth,
Lisa Robinson writes about it as society. Robinson has reported on rock
music longer than just about anyone, at Creem in the seventies and cur-
rently for the New York Post. Never exactly a rock critic, Robinson instead
interpreted the music using a well-established journalistic form: the gossip
column. Her Eleganza reports at Creem brought a perspective to the field
that in many ways is an antidote to rock criticism's tendency to get hung up

in the netherworld of album reviews. "The point about my early stuff is that
itwas purposely more frivolous than that of the other women who were
writing about rock at that time," she says. "To me, rock 'n' roll was fun,
sex, liberation, clothes, style, and getting-out-of-the-house freedom. I wrote
from a decidedly personal, emotional, biased, gossipy point of view. Unin-
terested in emulating any of my male peers, I wanted it to sound like I was
talking to someone over the telephone, the morning after I had experienced
something great."
While such writing has rarely gotten the respect accorded news reporting
or criticism, it can often be more influential —
Robinson has long been a
power player as well as a journalist. That's partly because gossip columnists
12 evelyn mcdonnell
become insiders. Robinson has been able to bend the ears of rock's estab-
lished mighty while remaining attuned to new acts. This does not make her
merely a step on the hype chain; Robinson can be as judgmental as any
crotchety record reviewer. While providing sympathetic ears, gossip colum-
nists are also moral matrons. Thus, in a 1974 Creem column, Robinson
wrote a touching obituary for Miss Christine, a "graceful courtesan" of
rock stars, that was fully feminist as it who would call the
chastised rockers
former member of the GTO's a groupie: ".was one of the tragedies of
. . it
Christine's life that certain people defined her life-style in that limited man-
ner. Limited people and limited magazines did that."
Celebrity/gossip journalism of the sort Robinson practices is, admittedly,
the kitchen of cultural criticism: a jail within which women can have total
freedom. The inveterately macho Rolling Stone (in his history of rock's
most famous mag, Robert Draper describes how women there were ex-
pected to answer the phones and make coffee) confined its few female critics
during its early years to these quarters, assigning Eve Babitz to chronicle
rock stardom's glamorous daily life, and Robin Green to write about such
marginal —and therefore okay to leave in women's hands —rock figures as
the Bee Gees, Black Sabbath (too metal for Stone), and David Cassidy.
Green's work indicates the innovations women can achieve within this win-
dow of opportunity; her 1975 article on Cassidy explores the machinery
and the human being behind the pop idol. Green also validated the tastes of
female teenage fans — no small As Lori Twersky
leap for music criticism.
and Cheryl Cline have documented in articles written in 1981 and 1986
respectively, journalists have repeatedly caricaturized this audience and its
interests. " 'Silly, Screechy Girls' seems to be the invisible subtitle of many
an essay on female rock fans," Cline wrote in her Bitch overview of the
subject.
Green is not the only woman to veer from that party line. As editor of
Sixteen magazine in the sixties and seventies, Gloria Stavers broke journal-
istic ground by writing and editing stories that approached stars from the
viewpoint of an adolescent admirer rather than a record collector. Fan club
newsletters have long done the same. The most radical achievement in this
field of journalism was Pamela Des Barres's 1987 autobiography I'm With
the Band, in which the celebrated groupie penned beneath-the-sheets revela-
tions of musical personalities.Des Barres lived out the fantasies of many
teens, and her book shows she and her colleagues were not the pathetic
parasites often portrayed by "limited people and limited magazines." Vm
With the Band documented the active role groupies played in a rock culture
being partially defined by sexual revolution.
rock she wrote 13
Yet while writing about music from such traditional women's positions
can rescue those views from silence, it can also reinforce the notion that this
is where women belong. For writers who are interested in music in ways not
specifically sanctioned for women, the gossip/groupie beat is a ghetto.
"Most of the women in rock journalism were little more than glorified
gossipers, whether through circumstance or inclination," Patricia Kennealy-

Morrison writes in herbook Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim
Morrison, referring to the late sixties and early seventies. Of course, as the
editor oljazz & Pop magazine, she and a handful of other women were the
exceptions proving the rule. But, Kennealy-Morrison writes, "there were
not all that many women who were given, or who seized for themselves, the
freedom to write like men, like writers." Tellingly, of the women she lists
Annie (Diane) Fisher of The Village Voice, Anne Marie Micklo of Rock,
Ellen Willis, Ellen Sander, Karin Berg, Deday La Rene, and Alice Polsky
only Willis's is even remotely a household name among rockcrit circles;
Sander stayed in the field throughout most of the seventies, but is now
another cipher. Ironically, Kennealy-Morrison herself, whose book shows
her to be an opinionated and knowledgeable critic, is more known for her
relationship with Jim Morrison —with whom she exchanged Wicca wed-
ding vows —than her criticism; although Strange Days incorporates some of
her old articles, it's primarily Kennealy's account of her time with the Liz-
ard King.
A decade later, Kennealy-Morrison could have listed dozens of female

critics in her survey of the field. By the late seventies, women were writing
for publications including the Voice, Creem, Rolling Stone, Melody Maker,
New Musical Express, Trouser Press, and The Boston Phoenix. In a 1975
Voice article, Robert Christgau described the formation of a rock critic
establishment. While the exclusively white-male membership of that club

indicated rock criticism was no field of dreams, a number of women still
found it to be an alternative to the straight jobs that had been run by men
for years. "I'm a rock critic because I'm antiestablishment and because I'm a
feminist," says Georgia Christgau, who has written only sporadically since
she was laid off from her editing position at High Fidelity in 1986. "It
attracted me because I thought I could be different and still get published."
From roughly 1975 to 1985 was a Renaissance period of female rock
criticism, a time when talents and philosophies flowered. Writers including
Daisann McLane, Carola Dibbell, Carol Cooper, Ariel Swartley, Julie
Burchill, Caroline Coon, Vivien Goldman, Susan Whitall, Penny Valentine,
14 evelyn mcdonnell
Trixie A. Balm, Debra Rae Cohen, Deborah Frost, Gerri Hirshey, Leslie
Berman, M. Mark, Karen Durbin, and Jan Hoffman followed in the direc-
tions pioneered by Willis, Uhelszki, and Robinson. From there, tastes and
styles diverged. Leslie Berman was interested in folk and women's music;
Carol Cooper wrote about reggae, funk, and salsa; Vivien Goldman wrote
about reggae, punk, and world beat; Carola Dibbell and Julie Burchill were
into punk; Deborah Frost was interested in women and musicianship;
Karen Durbin liked the Rolling Stones.
Implicitly or explicitly, most of these women were trying to shift criti-
cism's focus and approach without landing in a gender pigeonhole. For

many, this meant acknowledging their subjectivity. The harpooning of the
great white whale of objectivity was, after all, the goal of New Journalism,
and no one was better prepared to do that than women, who had been told
all their lives that their views couldn't possibly represent anyone else's. In
their hands, rock criticism became not simply a matter of authority (al-
though knowledge had its place), but a forum where opinions were
foregrounded. Some men practiced this form of criticism, too, not just in
gonzo, macho style (Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer) but with heart-baring
sensitivity (Bangs, Tom Smucker). Still, it has been women's forte. "The
way men are men and men are critics is that they're really into the stats,"
Georgia Christgau says. "They know their rap, they know the facts about
the band, they know their discographies, and they know everything every-
one else has written about somebody. I more academic
think especially the
ones have a host of comparisons they can make between artists. I feel like all
of that's very male. It's a competitive, aggressive way to look at an individ-
ual artist. I never liked reviewing music that way. I consciously try not to
compare artists to other artists. I just try to describe what it is that I see and
feel and think that the artist is trying to say to me as a member of the
audience."
For many of these critics, who had come of age with feminism, gender
was a crucial part of the identity from which they viewed the world. Thus
when Karen Durbin went on tour with the Rolling Stones for the Voice,
rather than trying to pretend she was one of the guys, she confronted the
tact that she was a feminist on the road with a band often knocked for its
misogyny, but whom she loved. After a group interview where a woman
journalist was slagged as "one of those high-pressure girl reporters" and Bill
W\ man had talked about a song tentatively called "Vagina," Durbin wrote:
'Most of the time on the tour, I was just another reporter, neuter, doing my
job while everyone else did theirs, but at moments like those, I felt self-
consciously female, isolated and engulfed by an all-male world. ... Of

rock she wrote IS
the half-dozen or so reporters following the tour that week, one was female
—me. The result for a woman covering the tour is that you spend almost all
your time with men; it's a peculiar, alien sensation, as if you were visiting a
planet where the female population had been decimated by an unnamed

plague."
Later in the story, Durbin finally interviews Mick Jagger and finds herself
almost seduced. "Mick was sitting in the middle of his bed. He was tousled,
the bed was tousled, the room was softly lit, and lovely classical music
played from a radio by the bed. He looked tired and friendly, like nothing
so much as some exotic little animal in its lair, gazing out from soft, blue-
shadowed eyes and smiling with lightly painted lips. I felt bewitched, and
for a moment, dizzy, lustful half-thoughts collided inside my head." But
when Ron Wood enters the room, a serious conversation becomes a glimpse
into the boys' club, where girls —
including, eventually, Durbin are treated —
as just plain silly.
Obviously, women reading a story like this could feel like their experi-
ences were finally being talked about —and men could learn from a perspec-
tive different from those of the male reporters on the tour. Other women
journalists have used the power of their difference not simply to address
that difference, but to write differently, to exploit their advantage as outsid-
ers. Thus, when Deborah Frost wrote a cover story about heavy metal for
the Voice in 1985, she didn't write in the first person or talk about how
Motley Criie treated her; she took the tools of subjectivity and empathy into
the minds of Nikki Sixx et al., speaking in their voices. This helped her
explain the band's escapades, from drunken driving to smashing hotel
rooms to boning groupies: "You do just anything to
find these girls that will
get backstage. They're troupers, man. You've never seen some girls take so
much. These girls'll do anything, man. Ask 'em to bark, they'll bark. Where
do you find them? You can find them just about anywhere. Arf!"
Frost shows that attempts to exclude women from macho music worlds
didn't necessarily work; from Frost to Donna Gaines to Deena Weinstein to
Daina Darzin, women have been some of metal's most prominent chroni-
clers. Women have also often written about types of music ignored by men.
In particular, whether it's because it's what they're interested in, because
they feel obligated to provide a sympathetic ear, or because male editors
think what they should do, women often write about women artists.
it's
More women tend to write about music more marginal, less

generally,
"straight," than what white men write about, whether it's by women,
blacks, Latinos, gays, or weirdos: After all, men and women aren't neces-
sarily looking for the same role models. Robert Christgau introduced his
16 evelyn mcdonnell
'75 white, male rockcrit establishment as an explanation for the rise of
Bruce Springsteen. But as his sister Georgia remarks, "I think that men
identify with male rock stars, just like women identify with females. ... I
never liked a lot of mainstream artists enough to get in my Bruce Spring-
steen piece. I think I wrote about him once, and I think he's worth about
750 words, not six long essays a year in both the front and the back of the
book."
'There's a notion of what's good that's very male defined," says Swar-
tley. "Because one of the genders has gotten to name what's good more
often with more people in more papers, it makes it harder to say, no, we
need room for this too." Durbin believes that men have historically focused
on music that is more formally and lyrically serious and ignored music that
reaches people emotionally. "Criticism has lost touch with the pleasure
principle. You wouldn't know it's music to move to," she says. "Rock
criticism ismore overwhelmingly male than rock itself."
With the exception of Robinson, Uhelszki, and Frost, most of the women
who wrote in the sixties and seventies have all but quit rock criticism; some
write maybe one review a year. Their reasons for leaving are as diverse as
their subsequent pursuits (academia, punk rock, law, family), but they
sound a similar tone: As women get older, they become less interested in the
music. "We grew out of it," says Durbin.

Of course, that means either the male rock critics who stuck with it are
stunted adolescents (a charge some current and former critics specifically
level), or they found something in music that grew with them. Or women
were shut out of the field in ways that were so subtle, they've rationalized
them away. Or all of the above.
Many women were victims of the professionalization of rock criticism in
the eighties, when Rolling Stone purged many of its quirkier writers and
rock criticism went mainstream. "The business became increasingly impor-
tant and straight journalism caught on, so there began to be rock critics at
the daily papers," Robert Christgau says. "It became a profession that
people thought they could do. It was, inevitably, professionalized, and the
room for that amateur rannishness diminished."
Of course, many people considered amateur fannishness precisely rock
criticism's forte. Not surprisingly, as rock criticism entered the straight
world, it reflected all the old hang-ups of that world — including sexism.
1cw women were hired for those daily jobs, and with the exception of
;
Crecm editor Susan Whitall and Rolling Stone editors Marianne Partridge,
rock she wrote 17
Sarah Lazin, and Harriet Fier, they continued to be excluded from editing
positions. In the days when lots of people were free-lance critics and it was a
relatively easy way to be a —
bohemian and when men like Christgau, then
the Voice's music editor, were open to women's voices it didn't seem so —
important that women didn't hold the power. But in the eighties, women
found themselves struggling against a hostile economic environment, look-
ing up through the glass ceiling at the ex-peers who were now their bosses,
realizing they were reaching the age when they wanted a family, and haul-
ing ass out of there. "The only reason that those of us who stopped doing
criticism may feel bitter or uncomfortable about it has something to do with
the fact that men had a different way of stopping," says Leslie Berman, who
is now studying law. "They were able to stop and recognize it as a choice, as
a career move. I stopped writing about rock 'n' roll because it paid shit."
Plenty of men stopped writing about rock 'n' roll because it paid shit, but
they never had to suffer the overt sexism that makes being financially unsta-
ble more difficult for women than men. One critic recalls that when a
colleague and friend of hers became music editor at a magazine, she called
him up and he asked, "So now will you sleep with me?" Others describe
being stuck in entry-level positions at music publications while less qualified
men passed them by, or being shoved off into "women's sections" of the
company. One journalist was told by a prospective employer, "We're start-
ing a magazine and you're starting a family, and it just doesn't seem like a
good match." Another was hired by a large daily that required her to wear
pantyhose, then abruptly fired her when a white male crony of the editor's
was handed the job. I was once apologetically told by an editor at a music
magazine that there was an unspoken rule that women were not to be hired
or used as free-lancers.
At at least one music magazine, the sexual harassment has been so serious
that one woman has prepared discrimination charges against its editor/
publisher. In a 1994 article in the New York Observer, Carleen Hahn

reported that a former employee was filing a Title 7 complaint against
Spin's Bob Guccione, Jr. —and that she was not the first woman at the
magazine to be harassed. Former male and female Spin employees described

to Hahn the sexist atmosphere fostered by Guccione junior, the son of the
Penthouse publisher.
Again and again, from Patricia Kennealy to Karen Durbin to Deborah
Frost to Gina Arnold, women refer to rock criticism as a boys' club. If you
follow certain rules — you act one of the boys,
if like if you date one of the
boys —you'll be granted admittance; you break the if rules, you'll be kicked
out. "The only way that any one of us, if we really wanted to maintain a
18 evelyn mcdonnell
place in that crowd, do so would be to be sleeping with

would be able to
some guy in the in the crowd want to sleep with

crowd, or to have some guy
you," says Berman. "You have to either be in the locker room or you have
to be somebody that everybody in the locker room wants to be hanging

around with."
Several women use the "locker room" analogy to describe the fraternity
of rock critics as well as the atmosphere surrounding rock stars —particu-

larly the backstage area, where, if you're a woman, it's assumed that you're
a groupie. Many say they became critics partially to escape that stereotype.
"In the backstage milieu of concert settings, where a lot of us spent our
early journalistic moments, the guys always have a lot to do, and there's a
lot of girls who are just hanging around," says Village Voice editor Ann
Powers. "There's this desperate feeling of not wanting to just hang
around." Many rock critics identify with Lisa Olson, the Boston sports-
writer who fought for admission to sports locker rooms. "You're put in a
lot of situations that are really demeaning, as a woman, which you've got to
emerge from with some kind of dignity," says Frost. "You're getting it from
the bands, you're getting it from the editors, the other people you work for.
Which men don't have to deal with. . . . There's really a sexual aspect to
it, and to say that there isn't is to totally deny the truth. . . . It's something
that's very ingrained in this whole boys' club atmosphere of rock criticism."
A happy number of women have left rock criticism for bigger, better, or
at least equally worthy pursuits. Willis writes a media column at the Voice
and teaches journalism at NYU. Durbin is editor of the Voice. Caroline
Coon is a painter. Dibbell writes novels. Swartley is a free-lance magazine
writer. Julie Burchill is a best-selling novelist in England. Daisann McLane,
who was a main pop and rock critic for Rolling Stone for three years, writes
about Caribbean music for the Voice and New York Times. Jan Hoffman is
a reporter for the Times, Janet Maslin a film critic there. Patti Smith is, well,
Patti Smith.
Yet there's a sense of something missing without these women's voices

engaging in the rockcrit dialogue. Maybe as their original countercultural
objectives faded and rock fragmented, they really did lose interest in the
music. "I got tired of it," Willis says. "I wanted to move on to other things.
Ir stopped being compelling to me as a central metaphor for all the different
issues 1 wanted to write about." Or maybe they weren't allowed to write
about the types of music they wanted to, in the way they wanted to. Maybe
the Held and the music became more conservative together, and women
were sent a subtle message to get back into the kitchen. The Reagan-Bush
J
ears did take a heavy toll on women critics. "It doesn't have anything to do
rock she wrote 19
with my life," Swartley says about current pop music. "It doesn't talk about
kids. It doesn't talk about long-term relationships. I don't think there's any
pop music directed at the peculiar class of anger women my age that I know
feel."
Swartley believes that some men are able to continue writing about rock
because they respond to it formally, while she responds emotionally. But, as
L.A. Weekly's Sue Cummings points out, that's a typical Western-con-
structed dualism. And it's a reinforcement of the myth that women can't
think abstractly. Yes, many women wear their emotions on their sleeves
when they write, but that doesn't mean they're not responding to the form
of the music. Telling women that their views are too emotional is a way of
belittling their opinions and, ultimately, silencing them. "As far as criticism
itself, it's extremely threatening to me," Dibbell says. "I believe that it has a
lot to do with the fact that I'm a woman and that I was not specifically
encouraged to throw my weight around verbally. For me to try to get myself
to go through the personality restructuring that would have been required
for me to really be a critic would be like giving up what I valued about
myself."
Dibbell stopped writing partially because of harsh responses to her criti-
cism. Certainly, a critic has to be able to take what they dish out. Hate mail
is commonplace, but men get it too. Yet some reactions to female critics are
unusually angry and even violent, motivated more by misogyny than ruffled
feathers. In a 1987 incident in San Jose reported in Bitch magazine, a singer
for the band Daddy in His Deep Sleep brought an inflatable sex doll on-
stage, told the audience it who had made an offhand,
represented a critic
slighting remark about his band and assaulted it onstage. TV
in a review,
show host Dee Barnes was beaten up and thrown down a stairway by
rapper Dr. Dre when she aired an interview in which Ice Cube said deroga-
tory things about his former N.W.A. bandmate. In a society that has long
sanctioned violence against women, it's sad but not surprising that some
men respond to the verbal threat presented by female critics with physical
violence.
Fortunately, women are speaking up regardless. A new generation of

females has risen to the forefront of the rockcrit ranks. Many of them
worked on the fringes of publishing and the music world in the late eighties,
writing about punk rock and its descendants for alternative newspapers or
DJ'ing at college radio stations. Others have been inspired by rap to put
their opinions in writing. In a sense women — like many cultural freedom
20 evelyn mcdonnell
fighters— went underground in the eighties, refueling and finding a new

sense of independence.
The most important underground music publication of the Reagan-Bush
era was Bitch. From 1985 to 1989, 'The Women's Rock Mag with Bite"
filled the considerable gaps left by mainstream journalism with articles
about female artists and essays that challenged conventional constructions

of sex and rock. "Why Bitch? Because lots of what gets written about
women in rock is ALL THE SAME," declared editor/publisher Lori Twer-
sky in the debut issue. team of writers including Cheryl Cline, S. J.
With a
McCarthy, Danise Rodriguez, and William V. Abbott IV, Bitch ran stories
on historical female figures who have somehow been left out of most of the
histories, and on new musicians coming up. Bitch writers attacked both
knee-jerk sexism and feminism, defending female fans without mythologiz-
ing them, looking for historical precedents for heavy metal's misogyny.
During its time, Bitch didn't dent the rockcrit canon —although it did
take it on. In one particularly feisty essay, Twersky attacked critical stereo-
types of girls and cars: "American male Rock critics REALLY burn me
when they add to this Girl And Car stuff the standard yapping about certain
songs sung by women (but not necessarily written by them) being celebra-
tions of female innocence and puppy love, yada yada, which is a message: it
says that female feelings are, beyond anything else, DUMB feelings, ador-
able in their stupidity, and there is something not innocent, authentic, nor
likable about female feelings more clearly articulated than 'Da Doo Ron
Ron.' " Bitch's contributors weren't afraid to assert their opinions; their
name preempted the usual vitriolic responses. Distributed by mail order and
in the fanzine network, Bitch primarily reached other women and support-
ive men. But many of those readers were inspired to start their own bands
and/or 'zines; Tobi Vail of the band Bikini Kill and 'zine Jigsaw, for exam-
ple, was a Bitch fan. When editor Twersky died in November 1991 of
complications from an autoimmune condition, Bitch stopped publishing,
but it had already planted the seeds of Revolution Girl Style.
The nineties find women strengthening and taking in new directions the
advances made by critics before them. Often, they're doing so unaware of
the precedents they're following. "Now I have female peers, but I never had
female role models," Gina Arnold says. A number — Powers, Ar-
of critics
nold, Darnel Smith, Terri Sutton, Sue Cummings, Gillian Gaar — honed
their voices as columnists for alternative weeklies, where they're given the
freedom to be personal and political. "I feel very dedicated to being a
feminist in my writing," says Powers, who was a columnist for SF Weekly
for tour years and who continues in Willis's tradition, dissecting music
rock she wrote 21
using the tools of crit theory and infusing her analysis with poetic prose and
personal anecdotes. "There's been a lot of opportunities for women in the
rock world, but there's also a lot of misogyny. So it's important for me to be
explicitly political, without being a total lefty, writing in a way that does
women's consciousness."
address women's issues and
Many women have moved away from writing about music claimed by
men. "At the Weekly, there's so many guys with a proprietary interest in
rock, I don't even see myself as a rock writer," L.A. Weekly music editor
Cummings says. "My big obsession is house and techno." In a 1990 column
for Minneapolis's City Pages, Sutton worried that critics don't dance: "Peo-
ple freakin' about Hammer's shallow talent pool are missing the point. The
four million owners of Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em aren't sitting
around the living room, witless on pot, dissecting obscure lyrics and musical
antecedents —they're dancing."
Karen Schoemer, who has written for numerous publications and is now
the music critic at Newsweek, says that as a straight woman, she can appre-
ciate the appeal of artists straight men can't. "There are a lot of mainstream
bands that don't get any recognition [from critics] because the male singer is
sexy," she says. "I'm not saying Jon Bon Jovi is a major talent by any
means, but he's never ever going to be taken seriously in mainstream rock
criticism because he's got a legion of girl fans. And a lot of male critics
automatically take that as saying that a band is not serious."
The teen magazine Sassy definitely takes girl fans seriously; moving Glo-
ria Stavers's tradition one step farther, it even speaks in their voice. In the
late eighties and early nineties, Sassy writer and editor Christina Kelly and
such contributors as Kim France and Erin Smith used teen lingo to discuss
music and profile artists. Their "cute band alert" not only celebrates girls'
tastes, it's been a successful indicator of future stardom. Kurt Cobain,
Courtney Love, Evan Dando, and Juliana Hatfield graced Sassy covers be-
foreany other mainstream magazine picked up on them. Sassy has changed
the face of magazine publishing by speaking frankly to girls about issues
that teen magazines have long skirted. Not surprisingly, it was the first
national publication to write about the loose network of fanzines and bands
that has become known as Riot Grrrl. (In late 1994 Sassy was sold and its
editorial style revamped.)

Fanzines, long a stronghold of nerdy white boys with big egos and big
mouths, are the latest front in the rockcrit battle. From Bikini Kill, to
glossier, female-led publications like B-Side and Ben Is Dead, to Lisa
Carver's Rollerderby, 'zines have become outlets and forums for women in
the wake of Bitch. Carver writes like a Patti Smith of the nineties, libidiniz-
—
22 evelyn mcdonnell
ing her musical appreciation, creating and commenting all at once. Her
insider status (she doubles as performance artist Lisa Suckdog) gives her a
sympathetic ear, and she can get into indie boys' and girls' minds like no
one else.
Riot Grrrls take Willis's polemical kind of writing to its punk extreme.
"Because we girls want to create media that speak to US. We are tired of
boy band after boy band, boy 'zine after boy 'zine, boy punk after boy punk
after boy," reads a manifesto in Fantastic Fanzine. Riot Grrrl 'zines often
explore intensely personal terrain, including incest and rape. The Xeroxed
pages can read poems desperately scribbled in a diary by someone
like
locked in a bunker, her words her final resistance. Private acts made politi-
cal through sharing, 'zines are not aimed at a mass audience. Accordingly,
when the media leapt upon Riot Grrrl as a new trend in 1992, Riot Grrrls
leapt back in fright, and recriminations have flown back and forth ever
since.
The most promising new pop music critics are the women who write
about hip-hop. Like writers inspired by punk a decade earlier, rap critics
channel the energy of a musical explosion into their writing. Danyel Smith,
dream hampton, Ann Marlowe, Joan Morgan, Amy Linden, and Gwen
Meno all write powerful prose that highlights personal and political re-
sponses to music. Poets like Tracie Morris, Dana Bryant, and 99 have also
been influenced by rap and chronicle their relationships to it. Most of these
writers address hip-hop's fabled misogyny head-on, defending their love of
Ice Cube or Dr. Dre in the same way Ellen Willis and Karen Durbin de-
fended the Rolling Stones.
Black writers add a cultural justification to their arguments: Even while
they criticize expressions of African-American experience, they won't let
those expressions, and thereby their experience, be dismissed. Like many

women before them, they find themselves caught between feminism and
black pride, and they're forging new articulations of that position. "Because
I love rap music, its cadences, intonations, and mood swings, I've recog-
nized and struggled to reconcile the genius and passion of my brothers
even when it meant betraying my most fundamental politics," hampton
wrote in Essence in 1994. Hip-hop may harbor a lot of chauvinism, but
with the exception of Carol Cooper, along with occasional articles by Ja-
maica Ki nca id (who cut her teeth writing criticism for the Voice in the
seventies), Thulani Davis, Lisa Jones, and Lisa Kennedy, there was no body
of pop music criticism by black women until rap came along.
Now, they're the next chapter in an unfolding history. There's a straight
but rarely traced line from Ellen Willis to Patti Smith to Georgia Christgau
rock she wrote 23
to Danyel Smith. When Leslie Berman discusses the field she's basically left
behind, she could be reading from a Riot Grrrl tract. "I'm a pretty serious
feminist," Berman says. "And a part of me says, We'll fight them on the
beaches, and we'll make them give in and see that we're right, and they'll
march shoulder to shoulder with us and we'll be equal. And part of me says,
Fuck them, we'll have our own revolution."
I AM the BAND
Marianne Faithfull,
excerpt from Faithfull, 1994.
Fans of Marianne Faithfull's solo work, particularly her brilliant

1979 album Broken English, know she was more than just a pop
starlet who rose to fame on Mick Jagger's coatsleeve. Her 1994
autobiography faithfull, written with David Dalton, revealed her
as a tough, well-read, self-aware woman with neither a
romanticized nor a jaundiced view of her life with the Rolling
Stones, as a homeless junkie, and as a respected artist with a
voice equal parts cigarettes and cordials. In this excerpt, she
tells how she wrote "Sister Morphine," and how it became
known as a Stones song.
he next serious rift in my relationship with Mick came about over

"Sister Morphine." After "Sister Morphine" I began to lose my way.
My dilemma as a pop singer had been that I felt my career was a dead
end. I was bogged down in the banality of the material. I had neither the
resourcefulness necessary to ring changes on it nor the will needed to sur-
mount it. My career had been a fluke and I had run with it as best I could.
All I could do was go on and on making slight variations on a theme that
was becoming monotonous. At best I was a curious anomaly in the mechan-
ics of pop. As a performer I was only average.
My last pop song, "Is This What I Get for Loving You?" had been
released in February of 1967. But by the time it came out I had lost interest
in it and the whole wretched pop music business along with it. The music
28 marianne faithfull
business had become a nightmare, with endless disputes and lawsuits flying
about between me and my various managers, Andrew Loog Oldham and
Tony Calder and Gerry Bron. I hated the tawdriness of what I was doing. As
soon as I fell in love with Mick I began to see pop music on an entirely other
level. Since I no longer had to work, I could let the whole damn thing go.
Until "Sister Morphine," I didn't have the slightest interest in writing songs.
I had felt I was never going to transcend the trivial level of pop songs.
And yet this was all I knew. If I was ever going to tell my own inner tales it
would be through pop, the prodigal bastard that my generation had made
into high art. I was envious of Mick and Keith. They had moved far beyond
the boundaries I was still locked in; they were stepping on the posts of life
itself. I had seen what the Stones were doing, what pop music could be-
come. "Sister Morphine" was an attempt to do that myself. To make art out
of a pop song!
People tend to assume that "Sister Morphine" comes from an incident in
my life, that it is a parable of a junkie's last hours. But at the time I wrote it
I'd only taken smack once. I was still far from becoming a junkie. "Sister
Morphine" was in my head —my feelings about what it might be like to be
an addict.
"Sister Morphine" is the story of a man who has had a terrible car
accident. He's dying and he's in tremendous pain and the lyrics of the song
are addressed to the nurse.
By 1972, when it came out on I was the character in the
Sticky Fingers,
song. You have to be very careful what you write because it's a gateway,
and whatever it is you've summoned up may come through. It happened to
Mick and Keith.
Mick began writing Morphine" in a garden in Rome
the music for "Sister
where we were staying with Keith and Anita. It was just a riff, essentially.
He had the melody for about six months and he would walk around the
house strumming it. It got to the point where I realized that if someone
didn't write the lyrics, we'd be hearing this for the next ten years. Mick
seemed to have no idea what kind of words would go with the music.
Maybe he was waiting for me to do it. That wouldn't surprise me. Even on
the guitar it was mournful, but it became even more lyrical. I used John
Milton's "Lycidas" as a model.
I do believe in inspired bursts. These things come through you. Mick was
a major conductor of electricity, but this particular day the lightning struck
me. A vivid series of pictures began forming in my head, and a story about a
morphine addict.
What may have triggered the idea for the song (and "the clean white
rock she wrote 29
sheets stained red")was an incident on the boat to Brazil with Mick, Keith,
and Anita. Anita was pregnant with Marlon at the time and after a few days
at sea she began bleeding badly and she panicked. She called the doctor and
he eventually gave her a shot of morphine. I remember that Keith and I were
very proud of her in that idiotic junkie way. "Wow! You managed to score a
hit of morphine!"
I was a big Velvet Underground fan. I played their records around the
house continually. I knew "Sister Ray" and "Waiting for the Man," and
these also must have drained into my brain somewhere.
The first person I showed the lyrics to was Mick, who was impressed.
Also frightened. Only then did I dare show them to Anita and Keith and,
eventually, to Robert.
It was all from the very beginning. I heard it in my head
there complete
and just wrote itwas obviously a moment lived on the beam. But, as
out. It
often happens with me, I didn't really understand it. The result of this
effortless creation was not to inspire the writing of more songs but the use
of more drugs! I became a victim of my own song.

Mick knew that if I had no outlets I would soon become edgy and fretful.
A pest as well. It was important, too, that the relationship remain mutual
and reciprocal. He taught me about black music and the blues. He played
me James Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Sam Cooke, and Skip James and acted
them out, danced them for me. They were incredibly wonderful sessions,
where he would tell me all the things he knew and, more important, instill
in me his own enthusiasms for things that until I met him I'd not even heard
of. And I hope I did the same for him, with books and art and ideas. There
was a mutual exchange of experience, energy. And then he became very,

very involved in his work, and the work got better and better.
I am very competitive; I always want to come out on the top, and a
relationship by its nature is a compromise. Nobody's going to be the win-

ner, but I couldn't accept that. I began to become very jealous of Mick. He
tried his best to cope with the situation as far as he understood it. He knew I
needed to have my own work and he encouraged me to keep making
records.
Itwas beginning to dawn on me that if I was Mary Shelley, where was my
Frankenstein} I was very contemptuous of women who just hung around
groups like the Rolling Stones. I wasn't doing anything. I began to complain
bitterly, so Mick decided to record my version of "Sister Morphine."
It was up the recording session for "Sister Morphine" with
his idea to set
Jack Nitzsche. And went to the trouble of doing this while

the fact that he
the Stones were mixing Let It Bleed shows that it was taken seriously.
30 marianne faithfull
We put down the instrumental tracks in Los Angeles (the vocals were
done in London). Mick produced the session and Ry Cooder, Jack Nitzsche,
Mick, and Charlie Watts played on it.
Jack Nitzsche was a very funny, neurotic guy having problems with his
marriage and talking a lot about the fault line in California, the earthquake.
They were all going on about it, everybody who lived there. It was the time
when there was the theory that half of California was going to fall into the
sea any minute.
He was very intense and arrogant. He saw me drinking and doing coke,
and he was furious. "How can you call yourself a singer and do coke? Don't
you know what that stuff is doing to your vocal cords and your mucus
membranes? Forget about Keith and Anita. Everyone in the band can get
wrecked except the drummer and the singer." I said, "All right, sir, I won't
do it again, sir," and I didn't — until the session was over.
"Sister Morphine" was released in England in February of 1969. It was
out for a mere two days when Decca freaked and unceremoniously yanked
it off the shelves. There was no explanation, no apology. Mick went to see
SirEdward Lewis at Decca to protest but he got absolutely nowhere. I was
crushed. It was as if I had been busted again. Decca, I assume, wasn't going
to allow me to contaminate the minds of young people! When it came out
on Sticky Fingers two years later, however, there wasn't one peep about it,
so perhaps it was the timing. Perhaps it was because they were men. Perhaps
it was my cursed image.
The song must have come as a bit of a surprise to the old dears up at
Decca. My previous album, Love in a Mist, three years earlier, had not
signaled that much of a departure from my other records. I felt trapped; I
wasn't going to be allowed to break out of my ridiculous image. I was being
told that would not be permitted to leave that wretched, tawdry doll
I
behind. If I went on doing my nice little folky songs I could go on making

records. Otherwise, I would not be permitted to do so.
"Sister Morphine" was my Frankenstein, my self-portrait in a dark mir-
ror. But, unlike Mary's, my creation wasn't going to be allowed to see the
light of day. Mine was a very pop Frankenstein, just a song, but in my mind
I had painted a miniature gothic masterpiece, my celebration of death! I
blamed Mick; I didn't feel he'd fought hard enough. For almost a year he
fought with Decca over the lavatory album cover for Beggars Banquet, but
for me he had one meeting with Decca and left it at that.
I began to lose heart. Morphine" was my inner vision

I felt that "Sister
and no one would ever know about it. That was the most depressed I've
ever felt. At the moment when "Sister Morphine" was taken off the shelves,
rock she wrote 31
our relationship began to shatter. I, too, was now caught up in the gathering
gloom of the late sixties. My Frankenstein had been denied its own life and I
began to wither and brood along with it. It was one in a series of calamities
that included Performance and the loss of the baby. And once things began
to unravel, there was no way they would ever go back together.
Jaan Uhelszki, "I Dreamed I Was
Onstage with Kiss in A/ly 7Waidenform
Bra/' Creem, August 197S.
In the early seventies, Creem magazine set the tone for rock
criticism: flippant and revolutionary as the music itself.
Journalism student and rock enthusiast Jaan Uhelszki joined
America's Only Rock 'n' roll Magazine as "Subscription Kid" in
1971, moving up the ranks to become senior editor, alongside
Lester Bangs, by the mid- 70s. In 1975, on a publicity lark, she
went onstage with Kiss and filed the following report.
W,
about
ell, not exactly my idea of the perfect fantasy, but I was curious
on the other side of the footlights. Armed with an abundance of

life
determination and a tight pair of Danskins (Danskins aren't only for danc-
ing), I approached Larry Harris, the vice president of Casablanca Records,
with my plan: "How about if I join Kiss for a night?"
No answer, and then nervous laughter. Obviously, Larry thought I just
wanted to know what
was like to mouth kiss a vampire. Sure, they were
it
eager for a feature on the band but this scheme was just a little bizarre. I
pushed the point and they told me disturbing tales of other fresh faced
females who were transformed into raging teenage nymphs after attending a
Kiss concert. "But I don't want to see the show, I want to be in it!" I
persisted. Reluctantly the Casablanca crowd conceded (only after making
me promise not to call Kiss a glitter band), assuring me I could join these
rock she wrote 33
contorted Kewpie Dolls on stage for one number or four minutes, whatever
came first, on the following Saturday.
,**,
Thursday: I decided to drop in on the Detroit rehearsal to see what kind

of atrocities I'd be in for. Soon after I arrived I found some of the band
lounging on the side of the stage so I walked up and asked what they
thought of the idea of me being a Kiss (Kissette?) for a night. They all
looked at me vacantly, and I realized that NO ONE HAD TOLD THEM! I
felt like a Rockette who gets told thanks at the open call before she's had a
chance to do her dance; but undaunted I fumed at the executive-in-resi-
dence, and demanded he explain the plan.

I returned to an empty seat in the vacant hall and continued to watch the
band rehearse, to "pick up some tips." A stage hand divulged that bassist
Gene Simmons had accidentally set his hair on fire while practicing the fire
breathing segment of the show, which I admit made me squirm and fear for
my own charred remains. My visions of stardom were quickly evaporating

like warm Jell-O. Simmons came over and pulled out
During their break,
the few strands of his singed curls, assuring me, "It was nothing," but I
couldn't prevent myself from biting the Lilac Frost off my nails. I was
beginning to have misgivings. I think Ace Frehley did, too, because he just
stared over my left shoulder, but Peter raised a comradely drumstick when
Paul Stanley stated as he pointed to the empty stage: "Saturday Night, that's
you up there!"
.**,
The next afternoon, Kiss comanager Joyce Biawitz called the office and
reminded me to gather together all my baubles, spangles, and feathers for
my big debut.
"But, but, Joyce," I sputtered, thinking of the promise Larry'd extracted.
"I threw all my rhinestones away. Everybody knows glitter died last sea-
son."
Kiss is indisputably Detroit's favorite new band and tonight they are
playing to a sellout crowd of 13,000. Maybe they represent some surrogate
MC5 that made it with the same subversive tendencies and the wild excesses
and brutalism. Maybe it's the 110 decibels. Kiss's Street Rock (which has
been coined "Thunder Rock") is no more than a bastardization of heavy
34 jaan uhelszki
metal. Its and strong basic rhythm slug you in the

fanatical drive gut. I
mean, have you ever seen a girl dance in her wheelchair before?
Kiss is a package deal, allowing both the audience and themselves to let
out their pent-up frustrations and feelings. When Kiss flaunt and strut
across the stage, they are stand-ins for all those underage punks with their
rebel hearted outlaw fantasies that are only realized through rock 'n' roll.
What am I going to pack to become a Kiss? I ponder over breakfast,

wincing at the memory of last night's show. What if that geekish bass player
bitesmy neck, oozing red blood-goo on my unsuspecting shoulder? Anxiety
knots my stomach so much that I can't even force a single Sugar Crisp down
my throat, so I return upstairs to case my closet. One leotard — black, one
pair tights — black, and one pair six-inch platforms—also black. I zipped up
my Samsonite and hurried out the door, Junior's warning still ringing in my
ears.
Stage manager Junior Smalling is a frightening and humorless man, who

wears an oversized pair of blue plastic glasses and possesses the self-given
nickname of "Black Oak." Last night he demanded my presence at the
Eastern Airlines desk at 10:45 a.m. (for an 11:20 flight), and although it was
now after eleven and my ticket was in order, I still dared not move until
Junior arrived. At eleven-ten he strode in, lugging a battered briefcase and
an ugly scowl. He didn't acknowledge me, but instead barked at the airline
clerk. Finished, he whirled on the band like an angry parent. "What the
fuck is wrong with you guys? We get you watches, and you still can't get
here on time. We coulda missed the plane and the gig, so hustle them asses
to the plane!" Finally he looks down at me and
spits: "What are you
waiting for? Get to gate thirty-four!" Then almost kindly he adds, "Didn't
anybody ever tell you to wear tall shoes around these guys?"
Seated in 8A my fear of flying is mixing badly with my apprehension.
After a round of Hail Marys I look up to see Gene Simmons seated next to
me, sans makeup of course although he still makes a scene in his seven-inch
platforms, cheese colored scarf, and black polish that he is presently chip-
ping off his stubby nails. Of all the members of the band, his appearance is
the most obscured by the paint; he might just as easily be Omar Sharif or
Joe Namath for that matter. Instead he was a former lifeguard, then a Boy-
Friday at Vogue, has a B.A. in Education but secretly confesses a desire to be
Bela Lugosi (and is lovingly dubbed Mr. Monster by the rest of his fellow
inmates). Circulating around the plane is the current issue of one of
CREEM's competitors, which has done a full feature on Kiss. Eventually
the copy drifts to our seat and Gene insists on reading the story aloud to me.
rock she wrote 3S
"How come after everything I say, they always add 'Gene expounds'?" he
pouts.
"Probably because you went to college," I explain.
We exit the plane without incident, except that most of us are over six-
foot-something. Me, I feel a lot like Lewis Carroll's Alice after drinking the
small potion, until I notice that Paul Stanley isn't that much loftier than me.
As I remember, yesterday I came about eye level to his Keith Richard but-
ton.
"What'd you do, shrink overnight?" I ask.
"No, didn't you know I gave up platforms? I wanted a new look," he says
coquettishly, tossing back his head of perfect curls, but he blows the cool by
dropping his screaming yellow zonker sunglasses.
"Hollywood?" I venture.
"No, I wear 'em because I don't like to see people looking at me all the
time," he confesses. Stanley is a confident young man, bordering almost on
arrogant. With or without his makeup he possesses an intense magnetism;
Paul is the throb of the teenage heart, luring them away from their Barbie
dolls into the backroom.

"What do you do about all those oversexed preteen glitter queens that are
after you?"
"When a thirteen-year-old groupie comes on to you, what is that? That
holds nothing for me. I'd feel more like a lecher, or a baby-sitter," he
admits.
Believe it or not, the Gorgeous George of the group was once an ugly
duckling, never getting any of the girls he wanted. "You know, I was an
ugly kid. I looked like I was put together with spare parts. 'Okay, Mac,
here's a set of legs, stick 'em on Stanley.' I used to be fat and had the
funkiest hair. In fact I even used to iron it, or use this Puerto Rican product
called Perma Straight that had directions in both English and Spanish. Back
in 1966, the only thing I wanted to be was John Sebastian."
Yesterday an ugly duckling, today a superstar stud. When he shed his
skin, and eighteen pounds, Paul became rake
the pretty boy, a rock 'n' roll
in tight jeans. "I know I can have any girl I want now, they are the ones that
come after me; but I'm real together about it. They're not after my mind,"
he says. "You know, the sad part about it is, if you're ugly people hate
you."
Across the table Ace Frehley pulls out a package of Sweet 'n Low and
trickles it onto his iced tea. "Gotta get rid of my beer belly, you know," he
explains.
"You don't drink beer anymore?" I ask, remembering a once drunken
36 jaan uhelszki
Ace doing Rodney Dangerfield impressions that were so hilarious, I feared

for my bladder.
"No, I drink wine now."
"But Ace, you won't be funny anymore," I implore.
"Well, wine isn't as jolly, but I'm still funny," he brags. "Hey, what's a
specimen?"
"I don't know?"
"An Italian astronaut."
Kiss are essentially street snots yanked from their gangs and plugged into
an amp. They were brash JD's, tattooed and tough, who knew exactly what
and who they were. Today, they still proudly display their tattoos (except
Gene) but now their "colors" are a little —
more obvious the paint they wear
onstage. Kiss's identities seem to be the result of some concurrent concep-
tion by EricVan Daniken, Walt Disney, Stan Lee, and Russ Meyer. Al-
though they wear makeup, the classic stereotype of a flit, Kiss emerge as
four macho lugs. "Hey, Uhelszki, you put out?" somebody asked.
We enter Johnstown, Pa., in a rented limo driven by a freckle-faced straw-

berry blonde. "You know, whenever we have a female limo driver I feel like
saying, 'You get in the backseat, and let me drive,' " says Paul. "Or just get
in the backseat . .
." he jokes. The driver titters, throws Paul a toothpaste
smile, and continuously sneaks glances at him in her rearview mirror.
"Is this your regular job?" he asks her.
"Yes."
"Well what's your irregular job?" he jives. As we get out of the car she
anxiously waits for Paul to beckon her, and when he doesn't she reluctantly
pulls away.
"Paul, you're just a tease," I admonish.
"Yeah, I know, that's all the fun. Getting it is nothing."
"Room 421, miss." Key in hand, I rejoin the gang and anxiously ask, like
an old hand, "When's the sound check?"

"What sound check?" Gene blankly answers.
"You mean don't get to rehearse?" I ask nervously.
I
"Nah, you'll catch on, just follow us," says Paul.

"Yeah, but I've got nothing to wear. ..." I say with a trace of panic.
rock she wrote 37
"Don't worry, we'll take care of you, kid, your name in lights . .
."
jokes Bill Aucoin, their manager.

It's p.m., and all I have between me and showtime is Saturday after-
4:00
noon TV. I'm watching Soul Train without having the slightest idea what
I'm seeing, when the phone rings.
"Uhelszki?" (By this time I was one of the boys, and either called Uhelszki
or kid.)
"Yeah?"
"What size shoe do you wear?"
"Eight and a half. Why?"
"Too bad. I thought we could
snazz you up in a pair of silver boots."
"Well, maybe I could stuff 'em with Kleenex."
"No, won't work. Don't worry, I'll rummage around some more."
I felt like I was getting ready for that Big Date —
you know, the prom or
—
Homecoming when actually I was going to be onstage for a total of four
minutes in an Ice Arena in Nowhere, Pennsylvania. But still fidgety, I kept
trying on my leotard over and over, checking the image in the mirror, and
feeling a lot like the motorcycle moll in Naked Under Leather. Drawing the
drapes, I practiced a few classic Kiss kicks in the bathroom mirror without
much success. My practice was cut short by a knock at the door, and an
ominous voice: "Be in the lobby in one hour!" The Voice commanded;
mine, as a mere member of the shock troops, was but to obey.
Room service came, and I left it untouched, which was probably for the
better. I didn't want my thighs glaring out at all America . . . well, at
Johnstown, Pa.
This is it, light the lighis
This is it, your night of nights

Curtain up, we'll hit the heights
No more rehearsing, and nursing a part
We know every part by heart
And oh what heights we'll hit
On with the show, this is it.
Absurdly, this song kept threading its way through my brain like some
hold on sanity. It was too late to back off.
The dressing room in all of its filthy linoleum splendor wasn't the worst
of its lot. Once inside, I'm afflicted with a bad case of modesty, and become
obsessed, like a cat searching for a spot to drop her kitten, with finding a
secluded corner to change into my clothes. Would a phone booth do?
38 jaan uhelszki
Clutching my costume, I spot an empty stall and dart in relieved, bolting the
door. Like a quick change artist, I tear off my T-shirt, tug at my

Landlubbers, and don my basic black, feeling more like a naked seal than
part of Kiss. Timidly, I sneak out of the stall and approach Ace: "Hey, do
you have another pair of tights I can wear? I'm freezing," I lie.
"Yeah, but they're size D," says Ace.

"That's okay."
"But, Jaan, yours look better. They're much hotter, because you can see
your skin through them. Doncha wanna look good in pictures?"
"That's what I was afraid of."

"Hey, hey, if you don't watch those legs they're gonna get grabbed," leers
Simmons.
Embarrassed, I turn on Junior and shout: "Hey, how long until we go
on!"
"Lookit her, give her a black outfit, and make her a Kiss, and already
she's hardcore," he laughs.
The first band is on and the crowd is a stiff. No encore. Bill Aucoin sticks
his head into the dressing room, shoves five backstage passes toward us, and
tells us we've got forty-five minutes until showtime. My palms have started
to sweat so much that they're beginning to obliterate the lettering on my
pass, so I stick it on my right shoe, figuring the local goon squad would
never believe that I was "Kiss For a Night" and give me the shove, figuring
me to be just another fanatical Kiss groupie who had painted her face like
her heroes, which seems to be the current fashion among the fans. In
keeping with the code of concealing the real identity of Kiss, my
photographer can't start shooting until the guys have sufficiently obscured
their features. Tired of pacing, I take a spin around the backstage area,
which is littered with underage glitter queens of varying age and brilliance.
A fourteen-year-old Patty Play Pal accosts me.

"You know Gene Simmons?" she drools.
"Yeah," I reply matter-of-factly.
"Does he really do those things with his tongue?" she asks excitedly.
"I guess so," I reply.
"Gee, I wish he'd use that tongue on me," she says wistfully.
I return, and Kiss are in the final stages of completion, and ready to give
me tips on cosmetology. I'm hesitant to let them know that the last time I
rock she wrote 39
put on face makeup was in the tenth grade, in the girls' John at Southfield
High School, and all my technique consisted of was smearing "Touch-and-
Glow" over my adolescent visage.
"I always wear a shower cap to keep the grease outta my hair," explains
Peter as he smears some goop on his face.
"Yeah, Uhelszki, you gotta get rid of those bangs!" barks Simmons,
yanking two clumps of my hair and wrapping elastic bands around them, so
my carefully fully blow-dried hair is imprisoned in two sprouts on the top of
my head.
"Ouch!" I complain.
"Shuddup, kid!" kids Simmons. "You're the one who asked for this."
Suddenly Paul looks at Gene, and the two of them grin, nod their heads, and
attack my hair with a rattail comb and a can of hairspray. "Ah, perfect,"
sighs Paul, as he admires my new fright-wig concoction.
Ace, oblivious to what happened, shoves a bottle of cocoa butter toward
me. "Here, use this. It'll seal your pores." I guess I looked confused, because
Ace asked me, "How come you don't know anything about putting on
makeup, and you're a chick?"
I ignore the remark and furiously pat the butter all over my naked face.
"Broadway Red?" I ask, picking up a worn tube of lipstick.

"Yeah, I love it," says Peter. "In fact, if the day ever comes and I do a solo
album, I'm going to call it Broadway Red."
By general consensus, Kiss have decided make me up as a composite of
to
all of them, just like the back cover of the Hotter Than Hell album. Now for
the actual transformation: sidestraddling the bench, I face Simmons in his
black satin prize fighter's robe with otto heindel emblazoned on the back,
trying not to giggle as English comes out of this Halloween-monster thing.
"It's time to make a little monster. Now watch, so you can do this," he
instructs as if he were a counselor for the Elizabeth Arden School of Beauty.
"First rub Stein's clown white all over your face. Smooth it very lightly, only
using a little around the eyes."
I dip my and start smearing the stuff on my face.
fingers in the jar,
"No, Uhelszki, like this!" he admonishes, losing patience and doing it
himself. "Okay, now sprinkle baby powder all over your face, so the base
will set." I look at Paul in the mirror and start to laugh.
"Didn't you know we're the clowns of rock 'n' roll?" Paul jokes. Ace
scowls at his reflection, muttering that he made "the goddamned lines too
thick." Unsatisfied, he storms out the door. Peter dabs on his last whisker,
and preens in front of the mirror, caressing his lean leather thighs: "Tony
Curtis, eat your heart out!"
40 jaan uhelszki
( .cue etches Maybelline black on my dry to normal skin, sketching in his
bat insignia. "Hey! Don't make her up just like you," yells Stanley. .
"Pm not, I told you, we each get a crack at her." Ace splotches a silver
dot on my nose, and Peter adds his own feline touch in messy black crayon.
Paul pauses over the conglomeration, and draws a smaller version of his
star. Funny, somehow, I some kind of immunity behind the paint, a
feel
little more confidence. Maybe this rock 'n' roll business won't be so bad
after all. Gene holds up a mirror and stands back, telling me to look at my
reflection. "Don't you feel special?" he inquires.
"No, silly," I admit.
"< ome on, you look very groupie."
"I do not!" I argue.
"No, that's great! Get off on it tonight, while you got it," he says.
"So then you think I look okay?" I ask.
"Yeah, but I look better!" He laughs.

Now the presentation of my plugless wonder. Junior shoves a red guitar
in nn hands and I fumble with it. "You mean you don't even know how to
hold a guitar?" he asks increduously.
"No, do you know how to change a typewriter ribbon?" I retort. Paul
comes to my rescue and shows me how to handle the Fender. "Here, hold it
like this, off to one side. Now wear it low and slinky, so it looks sexy."
M\ last touch is the freak paraphernalia, and I go from person to person
collecting their junk jewelry and brutish decorations. Finally I was outfitted
in a studded collar, a menagerie of plastic eyeball (and other unidentified
organs) rings, a metal cuff, and a studded belt whose buckle encased a
tarantula named Freddy. Unfortunately Freddy kept slipping off my thirty-
hve-inch-hips, and finally had to be taped to my tights with gaffer's tape.
Readying tor a gig with Kiss fell short of my expectations and their
reputation. I expected some gruesome ordeal, but instead we took turns
mugging in exchanging gossip ("Did you see the set of tits on
the mirrors,
that fifteen-year-old broad?") and advice. I felt more like I was at a
lupperware party thanin a rock 'n' roll dressing room, but then the
"worst" was come. Stagefright. "I got a run in my tights," I whined.

vet to
"Don't worry," comforted Bill, "who's going to notice fifty rows back?"
1ike a rock 'n' roll Casey Stengel, Bill gave me an impromptu pep talk,
about standing up straight, not watching the audience, and looking "like
you belong there." As he finished we were out the door, and believe it or not
1
was raring to go, running down the hallway. Without realizing it, I was
halfway up the stairs to the stage when Junior grabbed me. "Hey,
sweetheart, where you going?" he laughed.
rock she wrote 41
What he didn't realize was I was getting a little trigger happy, and maybe
even stagestruck, but just in case I motioned him over to me. "I have every
intent on going through with this, but when it's time for me to go onstage,
don't give me a hand sign, just shove."
The set seemed to take forever; I felt like I was sitting through the rock
version of Gone With had already shredded four Kleenexes, I
the Wind. I
had to go to the bathroom, and the makeup was beginning to itch

unbearably. As I raised a lone fingernail to scratch, Bill Aucoin was at my
side, like a trained pro, grabbing my hand. "That's a no-no," he said, and
fanned my face to relieve the irritation. "Did you know you're on next?" he
inquired.
I didn't. Visions of graduation day floated through my head, that fear of
slipping before the entire school before you got your hands on the diploma.
Only difference was that if I slipped onstage, Kiss would use it as part of the
act. So in this sense I couldn't make a mistake. Just a damn fool of myself.
From stage left I peeked at the greedy crowd, and was horrified that the
stage was only inches off the floor well, twenty-four inches. This struck —
me as odd, since this is a Kiss concert and everybody knows their reputation
for riling up an audience, whether it be amorous ladies intent on wrapping
their arms around Ace's mike stand, or just uncounted masses of genderless
groupies who want to cop a feel.
Countdown. Then the shove, and I'm onstage, moving like I'm
unremotely controlled. Forgetting completely that I am in front of five
thousand people participating as one fifth of this sadistic cheerleading
squad, bobbing and gyrating instinctively, I no longer hear the music, just a
noise and a beat. On cue I strut over to Simmons's mike and lean into it and
sing. Singing loud without hearing myself, oblivious to everything but those
four other beings onstage. Gene whispers for me to "shake it" and I loosen
up a little more, until I feel like a Vegas showgirl going to a go-go. Suddenly
it strikes me: I like this. And I venture a look at the crowd, that clamoring,
hungry throng of bodies below me. All I can think at that moment is how
much all those kids resemble an unleashed pit of snakes, their outstretched
arms bobbing and nodding, as if charmed by the music. I wonder if they will
pick up on the hoax? But they keep screaming and cheering, so I might just
as well be Peter Criss, unleashed from his drum kit, as anyone. The only
difference is, I am the only Kiss with tits.
I slide over to Stanley's mike, sneaking up behind him, and mimic his
calisthenics. He whirls around and catches me, emitting .1 huge red crimson
laugh from his painted lips. I push my unplugged guitar to one side and do
42 jaan uhelszki
an aborted version of the bump and the bossa nova, singing into Paul's mike
this time.
/ wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day!
Oh yeah!
I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day!
And right on cue, to add that last dash of drama, Junior's beefy arms
ceremoniously lift me and the guitar three feet off the stage, and I look like a
furious fan who almost managed to fullfill her fantasy, but was foiled in the
end. But you know something? I feel foiled; J wanted to finish the song. My
song!
We trekked back to the dressing room and now, after the ordeal, my legs
went marshmallow. Wanting to appear blase after my big debut, I grabbed a

wooden chair and draped myself over it.
"It was hysterical!" laughed Paul. "I knew you were gonna be onstage,
but then I forgot about you, then all of a sudden I look and see you dancing,
looking like Minnie Mouse."
"You're a perfect stage personality," said Gene. "All of a sudden you
were hogging the mike. You took over, stealing scenes like a pro. You know,
the kids thought you were a part of the show."
Junior walked over, and I was afraid of his verdict but he liked it, he liked
it!"You did it! You got out there like a trouper. I gave you the sign and
away you went. That must have been very, very heavy for you."
"I didn't think they noticed. ..." I sputtered.
"I was watching people in the front row, and they were saying 'Who is
this chick. What is she doing up there? What's going on?' " Junior
continued.
The party was over, the fans dispersed, but the five of us were armed with
five boxes of Kleenex and four bottles of cold cream. "You know, if we
don't get rich, I'm gonna need a padded cell," confessed Peter.
"Didn't you hear, Peter, we're the next Beatles!" laughed Paul.
The next morning, as we sleepily wandered to the coffee shop to await
the limousines, each member of the group greeted me, not with "Good
rock she wrote 43
morning," but a mimic of my stage shimmy. "You deserve it, Jaan, you told
usyou were shy. I never thought you could be such a ham," explained Bill.
As we said our good-byes, Gene Simmons said over his shoulder:
"Whenever you feel like putting on that makeup again, give us a call."
Cherie Clirrie, excerpt from Neon Angel:
The Cherie Currie Story, 1989.
The Runaways were the first all-female rock band to make it

big. Their rebel-girl, JD image helped them succeed, and as lead
singer Cherie Currie's 1989 autobiography, written with Neal
Shusterman, showed, they had to be tough to survive the
peculiar ravages of rockgirl stardom. In this excerpt, they play
their first show on their first national tour.
JL t's a sellout crowd. Thirteen hundred. Over five hundred people were
turned away, and now they hang around in the street, angry that they can't
get in. We're the headline attraction tonight. We're not opening for another
band — all these people are here to see us\
We're on in five minutes. I bite my lip and check that my black net
stockings are pulled up all the way, and are secured tightly to my white satin
corset with black lace frills. That and black platform shoes are all I'm
wearing. Like I said — bad girls. By the time the night is over I'll have
changed outfits five more times.
I check in my head the order of the songs we're doing.
I've performed and
rehearsed them so many times, I know them

was born knowing them. like I
I've practiced my moves over and over again, taking a bit from Bowie and
adding a little bit of Cherie. I'm my own creation now. The Cherie-thing is
—
complete it is fully grown now.
My hands are cold, like they were when I auditioned. Like they were at
rock she wrote 45
our very first rooftop performance, and our show at Wildman Sam's. Still, I
feel that dark crater inside my soul like a pit in my stomach. Surrounded by
thirteen hundred fans, ten roadies, and The Runaways, I still feel all alone.
"Mellow out," says a fat roadie named Ralph. "It's only Cleveland." But
the fact that it's anywhere but Los Angeles is enough to send my heart
racing. In my whole life, I'd never been more than a hundred miles from
home.
"Here," he says, and hands me a pill that looks like an oversized aspirin.
I'd tried that pill before. It was a Quaalude. "Take this, it'll make you feel
better. It's just what the doctor ordered. Take it," he says. "It's just one. Just
one can't hurt you."

That makes sense, I think. I mean, just because I pop one 'lude doesn't
mean I'm a drug addict or anything. After all, a 'lude's not much different
from a Placidyl, and those Placidyls helped me so very much when I was
sick, back in Los Angeles.
Of course I was sick then.
Of course I took them after the concerts.
Of course they were prescribed by a doctor for me.
But what the hell. I take the pill and swallow it.
The lights go down on the audience, and they cheer. In the darkness Joan
leads us all onstage, and when the spotlights come up, I am in another
world. Dozens of guys fight security in front of the stage, just to get closer to
us. They hold up our record album covers and posters and signs. They shout
our names. They reach out their hands toward us.
And all at once what Joan sa d comes back to me. At

:
first I didn't under-
stand what she meant, but now, in the heat of the lights before the frenzied
mob, I —
"Benny and the Jets" Elton John's make-believe band of the
see.
times — around the world that is us.

idols of teens —
The crater is gone. That dark hole in my soul is filled with the screams of
the mob. I don't need my mother. I don't need any of that; I've got rock 'n'
roll authority now! Just what Kim demands, just what the audience de-
mands.
"We love you, Cherie!" they scream.
Yes! This is what I want! This is the answer to all my problems. The
crowds and the 'ludes and the smell of pot filling the air around me. This is
my life and this is my family! Yes, I'll sell myself to the crowds. I'll sell
myself to anyone for the chance to be Benny!

Funny, but it used to be I wanted to shove everything the world hated in
its face. Now I want to give the fans exactly what they want, and they want
their sexy little Cherry Bomb.
46 cherie currie
I concentrate on the music, and in a moment, all my fears are gone. I am

gone, and all that remains is the beautiful beat of Sandy's drums, and the
glorious wail of Lita's screaming guitar. I strut across the stage, teasing the
boys in the front row, and wail the opening line of "Cherry Bomb" as I
slowly wrap the microphone cord around my body like a snake.

Georgia Christgau, "The Girls Can't
Help It," The Village Voice, October 30, 1978.
With some notable exceptions, rock 'n' roll hasn't been much of
an equal-opportunity employer. That began to change after
punk rock, when the demystifying of instrumental virtuosity
opened doors for women. Former Creem editor Georgia Christgau
sat down with a number of Downtown New York musicians who
were part of this new wave of rockers.
late last summer local rock 'n' roll waved me good-bye when some-
one threw a bottle at one of the Dead Boys on stage, cutting him. I knew
that Stiv Bators took to cutting himself voluntarily; he idolized Iggy Pop and
Iggy had done that once. I hadn't seen him that night but had seen him
perform a lot the year before, when Iggy and I both still lived in Detroit. I
went because my friends did, because I liked rock 'n' roll, because James
Williamson played great guitar, because I had never seen anyone as intense
as Iggy. And because he was a great problem solver —once in a sweltering
high school gym came out after intermission carrying a Styrofoam

Iggy
chest full of water and drenched himself. It was funny; it made him look like
a horse, it dissipated some of that hyped-up energy we all thought was so
important. Plusit helped him get on with the show.
For the Dead Boys, the stage was a place to act out fantasies about male
violence, and their biggest fantasy was Iggy. By the time Iggy was rolling
around in broken glass on a Los Angeles stage he was doing what people
48 georgia christgau
expected of him. He used to do things no one expected. The Dead Boys

transformed his defeat into an act of courage. It really made me sick. I knew
a lot of what was going on at CBGB had been influenced by Iggy, and I
never wanted to go back there again.
So when a friend recommended the B52's this spring, I was quick with the
generalizations. Punk rock was just stupid men posing as stupider boys. No
group named after a bomber had anything to say to me. Nobody who
couldn't play or sing well could be any good. Amateurs were not my cup of
tea. I went to CBGB alone on a rainy Thursday night. I was doing my job. I
knew there were two women in the B52's, which normally would have
lifted my spirits, but tonight it only made me more wary. Hardly any
women played instruments in rock bands. They would be terrible. Worse,

I'd excuse them.
But as their set began I reacted with a fan's instincts: Can I make what
she's wearing for under five dollars? The band did a great version of
"Downtown." They played originals. One woman played guitar; the other,
more typically for rock 'n' roll, was a singer. But her pageboy brunette wig
and campy clothes suggested a parody of a girl rock singer, not a clone of
one. I'd watched Patti Smith choose androgyny to get around male stereo-
types, but in my wildest educated guesses I'd never imagined a rock 'n'
roller walking onstage with a patent leather blue handbag. They sounded
like Talking Heads after a few drinks. I liked Talking Heads. I was having a
great time. I thought the women onstage had something to do with it; yet
their presence didn't seem like a big deal. If they had tried hard to get me to
this good place, it didn't show. Maybe because there were two of them, they
reinforced each other. Maybe I would get my one girlfriend who still liked
rock 'n' roll to come over and I'd some new records.
play her
Instead, I went to see if there were any more women rock 'n' roll musi-
cians around town. I found fifteen or so bands circulating with women
instrumentalists, but few were in the punk rock/CBGB's scene. Avant-garde
rock — played mainly in little clubs that opened next week and closed sooner
—was the scene for women rockers. But the vibes were very different. No
fan stuff here. Act cool. I learned quickly about avant-garde vibes when one
group played too loud: the people, instead of complaining, like a rock
audience would, covered their ears politely, like friends. In such a receptive
climate, it was understandable that women could play instruments in rock
bands without standing out conspicuously as Women. But I didn't really
understand my place in such an audience. Once, at a performance of a
group called Blinding Headache, I saw a not apparently inebriated man
doze through half the set. This was a little too cool for me. Still, it was hard
rock she wrote 49
not to like the avant-garde, which had apparently fostered most rock 'n' roll
women instrumentalists, where so much of the music was at least different,
if not always good . . . even if the scene is a fragmented one. Bands break
up and reform frequently, few bands get as "far" as CBGB, no one makes
any money, and it is an incestuous scene at best.
So I decided to spend a nice day with the girls. I thought I'd invite my
rock 'n' roll buddy, Roberta "Robbie" Cruger, and a few musicians, over
for brunch. It's such a women's thing to do. The guest list included a purist
rock 'n' roll drummer in the Zantees named Miriam Linna, 22, who felt as
funny about the avant-garde as I did; Adele Bertei, 23, a keyboard player of
some repute in the avant-garde; and Nina Canal, 25, a guitar player from
Tone Death, and a member of another avant-garde group, the Gynecolo-
gists.
Georgia: Do you feel what you're doing in avant-garde is derivative of jazz

or rock or what?
Nina: Definitely rock 'n' roll.
Georgia: Because of the rhythm or the sentiment or what?

Nina: Both. But it's not punk or new wave; both terms are inaccurate.
People say the bands playing are not new, just early sixties over again, but
there's other things going on. One of them is how many women there are.
Adele: Definitely has an influence.

Miriam: A lot of women now are not really up front, but they will get, more
and more, start doing their own music. Now they're in bands, collaborat-
ing; that's good, too.
Miriam: Girls were into it in the sixties. I don't think it's a progressive
movement, it's regressive; one of the greatest drummers in the world was
Honey Langtree Honeycombs, in
of the the mid-sixties. Nobody said then,
"Ew, a girl." They said, "Ooh, a girl!"

Adele: Yes, but rock 'n' roll is so male dominated, I never even heard of
Honey Langtree. What did she do?
Miriam: The Honeycombs, you know, "Have I the Right?" [sings] "Have I
the right to kiss you . . .

?"
Adele: Oh, yeah!

Miriam: Yeah, they named the Honeycombs after her. Blond hair; a cute
flip.
SO georgia christgau
I can identify with women who don't make a big deal about being into
rock 'n' roll. As a first generation Beatles fan, I have the right. However,
that shrug of indifference can be misleading. I also grew up with the

women's movement, and sometimes tell myself that I only became a femi-
nist because of good timing. I began writing reviews at Creem magazine in
1973, where I held the distinction of being the only woman on the editorial
staff who'd never been the girlfriend of one of its founders. (Though when I
was eventually fired for insubordination, it was suggested to me that every-

thing could be worked out at a nearby motel.)
In the spirit of rock 'n' roll, Creem ran an ad each month encouraging
readers to submit writing on any subject. Since their readership was sev-
enty-five percent male, most of the response they got was from guys. But
when women like me began writing, we were encouraged too. No one ever
mentioned how many women published in Creem, except people from afar
who deemed the Detroit periodical good, and took note of such things. If
the absence of political conscience was cynical, it was also freedom from
self-consciousness. Creem said anyone who felt like it should write. Rock
'n' roll said anyone who felt like it should play.
Georgia: The first group you were in, Miriam, the Cramps, was based on
the idea that you would start from not being able to play ... to learning
how to play together.
Miriam: I started playing November 1976. 1 never thought I would
drums in
play; I was just an extremely ardent rock 'n' roll fan. I came from Cleveland
to New York to hear it, maybe start a fanzine or something. The Cramps
were just a group of friends. My first thought was I can't do this. There
hasn't been any girl drummers since Honey Langtree and she looked a lot
better than me. Moe Tucker I idolized, but that was too much to ask, the
legendary Moe Tucker, Velvet Underground, my God. But I just started
playing and a lot of people were offensive, saying, "Ew, a dyke." And so I'd
say,ew to you too. I can play drums too. If I had been a girl who really
knew how to play drums, people would have said, "She's got an excuse to
rock." We practiced for one month; when we played out it was super simple
and super weird.
Adele: But people would give you a lot of shit, Miriam?
Miriam: My mother, a lot: "I can't tell people you're playing drums!" She
still hasn't told anyone. It's pretty wild.
Nina: Do you think there's a different sound in your band because you're a
woman?
rock she wrote Si
Miriam: I think, maybe, a certain sound. I don't think there's any guys who
drum like I do, because I want to drum like Chuck Berry's drummer, that's
all. Nobody drums like that. Chuck Berry's drummer never had a roll. It
was always just a fast ch-ch-boom, a very danceable beat. He was a guy.
You never knew who he was, Mr. X but he was . . . a good drummer for
keeping a beat. I think that's the only important thing. A guy could do it just
as easy. It doesn't make any difference that it's a guy or a girl, except that I
wanna play in a band.
Editorially, at Creem, there were problems with sexism too. Even when
Joni Mitchell had a hit single, and a rock 'n' roll single about a carousing
broad at that, she did not rate a cover story. Suzi Quatro, more of a Creem
stereotype, wore leather, was from the home burg, and played at least as
well as half the boys we discussed endlessly in our pages. Her big moment in
Creem was a short feature and a large color photo ... a pinup. Creem, at
its best, made fun of people it didn't like, or enthused over its fave raves.
Usually women didn't fit into either category. (The exception: Patti Smith.)
But the other problem with women musicians at a rock 'n' roll magazine
was that there just weren't enough of them.
Adele: One of the most exciting things to me when I came to New York is
that there's all these women playing in these bands. And playing original
music. That never happened in Cleveland. All these women picking up
instruments, experimenting with them, and learning how to play; different
things will come out of thern.
Miriam: Why is it so different?
Adele: Well, because they've never done it before. It's new to women to play
rock 'n' roll. Women have gotten strong enough that they want to do it. It is
an aggressive music; it's electric music. A lot of women seem to be afraid of

that kind of sound, amplified sound. I think it's going to put a whole new
look on things.
Miriam: Why would it be so different from a guy who never saw an instru-
ment before and started to play?
Georgia: They're almost alike. The amateur wants to play, he plays in a
rock band. But now the girl is the amateur. She is the new person.
Robbie: But take the Runaways. For some reason

Adele: They've just taken over the traditional male roles. They get up there
and . . .
S2 georgia christgau
Miriam: Unzip their blouses, [everyone laughs.] Well, it helps a lot.
Adele: But it shouldn't have to help.

Robbie: Butwhy don't they even sound like rock 'n' roll musicians? I remem-
ber being very close with a group of women in Detroit that started a rock
—
band, POW Power of Women. It was somebody else's idea, someone tried
to package them, maybe that was the problem, or maybe they were a little
before their time; for some reason the Runaways, and this group — there
was definitely something different, but it wasn't rock 'n' roll. There was no
gutsiness to it. For me, women rock musicians have never been able to make
music that you'd want to dance to.
Georgia: But I would call Patti Smith's first record gutsy.

Robbie: Definitely. But she's a singer. She's not a musician on that.
Nina: But she is the mainstay in the band.

Robbie: True, and she writes songs. Why is that changing, then?
Adele: Well, do the Runaways sound different from Aerosmith, or bands of
that [snicker] caliber?
Robbie: Fanny, remember Fanny? There's a better example. It didn't matter
that they were playing amplified instruments. They were still playing them
like acoustic ones. That's the interesting thing, to be afraid of all that. Of
power.
I think if a woman's afraid of playing an electric, loud music, it affects

how well she gets across. Of the three women talking, Adele appears the
most confident onstage; she's also the most successful. (When Adele was in
the Contortions, avant-garde wizard Brian Eno chose them for a record of
four New York bands, unofficially called "No N.Y.") Miriam plays drums
to left field; I've yet to see her overcome her shyness and face the audience.
is sometimes riveting. Nina's performance is more
Yet that insecurity, too,
anonymous than anything else; the first and only time I saw her perform I
didn't even know she was a woman.
I imagine Nina needs more composure to play the atonal, painfully loud
notes of Tone Death's songs deadpan than if she were to get up onstage,
wriggle around a bit, and try to sound like someone who could sell records.
That's what the Erasers, one of the most commercial unsigned bands play-
ing CBGB and similar clubs, are doing. Susan Springfield, the band's leader,
wears an ingenuous smile, glances to her bass player, also a woman, as if to
rock she wrote S3
say, "I'm about to play a guitar solo. Here goes nothing!" Then she plays
one that's quite something.
I didn't invite Susan to the brunch because she is already on the road to
making it commercially and I was afraid she'd tip a balance. So I talked to
her alone. When she told me that one of the reasons she'd like to get a
contract is that then she'd get to travel around the world, I didn't know if
she was being innocent or greedy. Raised in Wisconsin, a graduate of Pratt

Institute, performing a little over a year, about to release a single on Ork
Records — hell, she's hardly even paid dues and I already had her record
company bio sheet memorized. Now, I like the Erasers, a whole lot. But the
reasons she had for doing what she did didn't loom as large as the probabil-
ity of her likely success, which took us both in. She was the star listing the
influences, Patti Smith and Susan Sontag, if you're interested, and I was the
fan. Once I saw Springfield walking down the street as I was riding past her
on my bike. Giddy, I rode no hands, like a little kid, to impress her. In case
she was interested. But that is not the way of the avant-garde.
Nina: You mentioned, Robbie, how instruments are played. A lot of bands
in New York—take Lydia Lunch, in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. They came
out of three-chord rock 'n' roll, to play a kind of minimal music. It's very
intense, has nothing to do with playing your instrument. It has to do with
feeling your instrument. This is the important thing with the New York
bands. A lot of people — in the bands in England, where I'm from, and here
—some of them and some of them not such kids, have never played
kids,
their instruments before. The only way you'd get up there to do it is to feel
it. There's that kind of intensity happening. And I think from that kind of
very barren, very arty kind of thing, people will get more sophisticated,
more musicianlike. But their background will be this timbral kind of thing,
this just feeling . . . sensing the sound, not knowing, you know, E, G, B,
but just making it work by the way it sounds.

Adele: When I play, I feel like the most important thing about the music is
getting out these feelings in myself. I'd never played keyboards before. How
did I develop my style of keyboard playing? Well, I feel a lot of hostility and
stuff, [laughter] alienation from society; playing my instrument is like my
nervous system coming out.
Another time I was just doing my job I had gone to see the Women's Jazz
Festival Jam one night the last week of June. It was a setup on the street,
S4 georgia christgau
amid theatergoers' cab traffic and general Times Square-area craziness.

Peggy Stern, a piano player and associate of Terry Garthwaite (a favorite
musician of mine), played in a round-robin jam with other women. Accus-

tomed to the problem most musicians have of not getting enough exposure,
they looked like they were having the time of their lives.
Stern is a tough, gum-chewing piano player, or that's how I described her

three years ago when she played with Garthwaite at the National Women's
Music Festival in Illinois. In my rock 'n' roll head, tough also separated
Stern from the mild-mannered folkies who dominated the festival, who in
turn dominate women in music historically. She doesn't have very much
musically in common with the women who came for brunch, but she has
the same kind of gutsy spirit. Stern, Terry Garthwaite, and Willow Wray
blew an audience away one night during that week of mush. Maybe it was a
reaction to the nice time all those women were having. Or maybe Stern, a
former professor and classical pianist, liked being risky. Whatever it was, I
asked her how she felt when she played music. She didn't talk about "feel-
ing your instrument." She just laughed and refused to discuss it. She said it
would sound too religious.
Miriam was getting uncomfortable. She was thinking that rock 'n' roll
was innocent and spontaneous. When Nina said that the New York bands
were just "making it work by the way it sounds," she said, "That's not what
it is. I don't think rock 'n' roll is something you ever had to think about
before doing it. It's either genius like Eddie Cochran or just makin' up songs
about cars and girls. Or else being rooted so strongly in the great rockers
that what you're doing is real."
Adele: Well, when I start writing music I don't want to write about my
boyfriend, about how much I love my boyfriend . . .
Robbie: Why?
Adele: 'Cause I don't have one.
Nina: Well, that's not true altogether.
Adele: 'Cause I don't like the situation I have to live in. I hope things will get
better. There's too many creepy, ugly things going on that a lot of people
are victimized by. I don't want to make slug music and be really depressed
about it. I want to transcend it.
Georgia: What's slug music? That's a great expression.

Adele: Slug music to me is what punk rock is into right now.
the state of
Playing one chord and screaming, just noise, it's not making any point.
Georgia: Well, slug music may be punk rock like the Dead Boys as far as this
rock she wrote SS
table goes, but Foreigner is like Dead Boys for the people. They sell millions
of records.
Robbie: I always wonder if groups like that know they're a parody.
Nina: What about the Dictators?
Miriam: I love the Dictators.
Georgia: I don't. But see, the difference is that there's some sense in which
you don't take them seriously.
Miriam: Definitely.
Georgia: That's crucial to pleasure. Like, I cannot listen to "Some Girls"
because I do not find it ironic that Mick Jagger thinks black girls want to
fuck all night. I find it racist and sexist.
Nina and Adele: Right.

Miriam: The Dictators are from Frank Zappa and Flo and Eddie. I don't
worry about them becoming the next Boston. But about the more serious
music, I don't understand. The Sex Pistols did a very political thing, saying
to people who sing about cars and girls that that's not today: you have to
deal with society! People are jumping off buildings! —Don't you under-
stand, it was bad in the sixties, or even the fifties. People said Elvis was this
gross guy gyrating his private parts. But he didn't give a hoot about sex and
madness, beat up your girlfriend. He was in a private world of teenage;
adults had no access to it.
Nina: But the Sex Pistols came out of a very specific economic situation in
England.
Miriam: But I come from a very lower-class background and rock 'n' roll
was like, when my sister got her first pair of pink tights, it was, voom, forget
all this about not having any money, I got a pair of pink tights!
It sounded good. But maybe not that good. Adele said compassionately,
"That bothers me too. A lot of kids are complaining all the time. They don't
have no dream world." "But what's happened," said Nina, "is a lot of
people got sick of pretending, of that sweetness." remembered my week at

I
the music festival and how sick I was of the sweetness in women's music.
Adele criticized feminist music, too, as "insipid, hiding behind the issues,
patting each other on the back." Then she and Nina remembered that time
Nina was in a women's band.
Nina: I did it for a short time, it was fun. I do feel there are more men able
to interact with women, switch from their masculine to their feminine side.
56 georgia christgau
But it's frightening to think about falling into the same traps as men, you
know, the women's band.
Adele: The reversal of roles.
Nina: And how it turns out to not be any different.
I decided to let them work that one out. Women's bands never seemed
like a solution to me, or even a cause for celebration. Of course, I had never
seen a great one. The nice thing is, if I ever do, it may not be a big deal.
hattie gossett with carolyn Johnson,
"jaz^women: they're mostly singers
and piano players, only a horn player
or two. hardly any drummers,"
Jslzz Spotlite New$, August 1979.
In the 1970s such writers as Ntozake Shange, Thulani Davis,

Jayne Cortez, and Jessica Hagedorn fused elements of jazz
performance into poetic and prose writings and readings.
Performer and writer hattie gossett, author of sister noblues,
comes out of this tradition, infusing her storytelling with a
multimedia, multisensory approach to the world. In this piece,
cowritten with Carolyn Johnson and also published in Heresies
in 1980, gossett looks at the trials and tribulations of her
jazzwomen antecedents.
Wo omen and
about jazzwomen? why?
jazz? what? women's
who
jazz festival? tv specials
cares? they've been overlooked by history?

and films
they should have been —what have they done that's worthwhile? everybody
knows can't no woman blow no saxophone or beat no drums, somebody
just gave them a gig knowing there's always a sucker ready to give up some
money to see some broads, no matter what they doing, hell! i never heard of
a men's jazz festival, hmmmmph! ain't that reverse discrimination? why

don't they sponsor a men's festival? hmmmmph! what about that? huh?
38 hattie gossett
,**,
women, jazz.
most jazz lovers hearing those 2 words if asked to put a name to the first
image that comes to mind would probably say singer — bessie, billie, sarah,
dinah, betty, carmen, ella. or singer/pianist —nina simone, hazel scott,

amina meyers. pressed for instrumentalists, most will come up with key-
board players like shirley scott, lil armstrong, marylou williams, alice col-
trane. a few might mention trombonist/arranger melba liston, alto saxo-
phonist/vocalist vi redd or trombonist Janice robinson. a middleaged hipster
or a jazz scholar would mention the all girl (so-called) orchestras and bands
of the forties, like the international sweethearts of rhythm, mostly though
it's singers and piano players, only a horn player or two. hardly any drum-
mers.
this is not about the singers and piano players and their magnificent
contributions, not because these women don't deserve more attention,
honor, gigs, and money, anyone who has attempted the simplest research
about women jazz performers will attest to the embarrassing shortage of
material —no booklength biographies except for billie and bessie; few mag-
azine articles, no films or tv shows, little radio, there is much work to be
done.
but i want to shine my light on this question: why are there so few female
names in the great roll call of jazz saxophonists, drummers, trumpeters,
arrangers, composers, orchestra leaders? did god make women physically
unfit to play certain instruments? are women mentally incapable of dealing
with the ups and downs of jazz life? is all this stuff about women and jazz
another media hype? a subversive plot to take over jazz being put out here
by some mad feminists? are women musicians trying to get over by using
their sex to cover up for their lack of musical ability? how come there's
mostly singers and piano players, only a horn player or two, hardly any
drummers?
herstory: how it was
actually it goes back as far and as deep as the music's roots, this practice
of women playing hardly any of the major solo instruments, power instru-
ments.
as an afroamerican art form, jazz is rooted in west african culture, with
certain ties to euro-american culture as well, the african connection began
rock she wrote S9
with the drum on the mother continent and made its way across the atlantic
along with the kidnapped africans whose fate itwas to lay the foundations
for the new world, not only was the drum a major power symbol in music,
drama, literature, medicine, and religion but also in communications; talk-
ing drums broadcast news over vast areas in an amazingly brief time, in the
new world, the euro-american contribution consisted of additional instru-
ments and a system of harmony based on a 7-tone scale, blues and jazz
musicians soon subverted 3 of these 7 tones to blue tones or blue notes, the
european power instruments were orchestra, piano and violin, in west af-
rica women did not play drums, the idea was so highly taboo that the
suggestion could elicit bales of laughter or fierce anger, some cultures even
forbade women touching drums, women sang, chanted, danced, men were
master drummers, this tradition was continued in the new world as was the
european tradition of women not being major piano or violin soloists or
orchestra leaders, both these age old traditions combined in the new world
to lay a firm basis for excluding women from power instruments in any
form of music, including jazz.
by the dawn of the twentieth century secular afroamerican musical ex-

pression increasingly had an economic motive —the music had become a
valuable commercial entity, musical creations had to be marketable or the
creators couldn't eat. show some queer
business, entertainment, due to
notions equating black musical creativity with low life animal impulses and
promiscuous sex, this highly inventive musical energy was confined to the
red light districts of the newly industrialized cities, the term hot when ap-
plied to the music by its had one meaning, which was soon dis-
creators
torted, only the most "daring" whites and middle class blacks would ven-
ture to the red light districts to hear this "hot music." it's a good thing the
recording process was invented and perfected around the same time the
music was getting itself together, furthermore at the time when the music
was developing there was a severe social prohibition against women being
involved in any kind of commercial endeavor, women performers were
thought to be harlots by most decent people, even high class opera singers
and big-time actresses (white) were often regarded as somewhat less than
ladylike, so you know what was said about jazzwomen.
with all this, it's not surprising that most parents didn't (and still don't)
want their sons to be jazz musicians or any other kind of artist, let alone
their daughters, it's a rough life, a dangerous life, even for men. wild. fast,
uncontrollable, alcohol, drugs, loose women, loose men. seediness. un-
steady income, all that traveling, cooking beans on a hot plate in a tiny hotel
room, all these images have been perpetrated by a hostile and racist media
60 hattic gossett
system, so lots of parents think it's better for their kid to have something
steady, lots of parents didn't (don't) want their daughters to even date a
musician, musicians are full of stories about being told — sometimes at gun-
point or knifepoint — by parents to stay away from their houses cuz they are
raising their daughter to be decent and don't want to see her with any wild
man.
so it's understandable that few people encouraged their daughters to
learn to play drums or saxophone, besides, everybody knows that girls take
dance or piano or voice —
maybe flute or harp, right? and most parents have
no plans for their daughters to ever earn a living as a result of their dance,
piano, voice lessons, the lessons are just something to help round out a girl's
development, make her more cultured and refined so she can get a husband
with higher income potential, or, if the girl has a career as a nurse, teacher,
or secretary, then music is something to put at the bottom of her resume as a
hobby or special interest.
today the women who are not afraid to be honest have told us enough of
what it is like to survive the rigorous gauntlet to which even the most liberal
of liberated men will subject any woman entering their previously unvio-
lated male sanctuary, be it a muddy ditch, a plush executive suite, or a
bandstand, so you know what it must have been like in the days when men
didn't have to put up any pretenses about their prejudices about women,
can you imagine being the girl singer in an all male 18 or 21 piece big band
in say the twenties or thirties or forties or fifties? traveling all over the
country for weeks at the time in a bus? if a woman had gotten past her
parents' balking and if she had resisted getting pregnant, engaged, or mar-
ried, if she had dealt with local bandleaders and club owners andworked
her way up to going on the road with a name band, she had already had
some introduction, but in case she hadn't, life on the bus on the road would
sure do the job.
in polite conversation, the girl singer names like sparrow,
was called
wren, warbler, chirp, regardless of her talent she first had to fill the bill as a
beautiful, charming, gracious, delicate, softspoken ornament, in fact, if you
wanted to be a singer or instrumentalist, you had better be beautiful,
charming, gracious, delicate, softspoken, and ornamental, and then you had
better be ready for the outright propositions, sly pinches, fast feels, leering
eyes and mouths, direct hits, attempted rapes from bandleaders, sidemen,
club owners, promoters, record company execs, customers, waiters, many
times you had to wear some kind of weird gaudy costume which showed
more than it covered, you often had to be nice to the customers get them —
to spend more money, and sometimes if the customer or the boss wanted to
rock she wrote 61
take you home with him you had to go if you wanted to keep your gig. and
if you weren't thin with long flowing hair you had to be ready for the names
like can-o-lard, hamhocks and if you
hips, greasy gertie, big butt bertha,
had a big loud voice and not a sexy sweet voice

was even worse, your
it
talent was somehow secondary, no wonder there was a steady stream of

minimally or nontalented women who got over on their looks while less
attractive gifted women often languished in the shadows.
the road has taken the weight for the breakup of miles of love affairs and
marriages, but when we think of this situation most think of the husband as
traveling musician and the wife as keeper of the homefront. no one expected
a jazzman to rearrange his schedule so that he could be with his wife at the
time when was born for instance or at the other critical times in a
a child
family's some did, of course, but mostly they didn't, this is even more
life,
peculiar when you remember that one of the attractions of the artistic life is
freedom of schedule, and what is it like when the woman travels and the
man stays home? traditionally this has not happened, in the past most
women traveled with their husbands or some family member because this
was a good way to avoid leering mouths and creeping hands and also
because the road can be lonely, then too the husbands or family members
often weren't too thrilled about their wives, sisters, daughters being out on
the road alone, seeing, being seen, free, so then we have the phenomenon of
the husband as manager or bandleader, often incompetent, jealous and
possessive, sometimes better at squandering his wife's money and ruining
her career than anything else, in contrast, jazzwomen often took leave from
their careers to have babies and to raise families, in fact, many jazzwomen
worked less frequently than they might have in order to spend more time
with their families, after all, it's expected for a woman to do this, right? as
for jazzwomen who decided to go on the road alone, to hang out, get high,
have a succession of lovers and husbands? well, we know what was said
about them — right?
and then there's the question of physical fitness, are women physically
capable of maintaining the rigorous condition needed to perform the physi-

cal act of playing a set of drums or blowing into a saxophone all night long
night after night year after year? doesn't it take a big strong muscular body?
and won't your lips deformed from all that blowing? or your
and mouth get
chest? and what about the muscles in your arms and legs if you're a drum-
mer? won't they be too big? and if you're not a drummer or a piano player,
who down, will your legs
at least get to sit and back be strong enough
to
stand up all night? and what about when you have your time of the month
or when you're pregnant? doesn't all this add up to another big deterrent?
62 hattie gossett
well, if any of that's true, it sure doesn't show up in the women instrumen-
talists' photographs or in their living selves, if you saw a woman saxophone
player or drummer without her instrument, you would see no standout or
hidden physical features or distortions that would set her apart from any
other woman, besides, if women have stood on their feet as waitresses,
factory workers and household workers, etc., throughout history, isn't
standing on a bandstand for 40 minutes out of every 60 for 4 or 5 hours a

night kinda lightweight?
how it is now/how's it gonna be?
a lot is happening now. women's concerts and festivals and forums, a

national directory of women musicians, calendars, business companies ca-
women musicians, women bands again,
tering specifically to the needs of
even women drummers and saxophone players, playing for all women audi-
ences, playing for anybody anywhere, a blossom is opening, a butterfly
emerging from a cocoon.
and of course there are problems, like any other emerging group, women
jazz musicians are put on the spot as soon as they get their moment in the
spotlight, what are your goals? everyone wants to know, where is this
upsurge of energy headed? some see the goals as integrating women into the
existing jazz structure so that eventually there is no need for women's jazz,
these women often say they are just playing whatever music is out here and
that their femaleness is only a happy accident, others feel that their female-
ness has a lot indeed to do with their musical output and are making a
conscious effort to create music that reflects the female experience. Some
are anxious to prove they can do whatever men do; others want to show
that women have something special to offer that is different and at least just
as good.
there's another question which at first almost nobody wants to deal with,
though if pressed, most honest observers will admit they too have noticed
few black women in this flowering of jazzwomen. not that there aren't any
black women at all. no. but it is clear that the descendants of the blond
goddess have an overwhelmingly higher level of visibility than the descen-
dants of the african queen, this is certainly worth considering when we
remember that jazz is an afroamerican cultural expression, is this black
invisibility simply a matter of numbers? are there fewer black jazzwomen?
or is it a matter of talent —are black jazzwomen less talented? none of the
rock she wrote 63
above actually, like the roots of the music itself, the reasons go back very far
and deep.
we have seen that traditionally jazzwomen had to be acceptable first as
ornament/objects, as if this is not already bad enough, if we take a careful
look at official jazzhistory (or american history or the history of western
civilization), we will see that the most desirable ornament/objects have been
those with flowing hair, blue eyes, and white skin.
oldtimers knew that ma rainey and bessie, clara and mamie smith, were
the baddest new Orleans shouters, but sophie tucker got the shot in the
movies and in the standard history books, and she assuredly got more
money and and working conditions too. she was the accept-
better contracts
able version, and then there was that whole generation of white women
singers who got over by copying note for note the recordings made origi-
nally by black women singers, these copies or covers as they were known
were then boosted to the top of the top 40, while the original black product
was restricted to the chitlin circuit, actually, all women end up losing in this
game, the white woman lost and still loses because she is forced to squash
whatever creative ability she has in the slavish effort to imitate someone
else, though her white skin can give her an illusion of having more creative
ability and power than darker women, she pays for this shallow, hollow
privilege by having to sacrifice her ability to develop along her own line.
the black woman's situation is even worse, not only can she never hope to
successfully compete for the empty title of ornament/object; in order to even
be in the game at all she is pressured to become ultimately a poor and sad
imitation —several times removed— of herself.
but there is an even deeper irony to the situation, the playing of jazz has
been not only a black prerogative but a black male prerogative, jazz has
been one of the few pieces of turf held almost unquestionably by black
males, like boxing, every now and then a new great white hope emerges, but
it no sweat cuz the hometeam knows that a joe louis or a charlie parker
ain't
will emerge from the corner and reclaim the crown.
conversely, it seems that once jazz (like boxing) became a profitable and
big business, white men have not brooked any serious challengers to their
hold on the various commercial enterprises that reap profits from jazz.
black culture is a natural resource over which its creators have a dimin-
ishing amount of control, the african and other oppressed third world kins-
people of black americans are still connected to their land in varying degrees
and therefore have some access to and control over their natural resources
(oil, gold, labor power) and various cultural resources, although they too
have suffered the rip-off of their cultural resources as part of the process of
—
64 hattie gossett
colonialism and imperialism, how else do you think the european and amer-
ican museums got to be full of african and other third world art and arti-
facts? in fact, it is only through the process of political struggle for libera-
tion and nationalization that third world peoples have regained meaningful
control over any of their resources.
the process of black american cultural disenfranchisement is often as
subtle as it is unscrupulous, the current attack on sexism in jazz appears to
be a liberating force because women's abilities as instrumentalists are now
being recognized, but a deeper look at this "feminizing" process shows us
that the trickbag of cultural ripoff is deeper yet because white women are
still being promoted over black women, the first trick out of the bag was the
promotion of white men over black men for racist reasons, the next trick
has been white women's promotion over black women for sexist and racist
reasons, no matter how many tricks come out of the bag though, it is clear
they are all designed to keep afroamericans from controlling our cultural
resources the same way we are not allowed to control another, ever more
important resource —our labor power.
although white jazz entrepreneurs deny making any real money and
swear their only motive is love of a great art form, nobody has ever reported
seeing any of them on the unemployment line or at the welfare office, it's an
interesting breakdown, isn't it? black women and men creating a product
that is imitated by white women and men and controlled by white men.
so how much of a challenge is today's wave of jazzwomen to the estab-
lished order of things if these points about black women and white male
control are overlooked, uncomfortable as they make some people?
in addition to this pressure exerted on her from external sources, the
black jazzwoman also faces internal pressures that often prohibit her cre-
ative expansion, because her physical features don't conform to the popular
—
mold she must prove her femininity must in fact first prove her humanity,
there is more pressure on her to conform to the usual feminine standard
pressure from her family, from her man, from her peers and community, so
it is harder for her to rebel, those who do rebel are often made to feel guilty,
as though their rebellion is directly responsible for the demasculization of

black men. this sexist internal pressure is often more difficult to overcome
than the racist and sexist external pressure.
so the black woman is caught in crossfire — between a rock and a hard
place, if it was hard for any woman to play saxophone and drums, it was
even harder for black women, it is easier to rebel if you already have some
kind of approval that gives you a leg to stand on. and the black woman
knows that even if she does have the courage to rebel against the traditional
rock she wrote 6S
ways and choose an untraditional life for herself in the arts in jazz she — —
will find that certain realities seem to form the bottom line no matter where
she goes, she is still the low person on the totem pole, not only is she a
woman, she is black, not only is she black, she is a woman.
conclusion
what are the black women who are in jazz today doing to make sure they
are seen, heard, and appreciated? at this time we see many of them becom-
ing dynamic and vocal members of organizations —organizations they've
helped to form for the purpose of assisting young musicians with promo-
tion, publicity, education, and work, an example of this can be found in the
recent salute to women in jazz produced by the universal jazz coalition,
active during the week-long series of concerts, panels, etc., were sharon
freeman, french horn player and pianist, carline ray, bassist, and trombon-
ists melba liston and Janice robinson, among others.
many black women in other creative disciplines —painting and writing,

for example — have built collectives and support groups geared to their spe-
cific needs, an example of this is "where we at," a collective of black women
who are visual artists, we have not heard much about similar groups formed
by black jazzwomen, though some agree that the need indeed exists, per-
haps the fact that jazz has been a black male preserve for so many years
makes it difficult for black women to emerge as a distinct group changing
and shaping its creative possibilities, perhaps we will see in the near future
an organization of black jazzwomen that will speak up for the needs and
abilities of the black jazzwcman.
the answers to these and other questions are part of the buried treasure
that this new wave of music will wash onto the fertile shores of black
culture, women's culture, our culture.
Kim Gordon, "Boys Are Smelly: Sonic
Youth Tour Diary, '87,"
The Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, fall 1988.
As singer and bass and guitar player for Sonic Youth and Free
Kitten, Kim Gordon writes songs about female power and
trouble. The girl-fueled aesthetic she injected into 1980s
underground music inspired a generation of young women to
form bands. This tour diary documents a woman creating a
space amid the flagposts of late-eighties Amerindie rock:
crowded vans, psychotic fans, and the goddess of light.
B, efore picking up a bass I was just another girl with a fantasy. What
would it be like to be right under the pinnacle of energy, beneath two guys
crossing their guitars, two thunderfoxes in the throes of self-love and male
bonding? How sick, but what desire could be more ordinary? How many
grannies once wanted to rub their faces in Elvis's crotch, and how many
boys want to be whipped by Steve Albini's guitar?
In the middle of the stage, where I stand as the bass player of Sonic
Youth, the music comes at me from all directions. The most heightened state
of being female is watching people watch you. Manipulating that state,
without breaking the spell of performing, is what makes someone like Ma-
donna all the more brilliant. Simple pop structures sustain her image, al-
lowing her real self to remain a mystery — is she really that sexy? Loud
dissonance and blurred melody create their own ambiguity —are we really
rock she wrote 67
that violent? —a context that allows me to be anonymous. For my purposes,

being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible,
being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music
makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and
making it strong.
we're the archies!
People who can't even believe we have an audience are always curious
about who they are. Maybe half the crowd who shows up in New York are
real fans: noise buffs, death rockers, yuppies who have never heard a Sonic
Youth record but know who Lydia Lunch is, rock writers, fanzine moguls,
and sexual misfits, each and every one of them dressed in black. In L.A.
everyone ismore power-shag. In other cities audiences are younger, mostly

fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds from areas that have cable (MTV's 120 Min-
utes), get exposed to us, and, unlike college students, have nothing better to
do.New Yorkers familiar with Sonic Youth never consider us a teenybopper
band, but that just goes to show how provincial New Yorkers really are.
They should get out of the city more often and see the world.
A lot has changed, though, since Sonic Youth began in '81. Cofounder
and guitarist Thurston Moore named a show he was booking Noisefest.
That's where we met guitarist Lee Ranaldo and the band came together.
The festival's name was a joke, inspired by the owner of Hurrah, who had
said he was gonna close the club because all the bands just sounded like a
bunch of noise. Nobody even knew what wondered if

a noise band was. I
people would be disappointed in Europe, the easiest place for New York
bands to get gigs, because we didn't fit the image. Next to our friends the
Swans, who were very loud and had a percussionist who pounded metal, we
were total wimps.
every night, a different gig
Lyle Hysen, drummer Das Damen, a New York band with a Deep
for
Purple-like zest for guitar curdle and intricate song structures that frame a
tragicomic persona (if comedian Richard Lewis were a band, they'd be it),
told me about this vision he had that would change the face of indie rock.
Instead of the band going on the road, from city to city, the audience would
tour. For instance, they could do the Midwest. Head out to Minneapolis
68 kim gordon
and see the Replacements, Soul Asylum, and Run Westy Run. Get back on
the bus and drive to Madison for Killdozer, Die Kreuzen, and the Tar
Babies. Just think, every night a different gig.
You'd be better off than the typical small touring band. There'd be no
endless bickering about where-what-when to eat, all that draining decision-
making. The tour manager would take care of everything, so you could just
concentrate on watching the bands play. If the bus broke down, well,
maybe you'd miss a gig, but it's not your responsibility.
Personally, I like to know that a band has suffered by the time they get
onstage. Like the first time Redd Kross toured. Out of some thirty dates
they did six. They drove out of L.A. some crappy station wagon they
in
bought with a record company advance, and they had big suitcases filled
with their gear —high-heeled sneakers, spangled bell-bottoms, poly-coated
blouses —and everything got messy and wrinkled, but a half dozen times
all
they shimmied onstage and played their hearts out.
richmond, 9/14
I never feel like we're really on a tour till we hit Richmond. The wide
streets feel different, slow and empty, and then I know we've left NYC/New
Jersey/Philly/Baltimore/D.C. That turnpike shit is the ugliest anywhere.

"Mom, I Gave Some Acid" was the funny industrial rock song by
the Cat
Happy Flowers we covered tonight when we played with them. They cov-
ered Sonic Youth's "Catholic Block" and wailed all over us, 'cause they're
so fucking cute. There were a couple guys from Fishbone hanging out,
trying to be funnier than anyone else. One guy was trying to impress me,
telling me what neighborhood he comes from in L.A. He said that he could
be making a lot of money selling crack, but he preferred to play music. I
really felt like saying to him, "Yeah, so fucking what, I'm a girl and here's
my ghetto pal."
chapel hill, 9/15
The Cat's Cradle was packed and too hot to remember anything. The last
time we played in Chapel Hill, '82, it was the old Cat's Cradle, which was
filled with the kind of dreariness that comes from redneck bars.
That was our first tour, us and the Swans. Yeah, we thought we were hot
shit. (We had a record out and had played CBGB, the Mudd Club, and
rock she wrote 69
Danceteria.) It was raining and sad as hell, and the headlining Swans played
their set to six jeering cowboys. Chapel Hill is one of the hippest places on
earth to play, but in 1982 we were too underground or something. Mike
Gira, the leader of the Swans, introduced a song amid giggles and chants for
"Freebird" by saying, 'This next song is about getting butt-fucked by a
cop," or something to that effect. We stood around waiting to see if Harry
Crosby, then the English bass player for the Swans, who was as drunk as
anyone, would feel the need to defend their honor. But nothing happened, a
fitting end to a stupid evening.
All ten of us piled into the van, and the Swans fought among themselves.
Morale was very low, tempers short, and our expectations not as high as
Mike's, which is why they scream at one other. One night Mike and his
drummer started strangling each other and calling each other "dickhead"
and "asshole." Meanwhile everyone else is crammed around them trying to
mind his or her own business, being really cool.
atlanta, 9/16
On the drive from Athens to Atlanta there's this great Sno-Kone stand
run by a six-year-old who offers a million different flavors —poppy seed or
corn dog, for instance. We've totally given up on Athens, where we played
twice and nobody came. The first time was the night Gira jumped off the
stage and pushed someone who was pogoing. Mike thought the guy was a
poser who was making fun of him. In reality he was a nerd, and Mike had
never seen a nerd before.
We played at the Metropiex in Atlanta. As wholesome as Athens likes to
think it is, Atlanta is self-consciously decadent. For instance, when my bass

amp broke during the set, I felt pressured to go through the motions, pre-
tending that sound was still blasting out, dry-humping as it were. Someone
in the audience shouted, "Play some fucking noise, that's what it's all about,
isn't it? Stop complaining that the PA isn't loud enough." This is the kind of
expert who will later review the show, complaining that no one stuck a drill
up his butt.
Anyway, Atlanta used to have a super bad reputation as an evil punk

scene, lots of kids hanging out and slashing the tires of touring bands, a real
pit. Thurston from coming to the
tried to discourage his sister, Susan,
Metropiex. He must've thought we were gonna suck, or that he had to
protect her. Thurston is really hung up about having to protect women,

must be his upbringing. (Thurston and I even had a Catholic wedding.) He
70 kim gordon
told Susan she'd be raped and murdered if A handsome redhead,

she came.
thirty, the mother of four, she ignored him and appeared at the club with a
camera around her neck, gasping to their cousins, "God, I'm the only nerd
here!" Someone asked Susan for her autograph.
We stayed at her house and awoke to food flying around the room and
babies crawling all over us. I know many people think we indulge in twisted
sex and ingest massive amounts of drugs on tour, and of course we do. But
I'll always remember Susan, standing in the driveway with the kids and
waving good-bye.
texas, 9/17
On our way to Dallas, we just melt, sleep, and nag our drummer Steve
Shelley about driving too slow and Thurston for driving too much like he
plays guitar. Lee Ranaldo is holding his movie camera out the window
again, and Terry Pearson, our sound man, is ripping through another rock
'n' roll autobiography. He can read one in ten minutes. Suzanne Sasic is also
with us.
Suzanne is our T-shirt vendor and runs the lighting board. Tomboyish,
but with long red hair, she wears spurs and keeps her money in her boots.
Her penchant for wearing glitter and silver, combined with her almost
translucent skin, are other reasons we call her our goddess of light. Suzanne
and I sit in the last row of the van and complain about something or other
or just voice our opinions in general. No one ever listens to us. It's so far
back, what with the windows open and stereo blasting, that we have to
shout to be heard. "Turn that shit off." "Stop the car, I have to pee."
Thurston complains that we're always mumbling.
Suzanne has a diet that's a challenge to accommodate. She won't eat
anything green, except guacamole, and will only eat the middle of various
foods like pancakes and cheese omelettes. (She hates the egg part.) Spa-
ghetti, chocolate, and orange juice are staples. I'm writing this as a warning
for all the boys across the country who write to ask who the vixen with the
devastating eyes is.Does she care? No, she's a heartbreaker. Just send
obscure vinyl, After Eights, and forget the rest.
rock she wrote 71
buffalo, 5/9
There are these kids here —the Neurotic Family Production Company—
who have an inscribed cake ("sonic life") made for us every time we play
one of their shows. Last time we played there with Das Damen, and they're
going, "You guys suck, I can't believe they made you a cake."
The nicer the promoter, the better the food, the worse the gig is usually,
except New York gigs, which don't need any reason to suck. Our shows in
Europe tend to be less exciting for this reason.
Switzerland, 6/9
Misjudging the drive from Paris, we're about six hours late for a live
radio broadcast at one of those state-of-the-art radio stations. I like to think
it was Carlos's fault, our booking agent/tour manager in Europe. Carlos is a

tall, gangly, soft-spoken friend of ours who came into the job of booking
bands through social work. (Holland gives government subsidies to its rock
clubs.) When we're together our stereotypes of one another become more
pronounced; he is the self-righteous, hardworking Dutch manager, and
we're the spoiled, self-centered, American rock assholes. In Europe, we're
almost always late. In America we're pretty self-sufficient.
The most fun thing about having Carlos around is listening to the way he
tries to shame us. "I don't want to, I don't want to," he'll say, rolling his
head from side to side. He has met or heard about every wasted performer
on the European circuit, and he still thinks we're bad when we want to stop
for bangles and candy. We find it essential to stop everywhere to exercise
our right as Americans to spend freely. To tour is to shop. This drives Carlos
crazy.
Anyway, we get to the radio station in Geneva very late, but they still
want us to play, which is unfortunate. Carlos is disappointed in our atti-
tude. We started complaining about having to do the show when we found
out we weren't getting paid. And it's the same old story about how we'll end
up with a high quality live recording, but we already know it's gonna be
lame because it's a dead room and we'll be playing in front of five Swiss
people bobbing their heads and smiling politely.
So of course they have a great spread of pate, cheeses, and smoked ham.
We feel like slobs surrounded by this plush equipment and stark beige
environment, quiet as a bomb shelter. From the first note it's a disaster.
Thurston starts whispering obscenities over the intro to "Cotton Crown."
72 kim gordon
We feel like jerks, so pretty soon Thurston is swearing new lyrics to all the
songs, and no one stops us. (Some of this session did end up on the B-side of
Master=Dik.)
Switzerland was the only place I ever had my ass bitten by someone in the
audience. I'd turn my back, and the guy would jump up and bite me, and I'd
have to fight him off. When he kept doing it Thurston kicked a glass in his
face. It really destroyed the mood.
boston, 10/18
There was a point when I started getting sickened by the violence onstage.
Thurston's fingers would swell up all purple and thick from banging his
guitar. Usually I never know what's happening onstage, I would just see
guitarlike objects whizzing through the air out of the corner of my eye. A
couple of times Thurston pushed Lee into the audience, as the only way to
end a song, but that was harmless fun.
At our first gig in Boston about four years ago, Conflict editor Gerard
Cosloy, Forced Exposure's Jimmy Johnson, and this drunken fan-boy were
just about the only ones there. During the first song the fan-boy picked up
this broken drumstick that had flown onto the floor and threw it back. It
speared into my forehead. At first I thought it had bounced off Thurston's
guitar. Shocked, I didn't know whether to cry or keep playing, but then I
just felt incredibly angry. It took a long time to resolve that incident, 'cause
it really made me feel sick, violated, like walking to the dressing room after
a set, having some guy say, "Nice show," then getting my ass pinched as I
walk away.
I blamed it on the music for a while, because it did draw fans who really
want to see you hurt yourself. It's not that I don't share similar expecta-
tions; there's beauty in things falling apart, in the dangerous (sexual) power
of electricity, which makes our music possible. But what was once a hazy
fantasy has since clarified itself. I don't want my blood to be entertainment.
When we most recently played the Channel in Boston, some kid threw a
handful of firecrackers in my face. I threw down my bass and left the stage,
and so did the rest of the band. We figured out what happened and went
back on to finish the set, while the bouncers were throwing the kid out. I
was actually beginning to feel sorry for him, probably a misplaced Aeros-
mith fan.
rock she wrote 73
naugatuck, Connecticut, 10/24
There's nothing like Naugatuck on a Saturday night. It was just about the
last gig tour. The club is next to a Chinese restaurant in a shopping
on the
plaza. River's Edge could have been filmed here. I've never seen so many
metalheads cruising the roads. They make perfect sense, though, when you
look at the barren trees, the discount store, all this desolation and quietness
— you want to crank up something really loud and ugly. I couldn't help
wondering what the girls did while the boys were off playing with Satan.
Maybe they also crave electricity, swirling around their heads, through their
legs.
I know what they feel like. When Iggy Pop came onstage in Naugatuck
(or was it London?) to sing "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Lee and Thurston
were ready to rock. was amazed that he was so professional. He expressed
I
the freakiness of being a woman and an entertainer. I felt like such a cream
puff next him. I didn't know what to do, so I just sort of watched.
secret message
This guy writes me letters. He tells me up front he's been hospitalized for
mental disturbances several times and asks that I stop sending messages to
him through our music. Guys like this take over your whole life if you give
them even a smidgen of attention. So if you read this baby, stop sending
those letters.
Donna Dresch, "Chaingaw/'
Jigsaw, winter 1989.
By the 1990s women

players were no longer such a rare sight,
especially inunderground and alternative rock bands. As bassist
for Dinosaur Jr., Fifth Column, Screaming Trees, and Team
Dresch, and as founder of her own 'zine and record label,
Donna Dresch is a leader of a new wave of consciousness among
female and queer musicians. In this essay for the 'zine Jigsaw,
written in the raw typo-filled style of a Xeroxed hand-out, she
muses on how and why she started playing bass, and what it
means to see/be a girl in a band.
maybe
7W aybe
not, because a
I think about this
LOT of people ask
more than
me why
a normal person does. But
there are so many girls
who play bass in bands. See, I was sitting on a curb in Arizona, talking to
Ed, when he asked me this. I thought about it a bit and said, "ED, there is a
million reasons." But, first, I had to look at myself and figure out why I was
doing such a thing. I HAD
remember an awful point in my life, in high
to
school (blechh=$%), when I hung around this up and coming hardcore
band, sitting with them at lunch, following them to practice all the time
thinking, as I watched the bass player, that / could do the same thing. The
reason I watched him so was that he TALKED and talked about how good
he was ... a BIG deal. And I kept THINKING could do But, would
I it. I
get so mad that this boy would tell me that I couldn't. Oh, well, gotta get
rock she wrote 73
going with my life. After a while I was teaching myself AC/DC songs on a
beat-up acoustic guitar. But it's MORE than wanting to play better than
some boy in my high school. I liked the bass. Bass is a heavy thing, mama.
In another curb sitting, Delilah tells me, "YOU know? I'm going to teach
myself to play bass because bass is really powerful, I'm the kind of person
who likes a lot of power." Is that it? POWER?
Iwas trying to tell Ed that I think that most girls aren't given an instru-
ment for Christmas and don't usually have parents who say, "Here, honey,
we bought you this drum set you've been wanting, now go play in that loud
rock band." So, it takes a while for it to become a real idea for girls to think,
No, I CAN be in a rock band. Maybe by that time all the boys know how to
play music already.
Bass is the kind of instrument that you can make an accomplishment on
not long after you have worked at it and it goes onward and upward from
there. Maybe it has to do with patience. ... Or impatience. Frustration.
Bass players are, a lot of times, looked at as a backbeat, a submissive
quiet person holding a song together without much notice. Kind of like how
girls are SUPPOSED to be. But what does that make boy bass players?
Sissies? Nah, I'm kidding. I don't know. I hate that last idea. I want to be
the exact opposite of that. I play bass because it's heavy, funky, percus-
sion-y, I can jump around a lot. It's in my soul. But looking at it another
way, bass IS the exact opposite of what girls are supposed to be. Heavy,
loud, powerful ... I guess it depends on how it's played soulful or . . .
soulless.
I could go on forever. Maybe I should continue this next issue . . . yeah,

stay tuned for part II and don't forget to read CHAINSAW magazine. I
don't have an address yet but CHAINSAW is my magazine. It's different
from JIGSAW. We're pals. I don't know why we ended up with similar
names. It's my fault.
Stay free.
DONNA DRESCH,
CHAINSAW magazine
Margot Mifflin, "The Fallacy of
Feminism in Rook/'
Keyboard, April 1990.
Technical magazines, like instrument stores, tend to be

strongholds of chauvinism, where men still question whether
women can play. Females are more often featured as ornaments
draping equipment in ads than as players interviewed in
articles-or as women writing those articles. Margot Mifflin, a
keyboardist and free-lance writer, broke that barrier when the
following "guest editorial" appeared in Keyboard. Afterward, the
magazine received several letters from readers accusing her of
having penis envy.
W hen
female band in
in rock, the
I
New
sexism
was playing synthesizer in Barefoot
York that attempted
& Pregnant, a mostly
to defy the stereotypes of
we encountered came from well-meaning fools whose
women
compliments were always qualified with "for a girl." Our drummer was
—
always "a good drummer for a girl." She was more inventive than any of
the male drummers who traveled our club circuit, which made us wonder
how much she would have to practice before she would be deemed a good
drummer, period.
Having since been hired to play with John Moore, a hard rocker on
Polydor, I've discovered that such morsels of bigotry are almost cute com-
pared to what goes on at major labels. When the band was setting up for a
rock she wrote 77
showcase arranged for label executives who were visiting from London, I
noticed someone pointing to a monitor directly in front of me and telling a

technician to move it "so the pigs can see her legs." A week later, when the
response to theshow came in from the London office, I was told the bigwigs
loved the new lineup, with one exception: Why did Moore want a woman
in the group? What could he possibly be thinking? The implication was that
this was cock rock —

no girls allowed. When Moore asked them if it was the
keyboard lines they objected to, they told him my playing was fine; my
gender, however, was not.
My major label initiation has confirmed a suspicion I've harbored for
some time now: Despite occasional magazine articles celebrating the chang-
ing roles of women in rock and pop, the progress of feminism in this
industry was negligible in the eighties. In fact, we enjoyed more musical
freedom and diversity in the seventies than we do now. The "new" image of
women in rock —tough, serious, potentially threatening —applies to looks,
not art. It's okay to be a nappy-headed Tracy Chapman or a hairy-legged
Michelle Shocked, as long as you're a gentle folkie singing about moral
integrity in a reassuringly feminine voice. No raspy Janis Joplinisms or Patti
Smith surrealism allowed, and God forbid that Chapman's tell-it-like-it-is
lyrics might actually make reference to her sexual orientation.

My point is not to denigrate Chapman and Shocked. Their music is
responsible enough, but it represents the limit of what's acceptable for a

woman in pop music. That limit excludes female rockers who prefer feed-
back, Jack Daniel's, and, in some cases, women, to folk-picking, Sleepytime
Tea, and heterosexuality.
We were doing pretty well ten years ago, with the Slits stretching mock-
Asian harmonies across tribal rhythms, Exene Cervenka of X singing glori-
ously off-key over amped-up punk progressions, and the Bush Tetras, who
never made it to a major label but gained permanent notoriety in the under-
ground by laying smart lyrics over funk grooves peppered with raw guitar
noise. The legacy of Patti Smith still inspires an entire generation of ruffian
female rockers, and punk divas Siouxsie Sioux and Chrissie Hynde have
miraculously survived the '80s.
But in MTV stalled the feminist momentum we had gathered up to
1981,
that point. The avowed irony of Madonna's Boy Toy belt just didn't jibe
with her lingerie fetish and on-screen autoeroticism, and "Papa Don't
Preach," in which she condoned teen motherhood, was hardly progressive.
For six years a flurry of airbrushed babes shimmied, bounced, and giggled
across the TV screen —Annie Lennox being perhaps the only beauty with a
7S margot mifflin
brain — until 1987, when Suzanne Vega was signed to A&M and the chain
was broken.
Since then, hordes of female folkies have been championed, Phranc
("Take off your swastika, I'm a Jewish lesbian") among the most
swashbucklingly funny and Edie Brickell among the more sickeningly pre-
cious. But what about hard-rocking women? Where's our mainstream role
model? A handful have broken through on major labels: Throwing Muses,
Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, and Sinead O'Connor, while a legion of lesser-
known females from Ut to Scrawl to Salem 66 art bucking for the chance to
make blistering music for mainstream audiences, without much hope for
success. In 1988, artist/videographer Robert Longo attempted a well-placed
act of subversion by creating an MTV "Artbreak" that showed a woman
banging her fists on a table while watching girls "jiggle" on TV. "Women
can rock, rock, rock," she barked at the screen. But Longo's minidrama
might as well have been tagged with a caption that read, "But not on
MTV."
I remember having heated, gender-specific discussions with my Barefoot
& Pregnant bandmates — first, during our all-female days, about how much
was too much sex appeal, later, on the question of whether to integrate the
band by replacing our outgoing bass player with a man who was perfect for
the part (to pass him up, we decided, would be reverse sexism), and often
about love songs, the very thought of which conjured images of so many
Top 40 bimbos that we couldn't bring ourselves to write them. We theorized
about how to compose lyrics that implied a feminist consciousness without
sounding preachy, which proved to be impossible, so we kept the politics
out of our music and simply tried to avoid lyric cliches. Those discussions
usually ended with someone saying, "We talk too much, let's play," but the
path to our ideals was littered with so many gender-coded booby traps that
"just playing" wasn't always easy.
Patti Smith liked to call herself an "artist beyond gender," a luxury she
could afford because she performed at a time when gender expectations
were on the wane. Today, those expectations are stronger than ever; only
the packaging has changed. Face it, any intelligent woman looks radical
compared to the assembly-line Taylor Daynes and nearly brain-dead Stacy
Q's that record companies march onto vinyl every month. Close your eyes
and listen to the "new" women in rock; you'll find that for all their alterna-
tive accolades, they sound frighteningly homogenous: humble, sentimental,

and harmonically uninventive. They're living proof that our current di-
lemma has less to do with being asked to show a little leg than with being
forbidden to show our fangs.
rock she wrote 79
So ifyou have any delusions about becoming the Grace Slick of the
nineties —or even —
better, gaining fame as an instrumentalist put them to
rest. No one in the industry is interested. Throw out those unwholesome
Bad Brains records and perfect your waiflike, wounded folkie image. Before
you know it, you'll be the subject of an article about the changing roles of
women in rock.
Gretchen Phillips, "I 7Woshed at
A/Vidh," The Village Voice, September 6, 1994.
For four decades, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has

functioned as the cultural heart of American radical lesbianism:
thousands of women gather every summer to celebrate their
own music, politics, and pleasures on the grassy land, which
becomes an all-female space for a brief and glorious time. But
the "Fest" is also always a site of controversy, where this
community's deepest conflicts come to the fore. Pioneering punk
dyke musician Gretchen Phillips, of 2 Nice Girls, Meat Joy, Girls
in the Nose, and The Gretchen Phillips Experience, offers an
intimate view of the festival and reveals what she's learned
from and about the women's music scene over many years of
involvement.
JL first went to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 1982, when I

was 19. The concept intrigued me: womyn's music (whatever that meant),
upward of 6,000 naked wimmin, and a chance to get out of Texas in August
and go camp in exotic Michigan. I drove up with two high school buddies
and a former girlfriend. We paid our sliding scale at the gate and set up
camp. I'd never been that far north before; the ferns looked enormous,
practically prehistoric, like a dinosaur was about to come stomping onto
the scene at any moment. We found a place to camp before nightfall, amidst
the thousands of other ladies of the land, drank our gallon of Gallo, and
passed out.
rock she wrote 81
The next morning, Friday, I awoke and was seriously freaked out. My
former lover had hooked up with a new lover right before my eyes, and the
woods were full of unknown lesbians doing unknown things. Lonely and
overwhelmed, I walked down the path that led to the enormous main
kitchen that feeds 6,000 wimmin, and decided to do the only sensible thing I
knew — eat acid.

much better after that. It all made sense. Mich (as I like to call
Things got
it)was a freaky place and required a freaky state of mind. This teenage
Texan needed acid to be able to take in the sight of that much floral beauty,
and that much naked female flesh. I had never seen so many breasts before,
so many bare asses, so damn much skin on such a vast terrain. I decided to
make that weekend all about studying my body issues.
I don't remember who played that year, but I do remember my first
thought as my still tripping self walked into the giant bowl that seats the
audience for the night stage. The bowl was filled with wimmin wearing
outrageous costumes, and regular old Midwestern dyke wear; some were
naked. Everyone was talking and laughing, very excited to be together. I
immediately thought, "If every woman here had a simultaneous orgasm, the
power of it would shift the earth on its axis." I firmly believe that to this
day.
I've been to Mich nine times: twice as a paying "festie," four times as a
worker in the worker's kitchen, twice as a paid performer, and most re-
cently as both worker and performer. I've looked at Mich from all sides
now, and I suggest that it's best to go as a paying festie the first time. Check
it out, eat your acid, get accustomed to what it's all about, see every perfor-
mance, and go to workshops all the livelong day. Festies are required to put
in one four-hour work shift, and I've always found that to be the best way
to meet girls. You get into a conversation with the girl chopping carrots
beside you, and before you know it you have a place to stay if you're ever
passing through Chicago. Or Sydney.
I went back in '83 to work. Upon arriving on the land (as the festival site
is called) I met one of my first goals, which was to bed down this hot self-
described Puerto Rican Jew with dreads, whom I'd seen the year before
traipsing across the land wearing nothing but a pair of workboots and a
tool belt. We had strawberry Haagen-Dazs and Stroh's Light floats, bit each
other for foreplay, and ended up fucking on the night stage. was dreamy. It
Within two days I was going out of my mind. I was new on the land and
needed my space, and she was getting mean. So I pulled out my mushrooms
and ate them. That helped considerably, and I was once again able to find
my equilibrium on the land. A self-identified s/m dyke came up and talked

82 gretchen phillips
to me for hours while I was tripping. I had never met an s/m dyke before, so
I asked her a lot of questions. She answered them all. Later, she introduced
me to some of her s/m friends; they were all the girls I'd been wanting to
meet, because they looked so punk and cool. We had the love of girl punk
bands —X-Ray Spex and the Avengers and Au Pairs and Patti — in common.
That's how I came to hang out with s/m dykes.
I've always used Mich as a place to charge my batteries for the rest of the
year, planning my life around being there in August and learning my les-
sons, both fun and hard. Mich also helped me plot my musical game plan.
I'd say to myself, "When my band plays at Mich, we'll include more of this
and less of that." I knew there needed to be rocking electric guitars in

Lezzieville. There needed to be explicit sexuality. There needed to be big,
communal fake orgasms in order to push us closer to that real communal
orgasm in the bowl of the night stage. The one that will change the world.
Every year, there is an "issue" on the land. Issues have included: pornog-
raphy, contagious disease, transgenders, buying the land, racism, hierarchy,
and boy children. The notion of sex positivity is always, not surprisingly,
hotly debated. All of these particulars add up to an ongoing discussion of
what "safe space" means.
This year, two issues dominated: transgender and Tribe 8. As a punk
musician who doesn't know any transgenders, the latter was my issue of
choice. Tribe 8 are the first punk band to play Mich since the Contractions,
another Bay Area group, divided the audience in 1981. They're not the first
to include s/m in their stage performance, though. Years ago, Carol Mac-
Donald (of ISIS fame) had two tops in full regalia stand guard on either side
of the stage while she performed "Under My Thumb." That caused quite a
ruckus. But Tribe 8's performer bio in the festival program threw down a
gauntlet: "We are SF's own all-dyke, all-out, in-your-face, blade-bran-
dishing, gang-castrating, dildo-swingin', bullshit-detecting, aurally porno-
graphic, Neanderthal-pervert band of patriarchy-smashing snatchlickers
... on a musical mission to annihilate repression of any kind, including
the kind that comes from their own kind."
I could relate to that sentiment in a big way. In '91, 2 Nice Girls per-
formed my song "Manlove" on the night stage. The song was my answer to
the dyke who had told me to stop talking about how much loved my little I
brother and the guys in my band, Meat Joy. felt the land was vast enoughI
to accommodate one song about a dyke who loves the men in her life. But,
as I expected, some wimmin got upset. There were threatened boycotts of
rock she wrote 83
our future shows. I confirmed my suspicions about how easily the notion of
"safe space" can be disrupted.
Tribe 8 was one of the first bands to perform at Mich this year. Us punks
were dying to hear from them in this beautiful, outdoor all-lady context. Yet
trouble was a-brewing. Wimmin protested the show at the entrance to the
bowl, holding banners that read Tribe 8 promotes violence against women
and children, and form of sexual abuse you may
If you are a survivor of any
not want to attend the Tribe 8 performance at 8:00 p.m. as it contains
explicit sexual violence. Support given at Oasis. Here at Mich all things are
provided —something provocative and something to help you cope with it.
A constantly shifting crowd of wimmin stood in front of the protesters,
attempting to "dialogue," agreeing with their sentiments, and smirking.

The protesters asserted that they weren't trying to censor the band. They
merely wanted to warn unsuspecting wimmin that if they had sexual vio-
lence in their past, Tribe 8's onstage antics —castrating a dildo, domination
at the hands of a femme bitch top, and the crack of a solitary whip could —
be severely traumatic. Memories of incest might be triggered. My question
is, what's wrong with remembering? How do you expect to heal?
Right before the show, a member of Tribe 8 went up to one of the

protesters and said, "Hi. I'm in the band and I'm also an incest survivor."
She extended her hand. The protester scowled at her. "Okay, so you don't
want to shake my hand," the woman said, and walked off. Later, the band
member said, "I've never had someone be so rude at such a vulnerable
point. I think that's really cold, cold." As members of dyke bands, we
discussed the terror and discomfort of playing to all-straight crowds and all-
dyke crowds. You expect the former to be assholes and to feel they already
know all there is to know about you; but you fear the latter will do the
same.
"We're not here to alienate," said Tribe 8 guitarist Lynn Flipper. "We
usually try to alienate the guys in the crowd, and here, there's no guys.
We're like 'AGHH! What do we do? What do we do?' " Flipper and I
decided that most of Tribe 8's tactics are satirical, and that the protesters
here were humorless. was the old dykes-have-no-sense-of-humor debate
It
again. The next day, at a workshop organized by the band and called "So
You've Got a Problem with Tribe 8," Lynn Breedlove made the excellent
point that although wimmin have a hard time being taken seriously in the
world, you've got to be able to laugh at yourself.

Throughout the weekend, s/m dykes made themselves available to any-
onewho had questions regarding their presence on the land. Although
many wimmin took advantage of this offer, the main protesters did not. S/m
dykes were willing to hear what others had to say. But the protesters seemed
content to merely gain reassurance from a closed circle of friends.
The audienceat Mich shows is divided into Chem Okay No Smoking,

Chem Okay Smoking, Chem-Free No Smoking, Chem-Free Smoking, Deaf,
and DART (Disabled Area Resource Team). For Tribe 8's performance,
punks got unprecedented permission to have a mosh pit at the front of the
stage. Ask and ye shall receive! I was a little concerned about my 31 -year-
old body and the fact that I was performing the next day, so I requested that
Lynn Breedlove announce that there would be a Vegan Over 30 Drinking
Okay No Smoking mosh pit. But I needn't have worried for my safety. The
mosh pit was safe space and a hot babe zone. Girls in leather, girls with
pierced bodies and good haircuts. We were ready for something new on the
land. Breedlove came out and made lots of announcements about where to
go on the land for emotional support if you're a survivor. It was touching
and sincere. She then said passionately, "We fuckin' need each other, man."
We all yelled in agreement, and Tribe 8 proceeded to rock our world hard
and good.
I stood to the side for the first part of the show, looking at the pit and
feeling kind of old. Then
saw two middle-aged Midwestern dykes excit-
I
edly jump in. That did it. I was slammin' again, like I did as a teen. And it
was fantastic. Lots of topless babes throbbed and collided, grinding and
falling into each other. All the random horniness that the festival creates
found its perfect outlet in the mosh pit. Skin to skin, sweating and cheering,
I kept going into the very center where was really hot and the music was
it
muffled. The fantastic Breedlove egged us on and gave us energy.

Moshing is perfect for lesbians. We're an athletic, adventurous, lusty lot,
and this gives us an excuse to rub all over each other. Girls were stage
diving,and it looked real enticing. Tribe 8 went into a song about "loving a
girlwhose daddy loved her in a bad way." I took that as my cue to slam on
up to the front, where the long runway met the crowd, and wait in line to
stage dive. (Although we were moshing, we were very polite.) I'll never
forget that blessed moment of standing there, looking down on the up-
turned faces of all those beautiful dykes saying, "It's Gretchen," saying my
name, calling me
to jump into their arms. It was one of the most intense
moments of abandon I'd ever experienced. I jumped and the crowd moved
me into a sitting position, as if I were sitting on a throne. In those precious
seconds as I surveyed the land from this vantage point, I felt like the Queen
of the Universe. And knew
I that my bands had helped pave the way for this
rock she wrote 83
glorious mosh pit and this great punk band and this blissful feeling. I never
wanted to live any other way than being supported, literally, by these dykes.
Soon after me, an older woman named Mauve stage dived. Mauve was a
regular worker for many years, but had stopped coming after '88. Everyone
screamed, "It's Mauve, it's Mauve," and they held her so gently and kept
her up for a really long time. I suddenly started sobbing really hard, seeing
the loving way this hippie woman in her fifties was being floated from
person to person. Lots of girls cried at this sight. Generational differences
vanished in a transcendental act of pure trust. Before the show was over,
Alix Dobkin, the birth mother of womyn's music, stage dived. The crowd
went wild.
Watching this, I remembered that back in the early eighties, Kate Clinton
hosted an afternoon of New Games on the day stage. One of these games
consisted of wimmin standing in a line and passing each other overhead: a
slightly slower version of stage diving, without the music. I learned the
principles of stage diving on the land and have always thought that lesbians
originated it.
Despite the protests, Tribe 8 triumphed. I have never felt so high and so
good and so pumped and, dare I say it, empowered after a show. My friend
Alexis was so inspired that she designed commemorative T-shirts on the
spot: "I saw you moshing naked at Michigan," "I moshed at Mich," and
my personal favorite, "My moms moshed at Mich and all I got was this
goddess-awful T-shirt." I decided that next year I would lead a moshing
workshop for the curious yet uninitiated. Wimmin had already shown their
ignorance by referring to it as "the mush pit" and "the nosh pit." Or maybe
they were just redefining language again.
The day after the Tribe 8 show, my band
Nose played the day
Girls in the
stage. We wore Catholic schoolgirl uniforms and had two go-go dancers
with costume changes and strap-on dildos. The girls from the kitchen crew
carried out my fantasy by wearing only aprons with bare asses. There was a
large mass of girls to my left. I think they were slamming, I don't know, it's
all a blur. Alix Dobkin joined us onstage, as she'd joined Tribe 8, and gave
her blessing to the new breed of rockin' lezzies.
There are always lots of disagreements at Mich. But the notion of defin-
ing and practicing respect is an integral part of the ongoing process. It's not
Utopia, nothing is. But it's practice for Utopia. Mich is a surreal place that's
impossible to understand unless you're in it, and even then sometimes you
can't understand it, you just experience it. I've seen a real UFO there.
Everyone saw it. I've had great sex there, really let loose. I've made lifelong
friends. I've heard fantastic music, and learned all sorts of things. Whatever
its faults,Mich is surely one of the most powerful places on the planet for
lesbians. Next year will be the festival's twentieth anniversary. I hope to see
you moshing naked there.
ON the SCENE
Lisa Robinson, "The New Velvet
Underground/'
Creem, November 197S.
The ability to transcend the minutiae of musical moments and

observe trends and developments—to see the forest for the trees-
is the mark of a true journalist. As rock's most enduring female
chronicler, first as social watchdog of the rock 'n' roll life-style

through her "Eleganza" column in Creem in the seventies, and
now as pop music columnist for the New york Post, Lisa
Robinson has been at the forefront of musical history. The
following article is an early report on the birth in New York of
what became punk rock. Twenty years after it was published,
R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe told Robinson that when he read it as a
teenager in Georgia, it changed his life.
ven though I'm fortunate enough to have a larger-than-the-usual-

size color TV, and I appreciate it for the great drug that it is, there is part of
me that will always cherish old black-and-white movies (and I'll watch
them anytime, forget this late at night business) on television. I don't think
it has a thing to do with nostalgia. (Remember nostalgia?) I prefer the look.
The same is true of photographs. I always think the ones in black and white
tend to better document, illustrate . . . and on their own are more inter-
esting works of art. In 1969 when Richard Robinson thought seriously

about forming a band called Man Ray, in which everyone would wear all
90 lisa robinson
black and white and the stage would be adorned with bright white neon
light, I thought it a bit stark. I realize now how right he was.
Those of us who live in New York City and who have attempted to
spread the media word about a newly emerging "New York band scene"
realize that so far, the scene is still "underground" (remember "under-
ground"?) and minimal. The most dedicated to spreading the word include
writers Alan Betrock, Danny Fields, James Wolcott, and others; but most of
the credit for the existence of this scene must go to CBGB proprietor Hilly,
who is the only one to give these bands access to a stage as they perform
regularly at his Bowery-front club. Recent Village Voice articles on CBGB
have brought more people down there; I wouldn't be at all surprised if a
New York magazine piece is next, and soon there will conceivably be hordes
of the amyl-nitrate popping, slumming, uptown faggot set descending on
the small bar at Bleecker and the Bowery. They won't stay long, though,
because it's only the seriously committed who understand that while cur-
rently minimal, this scene could mark an important change in rock 'n' roll
music as we know it today.

Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones, and perhaps the Talking Heads are
evolving a totally new look, as well as a sound. There's a decidedly chiaras-
curo (dictionary definition: arrangement of light and dark parts to create a
pictorial vision) feel to these bands; a spare, stark, no-nonsense visual. So
antifashion that it has become, for those of us looking closely, a fashion
itself. It's more than that they look like the rock stars of old, although the
short hair of Talking Heads' lead singer David Byrne, or the almost Beatle
mop of Johnny Ramone, to say nothing of the skeletal look of Television's
crazed Tom Verlaine, do bring back memories of early Stones, Kinks, the
Who. But more than an attempt to look conservative as an emotional back-
lash to a mob of flashy posers, there's an avant garde nostalgia at work here
as well as a desire to strip away all excess popstar trappings. When the
Ramones play, they concentrate on their energy rush, they play so fast they
barely give their audience a chance to applaud between numbers. And what
could be more sensible than performing a twenty-minute set? It couldn't
make more sense to me; the Ramones leave you with that rare desire to hear
more, as well as a much needed chance to catch your breath. Talking Heads
may be a bit too intellectual and/or still too early in their development for
my tastes, but I like the way they look. Girl bass player (I don't care, she is a
girl) Martina Weymouth reminds me
Maureen Tucker, and boy lead
of
singer David Byrne is like Jonathan Richman without the warmth. I hon-
estly can say that there aren't many people I could watch onstage as much
rock she wrote 91
as could Patti Smith, Joey Ramone, and Tom Verlaine. They all three have,
I
to borrow from Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas stacks of style. —

One comes away from these bands realizing more than ever that so many
—
musicians whose names I'd rather not mention just look silly and old- —
fashioned these days. (Slade is one of the ones I'd rather not mention.) Even
Jagger, with his multitude of specially designed Giorgio di Sant'Angelo
ensembles this past tour, revealed that it wasn't the way he'd wanted to
look.And the funkier, get-down bands like the Eagles, the Allmans, the
Outlaws ... all those bands who never stopped wearing T-shirts and
jeans don't really count here, because they never had anything to do with
fashion.
But Television, the Ramones, Patti Smith —they do. They all share a very
black-and-white look. Tom Verlaine in particular is so detached, and this
combined with their crazed, charismatic energy, is dramatically effective.
Not only do they sound interesting, they look interesting. Without props,
smoke, fire, sets, costumes, makeup, hairstyles, or special shoes. What does
not look interesting is someone like Johnny Thunders who, with his new
band the Heartbreakers (including former Television bassist Richard Hell),

walked through CBGB one night right in the middle of Talking Heads' set
(rude, rude) with lots of blond groupies (remember groupies?) in tow. You
know the type, girls who still buy clothes at Granny Takes a Trip and wear
platform boots in the summer, yet. Thunders, as I recently heard on the
CBGB grapevine, refused to walk through the main door of the club during
his appearance there, but insisted instead on being escorted through a spe-
cial side door. Teh, tch, who does he think he is, one of the New York Dolls?
In addition to some awful lyrics (the Heartbreakers' ". . . ready/ready/to
go steady with you" sent me fleeing CBGB in terror), they look all wrong.
Johnny still jumps around the stage like he's Ron Wood, still with that
English roadie shag haircut and turquoise open shirted Chinese top (I wish I
had never made such a strong statement on Chinese clothes, day by day I'm
changing my mind) and let's face it, he's too short for this band. If he still
has to play pretend-popstar, why did he bother to leave the Dolls, to say
nothing of how much better Richard Hell looked with his white shirts and
black jackets (very Don't Look Back) standing next to Tom Verlaine. Musi-
cally they may not have gotten along, but at least they were the same height.
And while one hopes that David Johansen's recent hard work will pay off
for him,no one is smiling that he sat through a set at CBGB heckling the
band from a front table. Even Margo Channing endured Eve Harrington
with dignity; of course the analogy doesn't really apply, for these new bands
are totally unique. Whether they owe a nod of the head to John Cale or the
92 lisa robinson
Stooges or Lou Reed (who in his usual gracious manner shrieked, "I AM
THE NEW VELVET UNDERGROUND!!" when D. Fields told him to go
see Television because they were) or Patti Smith or Dylan ... I don't care.
They are making music as interesting now as anyone did then and they are a
visual relief. The garbage is being replaced by yet another "avant-garde"
urban scene that is visually sensible, so right for these deadly seventies. It's
nonintellectual art being created in much the same way as when the Who
first smashed their guitars or when John Cale tore apart a mannequin nurse.
It's unpredictable and looks like 8mm home movies so far. I don't miss the
Technicolor at all.
Caroline Coon, "The Sex Pistols,"
AAelody /Waker, November 1976.
Punk rock quickly emerged across the Atlantic, too, and again,
women were among the first to document it. As a longtime
activist and music critic, Caroline Coon immediately understood
the importance of the new bands. In this article that originally
appeared in Melody Maker and was included in her 1977 book
1988: The Punk Rock Explosion, she interviews a pre-Sid Vicious
Sex Pistols.
J haven't seen a hippy in two weeks. That's something! They were so

complacent. They — the drug culture—flop around them. They
let it all
were all dosed out of their heads the whole time. "Yeah, man, peace
and love. Don't let anything affect you. Let it walk all over you but
don't stop it." WE say bollocks! If it offends you, stop it. You've got to
or else you just become apathetic and complacent yourself. You end up
with a mortgage watching TV with 2.4 kids out in suburbia —and
that's just disgusting. All those hippies are becoming like that. All
that's different from them an' those they were reacting against is that
they've got LONG hair and bowler hats!

Everyone so fed up with the old way. We are constantly being
is
dictated to by musical old farts out of university who've got rich par-
ents. They look down on us and treat us like fools and expect us to pay
POUNDS to see them while we entertain them and not the other way
94 Caroline coon
around. And people allowed it to happen! But now they're not. Now
there's a hell of a lot of new bands come up with exactly the opposite
attitude. It's not condescension anymore. It's plain honesty. If you
don't like it, that's fine. You're not forced to like it through propa-
ganda. People think we use propaganda. But we don't. We're not try-
ing to be commercial. We're doing exactly what we want to do what —
we've always done.
Johnny Rotten
A cult band with mass audience! They sing antilove

a potentially
songs, cynical songs about suburbia, songs about hate and aggression, and
it sounds natural because it's their life. Their fans like it because they recog-
nize it as their lives too.
Only a few years ago we were all happily thinking we belonged to one big
fraternity, the Family of Rock 'n' Roll. We went, en masse, to open-air rock
concerts, love-ins, and we smiled at each other. The wars and the pollution
of technological society raged on and we presented the authorities with
flowers. It was the logical protest in an environment which felt as if just one
more spark of aggression might blast us all into smithereens. No matter
how angry we felt, we remained peaceful. Dropping out of the system was
our ideological protest against the horrors which surrounded us.
Gradually it dawned on us that although the Vietnam war was grinding

to a standstill, nothing would change. Richard Neville, the editor of OZ,
was prosecuted for publishing an "obscene" magazine the school kids' —
issue, where Rupert Bear crashed through daisies with a rampant phallus
and schoolmasters were realistically cartooned beating their pupils. He was

sent to prison. We couldn't find an acre of land for a free music festival.
Stopping a free festival cost the Kent County Council £200,000 in police
barricades and enforcements. Country and town communes were raided,

the drug laws used to harass the hippy life-style. The psychedelic musicians
became millionaires and disappeared to tax havens taking with them the
— —
money our money which might have kept the movement struggling. So
slowly, silently, all the psychedelic posters, beads, and flowing clothes dis-
appeared. We tried, but we didn't change the system.

In the late sixties and early seventies society had a last fling. In the City
the Slater Walkers of the world drained money out of industry leaving
nothing for essential capital reinvestment. They made money running the
economy down. Prime Minister Edward Heath was at last moved to speak
out against "the unacceptable face of capitalism." But to prop up the system
—
rock she wrote 9S
savage cuts were made

Government spending. Slums were pulled down,
in
established urban communities broken up and the lucky(?) ones rehoused in

sinister, concrete tower blocks. Fewer and fewer houses were built. More
families were separated and housed in council hostels. Fewer schools were
built. The size of classes increased but the number of teachers the councils
could afford to employ decreased. Everything food, clothing, entertain- —

—
ment doubled in price. More and more people were made redundant.
Thousands of young people began hurling bottles and beer cans at the stage.
For three years we accepted the situation, almost stunned. Theatrical
bands like Queen, Roxy Music, and lOcc tried to anesthetize us with dol-
lops of romantic escapism and showbiz gloss. Then everything seemed to
change overnight. Suddenly there's a new movement, a new way of life, a
new wave of music ... no one is quite sure what it amounts to, but it's
here.
And right in the middle of it are the Sex Pistols, making their music and
hoping that what they do means something more than just entertainment.
Since they arrived they've directly inspired at least seven new bands to
adopt The Buzzcocks, the Clash, Chelsea,
their harsh but positive attitude.
the Damned, Eater, Subway Sect, Siouxsie and the Banshees all these —
young musicians sing about anarchy, boredom, apathy, oppression, lust
and people applaud. But are these young bands really committed to chang-
ing society (or at least the rock musician's role in it)? Or is their stance just
another Great Media Hype?

The Sex Pistols are adamant. They want to shock people out of apathy.
They want people to do something. They want to have fun which is why —
—
they've kept going which is what all of us are doing. The Sex Pistols' story
is the story of this era. It's as simple as that.
They started in London in 1975. This fact is significant. It's in London's
suburbs where the contrast between the promise of a better future and the
reality of the impoverished present is most glaringly obvious. Drab, Kafka-
like working class ghettos are a stone's throw not only from the wealth
paraded on Kings Road, but also from the heart of the banking capital of
the world.
It was natural that if a group of deprived London street kids got together
and formed a band, it would be political. And that's what's happened.

Johnny Rotten left school when he was sixteen.Even then he wrote songs
with a startling antiestablishment bias. Occasionally he worked as an office
cleaner. More often he was on the dole.
Johnny has a way of being at once cutting and sarcastic and yet affection-
ately tender and positive. He'll sit very still, totally inert, his eyes glazed,
96 Caroline coon
staring mutely ahead and yet his febrile body, lean, without a trace of
indolent flesh, gives the impression of perpetual motion. It's as if he's stiff-
ened by an electric current.He is a man of enigmatic contrasts. He assesses

character in a flash. To those who come on trying to impress him, he feigns
the expected, sneering punk facade, revealing nothing about himself. He

rarely opens up in public. But to the genuinely curious or friendly he'll be
unexpectedly warm. He kneels on the stage and chats to fans. He smiles and
jokes a lot.
He did have long hair once but he hacked it all off himself. Eighteen
months ago he looked like an urban tramp. Now he looks like a disgraced
Angel Gabriel. Meningitis in childhood accounts for his slight stoop. He has
ice-blue eyes, parchment-white skin, and a head of ginger/blond/yellow
hair. It's all spikey and damp like the well kissed fur of a child's teddy bear.
But he can be as cold and as closed as a fist of steel.
In 1975, he and his close friends, John Grey and Sid Vicious, were the
terrors of Kings Road. "I used to go up and down the Kings Road gobbing
at the posers and pissing around," he says, his eyes flashing in mischievous
memory. There used to be groups of them on
"I just couldn't stand them.
and we would chase them around all the time. I
the corners of those shops
mean, they were weeds. They wouldn't defend themselves in any way. Not
even verbally. They'd say 'Oh, get off and run away. We expected someone
to put up an argument. But they were spineless."
It was after feeling particularly hostile to Chelsea's wealth and well-
groomed finery that Johnny bought (or acquired) a brand new suit, shirt,
and tie. He took it home and slashed it to pieces. He pinned and stapled it
together again. And then he wore it.
"We used to be as obnoxious as possible," he continues. "We'd go into

pubs and get kicked out of all of them. And I got called Rotten. Steve [Jones,
the Pistols' lead guitar] called me Rotten first. He said, 'You're Rotten, you
"
are!'
"It was his teeth," explains Steve. "He never used to brush his teeth. They
used to be green!"
Johnny and Steve have just finished putting the last overdubs on "Anar-
chy in the U.K." It was the second attempt to get the single right. "The first
time," said Johnny, "we went into the studio and got pissed and just messed
around." Then Malcolm McLaren called in Chris Thomas. "He's come to
several of our gigs and he had time off and nothing better to do." Johnny
thinks the new version is a definite improvement and both he and Steve are
elated, but tired —
and hungry. So we're in a restaurant, devouring steaks
washed down with vin ordinaire.
rock she wrote 97
Steve has the reputation of being a man of few words, illiterate in fact.
But he can read and his sound intuition and low boredom threshold make
him great fun to have around. He's always looking for action. Of the four,
he probably has the most fractured childhood. His real father was a boxer
whom he never knew. He doesn't get on with his stepfather and since the
family only lived in one room, this led to a very fraught home environment.
At night Steve pulled out a collapsible camp bed and slept by his mother and
father's side.
He always listened to the radio. The first record he can recall being
impressed by was Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." He didn't have a record
player, nor could he afford records. But he always wanted to play electric
guitar.
He and Johnny on well together, and here the coincidences start

get
accumulating. Steve was at school with Paul Cook, the Pistols' drummer.
Neither of them did any work. They went to school because it was some-
where to go. Many of their friends didn't bother going at all. When Steve
and Paul fancied a day off they'd go over to a mate of theirs called Wally.
His parents were the most easygoing and they could spend afternoons in the
back garden drinking.
In 1973, just to relieve the boredom so they say, Wally suggested they put
a rock 'n' roll band together. Steve, calling himself Q. T. Jones, was the
singer. He gave a drum kit he'd acquired (like all the other instruments
through illegitimate means) to Paul, and Wally was on lead guitar. They
needed a bass player.
And they didn't have to look far. Like Johnny and his friends, Paul and
Steve spenthappy hours nicking clothes (they now confess) and listening to
the jukebox in Malcolm McLaren and Vivien Westwood's Kings Road
shop, "Let It Rock" and "Sex." One Glen Matlock, a budding bassist,
worked there on Saturdays. Malcolm put the three of them together. Then
Wally got the elbow. Steve wanted to play lead guitar, and he couldn't sing
anyway. Now they needed a lead singer.
"It was so obvious really," says Johnny. "Malcolm's shop was a great
place to go. The clothes were always different. It was new and good and
honest. It was antifashion and antiorganization. He'd often seen me in the
shop and one day he came up to me and asked why I always looked so
bored and why was I so awful to everyone. He asked me whether I'd like to
sing with the Sex Pistols."
They all met in the Roebuck pub on the Kings Road and Johnny was on
good form, ladling out the insults and calling them all "a bunch of fools."
They thought he was phony but they dragged him the few hundred yards up
98 Caroline coon
the road to the shop and stuck him in front of the jukebox for an "audi-
tion." Johnny remembers jumping up and down and mouthing along to an
Alice Cooper single. He didn't know the words.
Johnny continues: "I couldn't sing. I was never ever bothered to sing in
my whole life. I had absolutely no interest in singing. I wrote songs but I
didn't know what I was going to do with them. I was more interested in
being obnoxious. They all laughed at me, so I said 'now I want to hear what
you cunts sound like.' I went all the way down to Rotherhithe, where they
were meant to be rehearsing, but they didn't turn up. I rang up Malcolm
and told him to forget it. I thought they were a bunch of lazy cunts and I
said they'd never get anywhere. But Malcolm kept ringing me up."
Another rehearsal was arranged which, Johnny now says, was "inde-
scribably terrible." At the time every one of them wanted to leave the band.
Paul had already quit but he was "just sitting in" to help them all out.
Paul isn't a man to take chances. He kept up his daytime job in a brewery
until two months ago — just in case. The evening he finally left his job, the
band played in Chelmsford maximum security prison. Paul was so drunk,
he fell off his drum stool. He is usually calm, wide eyed, and bubbling with
good humor. He's the easiest one to talk to.
"Everyone thinks we've only just picked up our guitars," he told me

recently. "But we've played for three years. We rehearsed every night just
shutting ourselves away from everything.
"We did get to the point where we thought we were great. We used to
boast that we were in a group and it got comfortable. We'd sit drinking in
the Roebuck with all the Chelsea Successful thinking, We're great. We're in
a rock 'n' roll band. Then Malcolm came along and gave us a boot and we
started wondering what we were doing and why we weren't looking for-
ward to getting up onstage."
Johnny was just the galvanizing influence they needed. "I was not behav-
ing very well," he says. "It was getting sick. It just had to stop and I knew
that if I didn't get on in the group then I'd either end up in a loony bin or in
some kind of prison."

How did he sing at that first rehearsal, I wondered? "God, it's such a
weird feeling," he recalls. "For the first time in your life you get up in front
of these people you don't know, who you've been very cynical about. I'd
never done anything myself and I thought, Oh my God! I can't back up
what I've been saying. So I just grabbed the mike and I screamed. And it
came out really awful, and I just wanted to run out the door. But I stuck
with it. But every time I used to go out to the bog they'd go, 'Oh, what a
—
rock she wrote 99
cunt he is.' I knew," he continues, giving Steve a sly look, "because I used to
listen at the door."
Johnny's singing technique, like his phenomenal stage presence and sense
of style, has evolved through experience. Very few people have influenced
him —unless it's his close friends like Grey and Vicious. He denies having
any idols whatever. "I'd listen to rock 'n' roll," he says, "but I had no
respect for it. It was crawling up its own arsehole. It was redundant and had
nothing to do with anything relevant. Rock 'n' roll was about as relevant as
all that funk played in those Kings Road clothes shops. Do people actually
listen to that music? No! It's just background music while they buy their
jeans flared jeans. Is that any state for rock to be in? I just feel very sorry
for the people who try to apply their brains to it. It's moronic rubbish and it
reflects on them."
The Sex Pistols literally "crashed" in on the music scene exactly a year
ago (November 1975). They were unknown and found it impossible to get
gigs. Not deterred, they'd discover where London Colleges were putting on
dances and they'd ring up the social secretary with the information "we're
the Sex Pistols. We're on the bill tonight." The method worked. At least
they gigged, if not for money. The dole kept them in cigarettes, if not beer.
They were very poor. Johnny lived in a "squat" (he's just been evicted and is
temporarily at home). Paul and Glen still live at home because they can't
afford to live anywhere else. And Steve, who couldn't live at home if he
wanted to, crashes in the one-room "studio" in Soho with no hot running
water where the band rehearses.
By January this year (1976) they were beginning to make headway. They
sounded solid, fast with an unforgettably aggressive stage attack. Johnny,
looking like a berserk convict starving and strung up on a wire hanger,
poured forth a vitriolic stream of antagonizing lyrics, alienating large sec-
tions of the audience. But he lapped up the heckling, and gradually the
band's unprecedented commitment to raw energy and iconoclastic blasts at
established idols and sacred cows, began attracting fiercely loyal fans like
the Bromley Contingent.
They began their Tuesday night residency at the 100 Club in February
and it held them in good stead as first the Marquee (where Johnny had
thrown chairs around) then the Nashville (where the band had leapt off-
stage midset and joined in a fight) and then the Roundhouse (where John
Kurd just didn't like them) banned them from ever playing there again. (The
100 Club banned them, too, afte'r the incident at the Punk Rock Festival.)
They made regular sorties up North and made their first appearance outside
the U.K. in Paris.
lOO Caroline coon
Johnny developed a powerfully idiosyncratic vocal style. He forces out

word syllables like machine gun bullets and there's never any doubt about
the extent of his commitment to what he is doing. Steve, after two amazing
gigs on large stages in July (the Lyceum and Manchester Free Trade Hall),
has begun to move and play with an originality which has even the cynics
calling him the new Pete Townsend. Steve doesn't deny the Townsend influ-
ence but he's never consciously copied him.
The band's worked very hard and it's survived because, as Paul says,
"there's not exactly an alternative, is there? And we do know we're doing
something worthwhile." They wanted Johnny to pull them together, to be
the ingredient that would give their music purpose, and that's exactly what
he's done. It wasn't easy to discover how best to work together and there
have been fierce arguments. These were overcome when Johnny insisted
that rehearsals were an open forum. He forced and cajoled everyone to
participate in the development of the band's musical identity.
Glen was the one who most often wanted to have the last say, and by
general consensus he knows the most about rock 'n' roll history. His back-
ground is no less deprived than that of the others but his parents insisted he
went to the local Grammar rather than the Secondary Modern School. Not
unnaturally, therefore, he has a taste for more musical complexity than the
others. But the tensions this creates are positive. Steve and Johnny fight to
pare songs down to bare essentials, and Glen presses for a touch of elabora-
tion.
Johnny writes most of the lyrics, but as Glen has said, "The spirit of the
rest of us is in them."
Says Johnny: "I make sure that if I put words in a song they are what
everyone thinks —that it's not just me bullshitting to my heart's content. All
our songs will be credited to the Sex Pistols. We don't want any of that 'he
wrote this so he gets more money.' That's disgusting. No song is ever
written entirely on your own. It's always slagged off by the others so by the
time it's been slagged, other people have put their ideas into it. We've all
made it what it is."
He finds it difficult to write lyrics without a tune in mind so he imagines

one even if Steve or Glen drastically change it. "No Feelings" and "Satel-
lite" are basically Steve's melodies; "Problems," "I Wanna Be Me," and
"Liar" were written together in the studio; "Pretty Vacant," "Sub-Mission"
and "Anarchy in the U.K." are mainly Glen.
" 'Anarchy in the U.K.' was several of his tunes put together," says
Johnny. "We did it at rehearsal one Sunday. I came in a bit late and they'd
rock she wrote lOl
already put the basic melody and I just said, 'I'll call it "Anarchy"!' The rest
of the words came quite easily."

Never before have groups or musicians like the Pistols or the Clash been
so unself-consciously political. "We're more antisocial, than political,"
maintains Glen. Nor Johnny writing protest songs as such. He is protest.
is
In "Anarchy in the U.K." he is not advocating anarchism. He is anarchy. It's

a subtle shift of emphasis. Instead of placing himself on the outside, the
adversary on the attack, he stands in the center, already the victorious
personification of the issues which once defeated him. He is no longer the
victim. He is no longer acted upon. He is the action.
He has come a long way since the early days when he used to write
"ludicrous songs about people killing each other with broken light bulbs"
and other epics of similar comic-strip blood and guts. Now, with dramatic
words which cut like graffiti gouged into slum walls, he creates atmospheric
songs as dour and forbidding as the council flats and concrete backyards
which are his inspiration.
What kind of childhood did he have? Where was he educated? What kind
of house did he live in? "It was a collection of matchboxes," he replies
reluctantly. The past is not a topic he willingly discusses. "It was f-ing
awful. Just a square box. A front room and three bedrooms. I've got three
brothers. One works and the other two are still at school. They're all
younger than me.
"I went to a Catholic school, which is even worse than a state school
because they have no money at all. It really was like five hundred to a class
—and a woman teacher who just cannot keep control. I went to school with
Grey and twenty others and we all just decided to forget everything and
educate ourselves. We decided not to listen to the bullshit they were throw-
ing at us — like mass every morning. So we went off into another classroom
and did what we wanted. But they kicked me out for being a Hell's Angel.
"I let anybody tell me I was no good. Teachers were always

would never
we were no good. The most famous job they tried to throw on you
telling us
was bank clerk. Always, bank clerk. And I just said, 'Bollocks, I ain't going
to be no bank Then you start pushing the teacher around because
clerk.'
they offend you so much. They offend public decency. What they did to us
was a crime. But it's not even their fault. There's always somebody higher
up making them do it.
"The most remember about my childhood is just hating

vivid thing I
teachers. You sit down and you look at them and you want to cut their eyes
out because they just don't care a shit about you. They give you absolutely
^
102 Caroline coon
take your sonl if they'd got the

nothing. They take, take, take. They'd
chance They didn't take mine!"

the only way to change the systems
Does Johnny, like Paul, believe that
Johnny explains. He
think he means that,"
through violence? "I don't He
people in the face if they
don't agree with you.
doesn t mean smash
you shouldn't let people override you.
means that
Melody Maker last week, people have blown our
"As the Damned said in
They want to associate us
right out of proportion.
inv olvement in violence
can slag us off. It makes us out
with violence. It's the only way, really, they
Which means we aren't a threat to
To be just crude, ignorant,
and loutish.
th haven|ti
fight? "Of course
been al.eged, ever encouraged a
1
Has he, as it's
I know I m right. But ,f I
I just won't let people tell me I'm wrong when

You -just a fool if you
then just too bad. That's human nature
h v it's
violence 1 11
doesn't happen. Why people are so frightened of
pretend it
never really understand."

violence than any-
Certain! Johnny's has been more conditioned by
life
violence ,s about the
thing else. In his unyielding concrete environment,
surprisingly his body is scarred
survive. Not
only feeling strong enough to
of street life. But what
about the c.ga-
h knife wounds-the aftermath
w" doesn't bur, I
arms? "What about them? Pain
Tene bu ns on his hands and
I thought it would
be good fun. It had and
d d it for my own amusement.
slag me off o
has nothing to do with
anybody else. I won't have people
body. Because it's mine. If I
want to cut my own leg
what I do to my own
°f We
he .acked playgrounds, etc.,
when he was a child! "Yes.
bills' as ,f
passmg
to go. So what did we
do? We threw bricks at
ha noire The
something you can do the m flats. police
That's an old favorite. That's stori,
go four or five
comp.aint. So you jo*
Income in unless there's a
,
up and throw bricks down at cars. Who goes to the youth club! Do they
only in West Hampstead
and they are
1st" I heard rumors. But they are
go to the pubs at an early age.
id with Jonathans and Cecils. So
you just
Or as Steve points out, the launderette.

tried to escape a 1
"Someone like Brian Ferry," Johnny

thatBut we're not ashamed of it.
continues, "has
And we're fighting ^^T^ and he s really fallen
td got earned away with the flash restaurants

Ferry just
ffl
solution for us. If

doesn't work. It
you do what we're doing and

gets you
"^ «^J* "£
try to break out of all that
rock she wrote 103
then you get slagged off — from all sides. But it's worth it. It's better than
going along with it."
Johnny, like Steve (who's not the only young musician around acquainted
with Borstal), was only a hair's breadth away from a terminal prison exis-
tence. "I did all the usual things like nicking cars and that. But everybody
does. It's just something to do. But I was lucky. I didn't get caught. If you
do, that's it. They just get you all the time after that 'cause you're known."
That the Sex Pistols have little time for romantic love is hardly surprising.
They are tough and realistic, and scorn the conventional euphemisms which
protect people from the truth. But is the most intense emotion Johnny really
feels —
hatred? "No. No. If you just hate you don't do anything construc-
tive.You've got to be realistic to see the situation you're in, and then you
must use what you know to your own advantage. You mustn't let people
override you and walk over you like they do at school. Comprehensive
schools have such a high failure rate. There's no such thing anymore as a
successful comprehensive kid. You just don't make it unless you've been to
Eton. Your outlook is so low for a start. You're forced to accept that you've
got to be married by the time you're twenty-two. Or else you think you're a
failure. And that's terrible. I wouldn't have that."
Does he have girlfriends? "Yes. But what's that got to do with marriage? I
don't go around arm-in-arm with girls. But I don't hate sex. It's just that it's
all been done between the ages of twelve and now. You do it all then. It's so
easy nowadays. So by the time you're twenty you just think yawn just — —
another squelch session. It's as simple as that. You just disregard it. It
happens or it don't."
Is there any love at all in his life? "No, there's no love at all. I don't
believe in love. And I never will. It's a myth brought on by Micky Most and
Co. to sell records," and he laughs. "I mean, when you actually listen to a
love song and try to relate to it as something that happens in real life, it just
doesn't work. There's no connection.

"You can't love anything. Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussycat. It
doesn't apply to humans, and if it does it just shows how low you are. It
shows that your intelligence isn't clicking."

What happens then between people who like each other? "Lust. That's
all. I can't see it going any further. After that it begins to get vampiristic, like
clutch 'Don't leave me.' Then you just end up using somebody for your own
selfishness, because you're too weedy to be out on your own.
"You can like someone. You can get on with someone really good, but the
point is, do you really need to be with them all the time? You get bored with
someone after two or three days. You've said everything and you just have
104 Caroline coon
to go off and be alone for a while. And same with friends. If you
that's the
hang around with somebody the whole time you must be a real moron."
What about children? "What about them? If you want a family you can
go down to an orphanage."
The Sex Pistols' lack of pretension is an integral part of their appeal. They
are accessible, as close to their audience as rock 'n' rollers have ever been.
They are the first band to present teenagers with songs about reality rather
than escapism and that's important when there is nowhere to escape to.
Taking introspective knowledge for granted, they believe in little except

themselves. They are facing up to reality, and through their music they are
attempting to make it as much fun as romance was in the past. They believe
that the violence of frustration can be channeled into positive action. For all
their shocking ability to tell the truth about the world as they see it, they are
profoundly optimistic.
What about the future? Is getting in the charts important to them? "It's
not essential. And we'll never compromise. If nobody likes the single they
can drop dead. And that's not because we're bigheaded. But we're the ones
that count. If we don't like it we wouldn't do it. If we are successful, if we
make money, we can use it so that kids can have somewhere to go. Money is
to be used. It isn't to enable you to languish in ecstasy the rest of your life.
"If the single ["Anarchy in the U.K."] gets into the charts then it will
show that it's been worth it. That there are thousands of people who are
pissed off with everything. And I really think they are. I can't see how they
can put up with it. People say we're not the alternative. But we never said
we were. We're just one alternative. There should be several.
"And already there is an excitement in the atmosphere. There are some
groups that are extravagantly different. It is going to happen. I can see it
already."
Vivien Goldman, "The Rascal
Republic Takes On the World,"
New AAusical Express, October 18, 1980.
By the end of the seventies, pop music had influenced the
world, and the world began influencing pop. Nigerian artist
and political dissident Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was one of the first
"Afropop" or world music stars. British journalist Vivien
Goldman, who had already explored the intersection of politics
and rock through her coverage of punk and reggae, filed this
authoritative story on Fela's politics, persecution, wives, and
song.
ela Anikulapo-Kuti has twenty-seven wives, and at least sixteen of
them are creating a sensation in the Coliseum in Rome. Perhaps if you

released a pride of famished lions among the earnest Scandinavian tourists
and nuns shepherding their jailbait flocks along like clucking mother geese,
they'd be as big a tourist attraction.

Basically, the seventy-strong folk of Africa 70 don't want to see the
Coliseum at all, but ever since their luggage landed at Milan Airport before
they did, and 45 kilos of killer Nigerian weed were found, magically, in the
first seven cases customs looked at, their time hasn't gone according to plan.
Some people say that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Africa's most prominent mu-
sician, leader of the Nigerian MOP (Movement of the People) party, and
proposed candidate for the Nigerian Presidency in the 1983 elections,
106 vivien goldman
would do anything for publicity. But the most cynical PR would think twice
before prejudicing his political credibility in such a stupid way.
The seventy wandering musicians were originally invited by the Italian
Communist party to play at their annual L'Unita Festival, a nationwide
—
weeks-long shindig. But as it happened as it was supposed to happen,
Kurt Vonnegut and conspiracy theorists would say the grass bust shat- —
tered all their plans. Their passports were taken away. Fela himself spent
days in Milan's Busto Arsizio prison, until an American woman "friend" of
Africa 70's, twenty-seven-year-old Susan Rochelle Findlay, confessed to
planting the pot and was imprisoned instead.
By that time, Fela had garnered reams of sensationalist press all over the
Continent, and was forced to cancel date after date. It appeared that,
though his name was cleared, his presence was proving something of an
embarrassment to the Communist party.
Right now, while the sixteen or so queens are prettily posing for stacks of
Instamatics, Fela is in the middle of a four-hour confab at CP HQ. He didn't
need to fly to Italy to face the dope charge. He could have stayed in Hol-
land, where the news of the grass discovery reached him, but he preferred to
face the charges and prove his innocence. At Amsterdam Airport, catching
the plane for Milan, Fela announced that he thought the pot was planted on
him by the CIA.
It's obvious that when Fela finally arrives to gather his tribe at the Coli-
seum, he is deeply weary. Apparently the CP officials were polite, apolo-
getic, concerned even. We're sorry, it's all been such an unfortunate misun-
derstanding. Perhaps you'd like to try again next year?
Fela, who has now been forced to sink at least £16,000 he can ill afford
into this abortive excursion, poses for photos in front of the Coliseum. As
Giovanni Canitano begins to shoot, Fela lifts his arms in the traditional
gesture of black power. It's a reflex movement, an instinctive response when

the camera is pointed in his direction. But the familiar motion seems to
trigger a preset response, and a new energy seems to pulse through him. Fela
looks about him, at the Africa 70 musicians, and suddenly his fist punches
the air with great authority, and he flashes a big beacon smile. The musi-
cians begin to smile back.
The Instamatics start to flash.
ITT! International t'ieft'ief! Long, long time ago, Africans didn't carry
Where they shit was a big, big hole. Long time ago, before they
shit.
come and took us away as slaves. They came to colonize us, taught us
rock she wrote 107
to carry shit. ITT! They come, they cause confusion, cause commotion,
cause inflation. International fief fiefI Men with low mentality!
("ITT" by Fela Kuti)
A shitty story it is, you could say this particular chapter

indeed. In fact,
starts with ten buckets of the stuff, which Fela and friends smeared all over
the house of a Mr. Abiola, Nigerian chairman of ITT (International

Telephone and Telecommunications, an American multinational company),
leading politician within the ruling National Party of Nigeria, and
shareholder in Decca Records.
Fela and Decca Records have a long and stormy history. Anyone who
saw Jeremy Marre's recent TV documentary on Nigerian music will
remember the sit-in staged by Fela and cohorts in the Decca offices when the
company refused to pay him certain moneys. It's said that two women gave
birth in the managing director's office. The shit-spreading episode, although
it was prompted by a further nonpayment, has a deeper significance. ITT
has links with the CIA, researched in such books as Gary MacEoin's Chile,
the Struggle For Dignity: ITT/CIA/ Chile.
It's a familiar story of destabilization. A dependency on American
funding is set up, and when the Third World nation decides to go it alone,
the cold turkey throes can be sufficient to drive the nation back to its old
supplier. The big multinational companies play a crucial role in this process.
Fela feels that ITT has been particularly noxious in Nigeria, a country
that has very little running water, electricity, or sanitation, although it
supplies oil to the world. He has been very militant in his anti-ITT publicity.
Apart from singing specific finger-pointing songs like the lyrics quoted
above, he's also given eighty-three university lectures on the subject in the
past year.
Like any good detective, Fela marshals the information about the
customs bust to back up his CIA allegations: Susan Findlay, the American
teacher who confessed to planting the "Indian hemp," as the Italians
quaintly called it, is actually employed by the Nigerian government, with
whom Abiola is involved. Piece together Abiola's involvement with Decca,
the government, and ITT, then add the crucial fact that he, like Fela, intends
to run for Nigerian president in the 1983 elections, and, as Fela says, "the
connection is just too tempting."
Where did you get the things you have? The things you don't ownf You
mean you don't know? You say yourself you're not there for Africa at
all. You mostly come over from London, from New York, from Brazil
108 Vivien goldman
would be plenty water

if you were there for Nigeria, there
overground, plenty water in the
air-only
underground, plenty water
people get electric, only for
there. Big, big
water for man to drink is not
not there (Fela Kuti song)
working people it's
his present position as the most

Ud 1969, Fela didn't occupy
till
working today. Others, like Gil Scott-Heron,

specifically political musician
their lyrics, but which
other musicians, with the
are equally direct in
People, have
possible exception of Linton
Kwes, Johnson and the Plastic
merged their art and their direct action so incisively?

Fela says: "Maybe if d have
Thinking back to his prepo.itica. days,
Maybe." He laughs. He s anxious that we
known, I'd have shelved the idea.
understand he's joking.

At the concert in Naples' mam square, the audience couldn't believe the,
of
like a solid fuel ,n,ection
luck and Africa 70's dance music is
Fela
and keen
Fela plays jazzy saxophone
percussion, horns, and voices.
guitar carries much of the momentum, it
stabbing organ. The rhythm mix

in the
chatters in your ear and won't
go away. The bass is sadly lost
possible to sense it loping deep in there.
tonight, but it's
Amazonian tropical excess. Almost all
It's overgrown salsa, fertilized to
with singing and
Fela's seventy co-workers
seem to be onstage complete
pandemonium,
Clinton's ideal onstage party
dancing queens. It's George
S£
holiday compared to the
Fek plaT'tr two and a half hours-nothing, a
at theu Lagos
four-and-a-half hour sets they play
usual four-n,ghts-a-week,
own club. No Lagos club would
ShrL. Fela had to control his
club, the
massive popularity.
allow him to play, despite his that
churning, ever-changing rhythms
Each song lasts over half an hour,
the Italians are
grasshopper-leaping ecstasy. But
drfve he audience to those
of the excitement-understanding
probably missing a good portion pure,
sugar-coated with
8 ironic
words brands your memory,
fierv scaldingly
u„r Afro-B eL. The rhythms remind

you that fife is
haven't felt so good for weeks.
It s the words
*~™"^£
then you're dancing, and you
that keep on getting Fela
Kuti into trouble.
laborer worker, they go Rustle

People they work, office worker,
buses they ride
to make ends meet.
Authority people! Instead of
try
they in helicopters^
-theyjo
motorcars, instead of motorcycles
plenty money armed robber need
steal, public they contribute
. . .
rock she wrote 109
gun, Authority Man, him need pen, Authority Man in charge of money
. . . ("Authority Stealin")
Those lyrics are from Fela's latest scorcher of a disco-mix, the first release
on his own Kalakuta records label. No pressing plant in Nigeria would

touch it, with its explicit references to a recent Nigerian political scandal.
They call it "Oilgate" —the mysterious disappearance of nearly three billion

money. Inside each record is an issue of
naira (Nigerian currency) of public
the Africa 70 broadsheet, YAP (Young African Pioneer) News, its motto:
"Our challenge is never to suffer again."
It contains a transcript of the "Oilgate" trial in which Fela makes explicit
accusations against the Nigerian government, plus a copy of the crucial

piece of incriminating evidence, a money draft made out to one Abasanjo,
former head of Nigeria's military government, stamped by the Nigerian
Medical Association, for 860.15 billion naira.
Fela pressed the record up in Ghana, and had to smuggle it into Nigeria
to evade their record import ban.
We meet the day after the Naples show, in Fela's seedy hotel room. He
sits in the corner, holding court, dressed in threadbare mauve Y-fronts. The
room is full of queens, lying four to the bed like sensual sardines, and
musicians sitting on every available surface.
These are the people of whom Fela's Cambridge-educated lawyer, George
Gardner (son of a UN adviser on African affairs), later says: "They have ties
stronger than blood. Every person on this tour has scars. Kwesi [Yupe,
Fela's political and media adviser] has had his ribs and leg broken twice. He
still has bayonet holes in his head. And that's just in the past eighteen
months. Every rebel in Nigeria, who will stand up and be counted,
everyone
is here."
Fela talks fluently for two and a half hours, occasionally looking to one of
his people for confirmation. He
passes round photos of a meeting of his
MOP party, in a sports stadium. The place is packed. Fela's arms are raised
in that perennial victorious gladiator's salute. At the last election, MOP was
not allowed to register: Fela has plans to bypass the ban standing
independently in the 1983 elections. He calls himself the Black President
because, he says, he's more popular than the Nigerian president.
We'll know in 1983. Is it a coincidence that that's the year when the
reggae songs say Africa will be free?

Fela comes from an upper-class, ecclesiastical background. His brother's
HO Vivien goldman
a professor of pediatrics in Lagos, and heads the Nigerian Medical

Association.
One day, many years ago, the market women came to visit Fela's mother
and complained that they were being unfairly taxed. Fela's mother got up
from her chair, he remembers, and went to help them, thus starting a career
in politics that took her all over the world, even to Russia and, at Mao's
invitation, to China. On her way back from China, her passport was seized
by the British government. Like her son in years to come, she was getting to
be too much trouble.
Thus, Mrs. Ransome-Kuti (as the family name then was) was unable to
visit her son while he studied in Trinity Music College, London. Fela lived in
Ladbroke Grove, Bayswater, and hung out at Ronnie Scott's and the
Marquee, the Flamingo, the Roaring 20's (now Columbo's), jazz clubs,
playing with jazz musicians from all over the place. (Incidentally, his
celebrated association with Ginger Baker doesn't date from this period,
though Fela saw him play with Cream then.)
Despite maternal and cosmopolitan input, Fela's political awakening
began in '69, when he took his musicians on a frustrating, visaless tour of
the U.S. There he met with scant respect for African music and musicians
(except from producer H. B. Barnum) and was overwhelmed by the size and
scale of New York. "I felt like a cockroach."
Fela was baffled by the sudden knowledge that Nigeria's leaders had been
hiding the fullness of the twentieth century from their people. He traveled
across the States, and "I couldn't talk, couldn't participate in subjects
because I didn't have the knowledge. I saw that the colonial education and
upbringing, which America was involved in, too, was very badly wild.
History starts with Mungo Park 'discovering' the Niger! This pushed me so
much, I said I would die in the struggle.
"I was singing high-life, jazz, nothing deep. Short, short love songs,
stupid, about the rain or something. I wasn't thinking as an African. With
the self-insight I got in the States, I vowed I was going into politics. I also
saw the power I could have through using music."
His education was intensified by a relationship with a Black Panther
woman in Los Angeles (who shocked him by revealing she'd been in jail for
kicking a policeman at a demonstration) and he started to try and write

African music, firstly by copying the rhythms of a London-based African
musician called Ambrose Campbell. At that stage, Fela was a political
innocent. "I didn't see any opposition at home. I thought any African who
heard this idea, must buy it. I didn't know I would start a lot of trouble."
—
rock she wrote 111
The trouble began almost imperceptibly, when the police stopped him
playing his new pan-African militant music in a club he part-owned.
He won that court case.
Then, on April 30, 1974, the police raided his house and tried to
implicate him in a big grass bust. He wound up spending time in prison till
his name was cleared. "In that prison, we had order a president, an —
attorney, a sanitary inspector. The place was so crowded, but the prisoners
set up the order. They called it the Kalakuta Republic kalakuta means
rascal, it's an East African word.
"I used to think criminals were just — criminals. In jail I found they were
intelligent people, who wanted to better their lives. I them I would
told
rename my house Kalakuta Republic, not knowing I was bringing real
trouble and confusion on my head. . .
."
The police raids were systematic now. One morning, just before Fela was
due to pick up the band's passports for a Cameroons tour, the police broke
into hisbedroom and planted him with a spliff. Fela grabbed the joint,
swallowed it, washed it down with a swig of whisky, and lectured the
policeman about how wrong they were to persecute him when he was trying
to fight for them.
Nonetheless, they attempted (unsuccessfully) to wash his stomach out in
hospital, and then locked him up again for three days to observe his shit.
Fela ate lots of vegetables.At night, when the guards were sleeping, other
prisoners passed him chamber pots and then hid the contents. When he
finally sat down to deliver on the morning he was due to go back to court,
he remembers proudly, "I gave them a nice, clean shit."

This incident is commemorated in his song "Expensive Shit." The cover
of that album shows the barbed wire fence that now surrounded the
growing Kalakuta Republic, its tentacles creeping down the road as more
and more people wandered into the house and decided to stay on, camping
outside. The original wooden posts were replaced by barbed wire, then Fela
electrified the barbed wire. When the authorities really decided to smash up
this offensive state-within-a-state, they would have to switch off the
electricity in the whole neighborhood — but that was still a couple of years
away. . . .
In the meantime, the Nigerian press was full of clashes between Fela and
the police. He was raided for any and every reason, repeatedly taken to
court, jailed, and beaten, till the chief of police decided to meet Fela for
himself. Fela describes him as "a thoughtful man," though it does seem as if
112 vivien goldman
his thought processes lagged slightly in Fela's case. At any rate, finally
convinced of Fela's integrity, police harassment suddenly ceased for two

years, till 1977.
At that time, the Nigerian government's military powers made our Suss
laws seem like a summer holiday —
the army was entitled to pick people up
and beat them at random in the streets, for traffic offenses and the like.
But while the official Nigerian Arts Festival —Festac—was going on, the
soldiers began to pick up foreign journalists and visiting artists. Not
surprisingly, many of these visitors began to gravitate to the Kalakuta
Republic. When Africa 70 staged their own mini-Festac at the Shrine, its
success aggravated the regime They were already vexed at the

still further.
initial appearance of YAP News, although, as Fela explains, "It was a heavy
manifesto, not an attack, so they couldn't hold me for sedition."
The serious trouble, the trouble that people who've hardly heard of Fela
Kuti know about, began when one of Fela's people was badly beaten in the
streets. He made it back to the Kalakuta Republic, but as Fela was
organizing transport to hospital, the army arrived demanding to arrest the
beaten man. Fela refused. War broke out.
The carnage was almost inconceivable. Fela pauses even now when he
remembers and shakes his head. "It was terrible terrible. ." His
. . . . .
mother, seventy-eight years old, was thrown from a second-story window

and died soon after.
—
Later Fela and followers used her mock coffin Fela wanted to use her
actual corpse, but the rest of his family wouldn't agree for a protest. They —
left it in a window of the burnt-out Kalakuta Republic, in the heart of
Lagos, with a sign saying, This is the spot where justice was murdered. When
the military regime handed over to an equally dubious, according to Fela,
coalition government, they left the coffin as a silent protest in front of
government HQ. She would have approved.
Almost all Fela's wives were raped by soldiers. One had broken bottles
sewn into her vagina at the hospital. Aleike, Fela's most loquacious wife,
remembers the high jinks they played in prison that time, fooling the
warders by hiding precious cigarettes in toilet rolls in their vaginas — just
like prisoners in Irish H Blocks today, discovering all kinds of new anal
functions.
When the army burnt the house, they also burnt the soundtrack for a film
Africa 70 had just finished. Fela crossed to Ghana, to try and salvage the
remains.
—
rock she wrote 113
There he found a government even more repressive and vicious than the
one he'dleft behind. It only took threee months for Fela to be deported; the
official reason was that he had taken the side of some market women in a
street argument. But Ghanaian students had been using Fela's antimilitary
song, the hypnotic "Zombie" ("It's against the kind of mind that takes
orders without thinking"), as a rallying call.
With the help of Kwesi Yupe (then the only outspoken editor in Ghana,
whose Catholic Herald was repeatedly raided by the police), till he had to
flee with Fela to escape worse, Fela met with student leaders, and
encouraged them to close down the universities. Under the circumstances,

it's perhaps surprising Fela was there as long as three months.
I have to keep passing the message of Pan-Africanism wherever I am.

They were annoyed. . . .
It was these events that decided Fela to marry the women who'd
supported him through such extreme tribulations —twenty-seven of them,
including his original wife, British-bred Remy. She comments, "I didn't
mind. Before that, he used to have lots of girlfriends. Now at least he's
honest."
The marriage took place in the Ifa religion, a traditional African religion
Fela has been rediscovering as part of his pan-African quest. Anyway, it's
traditional in African culture for a man to have as many wives as he can

afford to buy from their parents and support. Doesn't that imply women
are just a piece of property to be bought and sold, even if the sum is
nominal, you say, Fela? "Aha, now you understand," says Fela
mysteriously.
Africa woman, she go cook for her man, she do anything he say, but
Lady no be so. Africa woman go dance the fire dance. ("Lady" . . .
by Fela Kuti).
That's one of Fela's old big hits, wherein the approved cultural African
woman knows her place kinder, kiiche, kirche (children, kitchen, church),
as the Nazis were so fond of saying.
Here we're confronted with the anomaly of "radical" people intent on
finding their freedom through rediscovering traditional cultural habits that
many people were thrilled to see the back of. Men are usually quite attached
to these traditions that ensure a nonstop mother/nurse/cook/cleaner figure,
unpaid.
114 vivien goldman
Fela's queens share a cheery, girls-dorm, sisterly rapport. Fela explains,
"My affinity for sex helps keep them together. I sleep with two or three a
day, so none of them gets too neglected." Long faces among the queens
often indicated, if their teasing is anything to go by, that the queen in
question has somehow got stuck on the rota, and is anxiously awaiting her
turn.
If a wife is "unfaithful," the other queens are supposed to dutifully report
back to the King. Despite nasty rumors about wives locked in rooms, they
themselves say his punishments are not too severe.
Admittedly, Aleike is a favorite queen, and as such has little cause for
gloom, but her view of the multiple-wife structure is very positive: "If he
was a harsh man, none of us would stay with him." Only fifteen or so have
left to —
date and there's doubtless a queue of potential queens.
Everyone in the family finds it quite reasonable. If any queen is
dissatisfied, she's free to pack her bags and go marry someone else, just like
that. It's a disturbing thought, though, that after a period of intense

involvement with, and economic dependency on Fela, a queen might have
some difficulty in finding a new niche.
Aleike is bouncy and bubbly. She used to be a fashion model, and is still
pleased to pose for the snap-happy tourists.

She comes of a "colonial" family — father a judge, mother a nursing sister
—who gave her a proper convent education, then cut her off when she went
to live with Fela in her late teens. Fela taught her to be an "African
woman," and overcome Western indoctrinations like jealousy. Western
feminist conceptions of what constitutes freedom appear irrelevant to her;
she has found her freedom through Fela, she says. "Fela trusts us. I pray we
will never let him down."
If you're intent on retrieving African identity through reabsorption of
traditional customs, apparently "tradition" is a virtue in itself. World
Health Organization statistics say that about five million young African
women a year undergo the clitoridectomy operation; their clitorises are
either cut, or removed without anesthetic. Aleike says that this (to me)
absolutely horrific operation is okay: It's cultural. Kwesi, Fela's radical
political adviser ("I'm a political animal"), endorses it too. Speaking from

personal experience, he says that "cut" women are more sexually sensitive
and responsive. Not surprising, since they've been mutilated so that they
can only receive vaginal sexual pleasure.
Still, back home in Lagos the neighbors who insulted the raped women as
whores, now respect them as "Fela's queens."

Sometimes the terms radical and colonial seem to blur around the edges.
rock she wrote 113
Aleike tells me stories of how people who've abused Fela's generosity

often meet bad deaths, as if by magic. "Many people say he's a god, sent to
do things for the African people."
It's five years now since Fela changed from his slave name, Ransome-
Kuti, to his new name, Anikulapo-Kuti. It means a traditional hunter, who
controls death with the magic amulets he carries in a pouch by his side.
I ask Fela why he thinks he hasn't been killed yet.
"They like me. It's a bundle of contradictions. They beat me a lot, but
they don't see the point in killing Fela who makes music."
I never did find out what's in the leather pouch Fela always wears round
his neck.
Sheryl Garratt, "Lovers Rock/'
The Face, A/Vardh 198S.
Lovers Rock isn't well known in the U.S., but in England and
Jamaica, this reggae style produced many pop hits. British
journalist Sheryl Garratt, editor of The face and cowriter of
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered, a seminal study of women and pop,
explored the history of Lovers Rock and its special appeal to
ladies in this 1985 Yace article.
he soft, sophisticated sound brought women into reggae's fold,

made close dancing cool again, and did wonders for the sale of gold jewelry
to men. It should also have made a handful of singers into pop stars, for
though there was much dross released during the heyday of the Lovers
sound —screechy voices making tuneless covers of U.S. hits —there were
also many gems left unearthed because of a music press who could cope,
perhaps, with Rasta mysticism and culture, but who shriveled in embarrass-
ment at the sound of silly love songs.
So how to describe Lovers Rock? Take the voice of Deniece Williams,
Minnie Ripperton, and the sweetest U.S. soul,' add to it a gentle reggae
backing, clothe it in the style of British-born blacks, and you have some-
thing like it.
The story starts in the mid-seventies, whenSir Coxsone International had
a residency at the Roaring Twenties Carnaby Street, one of the few

just off
central London clubs ever to play pure reggae. Lloyd Coxsone had the sort
—
rock she wrote 117
of contacts most sound systems operators could only dream of, and he was
known for playing the likes of Bob Marley, Burning Spear, and Dennis
Brown long before anyone else. The respect he commanded meant that his
was one of the few sound systems that could get away with slipping a few
soul records in among the heavier rhythms at this sort of dance, using the
softer rhythms to cool down
crowd and perhaps encourage them off the
the
dance floor and toward the bar. One song
in particular
—
"Caught in a Lie"
—
by Donnie Elbert became a signature for the Coxsone Sound, and Lloydie
began talking, as he often did, about making a reggae version of the tune.
Elsewhere, Jah Sufferer Hi Fi were working a regular Friday night at the
Metro Club in Ladbroke Grove, where a Barbados-born DJ by the name of
Dennis Bovell was making an impression with the exclusive tunes that he
had recorded for the sound system.
"What happened was that at a dance, people used to say that they were
the only ones who had a copy of a tune, and then their opponent would put
the same one on and say, 'No, you ain't, I've got a copy, and what's more,
I've got four different versions as well!' No other sound [system] could do
that to me, and I could boast that if anyone ever played one of these tunes, I
would break my copy that minute and throw it away. So my crowd the —
—
people who came to my sound could be assured that they would hear
exclusive cuts. I used to have my own theme tune called 'Jah Sufferer,' and
when I'd put that on around ten o'clock, the whole audience would just go
mad!"
One night, from the audience, a young girl of around thirteen came up
and introduced herself to Denr is claiming that she could sing. Her name
was Louisa Mark. When Jamaican crooner Dennis Brown came to England
to tour, he stayed with the owner of Jah Sufferer, and it was arranged that
he try a few duets with Louisa. Everything worked out well, and when
Lloyd Coxsone approached Bovell with the idea of a reggae recording of his
soul theme, she seemed a natural choice.
Coxsone produced, Euton Jones was the drummer, Webster Johnson
played keyboards, and Dennis did the rest. The sweet, yearning vocals
wherein Louisa discovers that the girl her boyfriend has been seeing is not,
after all, his cousin —were recorded in just one take, and made the record an
instant hit.
"Suddenly," Bovell recalls, "we'd made a record that people could buy,
reggae that had been made in England but which people didn't turn their
nose up at."
—
118 sheryl garratt
At last, here was a sound that wasn't just an imitation of Jamaican styles,
one that gave women the chance to really star in reggae for the first time.
Marie Pierre became the first of these new singers to make an album
"Love Affair" on Trojan, which again involved Bovell and then there was —
15, 16 &
17, a group aged (you guessed it) fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen
and led by one Christine McNab. Their first record, "Black Skinned Boys,"
a British reggae hit, established a whole new tradition of girl groups.
Encouraged by the success of this new English reggae, Bovell and his
group Matumbi finally decided to release "After Tonight," a song that had
gone down well on the band's constant tours of the country's reggae clubs.
The time was right, and the single stayed at the top of the Black Echoes
charts for nearly eleven weeks, but Dennis wasn't around to enjoy it: just
days after the record was released, he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to
three years in prison.
The charge dated back to an incident at the Carib Club in West London
nine months before, in '74, at a dance where Bovell was the DJ. The police
had raided the club, a fight had ensued, and he was accused of inciting the
crowd to attack from the microphone, a situation later mirrored in the film
Babylon for which Bovell wrote part of the soundtrack.
It took six months for the appeal to come up and for Dennis to be
acquitted and released without apology or compensation. In the meantime,
he spent his time in Wormwood Scrubs composing new songs, imagining
the chords because the authorities wouldn't allow him a guitar
— "They said
I might hang myself with the strings!"
Back in the world outside, the records were still selling well and Dennis
became the engineer at Eve, a tiny eight-track studio in Brockley, South
London, owned by Dennis Harris.
Harris himself is a curious figure, a grocer turned landlord who had sold
up his property and decided to enter the music business. After running a
profitable line in trips abroad, taking a sound system and a coachload of
fans to places like Brussels for a weekend, he moved into records and scored
an almost immediate hit with "Hurts So Good," sung by Susan Cadogan
and produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry. It was a success in the mainstream
pop as well as the reggae charts in '75.
Eve was run by Bovell and Steve Wadey (writer of the hit tune "Black Is
homemade tape machines that often broke and had

Black"), and in spite of
to bewound back by hand, it quickly built up a reputation. "This was '76,
and we'd make like an album a month!" laughs Bovell. "Every Sunday after
'Reggae Time' on the radio, we'd have a talent competition at this place
we used to have thousands of kids, and we'd audition them. Really seri-
rock she wrote 119
ously, right,we'd say, 'Yes, you can sing. You can't hop it!' No bullshit- —
ting, we were really hard. Why kid someone around?"
Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice, who had recently made an album with
Bovell, describes him as a man who doesn't pamper: "Usually producers
really indulge you in the studio, it goes with the job. But when I say some-
thing like 'Absolutely superlative take, Dennis, I don't think I could equal
do it again, Collins!' "
that one,' he just goes, 'Fucking shit,
From these Sunday auditions came Karen, Carol, and Pauline, collec-
tively known as Brown Sugar, and through them indirectly the term — —
Lovers Rock. Harris had a habit of inventing new labels if a record didn't —
sell, Bovell claims, he would scrap the label along with it "He used to —
make a new label every day, he was crazy about it!" Perhaps, but they were
syrupy love songs sung by women to a reggae beat,
at the start of a cycle of
and soon a good part of the Echoes reggae chart would be taken up with
singers and groups who often disappeared after their one hit tune, usually
covers of popular soul ballads. There were a lot of a little money men with
or know-how dreaming of Berry Gordy, and even more young women with
a voice and a memory of Diana Ross. The records were selling, there had
been occasional forays into the pop charts, and things were looking hope-
ful.
When John Kapaiye —now the guitarist in Bovell's Dub Band —came up
with a catchy song called "I'm in Love with a Dreadlocks," and the audi-
tions came up with the charismatic Brown Sugar, Harris decided that this
could be The One and set about naming a new label, giving a final list of
suggestions to his engineer. True to form, Bovell rejected them all until he
came to one which he recalls was illustrated by a little red heart with an
arrow running through it. "it was dead stupid! It looked like a twelve-year-
old had drawn it, and it was called Lovers Rock. And I went, 'Yes, great
title!' So he pressed it up, and we were on the road. After that we put
everything on the Lovers Rock label."
"I'm Love with a Dreadlocks" is played by many now more for its
in
brilliant dub mix than for the vocals, but the label stuck, and the genre at
last had a name of its own.
Janet Kay had always wanted to sing, and along with a friend, she even
auditioned for the children's TV spot Junior Showtime in her preteens,
wearing, she recalls with a cringe, a purple flared trouser suit. They never
called back, "but I convinced myself it was because we'd moved house and
they couldn't contact me." Janet continued listening to soul, singing along
12 O sheryl garratt
to the records, sure she had a voice, and it was she who eventually sang one
of the biggest Lovers hits.
One night Dennis Bovell, who was working on some

frustrating and
meandering sessions with JA session drummer Sly Dunbar and his then-
partner Lloyd Parkes, asked her into the studio to sing "Silly Games," a
track he had recorded himself, playing all of the instruments. "I got her to
do this high-note thing in the studio and that was it — it was just a demo."
A few copies were put out as a prerelease single, and then it was forgotten
until a year later, when Dennis claims he was woken up by a friend saying
the track was on the radio. "She brought it in and at first I thought it was a
tape machine, but then the bloke said, 'Just in at number twenty!' So I came
to London quickly."
He says now that he knew nothing of the deal for the single that had been
struck with WEA, and Janet herself was also out of town and even more
oblivious to what was happening. Away on a package holiday in Spain, she
was stunned to get a telegram asking her to fly back for Top of the Pops. "I
thought, stuff it, this is my first time abroad, and I'm not going to finish my
holiday just for that!" But in June '79, the record got to number two, and
the papers were full of the story of the secretary from London who had
suddenly hit the big time.
For Carroll Thompson, the success of "Silly Games" was also a boost.
From her early love for Ella Fitzgerald, whose records her father collected,
she had moved through the Motown era before discovering reggae. "I grew
up hearing the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Jacksons. Then there was
Minnie Ripperton, Aretha, so many. But 'Catch a Fire' came out when I was
still at school, and it really got to me —
Bob Marley and the I-Threes. I really
started listeningand becoming aware of my roots, my culture, where I'm
coming from, and how I should be. That's still there. I love reggae music,
and that is my first, natural kind of music."
For a woman, though, apart from the magnificent I-Threes, Bob Marley's
backing trio of Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, and Judy Mowatt, there were
no great role models to follow as there had been in the American soul or
jazz tradition.
it's always been roots and the men singing about their
"In Jamaica,
cultureand Rasta," Carroll explained. "And because of that, women al-
ways had a low profile. At first it was the same in England, because you only
had Louisa Mark, Janet Kay, 15, 16 &
17, and Brown Sugar who had any
real success, and I don't think the producers really took women seriously.
They thought, Oh, they'll just get pregnant and give up, or their man will
give them a whole heap of trouble, and there's no point putting money into
rock she wrote 121
it. So they didn't really concentrate on them and give them the credit that
was due. Then after a while it changed as they realized that women weren't
want to make a career out of singing."
stupid, that they did
The usual pattern was for a song to be written, recorded by session
players such as Angus Gaye and Tony Gad from Aswad or guitarist Alan
Weekes, and only then were the singers found from either personal contacts
or from talent shows. Not all the auditions were run with quite the straight
attention to voice potential as the ones at Eve studios.
"It depends on your mentality and what you want to project — if you're
the kind of woman who wants to go through all that shit, then you go
through it. If you show them that this is your profession, and tell them that
if they want a woman to mess around with, then they should go to a club
and find one, then they'll treat you with respect. And in this business, you
have to have respect if you're a woman, otherwise you won't get far."
But autonomy was still difficult. There was the problem, first of all, of a
backing band. Many musicians were scared to be seen in public playing love
songs for girls. For women to actually play instruments themselves was still
rare. Prejudices abound: girls are too busy thinking about their looks to
really concentrate, and their presence onstage blocks the vibes from Jah.
Black Uhuru's female singer Puma Jones attributes such arguments to
over-earnest and dogmatic youth, while Lovers singer Trevor Walters has a
simple answer to anyone who may question his masculinity: "If anyone
called me soft" —he smiles sweetly— "I'd punch them in the mouth."
In 1981, Carroll Thompson gave up waiting for attitudes to change and

formed her own company, C&B, starting to write, sing, and produce her
own records."We had so much hassle to get what we wanted that we
thought we might as well do it ourselves — it started out of necessity as much
as anything else."
Her first album, Hopelessly in Love, was distributed by Carib Gems and
packaged with a photo of Carroll sitting on a car bonnet outside their office
in Harlesden. The picture was slightly fuzzy, the title Letraset over her legs
—everything about it said cheap, but it is a Lovers Rock classic which with
very little airplay has sold well over 35,000 copies.
This is the hidden face of popular music, less visible than even roots
reggae, which at least has media credibility. Every year, thousands of
records are sold without ever touching the charts, the radio, or sometimes
even the black music papers: older singers such as Ginger Williams, Owen
Grey, and Alton Ellis, who are the Caribbean MOR equivalent of, say,
122 sheryl garratt
Andy Williams or Perry Como, and the younger singers such as Mark, Kay,
Thompson, Jean Adebamba (a nurse who won several reggae polls in 1982
with her song "Paradise"), Sandra Reid, Sandra Williams, or promising
newcomer Paulette Taj ah.
At first, Carroll explains, she felt angry at her exclusion from the air-
waves, but by the time of her eponymously titled second LP in '82, she had
learned that it was business, not merit, that created hits. The album had a
glossy, expensive-looking cover designed by Neville Brody, pluggers were
employed, and Hopelessly in Love was simultaneously repackaged in a
glamour-shot sleeve.
Mainstream success was still elusive, though, and in spite of her years as a
producer, as session singer, and as a solo performer, when she joined Vir-
gin's new hope Floy Joy, many treated her as a newcomer. Reviewers of the
band's London debut at the Wag Club wrote of their surprise at her profes-
sionalism, seemingly unaware that only weeks before, she had been singing
along with Janet Kay in her own right to a packed Royal Festival Hall. For
her part, Carroll found the Wag an odd place to play, and preferred the
dates in Northern clubs to trendy London's cool.
As a result of her work with Floy Joy, Virgin has now released "The
Apple Of My Eye," a Lovers single made with the reggae/soul duo Total
Contrast and, she openly admits, not her best. And although it must grate to
be ignored until endorsed by white male rock musicians, the funky, jazzed-
up pop of Floy Joy should not be seen as a departure. The versatility of the
Lovers Rock is something most of the singers
clear, soaring style of vocals in
stress, and by the time of her second LP, Carroll was already branching out
into soul ballads and soft funk. When came out, she emphasized that
it
"even though you have to be categorized at some stage to market your

records, it's important for me to be a singer of songs, to explore different
fields."
In the Black Theatre Co-Op's live revue Party Party, Carroll, Janet Kay,
and Victor Romero Evans (himself a minor Lovers Rock star) run seam-
lessly from a Motown medley to a routine of Bob Marley's hits, through
calypso, gospel, soul duets, and their own hits, and Janet Kay reacts angrily
to any suggestion that the soft funk of her last single, "Eternally Grateful,"
could be seen as a diversion or sellout. "Soul was my first love, and I'm sick
of the term Lovers Rock. It's got so that every time a woman opens her
mouth to sing, she's stuck with that label."
She is reluctant to talk about the past and the "Silly Games" era, prefer-
ring instead to discuss her present work as an actress —she joined the BTC
rock she wrote 123
after meeting Victor at a singing session in a shop and being told that they
needed a woman who could sing for a play they were casting.
Trevor Walters, whose reggae version of Lionel Richie's "Stuck On You"
on the independent I&S label charted higher than the composer's original,
also stresses his versatility. "I don't only see myself as a reggae artist, and
there's not a lot of British artists who will sing soul —you could count them
on one hand. Our technique is soul based, it's not like the everyday reggae
singer,and us singing on top of soul is just as good as doing Lovers Rock."
Walter's early hits were on the Santic label, and he still works with their
producer Leonard Chin, one of the major Lovers Rock names, who is
respected especially for his skill with string arrangements. Eventually,
though, he would like to work with an American producer such as Quincy
Jones (a name which, along with that of Luther Vandross, is breathed with
awe by most Lovers singers). Having now been picked up by Polydor,
where, he claims, "I've never been fussed over so much in my life," and
having provided the label with another chart hit in "Never Let Her Slip
Away," it seems like Walters's dreams may be closer than most to fulfill-
ment.
For Lovers Rock never did live up to its initial promise. From Susan
Cadogan to Janet Kay, Eddie Grant to Musical Youth, the record-buying
public has shown that when exposed to more lightweight reggae, they are
often happy to make it a hit. Yet the Lovers sound only rarely broke out of
the reggae charts, and even there, it has dwindled in popularity.
The Lovers scene remains concentrated in London, Birmingham, and a
few other urban areas with large black populations. Some would say it
needed a Berry Gordy to discover all those budding Dianas and package
them for a white audience, and at first the analogy seems appropriate. When
they first started, Fredrick Waite, the father of two of Musical Youth and
the man who taught them how to play, saw Birmingham as a new Detroit,
with the Youth cast as the Jackson 5. But times have changed, there were no
charm schools, no stables of songwriters and producers, no grand plan, and
perhaps no cultural tide to catch and define. As Neil Frazer of Peckham's
Ariwa Records points out, in the eighties his alter ego the Mad Professor
can produce a dub album that will sell fairly quickly both here and in
Europe, while Lovers Rock never caught on abroad.
Lovers Rock sound systems have gradually dwindled Dennis Rowe, co- —
owner of London's hottest young sound, King Saxon Studio, claims that
they moved from Lovers Rock to more deejay-orientated music in '80 after
—
124 shcryl garratt
he had a dream that told him to do so. Since Saxon's stable of MCs devel-
oped the fast-talk style of toasting exemplified by Smiley Culture, other
sound systems have followed and a whole new English sound has begun to
emerge.
For a while, Trevor Walters explains, there was pressure: "When Lovers
started to die out at the beginning of '83, people were trying to push me into
changing with what was going on —the harder, heavier sort of music. But I
wanted to establish my own sound and technique, because that's what I feel
comfortable with. I'm not into riding wagons."

He was right, and the music has not disappeared. In some quarters, it is
finding new audiences by becoming more integrated with the smooth soul
circuit. Clubs may no longer have pure Lovers nights, but the music is still
played between soul imports, harder reggae, and even the odd Soca or dub
record.On a recent Saturday night, the Apollo Club in Willesden offered
PAs by Carrol Thompson promoting her new Virgin single, fast-style DJ
Asher Senator, roots vocalists the Wailing Souls, as well as spots from
visiting soul artists. At soul clubs where audiences would riot at the sound
of an electro single, a Lovers tune will be accepted without murmur (pro-
vided, of course, there isn't a lengthy dub mix appended), and Trevor Wal-
ters is a regular PA on soul shows.
Trevor sees the emphasis on love in his songs as a leveling factor. His
audience, he feels, is mainly women, "the sort of women who buy my
records have I think been through some sort of emotional letdown in their
life, and they can relate to my stuff. People have told me that they've heard
my record play and seen a lot of women cry. I've also been told that my
records have mended relationships sometimes I wonder, you know?"
— "that's horrible, boring"
. . .
He doesn't want to get involved in politics
but in the eighties the old ideas about romance have come in for something
of a battering. The Mills & Boon image of women who are lonely without
Him, their lives transformed when He's there, and then shattered when He
leaves, is not always accepted uncritically.
On Carroll Thompson's first album, although she was on the whole
hopelessly in love, simply in love, oh so sorry or brokenhearted, in "No,
You Don't Know" she sings about the plight of an unmarried mother who is
left waiting for her unfaithful lover:
You took me from my mother's home/To make a life for you and me/
But what have I got to showf/An empty bed and your child before me.
rock she wrote 123
As Lovers grew up, there was a trend for more assertive songs among the
besotted pleas. Last year the Wild Bunch sang a typical tale of lovelorn
victims, but gave it an added twist:
Look what it did to Cheryl, has three kids to mind/Has no one to

depend on, it shows you how man's unkind/My best friend Maxine, she
takes an overdose/Because her man was dancing with another girl too
close/But you see me, I'm tough/No man's going to hit me, I'm rough/
I'm an indestructible woman, and no man's gonna put me down.
"Indestructible Woman" used sweet voices to put a harder message

across. Sister Audrey, aka Audrey Donnegan, similarly used her clear,
Deniece Williams-style vocals to great effect on the haunting "English
Girl," an attack on English racism and its effect on the generation of blacks
who were born in this country. Her upcoming album promises a blend of
traditional Lovers with harder politics.
There is still confusion around the term, with some artists rejecting it as
derogatory, others such as the Jamaican singer Sugar Minott using it to
describe their much harder, rootsier love songs. Gregory Isaacs, for
instance, is not strictly a Lovers singer, although love is one of his major
themes, and in "Loving Pauper" he recorded one of the most erotic songs
ever: "Tell me 'bout the things that excite you, and make you tingle with the
light." Women scream at his shows; Gregory can put more sex into a groan
than Frankie & Co. could in a whole pleasure dome. He is the Marvin Gaye
of reggae.
There is similar contention around Winston Reedy, a singer from
Finsbury Park who is heavily influenced by Isaacs and presents a similar
blend of love songs and Rasta ideology on his Dim the Light LP. Featuring
Carroll Thompson and Janet Kay on backing vocals, the record was
recorded mainly at Channel 1 Studio in Kingston but mixed at Easy Street, a
small, relaxed, and friendly studio in London's East End which is a favorite
among the Lovers crowd. His vocals are held by some to be too Jamaican
influenced to have crossover appeal, yet the falsetto overdubs on his "Never
Gonna Give You Up" (later covered by Musical Youth) should leave no
doubt as to his ability to sing with soul, and now that he is signed to UB40's
Dep International label, perhaps a wider audience beckons.
Listening to these artists, and others such as Frankie Paul, you can hear
the Lovers legacy in reggae, a popular antidote to the mysticism and
126 sheryl garratt
militancy of the music in the seventies. For many young blacks born or
brought up in England, Lovers Rock was a sound that reconciled and
merged the American soul and Jamaican reggae they listened and danced to
with their own voices and style. For women especially, it offered an
unprecedented chance to make themselves heard.
Lovers has moved out of Stoke Newington, Harlesden, and Handsworth
and into the mainstream, so turn down the lights and relax.
Deborah Frost, "White Noise: How
Heavy Metal Rules/'
The Village Voice, June 18, 1983.
When Tipper Gore and the Parents' Music Resource Center

engineered congressional hearings about rock 'n' roll lyrics in
1985, they included a Deborah Frost article in their testimony
about satanism and perversion. Armed with a musician's
understanding of technique and a lethal wit, Frost has been at
the forefront of music criticism since the late seventies. Her
sympathetic knowledge of metal, a genre many critics scoff at,
produced this Village Voice cover story in 1985, wherein Frost
braves the big hair and finds the big money in heavy metal
clubs, and ventures inside the minds of Motley Crue.
JLt's Friday night at L'Amour, Rock Capital of Brooklyn (well, that's

what it says on the awning). The smell is smoke and damp black lipstick
—
and black leather. God and maybe the fire marshal knows how many —
bodies are packed shag to shag, Bud to Bud, in front of the oversized video
screen and overworked PA. Fists jump, jab, and pump as the crowd screams
the catchphrases to songs you probably won't hear on contemporary hit
radio: "you can't stop it, you just can't stop it, you can't stop rock V roll!
PLAY DIRTY! BALLS TO THE WALL! SHOUT AT THE DEVIL! l'M AN ANIMAL. I FUCK LIKE A
BEAST! HEAVY METAL, HEAVY DAYS!"
Judging by the photo buttons, pins, and cloth logo patches splattered
128 deborah frost
liberally across sleeves and bosoms, just about everybody here loves Ozzy
Osbourne, Van Halen, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Motley Criie. Also popu-
lar are chains, dog collars, and the latest in welcome-to-my-nightmare gear
—spiked gauntlets whose only purpose is to give a nice whaap to anyone
who inadvertently gets too close.
Onstage, the band's got problems. Then again, offstage, this band has
problems. Its name is Saxon, and the resemblance to the fictional Spinal Tap
is not entirely coincidental. Spinal Tap's creators could hardly have imag-
ined that the balding, inept bunch they parodied so perfectly would have
become a commercial prospect. Halfway through Saxon's first song, just as
the zucchini-shaped bulge in frontman Biff Byford's white tights begins to
"The Power and the Glory" becomes "The Power Failure"
wilt noticeably,
and L'Amour, Rock Capital of Brooklyn, is plunged into darkness. "Oh,
this is nothing," says Saxon's publicist. "In San Francisco, they blew out
two city blocks!"
The technical difficulties are eventually conquered, enabling any inter-
ested person to discover that the solos sound the same whether the guitar
player is using his fingers or bouncing the instrument off his head. There is
also an endless drum solo, a couple of feeble swipes at the cymbals with
flaming drumsticks, fireworks, and between-song patter during which
Byford addresses the audience as "you fuckers" and "you rabble" and
raises such weighty subjects as big tits.
The crowd reaction might be summed up by the exuberant whoop of one

boy. "Jesus, I'm psyched!" he shouts, as he and his buddies head out after
the last encore, unzip their flies, and take long leaks outside the door.
"It is now 1976," mourned Lester Bangs in The Rolling Stone Illustrated
History of Rock & Roll, "and heavy metal seems already to belong to
history."
It is now 1985, and heavy metal is bigger and more profitable than ever.
Despite the predictions of critics, trendsetters, and parents everywhere,
heavy metal refused to roll over and die. —
Around the world in London,
Paris, L.A., Brooklyn — it's alive! And it's still rock's crudest, grossest ex-
treme. Which, of course, has just about everything to do with its appeal.
But no matter whether it's mass appeal (like Van Halen) or limited appeal
(like Mercyful Fate, Exciter), what distinguishes new metal from old metal
(like Led Zeppelin) is its debt to punk. True, punk failed to reach a mass
audience, but thanks to its influence new metal is faster and shorter and
played with more conviction than old. To paraphrase Def Leppard's Joe
rock she wrote 129
Elliot, punk failed not only because it was heavy metal with nonsoloing
guitarists, but because it was heavy metal without heavy sex. Although
other ever-popular topics for metal rumination are power, death, revenge,
and madness, most male teenagers — metal's prime audience
still are not —
particularly interested in any product that does not offer the promise of
getting laid, or at least clues of to how to go about it.
One of the oddities of heavy metal is how many bands dress up in

women's clothes — in high heels, fishnet, heavy makeup, and dyed long hair
—to deliver their abuse.What's even odder is the number of girls who line
up to take it. Ten years ago, females were scarce at most heavy metal shows.
Now, even the most stereotypically "macho" bands like Judas Priest are — —
drawing more sexually integrated crowds. And though metal has yet to
produce a major female star, the few women in the genre Lita Ford, Rock —
Goddess, Girlschool —are accepted as a matter of fact, something that
would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when women with greater gifts
(Birtha) faced far more audience hostility.
"Heavy metal is a very necessary kind of music in terms of emotional
needs for a certain group," says Motley Criie/Twisted Sister producer Tom
Werman, an MBA from Columbia who sold soap for Procter & Gamble
before becoming an A&R man and producer whose acts have sold a total of
100 million records.
Not only have the musical alternatives to metal become more mecha-
nized, they've become more respectable. Rock has moved more and more
into the mainstream, turning into TV soundtracks and advertising jingles.
Perhaps that's why what heavy metal brings back to rock 'n' roll now has
never seemed so sorely missed or so desperately needed — and that is: hot
blood.
Heavy metal is still hard, fast, deep, dark, and dirty. The lyrics of some of
the most successful heavy acts — Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden, for in-
stance —may be largely unintelligible, buried in a murky mix. But along

with the horror movie props, salutes, Satanic symbolism, they give the fan
the sense of belonging to a secret society, complete with codes and initiation
rites — all for the price of a concert ticket.

Heavy metal bands invariably face the dilemma of cleaning up their acts
and their sound to become more accessible, which may cost them their
original cults. Some manage to walk the tightrope between commercial
success and "selling out" gracefully. Eddie Van Halen (the heavy guitar hero
of the generation) helped Michael Jackson beat it to good clean crossover
superstardom. But a Van Halen show, unlike the Jacksons' Victory tour, is
still not a family picnic. And you probably won't find the Social Register
13 O deborah frost
groupies, who've helped turn the Stones into international embarrassments,

hanging out in Ozzy's or Motorhead's dressing room. And there're going to
have to be several changes of the guard before Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx is
invited to tea in the Rose Garden.

"A kid puts on a Judas Priest or an Iron Maiden or a Motorhead shirt
and it makes a statement," says Cliff Burnstein, who used to manage AC/
DC and now handles Def Leppard, Armoured Saint, Dokken, and Metal-
lica. "Hall and Oates don't make a statement."
So what statement is the kid making? He's telling society where he stands
—outside of it. He's telling the adult world to fuck off.
Whatever heavy metal means to the kids who buy it today, it means
something else to the men who sell it. Even if heavy metal never received
much respect from critics or anyone else, it's been a staple of the record
industry since the dawn of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Throughout
the seventies, for example, Deep Purple was Warner Bros.' best selling band
—a fact that convinced Bill Aucoin to quit his day job in 1973 to manage
Kiss, then considered a joke on the Max's/Mercer circuit ruled by the New
York Dolls. Despite ups, downs, and changes of eyeliner, Kiss subsequently
sold more than 50 million records and set the precedent for current bands
like Twisted Sister and Motley Crue, not only in makeup but, perhaps more
important, in merchandising. And well into the eighties, long after the
group's actual demise, Led Zeppelin —and eventually anything that
sounded remotely like them (i.e., —
AC/DC) not only continued to sell
records but were constantly in demand on radio request lines.

As Jerry Jaffe, vice-president of A&R at Phonogram, explains, heavy
metal fans remain more loyal than any other record buyers. "This is the
only genre," he says, "with big catalogue between albums. You don't see
that in pop acts. With pop acts, when the life of a particular Linda Ronstadt
album is over, it drops to nothing. And then the next album comes out and
starts selling again. But the catalogue on hard rock is phenomenal. We were
selling about 10,000 albums a week of Blackout by the Scorpions even
when it was four years old."
That loyalty comes from a band's persistent contact with its audience.
The Scorpions, for instance, have been touring steadily since 1978, when
they debuted at the bottom of a Ted Nugent/Aerosmith bill. They were
following the traditional route for breaking heavy metal bands. The idea
was to keep them on the road, building their followings until they had the
rock she wrote 131
reputation or the hit record that would turn them into headliners and/or
stars.
What accelerated and revolutionized the process was MTV. Without it,
it's boom might have happened any-

possible that the current heavy metal
way, but it probably wouldn't have been so popular or so lucrative. "A lot
of people," says Tom Werman, "were introduced to heavy metal who didn't
really know about it before."
Cliff Burnstein points to a Forbes market research study that directly

connects the surge of MTV watching and record sales with the bottoming
out of the video game business. Burnsteinfeels that heavy metal made such
an impression on video because "these groups, their raison d'etre almost, is

to play live. On the videos, they have some excitement."
—
Def Leppard created enough excitement thanks to several hit singles
and a somewhat softer, more melodic approach to sell more than six —
million copies of their third album, Pyromania. Although it couldn't com-
pete with Michael Jackson's 40 million Thrillers (what could?), it was the
second largest selling album of 1983. As a result, the band's earlier albums
began selling briskly too. Quiet Riot's 1984 debut LP sold 4.5 million
copies. No surprise that record executives have been more impressed by
Quiet Riot than anyone debut cost only $30,000 to make. Al-
else: their
though most industry spokespeople quickly point out that the cost of the
average heavy metal record is closer to $125,000 (which usually includes a
hefty percentage to an experienced producer and engineer to maintain order
in the studio and make the product hit-tight), the potential profit margin is
still great.
MTV had another, perhaps more disturbing, effect. "I think the androgy-
nous nature of so many of the 'new music' acts forced a polarization of
sexuality that was even more graphically brought into focus by the rise of
MTV," explains Jerry Jaffe. "So basically you had a much more macho
image present in the music. Van Halen is the ultimate fantasy for all these
guys. Don't forget, most of this genre of music —the way that it is pro-
grammed for radio and MTV, you have to understand, is the lowest com-
mon denominator entertainment. It's bread and circuses for the common
people. Record companies are trying to make money. In the same way that
Porky's made money, a record company can make money on Motley
Criie."
HELLO BOSTON? DO YOU MOTHERFUCKERS LIKE TO

DRINK ALCOHOL? DO YOU MOTHERFUCKERS LIKE TO EAT
PUSSY? DO YOU KNOW WHY OUR FUCKIN' HEARTS ARE
132 deborah frost
BROKEN TONIGHT, BOSTON? BECAUSE WE CANT EAT ALL

THAT BOSTON PUSSY TONIGHT HELLO BOSTON! DO YOU
MOTHERFUCKERS LIKE TO DRINK ALCOHOL? DO YOU
MOTHERFUCKERS LIKE TO EAT PUSSY? HELLO BOSTON!
DO YOU MOTHERFU . . .
It's Tuesday maybe, but it's not Boston. It's somewhere in the flashfire
warning area way above Malibu, where a tape of a Motley Crue show has
just blown out the monitor system of a rustic studio tucked into the dry
brush up in the hills. The three-fourths of Motley Crue present are not
really interested in mixing a performance tape for an upcoming live
broadcast. That's partly because the tape exposes the bum notes and painful
realities you don't hear on their brilliantly produced second album, Shout at
the Devil, or see in their impeccably directed videos, where they're draped
in $20,000 worth of studded leather costumes, several layers of elaborate
makeup, and hordes of hired women.
Bass player Nikki Sixx's day began at the Hyatt on Sunset with an oath
never to drink again, an Alka-Seltzer, and a shot of Jack Daniel's. He keeps
the Jack in his black 1984 Stingray along with a hairbrush and a giant
economy-size can of Flex Net.
Nikki and drummer Tommy Lee say they always like to keep their hair
looking cool and their Corvettes washed so they can get laid. Like last night.
They weren't actually planning to stay at the Hyatt, that's just the way
things turned out. Back in the old days, it used to be nicknamed the Riot
House and lots of bands (who liked to do the same shit the Criie likes to do
now) used to stay there. But these days, most rock 'n' rollers stay at the
Marquis down farther on Sunset, where no one'd blink if they saw Nikki
like he was last night on the little couch in front of the elevator on their
manager's floor sorta like a dead cockroach, with his feet up in the air and
Tommy yelling, "C'mon man, we're never gonna get laid if you keep lying
there!"
But oh that was nothing compared to the time (where was it?) when
guitarist Mick Mars got arrested for indecent exposure, but it was really a
case of mistaken identity 'cause it was Tommy who was running down the
hall in his party pants —they're sorta like a leather G-string. He has 'em in
leopard too. Only the senile security guard, the guy was like seventy years
old, man, just saw bare cheeks and Revlon Blue/Black hair and went into
the men's room on the floor, and there was Mick, just talkin' to a chick,
man. And the next thing Mick knew he was in handcuffs, going to spend the
rock she wrote 133
night in jail. He got bailed out, the hotel apologized, and all charges were
dropped. The thing was mishandled terribly, man.
But everyone in this band's been in jail a million times. It's a joke. Like
the story that got out about Vince beating up a girl on Halloween? That was
no girl, that was Tommy, man! Who remembers what it was about? You get
a little liquor in you and you throw a few punches and Tommy broke
Vince's nose. And then the cops came and beat up Vince so bad, the faggots
in the cell wouldn't even look at him.
Okay, so, yeah, well, last night . . . Ever since he rolled some chick's
240Z off the Ventura Freeway and practically killed himself (but so what?
The band would've been HUGE), his little sister Athena, her old boyfriend,
and the chick who was stupid enough to let him drive her car in the first
place, Tommy's gotten a little wiser about driving when he's twisted. Even if
Traffic School and AA, like they made him go to, is a joke, man!
Anyway, lots of times Tommy just goes back to Nikki's place in

Coldwater Canyon and bones some chick on the living room floor. But last
night when their manager saw the condition they were in when they came
back from the Seventh Veil, or maybe it was the Bodyshop, with a couple of
chicks who work there see, well, the exact chain of events is a little
. . .
hard to remember. That's what happens when you get a coupla mudslides
in you. If you don't know what they are, maybe that's 'cause in New York
they're called screaming orgasms. They're Kahlua and rum and vodka and
who knows what else but after maybe two of 'em, you start seeing God.
Anyway, they were drinking mudslides at the Hyatt and then when they
started biting people, their manager took away the keys to their 'vettes and
made them stay in the hotel.
Biting? Oh, that's just a little roll, a new hot tip they got into on the road
after they got tired of BB guns which they got into after whatever else they
were doing in the way of trashing rooms got kinda old. You know what
happens when you shoot up a motel room with BBs, don't you? The
problem isn't just replacing the mirrors and all the stuff from room service
that you used for target practice, it's that all those little pellets get really
stuck in the walls and you have to replace the wallpaper and that could be
at least $3,000 you could really spend a lot better on lights or something
that's gonna make the '85 show fuckin' incredible, man.
Vince says all of the touring in the past year has definitely made them way
more professional. Instead of trashing a motel wall (well, sometimes they
don't always give you connecting rooms so you just have to make them),
now they just rip up somethin'. Or bite somebody. But don't worry. They
only bite people they like.
134 deborah frost
Last night that included the waitress and their manager. He's used to it,
even if he is black and blue. He's gone to emergency rooms so often now for
tetanus shots, it's gotten to be as ordinary as brushing his teeth. Yeah, you
have to get a tetanus shot if the skin gets broken. Human bites are worse
than an animal's because of the bacteria in the saliva. Their road manager's
read up all about it. He sort of had to. Man — in where was it? Evansville or
someplace — it was really wild. They pulled into the hospital with so many
emergencies, the fuckin' attendants didn't know who to treat first. There
was one rash, a couple of claps, and human bites. So they just looked at this
truckload and said, okay, human bites, right this way.

The clap? Oh, that was, uh, the road crew. They're all sex gods too. In
fact, they try out the girls before they ever get to the band. This band has a
really efficient road manager, he really codes the backstage passes well. See,
the girls that have a patch with a slash on it, they've already been with the
road crew to get that pass. If it's a slash or PSP, preshow pussy, that means
she got that pass before the show and the band knows to stay away from
her. What would you have to Oh, probably perform
do to get that pass?
some spectacular feat in the back of the bus. Like taking on three fourths of
the road crew. If one guy gets a girl, he's not gonna give her a pass. He's
gonna have him and his buddy back there bring on the lighting guys. Just
like everyone gets a shot at it. You find these girls that will do just anything
to get backstage. They're troupers, man. You've never seen some girls take
so much. These girls'll do anything, man. Ask 'em to bark, they'll bark.
Where do you find them? You can find them just about anywhere. Arf!
What was really funny was the way every girl who got on the bus had to
leave a little something behind. By the end of the tour, the bus was entirely
decorated with underwear. But they had to throw it all away somewhere
before L.A. —the whole bus fuckin' reeked.
What Nikki would rather be doing right now is get into some serious
what he calls it. Instead, he's waiting for Vince to record over
flesh, that's
the worst mistakes on songs Nikki's so sick of, he says he wishes he'd never
written them, like "Merry Go Round." That's about a mental institution.
Nikki says he has a half sister who's spent her life in one, but that's not why
he's sick of the song. It's just he's learned something about hooks since he
wrote it, and he realizes now it doesn't have too many.
There are these two chicks who work at one of the places on the Strip,
and maybe after they're finished dancing, he and Tommy can persuade them
to go back to Nikki's or someplace. Tommy says he'd spend his last dollar
(Nikki's down to $21.40 himself; his new instant teller card hasn't helped
his cash flow any) to pay those girls to make love to one another. After you
rock she wrote 133
get off the road, doin' shows every night and shit, it's just nice to be able to
sit back and have someone else entertain you for a change.
Nikki leafs through Billboard. He's not too interested in where Shout at
the Devil is on the charts. Or album, Too Fast for Love, which
their first
they recorded on their own, before connecting with a real producer and a
realmanager whose family's oil wells helped pay for the $20,000 costumes,
fireworks, and photos that all helped contribute to the mystique and
popularity of a band with Kiss-like makeup, a Blue Oyster Cultish logo, and
whose singer and guitarist sounded a lot like Aerosmith's bands which —
previously captured the imaginations and allowances of fans the same age
as Motley Criie's.
Nikki turns the page to an ad for Tina Turner, studies it, and for a
moment seems lost, deep in thought.
"I've never fucked a black chick," he says.
It's Thursday Marquee in London. The smell is smoke and pints

at the
sloshed on the floor.
Oooh, there's Hanoi Rocks! And Girlschool with their
new guitar player from Australia! Rock Goddess with their dad the
manager, an ex-Teddy boy in drainpipe trousers who taught them how to
play! Neil from Whitesnake! And a guy who's been jamming with Jimmy
Page! That's the audience.
Lita Ford is onstage. She's made a tremendous improvement since her
first album. At least she's gotten rid of a costume that looked like it was
pieced together from raids on Cher and Big Bird. Now she's wearing the
same black Lita Ford T-shirt anyone can buy out front by the
bar. Her bass
player has a swastika Magic Markered on his arm. He sometimes likes to
draw them in lipstick, too, on backstage mirrors. Yeah, Hitler's sort of
happening again. Ozzy Osbourne, the godfather of heavy metal, has been
going onstage with a little mustache and such a great jodhpur-and-boots
getup, you'd almost think it was the Fuhrer himself.
Back at the Marquee, there's only one black person in the crowd. He's
got close-cropped hair, long pointed sideburns, and a dirty sports jacket. He
is rocking back and forth, back and forth, bending double to his knees,
locked in spasms of silent laughter, relishing some cosmic joke to which
only he knows
the punch line. Lita kicks into a selection of songs from her
recent album: "Lady Killer," "Dressed to Kill," "Hit and Run." Inspired,
perhaps, he reaches inside his jacket and starts to pull out something dull,
metallic. Later the bouncers are full of assurances that it was only a starter's
pistol.
4
136 deborah frost
.**,
Jerry jaffe sees heavy metal

as "just another form
of the pop music
rnachme that ,s here with us
right now. It doesn't
hose old bubb.egum acts. Except
mean more or t „ Is
the image is a little more
because ,t can be exploded a
little easier through
striking /be M
videos. But basLhy h
lust another phase in the Y
record industry."
B
usually nTT'
usuTaJlv quite long,
h ° WeVer '
L
Sa y S the lo ^ny
of a heavy metal band
is
as much
as twelve to fifteen
years. He cites Rusn
originally a power trio
who released their first record independ
ntly and
have developed a progressive
individual brand of "art
metal" whose
audience ,s faithful enough to 20,000 seaters
Garden regardless of the success
fill
of a particular album
like Mad on Joua ^
A new band gets only a couple of shots,
according to Jaffe. "You don't
have to go so much by airplay. You can see how mucn they're
what improving in
a promoter will pay for
bottom fine If a new
them and the sales, because that
act sells 30,000 albums,
tea lly Z t e
p.ck up the option, and the
I
7 ?*!° °' WW
° Uld be $25 °' 000 in the hofc.
M then audience, I might
the ve doubled
they
But because I e
go for a third album "
But because, as Jaffe suggests,
this is the only genre
where a band can
a practice from preslump days-tour

support. It's necessary,
despite the high ticket prices because
(Iron Maiden, for example, charged 17
50
J^o*;™ 'i
pec,al guests (i e ° pening acts> »*«*«
^
-
"
r aCC ° rdmg
much $7 500
as $7,500. "A ^^
An opening
act without a big record
*"?'" make as » ™*
yet has to settle-
with a very benevolent "
headliner— for $1,500
AsCM Bit
eXPen
As Chff Burns em explains, I T
°f "™ 8 ^
be ° ffSet by merch
heavy metal bands sell far more
advances. -d-
merchandise (in
ome ca ses, like Motorhead's, they
may sellmore T-sh.rts than records"
than such successful pop acts
as Hall and Oates, for example, who've had
more Top 40 hits than JUS t about
all of the heavy metal
bands put together
Bands no onger assume any
risk for T-sh.rts,
bandanas, party hats, and
assorted favors kids may not go
Merchandising was one an
for.
afterthought, often turned out
by the people who did Lorn
record companies. Now there
work fo
are at least three
major firms-Brockum,
G eat Southern and Wmterland-actively
competing for the rights to
manufacture and sell rock merchandise.
Both the companies and the band!
are reluctant to disclose
their merchandise revenues-and
unlike the re ord
rock she wrote 137
business, which has the RIAA to certify sales, there's no organization that
monitors which T-shirts go gold or platinum. Many have.
Jaffe says some bands are getting as much as $1 million advances for
T-shirts and assorted merchandise. Other sources say the figure, for an
established heavy metal band, is $250,000. A new band without strong
hype or a strong gimmick may get $25,000. The successful heavy metal
band will sell a T-shirt (or football jersey) for $10 to $14 to at least fifty
percent of the audience. The merchandising companies usually travel with
their own trucks and crews, arrange for licenses and sales tax, and make
their own deals with the hall. In some cases, halls may take as much as forty
percent, but if the band has a good deal with the merchandiser, the hall's
percentage doesn't affect their cut. Many may make fifty
bands, says Jaffe,
percent of their income from merchandise. Not unusual was one band,
without a current record out, who returned home from a thirty-three-date
tour in medium-sized (average audience under 10,000) halls with $350,000
in T-shirt and novelty proceeds.
It's sometime in California. After a while the days all run together and
don't make too much difference. Motley Criie are attempting to practice in
a rehearsal room in Hollywood.
Oh, I want to bone Trace right now, says Mick Mars to one of the
roadies, clenching his fists and making a little sort of forward thrust as if he
really means it. He is wearing red women's spindly high-heeled boots and
black eyeliner, without which he looks a lot like Don Rickles in a Morticia
Addams wig. There is no trace of any Trace, but there are two girls the
roadies found hanging around the parking lot when they went out for a
couple of six-packs. They work at an Arby's across the way, which is why
the road manager insists they must be sixteen, even though they look at
least two years younger. One has braces on her teeth. Both giggle a lot.
Everybody knows you have to be sixteen to work at Arby's, that's what the
road manager says. These guys have heads on their shoulders, you know.
Even on the road they don't go around pulling fourteen-year-old chicks. We
have some very strict rules about that. What if some cop came back to the
bus and took a look at what was going on?
And there are other distractions —a box of bondage boots and T-shirts
from Detroit. Some chick sent them to the New York office. Remember Red
from Detroit?
Yeah, Red. Didn't Vince bone her? I only boned her 'cause she was
buggin' me, then she wouldn't leave, says Vince.
138 deborah frost
Lead singer Vince Neil doesn't stick around too long himself. Rehearsals
take too much out Anyway, this is supposed to be a "creative
of his voice.
rehearsal" to work out new material. The only thing that really gets worked
out is a cover of the old Mountain hit "Mississippi Queen." They go
through two other songs. "Raise Your Hand to Rock" sounds like a cross
between BTO's "Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" (melody) and "Down in the
Valley, Valley So Low" (guitar part), but maybe it'll come together when
their producers get hold of it. Nikki is working on something else, the gist of
which is that even presidents and heads of state can be lonely.
—
For maybe ten minutes, Nikki whose mother has been married five or
six times, he forgets, which is why he left home at thirteen in the first place,
he says — isn't so lonely. He invites the little girl with braces to go into the
storage closet. Meanwhile, Tommy entertains the studio by bending over
and letting it all hang out of his party pantless gray sweat shorts.
When Nikki comes out of the closet, he takes a stroll over to the
soundstage around the corner where WASP, the latest heavies from L.A.,
are doing a video for their metal underground hit "(Animal) Fuck Like a
Beast." Only on one sound track they are miming vigorously to, it's
"(Animal) Bleep like a Beast."
The three front guys in WASP look like they're about seven feet tall, even
without their platform stilts. Leather shorts, latex pants, and fashion
accessories like over-the-shoulder exhaust pipes and beneath-the-crotch
rotary blades add to the effect. Skulls and torches glow and burn on the
walls behind them.
"Smoke it up! Smoke it up!" shouts one director. Gray, billowing smoke
clouds offer a sneak preview of hell as a cameraman on a crane moves in on
the lead creature's grimace.
"You know what's wrong with those guys?" asks Nikki, walking off the
soundstage shaking his Revlon Blue/Black head sadly. "They have no sense
of humor."
On December 8, 1972 Pantera driven by Motley Criie's lead

6:38 p.m., a
singer Vince Neil skidded into a lane of oncoming traffic in Redondo Beach,
hitting a Volkswagen containing a twenty-year-old man and an eighteen-
year-old woman. Both suffered severe injuries. Neil's passenger, Hanoi

Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley, was pronounced dead en route to the
hospital. Neil, who was not hurt in the accident, was arrested on charges of
drunken driving and vehicular homicide. He is currently free on $2,500
bail.
Leslie Berman, "On the Trail of the
BluejS/' High Fidelity, August 1988.
The resurgent popularity of blues in the late eighties revived old
questions about racism in the music's audience and the
authenticity of players. When Leslie Berman, a veteran critic of
various folk forms, ventured to the music's source in the
Mississippi Delta, she found the answers as unsettling as ever.
In her report for High Fidelity, she determined that playing a
guitar made out of the plank of a shack lived in by Muddy
Waters does not a bluesman make.
larksdale, miss., april 21: Late afternoon and the ten-buck catfish
fry is in full swing at the Municipal Auditorium. City fathers sporting "Big
Frog in a Little Pond" buttons circulate among black laborers, white society
matrons and merchants, and assorted kids, all seated at banquet tables
facing the crepe-festooned stage. The house lights go down as the constabu-
lary moves into formation, though only the tourists of the national press
make any effort to surge forward when three short men in undertaker's
black are introduced. Two sport familiar porkpie hats and shades, their
long, wispy, blond-red beards naming them before the emcee does: ZZ! ZZ!
ZZ Top!! The trio trots past amplifiers and drum kit to a high podium, Billy
Gibbons's hand clutching the neck of a cream-colored electric guitar with a
dark Mississippi River squiggle running down its fretboard and across the
body. The Muddy-Wood Guitar! A few words about kicking off a $1 mil-
140 leslie berman
lion fund-raising effort for the Delta Blues Museum (headquartered above
Clarksdale's Carnegie Public Library), handshakes all around, and the little
men wave and march offstage without playing. Is that it? The upscale part
of the crowd finishes its hush puppies and Cokes, then drifts out. Onstage,
the local band of black musician Earnest "Guitar" Roy, Jr., is in a frenzy,
tearing into its single on the Rooster Blues label, "I Wanna Know (What My
Little Girl's Been Doin')," earning vigorous applause from the remaining
diners.
Before the light goes, I drive north with Memphis photographer Pat
Rainer and Little Rock artist Randall Lyon, who interpret the scenery as we
flash by Muddy Waters's roofless, tumbledown cypress shack, which dou-
bled as a juke joint, then by the Stovall plantation where he drove tractor.
Ugly prefabs that house black plantation hands dot the roadside for what
seems like miles before we turn into the drive of the old Stovall main house
where Lyon lived one summer. A chained watchdog yelps, and a white
peacock up to perch on the crumbling splendor of the single-story
flies
antebellum mansion. The caretaker shows us ceiling-high library shelves

and period fireplace appointments, then regrets he can't attend the evening's
blues show: Tickets are too costly. Driving back to town, we pass the new
mansion where the Stovall heir entertained ZZ Top with shade and cool
drinks throughout the sleepy, dusty, Delta day.
When we get to the Cotton Exchange, the tiny club is knee to knee with
young, white customers gripping longneck beers and plastic whiskey cups,
listening to the Muddy Waters Blues Band. "Pinetop" Perkins holds forth
on the keyboard, singing Muddy's songs over Mojo Buford's wailing harp
and Louis Myers's brooding guitar. At one table down front, guitarist Jack
Johnson and harmonica player/pianist Frank Frost nod intently. Their care-
fully dressed-up companions, including most of the black faces in this room,
restrict their displays of enthusiasm to brisk, brief applause and private,
uninterpretable glances. The white kids shout, stamp, and whistle, eyes
bright over their Lacoste shirts. I wander down the street to meet Rooster
Blues' Jim O'Neal and peek at the hard-to-find records in his Stackhouse
Miss. Arts and Gifts storefront. Why this audience, I ask him? "Most of the
girls have made formal debuts at parties featuring black blues bands. Their
boyfriends have hired those bands for their frat parties. Even Muddy Waters
played them in the sixties. It's traditional." Outside the club, Warner Bros,
publicity staffers trade war stories and play music-business trivial pursuit
with rock journalists over go-cups of bourbon and water. Finally, we ride
north on Highway 61 toward Memphis. I'm feeling very blue.
rock she wrote 141
.**.
There's a buzz going on in blues circles, sparked by new acts, new audi-
ences, and a soupc,on of commercial outlay. In bars, rock gigs that used to
end with formulaic blues jams have given way to whole evenings of talented
up-and-comers versed in a variety of blues stylists. But who's really got the
blues? Not matinee idol Robert Cray, with his strict techno-picking curi-
ously devoid of the rasping slides and missteps of blues pain; not self-
congratulatory Stevie Ray Vaughan, wincing and hunching theatrically as

he sings of himself in the third person. At home in New York this spring, I
listened to the sweet, yearning strains of guitarist Bobby Radcliffe, a white
musician who's emerging as our best local bluesman. Then a rare appear-
ance by traditional bluesmen from Mississippi made me itch for the un-
adorned Delta sound. In Robert Palmer's excellent history, Deep Blues, I'd
read a strong sociopolitical definition of the form, quoted by Joe Dockery,
on whose plantation the music is "The best thing
said to have been born:
B.B. King said ... is means when a man has lost his
that the blues
woman. Which was all he had." So I went down to the Delta, to see if I
would hear blues so primal, it would prove him right.
,**<
oxford, miss., april 20: This is the town of Faulkner, home of "bow-
heads" (debutantes) as well as Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) and
its Center for the Study of Southern Culture. William Ferris, the Center's
director, secured his reputation by gathering Kenneth Goldstein's folklore

books, B.B. King's personal record collection, and several dozen cases of
materials from Living Blues magazine to form the Blues Archive. The Cen-
ter's music-related projects —a comprehensive blues bibliography; the Liv-
ing Blues and Gospel magazines and the revamped Jimmie Rodgers Memo-
rial Newsletter; innovative courses such as Robert Palmer's "The Roots of
Rock" —have raised its profile and generated several million dollars. But it
has attracted few scholars. Last year, one source says, it was shy the requi-
site number of students for the Southern Culture major, so it drafted one of
its work-study staff to flesh out the roster. Ferris is charismatic conjuring
funds and publicity. But the Center has yet to complete any sizable ventures
initiated with Ferris at the helm.
.**.
oxford, miss., april 21: Robert Palmer's classroom at Ole Miss is half- full
of glazed sophomores. From a podium, he details the continuum of blues

142 leslie berman
into rock, punctuating a stream of records with pungent observations and

anecdotes drawn from twenty-five years of playing, teaching, and writing
about music. More than a hundred kids signed up for "The Roots of Rock,"
because it sounded like an easy ace. "They were pretty freaked out when
Robert started with African instrumental music," Palmer's assistant assured
me. "And he got up to Little Richard only last week."
new Orleans, la., april 22: Tickets priced at $25 are the tip-off to the event
status of a concert/ride on the riverboat President. It's the first night of the
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, featuring white acoustic blues
guitarist John Hammond, blues legend B.B. King, and Texas blues-rocker
Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hammond strains and tenses in a sharp suit, con-
torting his face as he draws and blows harmonica counterpoints to clean-
sliding blues licks, closing his eyes as he sings. King plays a masterful,
polished set: tastes of guitar lines, careful mugs for the print photographers,
delayed vocals imitating emotions carefully held in check. When Vaughan

strides onstage, Showtime finally turns on its cameras. The set begins to
swing when guitarist Albert Collins and vocalist/keyboardist Katie Webster

join him. Even King reappears for the jam, his solos traded with Collins
sounding more animated than those he paced through earlier. Though

Vaughan's act is the evening's least inspirational, it is his set that draws the
audience to its feet.
new Orleans, la., april 24: On a big stage at the Jazz and Heritage Festi-
val, Albert Collins's hot band builds in intensity until it completely eradi-
cates my distress from the night before last. Most of the group members are
white, playing to an appreciative, mixed crowd; under Collins's influence,

they all pump and flutter wildly. The exuberant female guitarist is a real
bonus. Over in the Lagniappe tent, seventy-year-old Moses Rascoe, a recent

acoustic blues find, plays for a smaller audience. His large hands make
deliberate patterns —
on the fretboard sounds worked out during years of
playing what he'd learned from records and instruction books. In the quiet,
under the tent, Rascoe's deference is charming. Later that night, he plays
Storyville, a barnlike French Quarter tourist bar better suited to the brassy
electric bands that open for and follow him. Rascoe's gentle art isn't entirely
lost on the sparse crowd, but they expected loud, electric blues. In this
artificially silenced room, he is agitated.
rock she wrote 143
on the road to Eunice, la., april 26: Tagging along with Festival Tours'
behind-the-scenes look/listen into Cajun music, I find myself hearing the
best blues of the trip —on tapes made by BBC disc jockey Andy Kershaw,
another tour member, from his favorite recordings. For three days, we catch
snatches of blues in the Cajun, Cajun-country, zydeco, and swamp-pop
soundtrack to our ramble.
Memphis, tenn., april 30: In the city famous for coopting black music,
blues scholar Dr. David Evans is holding forth pessimistically on the state of
traditional blues. "There are many places that present blues here in town,"
he says, referring to the reoccupied tourist traps of Beale Street. "But they
don't hire local musicians, and they've virtually eliminated the street players
who used to congregate in W. C. Handy Park — by drowning them out with
highly amplified music from the clubs." Evans teaches at Memphis State
University, advises student fieldwork and research, and runs a small blues
label, High Water. One of the best performers he has championed is Jessie
Mae Hemphill, descended from a Senatobia, Mississippi, blues family. Ev-
ans has released several singles for Hemphill; an album is forthcoming.
Hemphill complains that she doesn't work much on Beale Street anymore.
Evans says her blues is too raw and noncommercial for the strip. That night
on Beale Street, I slip from a nea:*-empty bar featuring a cobbled-together-
by-management black combo into the lively, loud Rum Boogie, where the
white Texas blues band of Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets, with black
harmonica player and vocalist Sam Myers, holds court. It's date night, so
the audience is primarily composed of young white couples. Later, I stroll
by Handy Park, where a gray-haired guitarist sings the blues into a tinny
mike, bracketed by competing harmonica players and a drunk, dancing in
an imitation of a ballet twirl. The guitarist's share of date-night couples is
black.
Memphis, tenn., may 1: Hemphill and Evans meet me at the A&M Lounge,
a busy juke joint, to hear the Hollywood All-Stars, one of High Water's
acts. We pay at a speakeasy window, sit at card tables, and drink quarts of
Budweiser from blue-tinted glasses while the band rumbles gently through
its set. The cheesy Farfisa sound comes from an actual Farfisa. I'm en-
144 leslie bcrman
tranced. Couples dance, the room is hung with smoke, a card game pro-
gresses.
pine bluff, ark., may 2: Driving down from Memphis, we pass through
several blues-associated crossroads and mile after mile of red farmland. At
sundown, we reach the Pine Bluff Nursing Home and guitarist Ellis
"CeDell" Davis. Until Robert Palmer helped bring him to New York, where
he was recorded by the World Music Institute, Davis was known mostly on
a party circuit several hundred miles around the Mississippi. Though dis-
abled, partly by a juke joint raid in which he was trampled by escaping

patrons, Davis is a vigorous player, stroking chords and flattened notes with
a table knife. We talk about bluesmen he has known and worked with.
"Come to think of it," he muses, "they're all dead. Except me."
oxford, miss., may 3: The Blues Archive's part-time researcher is an in-

tense Swiss harmonica player, Walter Liniger. Overworked but devoted,
Liniger finds all of life analyzed and commented on by the blues. We ex-
haust ourselves discussing class, race, Southern culture, the blues. He's
right. It's all in there.
The new editor of Living Blues magazine, South African journalist and
blues enthusiast Peter Lee, is hopeful about the recapitalization of the inde-
pendent blues scene. "After all, our subscription base has expanded by
nearly twenty percent in only two issues." I ask if he hears much blues in
Oxford. "The gigs are in Clarksdale," he says, gesturing west toward the
Delta Blues Museum. We laugh together about Billy Gibbons's grand ges-
ture: Why build a guitar out of a plank from Muddy's old shack? "And did
ZZ play?" Lee asks. "Of course not," I say. I think (but don't say): They're
rich, white Texans with plenty of women. They don't have the blues.
Sue Cummings, "Spin Doctors: Jams
for a Sleepless Generation/'
L.A. Weekly, /Way 22-28, 1992.
Raves are to the nineties what outdoor music festivals were to

the seventies: tribal gatherings for cultural celebration. L.A.
Weekly music editor Sue Cummings was one of the first critics to
overcome rockist prejudices and treat rave music as an aesthetic
innovation. Here, she talks to the disc jockeys who are the
artists orchestrating today's rites.
JLt's 5:00 a.m. at the Masonic Temple in Long Beach when at the divine
command of the ultra beat, a man leaps into the bass. Sweating and com-
pletely naked, he thrusts himself beyond the black fabric of the PA speaker
cover and curls up tight inside the huge, resonating cabinet. Smiling danc-
ers, mostly oblivious, continue to bob and sway, lifting their hands en masse
toward the speaker stacks, testifying, palms touching the movement of air
in front of the heavy bass cones. The sound system still throbs at 138 beats
per minute, overlaid by the occasional hiss of a nitrous-oxide tank valve. A
smoke machine fills the room with gray dry-ice fog, cut by colored lasers
and a loop of old Western movies flickering against the walls. Upstairs,
dancehall reggae plays; off the front lobby, ambient music, and the Exotic
Drums of Linda LaSabre. On the floor of another room stand buckets of
146 sue cummings
paint, where partygoers decorate with hearts and daisies three loinclothed
men posed as statues.
Still the main attraction is maze of rhythm back in
the buzzing, vibrating
the big room. DJ, One Ron D. Core — a wiry
in a hoodedblond figure
—
sweatshirt with a mixer, a crate full of vinyl, two turntables, and some
headphones, orchestrates the rush deftly from a dim corner. Sorting
through records, or bent cueing over the tables, he rarely looks up. But he
moves mindful of the energy of the crowd, matching it, then pushing it, then
dropping down. Using smooth, fast samples and fading, a disc rarely stays
on for more than a minute. Acen's "Close Your Eyes" winds them into a
panic, and then a brittle, repeated scratch moves them to answer with
shouts. The techno pulse drives the dancers tense and hard, until some of
them hop up and down, almost pogoing. Then a house track with
levitate,
keyboards and vocals lightens the mood. "Throw your hands up! Throw
your hands up!" a vocal track rasps. The dancers, in their baggy pants,
caps, and Jive T-shirts, euphorically obey, volleying balloons across the
room.
The rave DJ's influence recalls the DJ's place in the disco craze of the
seventies, except the digital shaman moves with the rapid, aggressive flash
of a freestyle hip-hop mixmaster. Gone is the rapper, with his egotistical
boasts and angry polemics, replaced by the skillfully remixed, uplifting
female vocals of Rozalla. It's the end of February, two months before the
riots will turn L.A. streets into the realization of "Black Korea," and the
Masonic Temple has been transformed into Aphrodite's Temple, a refuge of
love with free condoms at the door, with neon-colored peace signs and
seventies smiley faces, where everybody's free to feel good.
Even the man inside the speaker has found a place to hide from his bad
trip. Later, people discover him inside the cabinet, but he will allow only
females near him. Veron, a petite woman with wire-rimmed glasses, holds
out her hand and soothes him with her thick Manchester accent, finally
coaxing him to fresh air on the street, where her friends wrap him with
borrowed clothing. The party will go on until about nine o'clock, when the
last ravers will stumble out for breakfast and a day of sleep. Sometime
during the next few weeks Savage House, the rave's producers, will settle
with Mike Shredder, the sound man, for the damage to the speaker.
do the piece, could you not use the word ravel" asks
"If you're going to
underground DJ Doc Martin with a wry smile. He's a little tired of the hype.
Half Armenian, half Spanish and black, Doc wears his hair in short
rock she wrote 147
bleached dreadlocks that droop across his eyes. Originally from San Fran-
cisco, based in Los Angeles for the past five years, the twenty-six-year-old is
such a fixture at raves that the word itself is a comma in his language, a rest
mark to be sounded only for the uninformed. At a few minutes past mid-
night Doc sits with three friends in a Formica booth
at Sanamluang Cafe on
Hollywood Boulevard. It's a Tuesday, and by this time any later in the week
he would be on his way to a job with about two hundred records in tow.
Wednesday night is Citrusonic, a regular club at the Probe; Thursday is Joy,
a similar setup at the Troubadour. Friday and Saturday's schedules vary
depending on the two to four big parties always happening on any given
weekend. Early, early Sunday morning is Flammable Liquid, his after-hours
spot, a favorite set because it runs for five hours, giving him time to stretch
out and work. Other DJs say Flammable Liquid is where Doc is at his best,
steering a moody, wee-hour ride up and down an emo-scape of organic
rhythms and deep house ambience.
Most of the mega-raves draw at least a couple of thousand young people,
average age roughly twenty, almost two thirds white, perhaps another third
Latino, and a fraction Asian and black. The youngest come for the all-ages
door policy, for a chance to cut loose from their parents. The older ones like
the change from the uptight celebrity-worship of regular nightclubs. The
raves have their own stars, who earn their status by their contributions to
the scene: sound technicians like Mike Shredder, known for delivering the
best bass; lighting experts like Mirage, who produce the most dynamic
displays; promoters, about twenty in the regular circuit, who put it all
together. These are the names you will see on fliers for an event. Four years
ago, the local scene began as a transplant of the English rave, with parties
held in one sweaty warehouse room. Lately the events have become elabo-
rate and high tech, as promoters compete. But the names that consistently
bring in the most people are those of DJs —Doc Martin, Ron D. Core, Barry
Weaver, DJ Dan, to name a few.
Unlike the promoters, who by their nature seek attention, and the drugs,
which by DJs don't spend much time in the
their nature get attention, the
media spotlight. Neither do they get much in remuneration. "To not get
paid," says Doc, "is almost a common thing." Their rewards are more
direct: the who crowd up to the turntables when a hot mix goes
admirers
off, the dancers who blow their whistles in time to a perfectly layered
sample, the friends who call to trade tips about new music, or stick around
to haul record crates at the end of the night. DJ Barry Weaver, who at thirty
now struggles like any rocker against his white middle-class parents' urging
that he get a real job, tells this story: "I have a friend who's a substitute
148 sue cummings
teacher. He called me one day and said, 'I just have to tell you something.'
At school one of the kids had doodled 'Barry Weaver' on the cover of a
book, exactly like it was the name of a rock band. Underneath my name
"
they had written 'Doc Martin.'
Barry lives in a Crenshaw-area commercial space, a storefront down the
street from the office of Urb magazine (the bible of the scene), where the
neighbors don't mind if he jams at all hours as loud as he likes. His mixer
and turntables are set up in a concrete-floored living room dominated by
several thousand records, huge steel industrial fixtures, and five-foot speak-
ers. Unlike Doc, who is known for warmer, "tribal" house grooves, Barry
leans toward hard-edged techno. Internationally the Los Angeles sound is
so identified with heavy techno that the Belgian team which produced
"James Brown Is Dead," one of the genre's biggest hits last year, named
themselves L.A. Style, a gesture intended both as homage and target mar-
keting. The record's biggest sales were in southern California.
Barry particularly likes the twelve-inch singles coming out of Detroit,
where the earliest techno records were made. Standing behind the living-
room turntables, he casually cues a few records near the top of his stack:
Meng Syndicate's "Sonar System," Robert Armani's "Magic Tricks," Phu-

ture's "Acid Tracks": "This shows where they've gone to, which is real
repetitive trance beats, with all the percussion up front, abrasive. A record
can be built around one acid noise that develops. The kind of sound, the
kind of techno that I'm playing personally, is very repetitive. Kids that are
really into it get inside of it." A slender, energetic man with WASPish good
looks, Barry's more comfortable standing over the living-room turntables,
sorting through crates of records, than sitting on his couch, where he fid-
gets.
"On a record like 'Acid Tracks,' whatever change happens is mostly

through my manipulation. Something like this I would never play out
through the whole thing, I would be bringing in other things in order to
bring about the change."
[Roll Circa '92 footage]
Voice-over of Channel 7's Lynda Moore: Saturday night, and

do you know where your kids are? It's possible they are among
the tens of thousands of southern California kids being seduced
rock she wrote 149
by the psychedelic and often illegal party scene of the under-

ground, called raves.
[Dub in music: L.A. Style's "James Brown Is Dead"]
Continue voice-over: They're wild, midnight-to-dawn dance

partieswhere four-, five-, six thousand kids cram into dilapi-
dated warehouses. There speakers, like altars of music, are wor-
shiped by kids in a cultlike fashion. And, where the high-tech
trip is either traveled sober, or driven by the raves' favorite drug,
the hallucinatory Ecstasy, and the potent gas nitrous oxide. One
party balloon, five bucks. One of the cheapest kinds of highs.
[Sound of balloon being filled]
[Shot of pickup truck]
Nitrous was what killed three kids from the Valley last month.
According had planned to sell it at an under-
to police, they
ground rave the next night. But a tank inside the truck's cabin
was left open, the windows rolled up, and all three fell into a
deadly sleep. And found in the back of the truck, party fliers
with the clandestine phone numbers. That is how we infiltrated
the raves' network.
The phone call first connects ravers with that night's party
which often begins at one selected record store.
instructions,
Like a scavenger hunt, kids have to go to multiple locations
before they even can get to the party. Always moving keeps them
and promoters always one step ahead of the law.
—Channel 7 News, April 20
The Wednesday after the riots, Hollywood's Citrusonic fills up before

midnight. "I thought it would be crowded," Barry says later. After the
weekend curfews forced cancelation of all the raves except one in Palm
Springs, people line up along Highland Avenue waiting to get into the
Probe, hoping to work off a little pent-up anxiety to Doc Martin and Barry
Weaver's mixes.
Because their styles are complementary, Doc and Barry's names are often
listed together on Rave DJs are usually too competitive to work as
fliers.
teams, and Barry says their appearance as one is more perception than
ISO sue cummings
reality. "We don't really hang out together," he says, although they're far
from rivals. During Barry's set at Circa '92, Doc kept a writer from asking
for a photo: "Don't bug him while he's working!" he said. "I just hate it
when people try to talk to me during a set," Doc later explained.

At Citrusonic Barry arrives late and flustered, zooming in head-down
past the manager who had threatened to cancel him. He hurries upstairs to
the booth, hoists his record crates onto the ledge at his back, snaps on the
headphones, and feverishly throws down "As One," the first
Jus' Friends'
disc of the night, onto the left table, twisting the fader knob with one
deliberate flick to segue off the record on the right side, the final track of the
previous DJ's set. While "As One" spins, Barry turns to the ledge behind
him and looks through a crate, his hands moving through the stack in a
quick, practiced shuffle, marking records for later play by wedging the
covers sideways so they stick up. The glass-enclosed booth gives him a good
view of the dancers, although he would prefer to be down on the floor, at
the same level as the crowd.
Tonight it's an older group —Citrusonic, unlike the all-ages warehouse
parties, admits only eighteen and over, and for this intimate setting Barry
will program more mellow sequence of cuts than he would for a big
a
blowout; heavier on tribal and break-beat hip-hop this time, lighter on the
acid techno trip. Here and there he'll sample an a cappella vocal, or another
sound he finds from a track, over a beat playing from the other side, but he
won't do any hard, abrupt scratching or pull out the more aggressive tricks
like backspinning. Keeping an eye on the needle's track toward the center,
Barry snaps down an unmarked record on the opposite table, and cocks an
ear into the headphones, adjusting the pitch so the beats per minute match
the record that's on, waiting for a certain break to come up. When it's time
he turns the fader knob again, jabbing his finger in the air with pleasure as
the new record comes in right on the beat he wants.
The dancers are just warming up, and the mood holds a hint, after the
riots, of relief. It's still before midnight, a little early, and Sue Dread, one of
the Citrusonic hosts, runs into the booth holding a paper cup from the
smart bar. She does the bump down,
against Barry's back as he bends
balancing the headphones between his chin and shoulder. He turns around
and hugs her; everyone in this scene, even the men, are big on hugs. Neither
is on Ecstasy (not the greatest if you're working), but, like amphetamine to
punk, pot to reggae, acid to the Grateful Dead, "X" still sets the tone for the
scene, although it's certainly possible to do the multisensory trip of a rave
chemical-free. The drug persists even since the clear disappearance of ni-
trous-oxide balloons and tanks following the asphyxiation of three ravers in
rock she wrote 151
March. No
doubt many tonight have ingested a discreetly palmed capsule.
A film loop of spinning orange slices repeats against the wall; lights flash
against a giant neon banana.
Only a couple of steps in the door and we were offered Ecstasy,

another twenty bucks. The whole scene is like one big promotion for
the euphoria-inducing drug. Ecstasy is projected on the vibrating walls,

on T-shirts, hats, and necklaces. The blinding laser lights and ear-
deafening hyperbeat of the techno music are obviously designed to
overload the senses.
—Channel 7's Lynda Moore, April 20
Raves admit all ages because no liquor is served; bringing your own will
mark you as uncool even if it doesn't get you thrown out. The subculture
prides itself on its anti-alcohol stance, attributing the peacefulness of these
large, crowded events to the absence of booze. The youthful energy of the
scene is partly a by-product of the liquor laws that exclude teenagers from
regular clubs.
In high schools the code word is house. A kid will see another in baggy
overalls and a Clobber T-shirt, and go up to him: "Hey, are you house}"
What emerges is a rare thing in the nineties: bona fide street youth culture,
an in-club with a vocabulary of identifying symbols, with its own ritual of
sights and sounds. Responsible elders begin a refrain the aging rebel will
recognize: The clothing is vulgar. The music is noise. The drugs are
dangerous. It's corrupting our kids. Underground, antiauthoritarian.
idealistic, populist, visceral, high-energy, aggressive, fashion-coded
— "It's
punk rock," Urb editor Raymond Roker. "It's punk rock with rhythm.
says
But these kids don't want a live act; the live acts have been too
disappointing. They want to turn their head into the speaker."
The DJs who work underground parties in Los Angeles are a feral breed,
one that values innovation over the power to break hits. While record pools
and free promotional products fill the stacks of commercial radio jocks,
rave DJs prefer to buy their own records, at a cost that can average over
$200 a week. Doc Martin works three days a week at Prime Cuts in West
Hollywood just to have first crack at the new shipments. That makes him
more "alternative" than the college radio programmers fed freebies from
major labels. Techno and house twelve-inch singles are the stock in trade,
releases from small independent labels clustered in Detroit, Chicago, New
York, Italy, England, and Belgium. "I have friends who are Billboard
reporters," says Barry Weaver, "and they get records from every major label
1S2 sue cummings
for free. They get treated really well and it's because they're playing the
records the industry wants them to. I can't play that game. It's a nice luxury
what you want, when you want, how you want, and never
to be able to spin
have anybody telling you, 'I want to hear Madonna.' "
"Everyone should have their own style or flavor that attracts people to
them," says Doc Martin. "If you're only programming the Top 10 hits and
that's your stack —
what's to stop anyone else from taking your job?" The
most highly prized records are rare pressings, limited-edition "white"
labels, and obscure novelties —
anything that will set your stack apart. "The
old Disney records are good," says Ron D. Core. "I use the haunted house
record a lot, just for the witches screaming and the chains and the ghosts. I
use that to open a set." An old vocal recording, of speeches or instructional

material, lends itself well to mixing over dance beats. Ron uses a sex
instruction record put out by Warner in the seventies ("I'll sample
something like, 'Oh, I had an orgasm' and speed-metal albums from the
")
eighties. He comes across as a former metalhead who's transferred his

hardcore aesthetic to techno. "I can sample cool guitar solos, pretend Satan
voices: 'Behold, it's the Lord Satan.' I've used that for intros and sampling.
You hear, 'Satan, Satan.' People say, 'That's cool, man. That's wicked.' "
Far more spontaneous than typical mobile party setups, techno/house DJs
are the truly live performers of the underground scene. "Being on the
turntables is exactly like playing an instrument," says DJ Dan. Major
"acts" such as the Shamen and T99 sometimes tour in support of a record,
performing their set list at raves with the help of DAT machines. In contrast,
a DJ's vinyl-driven set is low tech, improvised on the spot in response to the
feel of the crowd. Performers worry how closely they can duplicate their
polished studio sound onstage, a problem irrelevant to the DJ. When the
"live" act is done, their record waits by the turntables, raw material for the
DJ's sonic sculpting. The records are produced with that end in mind.
"Most of the stuff is not made by real musicians," says Ron D. "The music
is created by DJs and engineer-technicians, people who have the equipment,
who know how to operate it, with the help of a DJ."
By practice, even without understanding, it will be made plain; your

body will understand it long before your mind puts words to it. No
amount of understanding without practice will work. It is not
necessary that knowledge precede experience. Performance will
produce knowledge.
— Shiva, the Father of Tantra
rock she wrote 153
At 1:00 a.m.,Doc Martin arrives at Citrusonic and heads up to the booth

for a shift change with Barry. Avoiding what Doc calls "bad DJ etiquette,"
he tucks his crates out of Barry's way. The two exchange backslaps and
Barry hands Doc
the headphones, stepping back as Doc looks for a record.
Soon he has copy of Two Bad Mice's "Hold It Down" on either turntable,
a
and as one copy plays he cues the other to a different part of the record, and
brings that up with the fader, folding the song's pattern of riffs and breaks
back onto itself. "What I usually do is take the best part of the record and
either extend or play with it," he says. "There's a lot of different things you
can do with tones and vocals, one record saying one thing, the other record
saying another, and getting them to speak to each other. It's like making
two records have a conversation."
Although reserved, somewhat shy, when at the record store or in a
restaurant, Doc becomes exuberant when he steps behind the turntables.
Tonight he smiles and moves with the crowd, watching them through the
window as he bounces on his toes at the end of a taut headphone cord that
threatens to pull the mixer onto the floor. Dancers filter upstairs and peer at
him from the door of the booth, watching with admiration. "I didn't know
why I came here tonight until I saw this guy," gushes a boy with wide, black
pupils. The records flow, one into the next, as Doc carries the night along
with an intuitive sense of what the party needs. The good DJs do this; the
best, like Doc, deny their own skill to the casual observer by making it look
easy.
"As far as DJs are concerned, the CD is not technologically advanced,"
says Barry. "Because you can't touch it, there's a distance. There's
something about just being able to put your hand on the record while it's
playing — it's like a bond. You feel like you're in control. With a CD shut
down inside its tiny little box, you can touch it with a button, but it's not
the same. There's a little bit of a delay."
While the records speak to each other, the dancers and DJ have their
interchange: the digital shaman administers his sacrament; the crowd, by its
motion, gives encouragement and consent. "I will do anything to make sure
the people on my
floor dance," says DJ Dan. "You look at the crowd and
say, 'Okay, I'm gonna cooperate with you guys you get used to me, I'll get —
used to you.' It's like sex. You're smoothing them over and making them
feel comfortable with you, and after that stage, then it's time for you to be
very aggressive and make them move."

Like the extended jams of the Grateful Dead, the rave DJ's set works
within a psychedelically elongated timescape, spending two or three hours
on an emotional ride. Some people fear thrill rides. To merge for that long,
1S4 sue cummings
as the music plays, with a thumping roomful of flesh, or to swallow a pill
that unleashes a flood of the brain's serotonin all night —aside from the
physical dangers of indulgence, a rave signifies the desire for transcendence,
through the willing abdication of control. Heard in a clear, rational instant,
the music monotonous and repetitive. Felt as the bass resonates
is in your
breastbone, the body will understand long before the mind.
Tracie Morris, M on n' on,"
Cha.p-T-h.er Won: Some Poem$ by
Trade PAorris, 1993.
Amid megaselling success and Congressional-level detractors,

its
it's to remember that hip-hop started as a neighborhood
hard
enterprise: local b-boys spinning and scratching discs at block
parties, MCs improvising rhymes over the beats. In this poem,
Tracie Morris-a New York-based writer who leads the band
werdz-n-muzetsicl-pays tribute to the early days of a musical
form that has shaped her own and the country's verse.
for my friends back in the days
ROJECT ROCK OF AGES ON STAGES OF MILK CRATES. BRIGHT

NIGHTS SPINNING ON CON ED CURRENT. NYC SPONSORING
'80's SUBVERSION TO COME. COMPROMISED THESE DAYS BUT I
WAS THERE WHEN IT WAS FUN.
HOW WAS TO KNOW I SOUNDS WOULD SMACK THIS NON-HO,

BRAINIAC OUT THE BOX IN DAYS BEFORE VIDEO MUSIC? 31x2
SUMMER DAYS CHANNELING AVERAGE SOUNDS TO SOME-
THING NEW. USED TO UPLIFT SAVAGE GLORIA V. JEANS, GABER-
DINES USHERING IN THIS NEW WORLD'S HORIZON. SPIES IN ON
136 trade morris
THE MUSIC OF THE DAY WOULD HAVE HEARD '50's IMPROVISA-

TIONS IN HARMLESS FLIRTATIONS OF: "HIP, HOP YA DON'T
STOP." COPPING 40's UNTIL MOTHER SAW: "LORDY! BOY, WHAT
YOU DOIN'?" CEASED FREESTYLING, THE GOD LEFT THE SET
WITH MATHEMATICS OF THE DAY WHICH WAS: 40oz + 1 BELT =
YO ASS, CUZ.
MOMS DIDN'T KNOW HOMEBOY WAS ON THE START OF SOME-

THING LUCRATIVE. WOULDN'T MATTER IF SHE DID OR COULD
MAKE ANALOGIES TO JAZZ RIFFS. LIKE WANDA C. SAID TO PAUL:
"Y'ALL SKATING ON THIN ICE, HERE." MAYBE HE SHOULD TAKE
A SWIG OF OLD E BEFORE FALLING IN.
NOW TO THEN. I WAS FREAKIN' WITH SOME HAPLESS

STRANGER, DANGER OF GRINDING A DISTANT LATER. FAKING
IT'S PASSE TODAY. YET IN STILL LIKE THE BOYS FROM AROUND
THE WAY, DOWN WITH A "WHAT UP?" FRAME OF MIND.
CHUNKY CHOCOLATE WITH AN EDGE, A NICE BUTT AND, THE
CAESAR CUT.
MY FRIEND SAYS: "WHY YOU LIKE MEN WHO LOOK LIKE THEY
WAS IN JAIL?" THINK SHE WATCHES TOO MUCH NEWS WHERE
I
OFAYS SNOOZE THROUGH REPORTS OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

SAME ONES WHO EVERY GENERATION RESURRECT THIS DE-
CAYING NATION'S CULTURE. LAYING FOR SOMETHING BETTER.
SOMETIMES THINKING I'M SWITCHING CAPITOL E.N.Y. FOR
LOWER e. WEIRD TWIST ON DU B'S WARRING THEORY. FIGHT OR
FLIGHT? MIGHT GET MIXED UP AS THE FAMILY'S JAMIE, CAN
YOU BLAME ME FOR STAYING IN BROOKLYN?
DESPITE ITS NICKNAME: "CROOKLYN," THE HOOD'S THE PLACE

ICAN SHOP AND NOT BE STOPPED IN A BODEGA THAT'S BEEN
CREDIT-STIFFED BY DRUNKS ON RELIEF. AFDC CHIEF SOURCE OF
DOUGH VIA PALEFACE WHILE DREAM-DEFERRED O.E. CLONES
TAKE FIREWATER NIGHTTRAINS AT 39 BUT MANAGED TO TOW
THE LINE THAT FAR. REMEMBER THE ALAMO. STATISTICS ARE
KNOWN FOR JAIL, DEATH, STILL LIVING AT HOME.
BUT NO DEPRESSING REALITY THEN. JUST WHEN AND WHERE'S
THE NEXT JAM AND "DAMN, CHECK OUT THE FLYGIRL WITH
rock she wrote 157
THE DEF HAIR!" ONE THERE IN A MILLION WHO MANAGED IN

PREWEAVE DAYS TO PRESS IT DOWN AS A WAVE PAST HER EARS.
FEELING HOT, THE SWEAT BOX JAM LOCKS LEGS TOGETHER IN

CRIES OF: "STROKE! TO THE BEAT, TO THE BEAT." WEATHER
NOT THE ONLY HEAT SOURCE FOR PRETEENS THE ONLY NECES-
SARY MEANS BY WHICH HEAVY CREASES IN LEES WERE FLAT-
TENED AS MUCH AS GIRLS' CHESTS. BULGES STILL IMAGINED.
COMBUSTION UNDER WHICH THIS MUSIC WAS CONSTRUCTED.

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH OF DISCO ASHES. RISING STASHED
STAR IN THE BUSINESS' CRUMBLING CROWN. FOUND INDUSTRY
NEED TO CAN THE SOUND. KEEP BLACK FOLKS DOWN. JUST AN-
OTHER TURD OF RACISM'S MOUND. NO JOKE.
THAT'S ALL FOLKS.MTV COPS THE BEAT, THE BEAT THE BEAT
THE BEAT THE BEAT THAT BEAMS BOYS' LOOKS TO AUSTRALIA.
YOU KNOW IT COULDN'T FAIL TO MAKE YO! RAP CLONES
WHERE PROGENY DON'T DARE ROAM IN AMERICA.
SUCKING UP OUR SOUND FASTER THAN CRACK IN PLACES FOLKS

SPORT NO-LACED GEAR AND THE BASEBALL BAT. IT'S THE NEW
WORLD ORDERED. DRIVE-THRU SHOOT USA. WHILE HAVING
FREE REIGN TO KILL AND ABUSE, WHITE FOLKS BOGART YOUR
ART WHEN IT'S STILL. BEING USED.
TODAY'S YOUTH SHOULD BE BETTER READ. OR LISTEN TO EL-

DERS WHO SAID: "ROCK AND ROLL, STOLE MY SHIT TOO. WHY
YA THINK I GOTS THE BLUES?"
BEGIN THE BEGUINE. LIKE ELVIS, BUD BUNDY WILL BE KING. 17

YEARS AFTER RAPPER'S DELIGHT. IF THAT DON'T SCARE YA
WHAT WILL?
HERE, HAVE A SWILL OF O.E.
YA ILLIN'? TAKE A CHILL PILL AND BE STILL.
A YES, YES Y'ALL.

Holly George-Warren, "Into the
AbySS," Option, November/December 1992.
Drugs have long served a polemical role in music culture,
whether rhapsodized over as a mythic source of enlightenment
or condemned as a sin and a scourge. Sidestepping both the
rhetoric of "Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll!" and "Just say no,"
Holly George-Warren explores the complex nature of drug use
and abuse among rock musicians in this investigative article. As
a well-respected member of the musical community, George-
Warren got many artists to talk to her candidly about their own
and their colleagues' habits.
JL remember the last time I saw Johnny. It was one of those brisk spring
nights in lateMarch at a club in a small suburban New Jersey town. The
place was packed to the rafters with big-haired kids decked out in lots of
black leather and spandex. Hanging out in the dressing room with the
opening act, I saw him walk in. He looked like a tiny, fragile bird adorned
with his own bright plumage, a jauntily placed purple hat and an exquisitely
cut matching silk suit. "Got a joint?" he asked me, before making small talk
about a mutual friend. As the night wore on, I kept bumping into him in the
ladies' bathroom, sequestered in a stall —doing his junkie business. By the
time he got onstage, an acoustic guitar in hand and backed by a saxophon-
ist, his eyes gleamed like diamonds from his pale, gaunt face. His set was
brilliant: stripped down, each song —even "Chinese Rocks" —sounded as
rock she wrote 159
sad and moving as "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory." A few
weeks later, on April 23, 1991, Johnny Thunders was found dead in a New
Orleans hotel room of an apparent overdose of methadone and alcohol.
"Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" has been a cliche for years, but the
slogan's tenacity is symbolic of how entrenched the trinity is. The roots of
today's drug culture begin in the urban netherworld of postwar jazz. Bebop-
pers celebrated weed and wine, but alcoholism and drug addiction put
many jail or in their graves. The fire of bebop
of the music's leading lights in
was a spiritual and creative beacon to the beatniks, who in turn passed the
—
torch along with a joint and a handful of pills over to the rock scene and —
the hippies. Despite the current "Just say no" climate or even more so, —
because of it — drugs continue to be intertwined with music in the lives of
many artists. For some, like Johnny Thunders, it takes over; for others it's
an occasional dalliance. In both cases it continues to claim lives.
In June, Charlie Ondras, drummer of Unsane, died of an overdose of

heroin in New York City. Two weeks later, on another coast, Stefanie
Sargent, the twenty-four-year-old guitarist of up-and-coming Seattle she-
grungers Seven Year Bitch, also died of a heroin overdose. Sargent's
bandmates were shocked; they thought she'd quit using the drug six years
earlier.
Why do drugs and booze have such a firm hold on musicians? Do they
impede or enhance the making of the music? And what causes some artists
to go over the edge, while others dabble with chemicals of all sorts to no
apparent ill effect?
"For most musicians, the drug thing is a high-risk hazard of the game,"
says Keith Richards, the archetypal bad boy of rock 'n' roll. Having put his
own heroin habit behind him, Richards still professes to "drink a lot," but
adds, "There's no blanket thing of what's good for you — it's got more to do
with knowing yourself and how you react to things. I never took drugs with
rhe idea that they were going to make me play better. The creative thing cuts
through that unless you waste yourself too much and too long and then you
realize some of the contacts are not quite working. So then you give it up."
Many musicians would agree that, at least in the beginning, alcohol and
rock 'n' roll hand for a variety of reasons. Some explanations
go hand in
include emulating the drunken abandon of the early Stones, the Dolls, and
the late-seventies punks, loosening up to go onstage, and socializing with
bandmates and the audience. So is the simple fact that nearly every gig is at
some kind of bar. Chris Mars, founding member and drummer of the
160 holly george-warren
Replacements and now a solo artist, recalls how each of his bandmates
gradually became boozehounds and the effect it had on the band: "Tommy
[Stinson] didn't drink at first. He stayed sober during the first couple of
years of touring. He didn't want to drink and be like the rest of us. He sorta
fell into it, though, 'cause when you're on the road and you're with every-
body, it's kind of a hard thing to be an individual when there's so much
pressure like that.
"When Paul [Westerberg] joined the band, he was sober too,"
Mars
continues. "He was drinking orange juice. Then he switched over and
started drinking as much as us. The seventies bands we were influenced by
were notorious for drugging and drinking. That was a time of getting drunk
onstage, and we were also influenced by that let-everything-go attitude of
the punk thing. We were sorta insecure people, so [drinking] was a way to
release our inhibitions and go more wild onstage. The shows were very
nihilistic, crazy, explosive. We'd drink and just go and rip it up."
One of those party bands that formed in the seventies, the Fleshtones,
was also propelled by intoxicating elixirs, says founding member and
guitarist Keith Streng. "It's a real social thing, playing guitar in front of
people. Everybody's there to drink, get high, and watch a band, so it's good
to get into that mode of thinking, that atmosphere. I like to drink before
shows — but you don't want to go onstage too drunk; you just want to be
loose and do a good show. Partying is inherent in rock 'n' roll."
Not surprisingly, alcohol use is romanticized today mostly among those

who play older styles of rock 'n' roll. Jeremy Tepper's band, World Famous
Bluejays, has continued in the Fleshtones tradition, with its own brand of
rambunctious country-blues trucker rock. "We've always had a reputation
as being a real drinking band," he boasts, "in that we became very popular
with New York City bar owners because our beer-drinking audience sets
bar records every time we play. We get people to yell, scream, and move,
and they get thirsty."
Most musicians agree that life on the road is especially conducive to
heavy drinking. As Olga Gabelman, bassist for the Berlin-based Lolitas,
points out, "When you're on tour, you're tired, you get out of the tour bus
and have sound check, eat something, get more tired, so you start drinking
tequila because it makes you awake again." Claudine Troise, bassist for
garage-gal group the Aquanettas, adds, "Usually when you play a gig they
don't feed you, but they give you a case of beer, and you're sitting around
and you're going to grab one and drink it, and then another one, and then
you go onstage with another one, and afterward you go back to the dressing
room and drink the rest, then go to a party and drink more." Lydia Lunch,
rock she wrote 161
who started her career singing with Teenage Jesus & the Jerks when she was
seventeen, says, "Alcohol becomes a very convenient friend when people
are touring in rock bands. It's exhausting, very boring, and tense, and I can
see how people drink to excess just to obliterate the boredom. Personally,
I'm not a fan of firewater —
when I was twenty-one or twenty-
I outgrew it
two after a few bouts of incredible alcohol poisoning."

Though Lunch knew when to call it quits, others have not been so lucky.
Guitarist Kirk Brewster managed to survive alcoholism and heroin addic-
tion, but fellow members of his Texas roots-rock band, the Werewolves,
were not so fortunate. Bassist Bucky Ballard, who started drinking and
doing speed at thirteen, died of cirrhosis of the liver when he was thirty;
lead guitarist Seab Meador The band had

also died at thirty of liver cancer.
moved to New York, recorded two albums for RCA, were dropped by the
label, and relocated to Los Angeles when Meador, who'd been into drugs
for some time, died. Brewster remembers how things catapulted out of
control.
"We didn't talk about it, but we were scared to death," Brewster recalls.
"We saw ourselves as misunderstood artists with bad breaks; you feed on
that, and with alcohol and heroin or any drugs you can get, you're able to
imagine that things are a little We'd be sloppy

different than they really are.
drunk onstage — it was 1980 and
was this reckless abandon kind of
there
thing happening, so we thought drinking and falling offstage was part of it.
Of course, when you're drunk you think it sounds better, you think you're
—
giving your all your guts and essence —
but more than half the time I was
just making a fool out of myself. There's this invisible line that you never
know, but when you cross it you can never go back. We crossed it a long
time before we realized it and Bucky died he never realized it." —
A continuous need to block out fear and pain is probably the major
psychological factor associated with drug and alcohol abuse. Psychologist
Jenny Boyd, an outreach consultant for Sierra Tucson, an addictions treat-
ment center in Arizona, points out, "Often musicians are very shy and
introspective, so they just fall into drugs and alcohol as a social thing. But
on a much deeper level, they use them to numb out a lot of pain which often
goes back to their childhood." Says Lydia Lunch, "I see how people fall into
[addiction] because creative people are those who recognize their pain and
the pain they're exposed to concerning the rest of the world. What they try
to do is and concentrate on pleasure. They're trying
blur the pain to escape,
but it doesn't work. It? ends up being more painful."

Bob Mould of Sugar, who hasn't had a drink in six years,

Guitarist
believes he was already an alcoholic when he formed Hiisker Du in the early
eighties. "I drank every day, all day; it really had nothing to do with being
in a band. That environment was very conducive to drinking, though. But I
think [alcoholism] is hereditary. I don't know if that's why I started drink-

ing; all my friends were drinking when I was fourteen or fifteen years old."
Researchers at the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administra-

tion estimate that a third to half of those addicted to a given drug may have
genetic susceptibilities to it. One recent study of alcoholics found that a
disproportionately high seventy-seven percent had a certain gene that has
been linked to the brain's receptors for dopamine, a chemical related to the
sensation of pleasure.
Meanwhile the rock 'n' roll life-style, as Bob Mould points out, makes
drugs and alcohol particularly accessible, and musicians by nature can be
especially vulnerable. David Tritt, drummer for Rat At Rat R, who was a
self-described pothead at fifteen, went through addictions to coke and her-
oin before going straight three years ago. "Since I was fifteen, I didn't want
to be part of the real world," he recalls. "When I moved to New York from
a farm town in Pennsylvania, it was hard
remember the first day
to adjust. I
I was here, I was walking along Norfolk Street and there was a frozen
chihuahua with its legs in the air lying in a burned-out, vacant lot. Coke was
really cheap then and it was a good way to deny reality. Soon I was working
sound at the Pyramid Club and spending $300 to $400 a night on coke. I
started dating a go-go dancer who turned me on to dope. And that was it,
—
heroin was my drug the perfect way to crawl back into the womb."
Though many musicians feel the need to be anesthetized, others go for

drugs that have the opposite effect. Speed, coke, acid, and Ecstasy have been
well-documented drugs of choice among musicians. Bassist Bootsy Collins
recalls his Parliament/Funkadelic days when acid was considered the tool
for expanding the mind. "I can't speak for everybody, but it helped me a
lot," he says. "I remember the first time I did it; it started me to thinking
about writing songs. Before, all I wanted to do was get up onstage and play.
It put me in touch with my writing ability. But by the time I got to Bootsy's
Rubber Band was pretty much straight. I started cleaning myself up be-
I
cause I could see what drugs were doing to all my friends Sly, Jimi, Buddy —
Miles, James Brown." For his part, drummer Buddy Miles, who formed the
Band of Gypsys with Jimi Hendrix, says he had his "trials and tribulations,"
including twice serving prison terms due to drugs. Though Miles himself
rock she wrote 163
wasn't into acid, he recalls that "Jimi seemed to be able to play on it — but
the mind can only take so much." During the band's Madison Square
Garden show, Hendrix walked offstage midway through the set because,
Miles says, he was "messed up on drugs."
Some musicians say that experimenting with acid opened them up to a
whole new perspective. Scott Jarvis, drummer for the Workdogs and Puka,
says, "The first couple of times I did acid, I got some kind of handle on
music that's hard to describe. It helped me understand not the technical
aspect, but instead see what music really is, its essence —which totally by-
passes the verbal." Says Keith Streng, "I did acid back in high school and
that changes you forever, and the way you perceive things."
Lydia Lunch also used psychedelics, particularly between the ages of
thirteen and twenty-two. "I still dabble if someone claims to be in posses-
sion of a very fine batch," she says. "It lets you become as schizophrenic or
infantile as you truly long to be. Doing psychedelics, for me, is a very
emotional thing; it unhinges a lot of doors, a lot of blockades that people
put up. It's always a very emotional experience rather than a lighthearted,
trippy, freaky-styley trip. I'm still waiting for the perfect drug, though; I
think Ecstasy approached that when it originally came out and was in a
pure form. Basically all it made you want to do was fuck your brains out for
eight hours on end and it enabled you to do that. It's a pleasure drug — that's
what drugs should be used for, not as a crutch, not as an excuse, not as a
life-style, not as a habit. But Ecstasy got convoluted and polluted, so it
doesn't interest me anymore. I don't like to ingest poison, I like to spew

poison."
According to Claudine Troise, who just returned to New York from an
English tour, Ecstasy —or "E," as it's also —
known is still a big part of the
London music scene. "E opened up a whole new world of music for me,"
she says. "I used to look at techno, house, and dance stuff in a certain way,
but after doing E, and really getting into the music and dancing to it, I can
now get a buzz just listening to the music. Andrew from Primal Scream did
a remix of our song 'Whoa' that was totally E-induced. When we first heard
it we thought, What the fuck is this? But now, after going to Primal Scream
shows, we've discovered that what you want when you're on this
this is
drug. There are things you expose yourself to when you do certain drugs
that you would have never seen in a normal light."
Says Keith Streng, "I was using Ecstasy before it became illegal. I love it.
On some road trips I'd do it every night for twelve nights in a row. It was
great to play on, to party on, to come up with ideas. I also love speed, but
the problem with speed is that it doesn't last forever. It's a wonderful drug;
you're amplifying every cell in your brain, your body. You can do it for days
and days, but when you finally say, 'I've got to become normal,' it hurts. It's
a hard drug."
Bob Mould says he stopped using speed eight years ago because "you
know when you have to stop; you either stop or you die." In the beginning,
he preferred amphetamines to cocaine. "Coke was just a stupid drug. Every-
body I know went through a coke phase; it caught on really quick, but it
was pointless. Speed was so much more attractive in terms of how long you
could go on it and relative price."
Coke was partially responsible for the demise of the Replacements, ac-
cording to Chris Mars, who left the band shortly after the recording of its
last album, All Shook Down. "Drinking screwed up things, but especially
toward the end, cocaine completely screwed the band up. It's an evil drug. It
changed the whole mood and feel of the band and makes you want to drink
twice as much. People weren't thinking. They weren't themselves. The
whole thing went out of whack. We lost track of who we were and what we
were about. It caused miscommunication; people didn't speak their minds
unless they were coked up. Coke just makes you want to talk and you just
start talking in circles and nothing ever gets done. I'd occasionally take part
in it, was sober much of the time. It was deteriorating and got to the
but I
point where I was scared somebody was going to die. I remember one
morning a member didn't show up in the lobby after an all-night bender of

coke and booze, and we were pounding on his door. It turned out he was
just asleep but I realized then that it could happen."
Experiences such as Mars's seem to have induced some musicians to clean

up. According to Mars, Paul Westerberg has been sober for two years. Mars
himself only has an occasional beer, which, he says, has resulted in greatly
improved work, including a solo album, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.
Bob Mould, who's recorded two solo albums and a third with his new band
Sugar since getting sober, also says his music has benefited from the change.
"My personal experience was that the alcohol was repressing a lot of things.
It's somewhat of a myth — at least in my mind — that drugs heighten creativ-
ity. I think they repress a lot of things that are in the front of your mind that
you don't want to deal with. I find that my work after drugs is much more
intriguing, because the emotional level is a lot higher. When I dried out, all
the really ugly things came to the front, and that's what I was left with —and
—
rock she wrote 16S
that'swhat I had to write about. That was a lot scarier than gliding through
drug cliches and gliding through nonsensical writing. All of a sudden it was
here —the real me —and it was time to write about those things, and that's a
lot harder and ultimately a lot more rewarding."
Kirk Brewster also made his way back after bottoming out shooting coke
and smack. "I'd gotten to the point where I'd lost everything. Part of it was
the idea of suffering for your art, that the general population isn't as sensi-
tive or as farsighted as you —that whole thing. You think, I'll just destroy
myself. It's a romantic kind of death wish in a way. The needle was a self-
punishing thing. When it gets bad enough and you've been doing it for a
long time and you can't find the place to do it, it becomes self-mutilation.
Booting [the drug into the vein], registering it [in the syringe] —that whole
time was the closest thing to hell I hope I ever experience. In the end,
nobody wanted to work with me and I didn't want to work with anybody.
You're just alone in a room with your dreams and what might have been
and your self-hate."
It's been five and a half years since Brewster got straight and he's now
formed a new band, Big Town Tomcats, with the Werewolves' lead singer,
who never developed a drug problem. "Now we're playing for the pure fun
of it," Brewster says. "It's like it was when I was seventeen years old and
I'm enjoying remember why I started to play. But the old feelings are
it and I
still there. I think it's part of the whole creative thing; if you're trying to
create something, that's the most naked part of you, and when you start
messing with that, it's scary. You don't want to feel that fear, but you've
just got to go with it. It's an interesting journey."
David Tritt had his own romantic obsession with the needle. "Like so
many known, I was always terrified of needles. But it comes
junkies I've
down to economics, where one bag won't work anymore. If you shoot it, it
gets you ten times as high. So once I did it, I just loved it, and I developed a
lust for the needle. To this day, any excuse I have to get a blood test, I'm
there. I still associate the needle with that feeling of being high." After a few
years hiatus, Tritt rejoined Rat At Rat R in sobriety. "My work has im-
proved tremendously," he says. "I'm a better drummer than I ever was, but
it's much harder to get up onstage now that I do it without a couple of beers
or a joint to take the edge off the stage fright."
Recently, old-faithful marijuana has begun to make a big comeback in
music, due in no small part to the revival of late-sixties and early seventies
musical styles by bands like Teenage Fanclub, the Pooh Sticks, Primal
Scream, and the Black Crowes. The benefits of smoking a joint before
playing or rehearsing has been advocated publicly by many musicians
lately, including L.A. rappers Cypress Hill, who have practically made pot
endorsement a career. After performing at the Atlanta Pot Festival in April,
the Black Crowes followed Cypress Hill as High Times magazine cover
boys. The 1992 New Music Seminar conducted a workshop entitled "Pot in
Pop," for which self-professed potheads Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surf-
ers and Matthew Sweet were scheduled panelists, though neither showed
up. (Maybe they forgot.)
Jeremy Tepper says lots of pot smoking goes on at World Famous Blue-
jays shows. "The great thing about pot," he says, "is that it's such a social
drug. People share it and pass it around, and in general when you smoke pot
with someone it forms some kind of connection."

Workdog drummer Scott Jarvis agrees. "If you're playing in a looser,
improvisational ensemble, reefer helps quite a bit. If you're all smoking, you
tie in on one wavelength. For a unit not working on a strictly defined,
structural kind of music, reefer can help you take a piece of music out to
somewhere it hasn't been before. It's also good for writing songs and forc-
ing yourself to work on your technique. I use it to get myself to practice
every day, even when I don't feel like it. Athletic, mechanical exercises
repeated endlessly can get really boring, but with reefer it's not. You can
actually concentrate more on it and get into it, get underneath it, get behind
it. Also, you can smoke pot and hold your life together. It doesn't take you
to the point where you have to give it up or die; it doesn't put you in a crisis
situation like coke, speed, or heroin."

For others, however, the effects of marijuana are quite devastating.
"When I smoke pot," says a music journalist and recovering addict who
prefers anonymity, "I can't function. I can't talk to anyone, I can't look at
anyone, I can't think, and I certainly can't work. makes me paranoid and
It
frightened. And it's isolating. To me, it's about as social and creative as
masturbating."
The question remains: How far can one go before crossing what Kirk
Brewster calls "the invisible line" and ending up like his bandmates, or like
Johnny Thunders, or Sid Vicious, or Darby Crash, or Stefanie Sargent —or
even Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson? If research in the addiction field contin-
ues, doctors may one day be able to pinpoint those who could quickly and
easily become addicted to speed, heroin, or booze. But would that knowl-
edge dissuade someone hellbent on living fast and dying young? And for
those who choose to play Russian roulette, does the music they create make
rock she wrote 167
it worth the price they pay? There really is no pat, dogmatic answer. In-
stead, there are only opinions, based on one's personal experience.
Says David Tritt, "In the past I thought it was an artist's job to go to the
abyss and report back, conveying a certain mood or emotion. Rimbaud
would spend months on drunken binges, rolling around the streets of Paris,
then he'd sober up and write about it. It's the same way with Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, and Jim Morrison. They were incredibly visionary artistic people
who were inspired and all heavy into the drug thing. It's hard to be a
creative person and not want to fool around with things that expand your
mind or alter your mood. But I try to think about what they would have
been had they not been so fucked up."
Scott Jarvis disagrees to an extent. "A lot of people say, 'Look how far
Charlie Parker could have gone without heroin.' I don't think that's the case
at all. Look at the bop scene and the strong role heroin played and you can
see that there's definitely a connection between the stuff Charlie Parker did
and his ability to play, his ability to see those things. I think heroin was
Bird's tool to tap into his subconscious. Who knows if he'd done it if he
hadn't been a total junkie. It's like a trade-off, like you're selling your soul
to the devil. I think his creativity was enhanced, though his life was short-
ened."
Says Lydia Lunch, "I'm not a fan of habit — ritual, yes; habit, no. I've just
seen too often the effects of drugs and alcohol, how an occasional dalliance
can lead to a daily habit. People ask me about working with Rowland
Howard, a junkie. It doesn't matter to me that the person is wasting the
other twenty-three hours of the day, as long as he has that one hour to
create and give —as long as they have the energy and the power and the
vision to do that. It's not for me to judge or defend as long as it doesn't
affect their creativity. However, for most people it does eventually. It may
have spurred on their creativity in the beginning, but there's gonna come a
point where it's going to obliterate it, corrupt it, pollute it, because they're
doing the same thing every day."
Bob Mould speaks from some hard-earned experience. "When artists get
off track with drug or alcohol use, the work becomes very samey. With
Hiisker Dii, I saw that firsthand. The other byproduct of drug use is a lot of
misguided, terrible ideas. I often think to myself, 'What could have hap-
pened with people who went before they should have? What would they
have been capable of had they not been so immersed in their vices?What
would Johnny Thunders have done if he'd really stepped out of it, really
cleaned up and spent a year just looking in the mirror? What would his
work have been like? It could have been amazing."
FAN MAIL
AND
LOVE LETTERS
Nicole Panter, "Fudk You Punk Rock/
1977 and 1979/'
Fiz, 1993, and Fuel Summer 1993.
As a writer, all-around scenemaker, and former manager of

archetypal L.A. punk band the Germs, Nicole Panter has helped
define the loose, cool, theatrical tone of southern California's
punk scene. Here Panter offers a few slices of the underground
life: the first, a meditation on hardcore music's effects, the
second, a remembrance of the late Germs singer Darby Crash.
fuck you punk rock/1977
JL magine the exhilaration of knowing that you are part of something

that is completely and utterly new and different. Imagine that all your life
you have felt cut off from the rest of humanity at the most elementary level
—you do not communicate well with others. Imagine feeling so lonely and
twisted that at times you have really, really tried to kill yourself, even
though you were just a kid. Imagine that the people who were supposed to
love you, your family, have continually and deliberately brutalized and
betrayed you in ways other people couldn't begin to imagine. Imagine that
you are at the end of your rope. Then walk into a room where for the first
time in your miserable, horrifying life, you feel a part of things. These
172 nicole panter
people understand you because these things have also happened to them.
There's no need to explain your silence, your shyness, your need to get
totally obliterated every night of the week and to maybe fuck some really
cute boy against a wall in a dark corner of the club without ever asking his
name and then go dive into the sea of bodies pogoing. There's no need to
explain the way this music, this noise, makes you feel. There's no need to
explain why, when you get dressed every day, you do everything you can
to make yourself look as ugly on the outside as you feel on the inside.
There's no need to explain your hurt or your anger or the damage you feel
because it is perfectly self-explanatory in this place, in this music.
fuck you punk rock/1979

For Darby
The week before he died, he came to see me without phoning first. When 1
opened the door, it didn't hit me right away that it was him. His hair had
been cut into a mohawk, a really high one, and the remaining fuzz on the
sides of his head had been dyed blue-black. A
was shaved onto
circle
the right side of his scalp. He was wearing an army jacket, zipped up to the
neck, despite the fact that it must have been over a hundred degrees outside.
On the lapel, he wore a large photo-button of John F. Kennedy. It was that
famous picture of Kennedy sitting in the limousine next to a pink-suited
Jackie. He is smiling and waving to the crowd. Kennedy is trapped, forever
seconds away from having his brains sprayed out all over the November
Texas asphalt.
"What's with you?" I asked.
Then I realized that he was much taller than usual and it wasn't only the
mohawk. I looked at his feet and saw that he was on roller skates.
"I thought you were going to that Buddhist monastery in San Bernardino.
Didn't you tell me that?"
"No. Yeah. It's in Big Bear. I'm going to still, only when I called to
confirm, they'd fucked up my reservation, so I had Ree give me a haircut
instead."
Without being asked, he stepped up and into my house and skated across
the wooden floor of the living room and into the dining room. To stop
himself, he grabbed the door frame, and then he lowered himself into a
chair.
"What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"
rock she wrote 173
"Great, you know what I mean. The haircut, and stuff?"

"I need to change my image. How am I going to keep things going if I get
stuck in a rut? Where's your cat? Doesn't it fetch stuff? Here kitty kitty
kitty."
"Stop it, just talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about. You've made your decision, I respect
that."
"Quit making fun of me. It doesn't work on me."
"Do you have some soda or something?"
"Why don't you take the jacket off? It looks awfully hot."
"Just some water would be fine."
So I went into the kitchen and got him a glass of water. When I came back
into the dining room, he had picked up my Polaroid camera from the table.
"Take a picture of me and I'll take one of you," he said. When we finished
taking the pictures, he drank the water down in one long pull. He put the
glass on the table next to him and then hoisted himself out of the chair. In a
sudden move, as if he'd lost his balance, he grabbed my shoulder and kissed
the top of my head. Then he skated back through my house, and he let
himself out the front door.

Susan Brownmiller, "Yoko and John/'
Rolling- Stone, January 22, 1981.
When John Lennon was murdered, Rolling Stone called on

Brownmiller, one of the women's movement's most prominent
writers, to tackle the difficult subject of Lennon's widow, Yoko
Ono. A talented artist herself, Ono had nonetheless come to
represent the divisive and draining effect of women on the rock
'n' roll boys' club. Brownmiller defends Yoko, not only as a loyal
companion and true friend to John, but as a conceptual artist
whose greatest work was her own and her husband's life.
S ince
mourning process
November 22, 1963,
to sentimentalize
it has been a cathartic part of the national
and deify the grieving widow of the
fallen hero, but the fountains of warm devotion and transferred love may
not be turned on with flowing ease for Yoko Ono Lennon, the widow of
John.
For many, Yoko remains a difficult, disturbing figure. Seven years older
than Lennon, with a grim-faced demeanor and a preposterously un-
feminine, egotistical belief in the magnitude of her talent, Yoko Ono has
never fit the stereotype of a rock superstar's foxy lady. A Suzie Wong or a
Madame Butterfly softly strumming a samisen in the background might
have been grudgingly accepted and even approved. Hardly cut out for the
Yoko was forcibly cast, by those who claimed to know, as the
geisha role,
Dragon Lady, beloved John's bewitching mental aberration, the abrasive
rock she wrote 175
outsider, the wily insinuator who

become the fifth Beatle and broke
tried to
up the group. Yoko Ono was a driving, impas-

In the popular speculation,
sive bitch with an unfathomable sexual hold on the sweet working-class
poet; Yoko Ono was the dangerous, uninvited female who walked into the
clubhouse and demanded a change in the rules; Yoko Ono was the evil
schemer who put an end for all time to the song.
Coming to terms with Yoko Ono, even in this hour of her personal loss,
may forever be beyond the emotional capacity of some of John Lennon's
loyal, bereft fans. She was a rebel before John was, but a less plausible
model, the arty Sarah Lawrence girl strung out between two cultures with a
rich daddy and an urgent need for self-expression and fame. Hanging
around Greenwich Village in the late fifties, it was hard not to know of
Yoko Ono and her avant-garde art and dance manifestations. Epater le
bourgeois! If you liked Charlotte Moorman, the naked cellist, you probably
liked Yoko Ono.
In the effort not to be sentimental, I can see that I am being merciless out
of context. Some context, then, please. What
two Great Wives
of the other
of Rock, Linda Eastman McCartney and Bianca Jagger? Bring in Paul and
Linda, Bianca and Mick. These ladies were/are gorgeous and they also
shared an outrageous insistence on the significance of their worth and an
urgent desire to be noticed. Linda and Bianca have never been popular, but
they have not been disliked to the extreme of Yoko Ono. The wives of Paul
and Mick have been quite understandable, appropriate choices for super-
star men, not at all threatening to the music, to the men's careers, and to the
voracious emotional need for exclusivity among those who, for want of a
better word, we simply call fans.
But if Yoko Ono has not been convincing as an important artist, what she
has done is demonstrate that her true creative talent lay in nurturing John,
in serving as his mother, his teacher, his guru, his sensei, his master of zen.
Why does this trouble us? Why is it that so many still cannot take the word
of John Lennon that Yoko Ono saved his life, that she brought him in from
the dark and the cold and gave him sanity, meaning, and love?
All right, I'll deal with it. What Yoko Ono Lennon gave John Ono Len-
non, I think, was a feeling of authenticity that, for reasons known only to
him and to her, he feared that he lacked. What Yoko Ono Lennon gave
John Ono Lennon, I believe, was a maternal love, both as giver and receiver,
that he deeply craved for survival. If Yoko was not the originator of new
ideas she hoped and that John always insisted she was, then verifiably
to be,
and impressively she was a direct conduit from the newest ideas and the
newest causes to John the dreamer, the genius, the mass communicator to
176 susan brownmiller
the world at large, to John Lennon the superstar and to John Lennon the
child.
Dependency between a man and a woman may be a scary concept. Theirs
was always on public display. As she talked with him about the movement
against the war in Vietnam; as she crooned to him (I speculate) about the
beauty of all naked bodies and got him to pose with her, unvarnished and
fleshy, for the album cover of Two Virgins; as she discussed with him trendy
new therapies and Arthur Janov's primal scream and got him to shout out
whatever demons from his childhood were bottled up inside him; more
important, oh much more important, she explored with him the new ideas
of the women's movement, and alongside him, hand in hand, broke through
the sex-role stereotypes that had tied up his life in hard knots from Liver-
pool through the frantic Beatle superstar years. The John Lennon who was
cut down last week was a John Lennon who had discovered his own mater-
nal capacity and was in part mother to his own son, Sean, as Yoko Ono was
in part mother to John.
Yoko Ono's great talent was not her art or her dance or her music, it was
her ability to transmit maternal love through her body to John and from
John's body to their son. Her major conceptual piece of art, her Dance
Event, her theater happening, her technological experimentation, indeed,
her life's work, was to take apart the broken pieces of John Lennon in stop-
time motion and to put them back together again. The longer they stayed
together, people commented, the more they began to look alike, in their
peaked caps, in their Japanese kimonos, posing always for the camera as
man and woman twinning and coming together, the yin and the yang ab-
sorbing each other, erasing the boundaries and melting into one. How
unseemly for a man. How unseemly for a woman who took over the busi-
ness dealings while the international culture hero, her beloved husband,
hers against the world, mothered their child. Was it trendy? Was it morbidly
neurotic? Was it authentic and true? It appears to have been wholly experi-
enced and deeply felt, and it appears to have been what John needed.
Lori Twersky, "Devils or Angels? The
female teenage audience examined,"
Trouser Pre$$, April 1981.
As cofounder and leading light of the California women's rock

'zine Bitch, Twersky acted as the wisecracking conscience of a
changing rock scene. The women of Bitch offered a way for
women to see themselves in a rock world that sought their
consumer dollars but often ignored their opinions and desires.
Here Twersky takes her confrontational agenda to the pages of
Trouser Press, where she presents a sympathetic but never
sentimental view of the girls in the front row.
S
evaluating
ay there, bright eyes: As long as male rock critics are
Women In Rock onstage, why don't we also take a few minutes

suddenly
to reevaluate Women In Rock o//stage; i.e., the female rock audience, about
whom an inordinate amount of drivel has been written.
It comes possibly as no surprise to said critics that they don't understand
teenage females. They probably didn't understand them back in high school
either. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop many critics from making irritating
generalizations.
I became convinced that something had to be said after reading still
another reference to a "surprising number of females" (Lloyd Sachs, Roll-

ing Stone) attending a Ted Nugent concert. There have been many such
references —conclusive proof that Ivory Tower Isolationism, a disease af-
178 lori twersky
flicting people who scorn Show Biz news to read about Music, is rampant
among the critical elite. Listen, guys, it's time to put down NME and pick
up 16 if you want to know what little American girls are thinking. When
you do, you'll see pinup after backlit pinup of Uncle Gonzo, right there
between Leif and Shaun, not to mention the "Win the Shirt Off Ted Nu-
gent's Bod" contest in Rock! Female teen and subteen interest in Ted Nu-
gent is so huge that any critic who hasn't noticed it should stop making
pronouncements about female fans right now. The surprising thing is that
the audience wasn't all female.
The basic Rock Writer's Irritating Generalizations about Teenage Female

Fans can be summarized as follows:
Female fantasies consist of wanting to fuck rock stars. Teenage female
interest in rock consists in wanting to fuck rock stars. Teenage females long
to be their idol's groupie. Girls who like wimpy, soft pop don't daydream
about romance and marriage. Girls who like tough music with
sex, just
<(
have free and easy sexual attitudes. Women hung
street credibility" (urp)
up on rock stars who are notoriously into drugs, violence, and icky forms of
sex are themselves into drugs, violence, and icky forms of sex. If not many
females show up at a concert, not many females want to fuck that band.
Girls don't like heavy metal. Bands girls don't like are subliminally homo
(read almost any new wave writer's review of a heavy metal concert).
You should have noticed at least one logical contradiction: The good
bands are ones that girls feel completely ambivalent about? No wonder
Tom was prompted to remark: "We're all heterosexual, none of us are
Petty
fags; we just happen to like girls a lot! I've always played to girls even if it —
doesn't happen to be cool these days to admit it." When a confession of
liking girls leaves one open to a charge of homosexuality, peer pressure has
reached meganonsense levels.

The unfortunate tendency is to write about the Female Teenage Audience
as either one single collectivewill or as an easily sorted duality: Good Girls
who don't and Bad Girls who do. Actually, the Female Teenage Audience is
composed of individuals. One can't underestimate the combinations of in-
nocence, experience, and desire that America's estimated 112,000,000 fe-
of. Even the estimated 21,874,000 who are under twenty-

males are capable
one are a complex group. Certainly, many of the above stereotypes hold
true for many girls, but you can fit "many" into 21,874,000 several times
over with plenty of room left for variation. Male writers tend to judge rock-
loving females from the samples provided by backstage areas and hotel
rock she wrote 179
rooms, and write off the rest as either Barry Manilow fans or singers in new
wave bands. The current cliche, "new wave women are more feminist than
other chicks," yields fascinating writing in the vein of "Buying One's Own
Bullshit," and is remarkably similar to a maxim of fifteen years ago about
"folkie women are more sensitive and gentle than nonfolkie chicks." Just as
folk proved to have its share of bitches, new wave has its share of sexist
women.
Here are some cross-cultural perspectives to help men understand. Re-

member: Truth can be dumber than fiction.
1) Not all girls daydream about rock stars. There are also movie and
Russian ballet stars, one's best friend's inaccessible older brother, cops,
English teachers, sports heroes, astronauts, etc. This point is too obvious to
argue. If in doubt, please spend five minutes contemplating the erotic day-
dream potential of a Russian ballet star astronaut in antigrav chamber,
dressed for performance of "Spartacus." Borzbemoi. Thank you.
2) Some of the blandest girls, with the blandest musical tastes, are among
the most perversely horny. Or haven't you noticed all those pinup pix of
Leif Garrett and Shaun Cassidy in tight black leather? Consider the Novem-
ber 1979 cover of Tiger Beat Star, showing Scott Baio unbuttoning his pants
under the headline: SCOTT: he's got what it takes to light your fire!
(Article sample: "It you when you first saw Scott's face
was there inside
... a warm feeling in your stomach, and it kind of made the rest of your
body tingle!") Teenybopper mags are full of soft-core porn and photos of
half-naked boys with inviting smiles. Natch, some girls who buy 16 maga-
zine keeps me on top of the stars T-shirts don't get the double-entendre,
but . . .
3) Even with the New Sexual Openness, lots of girls really don't know
what it's about. Even intense desire can have surrealistically innocent over-
tones. Some (not all) teenybopper mags run photos of a tousled, sweaty,
—
half-naked David Lee Roth with nipples and belly button airbrushed out.
Three fourteen-year-old Van Halen fans, shown one such picture, were
unable to find anything wrong with it, even when given hints! Try this
passage (on Toto) from Rock! (italics mine):
If you want to get close to a rock star, there are many ways to do it —
some better than others. Many fans go the "groupie" route, offering to
hang around with a member of the band, in the hopes of getting to
know him, travel with him, maybe even (could it be?) marry him and
180 lori twersky
live (proverbially) happily ever after. It's true that many bands pride
themselves on the number of girls they meet on the road and many —
fans pride themselves on the number of guys they've gotten close to.
My favorite is Tiger Beafs interview with the Village People: "What do you
"
like best about a girl? 'She should be a good conversationalist.'
4) Some females couldn't care less about the people making music on
their records, or the came out
music scene it of. Plenty of women with
Rolling Stones records know who Mick Jagger is but couldn't recognize a
bass guitar, let alone who plays it.
5) Many have a wide variety of desires. It's not

rock star-crazed girls
unusual to find pictures of Shaun Cassidy, Roger Daltrey, Meatloaf, Pat

Simmons, and Mikhail Baryshnikov on the same wall. Or to find a girl
raptly seeking makeup advice from Debbie Harry and Marie Osmond.
6) Women don't automatically condone the morals, drug intake, or male
chauvinism of the rock star they worship. A traditional woman's fantasy is
"He's a wild, bad boy, but a woman's true love; understanding will reform
him." Women who like rock are no more free of sexist fantasies than are
rock stars themselves, and rock provides so many bad boys. A recurring
phenomenon of teen female fandom is the True Believer, a term I believe
first came into use around 1964. True Believers are some band's or star's
4-Ever. Sometimes they're groupies, but usually not. True Believerdom

usually rests on two assumptions: The first (which is sexist) is that all men
are screw-ups, with a corollary that men under pressure are bigger screw-
ups. The second is that talent is a terrible cross to bear, and creative people
suffer for exercizing their talents. True Believers consider all products of
talent to be painfully undertaken acts which prove that the rock star loves
his fans enough to sacrifice his happiness for them; the minor-corrupting,
wife-beating, friend-betraying hero is, as talented male, not really
responsible for his actions. A cruel twist of fate has made him both male
and creative, and he needs the True Believer's help, love, kindness, and
sympathy to overcome these terrible handicaps. True Believers are often
similar to Temple Priestesses in their devotion, which is why, ten years after
the Beatles disbanded, you can find eight-year-old who know

girls
everything about them. True Believers are still making converts. Many True
Believers are too awed by their idols to consider sexual possibilities. (Male
True Believers are coming into their own.)
7) A desire for sex shouldn't be confused with a desire to get fucked.
Teenage girls' daydreams about sex rarely involve anonymous quickies with
people who don't care about them. Even teenage girls not hungry for fame
rock she wrote 181
want personal recognition. Many girls who would willingly humiliate

themselves for an affair with a rock star would die before trying a one-night
stand with him.
The average American girl takes a dimmer view of groupies than the rock
press would have you believe. There are undoubtedly more female teenagers
daydreaming of being Ann or Nancy Wilson than have daydreams about
being Bebe Buell, Britt Ekland, and Anita Pallenberg combined, let alone of
being an anonymous groupie. For every girl who daydreams about being a
groupie, there must be at least one hundred who daydream about being
writers, musicians, photographers, costume designers, or poets: "If I were
one of those, creeps couldn't say to me, 'No head, no backstage.' I'd have a
legitimate reason for being backstage, and could be part of the action
without being treated as if I were wearing a sign saying, fuck me. Then one
day my hero will see my act/photos of him/poems and say, 'Here is the soul
"
mate I've been searching for!'
If TV were alert, it would start a series called Mary Harlequin, Girl Rock
Photographer. Mary would have two love interests, a very good boy (Shaun
Cassidy?) and a very bad boy (David Lee Roth?). Both would be on the road
for most of the shows so Mary could have adventures resisting the advances
of that week's guest star, solving his drink/drug problems, reuniting him
with his wife, getting him on stage in a condition to perform, etc. Prototypes
for this idea can be found in the Hello, Larry episodes featuring Joey
Travolta as a rock star modeled after Kiss/Alice Cooper (he falls in love with
a woman who listens exclusively to classical music), and in an episode of
The Love Boat featuring Sonny Bono as a rock star modeled after Kiss/Alice
Cooper (he falls in love with a woman who's deaf). Both shows had "I
really wish I could take off this makeup and stop acting like a clown, but it's
what the fans want!" and "But it's not what your true love, who sees the
real you, wants!" sequences.
8) Desire for male attention isn't the same as sexual desire. Many girls'
fantasies are of friendship or you move down into the

working partners; as
subteens you enter "I wish I was his daughter" territory. Weird mixtures
occur. Many men who figure in girls' crushes also appear on lists titled
"Who Would Be Your Ideal Father?" I believe Burt Lancaster and Barry
Manilow top such polls in America, but I've spoken to seven- to seventeen-
year-olds who longed for Ted Nugent, Robert Plant, and various Beatles
and Kiss members as daddies, and to twelve- to twenty-one-year-olds who
longed for Ted Nugent (popular guy) and various Who, Beatle, and Cheap
Trick members as close friends to talk to, like a brother (only less creepy).
When Riff Randall in Rock V Roll High School yearns to be the sister amid
182 lori twersky
four Ramones brothers, she is rightly portrayed as being closer to the heart
of the American girl than the groupie Angel Dust. No wonder girls dressed
as Riff show up at screenings (in northern California, anyway) to shout that
they are songwriters, not groupies.
As an addendum to points 7 and 8, plain old sex urges don't explain the
need for things like rock cookbooks —a dying breed of literature but fun
while they lasted. They fueled many fantasies, few directly sexual (although,
given the spectrum of desire, someone somewhere was probably aroused by

a picture of Kris Kristofferson's tacos). In spite of what teachers of
Fascinating Womanhood courses say, the desire to cook and the desire for
sex are rarely linked. So why would anyone want Alice Cooper's recipe for
Funky Tuna Casserole? The answer, True Believers, is, first, for the mystic
union achieved by latching on to all possible aspects of an idol's personality.
Second, because True Believers are always prepared. You can bet that
somewhere a starry-eyed girl is dreaming of the day her parents and
crummy brother would be eating dinner, when the Who's car breaks down
outside, and, coming in to ask for the use of the phone, the band would find
her in the very act of making Burnt Sugar Pudding ("a favorite of all the
Who," Cool Cooking, 1972). Afterward, having accepted an invitation for
dinner, Roger Daltrey would look at her straight in the eye and say, "Gee, I
wish J had a sister like you!" And if Paul (what do you mean, Paul who?) is
ever back on the marriage market, it couldn't hurt to know how to make his
favorite pizza. Marriage fantasies aren't necessarily sexual either.
9) Some fantasies are of "J wish I was my favorite star" type. All those
little girls practicing "Satisfaction" in front of the mirror have grown up
into a trend. In fact, probably more girls have daydreamed about being
Mick Jagger than of being Bebe Buell, Britt Ekland, and Anita Pallenberg
combined.
10) Lots of females who love rock music never go to big concerts. Even
girls who do want to fuck rock stars may not want to be pawed by strange
teenage boys. The absence of females at heavy metal concerts is usually
taken to mean that the record and radio audience for heavy metal is mostly
male. Maybe — but many females won't go to any big gathering they suspect
will be mostly male and rowdy, and this doesn't stop them from buying
records, posters, magazines, and T-shirts. Males who can't understand how
a female can worship a band but not go to its concerts underestimate the
reluctance of many females to be mauled by a group of loaded, firecracker-
throwing fifteen-year-old boys, many of whom regard concerts as mystic
licenses for hostile forms of sexual behavior. High school females are
exposed to a lot of hostile sexual behavior on a daily basis, anyway; petty
rock she wrote 183
molestation isn't unusual in a young girl's life, and trying to appreciate

one's hero while exposed to a constant barrage of such hostility isn't nearly
as much fun as staying home and hitting yourself in the head with a
hammer.
If girls don't like heavy metal, why do Van Halen enough to
they like
show up at their concerts? It's not because they think David Lee Roth is a
feminist. Why do girls show up at Ted Nugent concerts? Because, thanks to
his courting them through the teenybopper magazines, they know there's a
—
good chance of other girls being there safety in numbers. No female
interest in heavy metal? Ask the shy member of Van Halen. (What shy
member of Van Halen? Check Tiger Beat Star or 16.) And pray that Def
Leppard doesn't discover personality marketing, because, if anything,
female interest in heavy metal is growing, and lacks only bands willing to
cultivate it, the way Nugent and Van Halen have.
Once again: There are an estimated 112,000,000 women in America, and
concert samplings function as a lousy cross-section of their musical and
romantic interests. Ultimately, the female rock audience can no more be
defined than can the male rock audience. The sooner rock writers unburden
themselves of their accumulation of cliches, the sooner we'll have intelligent
writing —on any audience.
What makes you think Knack fans don't have the Knack's number?
Jessica Hagedorn, "Motown/Smokey
Robinson,"
from Pet Food and Tropical Apparitions, 1981.
Novelist and poet Jessica Hagedorn spent an important segment

of her early career in a San Francisco punk rock band, and her
work often reflects the significance pop music can play in
people's lives, whatever community they belong to. In this
poem, Hagedorn evokes the wistful erotic lure of the great soul
singer Smokey Robinson.
h, ,ey girl, how long you been here?

did you come with yr daddy in 1959 on a second-class boat
cryin' all the while cuz you didn't want to leave the barrio
the girls back there who wore their hair loose
lotsa orange lipstick and movies on Sundays

quiapo market in the morning, yr grandma chewin' red tobacco
roast pig? . . . yeah, and it tasted good . . .
hey girl, did you haveta live in Stockton with yr daddy

and talk to old farmers who emigrated in 1941?
did yr daddy promise you to a fifty-eight-year-old bachelor
who stank of cigars . . . and did you
run away to san francisco / go to poly high / rat your hair /
hang around woolworth's / chinatown at three in the morning

rock she wrote 18S
go to the cow palace and catch SMOKEY ROBINSON

cry and scream at his gold jacket
Dance every friday night in the mission / go steady with ruben?
(yr daddy can't stand it cuz he's a spik)
and the sailors you dreamed of in manila with yellow hair

did they take you to the beach to ride the ferris wheel?
Life's never been so fine!
you and carmen harmonize "be my baby" by the ronettes
and 1965 you get laid at a party / carmen's house
and you get pregnant and ruben marries you
and you give up harmonizing . . .
hey you sleep without dreams

girl,
and remember the barrios and how it's all the same:
manila / the mission / chinatown / east La. / harlem / fillmore st.
and you're gettin' kinda fat and smokey robinson's gettin' old
ooh baby baby baby

ooh baby baby
ooh . . .
but he still looks good!!!
/ love you
i need you
ineed you
iwant you
ooh ooh
baby baby
ooh
Donna Gaines, "Sylvia's Husband/'
Sociologist Gaines has made her mark in cultural studies with

her empathetic studies of suburban youth culture. Here, she
turns her eye on her own group of friends, and puzzles over the
role the figure of Lou Reed, Velvet Underground founder and
original punk, plays in their lives. What she deduces throws
light on some differences between male and female fanship.
(Historical footnote: Sylvia and Lou Reed are now divorced.)
his is Lou Reed. But it has very little to do with Reed

a story about
Lou Reed remains unrevealed, just like any
or his wife, Sylvia Morales.
other mass-mediated icon. Madonna, for example is she really Tom —
Ward's "capitalist slut," or is she Barry Walters's "prosex feminist," or
Vince Aletti's "prokie"? We don't know and some of us don't care. So I'm
not concerned with deconstructing Mr. Reed's oeuvre, in finding its telos, or
in figuring out if he fucked us over by "selling out." I don't care whether

Lou Reed is a legend, or a has-been grasping at maximum video revenue.
What does it matter if he prefers Hondas to Harleys or if he's just putting us
on? These are his problems, not mine. I'm not even one of his many obses-
sive fans. Some of my best friends are, though, and they've already warned
me to watch what I say about Him.
First there was the Bible, then Marx, and then there was rock 'n' roll.
When things get ugly I guess I should invoke the psalms or Marcuse or de
rock she wrote 187
Beauvoir. I should be calling on them to help me understand living in the

world. I mean, how else can we explain the everyday excrement where
animals endure Auschwitz for human vanity and progress, where the only
hold on life that teenagers feel they have left is suicide (ending it) or procre-
ation (starting it). And then there are the betrayals: friends who die too
young, lovers who turn out to be assholes, people we believe in who stick it
to us. In the minutes that lie between the hurt, anger, and confusion and
finding the guts to call a friend, what do I do? You got it — I stick my head
inside my speakers.
But Lou Reed was never my patron saint. The thing that stood between
me and mass murder was always a buzz-saw guitar. Thanks to Jimi Hen-
drix, somebody's life was saved by rock 'n' roll, but not mine. As a general
rule I'd rather dish it out than take it — but please, don't play an album like
Berlin around me on a bad day. My mother was a band vocalist who sang
beautiful, sad songs like "Tenderly" and "Solitude." But she was a widow
in mourning. My favorite lullaby was "Summertime." It still makes me cry.
I feel helpless and hopeless until I can get angry — if daddy is not "standing
by," well, I want to know who is responsible. I want blood and I need noise.
Unfortunately, Lou Reed isn't loud enough to make my ears bleed. But
the biggest strain in my relationship with him is that he's always seemed too
smooth, too distant, too hard, too "male." Almost every obsessive female
Reed fan thinks he's sexy, and has desires and fantasies about him. Not me.
My great dark man has a big nose, high cheekbones, droopy eyelids, and
pops a rooster in the center of his crown. He's raw, loose, sloppy, and
unprofessional: Johnny Thunders. But I'm not interested in having sexual
fantasies about Thunderella, or Keith Richards, or even Chuck Berry. Look,
it's not that simple.
Consciously, Lou Reed doesn't interest me that much. The only reason I
think about him is because my friends constantly annoy me about him.
(They are compelled to give me tapes of his newest albums and periodically
force me to go see him live. In turn they must go with me to see Thunders,
and am really pissed, I even make them sit through one of his annoying
if I
acoustic sets. We aren't totally retro, we do like to see all the new, now
bands. But I'm not talking about music here, this is religion.) Uncon-
sciously, I think I've internalized Lou Reed more than anyone else. Like
everyone else I loved the Velvets. And at least one song on every solo album
has broken off some of the ice around my heart. In the gut level moment of
anger, pain, hatred, horror, passion, or despair it's Lou I turn to. He says all
the creepy things I can't put into words. Often I'll say something wise to
188 donna gaines
myself. Then I'll realize it's a Lou Reed proverb I've picked up off my
turntable. I'm talking, but it's his voice.
It's now twenty years after the Velvets' first album, and people get fixated
Some know him only from "Heroin."
at different phases of Reed's career.
Other people remember the Rock 'n' Roll Animal boy. But my Lou Reed is
the wretch who found salvation, the one who became whole. Lou Reed
After Sylvia.
Some people are offended by Reed's "misogyny" — his cold mistrust of
women or his glass-menagerie treatment of them. At the very least, women

have been problematic in Reed's work. This never bothered me, since I felt
the same way about men. Reed as faggot junkie was another peacock, just
like all the young dudes of that era. This "pop transvestism" revolutionized
nothing much in the world of genital politics but it was fun. Anyway, the
brutal feelings of fear, rage, and disgust that Reed expressed never seemed
gender specific to me. Whether the loved one is the other or the same sex,
the roles of power and submission don't really change. There is always a
struggle, always some permutation of ecstasy, trust, pain, and confusion.
From the beginning I could handle Reed's surface anger and strut, but
stayed happily immune to his ever-present vulnerability. In his earlier al-
bums some possibilities for getting close. But there was always a
there were
buffer zone, some escape valve that protected him from us, and us from
him. For example, the bitterness and cold resolve of his "universal truth"
that the dead "bitch" in "Street Hassle" will "never fuck again" is quickly
betrayed by a pathetic whine that "love is gone." Here, the whiner just slips
away, sha la la la, so easy to forget.

A year later, in 1979, Reed gives us the song of songs. "The Bells" is the
"Kol Nidre" of rock 'n' roll. The wedding march of the mutant bride down
the aisle of some bizarro-world Brooklyn catering hall. Rococo-bop. Ave
Maria, baby. Here we are as usual, waiting for something: the Messiah, the
man, the beloved, the "show of shows." Meantime, we get King Crimson
Live at the Yiddish Theater. In nine minutes and eighteen seconds we have
thegood old wavering flame of truth, a flicker of hope for our redemption.
But it's just a good drunken cry. Reed's shaky goat voice is shrouded in so
much pissy schmaltz, we can laugh it off and sneak quietly out the back
door.
InGrowing Up in Public, the moth flies dangerously close to the flame.
Lou has to drag us through the mud of the human condition in "How
First
Do You Speak to an Angel?" It's getting pretty hot, but we are not at all
prepared. Our clothes are off, but we leave our shades on. We're playing it
safe again in "So Alone," we're on for one last hustle.

rock she wrote 189
And then the sop goes and gets married on Valentine's Day!
Two years later, in 1982, he came out with The Blue Mask. For no
apparent reason, my friend bought it for me. I listened to "Heavenly Arms."
This is very creepy, I thought. This is too pure. The goat voice is steady and
he sounds like he means it. No apology, no bravado, and no gimmicks? I
waited for the punch line, but it never came.

I wondered, is Lou Reed serious —
all this talk about women on the al-
bum, "only a woman can love a man"? Why? Because they're so disgusting
and we're so degraded that we'll put up with them? Or is it because women
are angels of mercy, not human beings? Or because only we really know
how to give love? Even worse, was Reed just like all the other boys in the
glitter bands of the seventies now asserting an orthodox heterosexuality to
advance the career in Reagan's homophobe eighties? So, he "loves
women"? Was he reading Ashley Montagu? Was he for real or what? Was
this born-again feminism a knee-jerk reaction or a true-blue confession? In
the title song, he was really baiting me — "take the Blue Mask down from
my face and look me Fuck off!
in the eye."
This was too much. was confused. After the years of fancy approach-
I
avoidance footwork, how could I trust him not to laugh at me for believing
that this time he really meant it? What was Lou Reed's angle anyway? And
what would a man be able to tell me, a woman, about emotions? How dare
he intrude on female turf, to try and teach me something about feelings? No
way could icy Lou be this open. Was salvation finally to be found in roman-
tic, hetero love —
the premier ideological weapon of the patriarchy? No way
would I fall into that trap, and how could he, of all people, buy into it? He
was supposed to be so smart. What about God, the movies, revolution, the
—
purge (writing), alcohol, and noise those more trusted saviors? Where did
this leave me? I had to consult the panel of experts, among them some of my
best friends.
My best friend Anthony says that Lou Reed is someone to grow old with.
Reed is an organic intellectual of New York. Every region has a few, and
sometimes these mentors reach out to people in other places. Anthony was
brought up in rural Northwest Florida, about thirty miles south of the
Alabama border. He was raised a Christian, a member of the Popular Head

Free Will Baptist Church. He claims that he was an atheist, but now he
Lou Reed." Anthony's mother has "never traveled north of the
"believes in
Mason-Dixon line, and has no intention of doing so." She does not like
Yankees, but every Christmas she sends me Tupperware. In high school,
190 donna gaines
Anthony overdosed from recreational Thorazine. The next week he was

voted president of the school's honor society. He tells me that if it were not
forLou Reed, he would have done himself in long ago. Like many people,
Anthony is a lonely genius. He was hard to get close to at first. But once we
became friends, he was the kindest and most giving of all.
Anthony got involved with Lou through the mail. The album came rural
delivery. Sometime in the early seventies he picked up a fanzine at a local
convenience store. Some distributor from New York was advertising an
album that looked "ultrahip." Anthony ordered itand embraced Lou after
hearing this, the Velvet Underground's third album. Anthony admits that a
skinny middle-class Jewish boy from a suburb of New York is not a likely
sage for a 315-pound biker from Bonifay, Florida. Anthony's obsessions
should have included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams, Jr., or Molly
Hatchet. He could care less if he ever meets Lou Reed. Some people have a
friend in Jesus, Anthony has one in Lou. Anthony has at least five copies of
everything ever issued by or about Lou Reed. This includes legitimate and
bootleg albums and tapes, books, interviews, and videos, although he does
not own a VCR. He has an inventory written to computer disk, consisting
of five pages of text in need of chronic updating. So far Anthony has three
elaborate tattoos inspired by Lou Reed, and inscribed for eternity with Reed
titles— "Berlin," "Venus in Furs," and "Rock & Roll Heart."
The lO Best Proverbs of Lou. Reed. slS

Told -to yvte by Ajtthony
X "But remember the princess who lived on the hill who
loved you even though she knew you were
—
wrong" "Coney
Island Baby," Coney Island Baby (1976)
2 "The thing you learn

first is you always have to wait"
that
— "I'm Waiting for My Man," The Velvet Underground and
Nico (1967)
3 "I ain't no dog tied to a parked car"

— "New Sensations,"
New Sensations (1984)
/t "It's either the best or it's the worst, and since I don't
—
rock she wrote 191
have to choose I guess I won't"

— "Street Hassle," Street Hassle
(1978)
5 "Some like wine and some

but what love
like hops I really
is my Scotch" — "The Power of Positive Drinking," Growing Up
in Public (1980)
O "Things are never good, things go from bad to weird"

"Underneath the Bottle," The Blue Mask (1982)
7
"How do you think it feels when all you can say is if only"
—"How Do You Think It Feels?" Berlin (1973)
O "Between thought and expression lies a lifetime"

— "Some
Kinda Love," The Velvet Underground (1969)
9 "I was young and smart and it was not a

dreamed that I
waste. I dreamed that there was a point to life and to the human
race"— "The Day John Kennedy Died," The Blue Mask (1982)
10 "And I guess that I just don't know" — "Heroin," The

Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
Anthony's idea of a blissful New Year's Eve is to sit alone in the woods of
his Florida plantation, with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and a tape of
Berlin. He Anthony admits that his relationship with
finds this cathartic.
Lou Reed is a littleeven drove him to violate me by dragging
psychotic. It
me to a poetry reading by Lou Reed and Jim Carroll, at the West Side
YMCA a few years back. I hate poetry. Anthony never refers to Lou Reed as
Lou or as Reed. Only as Lou Reed. He owns about eighty-six black T-shirts,
many of which are Reed memorabilia, some of them in triplicate. This
obsessive collecting behavior spilled over into my life when he bought me
seven copies of L.A.M.F., the Heartbreakers' classic album. L.A.M.F. has
my favoriteThunders back-room pleasure hymn, "Pirate Love." Once,
when I got Anthony the "Berlin" tattoo for his birthday, I almost got drunk
enough to get "Pirate Love" tattooed on my forearm. But I didn't I still —
hope to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, in Israel.
192 donna games
Anthony admires Ellen Willis, since she shares his obsession with Lou
Reed. When he taught sociology at Big Science University out on Eastern
Long Island, Willis's book Beginning to See the Light was required reading
for his course. He perpetrated several abuses against the youth of America
in the name of Lou Reed, like making the kids listen to Metal Machine
Music. They were also expected to write a critique of Diana Clapton's book
on Reed, drawing on sociological theories of deviance. Anthony got very
good teacher evaluations, one from the vice-provost of undergraduate
studies himself.
Anthony does respect that Thunders is my guiding light —the principle
behind my haircut and everything else that really matters— but he is a true
believer. He sincerely wants to help me develop my relationship with Lou
Reed. Since Ellen Willis is a feminist, Anthony figures he can use her
arguments to spread Lou's word to me. In her essay about the Velvets,
Willis says that listening to "Heroin" she feels "simultaneously impelled" to
save Lou from the needle and to take it herself. Anthony twists this around
to argue that men mainly identify with Lou, whereas women want to save
him. I think about this. I hate heroin as much as poetry, so yeah, maybe I
wouldn't identify with Lou. But the idea of saving some man, even my
beloved St. John of the gutter guitar, does not move me. In rock 'n' roll's
hetero discourse of romantic love, women save men. For the man, Love is
Salvation. For the woman, it's just another burden to bear. The idea of
symbiosis is appealing, and some men do save women, but a chemically
dependent lover of any sex is just a pain in the ass. No way. Johnny
Thunders puts out hard chord in a blues field — just the thing I need to feel
better. Transcendence for the moment. There's no feminist theory generated

in his brilliant dick-for-brains lyrics. But that's okay, I'm just using him, I
don't want to marry him.

After "Heavenly Arms" Anthony and I began using the name of Lou
Reed's wife Sylvia metaphorically, to signify the most committed form of
was the one who would always love you, believe in you,
nurture. "Sylvia"
you how great you were. The lover as one big pep talk. Again, this is a
tell
concept and probably has nothing much to do with Ms. Morales and her
husband. If one of our friends was depressed, Anthony would say I should
call him and "be Sylvia." Forget Yoko, she had an ego of her own. "Sylvia"
represented the purest form of unconditional positive regard.
Anthony's reading of Willis on Reed was convincing until I got a phone
call from California. My friend Vicki said she was coming to New York for
a few days. I asked her how things were going between her and Lou. Vicki
comes from Brighton Beach, and her father is an accountant, just like Lou's,
rock she wrote 193
she says. Brighton is right next to Coney Island. And so when Lou sings
"Coney Baby" she knows he wrote it for her, even if it is dedicated to

Island
Rachel. In the summer of 1970 Vicki and I hitchhiked into New York City
to see the Velvet Underground at Max's. It was the first time either of us saw
Lou. I think I was a hippie then, since I remember wearing a cotton, Indian
print tablecloth that I had made into a dress. I had gotten the tablecloth
from Babs's who owned a schlock store in Brooklyn. Babs had
father,
moved to New
York City and opened a boutique with a guy named
Richard. Richard was an artist, and he was gorgeous. He wore antique
clothes and old ladies' orthopedic shoes and streaked his long brown hair
with blue and red vegetable dyes. They lived on Second Avenue with Holly
Woodlawn and Warhol was the word. Babs was glitter and dressed very hot
and vampy. Vicki and I didn't know what the fuck, but that night at Max's
we were sure that Lou was singing to us. Babs is now retired and living in
Florida with her three children. Vicki went on to the wild life, then
marriage, divorce, and now a brilliant career in microchip.
Vicki says that Lou is still the great love of her life, and thinks he's really
sexy. She'd love to "fuck his brains out" and "could give a shit about saving
him." Vicki is about ten years younger than Lou Reed, and believes that
Reed makes an impressive adult role model. For Anthony, Lou Reed is the
men's liberation movement. He helps Anthony to allow and understand
feelings like "the violent rage that turns inward." He "knows" he will never
be "like most people," or ever "be happy." Lou understands why, so it's all
right. I feel that way, too, a lot, but I just blame it on monopoly capitalism.
Unfortunately this insight isn't much help to the atomized, in those
moments of pain when we all feel so alone.
Two Anthony drove out to Freeport, Long Island, to find a

years ago
certain high school.He walked across the football field trying to understand
Lou's relationship with the coach he did it for in "Coney Island Baby."
Anthony didn't care if this was the same high school football field where the
real Lou Reed and his coach had a moment or if it all happened in Coney
Island near Vicki's house or off the back of Lou Reed's eyelids one night.
We've never seen god except in pictures. People have always needed
something to believe in. The rock 'n' roll sage is there for us, the message is
inscribed in vinyl, to guide us in sickness and in health.
Now, I'm real tough and Anthony's groovy. Lou is a reptile. He's cold
and hard and distant, he's so "male." Lou Reed has always played both
sides of the fence: too cool, and too deep. Reed the trickster explores the
194 donna gaines
things we won't 'fess up to. Then, just when it gets scary, he lets us off the
hook. Except sometimes he makes us sweat and that's good for us, and for
him. I remember hanging out Max's back then, with Babs and Vicki;
at
everyone is trying to be so cool that nobody will make eye contact. People
are high and sneer at anyone they aren't cruising. By 1987 we are mature,
even bored, thinking about alienation. We have our lovely lives. We're
beyond these questions. But Lou Reed knows better, like the way he
cautions the pained and frustrated to "spit it out" on Mistrial.
There are political explanations for the personal things that Lou Reed has
articulated all these years. We know all the reasons why we protect and
pretend the self, and about how order is served by "self-control." We're
wise to how we get burned in the name of the things we hold sacred. Lou
Reed's naked embrace of "Sylvia" in "Heavenly Arms" was the most
subversive move made so far. And whatever the hell he "really" had in
he's
mind, I don't know. And where he's gone from there, I don't care. 'Cause
when I heard that, I could not deny the possibilities he held out. And though
this embarrassed me, it made a few of my friends very happy.
—
Christina Kelly, "I Hate Going

Backstage," Sa$$y, April 1991.
Look sweet sixteen: The appearance of Sassy magazine in the
out,
late 1980s revolutionized themedia's approach to teenage girls.
Rock 'n' roll spunk met feminist self-respect in the magazine's
pages, and Christina Kelly (first as music editor and eventually
as executive editor) had much to do with the development of its
wisecracking, outsider-cool style. Here, Kelly deflates the aura
surrounding one of rock's most enduring mythic talismans-the
backstage pass.
S ome
printed with the
band's publicist has given you this peel-off adhesive pass.
name of a band and the name of a tour, with today's date
It's
on it. Although some dorks have glued their passes to their left breasts, you
discreetly hold yours in your hand. Other hangers-on —record company
people, journalists, friends of the band, friends of friends of the band
hover around the backstage entrance, waiting to "say hello." Some lucky
people with laminated clip-ons that say access all areas walk right on back.
They are really, really old friends of the band or very important music
business types. They don't have to wait. You're so excited about meeting
your favorite musicians, you envision backstage as this magical place where
lifelong friendships are started. But the strain of trying to look like you
don't care is all over your face. Your humiliation is only beginning.
My job at Sassy has taken me backstage numerous times, and it has only
196 Christina kelly
recently dawned on me that it was never as much fun as I'd thought it
would be. Anyone who goes backstage on a regular basis will agree with
me. While a lot of bands see backstage as a place to relax before and after
the show, record companies see it as a place to conduct business. "So many
bands think of it as their private time, but a band's career does not begin
and end with the live show," says Janet Billig, director of promotions and
publicity at Caroline Records, an independent label whose roster of artists
includes Henry Rollins and Bad Brains. "I like backstage because it can
make writers and radio and retail people feel really important. When people
meet a band, they feel like they're friends with them, and they'll write about
them and put them on the radio, and that sells records." Thus, though you
girls not connected with the industry might get backstage just because
you're cute, you shouldn't bother. Backstage is only a teensy bit more fun
than a boring business meeting in some stuffy conference room, and it
infringes on your beauty rest. To prove this important theory, I will relate
some of my pathetic backstage experiences.
intruding on hothouse flowers
After interviewing Hothouse Flowers in Ireland last spring, I smeared my

love for them all over this magazine. When they played in New York last
summer, I was chomping at the bit to see them again. After the Flowers'
show at the Bottom Line, a fairly small club, a guy from the record com-
pany offered to bring me back to "say hello," two words for going back-
stage that the music industry has turned into a cliche. I was pretty psyched
to see the band again, since I had so much fun with them in Dublin and all.
But we had to wait for MTV to interview them before we went back, and as
I sat there small-talking with various Polygram executives I began to feel
ridiculous. What could I possibly say to Hothouse Flowers besides "I loved
the show"? What if they didn't even remember me? Just as I was contem-
plating my escape, I was led to the tiny backstage area —a dressing room,
really. Fiachna, the incredibly sweet guitar player, immediately gave me a
big hug. "Great to see you again," he said. "I loved the show," I said. Liam,
their charismatic singer, gave me a brief, polite hug. We even had a short
conversation, but I was doing all the talking, and I decided to release him
from my clutches. There was a line of people in back of me, and right after I
walked away some promoter kissed Liam. Mary Kaye has told me (from
experience) that being a friend or even a girlfriend of someone in a band
rock she wrote 197
doesn't make you feel any less superfluous backstage. You are still just one
more person intruding on the exhausted performers.
The next night, Hothouse Flowers played at the Rock Academy, a mid-
size NYC theater. After the show, I went outside to the backstage entrance
on Forty-third Street. A large crowd hovered around a door manned by an

incredibly rude and burly security guy. "That doesn't mean anything," he
said to a girl wearing an adhesive pass similar to my own. The band's
manager was walking in at the same time as I was, so he got me in. This
time there were tons of people backstage, many of whom I had seen at other
music industry events but couldn't place. Liam was drenched in sweat and
propped up against the wall, totally drained. He really looked like he was
about to pass out. The minute I saw him, I had an out-of-body experience: I
was floating around the ceiling observing my behavior. I had no purpose in
this place; I had already "said hello" the previous night, yet there I stood.
When I said hi to Liam, he barely moved his lips. The band had already
given so much onstage, and still all these people wanted more. To be their
best friend, their girlfriend, their new producer, what have you.
trying to crash an r.e.m. party
Back during the Green tour I went to see R.E.M. at Madison Square
Garden. My adhesive pass granted me admittance to a bar at the Garden
where you had to pay for your own soda pops. I sat there for approximately
one hour with Jane, her friend Rebecca, and my ex-boyfriend. None of the
boys even came out to say hi. (Naturally, we assumed that they were busy
and pretended not to mind at all.) This is very typical of large concerts. You
think you score big with a backstage pass, but no. The general rule of
thumb is, if the band is big enough to play an arena, they are going to be
hanging out in some inner sanctum that ordinary mortals are not allowed to
enter, giving interviews or dealing with other annoying business tasks. In
this case you need one of those laminated access all areas jobs I mentioned
earlier. The adhesive item is really just a formality that allows you to sit in a
room staring at fellow suckers.
After our backstage fiasco, Jane and Rebecca went to a private party for
about fifty close personal friends of the band, which I unsuccessfully tried to
get into.
—
198 Christina kelly
barging in on the b-52's
This was my only semipleasant backstage experience. After their show at
Radio City Music Hall, I was standing around with a couple of adhesive-
passed friends waiting for the after-show party to start downstairs. The
band's publicist spotted me and offered to bring me to the band. The back-
stage area was actually quite comfortable, with couches and such. (Most
backstages are either crummy, graffiti-covered dumps or nondescript, insti-
tutional-looking rooms.) There was a tasty buffet (vegetarian, as opposed to

the chips and M&M's and lots of Perrier and beer. There
you often see)
were very few people, and most of them appeared to be close friends and
family members. Cindy and Fred nodded and said hello to me, though I had
never met them before. Keith actually introduced himself to me and Jane.
Jane and I had met Kate once but she couldn't seem to place us. I saw that
guy who played the reporter in Batman. Although the atmosphere was quite
friendly, I still had this creepy celebrity-hungry feeling because I had no real
reason to be there.
a meaningful conversation with soundgarden
My friend Lew is a fan of the harsh-sounding Seattle band, so Sound-

garden's publicist Lauren brought us back to meet them at the Beacon
Theater (in NYC also). She was exhausted, as the life of a rock publicist
writing press releases, setting up interviews, sending out advance cassettes,
talking to phony people on the telephone — is not an easy one. "I've been
with these guys all day but I still have to say hello," she said wearily. The
area (we were stuck in a stairwell, where the whole backstage experience
often takes place) was packed, with a healthy sprinkling of blond scantily
clad heavy metal chicks. Lauren expertly zeroed in on the band. "Lew, this
isMatt [Cameron, the drummer]," she said. "Matt rides bikes. Lew writes
for a bike magazine." She got them together and pinpointed their common
interest in twenty seconds flat, before turning away and repeating the feat
with another pair. It was pretty amazing to watch.
waiting for aerosmith and skid row
As noted earlier, being a member of the press is not the only way to score
a backstage pass. When Aerosmith and Skid Row played at Long Island's
rock she wrote 199
Nassau Coliseum last year, I chaperoned two twelve-year-old girls, Vail and
Marisa. They were desperate to meet Sebastian Bach, so Vail's very cool
French mother called the show's promoter. "I am going back to France
tomorrow and I've got to meet these guys," she told him. "Give me one
good reason I should give you a pass," he replied. "I am fifteen and I am
gorgeous," she told him. He left four passes at the box office.
After the show we hung out in a section of the bleachers with at least fifty
other people until the Coliseum emptied out. None of these people looked
particularly like heavy metal groupies. In fact, they seemed a little on the
aged side. After about twenty minutes we were corralled outside the back-
stage area, in a hallway near one of the exits of the Coliseum, with nowhere
to sit and no food or drink in sight. We
had shown our passes to three or
four different security people, and they gave us no information about
where, when, or if the band would appear. We waited a total of an hour, at
which point I forced the girls to leave. It was a point of pride, really, because
we had not been treated as we'd hoped. Also, I felt sure that if we had not
seen the band by then, we would never see them. Vail and Marisa were very
disappointed, because they really thought the passes meant something.
dissing 10,000 maniacs
Following their recent concert at the Beacon, Jane and I took our passes
and sat ourselves down in the seats near the stage door. After five or ten
minutes, I suddenly realized I could not go through with this farce one more
time. Jane really wanted to stay and "say hello," since she had requested the
passes from Natalie and all, but I dragged her bodily out of there.
Pamela Des Barres, "Rock n' Roll
Needs Courtney Love,"
Interview, TVYardh 1994.
Miss Pamela, as she was known in the days when she ruled Los
Angeles' glittery nightclub milieu, exposed-and gave credibility
to— the groupie life-style for a mass audience with her 1989
memoir, I'm With the Band. Here, Des Barres spars amiably with
Courtney Love, leader of her own band, Hole, and then-wife of
Nirvana's main man, Kurt Cobain. (Soon after this piece
appeared, Cobain committed suicide in his and Love's Seattle
home. A few months later, Hole bassist Kristen M. Pfaff died of
a heroin overdose.)
|^? he reminds me of Janis, Jimi, or Jim because she shouts her mind,
doesn't hold back, holds her own reins, and makes sure everybody knows
about it —Iggy Pop in a shredded antique wedding dress, a female Lou Reed
who screams like Exene. I can't think of a woman in music who has ever
been as candid or spontaneous, as unshakable or brazen, as this founding
member of the band Hole and former member of Faith No More and Sugar
Babydoll. Live Through This, to be released by DGC Records next month,
marks Hole's and Love's ascension from uncontrollable indie underdogs to
major-league players in alternative rock. If there's anything that her
records, performances, and outspoken opinions have shown, it's that this
Love never has to say she's sorry.

—
rock she wrote 201
I spoke to her and the members of Hole in Seattle, where Love lives with
her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, and their exquisite baby daughter,
Frances. While the two new members of her band — bassist Kristen Pfaff and
drummer Patty Schemel —
and I waited for Love to finish her nap and join us
for the interview, Eric Erlandson, the guitarist who has been with Hole
since the beginning but who and said only a
rarely speaks during interviews,
few words during this one, went out some wine; a new kitty sat
to get us all
purring on the table; Frances toddled around grinning; and Kurt called the
pizza man.
Pamela des barres: You are still sort of pioneers in the hard rock world. I
know you were both in a number of bands before joining Hole, but what
was it like for you to get started as female musicians?
kristen pfaff: It wasn't very much like sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll at all
for me in the beginning. It was really intense work, just so that people
would eventually accept me as a serious bass player. Because I realized right
away that since I was a woman, I'd have to be better at what I did to be
treated as an equal. Like I'd have to take the music further. So I've worked
my ass off.
pdb: I just interviewed Joan Jett, and she told me that her parents taught her
that she could do anything a man could do.
patty schemel: Yeah, I kind of had that support from my parents, too.
kp: Me too. And I think it was the same for Courtney. We didn't grow up
learning to be limited.
ps: I never felt like I had anything to prove. It was the general impulse to
make music that drove me. I I was eleven and
started playing drums when
started playing in punk rock bands when I was like fifteen.
pdb: Your record [Live Through This] is about to come out. Everyone is
expecting it to be really big.
ps: I'm afraid to think like that.
kp: Courtney's kind of like that too. We don't want to
ps: Jinx it. [laughs]

pdb: To whoever is reading this, I'm talking to the girls while Courtney is
taking a nap. We're expecting her down anytime soon.

kp: Oh, here she comes.
Courtney love: Kurt! Kurt!
kurt cobain: [from the other room] What?
cl: Give me some of that pizza!
pdb: Hi, Courtney.
cl: Hi, Pamela. You want a piece?
—
202 pa.mela. des barres
pdb: No thanks. [Pizza is handed out] So you've decided to settle down in
Seattle. Do you like it here?

cl: It's probably my favorite place that I've ever lived. It's been really nice to
me.
pdb: Have you lived in a lot of different places?
cl: Yeah, I've lived all over the world. To me, towns are like boyfriends. I
have sick relationships with some of them. Like New York is sort of your
junkie Eurotrash guy that you know is not very good for you but you keep
going back. San Francisco is kind of like the wannabe junkie Eurotrash guy
—a skater with dreadlocks, sort of scummy, that totally lives off you. Min-
neapolis is like Dave Pirner [of Soul Asylum], basically. A cute guy who
would dump his girlfriend of thirteen years for Winona Ryder the minute he
gets famous.
pdb: [laughs].
cl: It's not fair to rag on Dave, though. When me and Kat [Bjelland of Babes
in Toyland] moved to Minneapolis, we were like, "All right, we're going to
a different town, starting a new band, and one of us is going to land Dave
Pirner."
pdb: I used to talk like that.
cl: I know.
pdb: I actually had a list.
cl: [laughs] Yeah, me too. Mark Arm, the guy in Mudhoney, said I should
write a book called I'm in the Band.
pdb: You should.
cl: [laughs] Well, in your time things were probably a lot different than they
are now. Which is why, some ways, I'm really excited to do
in this interview
with you. In other ways, I don't want to identify myself with you, even
though I totally do identify with so much of your life. But you know, it's
that word
pdb: The G word? [groupie]
cl: Yeah. That's why I wanted to talk to you, about your experiences and
how artists today, particularly women artists, relate to them. How the
energy that you had in the sixties is so similar to ours. Because to me rock
'n' roll is about being sexy, and watching guys that make you want to fuck
them.
pdb: Absolutely. I mean lots of guys, or even girls, start bands to get laid.
Gene Simmons me
was the reason he started Kiss.
told that
cl: I don't think most do that. Although an old friend of mine in
girls really
another band went through a phase where her whole thing was like, I'm
going to fuck sixteen-year-old cute guys all over the land. But that's fairly
rock she wrote 203
unusual. I mean, on a physical and mental level, sex is not the same for
women as it is for men. And sexuality is also different. Or should be differ-
ent. But I've noticed that a lot of girls in bands will do this whole androgy-
nous thing, and even though sometimes I think it's natural, other times I
think it's a way of them saying: "Look, there's something wrong. There is a
weakness in the female character, so I'm going to cover it up and I'm going
to create this masculine persona." That's sort of what PJ Harvey does. I

mean I love PJ Harvey, but fuck that, I am not just like a guy. None of us in
this band are. [to Eric Erlandson] Well, Eric is. [to pdb] It's so sad when Eric
gets left out of these interviews.
eric erlandson: Yeah, [laughs]
cl: But, like, women's studies for years in

Kristen did feminist studies and
school. Kristen also comes from a band that was on a label that was notori-
ously sexist. It's very guy-band oriented.
kp: When I was with that band, it was like we were speaking a different
language. I couldn't really explain myself in a way that would be under-

stood at all. I couldn't say anything about wanting to play with other
women.
cl: But she was the attraction in her band, because she was such a great
player and her stage presence was so excellent, [to Kristen] Did you tell
Pamela about . . . ?
kp: What about him?

cl: Oh, this is such a sad story. When I left Minneapolis and moved to L.A. I
took this guy's drummer with me and basically broke up his band. Me and
the drummer lived together for a little while — until I drove him crazy. You
know, I did this Yoko Ono job on him. He was so beautiful, and then . . .
he was broke. I was broke. I was like, "I'm going to go work in an escort
service if you don't sell your stereo." It was pretty pathetic. But that's when
I decided to go to Alaska, because I needed to get my shit together and learn
how to work. So I went on this sort of vision quest. I went to Alaska to

dance. Actually, to strip.
pdb: Why did you do that?

cl: My little trust-fund ran out. It was a tiny trust-fund, but suddenly I had
no money at all. So I got rid of all my earthly possessions. I had my bad little
strip clothes and some big sweaters, and I moved into a trailer with two
crack chicks turned tricks on the side at the club where we danced.
who
pdb: That was really ballsy of you. But why did you go to Alaska?
cl: Alaska just seemed like the farthest place that I could go to get away.
And it was dark all the time while I was there, so I kind of figured that no
one could see me. [laughs] But before I left L.A. I looked up strip clubs in
204 pamela des barrcs
the Yellow Pages. I realized I couldn't work at the Seventh Veil or Star Strip
at that time because I was fat. Later, when I lost weight, I did work in those
clubs. But then I had to quit because they kept playing songs from Faith No
More. There's nothing worse than having to dance topless to your old band.
pdb: [laughs]
cl: But you know, on my way back from Alaska I stopped in Seattle on the
Greyhound, and when I got off I had little visions of Kurt [Cobain] and
Mark [Arm] in my head —not in a sexual way, but in that way that . . .
Because every town has its sort of rock star icon guy, the king of the town.
And in my head I was like, Yeah, when I get my band together, you're going
to open for me. Which is a great way of taking that energy, that sexual
energy that comes from rock, and changing it. And that's part of the reason
why I have such a problem with the whole groupie thing. You know, the
whole we're-backstage-and-we're-going-to-blow-a-roadie thing. I just think
that's such a waste of female energy and I hate it. Like I remember one night
Roddy [Bottum of Faith No More] was opening for Billy Idol at the Forum,
and I went backstage for the show. Whenever I had to go to these horrifying
events, like VIP parties, I made sure I wore no makeup and a big Vietnam
jacket and put grease inmy hair so that I could separate myself from the
other women there. When I went into the bathroom that night and saw
some of these girls standing in front of the mirror, I thought: If I gave each
one of you a guitar and showed you how to play, you'd be repulsed. You
wouldn't even want the power.
pdb: Do you feel like you have power by being a rock star?
cl: Fuck, yeah, man! I'm a rock star girl!
pdb: Have you always wanted that power?

cl: Always! Since I was a kid, you show me any kind of male-oriented thing
that can have a female protagonist and I'm there.
pdb: Did you ever think of yourself as a groupie? Or did you always just
want to play?
cl: I wanted to be a groupie, but I wasn't really pretty enough. There is one
heavy metal rock star I slept with. It's a fairly well-known fact, but I can't
tell you who it was. It's so goddamn embarrassing. So yeah, I did score once
in my yellow tube top and my red painter pants, [laughs]
Back then there was this girl that I would hang out with who was pretty
bottom of the barrel. She could never really get past the road manager. And
when she did she would get to, like, drummers. To me the whole thing was,
Is this your dream f That this guy is going to fall in love with you and take
you away and marry you?
pdb: That was my dream.
rock she wrote 20S
cl: But my dream was, when I saw those lighters go up at the end of the Van
Halen show at the Portland [Memorial] Coliseum, Why do guys get to do
this? I'm making no judgment on your dream, but . . .
pdb: In my time there weren't too many other options.

cl: Yeah, but this is now, and it's a complicated issue for me because so
many people have called me a groupie since I married a rock star. I just wish
that his band was smaller. You know, when we started dating, our bands
were about the same. Actually, Hole's first record ["Pretty on the Inside"]
sold more than Nirvana's first record ["Bleach"]. Of course, that was before
they got huge.
pdb: Do you feel competitive with him?
cl: Yeah. I mean, I married one of the best songwriters of my generation. If
my goals were minor the professional side of my relationship with Kurt

wouldn't bother me that much. But I'm not like some Olympian Riot Grrrl.
In fact, that's my problem with the whole Riot Grrrl thing. As supportive as
I am of them, there's a faction that says, "We don't know how to play, but
we're not going to follow your male-measured idea of what good is." Look,
good is Led Zeppelin II. That's fucking good. And I'm not going to sit here
and say you're a good band when you suck. They're like, "But we're enti-
tled to suck." Really? We work so hard to get good at what we do without
covering up who we are as women. So when I hear people saying things like
"Oh, Courtney got that gig because of who she's married to," it really pisses
me off.
Of course it's not like I don't feel lucky to have this great guy. I mean, on
a personal level, just in terms of his fidelity and that kind of stuff, he's
amazing. Like the other night we went out with Mark Lanegan [lead singer
for the Screaming Trees]. Mark is the sexiest guy in the Northwest. When I
see him I'm just like, Uhhhhh!
pdb: So you still feel that sort of sexual thing for other guys?
cl: Oh, yeah. You know sweet Evan [Dando]? We just toured with him, and
one night he passed out in Patty's bed. He was asleep and I woke up to go to
the bathroom —
we were sharing a room and I was in the other bed. I looked
at him and I was just kind of checking him out. Not bad. Then I thought:
Ahh, fuck it. I got steak at home. I mean, you can look, right?
pdb: [laughs]
cl: Anyway, I'm about three times out of his age range. Frances is more in
his age range!You know, Evan's on the cover of Spin this month [Febru-
ary], and Frances walked over and picked up the magazine and said,
"Daddy." This just happened today. I was like, "Frances, no. You'd have a
huge jaw."
—
206 pamela des barres
pdb: There are very few sexy guys in rock anymore. I think Evan is one of
them.
cl: Well, thewhole idea of what's sexy has changed a lot. When I was
growing up, my best friends and I were into guys like David Bowie, Leonard
Cohen, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan.
pdb:I loved Bob Dylan. Have you seen Don't Look Back?
cl: Who do you think I live with? I have to watch it every day.
pdb: Is Kurt a Bob freak?
cl: No, it's just that when he's in a bad mood, he is Don't Look Back,
[more guy talk until .]
. .
ps [to pdb]: Have you read Peggy Caserta's book on Janis Joplin?
cl: First sentence: "I was stark naked, stoned out of my mind on heroin, and
the girl lying between my legs giving me head was Janis Joplin." It was just
—
so fucking sick. But there's a martyr for you Janis. First of all, she was
nominated for Ugliest Man on Campus at the University of Texas. She came
to San Francisco once, got too strung out, started hanging out up on Co-
lumbus and Broadway, back when Columbus and Broadway was sleazy. I
—
loved it when it was sleazy the way it was when I was in Faith No More
and living in the Europa Hotel and my window was the corner window
with pictures of Carol Doda's tits all over it. That was also during my Iggy
Pop phase, when I used to cut myself onstage.
pdb:You used to cut yourself onstage?
cl: Yeah. See? [shows pdb her scars] I really lived it back then. I just thought
I was rock or something. Now I realize that there's a certain detachment
one must have from all of that. Being a female performer, the whole dy-
namic of an audience is different. Like we toured once with Mudhoney, and
Mark [Arm] would stage-dive every night, [lowers voice] I was so in love
with that guy. [laughs] In fact, it was sort of a contest there for a while
between Kurt and Mark over who was going to end up being the love of my
life.
Anyway, one night Hole was in London performing. We had just gotten
off tour with Mudhoney, and I decided to stage-dive. I was wearing a dress
and I didn't realize what I was engendering in the audience. It was a huge
audience and they were kind of going ape-shit. So I just dove off the stage,
and suddenly, it was like my dress was being torn off of me, my underwear
was being torn off of me, people were putting their fingers inside of me and
grabbing my breasts really hard, screaming things in my ears like "pussy
—
whore cunt/' When I was naked. I felt like Karen
got back onstage I
Finley. [laughs] But the worst thing of all was that I saw a photograph of it
later —
someone took a picture of me right when this was happening, and I
rock she wrote 207
had this big smile on my was pretending it wasn't happening. So

face like I
later I wrote a song called "Asking for

It" based on the whole experience. I
can't compare it to rape because it's not the same. But in a way it was. I was
—
raped by an audience figuratively, literally, and yet, was I asking for it?
That's when I started trashing stuff, because I was like, Why can't I have the
same contact with the audience that all these guys do? I think I did about
$5,000 worth of damage that night. I broke my favorite Rickenbacker
[guitar]. And we were a poor band. I mean, I was so broke, [laughs] But
later I read in some rock 'n' roll book that I was the first person the . . .
first girl to smash my guitar onstage. I guess they weren't counting Wendy
O. Williams.
pdb: Do you see yourself as someone who likes to provoke people?
cl: No. Not at all.
pdb: [Incredulous] So you're really not doing any of this stuff on purpose.
cl: Honestly, I just want to play.
Danycl Smith, "Dreaming America:
Hip-hop Culture/' Spin, May 1993.
Hailing from the West Coast hip-hop capital of Oakland,

California, Danyel Smith has developed one of the most
personable womanist voices addressing the genre today. Here,
in Spin's hip-hop column, she reminisces on the night she met a
first love-a group who won her devotion amid the sweaty ritual
atmosphere of the nightclub.
—
JLt was way back at least a zillion years ago when I was single and I
was wearing my stiff brown jacket with Tommy Boy stitched on it in yield
yellow. This was when the so-called "staff" coats had just come out, and
owning one, especially way out in California, was truly the dope shit.
My hair was still long, and I went to a dank hole of a club in San
Francisco called the DNA Lounge with two guys, Mike and Johnny, to see
Gang Starr. It was hot inside the place, but not packed. Females were
outnumbered, eight to one. The opening act was privy to very few show-
manship secrets as I recall, so I spent a good part of their set figuring out the
easiest way and then managing to scramble up to the top of a tallish un-
plugged speaker in the back of the room — Mike and Johnny had joined
their saggily dungareed compatriots up nearer the small stage. Finally
seated on the big black box, with my folded jacket under my butt for even
more boost, my view of the stage was unobstructed. I felt, stupidly, trium-
phant.
rock she wrote 209
My mind meandered as the intermission ran its course. I longed for

something other than the classic jams the house DJ was deftly spinning.
Barely up on Gang Starr at the time, I knew little of what Keith "the Guru"
Elam and Chris "Premiere" Martin had in store for me. I just wanted to lose
the present and find fandom. That ecstatic, erotic, nonsensical place where
profound connection is made between performer and audience member,
that place of mutuality and release. It's the entire reason for seeing music
performed live. It is my (frequently unrequited) wish every time I go to a
hip-hop show.
I sipped on my whatever-I-was-sipping and said a fervent pseudo-Chris-
tian prayer asking for no fights tonight, asking to be touched not by —
Johnny or Mike or any of the other very excited men staked out around the
room, but by the treble, asking to be moved by the music, shaken by the
bass, kissed wetly in my ear with the full lips of a microphone stylist. Take
me to the next phase I baby I take me. I asked that the band —and it was
going to be Gang Starr —create something big enough for me to slide into.
I wanted to hip-hop, you minus apology, without
see, reservation. I
wanted to shake my head in amazement at the show, at the goings-on

onstage. Not just nod my head, but fall out laughing, even screaming at the
crazy sensual nowness of it all.Not just hoot at the end of each song, but
shake my perspiring head in amazement and happiness at the immediacy of
someone actually being Up There, rapping.
For Gang Starr, this was Step in the Arena-era, before the almost as
perfect sequel, A Daily Operation, before Digable Planets took Elam and
Martin's punt and ran (a trifle too smoothly) off with it, before Arrested
Development's improv style arrived reeking with, if not a lot of jazz music,
then certainly a whole lot of jazz flavor —
this was before what Gang Starr
was doing became the next step, the new direction, a different level. And as
the duo went through its stellar set I reveled in the way it explored, mostly
on purpose, sometimes subconsciously, the hip-hop dichotomies of power
and powerlessness; "negative" ghetto- and "positive" Afrocentricity, obses-
sive self-love and manic self-hate. The deep affection for mama-deep hatred
of sister dichotomy was nearly absent from the Guru's monotonic, assertive
rhymes. The group wasn't enthusiastically welcoming women into its club-
house, but the door was ajar. At the time, it was the most I could hope for. I
could listen hard and be made happy.
The mostly male audience had converged tightly on the floor around the
stage, close on top of each other. They knew Elam's lyrics, yelling out
neighborhood names, holding up bottles of beer in salute to the duo, in
praise for Gang Starr having put together seamless, bass-y beats, in thanks
210 danyel smith
to them and seeing, then writing, then saying, in front of God and
for living
everybody, precisely what they have no place, and sometimes no words, to
articulate. The men moved around, it seemed, almost uncontrollably,
fiercely dancing, paying homage to two of their contemporaries who

—
deemed their experience the oft-distorted, mostly trivialized by hyper me-
dia exposure, "urban black male" experience —
worthy of contemplation
and performance. Their response was mostly exclusive of me and my gen-
der, and there was anger, even meanness, in the joy I witnessed from my
perch, but it was joy. And so it was a joy to watch.
I got it, see. I felt in on the whole thing —
the way the mesmerizing,
intimidating jazz got stuck in the booty by Premiere's merciless needle, the
way the here-and-now was smooshed together with the way-back-then, the
way the Guru's voice, delivering his smart, haunting lyrics, rode the jazz-
waves with look-Ma-no-hands inflections, the way the men furiously ac-
knowledged their rare validation. Gang Starr had created some music that
had a body of its own, which needed no brightly dressed human dancers to
back it up, that reached out its ashy-brown fingers and touched people.
They granted my wish —took me, as I'd desired, to the next phase.
From my spot, the place I had awkwardly ascended to, I could see the
show, the gesticulations and the nuances of a sublime act, one that at once
mirrored and uplifted its spectators. I felt Elam's lips as they flowingly
formed around his poetry, wet (as I'd hoped) on my ear, my neck, and they
lingered, heavily, on my mind. It was on that mild San Francisco night that I
became a Gang Starr fan.

BOY
WATCHING
Patti Smith, "A/lasked Bawl/' Creem,
April 1974.
Even as she was beginning to turn the definition of rock star on

its head with her own music, Patti Smith wrote lyrical, bare-
boned rock criticism, plugged directly into the libido of the
symbolic. Here, she uncovers the sexy side of folk hero Bob
Dylan.
Bob Dylan, Planet Waves (Asylum)
a
severed me
od-bye baby. See
off. I
I one would be the work that
was hoping this
some good dog too long. Trying

been following him like
not to be ashamed, as it does not seem to please him this admiration. But —
you know I never looked on him as my messiah. I don't need no messiah.
And no protest singer neither. To me he was always a sex symbol. Positive
energy behind a negative mask. Like a full basket beneath straining pants. It
wasn't the world he saved, in my dreams, it was me.

At school dances I was a perpetual wallflower. Not the kind that's lucky
enough to blend with the walls. I stuck out like a boil on a bareback. I'd
lurk about in limp taffeta and dream of him. My James Dean, my knight.
He'd walk across the dance floor, take me in his arms and we'd do the
strand to "A Million to One."
He articulated every unuttered cry. He played with such urgency. As if he
214 patti smith
had a stilted lifeline. As if he had a pain in the nerves. Him in his plaid
jumpsuit. It hit me then. How a guitar rests so completely on a man's cock. I
embraced every word. I walked his walk. I followed no parking meters.

When he broke down I waited patiently for his return. I never waltzed in his
garbage. I know he's human. He's simply human. I think of him often but
I'd just as soon forget him. Let the planet have him.
Planet Waves. I like the cover. Mostly cause it's black and white. Like
Baudelaire's dress suit. And his handwriting: ". . . space guys ... big
dicks and ducktails . . . searching thru the ruins for a glimpse of buddah
. . . long insomnia." Two cuts (side 2) make it completely worth it. One
black one white. One that swan dives and one that transcends. The death of
friendship the birth of love.
It's a thin line between love and hate. Genet and Motown know all about
it. "Dirge" is a love song Burroughs could get into. Amphetamine IBM.
Masculine honor broken on low streets. Corrupt and beautiful. Man to
man.
"... can't recall a useful thing/ you ever done for me/ except to pat me
on the back/ when I was on my knees/ we stared into each others eyes/
neither one of us would break/ no use to apologize/ what difference would it
make."
Moth wings flapping. Very Lorca-esque guitar and the way he plays
piano. A style second only to Oscar Levant's. Insistent plodding chords
drenched in "ballad in plain-D" guilt. There's something so delicious about
repentance; so seductive about shame. The maze you enter — his brain and
spleen. The dark where "angels play with sin."
alley It's very moving. A
man lost in the barracks of any city cold and dead as crystal.
"Wedding Song" is the white one. The hero is bleeding is tracked thru the
snow. He sings it with the bitterness of one who's forced to tell the truth.
His Hattie Carroll voice. He's such a handsome singer. And he sings like
nowhere else. A wilderness arcade at 4 a.m. He

there's sings to her "I love
you more than madness." There's nothing more a man could say to a
woman. To love her more than art, than himself. Peace coming from liquid
fusion. Nothing more perfect than the perfect union.
I don't care for the rest of the album. There's no balance. The Band
makes me nervous. Like a bumblebee in the face. But I'm no hipster putting
down Gone" has fine lyrics and stands waiting
the prince. "Going, Going,
to be covered by Chuck Jackson. And for me "Dirge" and
Mick Jagger or
"Wedding Song" are enough. Beyond any other. Relentless as one deter-
mined to walk very fast thru the faint night. Hard and manhead. Sex sym-
bol songs. The ones that never let me down.
rock she wrote 2 IS
Oh I been sick see. Victim of a bandanna wrapped too tight. Lying in bed
and my vision been bad. Playing "Dirge" over and over. Drawing a picture.
I thought it was Rimbaud but it was Dylan. I thought it was Dylan but it
was me I was making. Sooner or later all of us must know. It comes on like
a weeping revelation. It grips like a claw in the main. Everyman has got to
do his own work. But when you get down to pure self portrait it's just the
end of the line.
Trixie A. Balm, "Heavy Metal Will
Stand/' Creem, /Way 1973.
In this album review of the legendary metal-punk band the
Dictators' Go Girl Crazy, Balm (real name Lauren Agnelli-who
later became one third of the popular neo-Beat folk group the
Washington Squares) declares that good humor and woman-
worship can defeat sexist tendencies, even in the most street-
hardened New York borough boys. Agnelli's review typifies
Creem's style of wild wordplay and brash opinion, which
influenced many a rock writer to follow.
B, 'etcha thought I'd up and puke, eh guys? Get pissed and pan your
debut like a snotty azzole, huh? Like, how the fuck do ya get off on doing
these crude Surfari rip-off cruisin' tunes? Just how low can ya get? Think
you're real smart, eh? Bein' cracked up as hotshit Noo Yawhk rock 'n' roll
success stories means turd to me . . . I'm from Queens myself: used to
hang out with the hippies, chewing gum and screwing up and bein' a tuff
cookie like my sister who was once the Queen of Green Point, Brooklyn. So
I got you dudes all figured out. Another buncha sick turkeys. This rock 'n'
roll gig's "Just a hobby, nuthin' but," eh? Tell me about it. . . .
Almost carried away by these rubble-rousing reprobates who've coined

an idiotic image-imitative style destined to garner 'em derision or acclaim.
Impossible to lukewarm over the Dictators you either go ga-ga or
feel —
Bronx cheer. Their music comes close to conjuring the surfing sound of the
—
rock she wrote 217
seventies, qualifying as passable heavy metal et al to boot. Good sick fun,

shades of lOcc, not quite one-upping Flo and Eddie, a conglomeration of
Alice Cooper, Mott, the NY Dolls, Iggy and the Stooges, the Beach Boys
besides smacking of so much else it's ear-boggling. So what? The Dictators
Go Girl Crazy features swell melodies and lyrics anyhow (or maybe I'm
willing to spare the hook here because I've a weakness for deafening off-the-
wall sleaze and pseudoilliterate degento greasers).
Caveat auditor: this album is vulgar. But impressive. These talented hams
play echelons better than bands I've come across jamming in Queens. Basi-
cally a vocal group using rudimentary riffs and instrumental frenetic —
fuzzed-out guitar, strong emphasis on beat, adherence to 4-4 tempo —the
Dictators aren't much bothered by having a facsimile sound or with taking
tedious breaks. But they are concerned with acting facetious and singing
echoflex four-part harmonies which are a cross between fifties shoop shoop
and Four Seasons ooh wee ooh. "Teengenerate" has a great melody line
backed by lissome, shrieking leads (Ross "The Boss" FUNichello), chunkah
rhythmwork ("Top 10" and his Pacemaker guitar), acme raunch percussion
(Stu Boy King thumping his all elpee-long). Adny Shernoff's basslines are
inconspicuous, leaving bottom filler up to Stu Boy, who compensates might-
ily with virtuoso pummeling and booming bass drum. But Adny Shernoff
contributes by singing lead and coming up with precious lines like "Won't
be happy till I'm known far and wide, / With my face on the cover of the TV
Guide," "We play sports so we don't get fat," "I think Lou Reed is a creep,"
and the immortal "Set me free, might know better when I'm older, / But
today, just give me a sopor . .
." Go Girl Crazy is tasteless, nihilistic, and
revoltingly truthful. Viz: "Sometimes I wish I was black" ("Back to Af-
rica"), ". . . I'm a-scared of growing old" ("Master Race Rock"). Every
track an uncouth jewel.
The Dictators parody the California Dream in Go Girl Crazy, eternally
on the cruise for burgers, the perfect wave, sun and monkeyshines ooh la la
—with punk aplomb. They insist that girls are as essential to the good life as
"the fastest car." According to "(I Live For) Cars and Girls," "There's
nuttin' else in dis crayzee world except for cars and g-g-g-g-girls," which is a
considerably loaded statement for some virulent antisexists and humorless
dolts to take. Yet, as a woman, I'm not enraged by their macho attitude per
se because, 1) the Dictators cannot be taken seriously, 2) I feel flattered by
their coarse, affectionate worship, singing of how their lives revolve around
a Female Ideal (and Auto-Eroticism).
Proficiently transporting a time warp is a hard stunt to pull off, and I'm
pretty sure the Dictators know damn well what they're doing and why, and
218 trixie a. balm
how to do it without stooping lower than the gutter, which seems to be their
turf as well as point of departure. Go Girl Crazy is entertaining because the
Dictators opt for un(or anti)pretension in lieu of refinement; like Roxy
Music, they poke fun at "fun." Braggarts and rowdies, the vinylized punk
menace, they're a slice of Deco-American life: casualties of Coca-Cola
Drain.
Roll over Brian Wilson.
Karen Durbin, "Can the Stones Still
Cut It?" The Village Voice, June 23, 1975.
In this tour piece, longtime Village Voice writer (and current

editor-in-chief) Durbin takes to the road with rock's most
famous devils, and discovers a world where women need to play
by certain rules. She examines her own vulnerability to the
band's seductive ways, while unflinchingly detailing the boys-
only attitude that pervades the atmosphere of the road.
wo a.m. in a motel room in Wisconsin. The room is thick with dope

and smoke. People of various sexes crowd the room, among them
cigarette
the Stones. No one looks healthy. Keith Richard, as usual, looks moribund,
wasted, and vaguely dangerous. He is wearing a toothy-looking earring in
one ear and incredibly expensive, incredibly scuffed snakeskin boots. Peo-
ple are drinking whiskey and wine, snorting coke through rolled up five-
pound popping amyl nitrate. One big fat bearded
notes, and, occasionally,
man and shitkicker boots sneaks up behind a heavily made-up
in jeans
young woman and pops an amyl nitrate capsule under her nose. Her eyes
roll back and she almost keels over. Then she pulls herself together and
looks ecstatic. I am not ecstatic. I am not even slightly at ease. If someone

pops one of those things under my nose, I know I'll fall down in a hideous,
gibbering fit. I feel the way I did on the first night of sixth grade dancing
class back in Loveland, Ohio, where I was the only girl in anklets instead of
stockings and Buddy Borger didn't dance with me once. The coke I've
220 karen durbin
snorted has intensified this feeling. The dope is decorating it. Mick Jagger is
across the room, looking bored and small and unobtrusive. I would like to
go over and talk to him, after all, I am a reporter and he is The Stone. I can't
do it. Every time I start to, my knees dissolve, as they have been dissolving,
on and off, in his behalf for the past ten years.
Finally, I give up the whole misguided adventure and slink off to my
room, where I can read a murder mystery and try to feel less ridiculous. I
am doing this, unsuccessfully, when I hear a light tap at my door.

"Come The door opens, and it is Mick. He has a
in," I say. bottle of wine
in his hand, and he looks tired and friendly.
"Hi," he says, "would you like to talk?"
A fantasy, of course. It ran through my head on a repeating loop for two

weeks, from the moment I got the assignment to cover the first week of the
current Stones tour of North America until May 31, when I checked in at
the Royal Orleans Hotel in New Orleans, thereby entering the world of a
Stones tour.
It's tight, self-enclosed, and intense; you're pulled into it like an astronaut
into a black hole. Swoop! and you're in another world, within the larger
universe but essentially sealed off from it, with the Stones as its gravita-
tional center and everyone else revolving around them in a continually
shifting hierarchy. There's no room, or time, for fantasy in that world;
you're too busy finding your feet. And besides, the fantasy was wrong, as I
had expected it would be.
After dropping my bags in the furnished closet that constitutes a single

room at the Royal Orleans, I went with another reporter, John Rockwell of
the Times, to the Stones floor to pick up a press kit. (The Stones' touring
party — upwards of fifty people — is large enough that they can commandeer
a floor of every hotel they stay at.) While we were there, talking with Paul
Wasserman and Suzi Oxley, the tour press people, Jagger walked in. He
looked haggard and homely, with a mouth too large for his face, which at
that moment seemed deeply lined, and a head too big for his body. He is
small — all the Stones are, and they look slightly miniature, like eighteenth-
century men. But to say he's unobtrusive is too definite.
He is less unobtrusive than visually elusive. The parts don't quite fit
together; the subtle disproportion confuses the eye. And he turns on and off
more than any other person I've seen. The difference between on and off is
the difference between a lit stage set and a darkened one.

And with Jagger, on and off isn't simply the difference between the on-
rock she wrote 221
stage persona and the offstage person. The onstage persona is always on;
however many characters or moods Jagger might convey onstage sexual, —
clownish, menacing, he shuffles them like a deck of cards each is distinct —
and readable. But the offstage person is not consistently and the face of
off,
the person flickers continually with the masks of the personae. Charm gives
way to boredom, boredom to irony, irony to humor, with no apparent
sequential logic, and in between are moments of pure blankness, when there
is no expression at all on the face. Perhaps these are moments of privacy for
an extremely public person; if so, they work. Because at such moments the
observer is left with nothing to look at but that confusing disproportion,
and so you tend not to register him at all. Jagger is probably one of the most
widely photographed people in the world, and yet if he wants to —and
assuming there aren't hordes of forewarned groupies behind every potted
palm —he can pass through a hotel lobby virtually unremarked.
When Jagger came into the room that Saturday, he was a small, tired
offstage performer asking his PR people a question. Then Paul introduced
him to the reporters present, and the air zinged a little with that "oh, a star"
tension that arises whenever any of the Stones is being introduced to some-
one. Jagger seemed to come into focus; he straightened and smiled and
shook John Rockwell's hand in an attitude of formal courtesy. When he
turned and did the same with me, I saw that above the smile his eyes were
like blind walls. It was interesting, even eerie, but not the sort of thing to
dissolve the knees of any but the most determined sexual fantasist.
If one's fantasies of Stones life revolve around sex and drugs, around
play, the reality one finds on tour is work. This was particularly true during
the first week of the tour, when the band was
show together.
still pulling the
In the course of that first week, the Stones did five shows, two at Louisiana
State University's Assembly Center in Baton Rouge (the Stones commuted
back and forth from the hotel in New Orleans by air-conditioned camper),
another two in the Convention Center in San Antonio, and an outdoor
show Arrowhead stadium on the outskirts of Kansas
at the 60,000-seat
City. The night beforefirst concert, there was a midnight-to-dawn tech-

the
nical rehearsal at Louisiana State with the full band the four Stones, Ron —
Wood of the Faces filling the space left by guitarist Mick Taylor, Billy
Preston on keyboard, and twenty-two-year-old Ollie E. Brown, who usually
plays with Stevie Wonder, assisting on percussion.
These are the longest sets the Stones have ever done, running a little over
two hours and containing between twenty-two and twenty-four songs. The
oldest is "Get Off My Cloud," which segues out of "Ain't Too Proud to
—
Beg" a typically paradoxical Stones juxtaposition and the show con- —
222 karen durbin
i
eludes with abombardment of rockers. All week long, you could see the
show evolving onstage through the individual concerts, its parts knitting
together into something organic and alive.
Not that any show was bad crowd disappointed, but the first
or any
concert had an air of labor about You could see the continual effort
it.
behind the music on the part of every member of the band; the seams were
visible, and the show only really flew —
that moment when the music seems
to take over the musicians and send them as well as you spinning off into
—
some musical outer space during the last half-dozen numbers. Two days
later, with the first show in San Antonio, everything jelled. The band
seemed loose and high by the second number ("All Down the Line"). Mick
used every available inch of the huge, starflower-shaped stage, Keith
grinned frequently (Gar bo laughs!), and Ronnie Wood skittered around in
circles like a speedy six-year-old. Even Bill Wyman, ordinarily a solemn
man on stage, was seen to smile.
After the show, back at the hotel, everyone was exhilarated. It was evi-
dent that a tension had eased. And no wonder. Because that first San Anto-
nio performance answered the uncomfortable questions that hang over this
tour more than any other: Can the Stones still cut it? Are they slipping, is
this the beginning of the end? Yes, they can, no, they aren't, and no, the end
isn't in sight. That was one of the best rock shows I've ever seen, all two
hours and fifteen minutes of it, and the ones that followed were just as
good. The Stones are in their prime.
My favorite souvenir of the tour is a yellow armband, a cheap piece of
ribbon with three words on The armbands were a source of both pleasure
it.
and paranoia. They first came to my attention Sunday evening after the first
show. A room had been set aside at the LSU Assembly Center for the press
to use. There were a lot of us there. I don't think any Stones tour has been as
heavily covered as this one is turning out to be, with anywhere from a half-
dozen to two dozen radio, television, and print journalists following the
tour at any given point.
Some of us were feeling a little out of sorts. It looked as if we were going
to have to spend the time between shows —a matter of some hours—stuck
in the press room. A hospitality room, where there was food and an oppor-
tunity to talk to the band and where we had been permitted to spend some
time the night before, during the rehearsal, was off limits to the press. Or
was it? was glumly considering the sadly empty state of my
Because as I
stomach and my notebook, Frank Conroy of the Times Magazine wandered

rock she wrote 223
by wearing some kind of yellow ribbon around his arm. Worse, he was
drinking a beer. Then, Geraldo Rivera showed up, also wearing a yellow
armband and eating a plate of food.
Paranoia, envy, and panic mingled in my brain. My worst suspicions
were confirmed. Not all reporters were being kept away from the Stones,
just some. Like me. I strained forward to read the words on Geraldo's
ribbon. Something about access. Access to rockstars? My God, I thought,
that's laying it Then he turned, and the words became clearly
on the line.
visible. In large gold letters, they said: no access backstage.
Access is a word I've never had much occasion to use; it belongs, how-
ever, in any reporter's lexicon of a Stones tour, right next to Hierarchy and
Paranoia. Access means access to the Stones, the pinnacle of the tour hierar-
chy. And worrying about that access is a reporter's own special brand of
paranoia on a Stones tour. I got an armband some of
eventually, along with
the other reporters. The armbands were primarily intended for photogra-
phers, and what they did was let you stand directly in front of the stage
during the first two numbers, a joyous, earsplitting experience. It is fitting
that the only special badge of passage given to reporters on the tour was one
that told you where you couldn't go.
This kind of thing can make you feel slightly crazy, particularly if you're a
reporter who is a Stones fan. Even if you know that should the Stones prove
horrible you will go home and say so, that doesn't really quell the feelings of
love, affection, and gratitude for pleasures past that are bobbing around
embarrassingly in the back of your mind. While the Stones and the people
around them are treating you gingerly, as if you might bite, you're feeling
like an overenthusiastic St. Bernard who's about to roll all over the floor
with unwonted, and unwanted, adoration.
The press was finally given access to the hospitality room that night. We
were led in, over a period of a half hour or so, in little groups of two and
threes. It was a large collegiate recreation room. Bill Wyman, looking pretty
and artificial in his stage makeup, played Ping-Pong with one of the touring
party while Astrid Lundstrom, the striking blond Swedish woman who has
lived with him for the past eight years, looked on. Geraldo was over near
the buffet talking to Bianca, who is tiny and exquisite and chic. "You look
very beautiful tonight," he said. "Thank you," she said, in an incredibly
husky voice.
In the center of theroom, at a round table sat Mick. He was wearing a
T-shirt and and his eyes were almost completely obscured by the
jeans,
heavy black eye makeup he wore for the first two shows. (By San Antonio,
Bianca had prevailed on him to change it to something lighter, which was
—
224 karen durbin
smart; the black eyes were tacky, reminiscent of Alice Cooper, and they
made him look blind and glaring onstage.)
Sitting at the table with Mick were three British tabloid reporters and
tour manager Peter Rudge; it was an informal press conference, and I sat in
on it, resolving to be as un-St. Bernard-like as possible.

That, as it turned out, was easy. It was like a parody of the dumbest sort
of pop star press conference, with everybody playing unnatural roles.
Rudge, ordinarily a brusque man with the press, was alarmingly sweet
according to someone I spoke to later, because he's going to be introducing
a couple of his lesser groups into England in the fall and wants friendly
coverage. The reporters, who had been sufficiently hard assed and
wisecracking back in the press room, now seemed afflicted with their own
case of St. Bernardism. They were solemnly respectful, starting their ques-
tions with a ponderous "Tell me, Mick . .

." and asking Jagger questions
like did he feel that England was no longer a force in world politics? and
what did he think should happen there? and what were his political views?
Etc. ad dozium. He, in turn, distinguished himself by emitting such pearls as

"I would like to see a social revolution [in England] but I dunno how you go
about doin' it." He also said that he thought most people in England "have
been enslaved by a stupid kind of materialism; they spend all their time
watching telly." As he said this, he gestured with his left hand, the third
finger of which flickered with the light of a large, square diamond ring.
A moment later, one of the reporters asked, "Tell me, Mick, have you
sung 'Sympathy for the Devil' since . . . then?"
Thus respectfully was the touchy subject of Altamont broached. "Sure,
sure, hundreds of times," said Mick, cheerfully "We were going to do
lying.
it tonight, we just forgot." And into the small silence which followed this
absurd statement, he suddenly sang, in a high, sweet falsetto: "Please allow

me to introduce myself . .
." Just the first line, nothing more. But then you
remember the line that follows. A man of wealth and taste indeed.
I see I am in danger of doing what reporters too often do — make Jagger

seem like ninety percent of the Stones. Theatrically, that's true. He's more
than a singer, after all; he's a performer and one who works at the level of
spectacle, attempting to cast visual images large enough to reach people
who may be sitting many hundreds of feet away from him.

But offstage, Jagger recedes, taking his place, along with Keith Richard,
rock she wrote 225
asfirst among equal Rolling Stones. Nowhere does this become so clear as
on tour, when you have a chance to watch the work behind the show. In
one sense, the experience of that week was a process of watching the other
members of the band emerge.
The first rehearsal evening at LSU was almost a capsulized version of the
process. The rehearsal was supposed to begin around 9:00 p.m. It actually
started three hours later, because everyone thought Wood was in Ronnie
someone else's car, so a driver had to make the ninety-minute run back to
New Orleans to get him and bring him to Baton Rouge. Mick stayed back-
stage (no access rock stars); the half-dozen reporters present hung out in the
hospitality room with various members of the tour and, as they came and
went, the band.
Ollie Brown and Billy Preston came in, moved through the room looking
like characters out of an Alvin Ailey ballet. They wear enormous Afros
(Billy's is a wig), and they are showy, dramatic-looking men. Ollie, who
talked with frankly star-struck pleasure about being asked to join the tour,
looked like a tough, flashy street dude, with his brightly studded jeans rolled
up to show off high silver platform boots. Billy is older and more remote;
playing Ping-Pong in slick, expensively tailored black trousers and yellow
satin shirt, he might have been a rich young Harlem preacher on his day off.
Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman sat at a small round table in the middle of
the room and talked with reporters.
Wyman seemed, in some ways, the most "normal" of the Stones. He was
virtually free of that wary, slightly hostile tension that the Stones sometimes
radiated around reporters, perhaps, in part, because the press tended to
overlook him. Personally, this amused him. "Everybody says I'm so quiet,
that I never talk. Know why I never talk? 'Cause nobody ever asks me
anything." Professionally, it isn't quite so funny, although he was wry
enough about it. "Take a movie like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling
Stones. That's what it's called, and yet, y'know, you're in it for about
twenty seconds. Gets to feel a bit weird, that. You begin to think, Well,
what the fuck'm I doin here?"
Talking to Wyman, that night at LSU and in a private interview at the end
of the week with him and Astrid, I was struck by his openness. He expressed
emotions — affection for Astrid, the pleasure they take in raising his thir-
teen-year-old son, who will travel with them for much of the tour —with the
kind of unselfconscious frankness that is surprising in almost any man but
especially one who is —however silently —a star.
Musically, one associates Wyman and Watts, the oldest Stones; they pro-
vide the basic ground in which the Stones' music is rooted. Offstage, that
226 karen durbin
evening, they were like bad cop/good cop. Wyman was agreeable and talk-
ative, inclined to a kind of mild humor; of all the Stones, he was the easiest
to be around. Charlie, on the other hand, had the comic irascibility of a
Dickens character. He has a reputation among the band for humor, and,
just now, he looks eccentric enough to be out of Dickens, amazingly thin,
with a protuberant Adam's apple and facial features sharpened by the fact
that he has, for some reason, cut his hair so short that, with the small bald
spot at the crown, it suggests nothing so much as a cross between a mad
monk and someone who got out Dartmoor Prison a week ago.
of
That night, as we talked about the design of the show which was done —
by Robin Wagner in consultation with Mick and Charlie he seemed to —
respond to half our questions with "Wottaya mean??!!" Then, having made
it clear that the question was ridiculous, he would answer it. The last night I
was on the tour, after doing the interview with Wyman, I ran into Charlie in
the corridor and for once, he asked a question. He was looking at the
remains of a room service buffet that Paul had provided for the press.
"Wot's this, then?" he asked, seeming interested. Assuming he was hungry,
I pointed out a relatively unscathed avocado with crabmeat and suggested it
was still edible. And sure enough . . . "Edible??!!" he howled, and then,
muttering something about how he certainly wasn't goin' to eat that ghastly
he tromped off down the hall.
stuff,
At one point during an informal interview with Charlie and Bill, Keith
came blasting into the room with a small entourage, took one look at the
reporters, and veered off to an upright piano standing against one wall and
started pounding out a blues. It was like a metaphor for his whole relation
to the world, to the press, and to music. Throughout the week, I never once
saw Keith alone; he was always with one or two people, often another
musician like Billy or Ron Wood, and frequently a man named George
Pappanjou. George remained a rather mysterious figure; he avoids the press
even more assiduously than Keith does, looks rather like him, is said to be
Hungarian, and was seen to keep Keith's cigarettes lit and his glass filled;
yet, when I asked one of the tour staff if George was —each
Keith's gofer
star had somebody assigned to him in that capacity —she looked shocked
and emphatically said no, George was Keith's friend.
As for Keith blasting into rooms, well, he does. Offstage, Keith has the
same intensity of presence as he does on, and so, of course, it stands out
more. He's amazing looking — all tatterdemalion satin jackets and flapping
silk scarves, tight jeans, hollow cheeks, black artichoke hair, and huge
iridescent eyes. He doesn't look decadent; he looks vigorous and infernal, as
if he just strode forth from the jaws of hell.
rock she wrote 227
By the end of the week, it seemed odd that Keith could ever have been
called decadent, with its connotations of decay and artifice and overrefine-
ment; he seems utterly engaged in his work. The intensity of his involvement
was evident onstage, where his role as the guiding force of the music was
obvious. But the involvement was evident offstage as well. Night after
night, sometimes after spending an hour or so going over tapes of the
night's performance, he would slip off, with Ronnie or another member of
the band, to listen to music somewhere and possibly to jam. He lives hard,
and God only knows what exotic substances he takes along the way, but his
life seems to revolve around music.
Keith isn't really as unfriendly as he seems, but it was intimidating to talk

to him in a way that it wasn't with Jagger. Talking to Jagger feels appropri-
ate; he interacts with his public. Talking to Keith you feel a little as though
you are bothering a busy man.
During the reporters' group conversation with Charlie and Bill the night
before the first concert, Frank Conroy told an unflattering anecdote about a
woman he described as "one of those high-pressure girl reporters." I know
the woman he was talking about; she's in her late thirties. Later in the same
conversation Bill Wyman was talking about some studio work the Stones
had done recently. Many of the songs don't have names yet. "In the studio,"
Bill said, "we call them any old thing, just to get a name on the box for
—
convenience 'Dustbin Then
Lid' or whatever." he described one song
which was called "Vagina." was 'Cunt' in the studio not really,
"It —
y'know, but because somebody had called somebody else a cunt, and so we
used that. But then we didn't want to write that, so we used 'Vagina'
instead."
Most of the time on the tour, I was just another reporter, neuter, doing
my job while everyone else did theirs, but at moments like those, I felt self-
consciously female, isolated and engulfed by an all-male world. The world

of a Stones tour is very male. Out of a tour staff of fifty-six, six were
women. Of the half-dozen or so reporters following the tour that week, one
—
was female me. The result for a woman covering the tour is that you
spend almost all your time with men; it's a peculiar, alien sensation, as if
you were visiting a planet where the female population had been decimated
by an unnamed plague.
Of course, the plague does have a name —sexism. I had expected to
encounter that, although not quite the form it took in the Stones tour world.
In the world that exists around the band, the sense you get is not the hey-
228 karen durbin
honey-wanna-fuck mentality of an aggressively macho world where men

are men and women are sex objects, but rather of a much younger sort of
machismo, a world where boys are boys and this is their clubhouse so girls
keep out.
It's a world where it's hard to imagine men and women simply being
friends. Bill Wyman and Astrid Lundstrom were something of an exception
to this; their relationship had a quality of friendship and mutual respect
about it, and they seemed —and much of the time, literally were —somewhat
apart from the clubby, boyish atmosphere that most frequently surrounded
the rest of the band. But their relationship reflects some old-fashioned as-
sumptions. When I asked Astrid if she had a separate profession of her own,
she said no, although she had considered modeling or acting —and then Bill
broke in, saying, "I wouldn't let her; if she got involved with something like
that, she mightn't be able to come on tour." It was a striking remark if only
because except at that point in the conversation, Astrid seemed very much
Bill's equal.
Feminism hasn't made much more of an impact on the women who are
part of the rock world than it has on the music itself, perhaps because that
world is still so overwhelmingly dominated by men. I talked with some of
the women on the tour about this, asking the most general sorts of ques-
tions about what it was like to work on the tour, and how did it compare
with the rock world in general. They tended to confirm my impressions of
the clubby, boyish atmosphere, but their reactions to the feminism implicit
in such questions varied widely, from cautiously sympathetic interest to
flickers of outright hostility. And every woman I spoke to at some point
mentioned the groupies.
The hotels in San Antonio and Kansas City were besieged by groupies,
not simply female fans, but female fans on the make. Some of their clothes
were incredible, the stuff of pornographic fantasy — barely opaque dresses
with no backs, no sides, and hardly any fronts; halters that didn't halt much
of anything; constrictingly tiny short shorts; even one brief, weird arrange-
ment of black leather and industrial zippers. They crowded the lobby like
fervid mendicants, stalked the halls like big game hunters, but to no end.
They were held at bay by double ranks of security forces, in the lobby and
on the Stones floor of each hotel, while the Stones themselves stayed safely
out of reach.
There was a kind of comedy to that scene, but it had its depressing
moments. In San Antonio, as I came out of my room, I met a girl standing
by the elevator. She looked very young, with a fresh round country face,
and she was wearing an awkwardly fitting black evening gown that looked
rock she wrote 229
as if it might have come from her mother'scloset. Noticing my notebook

and tape recorder, she asked me rather desperately if I knew where the
Stones rooms were. I said I didn't, less out of loyalty to the tour than out of
embarrassment for her. As I started to get on the elevator, she called after
me, in a kind of shriek, "Can you get me an autograph?" "No, no," I said,
jumping on the elevator as the doors closed, and for a minute I hated rock
music and stars and sex and men and women, and I wanted to be some-
where else entirely. Not that there was anywhere else to go; running from
that girl, I was just running from part of myself.
Then I it. My interview with Jagger was scheduled for
ran right back into
the last night was on the tour, following the Kansas City concert. It had
I
been a long week. I was tired; he would be too. As I headed off for his room,
I was prepared for blank-eyed ordinariness, even relieved at the prospect.
Mick was sitting in the middle of his bed. He was tousled, the bed was
tousled, the room was softly lit, and lovely classical music played from a
radio by the bed. He looked tired and friendly, like nothing so much as
some exotic little animal in its lair, gazing out from soft, blue-shadowed
eyes and smiling with lightly painted lips. I felt bewitched, and for a mo-
ment, dizzy, lustful half-thoughts collided inside my head.
Then the phone rang, the moment passed, and I pulled myself together
and set up the tape recorder. It was, after all, not Arden Forest, but Room
521 of the Kansas City Royal Sheraton, a place where, among other things,
a serious interview might be conducted —
and almost was, until Ronnie
Wood came in.
He entered just as I was asking Jagger if he'd done any solo work; Jagger
said that he had been doing some work of his own and that, in fact, he'd
done a lot of it with Ronnie. As he and Ronnie started talking, the whole
tone of the interview shifted. When I'd been talking with Mick alone, the
conversation had had a quality of professional seriousness about it. He was
the serious artist-performer, talking about how performing a song changes
it, making it diminish or expand, how the best ones always grow in perfor-
mance, and how that was one of the things that made performing satisfying.
But as he and Ronnie talked about their work together, they sounded like
kids talking about their favorite hobby. was lighthearted and funny and
It
very young, a glimpse inside the clubhouse. Mick launched into a story
about how if he's got a song then he and Ronnie have got this studio with a
drum machine and they go down there and they have a girl usually he —
grins —
and Ronnie says yeah, a girl engineer, and we lay down the basic
track on guitars with the drum machine —
and Mick says and we get the girl
to run back the guitar track so we can sing the song and I say, feeling —
23 O karen durbin
somewhat confused but falling in with the general tone of things: Why a
girl? Well, sometimes it's Ronnie's old lady 'coz she's there a lot (says
Mick), or someone stayin' with her y'know, keepin' her company while
we're locked away downstairs (says Ronnie). And Mick explains: We need
someone to do the machinery, just push the buttons, and we teach 'em that;
they learn very easily. And sometimes they start comin' jumpin' out and
playin' the tambourine or somethin' and y'say (he puts on a squawky Goon
Show voice), "Git back to the controls, somebody has to play the guitar."
There was more of this sort of thing, with much clowning around, and I
found myself laughing even though the butt of all the jokes was girls-and-
their-silly-ways. At one point Ronnie was talking about trying to explain to

his girlfriend why it was on tour; "You are a
a bother to have her along
bother," Mick booming voice, " 'coz we don't have more
interjected in a
than one bathroom and your makeup is claustrophoberizing my fucking
bath HI" And then he toppled over on the bed, growling.
Funny machismo, but machismo just the same, and I asked Jagger if he
thought the criticism of the Stones as macho was accurate. He said he
thought the band was macho in a way, but the songs weren't, or at least not
since "Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl." I had half-expected a sneer at
the question itself; instead, he was polite enough until I brought up "Mid-
night Rambler." "Midnight Rambler," he said, wasn't a macho song. Oh,
you mean it's tongue-in-cheek? I asked, thinking of the Stones way with
irony. But no, it wasn't tongue-in-cheek, either, he said, it just wasn't a
macho song. I suggested that it might be a great song, but it played with
images of rape and wasn't really a song a woman could sing. And he got
very sullen and said a woman could so sing it, and even when Ronnie and I
started talking about something else, Mick went on muttering that it wasn't
a macho song, just wasn't fucking macho, that's all, wasn't. Seeing as how
we'd degenerated to the level of five-year-olds in a sandbox, I prepared to
retreat to a friendlier line of questioning. Too late. No matter what I asked
about anything, the answers came out in grudging monosyllables. So I put
on my adult reporter face and said, "Well, thanks very much," and he put
on his polite adult performer face and said, "My pleasure," and there you
have some irony.
After the San Antonio concert, someone asked Keith about the Stones'
—
image as a band did he think it had changed since the last American tour,
and, if so, to what? Keith said he was sure it had changed, but that he had
no idea what the band's image on this tour would be, he'd be interested to
rock she wrote 231
see. Then he talked about keeping the show fresh, with continual song
changes throughout the tour. "It's more work," he said, "but it's the only
thing that keeps you from getting slick."
If there's an image for the Stones this time around, perhaps it is to be
found in the extraordinary length of their shows, the effort going into them,
and the amount of touring the band is planning to do. According to Bill
Wyman, they hope to tour more or less steadily for the next year or so "in
as much of the world as will have us" on a one-month-off, two-months-on
schedule. If that's true, it's remarkable; the Stones haven't worked together
like that since the 1960s. The image of the Stones that I came away with at
week's end was simply that of a great working band, working hardest while
they're still at their best.
The Stones might act like kids sometimes, but they aren't, and they know
it. Bill Wyman, the oldest Stone, now refuses to give his age to the press. "I
feel silly about that," he said, when I asked him about it, "but . . . well,
I'm afraid it might somehow hurt the band." Jagger was asked so often on
the tour about age that he began after a few days to brush the question aside
a little more than a few years ahead," he said at one
wearily. "I can't think
point, sensibly enough. The same has to go for the whole group. Their
future is the same as their working image, and both are identical to their
music. Because it continually acknowledges the power struggles inherent in
matters of love and politics, that music may not always please us. But it will
have to do.
"Midnight Rambler" is macho. Worse, one of the onstage gimmicks the
Stones are using for this tour is a huge white penis. It's made of parachute
silk and comes blowing up out of a trap in the stage while Jagger is singing
"Starfucker." He some wit by punching and kicking the thing as it
achieves
recedes into the trap, but mostly he rides it, and the gimmick seems sopho-
moric and second rate, devoid of the multiple meanings that one has come
to expect from the Stones. It's dumb, and you expect the Stones to be smart.
But even if it were smart I would still wish it weren't there. My politics
make me want to believe that they give all their money to the revolution,
that they didn't really mean that part about the stupid girl, that in real life
they refer to all "women"

females over the age of twelve as and never fail to
vote for the Equal Rights Amendment when they're in town.
I have a perverse desire to make good guys of them. It's perverse not
because they're bad guys —and I'm talking about them now not as people
but as artists — but because they're both good guys and bad, selfish and
giving, arrogant and abjectly sad, joyous and continually aware of the lim-
ited life span of any joy. It's their complexity, their capacity for paradox,
232 karen durbin
that makes them great, that makes the music resonate year after year in the
mind. I have an impulse to clean them up, make them tidy and undisturb-
ing. But it's only the disturbing artists who are important, who fire our
imaginations so that their art gives rise to our own.
Ariel Swartley, "This Prince Is No
Pretender/'
The Real Paper, March 1980. 1,
Swartley's review for one of Boston's two alternative

newsweeklies captured the master of Minneapolis in the flower
of his early promise. Her analysis of his falsetto singing style
makes a particularly illuminating point about sexuality and
sound.
JLt could have been a scene out of The Warriors —the kids on the
Paradise stage were dime-store heroes, ready to prance and dressed to kill.
Leather, spangles, gauze, and studs —even the guitar amps were covered in
fur. Still, you couldn't help noticing how wide the players' eyes were, and
how young. And how the leader's mustache seemed only penciled in. Oh,
but they had enough cool moves, exaggerated sexuality, and street-corner
romanticism to fill a And they moved up to the
thousand high schools.
microphones was their last stand. They couldn't lose and you
like a gig
wouldn't want them to: Sunday night a week ago, Prince and his compan-
ions were the only righteous gang in town. Blacks and whites together, five
guys and a girl, and none of them looked over twenty —they may be the
most everyday people since Sly and the Family Stone. They're certainly the
hottest, best-selling black act to play the Paradise in at least a year. But most
of all they're Top-40 Warriors, fighting all the divisive categories and the
234 ariel swartley
separate charts and the segregated audiences with a blatant, gaudy, urban
mix of rock and funk and R&B.
If there was ever a kid you'd bet could take all comers, Prince is the one.
He's nineteen: his second album (Prince, Warner Bros.) is ready to go plati-
num, and there's nothing on it, including both its hit singles "I Wanna Be
—
Your Lover" and "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?"— that he didn't
single-handedly produce, arrange, compose, and perform —and that in-
cludes playing all The same goes for his debut album,
the instruments.
1978's For You. Clearly, the guy is some kind of prodigy. Born and raised in
Minneapolis, son of jazz musicians, he never had more than one guitar
lesson, they say. He learned by playing in bands from the time he was
twelve, by sleeping in a studio, by trying everything, by being young enough
to know he couldn't lose.
You can feel it when he gets onstage — he's a confidence man, shuffling
half a dozen images and styles. He combines pure prairie punk, complete
with dog collars and provocation (songs with titles like "Soft and Wet" and
"Head"), with the cartoon poses and tribal fantasies of George Clinton.
And he heightens the tensions of his punchy rhythms with guitars and
keyboards that ripple like a cornfield in the mainstream of mid-American
rock —honest. He borrows freely —Raydio's sly R&B groove, the Emotions'
leapfrog harmonies. He'll smooth out a melody over blocks of chords as
serene and lucid as a mantra ("When We're Dancing Close and Slow"); tear
the seams of another ("Bambi") with raucous Hendrix-style guitar. And he
juggles expectations as well, for when Prince and two other toughs in zip-
pered jackets finally grab the mikes and open their mouths, they let loose a
burst of falsetto harmony sweet and high enough to make a choirboy turn
in his robes in despair.
It must have been while he was singing that Prince discovered he was free
to make whatever music he pleased. Certainly there's some kind of libera-
tion in carrying a tune high up in your head like that. It's a way to cut loose
from your normal range and the constraints of tone and resonance; for most
of the time falsetto is a sound as rarefied as a synthesizer's. A lot of singers
use it as the icing on a song — I mean, there's a practically life-threatening
sugar rush when Michael Jackson squeals. And no one sounds sweeter or
more remote than the Bee Gees, who spin whole tunes out of falsetto's
artificial glaze. It's the artificiality that's the point —they purify their voices
of all personality so as not to interfere with their emotions. In their songs,

desire is undiluted by an object, romance is undisturbed by love, and trag-
edy is distilled from its humanity.
But then falsetto nearly always wants to leave the world behind. Gospel
—
rock she wrote 23S
singers use its highs to reach straight up to heaven and fall back through a
register or two to join the sinners down below. Soul singers with their roots
in gospel use the different voices to distinguish between what's desired and
what exists. And for the king of gospel/soul, Al Green, the disparity be-
tween real and ideal produces near-physical anguish: his singing is as tor-
tured as his doubts. Caught between sex and sacrament, between love and
illicit desires, his voice twists from gravel to dry ice and back again until the
terms are entirely interlaced.
Of course, falsetto literally confounds sexuality. It's a voice like a
woman's coming from a man, and singers as different as the sometime-
transvestite Sylvester and a divorced and bitter Andy Pratt (in "Avenging
Annie") have played off its ambiguity and their own sexual ambivalences.
Maybe more significant as far as Prince is concerned, falsetto is also a voice
like a child's coming from an adult. In fact, it is the ultimate equivocation
a cool and slippery customer from the start. They say the breath slides
around the edges of the larynx; whatever the case, the notes come out fast
and so flexible they're hard to control. Singing falsetto is like skating on thin
ice, and Prince has learned his lessons from Smokey Robinson, the cham-
pion figure skater of them The one who made it seem so easy.
all.
Like Robinson, Prince on falsetto as his principal voice but then,

relies —
with the kind of range these two have, they don't really need another. When
Prince is frustrated (in "Bambi," the song he introduced Sunday night as
"this is about a lesbian"), he's as shrill as feedback. In torch ballads like last
album's "So Blue," and the recent "With You," he glides through a ripple of
quarter tones on his way to unbelievable highs. And there are times in "Still
Waiting" and "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" when he skates so close
to the borderline that the smooth surface of his singing begins to crack, and
he leaves a daredevil's trail of rough edges and risks. It isn't synthesizers
that Prince is mimicking — it's a soaring, shrieking, sliding rock 'n' roll
guitar.
And I'm not only talking about the sound he gets. These may be danger-
ous equations, but I think there are differences you sense, if seldom point to,
between horns, which speak directly for the player, inspired by his or her
breath, and keyboards, which are manipulated at arm's length, and those
rock 'n' roll guitars. If the first suggests warmth and intimacy, and the
second speaks of worlds somewhat apart, the position of the third is, well,
equivocal. Slung across the chest and crotch, a guitar is half armor, half
advertisement. An alter ego, almost human shaped, it's a foil for the player's
sexuality. And that's exactly how Prince uses his voice. No wonder the guy
—
236 ariel swartley
who plays twenty-six instruments in the studio chooses only one onstage
you can imagine which.
The point is (again, like Smokey Robinson) Prince doesn't just sing in his
falsetto; he inhabits it. His hometown is in the midst of all the slippery
indeterminacies falsetto implies: male versus female, child versus adult,
lover versus friend or brother, opposite versus look-alike. It's not exactly
that that sweet, shy voice is a con —seductive and disarming—though some-
times that's the case. But the voice that insists to gay Bambi that "it's better
with a man" is at once aggressive and unnervingly like her own. It's not
clear what the difference is going to be. He does say he wants to be not just
a lover but "your mother and your sister too" —no wonder all the little girls
love him; they won't even have to leave home. But all his soft approach gets
him in the song is to be treated like a child. That's a problem he must be
used to, and in "Still Waiting" he delivers the classic complaint of teen rock
and soul: "People say that I'm too young . . ./Too young to fall in love."
Of course he cracks his voice and wheezes like an old man in almost the
next line.
But when he's not "waiting for the love to come around," he's worried
that she's getting restless and planning to split. Prince spends a lot of his
time imagining that he's about to be left: "It'sgonna be lonely," "I'm scared
you're gonna leave," "There's some talk going round town ." But . .
there's not one song where it actually happens. Alone in a studio so much,
perhaps he's used to living inside his head. Once in a while Prince states his
desires wwequivocally
— "I want your body," he sings in "Sexy Dancer," and
live, he dropped the line to his natural range. Most of the time, though, his
anxious sentiments and the solicitous flexibility of his singing are an amena-
ble mask: behind them there's some profound possessiveness. And yet the
voice gives a clue. Its fluent tricks point to a young man's pride in perfor-
mance; its tone suggests a hungry child's. Prince's appetite is huge — for
sources and styles and synthesis and work and —to listen to him —women
and love. In his songs his desire is so profound, he wants nothing less than
absolute possession: complete identification with his partner as well as per-
fect love. It may be only natural in a boy who likes to have things all his
own way.
What's remarkable about Prince is not simply that he does it all, but that
he avoids the solipsism of boy wonders and studio auteurs. He does not lose
perspective or indulge himself; there's none of the stiffness those who keep
their own time usually fall into (as Prince himself did on his last album). No
thin sound and meager texture, no finishing touches worried over too long,
no lifelessness. Ever the eclectic, Prince has pulled in enough sources to keep
rock she wrote 237
himself hopping, and by concentrating on his falsetto he's found a voice

with which to argue and a mask to play with. Above all, as a maker of hits,
Prince aims to please others as well as himself. And he's got the marketplace
at his elbow to remind him that he's only a genius as long as he delights an
ever-widening crowd. In a sense they're with him in the studio, urging the
fast breaks, the flying wedges of harmony, all the lovely magic of the trade.
That sort of pressure is tough on the sensitive, but salutary, I think, for
prodigies of whatever age.
And it certainly hasn't done Prince any harm. Sunday night he was in
fighting trim —and at one point he stripped to a leopard-print bikini just to
prove it. And he and his band of Minneapolis gypsies had the full house
getting funky in the aisles and dancing on their chairs. If the predominantly
black audience felt that this was a special celebration, mainstream recogni-
tion of a used-to-be soul secret —
Prince's first album was a substantial R&B
hit— they also heard the new wave message in the bursts of guitar fire and
the rude-boy poses. But for the leader of the pack on stage, it was clearly a
brave new world —without rules or categories or any limitations — yet. And
that's a world worth fighting for. In fact, if he just keeps on like he's keeping
on, the Warrior-Prince is going to be king someday.
Carol Cooper, "August Darnell and
the Creole Perplex/'
The Village Voice, July 27, 1982.
Pop music has historically gained much of its power in crossing

racial lines, incorporating black and white musics and styles. In
this portrait of one of New York pop's cleverest and most
colorful showmen, Carol Cooper examines the nature of this
mixed-up milieu, and the way in which one performer can
embody some of our most complex social problems and
possibilities.
The dominant feeling of the black poet is one of malaise, better of

still
intolerance. Intolerance of reality because it is sordid, of the world

because it is a cage, of life because it has been stolen on the high road of
the sun.
—Aime Cesaire,
Introduction a la poesie negre americain.
Tropiques #2, 1941
he Kid Creole world is one in which a society babe can be a bottom

bitch. Downward mobility? Not at all, this is present day, real world egali-
tarianism where an Inaugural Ball may have as many call girls as debutantes
in attendance and never know the difference. Illusory class divisions as
rock she wrote 239
fragile as Japanese wall panels provoke semantic transparencies: the chippie

becomes a courtesan, the pimp becomes an entrepreneur. Migrating to cities
in order to attain new rightsand powers, bucolic personalities dissolve into
the sophistic fluidity of form and identity epitomized by Kid Creole and the
Coconuts. The songs they perform embody a crash course in human nature
that accepts "evil" as a relative virtue . . . call it the omnipotent perspec-
tive. In the City (which Kid Creole has conceived as a handcrafted jungle
habitat), a Japanese wall panel will not be perceived as anything but
perforable paper, nor a bottom bitch as anything but a loyal wife.
The tintinnabulation of hell's bells opens side one of Kid Creole and the
Coconuts' Wise Guy. Bandleader August Darnell created this socafied aria
"Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy" as simultaneous homage

Edgar Allan Poe,
to
illegitimate joy babies, the upscale and downscale "leisure" classes, and
every ringing telephone that ever pierced the sleep of the weary. Although
casual listeners won't get past the characteristically acerbic subject matter,
"Annie" represents a sort of culmination for the ex-copilot of Dr. Buzzard's
Original Savannah Band. Darnell's musical and literary in-jokes used to be
too obscure to translate effectively on vinyl (Frank Zappa and facetiousness
never translates in print either), but the songs collected on Wise Guy, the
third Kid Creole opus, are among the most accessible of any number of
Darnell-produced projects.
Wise Guy may not be as populist as the first Machine LP, or as exuberant
as '79's Gichy Dan's Beechwood #9, or as arch as 1980's Cristina. But all
have been hot, manic, pop illusions, alternately flecked with lurid cynicism
and cloying euphoria. Pathology, not politics, inspires Darnell and his fasci-
nation with the universal kinks in the human psyche makes him a most
accurate chronicler of the passing scene. Darnell achieves universality where
other pop musicians have failed because he frames each musical question in
genuine paradox rather than mere controversy. He wants to force an inner
assessment and hence a destruction of the gap between what we think we
are and what we are culminating By sheer
in a violent revolution of the will.
dint of will Stony Browder Jr.'s erstwhile lyricist and protege has become a
formidably astute composer. When the head of Savannah Band was asked
to describe how brother August's work differed from his own he could say:
"It's the same thing —
dream music."
Or nightmare music. What always separated Browder and Darnell from
the pop mainstream was their insistence on dreams as "the shadow of
something real," a way to thoroughly confront a sordid reality. Neither the
240 carol cooper
lulling escapist fervor of disco, nor the formulaic self-righteousness of rock

could comfortably compare with songs from the second and third Savannah
albums whose music and lyrics made the concept of contradiction an art
form in itself.
There is a most fundamental contradiction in the work and persona of

August Darnell alone. Ever since Island Records signed the Kid Creole act
outside the U.S., Darnell has become a favorite interview for the European
press. Great Britain has been particularly solicitous, zeroing in on his ele-
gance, glib erudition, and gigolo mien to iconize their first black American
pinup boy. Paul Robeson, Darnell is not, but he is, consciously, closer to
Robeson than Teddy Pendergrass and accepts the foreign adulation with an
ironically arched brow. Moving with equal ease among rich-raff and riff-
raff he incorporates scenes from their respective salon-to-boudoir lives in
songs that see such social designations as interchangeable. He has taken

words like wit, charm, and style away from the entertainment and society
columnists to invest them with equally true antithetical meanings. No mod-
ern songwriter is quicker to recognize wit as sarcasm, charm as hypocrisy,
or style as superficiality than Darnell. But such are the games that famous
people play, and Darnell will act the fool if that will get him over.
On the basis of his extremely flippant and equivocal public image it
would be easy to play a rabid Daffy Duck to Darnell's urbane Bugs Bunny,
damning his ways and means as sexist, racist, classist, et al. But I have no
intention of stammering "You're dith'picable" at New York's own Francois
Villon.Too many interviewers have been thrown by Darnell's effortless self-
hype, and confused the quality of the music with the quality of the put-on.
Darnell's lyrics are better guides to his creative intent than his quoted expla-
nations. His poetry (at its metaphysical best on the Savannah Band LPs)
reveals it all, from ballots and bullets to sluts and saints. Aware of how
media legends are implanted, Darnell views the interview process with fasci-
nation and contempt; qualities that provoke magnificent encounters but

little in the way of insight. Darnell purposely withholds the key to his
parables because he pursues larger media in which to unfold the complete
idea. The trick is to sustain our curiosity until he lands that movie deal.
I remember being witness to the first performance of last year's Fresh

Fruit in Foreign Places at the Ritz, wedged amid a throng of nonplussed
trendies and press in the balcony, a capacity crowd of groundlings below.
Gone was 1980's R.E.M. pastiche of abstracted urban stereotypes. Fresh
Fruit was a polyglot playlet that transformed the giddy fantasies collected
on the previous Off the Coast of Me into nightmare. Claiming to be a "rap
musical" concerning the Kid Creole character's frantic search for his one
rock she wrote 241
true love, Fresh Fruit offered song after song indicting the degenerated
American Dream for crimes against the state of man. Aghast that control of
the social hierarchy is shunted between predator and parasite —perpetuat-
ing the most primitive form of determinism —Darnell fills his stage with
living mirrors of every false dichotomy, an array of juxtaposed obsessions.
Three Fay Wrays and a phalanx of banana-boat refugees, screeching mid-
dle-class shrews and Vegas girls, Dorsey and Ellington, Rosie the Dyke and
Carmen Miranda deliver Darnell's lyrics with yelping scorn —rending love,
sex, race, power, and politics to bloody shreds. "Going Places," one of
several songs that holds out the possibility of escape, ultimately denies
surcease with the punchline "When you leave New York you go —no-
where!" a mordant declamation which is just an upscale version of the
Player's Creed: You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out
of the game.
Wise Guy extends this idea with the addenda that hell's denizens learn to
enjoy corruption and relish internecine cruelty. Thus you have songs like
"Annie" and the insidious "No Fish Today" that expose the roots of mental
and physical aggression. The child abuse implicit in "Annie" and the petu-
lant sarcasm in "No Fish Today" 's dialogue between Almost Have and
Have Not frame the moral limitations of Darnell's international cast of
characters. It is here that all the mulatto/mongrel posturing first initiated by
Savannah's Mulatto Madness breaks down to reveal itself as metaphor.
Darnell isno half-caste, nor does he believe that black versus white is the
central contemporary dilemma. He is simply aware that the general public
has been socialized to think so, and this misapprehension is manipulated to
draw the kind of media attention that no other black or mixed band would
attract. Nevertheless the Creole conceit, which like Mulatto Madness is a
pop mythologizing of the "tragic mulatto" (as delineated by Langston
Hughes) into a symbol of rebellion, is becoming unwieldy. Darnell is care-
ful, perhaps too careful, to make sure that his allusions work on several
levels: from the most literal to the most abstract. The pronounced deca-
dence of Wise Guy, in particular its provocative staging, strained Darnell's

half-breed gigolo persona to the limit of many a critic's indulgence. Former
fans like the London Sunday Times' Simon Frith were mildly appalled dur-
ing Wise Guy's recent European debut, by Darnell's literal rendition of "I'm
a Wonderful Thing" which sent the single zipping up the British charts.
Seriously offended, Frith went on to bemoan Darnell's self-characterization

as a "small-time pimp," oblivious to the likelihood that he had fallen prey
to a highly calculated means of discovering prejudice.
Darnell is possessed of an extremely chthonic imagination and is wholly
—
242 carol cooper
intent on snatching the mask off anything that passes for respectability. The
only "themes" Darnell has ever worked with are paradox and bathos. His
symbolic Mulatto serves one purpose, to focus attention (not smirking con-
demnation like Zappa, Ferry, Jagger, and others) on mankind's original
irreconcilables: spirit and flesh, emotion and intellect. These, like the best of
Darnell's music, transcend sex, race, and class.
Darnell will admit he is no singer, and his taking the lead vocals on the
bulk of Wise Guy and Fresh Fruit was more a matter of expediency than his
own better judgment. After years of producing and paying close attention to
the successful risks taken by nonsingers in rock and new wave, he became
convinced that cleverness could compensate for vocal limitations. But the
perfectionist in him that worked with fine singers in the past, resents having
to pass off inadequacy as poignancy, no matter how successful the transmu-
tation. Onstage there is no question that he continues to maximize his
group's potential; innovative staging, charisma, and clear enunciation sell
Kid Creole to any live audience. But selling records is primarily an aural
crapshoot. The difference between a Darnell-designed recording and one in
which he or the Coconuts have taken a prominent singing role has too often
been the difference between a hit and a near miss.
Spooks workshop compilation that drafted members

in Space, a bizarro
of Savannah, the Ze Records stable, and Darnell as primary lyricist under

the aegis of producer Bob Blank, offers a peep into the evolution of Darnell
as musical scriptwriter. "(He's a) Marathon Runner," set to music by Car-
los Franzetti and Andy Hernandez, catalogs Darnell's personal phobias
aging, failure, competition. His protaganist is a victim of ambition and the

Protestant work ethic. Pattering feet strive against the envy of a jeering
crowd as the record subsides into a chilling death rattle. Although Wall
Street brokers can empathize, "Marathon Runner," like Edith Piaf's
"Traque," is pure ghetto desperation. On "Goin' to a Showdown," where
Darnell contributed words and music, the scenario shifts to a lopsided
Hollywood western. Taana Gardner chirps encouragement to her street
corner cowboy: ". Put on something nice/Just in case ya die/You'll leave
. .
a pretty corpse behind. ." There is something about this mannered syn-
. .
tax that whistles up Madison Avenue, yet "Goin' to a Showdown" is fin-de-

disco tin pan alley.
Gichy Dan's Beechwood #9, which Darnell coproduced with Ron
("Spooksin Space," "Deputy of Love," "Cowboys and Gangsters") Rog-
ers, is the sunny side of this street. Darnell was still committed to Savannah
rock she wrote 243
Band, but had written a batch of songs Savannah couldn't use. So Darnell
and Rogers took Juan Cotto, Frank "Gichy Dan" Passalaqua, and Lourdes
Cotto into Blank Tapes to manufacture the most intriguing pop album of
1979. Frank Passalaqua and the Cottos were a cagey choice for the vocally
demanding and Caribbean-flavored show tunes, for
collection of ballads
they represented just the right touch of racial and sexual ambiguity to
overcome all the usual obstacles to airplay and fame in America. If Elvis
was the bridge to white audiences for black music and performers, Gichy
Dan was to be the inoffensive way to crossover Darnell's apocryphal troops
of South Sea islanders, Caribbean natives, chino-clad immigrants, and zoot-
suited fancy men.
As usual much of the material is veiled autobiography, but the quality of
the singers elevates each daring merger of doo-wop, soca, and Latin from
in-group novelty item to instant classic. A listen to Passalaqua's solos on
"Splendor in the Grass" and "Lady from the Caribbean" lets you know
where Fresh Fruifs "I Stand Accused" and the new single from Wise Guy
are lacking. "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down," which got limited
airplay after the warm reception of the single "Laissez Faire," might have
been clipped from Darnell's score for the musical Soraya, which Joe Papp
had been offered long before he saw and preferred Fresh Fruit. "Good
Man" and doo-wop bop of "Young Hearts" frame the overall optimism
the
of Gichy Dan's Beechwood #9 the same way "Annie" and "No Fish To-
day" frame the overall pessimism of Wise Guy. It's been a long way from
1979 to 1982.
If the dreams of Gichy Dan were all of Hollywood romance and a some-
times overheated hearth, then Cristina offers the dark side of the moon-
June-spoon sort of reverie. Michael Zilkha of Ze Records was looking for
someone to produce a tolerable record for his girlfriend, and Darnell

jumped to the challenge. What, he wondered, would be the dream-life of a
wealthy, well-traveled Radcliffe wench with a rakish wit, manque preten-
sions,and no voice to speak of? Darnell, again with the assistance of Rogers
and Blank, knuckled down to his favorite type of conjuring: silk purses
from sows' ears. Merging Cristina's personality with his own, he concocted
a series of theatrical shadow boxes for her to inhabit, embellished with the
combined psychological detritus of Ayn Rand, Eldrige Cleaver, and Salva-
dor Dali. "Jungle Love" is the vinyl genesis of Darnell's extended flirtation
with the Fay Wray/King Kong mythos: "They say that a blond-headed girl/
Is tied between two giant stakes/Tonight in this primitive world/She's going
to marry an ape. . .
." Cristina's shrieks and twenty-four tracks of jungle
sound effects made this a minor hit in California. "Don't Be Greedy" and
244 carol cooper
"Mama Mia" are my personal favorites. The former features unique instru-
mentation set around a terse ultimatum to a wandering mate, thereby cush-
ioning the singer's dramatic excesses. The latter does all that and more to
evoke the emotional mise-en-scene of a wife and mother who is prone to
wander, leaving a little family ever uncertain and longing for her return.
Resentment? You betcha, Cristina is all about the politics of desire and
resentment —why we hurt the ones we love.
Falling briefly back into the Savannah Band to fire off Dr. Buzzard's
Original Savannah Band Goes to Washington, Darnell contributed lyrics
that werenowhere near the multilingual incisiveness of "The Gigolo and I"
or "Auf Wiedersehen, Darrio" from Meets King Penett. "We used to laugh
at Sandy Linzer and those guys after the first album," Darnell admitted,
"because they would only write and sing in one language." But the public
didn't get the point behind the fluent, almost subliminal transitions from
English to Spanish, English to French, or English to German. So Browder
and Darnell attempted a different sort of complexity. "Seven Year Itch"
merges bebop theories with rock 'n' roll technique to provide Cory Daye
with an orchestrally busy, dissonant backdrop where only she and a bank of
horns know where the melody goes. The lullaby of Southern Boulevard?
Perhaps. There is something frightening about the fact that each note of this
swelling cacophony is written down —arranged— like the vivid minutiae of

recurring nightmares, so that upon analysis one is able to decipher a good
deal more of the subconscious text than might be comfortable to know.
Darnell no sooner finished his contribution to Savannah's cryptic
dreambook than he was back on the casting couch with his own. Kid Creole
and the Coconuts became a performing entity because it wasn't enough for
Darnell to let people hear his obsessions without the visual counterpart. Off
the Coast of Me was just a screen test, a grab-bag of Darnell's most varied
ideas to seewhat the public would bear. "Lili Marlene," a German disco
version, was a bit too camp. "Darrio (Can You Get Me into Studio 54?)"
was a bit too cute. "Calypso Pan American"? Too bizarre. So all the more
moderate elements of these tunes were shifted, refocused, and rethought to
produce the rock/reggae/cabaret extravaganza Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places.
Joseph Papp had originally proposed to mount Fresh Fruit on Broadway
in '82. But Papp's reservations about the script and the feasibility of some of
the music has pushed that date back until such time as Darnell and Papp are
able to reach a middle ground to collaborate (collaborate?) on the definitive
book and score. Asked if he found Darnell resistant to changes in his con-
rock she wrote 24S
cept, Papp replied that the opposite was true, that he had to stave off
Darnell's urge to compromise (in the interest of speed) to preserve "what I
like best about his work."

"Darnell understands the middle class very well," Papp continued, "and
he likes to taunt them. I think they enjoy it, too, but some of the harsher
aspects of his music which perfectly complement the downtown club scene
will have to be adjusted for a Broadway audience." No doubt Darnell
appreciates Papp's respect for the satirical thrust of his writing, but it must
gig Darnell, the master of irony, to have to relinquish the final shape of his
immorality play to even such an accomplished entrepreneur as Papp.
Meanwhile, we are left to peruse the interim release, Wise Guy. Although
reminiscent of Off the Coast of Me's frivolous boogie appeal, Wise Guy
purports to be a flashback on the Fresh Fruit story, a tale of twenty-one
days spent in the Coconut equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. In
reality, we have only returned to that somnambulant never-never land
where even Darnell is forced to tell the truth. "Stool Pigeon," a brassy swing
salute to Joe Valacchi, careens along replete with screams and moans in the
instrumental breaks —the gleefully violent sound track for a pistol whip-
ping. "The Love We Have" is a conga-line detour into yet another evanes-
cent romance, pounding out the frustration of inconstant affection. An
instrumental chant "I'm Corrupt" ends the side by going to the heart of the
matter. Who is so righteous that he is "worthy" of being loved? Who is so
evil that he is "worthy" of being hated? How can immortal spirit exist in
flesh, or rational intellect coexist with brute emotion?
During their correspondence m 1910, Sigmund Freud congratulated Carl

Jung on his discovery of the American "Negro complex," which ascribed
the psychological eccentricities of Americans to highly symptomatic sexual
repression. Dr. Otto Rank was later to paraphrase this theory as being
". . . sought chiefly in the effects of living together with the Negro, which
has a suggestive effect upon the laboriously subjugated instincts of the white
races." Freud and Jung also debated the use of animist religion and parapsy-
chology in —
diagnosing mental disease and mental health. Much to Jung's
disillusion, Freud preferred to set up the sexual theory as an unassailable
dogma against "the black tide of mud, of occultism," and to defend biologi-
cal determinism against the type of faith healing dream therapy could be-
come. Being the grinning golem of the black tide, and an archetypal benefi-
ciary of the Negro complex, Darnell probably attended these discussions as

a protoplasmic fly on the wall. Now, by creating a self-referential legend
246 carol cooper
that makes the story of Bumpy Johnson and the Domino Sugar heiress seem
like Ozzie and Harriet, Darnell has woven these psychodynamics into songs
that are trenchant social allegories.
Word for word and note for note, August Darnell is an eloquent apologist
for urban living —the definitive pan-American tunesmith who has made his
home in the heart of darkness.

Joan Morgan, "The Nigga Ya Hate to
Love," The Village Voice, July 17, 1990.
Sometimes music can stimulate a fan's interest despite serious

reservations about its maker's political or social beliefs. Here,
Vibe magazine staff writer Morgan chronicles her seduction by
the music of rapper Ice Cube-the ways in which his music
connects with her experience as a young urban black woman-
without compromising her critique of Cube's attitudes.
snatch 1
Cube's
a reg Tate calls
new album, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
and strongly suggests I do a piece on
(Priority), for The
Ice
Village
Voice. I refuse, which I suspect he expects. It's no secret that I found
N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton nothing short of demonic. "But someone
needs to do this who grew up in the 'hood." I tell him for the umpteenth
time that I'm not the one trying to reconcile my black middle-class intellec-
tual complex with wannabe-down ghetto romanticization. What I don't tell
him is I'm still weirded out from last summer when I found myself singing
the chorus to "Gangsta Gangsta" in the kitchen long after I decided Straight
Outta Compton was the most fucked-up, violent, sexist rap album I'd ever
heard: "We wanna fuck you E-Z/I wanna fuck you too."
248 joan morgan
snatch 2
The next night in Harlem, USA, me and a posse of homeboys, ages ten to
fourteen, check out a familiar scene. Two white Five-Os are busy looking
terribly bored on the most well-lit block on Amsterdam Avenue, seemingly
unaware that there's plenty to do a half a block away in either direction.
Money Grip turns to his cadre and they break into a midsummer night's
ghetto serenade: "Nine one one is a joke/Ow-w-w/Nine one one is a joke."
The cop on the right fingers his holster absentmindedly while the one on the
left reduces them to little black gnats and waves them away. The kids are
not unaware of the gesture. Gnats turn into killer bees and chant "Fuck Tha
Police" way home. Not thinking
all the a damn about Philip C. Panell,
Michael Stewart, or Edmund Perry.
snatch 3
I'm doing the piece.
snatch 4
I gotta hand it to Cube. Even if he weren't rap's most proficient raconteur
sinceKRS-One, and even if AM W were straight-up wack, he'd still have to
be congratulated on marketing strategy alone. Unmitigated black rage
prepackaged for your cathartic or voyeuristic convenience. Hip-hop maca-
bre. It's a brilliant concept. Peep this. . . .
The first track, "Better Off Dead." The empty, echoing footsteps of a
young black man's final walk down death row. He and a black (yes, black;
turn to "Welcome to the Terrordome" if you need a refresher course, "Ev-
ery brother ain't a brother 'cause a color/Just as well could be undercover")
corrections officer engage in the following discourse: "You got any last
words?" "Yeah, I got some last words. Fuck all y'all." "Switch." Fry. Sizzle.
Dead Then he evokes the specter of the dehumanizing media by

nigger.
using the same emotionless newscaster's voice that matter-o-factly told us
that black men in Harlem had a lower life expectancy than those in poorer-
than-poor Bangladesh: "White America is willing to maintain order no
matter what the cost." Execution, however, is not quite that easy. On "The
Nigga Ya Love to Hate," Ice Cube reemerges as the quintessential Black
Phoenix, whom even the fires and electric chairs of white racist oppression
could not destroy. "I heard payback you motherfuckin' nigger/That's why/
Cause I'm tired of being treated like a goddamn punk
stepchild/Fuck a
cause I ain't him?/You gotta deal with the nine double M/The day has come
that you all hate just think/A nigger decided to retaliate. . .
."
rock she wrote 249
He's back, he's black, and badder than ever. How's that for a Rude Boy/
Revolutionary fantasy?
SNATCH 5
I leave Yankee Stadium, good vibes and Mandela fever, and head
full of
for the Vineyard. Cape Cod is a sharp contrast to Africa Square but I'm
willing to play cultural chameleon for a little sea air and solitude. AMW
peeks out from my pile of dirty laundry and I shudder. Ice Cube and South
Beach seem somewhat incongruous. Reluctantly, I put it next to my bag of
black hair-care products so I don't "accidentally" forget it. We're in the car
only twenty minutes before Kianga slips it in the Benzy. I don't riff too
much, figuring that even that has got to be more bearable than this pseudo
reggae UB40 making us listen to. It doesn't take long before
shit Leslie's
Negra, Leslie's sweet, black, and respectably corporate car, is turned into a
thumpin', bumpin', fTnger-poppin' Negro mobile. Yeah, boyee. This is work
booty music in a big way. Great. Chuck D., Hank and Keith Shocklee, and
Eric Sadler gave AM W
all the kick that was sorely missed on Fear of a Black
Planet. This is straight-up, hard-edged warrior music. Like the beats of

African prebattle ceremonies, makes you want to dance
it either into obliv-
ion or go off and bumrush somebody. Kianga flips the tape to the B side.
"Joan, you know this motherfucka must be bad if he can scream bitch at me
ninety-nine times and make me want to sing it." Yep. This one's deffer than
dope.
snatch 6
Some say the mob ain't positive

Man fuck that shit cause I got to live how I live
. . . Some rappers are heaven sent but "Self Destruction" don't pay
the fuckin' rent
So you can either dope or get your ass a job
sell
I'd rather roll wit the Lench Mob

— "Rollin' Wit the Lench Mob"
Things are not going as planned. How the fuck could I remember to bring
Ice Cube and forget my bag of black hair-care products? There's not a
bottle of TCB anything anywhere to be found and the most tan we got
today was in the parking lot, waiting three hours to get on the ferry. By the
time we get to the beach I'm a walking time bomb. Leslie, Kianga, and I get
into a thing because they think I overintellectualize everything. Maybe. But
2SO joan morgan
what's so cute about "A Gangsta's Fairytale"? "Little boys and girls they all
love me/Come sit in the lap of MC I-C-E/And let me tell you a story or two/
About a punk ass nigga I knew/Named Jack/He wasn't that nimble/Wasn't
that quick/Jumped over the candle stick and burned his dick/Went up the
street cause he was piping hot/Met a bitch named Jill on the bus stop/
Dropped a line or two and he had the ho/ At that type of shit he's a pro/So
Jack and Jill went up the hill to catch a little nap/Dumb bitch gave him the
clap." Just what our community needs. Ghetto fairy tales. Andrew Dice
Clay stylee. I ask Leslie if she would want her kids singing this?
Exasperated, she asks if everything has to be political.
SNATCH 6V2
"Not a baby by you/The neighborhood hussy . . ./All I saw was Ice
Cube in court/Paying a gang of child support/Then I thought deep about
giving up the money/What I need to do is kick the bitch in the tummy/No

cause then I'd really get faded/That's murder one 'cause it was
premeditated. . .
."
Leslie is appalled. "Do we have to listen to this shit?" I crank up the
volume. The sense of pleasure I feel is almost perverse.
SNATCH 7
a romantic I become products
place. Leslie, Kianga, and
The Vineyard is
of the environment and spend three quarters of our "weekend away with
the girls" talking about the men we left at home. We can't figure out
whether it's the combination of the beach, the fog, the gazebo, and the
lighthouse or the fact that the few brothers we did see on the island were all
cut from the same soft, prep-school, young Black Republican cloth. Either is
enough to make three streetwise, ex-prep-school sisters very homesick/
horny for what they have at home. "I need the element, my sister," says
Leslie. My mind races back to a scene that took place two weeks ago. I'm
listening to AMW when my terribly significant other emerges from the
shower, wet, glistening, and wrapped in a towel. My audio catches up with

my visual hear him singing, albeit softly, "I'm thinking to myself why
and I
great,
did I bang her/Now I'm in the closet looking for the hanger." That's
Z. Just great. "Sorry, baby," he says, "it's crazy seductive." He reassumes
gangster position and nods his head to the beat. I look up and see the beads
on his lip. Seductive? Yes,
of water dance around the slight snarl . . .
Lord.
rock she wrote 231
SNATCH 8
We catch a four o'clock ferry. There's a carload of black folks behind us
playing Ice Cube stupid loud. There are carloads of white folks looking over
at the car, "Damn, Kianga," Leslie says, "maybe
extremely uncomfortable.
that's what we should have done last night when that ignorant white
waitress asked you if you didn't have an easier name to pronounce than
'Kianga'!" "Word, that bitch didn't even want to take the order. What the
fuck, is my name supposed to be Mary or Sue?" I suggest we run back up in
there with a broom and cold-blast that shit. We all laugh. Bumrush
fantasies. Kianga stops. She looks away and touches my arm. Homeboy is
holding a baby girl in his arms. She's about a year old and nodding her head
to the music. That's the problem with unmitigated black rage. It grabs white
people by the jugular with one hand, and strangles black folks with the
other.
snatch 9
Yo, Ice Cube, man why you always kickin' the shit about the bitches
and the niggers
Why don't you kick some shit about the kids man
The fuckin' kids.
— "A Gangsta's Fairytale"
I'm back on 125th Street. One week later folks are still buying Mandela
T-shirts at almost the same rate they're buying the Black Bart T's. I stop in
Sikulu, the record shop of the righteous, to find out how AMW is doing.
Reluctantly, they tell me it's one of the top five sellers. I'm looking for a
young urban male type to talk to about it. For some reason, they're few and
far between today. I move and stand in front of the children's clothing store
that has those black mannequins. I realize that I've stood there umpteen
times and never noticed how fucked up they are. I'm transfixed. They're all
white models that were painted shit-brown. The boy mannequin has his
head contorted to the side, like his neck is broken, and his hand is missing;
it looks blown The bright red shoulder-length wig sadly parodies the
off.
weaves that keep the Korean hair store down the block in business. At least
the "negative" images Cube feeds us are our own. A posse of youngbloods
walks by. All of them have heard it but they're as reluctant to talk about it
as the sister in Sikulu. Finally one asks me what it is I wanted to know.
"I want to know what you think about it?"

2S2 joan morgan
"What I think about it?" He looks at me like I'm from Mars or Martha's
Vineyard.
"Yeah, do you like it?"
"Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot . . . Money can rap."

He reads in my silence that I'm waiting for him to say more.
"I like him."
"But why? . . . Why do you think he's good?"
It took me a while to realize that the look he was giving me was the same
look Andy Kirk, the legendary swing bandleader, gave this young guy in my
elevator when he asked him what made those old jazz greats so great. . . .
Because they could play, son. They could play.

Homeboy mouths the words again for me, slowly.
"Because . . . he . . . can . . . rap."
Gerri Hirshey, "James Brown:
Presenting the One and Only A/Vr.
Dynamite, 7Wr. Sex A/ladhine, Soul
Brother Number One CPart 1)/'
Rolling Stone, August 23, 1990.
The art of the personality profile demands that a journalist

understand more than the facts about her subject: she must
comprehend his or her personal style, the community that bore
him, and the nature of the charisma that's lifted him into the
spotlight. Here, Hirshey-a master at capturing artists in their
element-conveys some of the magic of the dynamic James
Brown.
o, ne night in the mid-eighties, the thunder of the sixties woke me

from a sound was 3:00 a.m. and James Brown was on the phone,
sleep. It
calling from the road. As usual when he makes calls at that hour, he had
something Mondo on his mind. "I have invented nuclear soul," he an-
nounced.
Oh, Mr. Brown, please.
"But I'm not going to unleash it until I've talked to all the world leaders."
Please, please, pleasel
In the several years I'd known and written about the Godfather of Soul,
I'd grown accustomed to his boogaloo Socratics in the wee quiet hours.
2S4 gerri hirshey
Once he commits your number to the astonishing Rolodex in his head, you
can count on calls from Anywhere, U.S.A. — at any time. He also likes to
hold forth after a show, backstage or in some swank hotel suite, in the
presence of band members, family, and a few buckets of serious barbecue. A

predawn sermonettes. On racism. Record
self-styled educator, he's given to
deals. The IRS. If you can hang on for the ride, J.B. can prove a canny, if
unorthodox, historian. The rhetoric is whipstitched with James-jive and
Scripture and shot with unanswerable questions flung at the assembly: "It's
—
4:00 a.m. do you know where your soul is?"
And now it was nuclear soul?
"BELIEVE IT!"
We debated the details for a bit —the Godfather was a tad fuzzy on the
method of deployment, it being "a monster-payload thang." Finally, I asked
him: What in the name
Mother Popcorn could he do that would eclipse
of
the initial impact of James Brown in the sixties? Could he be hotter than he
was on the 1962 Live at the Apollo, Vol. 1 f Dance any faster than he did on
The T. A.M.I. Show, in 1965? Did he propose further fracturing his stutter-
ing bass lines to split the funk atom?
Silence on the line, then a sigh.
"I can BE JAMES BROWN! Don't you be thinkin' I'm done with that."
In the flaming sixties, James "Butane" Brown did work some major kinks
on the verb to be. In terms of music, showmanship, style and the madden-
ing, arrhythmic push and pull of race relations, no single performer had
more impact in that decade. And the next. And the next. As long as there is
popular music — soul, funk, rap —whatever the shrink-wrap savants pack-
age it as in the nineties —we
done with James Brown. Despite the
will not be
current troubles that have silenced him (more IRS woes, a drug problem,
domestic violence, assault charges, a severe jail sentence, and now, strict
work release), James percolates. Up from city streets, from clubs, scratched
or sampled, or played whole cloth. If James Brown is not always available,
he's viable, in some form or another.
But it will never be like that detonation in the sixties when Jaaaames!
popcorned onto the scene, thrilling and heartening black America, scaring
the bejesus out of white, adult America, knocking the crew socks and
Weejuns off giddy white teens. That was nuclear soul. Lines of frenzied
humanity wrapped around Harlem's Apollo Theater, the world's toughest
testchamber for the most explosive acts in entertainment history. On the
rube, James Brown was the first man to sweat through his shoe soles in
rock she wrote 23S
prime time. Eeeeeeeeeeowl J.B. electrified an Ed Sullivan Show audience

benumbed by plate jugglers and Topo Gigio.
Those were the days when James Brown, ex-con and former shoeshine
boy, could easily quantify his success. Beginning in 1956, with the release of
"Please, Please, Please," J.B. hit the R&B charts like a screaming meteor,
made a crater so deep and wide — 114 hits —that no single act has matched
it since. Live at the Apollo, Vol. 1 stayed on the LP charts for sixty-six
weeks in 1962-1963. Though he cut "Please" the same year Elvis made
"Hound Dog," James Brown would have to wait nine years to cross over
into the pop-chart Top 10 with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (Part 1)"; all
six of his singles to make Billboard's Top 10 were released between 1965
and 1968. Soon, papa's traveling bag — literally a suitcase he carried gate
receipts in —was crammed with as much as a quarter million dollars per
night. He played 350 dates to 3 million paying customers in 1967 alone.
That year, he sold over 50 million records. Always, his titles were wry, off-
the-wall street poems: "Cold Sweat (Part 1)." "Let a Man Come in and Do
the Popcorn (Part One)." "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)."
"Hot Pants (She Got to Use What She Got, to Get What She Wants) (Part
1)." "Licking Stick — Licking Stick." And the landmark anthem "Say It
Loud—I'm Black and I'm Proud."
By the mid-sixties there was no denying James Brown, no keeping him
back.He was that good, that out there. And there is no doubt that the
moment was ripe for his revolutionary funk. For those fractious times,
BEING JAMES BROWN presented an irresistible tension of opposites. The
impeccable precision of his spring-tight band was overlaid with wild, kill-
ing-floor screams. His ingenious formula combined showmanship with

sweat. James Brown pinwheeled onto a stage with sharp, knife-pleated
pants and careful conk; he left it with blood on his knees, hair hanging like
a wet kitchen mop, after a patented, velvet-caped collapse and resurrection

ending. Always, Papa explained himself on the way off: "Ah'm tahred. But
Ah'm clean!"
A master at serving up the raw and the cooked, J.B. was the more thrilling
for the immediacy of his act. In a decade hooked on Free Speech NOW, End
the War NOW, Black Power NOW, his was theconsummate live perfor-
mance, conceived and birthed right here, right now. James Brown existed in
the Soulful Moment. His stage show was a ferocious juggernaut of sound
and movement. And no live album, before or since, has had the impact of
Live at the Apollo. Black radio stations played it like a single; white frat
houses wore out and replaced copies with beery reverence.
Musically, he is an unquestioned revolutionary who says it came natu-
256 gerri hirshey
rally. Ask Brown's daddy about the true roots of funk and he'd tell you he
first saw it back home in Augusta, Georgia, when James was four, buck
dancing in the dust. He said people called him "a godsend chiP." One
lunchtime Joe Brown brought home a busted organ and propped it up with
a cheese crate on the front porch. When he came home from work, the
whole neighborhood was watching his untutored boy wail at it.
James never would learn to read music, never bothered with the formali-
ties of charts and arrangements. Instead, he'd stand in the studio and tutor
each musician, hector him until he, too, heard the improbable horn pat-
terns, the bruising polyrhythms that danced in J.B.'s head. His voice was
somewhere between a murder-bent chicken hawk and the screech of sub-
way wheels. But sweet melody wasn't James's thing; tough rhythm was. He
took the big, punching horn section he'd so loved in Louis Jordan's band
and set it against the Famous Flames' tight gospel harmonies. In J.B.'s band,
the bass didn't walk, it hotfooted — fast, broken and driven by the labors of
the two, sometimes three drummers required to stoke that churning stage
engine.
The effect was inexorable. And it was perfect quadruple-time marching
music for a generation that felt its notions of social change were just as
inevitable. Listen to the intro on any signature J.B. number — "Cold Sweat
(Part 1)," "I'll Go Crazy," "I Got You (I Feel Good)"—and it's clear some-
thing unstoppable way. You can still hear that streetwise confidence
is on its
in the intro to Prince's "1999," in the relentless mesmer-mojo of a Bobby

Brown, an L.L. Cool J, and a Tone-Loc. For successive generations of black
artists, BEING JAMES BROWN has evolved into living boldly, realistically
in America here and now.
Jamesian visuals were as heart stopping as his sound. "I did things man-
ual" he's always said, "no automatic." He could not rely on lasers, smoke
machines, or video screens, just his own small, tireless body. Skittering on
skinny legs in tight stovepipe pants, the Hardest-Working Man in Show
Business stacked overcome bodies —male and female—high in the aisles. He
spun, did splits, boogalooed fast as a hummingbird's wing. Watching him
from the wings at the Apollo, six-year-old Michael Jackson stood in thrall.
Early home movies of M.J. show him doing a near-perfect imitation of the
Godfather's midnight-hour moves. Jackson readily acknowledges his debt.
Sitting in an L.A. studio as Thriller was about to be released, he explained
his Infatuation: 'The man gets out of himself. James Brown is magic. He's
got a kind of freedom. I crave it. Every day."
rock she wrote 237
In 1965, legions ofyoung men, black and white, also ached to have just a
dram of J.B.'s stylistic cool. Papa had a brace of suave handles: Mr. Dyna-
mite, Soul Brother Number One, Mr. Sex Machine. He also had five hun-
dred suits, three hundred pairs of shoes, and a hairdresser bill that made
Liberace look like a piker. On the road, he'd have his hair done three or
four times a day, a habit that persists when he's working. Those close to
him can trace his entire career through the changes in his 'do.
"I used to wear my hair real high," he said. "And people would ask,
'Why you wear your hair so high?' I tell 'em, 'So people don't say, "Where
"
he is?" but "There he is." '
Thus he's always looked as loud as he sounds. By the seventies, James had
turned to the same sartorial excesses that adorned the Vegas Elvis; in fact,
both occasionally used the same designer. Instinctive street cool — Elvis's
fifties baggy flannels, James's sixties vented sharkskin —had been replaced
by studied showbiz. By then, both men were faced with the knotty problems
own revolutions.
of outliving their
BEING JAMES BROWN got more burdensome, most notably with a
forty-pound, jewel-studded jumpsuit his wardrobe mistress called "the go-
rilla suit." He'd lose a few pounds every time he wore it. Being the Arbiter
of Hip for a given decade can be dicey indeed, a reality that's perhaps
causing Michael Jackson to buckle and strap himself into parody, molding
his very flesh with those pricey nose and chin jobs.
At least the burdens of race fell lighter on the Gloved One's epaulets,
thanks in large part to the breakthroughs of James Brown. In an America
only just getting used to the gender sepia tones of a Johnny Mathis and a
Nat "King" Cole, J.B. was loudly, proudly, aggressively black. Onstage, it
was thrilling, but in the supercharged atmosphere of the late sixties, that
fierce pride would also snare the Godfather in personal and political con-
flicts he never anticipated. He was successful, but rarely comfortable.
He had dozens of hits on the pop charts, but never a Number One. He
was abused by white law since he was sixteen, yet he said, all along said —
—
from prison in the past year "I love America." He was one of the greatest
forces ever in popular music, yet he signed some record deals that, accord-
ing to one of his lawyers, were essentially slave contracts. Tussling with the
record men at the height of his popularity, he would have to fight for his
creative freedom all the way to the Supreme Court.
Never mind, though, James was still out there. Coptering through Nam
to the disbeliefand delight of the mostly black American forces. Cooling the
2S8 gcrri hirshey
constituency in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Augusta during the riots

that followed Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in the spring of 1968.
He's had audiences with presidents and with the pope and commanded
huge crowds in Africa, where fans light-years from electricity streamed out
of the bush, cradling albums for him to sign.
It was heady, and confusing. In 1968, even the black community was split
on the issue of Mr. James Brown. At a black-power conference, poet LeRoi
Jones, now Imamu Baraka, called him "our no. 1 black poet," while H. Rap
Brown scornfully dubbed him "the Roy Wilkins of the music world."
His politics certainly were puzzling. Both James and Elvis had cozied up
to the Nixon White House —
Elvis as an honorary drug enforcer, James just
in a photo op. And staring from both sides of the barricades, many Ameri-
cans, black and white, were nonplussed by the friendship between James
Brown and Hubert Humphrey.
And so it was that James Brown, who went so far as to cut his hair and
— —
wear a natural the ultimate sacrifice "for the movement," was both a
symbol of pride and shame, depending on who you talked to. Doing the
right thing had never been as bewildering as it seemed in 1968. Years later,
Brown's childhood friend Leon Austin, then the proprietor of a smoky
Augusta bar called Leon's DeSoto Lounge, offered a clearsighted explana-
tion: "When he made the song 'Black and Proud,' he wasn't makin' it
because he was a militant. He was makin' a song that the blacks could feel
proud of themselves. It made lots of people feel good. But it broke him. The
white people still loved him but were afraid to go there with them NE-
GROES, cussin' and chantin' about proud, proud, proud. Then there were
the blacks who betrayed him. He made them proud of not bein' proud of
him."
Thus it was hip to hate him, hip to dig him. J.B. was a focal point for all
kinds of sixties rage and confusion. James himself has talked about how
badly it hurt, how little sense it all made. Sixteen years after he had gone on
live TV and radio in Washington, D.C., and walked the flaming streets there
amid the rioting, I met the Godfather in the capital. I found him back on the
street, at the vortex of a small but happy riot. He was standing out on New
York Avenue, waiting for his limousine. He had just played the Convention
Center, one of those massive cement trade emporiums built over inner-city
ashes. In '68,news cameras had followed his every move as he walked the
streets. Now, he was launched on his umpteenth "comeback," and the
concert, though well attended, was hardly an Event. The residential area
bordering the center was still half in ruins. But instantly, as happens every-
where, the neighborhood kids had sniffed out a star. Children who weren't
—
rock she wrote 2S9
even thought of when their parents got down to "Cold Sweat" crowded
around him, yelling and hopping up and down.
James! It's JAAAAAAAMES!
He reminisced a bit for the kids, then reached into his pocket. In the glory
days, and for years afterward, he used to wade through crowds, handing
out photocopies of his visitor's pass to the Vice-President's Gallery in the
Senate, authorized by his good friend Hubert Humphrey. Underneath his
name, someone had scrawled, the world's greatest singer. This night, James
again papered the little crowd with souvenirs —fake dollar bills bearing his
likeness in place of Washington's.
"So they remember James Brown was here," he said. BEING JAMES
BROWN was still his currency. It meant something. But nearly two decades
after the revolution, he wasn't sure what or to whom. "All I know now is
what it means to James Brown." As the usual postperformance lagniappe

took place in his quarters —a baronial suite at the Sheraton Washington
James drew a chair out onto the terrace. The view was splendid, all rolling
lawns and white columned porticoes. For many years, it was the rich, white
preserve of Supreme Court justices and vice presidents (Spiro Agnew had
once lived there).
"MACEO! Come on out!"
He called saxman Maceo Parker away from the feast.
"CAN YOU BELIEVE I'M SITTING HERE? A shoeshine boy?"
"Yaaaaas, boss." Parker laughed and disappeared back inside. Like so
many of the talented band members that James had driven away over the
years, Parker had returned (from a stint with George Clinton).
Grumbling, the Largest Ego in Show Business wondered aloud. He knew
he'd been up and down all kinds of ways since the days of smoke and tear
gas. "I took some mess," he said. And so had the country. Despite the
progress in civil rights, some black acts were finding it just as hard to breach
pop radio had been before the sixties. Things were looking ugly again
as it
in the projects and on the Senate floor, where Reaganomics was pounding
poverty and HUD programs.

"Things are in retreat," he said.
The same might have been said of James Brown. He enjoyed a brief Top
10 resurgence in 1985 with "Living in America," his theme for Stallone's
Rocky IV. But the same monkey riding countless backs in American cities
hopped the Godfather but good and took him down. The dark side the —
drugs, the domestic violence, the celebrated ego tantrums —now raged out
of control. My last few visits with James had been painful, owing to his
"messes," marital and chemical. He wasn't himself. If he was still BEING
260 gerri hirshcy
JAMES BROWN, it was a side that the sixties J.B. had been able to keep on
a short lead.
I haven't heard from James in a long while. They don't allow 3:00 a.m.
long-distance calls in prisons. But I've watched the news footage of his
work-release activity, and it's somewhat reassuring to see him plying his
community service amid the blue-haired belles in Carolina nursing homes.
He always said that home gave him strength; I hope that's still true.
It was during a visit home to Aiken, South Carolina, when James summed
up the difficulties of being his bad self. We were stopped at a tiny, rural gas
station-pool hall-general store set on a clay road not far from his ranch. He
stopped to banter with a clutch of elderly black men reclining on used tires.
Then he climbed into his flashy van —the one with the coach lamps, disco
lights, and massage-parlor signs. From deep memory, he steered around the
road ruts and held forth on what he saw as the predicament of the Ultimate
Soul Man: being lonely in America. His voice was not boastful, but quiet
and sad.
"You will never understand James Brown."
He's right, of course. If we did, we'd probably be able to parse the
Gordian knot of racism once again tightening around this country. And we
might comprehend his own tragedies. But the mystery is no deterrent to
appreciating what the audacious and exhausting act of BEING JAMES
BROWN has done to the sound, and the style, of living in America.
Gina Arnold, "Nelson Is as Nelson
DoeS/' East Bay Express, April 12, 1991.
Pop groups dismissed or even vilified by critics sometimes draw

the most devoted responses from fans. This is particularly true
of teen idols, who rarely gain respect for their music and whose
audience is often dismissed as silly and sexually motivated.
Here, Bay Area-based critic Arnold stands up for teenage girls,
and testifies to the power of the late teen idol Rick Nelson's twin
sons in carrying on the tradition of the heartthrob.
S ome
several rock
people think that the sudden advent on the charts
bands whose members are the offspring of fairly
last
famous
year of
sixties
rock personalities (Wilson Phillips and, of course, Nelson) is an example of

the extreme unfairness of the music industry. They think that these children
of privilege got their recording contracts based on their parents' name-
recognition rather than on talent. But I think just the opposite. It's not that I
think that Brian Wilson and Michelle Phillips and Ricky Nelson were
bound to have passed on their musical genius to their kids, but that I think
children whose home lives must have been so twisted and interesting (and,
in two cases, tragic) ought to have incredibly deep insights about modern
American life.
By that reasoning, Nelson ought to be one of the heaviest rock groups
around. Its leaders, Gunnar and Matthew Nelson, the identical twin sons of
the underesteemed early sixties rocker Ricky Nelson (and grandsons of
262 gina arnold
Ozzie and Harriet), grew up in Studio City in the relatively tiny apartment
of their mother (Kris Harmon, sister to actor Mark Harmon), not, unfortu-
nately for them, as rich as the kids of L.A. probably thought the offspring of
celebrities ought to be. Then they were the subjects of an acrimonious
custody battle between their uncle and their mother, whom their uncle and
his wife (Mindy from Mork and Mindy) considered unfit, while their father,
portrayed by the press as a cocaine fiend and alcoholic, was busy getting
ready to die prematurely in a plane crash. So, say what you will about
growing up famous and beautiful in Los Angeles, the Nelson brothers' lives
to date have hardly been enviable.

From the Nelson brothers' miserable past, however, has not sprung John
Lennon-like genius born of pain, but the most banal American ambition of
upper-middle-class suburban white boy youth —an ambition grown tremen-
dously large and sparkly and colorful due to their proximity to real-life
Hollywood glamour. There is something almost tragic in the sight of the
spookily beautiful duo singing their hearts out on the most hackneyed
phrases. "Don't give up on dreaming," they sing in "Fill You Up." "Open
up your wings and fly away!" Or, from the song "Everywhere I Go":
"Every day that I live without you/I just can't help but dream about you."
Or, "After the rain/You'll see the sun appear to light the way." Say what
you will about the Nelsons —that they were pumped into popularity by the
crassest possible record company exploitation campaign, that there is no
there there —they really mean this stuff.
And their fans, such as they are, know it. That's why last Saturday night
outside the Berkeley Community Theater, there were twelve little girls,
ranging in age from about eleven to eighteen, who'd sat on the steps there to
hear Nelson's sound-check. Later, they waited in a long straight line for the
doors to open while the BGP security guards indulged in a little friendly
teasing. "You girls love Nelson?" they asked incredulously. "YEEESS!" The
girls screeched, a little bit shyly, though in unison. "Hey, how come you
girls aren't at Neil Young tonight?" one of the guards joshed. There was a
shocked silence. Then one of the older representatives howled indignantly,
"Oh, puleeze! THAT old ugly guy?!"
The Berkeley show came at the very end of Nelson's year-long tour, and
according to one source, the majority of the ticket sales came from the
Fremont and Concord BASS outlets, a fact which manifested itself in the
yards and yards of perky pastel-colored mall wear that many of the at-
—
rock she wrote 263
tendees wore. The audience was predominantly young and predominantly

female, though one did see a number of teenage couples on dates.
There was also a pretty high number of really young children: the six- to
ten-year-old crowd, for whom the whole scene was wildly exciting. During
the horrendous opening act, House of Lords, for instance, I saw two incred-
ibly sweet-looking little boys frantically copying the motions of the drum
soloist; they looked so cute, it practically reconciled me to the awfulness of
the music. It's a sad comment on the effectiveness of House of Lords,
however, whose haggard-looking leader Greg Giuffria (formerly of Angel, a
band so bad that Frank Zappa once wrote a scathing rock opera based on
them) is forty if he's a day, that the people who liked his new band the most
at the show were well under the age of ten.
Actually, seeing House of Lords was instructive, because they were so
much worse than Nelson could ever be. You wouldn't think the type of
cliche-ridden pop-metal that both bands play could have such extreme dis-
tinctions, but in fact, House of Lords' weak portrayal of the genre made
Nelson's show seem like total genius.
Not that Nelson's music, per se, has anything much to recommend it: this
is, after all, a band that treats Styx like the Velvet Underground. Nelson
plays keyboard-heavy HM rock with a ton of REO-esque soaring high
harmonies, but to give the group credit, it's also more guitar heavy than
almost everything on the radio today. During most songs, there are three
guitars going at it at once, and hard, for a sound that's a bit similar to Blue
Oyster Cult's; at Nelson's best
— "After the Rain" and "Love and Affec-
tion" — it could almost be a squeaky clean version of Soul Asylum.
The Nelson Bros, are okay instrumentalists —as good as Redd Kross, say,
another pair of siblings who are only distinguishable by one brother's
bangs, and who, because they haven't been marketed to a teenage market,
never get knocked for not being Stanley Clarke and Adrian Belew —and
they do work up a sweat playing. Unlike Ozzie and Jose Canseco, the
Nelsons seem about even-steven in the talent department: Matthew played
quite passable bass the entire show, but Gunnar (who only plays guitar
sometimes) has a much stronger voice.
It's nice that little girls are cheering for an actual rock band, not merely
the prefab, dance-oriented, cheesy soul-pop showbiz of New Kids on the
Block. But the main thing about Nelson —the thing you just can't get past
is that the boys are just so visually striking. Identical twins and chimpanzees
— it's a known fact that people just can't help being fascinated by the sight
—
264 gina arnold
of either oddity. And besides being identical —Matthew is better looking,
but it's hard to say why, beyond his better haircut — they are the visual
equivalent of pure spring water, a good-looking version of Johnny and
Edgar Winter, whose very nature seems to shine out of these clean, white
bodies.
I think these kids' enthrallment to what the industry likes to call the
Nelson phenomenon, however, goes well beyond America's known fascina-
tion with blondes —otherwise Soul Asylum's David Pirner would be King of
MTV. More important than looks to Nelson's thirteen-year-old fans, I
think, is the fact that the Nelson Bros, are totally sexually nonthreatening.
Tan, hairless, long limbed, perfectly profiled, they are the human
equivalents of My Little Pony; even dressed in spandex leotards they're
completely crotchless. Gunnar did a couple of hip-sways (you could tell
he'd taken some interpretive dance lessons, another reason why I liked
Matthew a lot better), but no bumps and grinds. There's nothing remotely
vulgar about their act (and of course, nothing remotely funky either). The
Nelsons aren't very sexy, but there's a certain phase kids go through when
they're really embarrassed by all things sexual, and for those kids, Nelson is
indeed the heavenly host.

In fact, unlike their female counterpart, Wilson Phillips, I think the Nel-
son brothers won a recording contract based more on their phenomenal
good looks and the basic novelty value of being identical twins than on their
parentage. Originally, their band sounded a good deal more metallish than
it does now; originally, their hairstyle was not as striking (waist-length,
perfectly straight, bleached blond; allegedly they wore extensions till they
could grow their own locks to the length required for their "look"). They
didn't come quite as out of nowhere as their 1990 smash debut, After the
Rain, makes it seem either: three years ago, the duo contributed a track,
entitled "2 Heads Are Better than One" to the Bill and Ted's Excellent
Adventure sound track under the name of Powertool.

I'm not sure, but I believe that in the interim between that project (which
accompanied an aborted label deal) and the release of After the Rain, they
found, not God, but the New Age philosophy that riddles their lyrics, their
between-song patter, their very beings. The liner notes are particularly rich
in psychobabble: parts of them could appear on a future SAT test, in the

section known as "analogies": "According to the rock band Nelson, Music
is to the soul as a) arms are to legs b) the sky is to the grass, c) wings are to
paws or d) the breath is to the body. (The answer, according to Nelson, is
d.) "Music is not the product of the age in which we live, but the opposite
rock she wrote 26S
the age is a product of its music. . . . Music must be the primary force to
guide us into a new consciousness, a New Age. ." Etc., etc., etc. . .
It'd be easy to make fun of Nelson for all this pseudophilosophy. But
possibly the most touching thing about seeing them was the way that,
between almost every song, one or the other of them would tell the audience
how much it meant to them to be rock stars. First was "Thanks for
it
coming to see us; we know you have other things to do!" Then it was "We
know the cost of concert tickets is pretty dear [their usage], so thanks for
spending your money on coming to see US!" "All your cards and letters and
calls to the radio stations and MTV have meant so much to us —they've
kept us going through the dark times!" "It's been a really long year, thanks
for waiting so patiently for us to get here!" Prior to "Love and Affection," it
was "This song is the number-one song in the nation and it's all thanks to
YOU!" And finally, it was "We're going to carry a piece of each and every
one of you beautiful, valid, special people home with us tonight!"
Now, Nelson's songs may be shallow and the Nelson brothers' dreams
may be banal, but, like lots of people in Los Angeles, that doesn't mean that
they're phonies. House of Lords was phony; Nelson was incredibly sincere.
Besides, the boys' success is due to this bevy of fourteen-year-old girls
screaming their lungs out at the Community Theater. Girls who are, indeed,
as Nelson pointed out, valid human beings.
There was a time when I objected to bands like this one imposing the
shallow dreams and false values of their golden looks and starry eyes on the
defenseless minds of unsophisticated little girls. I thought those girls de-
served a better mousetrap, and that it was the responsibility of the rock 'n'
roll community —radio, record companies, writers, and so on—to provide

quality music with content and depth for those little girls to chew on. But
now that I'm older, I doubt if that's true. I believe that what Nelson says
and does and believes in, the teensy-weensy values it promotes and repre-
sents, is already extant in its audience's mind. I think that Nelson under-
stands those girls —that there's a bond between the two groups, which
people like me have no right to deny either faction.
After all, what kind of grown-up guys want the Love and Affection
exclusively of prepubescent girls, at the expense, even the ridicule, of their
peers? Needy guys. Lonely guys. Guys who grew up in a single-parent
household in the San Fernando Valley, longing for the love of their rich,
famous dad. The Nelsons and their shiny little cliche-ridden dreams are the
direct result of so many little American circumstances, so many American
266 gina arnold
values that are deeply embedded in vast portions of upper-middle-class

suburban youth, even in myself. When I was watching them sing "After the
Rain," with its swoopy chorus and super-romantic lyrics ("Come on and
take my hand and I'll pull you through!") I felt exactly like one does after
seeing one of those Coke commercials where the girl makes the U.S. ski
team in the very last frame: teary eyed, exultant; convinced that dreams do
indeed come true.
That's what's so great and yet so simultaneously heartwrenching about

seeing Nelson perform live: because just like that commercial, which lasts
less than a minute, this exact moment of exultation is clearly the peak of
their career. Sad to say, Nelson's future isbound to be more tragic than its
past. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, American lives have no second acts.
Karen Schoemer, "Old Blue Eyes,
Young at Heart/' l.a. £tyie, April 1991.
Rock 'n' roll may have taken youth culture on a quantum leap,
but pop style and sexiness long preceded Elvis. Frank Sinatra
reigned as pop's king in the years before the rock explosion,
and, for many listeners, long after. Here, Karen Schoemer
details the elements of the master crooner's appeal.
rank Sinatra is older than my grandfather, but only by four-

teen days. Over the Christmas holidays last year, somewhere between the
two men's respective seventy-fifth birthdays, I sat down at the dinner table
with my grandfather and grandmother and asked them what they remem-
bered of Frank Sinatra's early years.
"Oh, the bobby-soxers!" tittered my grandmother. "They used to line up
outside the Paramount Theater."
"I remember there was quite an uproar," said my grandfather sternly,
"when he didn't fight in the war."
"Hordes of them, all wearing the bobby sox," continued my grand-
mother, ignoring him. She leaned toward me with a confidential smile and
laid her hand over mine. "Actually, I was a bit old for all that. I was in my
twenties by then." She sighed. "They called him 'Swoonatra'. . .
."
As she spoke, Sinatra seemed to stretch between us like an emotional time

line, connecting my twenties to hers. I could hear echoed in her rhapsodic
268 karen schoemer
little speech my own idolatrous crushes, as she brought to life a Sinatra I
could only know through photographs, films, and clippings, and it made me
a bit jealous to realize that she held inside her the youthful, gallant, fedora'd
Sinatra, while I had only the graying grandfather of swing. She knew Sina-
tra the flesh-and-blood swooner; I know only the institution. Not that he's a
less than impressive institution; in fact, he's one of the best celebrities this
century has given us. He may not be as famous as Jesus, but he's on more
jukeboxes than Madonna. In the forties, he was caricatured (always reed
thin, sallow cheeked, huge eyed) in countless animated cartoons — like the
one where a crooning rooster no wider than his microphone stand visits a
henhouse and inspires the hens to shriek "FRANKIE!" and start laying eggs
by the thousands. Recently, in the letters page of the Los Angeles Times, he
encouraged George Michael to learn to "swing" with his stardom, and
publicly disparaged Sinead O'Connor for her rebellious stance on our na-
tional anthem. Not merely musically speaking, Sinatra is the establishment.
When I was seventeen, I went to see the Woody Allen film Zelig; halfway
through, my date whispered, "Mia Farrow used to be married to Frank
Sinatra." was stunned. Mia Farrow married to the guy whose "New York,
I
New York" ("A-number-one" always made me think of the steak sauce) I

chorus-lined to in eighth-grade dance class? It was my first hint of the scope
of Sinatra's celebrity, of the ubiquity of Frank. He is always there, like the
telephone.
A few years later, again during a forgettable movie, I got my first inkling
of the soul inside the celebrity. Over the opening The Pope of
credits of
Greenwich Village there ran a song that, so to speak, blew me away: "Sum-
mer Wind," a melody imported from Germany, with a new English lyric by
Johnny Mercer, and recorded shortly after I was born. I'd never heard it
before, though of course I recognized The Voice. It was one of those weird,
wonderful moments when a song immediately and permanently lodges
within your being, and I became a bit obsessed with it, playing it every week
on my college radio show, squelched between such postpunk anthems as the
Replacements' "Unsatisfied" and Camper Van Beethoven's "Take the
Skinheads Bowling." The fact that I rediscovered the song, postgraduation,
on the jukebox of every good bar in New York City confirmed for me its
ineffable grandeur.
When Sinatra strode across the stage at his televised seventy-fifth-birth-
day concert last December 12, hard blue eyes flashing, he did carry inside
him that young man of yore; in the November of his years, he wears the
romance of his past lives well. But the Sinatra of the 1940s and '50s, with
his arched eyebrows and gallant smile and scrawny frame he was, indeed, —
—
rock she wrote 269
swoonable, and he represents an innocent sort of idolatry that is impossible

now. The relationship of audience to performer has changed drastically
these past few decades: the immediacy of television and the transparence of
digital sound have only brought our idols down to earth and into clearer
focus.
To "celebrate" Sinatra's —
diamond anniversary and to keep up with the
changing technology —the two record companies with which he is most
identified, Capitol and Reprise (a label he founded), have released massive
Sinatra anthologies: The Capitol Years, on three compact discs, and The
Reprise Collection on four. (Columbia, the label upon which he began his
solo career, honored him with a six-LP set, The Voice: The Columbia Years,
1943-1952, in 1986.) Both have been packaged in hardcover-size volumes
that open and close like books. The idea, one presumes, is that Sinatra's
recordings belong alongside the novels of William Kennedy (who wrote
liner notes for The Reprise Collection). Sinatra, this packaging seems to say,
is not just a singer; he is a poet.
These booked sets seem designed to bridge the generation gap between
older Sinatra fans and the potential whippersnapper convertees who have
been lapping up Harry Connick, Jr.'s Sinatraesque sorties by the thousands.
Combined, the Capitol and Reprise collections span thirty-one years (1953-
1984) and 156 songs; they are more or less Everything You Ever Wanted to
Know About Frank in two handy places, an introduction for new fans and a
reward for faithful followers. The CD generation can apprehend Sinatra in
its preferred format; primogenitors can update their collections and feel
young at stereo — it's their ticket into a new era. These collections are meant
to usher Sinatra most assuredly, most authoritatively and definitively, into
the nineties.
For some, they are surely a boon, a bounty. But they irk me. While they
do offer a wonderful chance to explore Sinatra in a variety of moods, they
also seem to assume that a life's work can be summed up in seven plastic
discs and two glossy booklets, an assumption that the storage capacity of
the compact disc certainly encourages. But by so "modernizing" Sinatra,
they completely remove him from his proper context. For what I've come to
realize is that I don't want to bring Sinatra into my present; rather, I crave
some subtle, fragile admission into his past. However romanticized and
mythologized it may be, Sinatra symbolizes an era beyond my experience
a softer, simpler time of ballroom dances and big bands and bobby sox, a
time when "swing easy" wasn't corny and all men wore hats. He's made for
vinyl, not CD. He's black-and-white, not color. For one raised on the lan-
guage of rock 'n' roll (the Beatles were played in my house when I was
270 karen schoemer
growing up), Sinatra is a ticket back in time, and these collections, in some
subtle but unnerving way, seem to block that passage.
Old Sinatra records, on the other hand, open it up. I look for them in
small mom-and-pop record stores, cached in the used bins like forgotten
Stardust memories. Their packaging —the thick cardboard covers, bragging

"high fidelity" in extravagant typeface —complements the contents. Sinatra
is usually pictured smiling that gallant smile, or smoking, or wearing a hat.
My attraction to these albums comes not so much from nostalgia or a
general dislike of things current, but rather from the excitement of encoun-
tering a physical artifact. An old copy of Sinatra Sings . . of Love and
.
Things or Sinatra Sings . . . for Only the Lonely is a doorway into a

beckoning world I never knew. It's kind of like buying a beautiful item of
vintage clothing and feeling oddly connected to the person who wore it
before you, or walking by an old brownstone and imagining what the street
looked like when it was built. These things allow us to confront history, in a
small, sympathetic way.

Sinatra —not the man, not the music, but the concept, the shimmer that
seems to hang thein when he sings —
air always represent for me will this
lovely and effervescent weight of things past. And the song that still cap-
tures this odd nuance of temporality better than any I've heard, by any
artist, is "Summer Wind." In the most obvious sense, the song is about that
very feeling, about loss and the fleetingness of things: "The summer wind
came blowing in from across the sea/It lingered there to touch your hair and
walk with me," it says in the first verse. And then in the second, "Then
softer than the piper man one day it called to you/I lost you, I lost you to the
summer wind." But it's not just the lyrics. There's the way the violins,
arranged by Nelson Riddle, float on a single note like clouds behind his
voice; the way the carnival organ swirls like the dissipating music of a
seaside boardwalk; the way the horns billow and swell at the end of each
phrase; the way the rhythm section up steps its pace with the key change in
the third verse. Mostly, it's the way Frank sings it: knowingly, and a bit
sadly, yet casual and carefree, as if by singing about the passage of time he
has somehow broken through it, and can exist outside of it, looking down
on like a bird in the air. "Summer Wind" is my Sinatra, and it accom-
it
plishes what is almost impossible and what we never cease to long for: to be
taken back to a place we never knew, where those who are old are young
again and where the young are ageless, as a soft wind blows and the air fills
with song, and a hand touches our own, gently.

Mary Gaitskill, "An Ordinariness of
A/lonstrous Proportions/'
Details, July 1992.
Well-known for her explorations of women's darker impulses,

fiction writer Mary Gaitskill here examines her lust for Guns N'
Roses leader W. Axl Rose, whose enthusiastic political
incorrectness and arrogant attitude have made him a dartboard
pinup boy for feminists worldwide. Admitting Axl's allure,
Gaitskill challenges both the judgmental tendencies of feminists
and the mind-numbing hedonism of the music scene. Written
two years before Rose was sued by an ex-wife and an ex-
girlfriend for physical abuse, her piece illuminates the
sometimes violent impulses of attraction.
here was a picture of Axl Rose in a magazine recently. The article
was about an L.A. pleasure palace where empty, beautiful people —those
bastards! —
come to shake their booties and girls get in by showing their
implants to the doorman. Axl was only mentioned once in the piece, but the
picture was perfect. Bloated, bleary, grinning a grin of bewildered entitle-
ment up the dress of a clinging girl to show the gorgeous ass

as he pulled
upon which he had just written his name, the Axl in the photo was a vector
for fantasies of fascination and resentment, a template of full-throttle bawl-
ing and bellowing, grabbing and eating. "Really revolting," commented the
person who showed me the picture. That's how you're supposed to react,
272 mary gaitskill
but I don't know. ... If I was a twenty-nine-year-old rock star and I was
my skull and a beautiful
out of girl came and wiped herself on me, I'd write
my name on her ass too.

Axl (more accurately, Axl's public image; I've not met the flesh-and-
blood man) reminds knew in junior high school, a small,
me of a kid I
pouty, gum-chewing androgynous brat named Brad. Brad was also some-
one I had secret empathy for, even though I thought I shouldn't. In a
desolate landscape of square brick houses on square sod lawns, one stunted
tree per lawn, he proudly slouched and sneered and snot-balled his way
through life, wild and sensually cruel; yet stiffly adhering to complex social
rules that I, to my dismay, could make no sense of. He wasn't a loner: there
were lots of kids like him, and I was scared of them for their wildness and
their conformity, both of which seemed to burst from the constricted envi-
ronment with alarming force.
But I also admired these kids for their beauty, their audacity and panache.
I was fascinated by the cruelty that ran through all their discourse like
blood. Brad in particular was clever and maddeningly cute; his vicious
taunting of the wretched special-ed student had the exquisite refinement of

a hot needle. I thought it was wrong and it made me sick, but in its extrem-
ity it had a horrible intensity that, just in terms of sheer wattage, was
stronger than anything else I saw in our sadly bland environment. And
teenagers, even quiet, shy ones, need and love intensity; they'll take it where
they can find it.
This is what Guns N' Roses music, especially as put across by Axl Rose, is
about. Not cruelty specifically, but rather the kind of boundless aggression
that can easily turn to cruelty. It is intense and generically fierce —generic
because it doesn't have to be directed at anybody or anything in particular,
whether Rose intends it to be or not. Some critics like to talk about how
"dangerous" or "on the edge" the band are, citing their drug and alcohol
excesses as if their music is the result of their being really "out there." This
is a bunch of shit. It doesn't matter if their nastiness and fierceness is
justified by their touted "street" experiences or not. An elementary school

kid who's been moved out of the lunch line knows where Axl's furious
screams are coming from. A tiny old lady hobbling down the street knows.
All human know, on some level, of those moments when you want to
beings
stick your hand up somebody's ass and tear his guts out. To hear that fly out
of the radio, streamlined by Axl's high, carnal, glandularly defined voice, is
an invitation to step into an electrical stream of pure aggression and step

out again. This opportunity to connect, even indirectly, with an experience
oi realized power is going to be a seductive sensation for anybody. For
rock she wrote 273
people who don't acknowledge this aggression and violence in themselves,

it is either irresistibly compelling or very frightening or both — like Brad's
appalling meanness was for me. And Axl's aggressiveness can be appallingly
mean to easy targets— you know, "faggots," "niggers," "bitches," etc.
I have a male friend who confessed to me, with certain guilt and embar-
rassment, that once, while he was sitting alone in a sushi bar reading about
a highly publicized rape trial, his disgust and anger about the rape somehow
turned into arousal, and he had to head for the bathroom to beat off. He
said part ofit was the flat, matter-of-fact journalese with which the violence
and obscenity were described; other than that he didn't rationally under-
stand why something that he considered brutal and grossly unjust (the
rapists were acquitted) would affect him this way. I think he expected me to
hate him, but I didn't. For one thing, you can't legislate your sexual fanta-
sies, and it doesn't do much good to suppress them. More important, fan-
tasy is not reality. This person would never rape anyone (in fact, when he
was a juror on a rape trial, he successfully persuaded an ambivalent jury to
much like dreams in that they are not strictly
convict). People's fantasies are
dream and fantasy images often have a more complex meaning than
literal;
is immediately apparent. Besides, aggression and sex are both inherently
arousing in different ways. Put them together and you can get something
strong enough to smash a fist through all your rational defenses. This is the
level that GNR is operating on, except that it is something everybody,
includingwomen, can dip into and experience at whatever depth they want.
And nobody gets raped.
Some critics would hurl their History of Rock, Vol. 1 at me at this point
and argue that women are figuratively raped by Axl's misogynist lyrics. At
least one critic I've read commented that he thought Axl's female fans
lacked self-respect. I understand why he might feel this way, but I don't
agree. There is great ferocity latent in —
women latent because culturally we
still don't fully support or acknowledge it. My fascination with little Brad
was partly, in retrospect, a result of a disavowal of my own aggressiveness
and meanness. If I couldn't see it in myself, I had to fixate on it in someone
else, in an exaggerated form. If I'd been able to acknowledge it and take
responsibility for my own I wouldn't have had to create this
like qualities,
polarized situation where he was on one end being mean and I was on the
other end being nice. My fascination with him was, at its murky bottom, a
desire to connect with something in myself and bring it into balance. Simi-
larly, I imagine that girls, even more so than boys, could look at Axl Rose
and feel intense delight at seeing him embody their unexpressed ferocity,
and thus experience it temporarily through him. This is an attempt at inte-
274? mary gaitskill
gration on a gut level and makes the kind of "self-respect" referred to by the
critic look like a rag.
The niggers/faggots stuff is different. I don't blame blacks or gays who

have a problem with Axl Rose. But song lyrics are like short stories; at best
they are full renderings of an emotional or experiential state, not statements

of how life should be lived or how the writer feels for all time. I once had an
argument with a lesbian friend over Axl Rose, during which I asked her if
she ever felt like just saying "Get out of my way" to anybody and every-
body. Queer Nation and ACT UP sure have. If you like the "fuck you" part
of a song, then you take it into yourself and let it help you tell people to fuck
off; the "who" part is your choice, not the singer's. Who Axl really hates or
doesn't hate is his problem and should be given no power.
There are bands that equal or surpass GNR in intensity and
lots of
aggression, but most of them are nowhere near as big. What gets GNR over
is their mainstream and essentially suburban sensibility. (Coming from me,
that's not an insult. My sensibility is in large part suburban.) Some smaller,
grungier bands work out of a suburban sensibility — but they give its gener-
ality a compulsive, aesthetic specificity. Axl, on the other hand, goes
straight out and down the center. Take the "Paradise City" video. Its most
salient features: huge mobs o' people, big spaces, big noise, bigness period.
Come one, The "Paradise" crowd scenes are an amorphous, mo-

come all.
bile, boundless universe that is accessible and ordinary, yet blown up into
an ordinariness of monstrous proportions. Nubile groupies pout while boy-
ishly gloating Axl displays a backstage pass reading ACCESS ALL AREAS
— nudge, wink— his ridiculous expression of self-indulgence mitigated by
an undertone of ingenuous vulgarity that is oddly sweet. (I imagine he had

the same look on his face when he made his absurdly banal I-love-lesbians
comment to Rolling Stone.) It's the democracy of porn; you don't have to be
hip or possess an arcane sensibility to understand where Axl is coming
from. But unlike many other mainstream bands, the sexiness doesn't deteri-
orate into softness or silliness because it's consistently laminated to mobile,
boundless fierceness. Lots of male performers gyrate their hips. But when
Axl does it way he does it in, say, "Welcome to the Jungle," it's not just
the
his hips. His rapt, mean little face, the whole turgor of his body, suggests a
descent into a pit of gorgeous carnal grossness, a voluptuousness of awful
completeness where, yes, "you're gonna die."
If this sounds like a hormonal response, that's because it is. Axl is obvi-
ously sexy. But the reasons why go beyond hormonal button-pushing.
When I look at him I feel a lot like I'm looking at that little snot Brad again.
Only this time I'm not scared. This time I want to embrace him. By "em-
rock she wrote 273
brace" I don't mean it's okay to be a rude prick and hate queers. Nor do I
mean that I want to find Axl and rip his clothes off. I mean I want to make
peace with all the elements of myself, and if getting off on Axl helps me do
that, so be it.
Axl joined the ranks of those

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone,
confessing their childhood abuse. With Roseanne Arnold it may've been
soul murder, with Axl it's, "My dad fucked me in the ass when I was two."
Ai yi yi. According to some people, this means Axl "just wants to be a
victim." Maybe. I would guess not, though. My sense is that Axl has reflex-
ively absorbed the current mood of helplessness with the ingenuous and
enthusiastic vulgarity he displays elsewhere. He penetrates society in a big
way, and it penetrates him back. Actually, it's believable to me that he was
abused or at least ignored. When I was young, the mean high school kids I
knew looked like inexplicable, cruel monsters. Now I think their wildness
and aggression were part of their fierce teenage spirit —which, as I said,
didn't have much room to move in its bland environment. When youthful
ferocity is ignored and not given real guidance, it can turn vicious and ugly.
In this respect, Axl's public persona is an amplification of an angry boy who
has never been taught to develop his intensity and power into maturity, who
is therefore wildly flailing about, locked in an endless drama of compulsive
aggression that can never be satisfied. My strong reaction to him is in part
an impulse to make it better, for him as well as me.
Once, I dreamed about Axl. In the dream we were on an airplane flying
somewhere. We weren't particularly happy to be sitting together, but it was
a long flight and we both- fell asleep. When I woke up, we had our arms
around each other, not erotically but companionably. When we saw what
we were doing, we jerked apart and regarded each other warily. We re-
sumed our forward-facing traveling postures, our body language subtly
changed by the realization that we'd touched and survived. Maybe next
dream I'll get to write my name on his ass.
WIMMIN,
GRRRLS,
QUEENS,
AND DIVAS
Susin Shapiro, "Patti Smith:
Somewhere, Over the Rimbaud/'
Crawdaddy, December 1973.
Sometimes a journalist discovers an artist who seems to redefine

the very nature of her genre: a genuine star. Susin Shapiro's
meeting with the emergent Patti Smith is a tribute, with critical
passages that echo the artist's own work and much revelatory
banter from Smith. It's easy to see from this piece how Smith's
prose style influenced other music writers during the seventies.
N. ew York — It's 8:30 a.m. on a fog soup Friday, an indecent hour to

be conducting an interview, much less making a record. I tiptoe through oil-
slicked puddles and into Electric Ladyland Studios, with its wallpapered
basement and carpet of silences broken by the occasional ping of a pinball
game in progress. By the time this print hits the fans, Patti Smith will either
be an overnight sensation (after four years) or an exotic flash in the pan; but
no matter which, something is happening here. The air is thickly momen-
tous as some tentative mixes filter through from what is in the process of
becoming her debut album, four sleepless weeks in the making.
I've been waiting for this ever since Patti first stuffed her amphetamine
semantics into my brain at a now-defunct cafe; the endless outpouring of
verse accompanied by a band that played traveling music for her flights into
fantasy and raw imagery, punch-drunk fists waving wildly, leaning on one
280 susin Shapiro
thin hip in black suit jacket and jeans, word-crazed and crooning, a cross
between Keith Richard and Mia Farrow; an omnisexual high priestess ca-
reening freely between the genders, elevating rock 'n' roll into incantation.
She sits down next to me on the purple corduroy couch, slouching at a

forty-five-degree angle. This dynamic, jet-haired, finely-etched, still dressed
in black and ballet slippers with soles, almost-apparition rock musician
Patti Smith is sitting down! Ready to jump up when producer John Cale
calls in to say there's something to hear. Electric Ladyland is fitting atmo-
sphere for the godchild-of-Jimi-Hendrix, and Patti resurrects him more than
once.
She lops off the g's at the ends of words, says dese, dem, and dose, has a
voice of Vaseline mixed with sand, goes tight-lipped and mute when she
doesn't want to answer a question. Mostly, she speaks haltingly and with
clarity.
"It drives me nuts when someone comes in and says 'Tell me your life
story.' Do you have questions? I love questions, they always have the ele-
ment of surprise!" (I stutter in admiration for the eight books of poetry
she's published.) "My push is beyond the word into something that's
to get
more fleshy, that's why I like performing. The Word is just for me, when I'm
alone late at night and I'm jerkin' off, you know, pouring out streams of
words. That's a very one-to-one process, but I'm interested in communica-
tin'. I'm another instrument in the band.

"I started out as a missionary, but I couldn't find a religion which didn't
promise things to some people to the exclusion of others. The personal
voyage into some kind of light shouldn't be denied to anybody. I got into
painting after that; was turned on to anything that projected a body in
motion, like Picasso's was a skinny, graceless girl and Picasso

blue period. I
was able to take the human form and make it into something graceful. I was
taught by art that no matter what you were, if you levitated yourself to your
highest form you would be graceful." (She is no longer graceless, but still
skinny.)
"Instead of being just a puny outcast, I started walking tall because I was
close to the blue period. I got into sculpture too — Brancusi, for example;
anything that had to do with purity of form. Then I began to feel the
limitation of a piece of paper or the canvas. I got hung up with the idea that
museums were sort of like zoos ... I decided that the highest place an
artist could go would be to get hung up on a wall in a museum. The piece of
art doesn't transform itself anymore once it's done. The viewer may go
through a transformation . . . it's a very subtle thing, how it actually hits
people. The move into poetry wasn't accidental. The calligraphic, like Ara-
rock she wrote 281
bian writing, always appealed to me. I got into letters, words, the rhythm of
certain words together, and gradually started writing poems that were
songs because of my obsession with rhythm. I love writing because there's
acoustic-type typewriters and electric ones. It's a physical act, but the word
is still trapped on the page. The neat thing about performing is it keeps the
act of creation alive. I love the process of creation, although the end product
in itself is a necessary evil. Still, I'm glad it's there, otherwise I wouldn't
have Rolling Stones records and William Burroughs books to enjoy."
Patti has crept into the higher regions of Rimbaud, the French poet,
constantly soliloquizing about him in her poems. As a pedestrian, I expect
to hear in detail about the meaning of his literature. "The first thing I got
from Rimbaud was the power of the outer image: was a teenage his face. I
girl, didn't have a boyfriend, I looked at Illuminations, he was a good-
looking guy! He even had long hair before the Beatles. It was that simple
. nothing cosmic. He sorta looked like Dylan. When I got his book I
. .
was into rock 'n' roll; I didn't give a shit about poetry. But what has always
attracted me has been perfection, whether it's a diamond or a Smokey
Robinson song. Rimbaud's poetry was perfection on the page, like glittering
graphite. I don't really understand poetry. I never even understood Dylan,
or 'Mr. Jones' either. I just hear Dylan and the words don't seem to matter.
Dylan's delivery, his phrasing, his physical image, his energy. Same thing
when met him. He's a very physical guy. And he has the highest integrity,
I
like Jimi Hendrix." (She looks around the room, acknowledging his ghost.)
"I think Dylan recognized the same things in me. We didn't really talk about
nothin' but the feelings were there ... the way he said my name, the way
we looked at each other. ... It was very real." (Dylan paid a widely
publicized visit to Patti after her performance at the Other End and seemed
well pleased to be there.)
I want to know why all her heroes are men; are all her heroes men?
"Most of my heroes are men simply because most of the heaviest people in
the world have been men. There hasn't been a woman who has done what
Jimi Hendrix did. I don't blame that on anything; if a woman wanted to do
it, she'd do it. If I wanted to do what Hendrix had done I should have
learned to play the guitar ten years ago. Too bad I don't have the discipline.
Actually, I like women. One of my biggest heroes is Jeanne Moreau. She has
perfected all smoking a cigarette ... or walking
the moves, the high art of
with a straight skirt. Perfecting those kinds of rhythms are, to me, just as
worthy of worship as somebody playin' a great harmonica. It's completely
coincidental that most people I admire are guys.
"I admire Anna Magnani too. Actually, I'm nuts about women, you
282 susin shapiro
know? Women are narcissistic am I'd much rather look at pictures

and so I.
of women than men. Brenda Starr's my favorite comic, Vogue is my favorite

magazine. Anyway, nobody —man, woman, or horse —has topped what
Jimi Hendrix has done. His gender is totally beside the point; the real
question is, what planet did he come from?"

Questions are popcorn in my mind. What about your record? How do
you like the mixes so far? I fight the urge to put my ear to the thick wood
studio door. She resists telling me, seems offended.
"I don't feel any kind of pressure . . . commercial or financial. Arista
doesn't expect me to be a singles artist. They just want me to be successful. I
want to be successful. Jesus wanted to be successful too. ... He wanted

everybody to see the light. If I had wanted to live in a garret somewhere I'da
stayed in Pitman [New Jersey]. I didn't decide to do a record out of the blue;
I've been deliberating for many years. I'm not interested in having a family.
My creative instincts are with art, poetry, and music. I don't have any other
motivation than to do something really great; I mean, I wouldn't want to do
a Captain & Tennille record. I'd rather be a housewife, and a good house-
wife, admired by all the other housewives in the area, than be a mediocre
rock singer. The only crime in art is to do lousy art. I'm going to promote
myself exactly as I am, with all my weak points and my strong ones. My
weak points are that I'm self-conscious and often insecure, and my strong
point is that I don't feel any shame about it.
"People like to look at me as this tough, punky shitkicker. Well, I am like
that . . . but I'm also very fragile. It's important that people know that; I
couldn't stand being just some leather boy. There are masculine and femi-
nine rhythms in me. We're all made up of opposites, and they often crucify
us, but I deal with that by accepting the bad stuff. I don't feel guilty or
stupid because of my weaknesses. On my record, I'm trying to reveal as
much about myself as I can. Sometimes I sing great, and some songs I
sacrifice great singing for very human moments. I have to let people know I
am as weak as I am strong or I'm never gonna make it. . . .
"All the cuts are long ones, except 'Elegy for Jimi Hendrix' which is 2:35.
I got the idea for 'Birdland' when I read this book by Peter Reich called
Book of Dreams . . . there's a passage in it about when he was little and
his father [the maverick psychiatrist, Wilhelm] died. He kept going out into
would pick him up in a spaceship, or a UFO. He
the fields hoping his father
saw all these UFOs coming at him and inside one was his father, glowing
and shining. Then the air force planes came in and chased the UFOs away
and he was left there crying: No! Daddy! Come back! It really moved me.
Another song, 'Break It Up,' started with a dream I had about Jim Morri-
rock she wrote 283
son. I went into this clearing and he was lying on a marble slab. He was
human but his wings were made of stone. He was struggling to get free but
the stone wings imprisoned him. I was standing there, sort of like a little
boy, or a child, screaming, 'Break it up! Break it up!' and finally his wings
broke and he was free to fly away. So I wrote this song with Tom Verlaine
called 'Break It Up.' " (Tom Verlaine is the lead guitarist for a New York
rock group, Television.)
"We recorded 'Elegy' on September eighteenth, the anniversary of Hen-
drix's death. I also wrote a song about my eighteen-year-old sister, Kim-
berly, and rewrote the Van Morrison song 'Gloria,' and 'Land of a Thou-
sand Dances' with an improvisational middle about the Sea of Possibilities
... a boy slashing his throat and tearing out his vocal chords. How am I
getting along with John Cale? It's like A Season in Hell. He's a fighter and
I'm a fighter so we're fightin'. Sometimes fightin' produces a champ. It's a
real honor makin' a record. If I do a great record, it sort of helps me pay
back the debt to all the other great records that came to me. . . . My
happiest moments are new LP comes out
when a . . . the Wailers, Minnie
Riperton, Stevie, James Brown. ... I mean, they've inspired me through-
out the years. would love to do
I a record that had just three minutes on it
that inspired Smokey Robinson.

"There's great chemistry between me and the guys in the band. [Which
includes rock-critic/guitarist Lenny Kaye; bassist Ivan Krai; piano man
Richard Sohl; and drummer Jay Daugherty.] I'll sit down with them and
say, 'Play some simple chords,' and I'll start daydreaming and talking over
the music, spilling poetry, and they'll keep me going by playing a certain
way or changing the chord structure . . . and it just grows from there.
When I'm onstage, they never know what I'm going to do in 'Birdland.'
They give me as much celluloid as I need for my film.
"I control theband only to the point where they get enough freedom to
control me. One night Lenny will be hot and I'll just do poetry to his guitar
solo. Another night it'll be my piano player; another night they keep up
with me. I have my throat, they have their instruments. We're all squeezing
this piece of coal and I can see the shoots of light starting to come out, the
beginnings of a diamond."
Lisa Fancher, "Are You Young and
Enough
Rebellious to 'Lowe the
Runaways?"
Who Put the Bomp! spring- 1976.
Though born of the devilish entrepreneurship of a male

Hollywood scenester, Kim Fowley, the all-girl teen band the
Runaways grew into icons of women's liberation, rock 'n' roll
style. Here, Lisa Fancher— a rebel girl herself, who started
writing about rock in her teens and went on to found the
independent record label Frontier— speculates on the group's
possibilities and celebrates their charm.
I'd
S ummer was nearly over before
been carrying out each day. I'd
I finally became aware of
be singing along as usual to
the ritual
my fave
songs on the radio (as I do when my parents aren't home) when I'd get this
powerful urge to hear the teenage disc fantastic. I'd root through my
records, put a dozen on the turntable, then fling them off disgustedly be-
cause they came so close and yet never quite did the trick.
I thought it was the Sweet but they were too old. I thought it was the
Dictators but I couldn't tell if I was being put down or not. It could've been
the Dolls but they weren't even real girls. It might have been an old record,
but I was sure I didn't have it, and in fact I doubt if it's been made yet.
Three weeks later, I saw that record onstage at the Whiskey a Go Go. It
rock she wrote 285
was in the form of three teenage girls who were screaming out glorious,
overpowering punk anthems. It was the Runaways.
Kim Fowley hadn't come up with a decent hype since the Hollywood
Stars, despite his gift for sniffing out stardom. For months he'd been roam-
ing the streets, looking for the key that would start the antidisco backlash
he had been among the first to start predicting. Then he met Kari Krome at
a party. They They agreed that the
talked. level of teenage consciousness
needed to be lowered to the bedroom and the Street, where it belonged.
Kari, Kim discovered, wrote terrific teen poetry in the form of three-minute
lyrics just waiting to be set to the right Sound. She was thirteen.
Kim thought enough of her lyrics that he signed her to his publishing
company and put her on salary. Meanwhile Kari was wondering aloud that,
if she was writing this stuff, why weren't there girls a couple years older
who could play it? Kim thought that ought to be easy enough; he even told
her that if she could find one right girl, he'd supply the rest.
So Kari came up with the rightest Ronnie Spector: Joan Jett, a

girl since
Suzi Quatro look-alike who played rhythm guitar a la the Chinnichap

school of thundering pop. She learned to play by going to Rodney
Bingenheimer's and hearing the British singles, learning to play them at
home from memory, because was no way she could buy them herself.
there
Fowley figured that since she was found so easily, putting together the
rest of the band would be a breeze. After all, wouldn't any teenage girl jump
at the chance to be in a rock 'n' roll band and have droves of pretty boys at
their feet? If only it were so simple! Word was sent out all over L.A. and god
knows how many girls were auditioned before they decided on Micki Steele,
bass and vocals. The band was complete when they spotted Sandy West, a
classic California surfer girl who played drums murderously loud (none of
yer Karen Carpenter trash), hanging out in the Rainbow parking lot.
They were so spirited as a three piece, Kim decided to leave it at that. The
only thing I can liken them to is a female Strangeloves; very crude, very
rough, and very loud, with teenage beliefs enough for ten rock 'n' roll
bands.
Micki soon left (at nineteen, she was really too old anyway) and a girl
named Peggy was added on bass. Lita Ford was found through the fanzine
Back Door Man, playing flashy lead guitar like a teenage Jeff Beck, and the
final element clicked into place when Cherie Currie, the Brigitte Bardot of
rock 'n' roll, came forward and volunteered her services.

The first gig was on the rooftop of an apartment and within fifteen
286 lisa fanchcr
minutes the three surrounding alleys were packed with kids. Even after ten
police carsshowed up, Joan (already shaping up as the Keith Richard of the
group) insisted they keep on playing. . . .
Peggy left a week later and was replaced by Jackie Fox, completing the
present lineup of the Runaways. Average age: sixteen. The sound: violence
by proxy.
The best thing the Runaways are going to bring back to modern rock are
those friendly, concerned lectures from parents to kids about the moral
dangers of rock 'n' roll. I mean, here's this Fowley guy who's led five nice
young ladies away from their normal lives as wives and secretaries, turning
them into rock 'n' roll tramps. It's true —the Runaways are going to give
rock 'n' roll back its bad name, and not a second too soon.
The Runaways are the girls "Rebel Rebel" was written for; don't-care
angels in tight blue jeans with one foot entrenched in their music and the
other in a circle of fascinated guys. Their lives and this crazy music are
inseparable; one gives the other meaning.
They like and play it rough 'n' dirty. Four of them have never been in
bands before, but they have intense and vibrant stage presence because they
are as excited as they are exciting. The force of their vitality (coupled with
the knowledge that they're the first truly great female rock band) comes on
like a heart punch no matter how many times I see them. What's even better
is that they're not trying to prove that they are punk teenage dogmeat. A
punk ain't gotta prove nothing to no one; it says so in their songs and the
way they look.
The Runaways are the quintessence of everything that's great about teen-
age girls —not the giggly demure saps, but the aggro ones who never came
to school because they were out too late at Rodney's the night before. And
they're living it right now, they don't write songs from idyllic memories that
gain romantic scope over the years.
The Runaways are as real as getting beat up after school. Their songs are
about juvenile delinquent wrecks, sex, pressure, and anything incidental

like drugs and parties. Sometimes the reflections on these are good, often
bad, but there's always the underlying, understood agreement that the state
of Teenage is what it's all about. They take all the elements of their lives,
punch 'em up into catchy anthems set to the beat of the street, plug it into
their amps, and sing it all out loud to your crotch or your feet or your head;
whichever they hit first.
At first Kim tried to get them to do his songs, and Mars Bonfire's, the
rock she wrote 287
usual scam. Soon, though, both Kari and Joan were turning out such first-
rate material that there was no need for these, or even for the oldies pain-
fully selected in an afternoon of picking through Greg Shaw's record collec-
tion. Songs like the Troggs' "Come Now," perfect though they were, were
no better than the band's originals, and lacked the strength and urgency.
The Runaways had already outgrown their status as a Kim Fowley hype, a
band of teenage girls. They were a functioning entity, a response to their
times and their audience, which was becoming more visible and even more
fanatical.
The predominantly white middle-class suburbs were bound to have an

outgrowth of teen troublemakers like the Runaways. These aren't jaded
Hollywood girls; they come from the sprawling bedroom valleys of Orange
County, spreading out to the beach, and they built their popularity in the
growing circuit of small teen clubs in these suburbs, where discos never
infiltrated. Their roots are just as real as Bob Marley's, only theirs are TV,
driving around, and going to Hollywood on weekends because it's the only
thing to do after five days of school and partying.
I was sitting with Joan in her room, listening to Sweet singles on a

crummy record player, pretending it was 1965 and I was Penny Valentine,
when she told me it was an incident on the Sunset Strip that convinced her
once and for all to give her life to rock 'n' roll. She was walking up to
Rodney's one Friday night when she saw a dead body out front, an obvious
OD, and nobody was paying any attention at The kids just kept walking
all.
into the club. The Sweet was flooding out the door and everybody just kept
on dancing 'cause if they stopped to think, they'd probably go crazy. Joan
Jett knew that was pure rock 'n' roll, and simply nothing else would do but
for her to be the one they were listening to while not paying attention to the
world.
So what are the rest like? Well, Lita Ford scowls a lot and drives too fast
always. She was going to be in the original three-piece but she hadn't fully
recovered from wounds inflicted in a parking lot by a gang of girls provoked

to violence by her looks.
Cheri can't even walk through a supermarket without attracting every
male in the place, and it's her moves onstage that inspire those lusty mes-
merized stares from the boys in the audience and vicarious reality for all the
who are
girls too scared to be that bold themselves.
And doing it on her own is Jackie Fox's strength. She tried out for the
Runaways and was so pissed off by Kim's decision that she wasn't good
288 lisa fancher
enough that she went out and tried to start her own group. Needless to say,
without money or connections she wasn't very successful, but she had im-
proved so much Kim decided she was right the second time around.
Sandy West, beneath that Doris Day drag of wholesome features, doesn't
really care about anything but getting up onstage. She drinks too much,
laughs too loud, and has so much spare energy, she relaxes by practicing
karate on her fellow band members. She's also the most outgoing and
generally the easiest Runaway to get along with.
What's really going to conquer is their performances. Exactly as it should
be, and with the right producer it should happen just as well in the studio.
The Runaways don't employ any gimmicks either physically or in the songs,
but rather rely on individual personalities to make the music more effective.
They could just as easily be a tits 'n' ass revue, but the sex aspect isn't
played up or down; it isn't played at all. They wear jeans and "Runaways"
shirts and it's natural yet erotic as hell.
I've seen them play everywhere from the lowest of dives to the Whiskey,
and each time I see them is the best, they improve so tremendously from
week to week. The most outrageous that I can recall just happens to be the
last one I saw, at a great little teen club by the beach, called Boomer's, just
recently opened on the second floor of some shop. There was no advertising
and just a small sign outside, but the place was crowded with local high-
schoolers, mostly girls. was packed more than a hundred
By midnight it
—
beyond capacity and this was a Tuesday yet. The audience, for the first
time I noticed, was overtly female, and everyone was extremely receptive
despite the scattered "Oh God I hope they're better looking than Isis"
comments.
The Runaways burst onstage to screams, and roared into "Cherry
Bomb," Cheri's song (I leave brilliant deductions of its message to the
reader). I'm not sure which are Kari's songs and which are Jett-Fowley
tunes, but they're all short, catchy, full of hooks and great riffs — Big Hits,
every one. "Secrets" follows and is one of the few carryovers from the three-
piece. And what, I'd like to know, is more a part of being a teenager than
keeping secrets from parents and teachers?
"Me and You" is definitely a Jett song. It's a love song, only it ain't the
usual girl-folkie-pining-away stuff, Joan would never do that. Her love

songs are both gentle and brutal. It's lifting the audience steadily into its
mood. . . . But wait! What do I hear? A capella chants by all five girls of
"It was all right" and now the kids are all doing the same, meanwhile
flooding out onto the dance floor. It's ol' Lou's classic "Rock & Roll" done
rock she wrote 289
Runaways style, with a totally different beat and the hook that refreshes. I
could hear this fifty times a night and beg for more.
The set is heading for its close when large chunks of plaster (I'm a strug-
gling writer and can't afford to lie yet!) and these
start falling off the ceiling
people, what they're doing! Jumping up and down, pounding on the tables
and dancing with abandon (the floor, never built to withstand two hundred
kids stomping in rhythm, starts behaving like a trampoline). It's the most
exhilarating sight I've witnessed in ages, but it's still nothing compared to
when they do their semi-theme song, "Born to Be Bad."
It's their longest song, and certainly the most complex. It starts off real
slow and melodic, Cheri singing sweet until they blast into a section of
superfast rock 'n' roll with the line "I was born to be bad, and I'm glad that
I did it!" Then slow, then fast again, and a spoken part by Joan as if she
were on the telephone to her mom explaining that she'd run off with a biker
(long, loud war-whoops from the floor) and joined a band. After this num-
ber is literal pandemonium and the adrenaline is like a geyser which, of
course, means the band is likewise going crazy they haven't been at it long —
enough yet to be able to remove themselves from the excitement they gener-
ate.
There's this very early-Who-on-the-edge feel to the Runaways that makes

one wonder if they're going to continue at this pace or turn around and start
punching each other out. Not only their emotions, but their music, too, is
charged with this kind of dynamic energy. Joan and Lita together are like
Clapton and Beck in the Yardbirds, one playing sharp, exacting rhythm, the
other filling in holes and actually playing interesting, short, effective solos.
"Wild Thing" is Sandy's showcase, wherein she sings lead and does a
solo, short and anything but sweet. "American Nights" is on loan from the
Hollywood Stars and it's the stuff legends are made of, a legacy of rock 'n'
roll. The closing number is "California Paradise" and everyone here knows
it's true and it's the only place all five Runaways just had to come from. And
they mean it as much as B. Wilson ever did.
Everyone is rushing around with that hyper look in their eyes, and in no
time it spells trouble. Girls and boys are going into the rest rooms and
tearing things apart and it's only a few minutes before about five guys are
trying to rip each other apart. I decided to exit stage right when I saw the
first police car pull up outside. Missed the second set but I bet it was a killer.
Now that their viability as a band was proven, the question of recording
naturally arose. Some trial sessions had been done at Gold Star with the
290 lisa fancher
three-piece band, and after seeing the five-piece, Greg Shaw had offered to
put out an EP on his BOMP label. But before any plans could be finalized,
before Kim could even begin his round of record company hypes, Mercury's
West Coast man, Denny Rosencrantz, showed up at a rehearsal and signed
the group on the spot. To produce the album, Kim found someone he
describes as "an American Dave Edmunds," a young man who built his
own studio and is into creating walls of sound. Recording began in early
March and the album is scheduled for release on May 1 —no fooling around
here. The working title is Young and Wild — I love it already.
Daisann A\cLane, "Heart Attack/'
Rolling- Stone, /Way IS, 1980.
When McLane, a staff writer for Rolling Stone during the 1970s,
presented this feminist-powered portrait of sisters Ann and
Nancy Wilson to Stone publisher Jann Wenner, he was not
pleased. In fact, McLane says that the piece led to her dismissal
from the magazine. Today, McLane's patched things up with
Rolling Stone, and writes mostly about world music for that
magazine and other publications.
They have led us to a new way of looking, acting, thinking, and mov-
ing; to a new and way of expressing ourselves in music; to
sensitive
freedom in conformity.
—Ann Wilson, an excerpt from her winning entry in a 1966 Beatles
essay contest
a
in the
host houses, we used
suburban community where
to call them. There
I
were always one or two
grew up: houses where the curtains
never parted, where trick-or-treaters —
never knocked empty houses. You'd
hear all kinds of stories about why the people who had lived in them packed
up their belongings and fled in the middle of the night — bankruptcies, scan-
dals, sometimes worse. Most people steered clear of ghost houses; it wasn't
that they were particularly spooky, but they raised doubts. In a world where
everything was supposed to be just fine, a ghost house was concrete, un-
292 daisann mclane
avoidable evidence that something was awry. Maybe that's why they tended
to be favorite hangouts for a certain type of teenager: the kids who grew
their hair long, sneaked out of gym class to get high. The kids who, like the
ghost houses, didn't fit in.
The house where Ann and Nancy Wilson grew up —on 166th Avenue in
Bellevue, a middle-class suburb of Seattle — is a ghost house now. Their
parents moved to a more secluded neighborhood two years ago. To get to
the old house, you drive down a two-lane commercial strip, past shopping
centers and Burger Kings, past new garden-apartment developments with
names and Pine View. "There are a thousand places that look
like Innisfree
just like this. You see them when you go on the road," Ann Wilson says as
she pulls her Land-Rover off the highway onto the main street of a housing
complex. "But I can remember when this street seemed psychedelic to me,"
she adds, laughing.
It has been threatening rain all morning, and a sudden storm blows up
just aswe pull into the driveway of the house marked 541. "Did you see
that?" Nancy Wilson exclaims. "Just as we passed Mrs. Nelson's house, she
parted her curtains and waved. It's been years since we've come by here. But
it's like nothing has changed." She looks at her sister, manages a half-smile,
and Ann laughs again, a little uneasily this time.

We go inside. Since the Wilsons moved out, someone had painted the
foyer walls an optimistic canary-yellow. But without furniture, the split-
level house feels blank and chilly. Ann immediately begins exploring the
place, nosing around from room to room like a detective looking for clues.
She finds them: hand prints pressed into the cement on the back porch, the
kitchen cabinet where the vanilla wafers always used to be, the well-worn
spot on the recreation-room floor where she and her sister practiced the
guitar.
"It's still here!" Nancy yells from upstairs. "Come look." She stands in
the middle of the tiny bedroom that was once hers and points out an love i
you painted in Day-Glo on the window sash. "I put that there when I was
about thirteen," she explains, shyly. "I'd written a song about the rain, and
I wanted to let the rain know how much I loved it." She blushes a little and
locks eyes for an instant with her older sister. Ann, the dark-haired Wilson,
is twenty-nine. Blond, blue-eyed Nancy is twenty-six. D. W. Griffith might
have made them had they been born fifty years earlier. They have
starlets of
a luminous, unself-conscious beauty and opalescent complexions that make
them appear oddly ageless, untouched by experience.

Inside Ann's old bedroom, across a narrow hall, the talk turns to the
sisters' teenage years: the acid trips on Ringo Starr's birthday: the stoned joy
rock she wrote 293
rides: thepusher who'd throw lids of grass through Ann's bedroom win-
dow: the hours spent behind closed doors in those little rooms, writing
poetry, playing records, daydreaming. "While we were doing all this stuff,
we felt really unusual," Ann says. "But we were pretty normal for the time
we grew up in. What we experienced was going on in suburbs all over the
country. We weren't that different."
Something, I interject, must have made them different. But what?
Rain pounds on the macadam driveway. Somewhere, a station-wagon
door slams.
"I don't know," Ann Wilson says after a long time. "I really don't
know."
The house where Ann and Nancy Wilson live now is only a fifteen-minute
drive from the ghost house numbered 541, but it seems much farther away.
It is a quirky little structure, full of odd angles and ambitious skylights,
tucked away at the end of a long dirt road that winds through a wooded
area near Seattle. When you pass the nearest house, at the foot of the hill,
the owner does not look out and wave. There are a couple of horses grazing
in a paddock out front, two Volvos in the driveway, a Land-Rover parked
in an open garage. Nothing remarkable —

just another house in the woods
that happens to be shared by two of the most successful women in rock 'n'
roll.
Heart, the band that Ann, and later Nancy, joined a few years after high
school, has sold several million alburns since its recording debut in 1975.
The first LP, Dreamboat Annie, released on Mushroom, a small, indepen-
dent Canadian label, went platinum in less than seven months. In early
1977, the band left Mushroom and signed with CBS Portrait label, touching
off a complicated legal struggle. Their subsequent records — 1977's Little
Queen and 1978's Dog & Butterfly—have sold upwards of a million cop-
ies. Their newest LP, Bebe le Strange, on Epic, has cracked the Top 5.
Heart (lead vocalist Ann Wilson, singer-guitarist Nancy Wilson, drum-

mer Michael Derosier, bassist Steve Fossen, and keyboardist Howard Leese)
is a curious marriage of musical opposites. The most commercially
success-
ful Heart songs
— "Magic Man," "Barracuda," and "Crazy on You" —graft
heavy-metal musicianship to emotional, image-laden lyrics. This unlikely
combination is held together by Ann's powerful, three-octave soprano. She
can belt and screech the hardest rock tune, then slide through every delicate
nuance of a tender folk ballad.
Ann and Nancy did not live together during most of the five years that
294 daisann mclane
Heart has been Nancy was romantically involved with

in the public eye.
Roger and Ann was living with Roger's

Fisher, Heart's original guitarist,
brother, Mike, the group's soundman and first manager. There have been
some changes. A year and a half ago, Nancy broke up with Roger; he
remained in the band, however, until October, just as Heart was about to
record Bebe le Strange. Ann and Mike Fisher had been together for nine
years. Then, one morning last October, Ann woke up and telephoned her
mother, her sister, and her childhood friend, Sue Ennis. They came over to
the house she shared with Mike and loaded all her belongings into her
Land-Rover.
"Wham! It hit me just like that," Ann remembers. "In the car, driving
back to Nancy's house, it occurred to —
me this is really over. The whole
business was finished in six hours." The tears, she says, lasted considerably
longer.
Ann, Nancy, and Sue Ennis have shared the house in the woods ever
since. "This place is like a girls' dorm right now," Sue giggles. A doctoral
candidate in Germanic literature at Berkeley, Ennis has been writing songs
with the Wilson sisters since high school. She collaborated on most of the
material on Dog & Butterfly and Bebe le Strange. Disillusioned with aca-
demic life, she took up Ann's longstanding invitation to move back to
Washington and work on songwriting full time.
They make an interesting trio: the wisecracking older sister, the delicate
younger one, and the tall, serious, angular best friend. A day at the house
with the women is alternately sober and giddy. They will sit in the living
room, doodle with the piano, hash out new song ideas in hour-long sessions
(this is how much of Bebe le Strange was written). They will run over to
Nancy's jukebox, press a few buttons, and dance vintage 1965 steps to
"Poison Ivy" and "Wooly Bully." They have a volume of inside jokes, and
tend to finish each other's sentences:
"Do you remember the strange night . . .
?" Ann begins.
"The night we went to Shakey's?" says Sue.
"Oh, God, the faces on those people!" Nancy adds.
Then they will convulse in chuckles and translate for strangers.
"You see," Ann explains, "this is about well, the song 'Strange . . .
Night' on the new album is about one night when the three of us dressed up
really weird and went over to Shakey's pizza parlor. It was a real family
place, and Wednesday was sing-along night, and there'd be all these parents
and grandparents and kids and stuff there, singing 'Old MacDonald.' We
drove up, walked in, and just stood there for a while, just to freak every-
body out."
—
rock she wrote 29S
"The song lyrics of 'Strange Night' are about that," Nancy adds. " 'Get
out that wig put on those shiny pointed shoes
. . . we'll have a . . .
"
strange night.'
"The funny thing iscome up to us and asked if the song
that people have
is about a drag queen," Ann snorts. "Can you beat that? I think they are
disappointed when we tell them the real story. People want you to be
decadent, and racy. Then they find out you're just writing about some girls!
"But," she asks, "don't you think it's more fun our way?"
Ann laughs and walks into her bedroom for a minute. She swings the
door shut; there's a photograph tacked to it: Paul McCartney.
Sue Ennis recognized the girl in the picture right away. There she was, on
the front page of the second section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, under
the headline 5 beatle letter winners. It was Ann Wilson, holding her first
prize, a Revere "Magic Eye" camera. Ann Wilson! That strange girl who sat
a few seats away in German III class, who never talked to anybody. Sue had
been watching Ann all term. She carried her books funny, under her arm
instead of up against her chest like the other girls at Sammamish High
School, and she didn't have any friends, and didn't seem to care. Sue was a
loner, too, but she kept up a couple of phony friendships with girls you
hang out with just so people don't think you're a total zero. Ann didn't
bother with that, and Sue respected her for it. And she was into the Beatles!
Sue decided that she had to make contact with Ann. But she would have to
be very cool.
The next Monday, after German, Sue sauntered by Ann's desk, humming
a Beatles tune. —
Nothing obvious the sitar riff from "Love You To"
something only another true believer would recognize. No reaction. Sue
pulled a desperate move and started beating out the rhythm with her finger-
tips on her loose-leaf notebook. Dum dum dum! Finally, Ann looked up.
"So, you're into the Beatles," she said, yawning.

"Yeah." Sue twirled a strand of hair around her index finger, pretending
to be bored.
"I suppose you didn't get to see 'em."
"Left mezzanine, thirtieth row, third seat in."
"What didja wear*"
They sat in the cafeteria together next period and didn't stop talking long
enough to eat lunch. Ann had a younger sister, Sue found out, and they
played guitar in their own folk group. Ann thought the Moody Blues' Justin
Hayward was super-cool, and she had a crush on that weird-looking trans-
296 daisann mclane
fer student with the British accent who Sue had been mooning after for
months.
That afternoon, Sue ran home from the bus stop, clutching her books
under her left arm. There was someone else!
It was in many ways a classic adolescent girls' friendship: the shared

confidences, the private jokes, the neatly pulled-off capers. "Nance and Sue
and I built a protective wall that we lived behind," Ann remembers. "An
exclusive society with its own language and its own culture." They called
each other Connie — pronounced Cab-nee in a mock little-girl voice be- —
cause the name summed up everything they hated about the super-straight
high-school girls they couldn't, and wouldn't, become. They broke rules:
once they stuffed Nancy, who was underage, into the trunk of Sue's Mus-
tang to sneak her into a drive-in showing the R-rated Candy.
But because this was the suburbs, and because it was the late sixties, the
fantasy world they shared had an added dimension. "We were physically
here," Ann explains, sweeping her arms to indicate the tract-home land-
scape outside her parents' house. "But most of the time we lived out there."
"Out there" was "swinging London," go-go boots, Yardley green eye
shadow. "Out there" was grass and LSD. "Out there" was also music.
They played and wrote songs constantly, moody evocations of late-ado-
lescent alienation. "Sensitive in the suburbs," Ann jokes now, a little sheep-
ishly. "I guess it seems funny to be writing songs like that when most of
what you've been doing so far in your life is sitting in your room."
In 1968, Ann and Sue graduated from Sammamish High School, and it all
changed. Sue, the girl who had always kept a few "socially acceptable"
girlfriends, who always did well in class, decided to leave Bellevue and go
away The triumvirate was broken,
to college. at least temporarily.
Ann Wilson, the loner, had other ideas.
"Vancouver. God, the whole time I was up there, I felt like we were in a
dream. I really wanted to get back home."

It is breakfast time at the Wilson house, and Ann is sipping Tab as she
tells the story of what happened to her after high school. Nancy and Sue
wander in and out of the kitchen, occasionally adding to her monologue.
"It began in Seattle, I met Roger [Fisher] and Steve [Fossen], and we
formed a group. I was the 'chick singer' — ha! One night we had a gig
playing in Bellingham, which is a college town up north. Mike [Fisher] was
in Canada then, times being what they were.
"Before I knew Mike, when he lived here, he went through this 'acid
rock she wrote 297
priest' phase. Got into Eastern religion. At one point, he was running
around in military fatigues, with his head shaved, giving acid to people.
Anyway, we played this club in Bellingham, and Mike sneaked down to see
his little brother's new band. He'd heard his brother say there was this chick
in the group, and when he walked into rehearsal, there she was, sitting on
the dance floor wearing old jeans with this big ciggie hanging out of her
mouth, a glass of wine, trying to learn the words to this Janis Joplin song,
'Move Over.' Yeah, man. A tough chick, y'know? Mike kinda went, 'God,
who's that!' and stuck around that night. He drank a pitcher of beer, and
we started to get to know each other. It was one of those deals where things
go gonnnnggggg! He asked me to go up to Canada with him. But I was too
scared. The 'tough chick' thing was all a front. I thought he just wanted to,
uh, make it or something. But eventually, I just had to move to Canada. I
just kind of came to him. It lasted nine years.
"It was really hard times. There I was, I'd followed this man to Canada.
We all lived in this one room — this is the story everybody in the band hates
now —and ate brown rice. Steve and Roger were married then, and they had
their wives there, and Steve had a child. I had to learn to be one of the hens.
It just drove me crazy! This middle-class princess from Bellevue had to wash
her hair in cold water and be the cook of the house.
"Nancy finally came up. We were so crazy to play together. And when
she did, I started to return to myself, 'cause was getting real far away,
I
really starting to become Anyway, you get the picture.

'a chick.'
"Mike had the business head. He drove our truck. He and Rog and Steve
built all the equipment for Heart. It sounds like we were spaced out, but we
weren't. We were organized and efficient. We thought, Okay, first we'll
make enough to buy a truck. Then we'll make enough to buy better equip-
ment. Then make a record. Then, after that, we'll be able to move to the
States."
She pauses, then continues. "After Dreamboat Annie —with things hap-
pening so fast —we got a manager. But Mike and I continued to be patriarch
and matriarch of the group. As the years went on, things got more polarized
—he handled the technical aspects and I sort of took care of the music. But
he would still advise me on the artistic aspects of things, and that eventually
turned into a problem. After a while, I stopped wanting to be advised."
From the bedroom, Nancy chimes in, "Me too."
"It was a hard fight. From the beginning, when we all had nothing, and
had to really rely on each other, remembering those days makes it hard to
wrench apart, to get free. Five years. was hard. And with Mike and me, it
It
was kind of a Pygmalion story. He was the one person who really encour-
298 daisann mclane
aged me, who said, 'Come on, Ann, you can do it.' Then his job was
finished. It was really hard for both of us to realize that. I left him, but I'd
really left him a long time ago."

She sits silently for a moment, then puts down her glass and jumps off her
perch on the kitchen stool.
"Come on. Let's go out driving."
"Come on, Connie. You can do it. Go. Now!" Sue Ennis barks.
Ann cranes her neck around to make sure, then zips the Rover across
three lanes of traffic. She manages
maneuver while maintaining a steady
this
high-third harmony to a four-voice version of "The Cruel War" (the Land-

Rover has no radio). Other songs on the four-part hit parade: "Sealed with
a Kiss," "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer," and "The Name Game." It feels as if
we're cruising to summer camp.
"I guess it really has come down to the boys and the girls in Heart,"Ann
reflects. "We didn't purposely set out that way, but that's the way it's
worked out, 'cause the girls write the songs, and we all live together, and
we're old friends. We don't try to beat 'em down or anything. We have boys
who are very, very good musicians, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're
the creators."
Has it ever occurred to her to do without the boys?
"No. Nance and I really like being in a band. If it wasn't these boys, there
would be other ones. That's the real truth of it."
She shrugs, downshifts, and pulls off the exit ramp for downtown Seattle.
Howard Leese is an affable twenty-eight-year-old with shoulder-length

shag-cut blond hair. He has played keyboards, synthesizer, and guitar with
Heart since the Dreamboat Annie LP. His role in Heart seems to be co-
musical director. He writes charts and helps the Wilson sisters translate
their ideas into technical language.
"The band is a pretty democratic thing. There's no duking it out," he tells
me. "The girls bring us the songs, then we hash things out. Sometimes the
songs change a lot. 'Strange Night' came in as a folk song, then turned into
heavy rock. Then sometimes they bring us a jewel in the rough, like 'Mistral
Wind.' That song had bars of 5/7 and 9/8 in it — a pop song! Ten years from
now, that's the song people will remember us by.
"Roger? He was nontechnical, a 'feel' musician, and just didn't fit the
band. I did the lead on the recording of 'Magic Man' when Roger was
rock she wrote 299
having trouble. Sometimes he would forget his lead parts and have to learn
them over before we went out on tour again. But he'd been in the band
almost thirteen years, and we went along with it. Probably longer than we
should have."
Roger Fisher, 30, lives with his brother in a house several minutes away
from the Wilson sisters' in the Seattle outskirts. He is currently working
with his own band, Fisher, and looking for a record deal, but he's willing to
talk about Heart. He chooses his words carefully, and stops often to make
sure he is understood.
"I have no animosity toward anybody. Whether or not I had to relearn
my guitar parts, I always gave a hundred percent onstage. The break was
pretty mutual. The girls weren't liking anything I was playing. I was so
depressed in the last year and a half. There was no future! Ann doesn't think
much of lead guitar playing.
— —
"You see" he sighs "back in Vancouver, it was mainly Mike at the
wheel. His spirit had Ann and me cranked up to do our best. But once we
got more famous, we lost sight of the need for greatness. It's Ann and
Nancy's band now. It's not a group."
two weeks before the first date of a ten-month tour to support Bebe le
It's
Strange,and Heart has rented the Seattle Paramount, a splendid old art
nouveau theater, for five nights of rehearsals. There's every reason for the
rehearsals to be tense; without Roger Fisher's guitar acrobatics, the band
has lost much of its visual focus. In addition, all the songs have to be
reworked —the guitar breaks reassigned to either Nancy or Howard Leese,
or written out of the arrangement. Yet the atmosphere is relaxed, even a
little careless. Most of the old songs get one run-through, and nothing is
played more than twice. The evenings end promptly at ten-thirty.

On the last night of rehearsal, the band invites family and friends to come
by. During the middle of the set, Mrs. Lou Wilson, a pretty, fiftyish woman
with bright blue eyes much like Nancy's, introduces herself. We move out
into the lobby, sit on the stairs, and talk while the sound of her daughters'
band echoes softly in the distance.
The Wilsons, she explains, are an old military family, going back several
generations. John Wilson, her husband, was a colonel in the marines who
settled in Seattle after retiring and taught English at Sammamish High
School. While Nancy and Ann were growing up, they lived in southern
California and Taiwan with their older sister, Lynn (now in Oregon with
her four children).
"
300 daisann mclane
"Yes, the girls have been able to hold on to the friendships and the values
they've had from childhood. I was so afraid when I saw they were intent on
entering the world of show business. But they haven't gotten tough or
hard." She smiles thoughtfully. "It's a miracle.
"I don't have all the answers to why they haven't changed, but I have a
theory," she continues. "We had incredible friends, an incredible support
system based around the Congregational church. It's a very liberal church,
with young ministers. At the same time our children were going through the
sixties, so were John and I. We left a world of phoniness and suburban
values and became active in social issues. We smoked pot with our kids and
did other things we never would have dreamed of doing. I marched in a
peace march with three daughters and a grandson on my shoulders."
Ann, according to Mrs. Wilson, had a difficult childhood. "She was born
just about ten days before her father left for Korea. All my loneliness and
my fears, and here was this beautiful little baby that looked so much like
him. Well, I smothered her with more affection and love than was normal."
Ann had bad speech impediment, and was obese during adolescence. Her
a
stammer began to disappear when she took up the guitar, but she still has a
running battle with her weight. "Ann learned very early that trick she has of
standing outside of herself and making fun of herself. It was a defense."
Once, Mrs. Wilson says, she asked Ann what it felt like to be onstage in
front of thousands of people. "It was a silly question, but I knew she'd
really tell me what was in her mind. Do you know what she said? 'I think,
okay for all of you. You guys used to call me fatty!'
"She's always so scared before she goes onstage," Mrs. Wilson muses,
almost to herself. "Mike used to walk her out every night. Iwonder who
will walk her out now?" She stands up to go back inside, drawn by the
music. "She'll be all right. I know she will."
"It is a little scary. When we were on the road and I was with Mike, and
Nance was with Rog, well, we were protected from being hassled, from
being lonely. This time, I don't know. Nance and I are going to try to
always stay in a suite with two bedrooms attached to a living room. That
way, we can have friends up, play guitar, watch TV—
Nancy Wilson interrupts her sister, laughing a little.
"We'll be each other's keepers!"

rock she wrote 301
Sammamish High School is a low, tan-colored cinder-block sprawl, the

kind of building that was built quickly and cheaply to accommodate the
sudden influx of students in the early sixties. There is a large parking lot out
front, athletic fields filled with gym classes on either side, and a carved
totem-pole bulletin board by the entrance that reads welcome to the home
of the sammamish totems. When we pass by, on the way back from the
"ghost house," Ann pulls the Land-Rover into the lot, almost by reflex.
"God, I haven't been here in ages," she says, looking at Sue. Almost at
once, they both say, "Let's go in."
It should be weird, like the "strange night," but it isn't. Here are these
two strange girls —well, not girls, women —one dressed in Carnaby Street
regalia, the other in a large cowboy hat, being trailed through the corridors
of Sammamish High between fifth and sixth periods by a woman with a
notebook and a photographer with four cameras hanging from her neck.
But what is weird is that, for five minutes, nobody notices.
Finally, a boy wearing a neat tie, a student government sort, one of the
social types, walks over and shakes Ann's hand. "Welcome to Sammamish.
Will you be attending our performance of The Music Man?" He adds,
almost as an afterthought, "I enjoy your records very much." And walks
away.
We move farther down the corridor, past the German classroom where
Ann and Sue met, past the art department. Ann turns around and sees we're
being followed, discreetly, by about fifty students —cheerleaders in uniform,
studious girls carrying books up against their chests, boys with their hair
still wet from gym showers. Kids who fit in. She signs a few autographs, and
we flee to the Land-Rover.
"Sort of like A Hard Day's Night, huh?" someone says when we get back
in the car.
"Yeah." Ann chuckles wryly. "A lot like Hard Day's Night."
She hits the gas, and we hightail it out of the parking lot, turning left
instead of right at the light, which is the only way to keep from getting
caught by the proctors if you're cutting out of sixth-period study to hang
out at the ghost house.
Carola Dibbell, "The Slits Go Native/'
The Boston Phoenix, fall 1981.
English punk inspired an influential handful of women to defy

the limits of acceptable feminine behavior and raise a ruckus.
The Slits were among the most striking of these artists, blending
reggae and rock in a glorious, goopy mess of sound. Carola
Dibbell caught the band in an early performance, and her
report applies a feminist analysis to this most liberator/ of
bands.
JL f the best thing the Slits ever did was to pose in mud and loincloths
for the Cut cover, I'd be satisfied. What courage, to bare the multitude of
sins that clothes are designed to hide: the thick waist and big bust of bassist
Tessa; poking through dreadlocks, the teeny breasts and giant nipples, like
walnuts, of singer Ari Up; and, dead center, Viv Albertine's pride, a torso of
nearly cartoonish perfection —as unsuspected under sloppy petticoats as
Tessa's breadth under T-shirts. Nuder than the average Oui model, the
image stakes out the female body as female territory better than anything
this side of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party": solid, varied, flawed, defi-
ant, and irreverent. Women are creatures of mystery, yuk, yuk, yuk.
Seventies feminism left a mess of open questions about sexuality — it
was nothing to be ashamed of, but was it something to be proud of? It
was owing as much to these questions as to punk's puritanism and chau-

vinism that the women who helped make punk, from Patti Smith on,
—
rock she wrote 303
tended to keep their sexuality androgynous or tongue-in-cheek. But

though playing sex object takes its toll in authenticity, the effort not to
can take its toll in animation, just like in the real world. For the Slits
maybe because they were so young when, opening for the Clash tour of
1977, they became the first all-female punk band things were a bit dif- —
ferent. They were theatrical. They liked gym skirts and old white under-
wear more than spandex or death, giggled when their instruments failed,
and were bored silly by masochism or even stoicism. The music they
managed to make was bottom-light, multilayered, thin, the instrumentals
scratchy and choked, the vocals husky, abstract, the lyrics associative
and playful. They opposed consumerism and vapidity rather than injus-
tice. Even without mud they looked dirty and pudgy, and Ari Up's ani-
and aery dances were
mal-style vocals like seizures. Their first perfor-
mances (with drummer Palmolive and a fifteen-year-old Ari!) were the

pits, but their skeptical interview in Caroline Coon's book on punk
made me think, and their 1979 New Year's Eve appearance in New
York, a miracle of incompetence, made me cry. Last week's belated Bos-
ton debut, on the other hand, made me wonder.
I don't live in Boston, so it took a local to tell me the crowd at the
Bradford was unusually varied and happy. There were straight people, stu-
dent types, and degrees of punk, with high proportions of unaccompanied
women and writers. Like a Clash concert, the evening would include open-
ers by an area band (the Scientific Americans) and a nonwhite performer,
reggae singer Earl Zero, who briefly fronted the Offs. The Offs I took to be
examples of a new breed, punk professionals, playing creditably but with-
out any discernible personality.
When Viv Albertine walked onstage, she looked surprisingly clean in a
short white dress and white Indian-style boots, but she came on tough:
"Turn off this want to play." The others finally wandered out,
slow music, I
Tessa in her usual T-shirt and shyness, Ari severe in black modern governess
suit, modern Oxfords, and her trademark derby (from which she would
spring her dreadlocks), Bruce Smith to the drums, and Tony Wafter and
Dave Lewis to assorted instruments on the side.
Later in the set, Ari would explain: "Our drum and bass are primitive
because everything's too technical." Which is perhaps the other joke of
the Slits' go-native cover. Their playing has to be primitive, yuk, yuk,
yuk — ago they still had trouble holding their instruments. As we
a year
all know, primitivism was one of punk's founding principles. The idea
was that with sophistication rock had lost its soul and that by investing
brutally simple forms with feeling (or energy) some kind of magic would
304 carola dibbell
occur, and it did. But the structure's limited, so where do you go when
you start repeating yourself? The Sex Pistols dissolved. The Clash got
better, and it didn't hurt. Bands like the Gang of Four or the Feelies ex-
ploit technical simplicity with increasingly canny conceptual foundations.
What the Slits did, I think, was to pursue the spirit of primitivism —or
—
what they took that to be rather than the form. Rather than build for-
mally on the idea of freedom-within-limits, they pursued the venerable
bohemian ideal of pure self-expression.
The set opened with "Newtown" in a fairly subdued rendition, but Ari
did get out her first scream of the night, a glass-shatterer. There is no one
really like her. Her voice has no clear center, equally at home with the
piercing, the guttural, the conversational. Her physical presence is hard to
pin down too: she's thin, but fat; lovely, but ugly, with doe-eyes, Lucille Ball
lips, all-elbows clumsiness, and no-gravity grace. As the set went on, she
looked and acted more and more like a bird —cockatoo, maybe, or crow.
Van Morrison looked for the lion in his soul, and animalism is one way
home. Ari's flights of voice and body seem effortless, accidental, and per-
fectly sincere.
There was a bit of a wait between flights, though. There was a wait, too,
for the next recognizable song. Most —disproportionately unfamiliar— in-
volved quasi-African influences, reggae-mike effects, Rasta talk, native-

American guttural, and one lyric went, "Weekend warrior, bread-and-but-
ter hunter." Get it? Today primitive, tomorrow — tribal.
Did I hear this right? Ari saying: "We're in a meditation." Moments

later: "Our songs are based on weightlessness and space." A heckler: "Bull-
shit!"
wonder what we're thinking of each other." This is Viv being coy.
"I
Answers: "Rip-off"; "You're perfect"; or, more to the point, "Grapevine!"

There were calls for the band's great cover of the Motown classic all night,
but it Nor did their hookier material, except for "In the Begin-
never came.
ning —
There Was Rhythm" and "Typical Girls" which after twenty minutes
of the other shit sounded like "Let's Spend the Night Together." Viv sang
lead on an awful, completely abstract number. One bit had her and Ari
doing pseudolanguages, including Ari's Crazy Eddie commercial. By the
end we certainly had earned "Grapevine." Instead we got Earl Zero banally
exhorting, "I wanna see you reggae with the Slits . . . rock with the Slits
. . . listen to the bass" (played by Ari). The set closed to screams of plea-
sure, cries of rip-off, bemused applause, and stony silence.
Punk's gotten depressingly institutionalized with dress and behavior

rock she wrote 3 OS
codes that it's a treat to see the Slits defy; they're not cool. But they seem to
be taking some pretty silly things seriously: the road to self-expression is full
of unmarked forks. Why

do wrong turns so often lead straight to the ex-
otic? Isn't this where we came in?
Jan Hoffman, "Backing Up Is Hard to
Do/' The Village Voice, March 18, 1986.
In her early career at The Village Voice, Jan Hoffman wrote about
everything from a Winnebago convention to domestic abuse to
the personal life of rocker Joan Jett. Her music writing often
focused on the human, sometimes quirky side of the scene. Here,
she shifts the spotlight away from stardom for a moment, and
gives the most accomplished backup singers of the moment's
soul scene their due.
S een but not noticed, heard but not listened

singers are those who repel starlight. But if
to; the best background
the three vocalists backing up
Patti LaBelle on Broadway attract a mention here and there, it's certainly
not because they're falling down on the job. Standing well to the rear stage-
left, they wear stolid black dresses that descend to the knee, while Patti
performs center stage in slitted gowns blazing red, blue, and gold; their soft
voices puff little ooohhhs and aaahhhs at Patti's roaring torch. But LaBelle,
an unusually generous diva, occasionally shares and even turns over her
spot to them. And for a few startling moments, the Sweeties — Carla Benson,
Barbara ("Babs") Ingram, Evette Benton —step into the foreground: ample
bodied and friendly looking, they suddenly trash out, doing a grand whores'
vamp with Madame LaBelle on "House of the Rising Sun/Lady Marma-
lade." Then they're piercing the silence of a dark theater during the a
cappella gospel "How Great Thou Art." And finally, during Patti's longest
—
rock she wrote 307
costume change, they back up one another during solo turns in their own
"Sweeties' Suite." Then LaBelle sweeps out, picks up her audience from the
baby-sitters, and the trio obediently return to their place in the shadows.
But this is turf they've been protecting aggressively for fourteen years. In
pop music, where most background singers' careers last five years, the
—
Sweeties two cousins and a best friend, all from Camden, New Jersey
are remarkable. For years they were nicknamed the Sweethearts of Sigma,
and the Philadelphia Angels —references to Sigma Sound, the studio play-
ground for producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thorn Bell, and to
Philadelphia International Records, grand masters of seventies Philly soul.
The singalong riffs the public associates with a hit are often performed not
by the star, but the background singers: that's the Sweeties whom people
hum along with on Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones," and on McFadden
and Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin'Us Now" (and on Patti LaBelle's re-
cent hit single, "New Attitude"). And on cuts by Teddy Pendergrass, the
O'Jays, Lou Rawls, SalSoul Orchestra/MFSB, Jerry Butler, Archie Bell and
the Drells, the Stylistics, the Spinners, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes,
Luther Vandross, Elton John, Dionne Warwick, France Joli, Joe Simon,
Charo, Engelbert Humperdinck, Grace Jones, Johnny Mathis, Deniece Wil-
liams, and Evelyn "Champagne" King —to name just a few. "We genius
background singers!" shouts Babs Ingram, the minister's renegade daughter
responsible for leading the other two astray.
They are putting on the paint one night before the LaBelle show, fussing
about what choice gossip from fourteen years of studio and backstage dra-
mas they can reveal. Carla, who believes in God and classical voice training,
is trying very much to act the lady. "I do not dish for publication," she
announces, fixing her partners with a hell-to-pay glare. But Babs, the flam-
boyant beauty who lost her soul to pop music when her "derelict cousin
played me a Drifters record," is running her mouth double time, while
Evette, of the gently curving cheeks and Baptist church choir schooling, is
attempting to slip in aword or two.

Until recently, especially when they went out on tour, stars wanted them
to behave like furniture. "Don't move. Don't smile. The Spinners were some
of the worst," says Babs, as Evette slinks into her chair, realizing what story
is coming up.
On the Spinners' hit "Games People Play," Evette (whose family nick-
name is "Sissy") sings the solo lines "Nowhere to go/It's hopeless so/I'll call
it a day."
"[Spinner] Henry Fambrough didn't want anyone to know. One night
—
308 jan hoffman
Evette's whole family came to a concert. When Henry sang her line, Evette's
mother yelled out, 'Sing, Sissy!' Well. The audience took it the wrong way."
The Sweeties are intensely loyal, though, to their meal ticket of three
years, Patti LaBelle, whom they call "the only lady in the music world
she's the exception, not the rule." The rule? In unison: "Miss Ross!" "She
keeps her background singers, offstage!" sneers Babs. Another diva they're
down on is Tina Turner. "When we did Live Aid Patti was just being her
lovin' self and says, 'Hi, Tina!' And Tina steps back and says, 'Dahling,
don't touch me, you're moist!' " That night, another star —whom they re-
fused to name because she's a good friend of Patti's —wanted to borrow

number. And then another number. She was
their services onstage for a
grandstanding, "so we kept sliding away from her, stepping away." Babs
giggled. "We can make it difficult, we can get real ignorant."
Especially with producers who don't appreciate background singing.
Babs: "Some of them are quacks. They think if you're not shimmying,
you're not singing." She's in the center of the room now, demonstrating:
fingers flying through her heavy black mane, false lashes flapping, hips
grinding. "But we knew better. We shimmied for the man, but we deliber-
ately sang everything wrong. He loved it."
Their longevity in the business is not only the result of their sturdy egos,
but of their sensual vocal blend, which holds a range extraordinary for two
sopranos and a mezzo. Evette's warm, husky alto gives her first crack at the
lowest notes. "Carla sings top, a beautiful top, the kind you kill for," allows
Babs, magnanimously. "But say it's a lowdown dirty song —to take her
beautiful voice on top
— "so now, waste,
is a destruction!" — Carla is shooting fierce
eyebrows at her my voice is funkier, so I should sing the top.
"But we switch notes onstage in the middle of a song. We've been doing it
for years. I might be on top, Carla might — you never know what we're
doing."
Their sound intentionally defies categorization because background sing-
ers must be accommodating. Babs groans: "We wooooooeed our way
through the seventies. Disco went on forever. We moaned. We screamed.
'Oh Baby!' 'Oh noooV Then the would go out that we were having
stories
orgies in the studio." Evette: "We've had to sound like monkeys. Flutes.
Trumpets. Violins. We sing the unsingable, the undreamable, the unthink-
able."
The Sweethearts of Sigma were never pegged as a "black" group. One
producer, who'd heard but never seen them, openly registered shock when
they walked into his studio. "Urn, there seems to be a problem."
"Well, sometimes we get real low, especially when they get the attitude
rock she wrote 309
that since we're black, we can't sight-read. Yeah." Babs is turkey-strutting

around the room; Evette and Carla are hooting and cheering her on. She
holds out an invisible music sheet, throws down some perfect air notes, and
folds her arms over her chest. "Then you get respect, and it's like, 'Where
did these niggers come from?' Or it's, 'Uh, girls, could you give us . . . the
And "
black version?' I say, 'You mean, sing it with ... a cuhluhd feel?'
"Most producers love us madly," Carla adds hastily. Says Babs: "Kenny
[Gamble] and Leon [Huff] would give us songs and let us be on our own to
work it out. We're very particular: we have refused to leave a session until a
producer is not only satisfied, but very, very happy. He'll say, 'We'll just call
it a day, girls,' and we'll say back, 'Oh no, we won't!' "
These genius background singers were born and made. In 1972, Babs was
burning out from touring with Ray Charles as a Raelette, and when she
fast
got home Camden, her friend Thorn Bell suggested she audition for nice
to
steady studio work over in Philly. If she could round up two other girls, her
chances were better. So she was pitching all this to her cousin Carla, who
was studying voice at Glassboro State, and did Carla know anyone else?
"Yeah, she's sitting right here in the room with me," Carla drawled, refer-
ring to her best friend, Evette, a special education major.
They drove over to Philadelphia, not only never having sung together
before, but without having prepared audition music. Babs and then Evette
did solos for Bell, but Carla, who'd never performed an R&B lead in her
life, froze. "Jesus God," she said to Bell, "just pull out an aria and I'll work
it for you!"
Bell patiently suggested they try something together. After they'd sung
only two lines in the bridge from "MacArthur Park," he bolted down the
hall and brought back producer Kenny Gamble. They sang it again. Bell
pulled in another producer. Again. Then another producer. Again. Then
Leon Huff. They must have sung the lines ten times. The harmony was so
perfect, the women dubbed their sound "the Godblend."
"Background singing is like painting a picture," says Babs. "The lead

singer is the central figure: if she's singing about snow and rain, then we
paint snow and rain onto the background of her canvas."
"We have to maintain our blend, and not be like the lead," says Evette.
"When Patti belts, her intensity doesn't require that we sing loud and
growly. When we're singing, we're loving back at her we find out the feel —
she wants."
Patti LaBelle first signed up the trio in 1983 for her Look to the Rainbow
"
310 jan hoffman
concert tour, and they've been with her ever since, on three Broadway runs,
the November TV special, and on the upcoming album, Winner.
"Working for her is like a party, and we're like a family"
— "with all — five of
Babs's brothers have been in Patti's bands Patti being like Mom,"
says Babs. "She even cooks for us. She's always pushing us, constantly
inviting us to grow."
It was Patti who named them the Sweeties. Evette, who does seem the
most sweet-tempered of the three, objects mildly. "The problem with it is
you gotta act sweet all the time. You can't be cutting up, like we do. One
night we came offstage raising hell and cussing, and a guy said, They ain't
the Sweeties now. They're the Sours!' But mostly they call us the Sweaties."
Babs abruptly leans forward, her face beaming with the anticipated plea-
sure of pure evilness. "In our show, there are four ladies onstage. And two
of them, when they sing, they wet."
Shrieks. Babs gets explicit. Carla rises haughtily and sails out of the room.
Evette, apologetically: "Well, you reach for some notes and it comes out.
Sometimes we say that you're not really throwing it down unless you've wet
yourself."
Babs, acknowledging the imaginary daggers being thrown at her back:
"Well, it's not like there's exactly puddles on the stage, but it can get
slippery.
Since their late teens, when they began singing together, session work has
provided them the funds and the stability they needed in their raucous
personal lives. In the seventies, session singers were paid union scale and
above for their studio work, but weren't eligible for residuals. Last year
Babs Ingram, who was on the board of the Philadelphia AFTRA, was one of
those who yapped so loudly and for so long that background vocalists
finally became entitled to residuals as well, retroactive to 1983. Though
reluctant to discuss income, the Sweeties said their per-person fee for five
live shows, all expenses paid, is $1,500 —minimum.
Now, Babs owns a five-hundred-acre ranch in Virginia. Evette is based in
West Deptford, New Jersey, where she also works as a special-education

consultant to a Head Start program. Carla and her twelve-year-old son
("but please write that I'm single") live in South Camden. After fourteen
years, they still claim to not want to work what they call "the front line": it
means breaking up the team, risking the loss of a solid home life and a
regular income, singing as they walk the plank in public, alone.
"I couldn't do what Patti does, in front of all those people. It's like being
president versus executive secretary. Besides, you lose your privacy out
there. In the background you can be who you are," says Carla.
rock she wrote 311
But Babs turns savagely on her friends: "Carla and Evette .are all back-
grounded up. I cuss 'em out regularly —they should be in the front!"
"In God's own time," intones Carla.

"Oh, gimme a bucket!" Babs snaps.
Evette delivers a pretty little speech about modesty and how happy she is
to be doing just what she's doing. Then she hesitates. "I do want to be the
first black female country-and-western star, though. Well, I just still might
do that."
Carla, nearly finished with her makeup and costume, eyes Evette's ciga-
rette disapprovingly. "Your instrument is inside you and you have to take
care of it," she scolds. "A vocalist has to have discipline."
Evette and Babs, a bawdy chorus: "Party princess, party princess, what
time you crawl in last night?"
Carla, huffily wrapping her dignity around her: "God never said, 'Don't
"
party.' As a matter of fact, He said,'Make a joyful noise!'
They flounce out of the dressing room and onto the stage. Curtain up.
The spotlight is on Patti LaBelle, draped in a black velvet floor-length cape,
her signature hair rising like Nefertiti's crown. The Sweeties stand silently in
the darkness, shifting impatiently, waiting. Patti begins.

"I can feel it/Coming in the air tonight," she moans, summoning forth
and then repossessing the Phil Collins hit. "Oh Lord," she's calling, "Oh
Lord." And the coming on and she's leaning into her vocal orgasm
lights are
thing, oh Lord, oh Lord. She's turning and facing the Sweeties and they're
grinning back, sending their voices out to meet her, oh Lord, oh Lord!
They're throwing it down, their long red nails tracing the outline of the
song, oooh, ooooh, oooooh, hips dipping and stroking in unison, the God-
blend now swelling, filling in the background.
Tricia Rose, "One Queen, One Tribe,
One Degtiny," The Village Voice Rock & Roll
Quarterly, spring 1990.
Analyzing the musical and social structures of hip-hop in an

academic context, New York University Professor Tricia Rose has
become one of today's leading lights in American cultural
studies. Here, she takes time away from the university to profile
Queen Latifah, rap's royal beacon of womanist philosophy and
action.
The ladies will kick it
The rhyme, it is wicked

Those who don't know how to be pros get evicted
A woman can bear you, break you, take you
Now it's time to rhyme
Can you relate to
A sister dope enough to make you holler and scream?

— "Ladies First"
^J^ueen Latifah is bobbing and weaving on the southbound East River
Drive like a veteran New York cabdriver looking for the pocket. We're late
for a photo shoot, but tardiness isn't the reason Latifah's topping sixty-five
in rush-hour traffic. The nineteen-year-old Queen of Royal Badness always
rock she wrote 313
drives on the wild side, but, like Janet, she's in control. Just under the Fifty-
ninth Street Bridge, Latifah cuts into the middle lane, slows her metallic-
blue Jetta to the speed limit, and paces a late-model Honda Accord to the
right. "Check this out," she says gesturing to the slow lane. We have but a
moment to catch a glimpse of the elderly woman clutching the wheel. "Get
it, Grandma!" Latifah cheers, accelerating back to cruising speed in the fast
lane.
"How are you doing back there, kids?" she quips to her friend Jane and
me while dialing a number on her portable cellular phone. Latifah talks
briefly, but decides not to make another call. She needs both hands for the
traffic approaching the United Nations underpass. Noticing the anxious
look on my face, Jane puts down Rita Mae Brown's Ruby fruit Jungle to
offer some reassurance. "You get used to it." She smiles, referring to La-
tifah's smooth yet aggressively confident style.
At a lull in the action, the gracious hostess apologizes that she can't offer
a sound track for the ride. Latifah's sound system has been stolen. For
alternate entertainment, she playfully prods Laura Hynes, her publicist,
who was willing to brave the front seat, into telling a southern hometown
story, complete with regional accents. Laura recounts a tale about a "young
redneck stud" who impressed his cheerleader date by driving his new con-
vertible Corvette into the Daytona Beach surf with the windshield wipers
going. We all laugh and marvel at the stunts drunk guys will pull to impress
women.
Without missing a beat, Latifah takes center stage. She imitates Laura's
southern twang to a T. Reproducing one accent inspires her to perform
several others in rapid succession. Her "Jamaican mama," "Cajun chef,"
and "Nuyorican sister" not only show a captivating feel for language and
inflection, they keep us rolling for the rest of the trip. Next thing I know,
we're looking for a parking spot.
Raised in Newark and East Orange, New Jersey, Latifah was an adven-
turous and athletic girl who was considered a tomboy by kids in her neigh-
borhood. "I was never really tight with girls when I was little," she laments.
"Most of the girls were too busy being grown, or they were into their own
thing doing drills or steps, or jumping rope —corny games." Instead, she
spent most of her time playing sports with her brother and other boys.
"People thought that because you are athletically inclined, you had to be a
tomboy. If you wanted to play kickball, baseball, and basketball with the
boys around the way, then you were a tomboy," she recalls. "But I hated
314 tricia rose
the word tomboy when I was little because my brother always called me a
tomboy when he got mad at me."
Eventually Latifah focused her athletic energy on basketball, leading the
Irvington High School women's team to two consecutive championships.
The statuesque (and beautiful)power forward was an imposing defensive
weapon: a star and a team player. She was never really an outside shooter,
but in the lane, she says with matter-of-fact confidence, "they couldn't stop
me, because I was strong on the inside. Strong and not clumsy. So, I'd score
regardless. I'm not saying I was the best because I wasn't the best. But I was
good enough."
Basketball and the community spirit of team play set the stage for her
musical development. Off the court, she and her female teammates culti-
vated an unself-conscious sisterhood by rhyming and harmonizing in the

locker room, a space that is all too often associated with male bonding.
"We'd go in the locker room and harmonize. We'd sing 'Betcha by Golly
Wow' and Delfonics stuff. Me and my posse all had different names, you
know, like superhero names. I think I was Wonder Woman. We had Batgirl,
Zana, Jane — all these crazy names. I wasn't really a rapper. I loved the
music but never tried to do it. I used to do the human beat box. After the
Fat Boys came out, I was like, T'mma get this,' " she covers her mouth and
gives a comic demonstration of her mastery of breath control.
She and rappers Tangy B and Landy B formed a rap group, Ladies Fresh,
in 1985, when the thought of the music industry accepting and promoting
women rappers was farfetched at best. Did anyone ever tell her that an all-
woman rap group couldn't make it? "No," she says emphatically. "They
[her peers] liked us because we were def. They couldn't dispute that. C'mon,
a girl human beat two def female rappers? We was Ladies Fresh.
box . . .
There were no girls beat-boxin'. We had it locked." Besides, "the female-

male thing" never bothered her: "I didn't think in those terms, it was just
what I wanted to do." Ladies Fresh moved from the locker room to local
community center parties and talent shows. When a rival women's rap trio
wanted to battle, Latifah put her writing skills to the test. "We stayed up all
night writing stuff and I haven't stopped since."
"I liked verbal subjects," she recalls of her school days, "not technical
subjects like math and things like that. Sociology, I loved it. English, I loved
it." Latifah's fluid use of language and rhythm inside and outside the class-
room shaped her life so much that questions about how she, a woman,
would know how to rap are ludicrous. "Don't let me break on them," she
says of cultural critics who define rap as a black male form. "They don't
rock she wrote 313
know. . . . We can go way back to the roaring twenties, to black women

blues singers. Blues is rap, just singing it."
Latifah knows from personal experience what black language theorists
have spent years trying to get across. (Bookworms can check out Henry
Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey for the full story.) In short, Gates
and others understand that black verbal practices are employed differently
by men and women, but are not the invention of either. Claiming that black
women rappers borrow from a male tradition misunderstands the develop-
ment of cultural forms; it contributes to the myth of women's marginal
cultural practice by equating limited power with limited "ownership."
Latifah's take? Ladies first:
Some think that we can't flow (can't flow)

Stereotypes, they got to go (got to go)
I'm gonna mess around and flip the scene into reverse
With a little touch of ladies first
Who said that the ladies couldn't make it? You must be blind
If you don't believe well here listen to this rhyme
Ladies first there's no time to rehearse
I'm divine and my mind expands throughout the universe
A female rapper with a message to send
The Queen Latifah is a perfect specimen.
Latifah rhymes like she drives —with conviction. Rapping, singing,

teaching, scatting, harmonizing, toasting-and-boasting to DJ Mark the 45
King's equally versatile and innovative beats, the Queen stakes claim to the
diverse traditions of the black diaspora and channels them through an
African-American urban sensibility. On All Hail the Queen, hip house,
reggae rap, and new jack swing are all subjected to Latifah's law. Even
when she shares the spotlight with De La Soul, Daddy-O, KRS-One, Monie
Love, and producer Prince Paul, her presence is never overpowered. While
they add to the album's diversity, they don't carry it. This is Queen Latifah's
album. Her decision to collaborate on her debut album is as surprising as it
is ambitious; it suggests that being a solo rap artist does not mean isolating
yourself from your peers.
While membership in a posse is de rigueur in rap, Latifah rolls with many
posses. She, the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Monie
Love, and 2 Much make up the Native Tongues; the Breakfast Club is a
group of her friends that includes her dancers the Safari Sisters, and MC
Lyte; DJ Mark the 45 King, and rappers Lakim Shabazz, Apache, and close
316 tricia rose
to a dozen others attended high school with Latifah and are all members of
the Flavor Unit. The Queen includes among her tribes other female rappers
regardless of whether they are formally linked through a group. Ms.
Melodie, Shelly Thunder, Monie Love, Ice Cream Tee, and other female
rappers and DJs are all guests on her "Ladies First" video, showing a depth
of women's solidarity never before seen in hip-hop. On one level, Queen
Latifah, by openly sharing musical ideas with other rappers, resists record
companies' solo-act jones and challenges divide-and-conquer strategies
common in "managing" and profiting from musical talent. On another
level, it's a broader expression of Latifah's communal philosophy: as she
puts it, "One Tribe, One God, and One Destiny."
In keeping with the tribal theme, Latifah's image and message are deeply
Afrocentric. Without the sanctimonious (are you really black?) head-
tripping that has accompanied some Afrocentric/cultural nationalist
movements, she positions herself as a spiritual descendant of African
queens. Unlike Oaktown 3-5-7 and the Real Roxanne, whose sexpot images
seem like an A&R man's prefab fantasy, Latifah's natural, no-nonsense
persona signifies the arrival of the astute, multicultural, poetic black Asiatic
woman. Inspiring young African Americans to absorb spiritual elements in
African history by grounding her music in the here and now, Latifah makes
contemporary black political issues comprehensible to knowledge-hungry
teens. "So today here is a message for my sisters and brothers/Here are some
things I want to cover/A woman strives for a better life/But who the hell
cares because/She's living on welfare/The government can't come up with a
decent housing plan/So she's in no-man's land/It's a sucker who'll tell you
you're equal/You don't need 'em Johannesburg cries for freedom/We the
people hold these truths to be self-evident/But there's no response from the
president."
Latifah's level-headed, cultural nationalist/black feminist vision calls into
question the historically cozy relationship between nationalism and
patriarchy. In the age of the male-dominated protest rap video, the video for
"Ladies First" is a powerful rewriting of the history of black women's
contributions to black struggles. Opening with slides of four black female
political activists —Madame C. J. Walker, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis,
—
and Winnie Mandela the video's primary theme depicts Latifah as a Third
World military strategist, stalking a table-size map of southern Africa,
shoving off large chess pieces of briefcase-carrying white men with a long
pointer, replacing them with black power fists. She and Monie Love also
rap in front of slides of prominent black women and footage of rural black
women running with sticks raised above their heads toward armed
rock she wrote 317
oppressors, holding their ground alongside men in equal numbers, and

dying wanted to show the strength of black women in history
in struggle. "I
— strong black women. Those were good examples," Latifah explains. "I
wanted to show what we've done. We've done a lot, it's just that people
don't know it. Sisters have been in the midst of these things for a long time,
but we just don't get to see it that much."
Latifah sees herself as an artist/activist, aiding in the process of creating a
new cultural politics. But she rightfully expects that the black intelligentsia
and political leaders will begin to fulfill their responsibilities: "I'm waiting
for someone to be the right one and just capture, captivate our people and
lead them in the right direction." Whether they do remains to be seen. In the
meantime, Latifah gets her job done.
Latifah's public poise and self-possession are strengthened by her

thoughtfulness and emotional intensity. When she was eight, her Muslim
cousin Sharonda recognized those qualities and gave her the Arabic name
Latifah, which means delicate and sensitive. "I was delicate and sensitive in
a lot of ways," she remembers, "but the exterior wouldn't show that. I was
big when was growing up. That automatically made people think I was
I
strong, tough, and hard and all that stuff. But inside I was a pretty sensitive
person." Growing up around nature in suburban New Jersey gave Latifah
an appreciation of its beauty and simplicity. Now residing near the Bronx-
Westchester border, Latifah maintains her appreciation of open space. "I
could never picture myself living in Manhattan. There's not enough trees
and grass for me. Seeing the moon and the stars, those things mean a lot to
me." They really do.
As we walk to her car before the drive downtown, Latifah takes the time
to point out that the springlike temperature is unusual for February. If she
had her way, she and Jane would have spent the afternoon playing ball and
taking in the sun. But her publicist is rushing her off to another pressing
commitment. We quickly pass a youth athletic center with a large glass
window, not noticing the dozens of eight- to ten-year-old girls inside
practicing splits, cartwheels, and dismounts. Moments later we're brought
up short by Latifah's voice: "Get it, girl," she cheers at the sight of one little
girl's dismount from the high beam. Enraptured by the girl's determination,
Latifah stands by the window, waiting to see another successful move.

bell hooks, "Madonna: Plantation
A/Ustress or Soul Sister?"
from Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992.
Groundbreaking feminist cultural critic hooks offers a potent
critique of America's postmodern sweetheart in this essay,
dissecting Madonna's affiliations with (and, as hooks sees it,
exploitation of) black culture and style, hooks brings a fresh,
clear voice to this academic essay, as she uncovers some rarely
examined aspects of Madonna's popularity.
Subversion is contextual, historical, and above all social. No matter

how exciting the "destabilizing" potential of texts, bodily or otherwise,
whether those texts are subversive or recuperative or both or neither
cannot be determined by abstraction from actual social practice.
—Susan Bordo
W
others publicly
hite women
name
"stars" like
their interest in,
Madonna, Sandra Bernhard, and many
and appropriation
yet another sign of their radical chic. Intimacy with that "nasty" blackness
of, black culture as
good white girls stay away from is what they seek. To white and other
nonblack consumers, this gives them a special flavor, an added spice. After
all it is a very recent historical phenomenon for any white girl to be able to
rock she wrote 319
get some mileage out of flaunting her fascination and envy of blackness. The
thing about envy is that it is always ready to destroy, erase, take over, and
consume the desired object. That's exactly what Madonna attempts to do
when she appropriates and commodifies aspects of black culture. Needless
to say this kind of fascination is a threat. It endangers. Perhaps that is why
so many of the grown black women I spoke with about Madonna had no
interest in her as a cultural icon and said things like "The bitch can't even
sing." was only among young black females that I could find diehard
It
Madonna fans. Though I often admire and, yes, at times even envy Ma-
donna because she has created a cultural space where she can invent and
reinvent herself and receive public affirmation and material reward, I do not
consider myself a Madonna fan.
Once I read an interview with Madonna where she talked about her envy
of black culture, where she stated that she wanted to be black as a child. It is
a sign of white privilege to be able to "see" blackness and black culture

from a standpoint where only the rich culture of opposition black people
have created in resistance marks and defines us. Such a perspective enables
one to ignore white supremacist domination and the hurt it inflicts via
oppression, exploitation, and everyday wounds and pains. White folks who
do not see black pain never really understand the complexity of black
pleasure. And
no wonder then that when they attempt to imitate the joy
it is
in living see as the "essence" of soul and blackness, their cultural

which they
productions may have an air of sham and falseness that may titillate and
even move white audiences yet leave many black folks cold.
Needless to say, if Madonna had to depend on masses of black women to
maintain her status as cultural icon she would have been dethroned some
time ago. Many of the black women I spoke with expressed intense disgust
and hatred of Madonna. Most did not respond to my cautious attempts to
suggest that underlying those negative feelings might lurk feelings of envy,
and dare I say it, desire. No black woman I talked to declared that she
wanted to "be Madonna." Yet we have only to look at thenumber of black
women entertainers/stars (Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer,
Vanessa Williams, Yo-Yo, etc.) who gain greater crossover recognition when
they demonstrate that, like Madonna, they, too, have a healthy dose of
"blond ambition." Clearly their careers have been influenced by Madonna's
choices and strategies.
For masses of black women, the political reality that underlies Ma-
donna's and our recognition that this is a society where "blondes" not only
"have more fun" but where they are more likely to succeed in any endeavor
is white supremacy and racism. We cannot see Madonna's change in hair
320 bell hooks
color as being merely a question of aesthetic choice. I agree with Julie

Burchill in her critical work Girls on Film, when she reminds us: "What
does it say about racial purity that the best blondes have all been brunettes
(Harlow, Monroe, Bardot)? I think it says that we are not as white as we
think. I think it says that Pure is a Bore." I also know that it is the expressed
desire of the nonblonde Other for those characteristics that are seen as the
quintessential markers of racial aesthetic superiority that perpetuate and
uphold white supremacy. In this sense Madonna has much in common with
the masses of black women who suffer from internalized racism and are
forever terrorized by a standard of beauty they feel they can never truly
embody.
Like women who have stood outside the culture's fascination
many black
with the blond beauty and who have only been able to reach it through
imitation and artifice, Madonna often recalls that she was a working-class
white girl who saw herself as ugly, as outside the mainstream beauty stan-
dard. And indeed what some of us like about her is the way she deconstructs
the myth of "natural" white girl beauty by exposing the extent to which it
can be and is usually artificially constructed and maintained. She mocks the
conventional racist defined beauty ideal even as she rigorously strives to
embody it. Given her obsession with exposing the reality that the ideal
female beauty in this society can be attained by artifice and social construc-
tion, it should come as no surprise that many of her fans are gay men, and
that the majority of nonwhite men, particularly black men, are among that
group. Jennie Livingston's film Paris Is Burning suggests that many black
gay men, especially queens/divas, are as equally driven as Madonna by
"blond ambition." Madonna never lets her audience forget that whatever
"look" she acquires is work
attained by hard
— "it ain't natural." And as
Burchill comments in her chapter "Homosexual Girls":
/ have a friend who and looks like a Marlboro Man but at

drives a cab
night is the second best Jean Harlow I have ever seen. He summed up
the kind of film star he adores, brutally and brilliantly, when he said, "I
like actresses who look as if they've spent hours putting themselves
together —and even then they don't look right."
Certainly no one, not even diehard Madonna fans, ever insists that her
beauty is not attained by And indeed, a major point of the
skillful artifice.
documentary film Truth or Dare: In Bed with Madonna was to demonstrate

the amount of work that goes into the construction of her image. Yet when
the chips are down, the image Madonna most exploits is that of the
rock she wrote 321
quintessential "white girl." To maintain that image she must always

position herself as an outsider in relation to black culture. It is that position
of outsider that enables her to colonize and appropriate black experience
for her own opportunistic ends even as she attempts to mask her acts of
racist aggression as affirmation.And no other group sees that as clearly as
black females in this society. For we have always known that the socially
constructed image of innocent white womanhood relies on the continued
production of the racist/sexist sexual myth that black women are not
innocent and never can be. Since we are coded always as "fallen" women in
the racist cultural iconography we can never, as can Madonna, publicly
"work" the image of ourselves as innocent female daring to be bad.
Mainstream culture always reads the black female body as sign of sexual
experience. In part, many black women who are disgusted by Madonna's
flaunting of sexual experience are enraged because the very image of sexual
agency that she is able to project and affirm with material gain has been the
stick this society has used to justify its continued beating and assault on the
black female body. The vast majority of black women in the United States,
more concerned with projecting images of respectability than with the idea
of female sexual agency and transgression, do not often feel we have the
"freedom" to act in rebellious ways in regards to sexuality without being
punished. We have only to contrast the life story of Tina Turner with that of
Madonna to see the different connotations "wild" sexual agency has when
it is asserted by a black female. Being represented publicly as an active
sexual being has only recently enabled Turner to gain control over her life
and career. For years the public image of aggressive sexual agency Turner
projected belied the degree to which she was sexually abused and exploited
privately. She was Madonna's career could not be
also materially exploited.
all that it is if there were no Tina Turner and yet, unlike her cohort Sandra
Bernhard, Madonna never articulates the cultural debt she owes black
females.
In her most recent appropriations of blackness, Madonna almost always
imitates phallic black masculinity. Although I read many articles which
talked about her appropriating male codes, no critic seems to have noticed
her emphasis on black male experience. In his Playboy profile, "Playgirl of
the Western World," Michael Kelly describes Madonna's crotch grabbing as
"an eloquent visual put-down of male phallic pride." He points out that she
worked with choreographer Vince Paterson to perfect the gesture. Even
though Kelly tells readers that Madonna was consciously imitating Michael
Jackson, he does not contextualize his interpretation of the gesture to
include this act of appropriation from black male culture. And in that
322 bell hooks
specific context the groin grabbing gesture is an assertion of pride and

phallic domination that usually takes place in an all male context.
Madonna's imitation of this gesture could just as easily be read as an
expression of envy.
Throughout much of her autobiographical interviews runs a thread of
expressed desire to possess the power she perceives men have. Madonna
may hate the phallus, but she longs to possess its power. She is always first
and foremost in competition with men to see who has the biggest penis. She
longs to assert phallic power, and like every other group in this white
supremacist society, she clearly sees black men as embodying a quality of
maleness that eludes white men. Hence, they are often the group of men she
most seeks to imitate, taunting white males with her own version of "black
masculinity." When it comes to entertainment rivals, Madonna clearly
perceives black male stars like Princeand Michael Jackson to be the
standard against which she must measure herself and that she ultimately
hopes to transcend.
Fascinated yet envious of black style, Madonna appropriates black
culture in ways that mock and undermine, making her presentation one that
upstages. This is most evident in the video "Like a Prayer." Though I read
numerous articles that discussed public outrage at this video, none focused
on the issue of race. No article called attention to the fact that Madonna
flaunts her sexual agency by suggesting that she is breaking the ties that
bind her as a white girl to white patriarchy, and establishing ties with black
men. She, however, and not black men, does the choosing. The message is
directed at white men. It suggests that they only labeled black men rapists
for fear that white girls would choose black partners over them. Cultural
critics commenting on the video did not seem at all interested in exploring
the reasons Madonna chooses a black cultural backdrop for this video, i.e.,
black church and religious experience. Clearly, it was this backdrop that
added to the video's controversy.
In her commentary in The Washington Post, "Madonna: Yuppie
Goddess," Brooke Masters writes: "Most descriptions of the controversial
video focus on its Catholic imagery: Madonna kisses a black saint, and
develops Christ-like markings on her hands. However, the video is also a
feminist fairy tale. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White waited for their princes
to come along, Madonna finds her own man and wakes him up." Notice
that this writer completely overlooks the issue of race and gender. That
Madonna's chosen prince was a black man is in part what made the
representation potentially shocking and provocative to a white supremacist
audience. Yet her attempt to exploit and transgress traditional racial taboos
rock she wrote 323
was rarely commented on. Instead critics concentrated on whether or not

she was violating taboos regarding religion and representation.
In the United States, Catholicism is most often seen as a religion that has
little or no black followers and Madonna's video certainly perpetuates this

stereotype with its juxtaposition of images of black non-Catholic
representations with the image of the black saint. Given the importance of
religious experience and liberation theology in black life, Madonna's use of
this imagery seemed particularly offensive. For she made black characters
act in complicity with her as she aggressively flaunted her critique of
Catholic manners, her attack on organized religion. Yet, no black voices
that I know
came forward in print calling attention to the fact that the
of
realm of the sacred that is mocked in this film is black religious experience,
or that this appropriative "use" of that experience was offensive to many
black folk. Looking at the video with a group of students in my class on the
politics of sexuality where we critically analyze the way race and
representations of blackness are used to sell products, we discussed the way

in which black people in the video are caricatures reflecting stereotypes.
They appear grotesque. The only role black females have in this video is to
catch (i.e., rescue) the "angelic" Madonna when she is "falling." This is just
a contemporary casting of the black female as Mammy. Made to serve as

supportive backdrop for Madonna's drama, black characters in "Like a
Prayer" remind one of those early Hollywood depictions of singing black
slaves in the great plantation movies or those Shirley Temple films where
Boj angles was trotted out to dance with Miss Shirley and spice up her act.
Audiences were not supposed to be enamored of Bojangles, they were
supposed to see just what a special little old white girl Shirley really was. In
her own way Madonna is a modern day Shirley Temple. Certainly her
expressed affinity with black culture enhances her value.
Eager to see the documentary Truth or Dare because it promised to focus
on Madonna's transgressive sexual persona, which I find interesting, I was
angered by her visual representation of her domination over not white men
(certainly not over Warren Beatty or Alek Keshishian), but people of color
and white working-class women. I was too angered by this to appreciate
other aspects of the film I might have enjoyed. In Truth or Dare Madonna
clearly revealed that she can only think of exerting power along very
traditional, white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal lines. That she made
people who were dependent on her for their immediate livelihood submit to
her will was neither charming nor seductive to me or the other black folks
that I spoke with who saw the film. We thought it tragically ironic that
Madonna would choose as her dance partner a black male with dyed blond
324 bell hooks
hair. Perhaps had he appeared less like a white-identified black male
consumed by "blond ambition" he might have upstaged her. Instead he was

positioned as a mirror, into which Madonna and her audience could look
and see only a reflection of herself and the worship of "whiteness" she
embodies —that white supremacist culture wants everyone to embody.
Madonna used her power to ensure that he and the other nonwhite women
and men who worked for her, as well as some of the white subordinates,
would all serve as the backdrop to her white-girl-makes-good drama.
Joking about the film with other black folks, we commented that Madonna
must have searched long and hard to find a black female that was not a
good dancer, one who would not deflect attention away from her. And it is
telling that when the film directly reflects something other than a positive
image of Madonna, the camera highlights the rage this black female dancer
was suppressing. It surfaces when the "subordinates" have time off and are
"relaxing."
As with most Madonna videos, when critics talk about this film they tend
no viewer can look at this film and not think about race
to ignore race. Yet
and representation without engaging in forms of denial. After choosing a
from marginalized groups nonwhite folks, heterosexual
cast of characters —
—
and gay, and gay white folks Madonna publicly describes them as
"emotional cripples." And of course in the context of the film this
way they allow her to dominate, exploit,

description seems borne out by the
and humiliate them. Those Madonna fans who are determined to see her as
politically progressive might ask themselves why it is she completely
endorses those racist/sexist/classist stereotypes that almost always attempt

to portray marginalized groups as "defective." Let's face it, by doing this,
Madonna is not breaking with any white supremacist, patriarchal status

quo; she is endorsing and perpetuating it.
Some of us do not find it hip or cute for Madonna to brag that she has a
"fascistic side," a side well documented in the film. Well, we did not see any
of her cute little fascism in action when it was Warren Beatty calling her out
in the film. No, there the image of Madonna was the little woman who grins
and bears No, her "somebody's-got-to-be-in-charge side," as she names
it.
it, was most expressed in her interaction with those representatives from
marginalized groups who are most often victimized by the powerful. Why is
it there is little or no discussion of Madonna as racist or sexist in her
relation to other women? Would audiences be charmed by some rich white
male entertainer telling us he must "play father" and oversee the actions of
the less powerful, especially women and men of color? So why did so many
people find it cute when Madonna asserted that she dominates the
rock she wrote 323
interracial casts of gay and heterosexual folks in her film because they are
crippled and she "like[s] to play mother." No, this was not a display of
feminist power, this was the same old phallic nonsense with white pussy at
the center. And many of us watching were not simply unmoved —we were
outraged.
Perhaps it is a sign of a collective feeling of powerlessness that many
black, nonwhite, and white viewers of this film who were disturbed by the
display of racism, sexism, and heterosexism (yes, it's possible to hire gay
people, support AIDS projects, and still be biased in the direction of phallic
patriarchal heterosexuality) in Truth or Dare have said so little. Sometimes
it is difficult to find words to make a critique when we find ourselves
attracted by some aspect of a performer's act and disturbed by others, or

when a performer shows more interest in promoting progressive social
causes than is customary. We may see that performer as above critique. Or
we may feel our critique will in no way intervene on the worship of them as
a cultural icon.
To say nothing, however, is to be complicit with the very forces of

domination that make "blond ambition" necessary to Madonna's success.
Tragically, all that is transgressive and potentially empowering to feminist
women and men about Madonna's work may be undermined by all that it
contains that is reactionary and in no way unconventional or new. It is
often the conservative elements in her work converging with the status quo
that have the most powerful impact. For example: Given the rampant
homophobia in this society and the concomitant heterosexist voyeuristic
obsession with gay life-styles, to what extent does Madonna progressively
seek to challenge this if she insists on primarily representing gays as in some
way emotionally handicapped or defective? Or when Madonna responds to
the critique that she exploits gay men by cavalierly stating: "What does
exploitation mean? ... In a revolution, some people have to get hurt. To
get people to change, you have to turn the table over. Some dishes get
broken."
I can only say this doesn't sound like liberation to me. Perhaps when
Madonna explores those memories of her white working-class childhood in
a troubled family in a way that enables her to understand intimately the
politics of exploitation, domination, and submission, she will have a deeper
connection with oppositional black culture. If and when this radical critical
self-interrogation takes place, she will have the power to create new and
different cultural productions, work that will be truly transgressive — acts of
resistance that transform rather than simply seduce.
Ann Powers, "Houses of the Holy/'
In the early nineties a new generation of women began

expressing themselves with the aid of guitars and microphones,
and a new generation of female critics was there to lend an ear
and articulate their own responses. As a writer for The New york
Times, Spin, The Village Voice, and elsewhere, Ann Powers has
been at the forefront of a school of criticism that embraces
feminism, scholarship, personal voice, and a deep appreciation
of music. Listening to PJ Harvey evoked Powers* s own religious
experiences and reminded her of medieval female saints she
had studied.
Jl-Jove and inestimable satiety, which, although it is satiated, gen-

erated an insatiable hunger, so that all her members were unstrung. . .
."
So an Italian woman of the fourteenth century described the passion that

had claimed her soul. A modern lover may argue the benefits of indepen-
dence, but sometimes, caught up in the magnetism of her own desire, she
can understand the sensual chaos behind her ancestor's words. Even as the
mind dissects the chocolate-box semiotics of romance, the body can feel
lovesickness as sickness unto death.

Polly Jean Harvey takes for granted that eroticism hurts, that nothing
pretty comes of giving over to love's irrational pull. Listening to her band's
new Rid of Me (Island) is like holding the shoulders of a friend as she fights
back nausea; every calm moment holds the menace of a new outburst. With
rock she wrote 327
the symbiotic tie between Harvey, bassist Steve Vaughan, and drummer
Robert Ellis so tight that their playing seems generated by her unkempt
vocal rhythms, Rid of Me magnifies the skintight discomfort of last year's
debut album Dry until it takes on mystical proportions. And that's the
point, because Polly Harvey's seduction tales bespeak no ordinary love:
she's telling us how she was taken by a god.
That's what the Christian adept Angela of Foligno did when she chroni-
cled the love that made her so ravenous. Holy women of the Middle Ages
typically experienced their faith in terms of bodily transformation, partly
self-induced, but ultimately mysterious. Stigmata, elongation or enlarge-
ment of body parts, levitations, and catatonic seizures proved the union
with Christ that these women attained, although such symptoms rarely
visited men. Accounts of these miracles, like the testimony of Angela that
historian Caroline Walker Bynum has uncovered, suggest that women could
actually change form, if only momentarily, and so push through the limita-
tions of their traditionally scornedand feared female bodies.
Polly Harvey same shape-changing power. Throughout
cultivates that
Rid of Me, she characterizes her rapture in terms of thirst, dismemberment,
and grotesque bodily shifts. Following the mystical tradition, Harvey goes
inside the myths she attempts to reconstruct and simultaneously lets them
swallow her. In "Snake," the band screams and clatters as Harvey, inhab-
iting Eve, pushes her voice to a limit that touches utter panic. "Missed,"
which could be about Mary Magdalene finding Jesus's empty grave, epito-
mizes faith as desperate yearning. As Harvey's guitar and Ellis's bass weave
a heavy bed of muddy noise, she pleads for a visitation: "Show yourself to
me, and I'd believe, I'd moan and I'd weep ... I'd burst in, full to the
brim." By the song's cymbal-crash crescendo, it's clear the vision she seeks
won't come. But Harvey's found new resolve in her divine lover's absence.
"I've missed him!" she wails, and this defiant refrain transforms the search
into her new addiction.
Harvey paints carnal desire as inevitably mystical as well, going beyond
sense into self-destructive experiences of union and absence. The title track
insinuates a threat of undying, obsessive love
—
"don't you wish you'd
never, never met her?" she spits at the unwitting owner of her heart, but the
song's secretlies in a background vocal reproducing true abandon. In ani-
mal rage and desperate need, someone screams, "Lick my legs, I'm on fire!"
The phrase boils over, overcoming both words and music until it's the only
sound left. Only after many rounds may the listener realize that this plea
comes not from Harvey's mouth but from Ellis's, voicing a lust that con-
founds expectations.
328 arm powers
Such moments release a furious energy, as PJ Harvey calls forth the

mythic power of eroticism to move beyond biological constraints. It's there
in her mummery of familiar temptresses and mad lovers but it's also in the
music. Harvey, Ellis, and Vaughan invoke classic rock forms (power ballad,
three-minute thrash, acid overdrive, postpunk discombobulation), blow
them out of proportion, then shred them to pieces. Short songs move sick-
eningly fast; ballads drag and bolt as if they're afflicted with manic depres-
sion. From Ellis's willfully misplaced cymbal crashes to Harvey's gutter
yowls, the performances tear apart the structures they're supposed to fit.
Steve Albini's production makes sense of this jones for excess through wild
dynamic shifts: inaudible passages give way to earsplitting cacophony, ef-
fects smother Harvey's words and then she's pressed up against the vocal
mike, enunciating for her life. On
the first few listens and by the way, it's —
impossible on the Walkman —
hand seems mortally heavy, pushing the
his
music in all the wrong directions. Eventually, though, the material's emo-
tional depth and the strength of Harvey's performance cuts through Albini's
attempt to match this power with his own will.
On the surface Harvey's tales of growing huge or cutting off her lover's
legs seem linked to raging feminist rhetoric —the castrating bitch, she's out
to devour us (or, if you're on her side, the Amazon's gonna show those
boys). But Rid of Me exudes too much terror to work as dogma; instead of
critiquing or even documenting the struggle to be sexually whole in a misog-
ynist and body-fearing society, Harvey means to create that fight's sonic
equivalent. And although Harvey may herself believe in the fight for
women's rights, it's Rid of Me envisions a subject
not the point of her art.
between sexes, empowered by the possibilities and entrapped by the limits

of both masculine and feminine. Throughout "Rid of Me," she switches
sexual identities like arunaway darting from one blind alley to another.
Woman-loving woman on
"Yuri G," woman-prizing dude in "Man-Size,"
self-proclaimed king of the world in "50FT Queenie," Harvey refuses not
only to speak for her gender, but to believe in its solidity. She's a drag king
from the inside out. It's a trait she shares with ecstatics from the Eleusinian
priestesses and St. Joan to Little Richard, Prince, and Prince Be.
The disconcerting union of sex and spirituality plays a role in virtually
every religious tradition, and it's just as common for rock music to explic-
itly unite the two. PJ Harvey's traditionalism lies precisely in the band's
constant striving for such grand moments. (The cover of Dylan's Highway
61 Revisited does away with the original's B-movie sarcasm, instead using
the accumulation of details as momentum on a highway ride toward hell.)
The point of making rock so big eludes today's Zeitgeist, which prefers the
rock she wrote 329
small miracles and accidental triumphs of acerbic do-it-yourselfers. If Polly

Harvey weren't a woman, PJ Harvey very well could be U2, trying to save
souls. If she tried to take an explicit political stance, she'd probably resem-
ble Sinead O'Connor, letting her flair fordrama drag her down.
Turned on by punk's nasty streak, though, Harvey's sound comes closer
to the perversity of Nick Cave and Mark E. Smith of the Fall, or the oblique
cataloging of relics that Black Francis made his business in the Pixies. The
inevitable Patti Smith comparison's not completely inaccurate, either, al-
though Smith was more sure of her own ability to articulate. Diamanda
Galas may make more sense as a foremother. Like Harvey, she's compelled
toward the language of physical pain, and she claws the ground of ancient
wisdom, looking for stories enormous enough to fit realities that confound
today's usual means of expression. Galas's testimonies about the AIDS
epidemic and the degradation of women can't be restrained within the usual
parameters of the avant garde. Nor does Harvey's breakdown of the flesh
settle within the bounds of a typical rock record.
PJ Harvey dismantles the customary arrangements of guitar flash, bass
groove, and drum bottom to reach some essence of rock that precedes the
familiar. The god that Harvey moans to wed is rock itself, in its role as
source of divine power in a secular age. She wants to make that noise in
order to believe in it. On "Dry," the debaucher who can't make her come
touches her from a stage, not in bed; as she churns out the catchiest, most
expendable riff on Rid of Me, she offers her immense hunger as inspiration.
"I'm sucking on the well, I'm sucking till I'm white," she wails. She's trying
to overcome history's dull weight by going to the source. Once there, she
finds it has no place for her; trying to fit, she risks obliteration. That's the
cost in any supernatural union; mystics are forever trying to rid themselves
of ego. Harvey's miraculous accomplishment is to get there and live to tell.
Mim Udovitch, "k.d. lang: How Did a
Lesbian, Feminist, Vegetarian
Canadian Win a Grammy and the
Hearts of America?"
Rolling- Stone, August 3, 1993.
The public grants celebrities the power to shape tastes, but this
influence also brings the burden of representation. When she
came out as a lesbian, singer k.d. lang found herself in the
position of poster girl for a political movement and a personal
identity, something she never wanted to be. In this deft profile,
Mim Udovitch delves into the psyche of this good-natured pop
heroine.
k
start inferring
d. lang doesn't want me
any attitude from
to write about her car, but before
this, let me ask you something: How would
you
you feel if every dimension of your existence that leaked through the dam
immediately got hung up to dry on a clothesline already sagging under the
weight of proliferating lesbian, feminist, vegetarian, Canadian stereotypes?
"You know what?" asks the proliferating lesbian, feminist, vegetarian Ca-
nadian herself. "I was just thinking about this particular interview and how
lately my lesbianism, because it is itself a closeted issue, becomes the focus,
and I have to be the Lesbian Authority. Although I want to talk about it,
like I want to talk about my vegetarianism, I'm a singer; that's what I am

rock she wrote 331
foremost. With the lesbian-chic stuff, I feel like I'm being used as a represen-
tation when I didn't come out for any other reason than to alleviate a lot of
personal pressure. This is just something that I wanted to say."

In any case, k.d. is nothing if not a gal who likes to play with a stereotype,
as her recent romp through some Herb Ritts photos with Cindy Crawford
indicates. "It was my idea to do the barber thing," she says. "It was Herb's
idea to get Cindy, and it was a lot of fun."
And it's not that there's anything wrong with her car. It's a perfectly nice
car. Owing to the context, and in tribute to Lord Alfred Douglas, I come to
think of it as the Car That Dare Not Speak Its Name. What it isn't, lang
feels, is an extension of herself, like her Harley is. We try to go on a ride on
her Harley for two days running but are unable because another car, which
is also not an extension of lang's self, and is not in fact even her car, is
parked in front of the garage where the bike is kept, and it cannot be
moved.
If this is not exactly k.d. lang-revealed-in-love-nest-with-man stuff, it's
because the woman herself, despite the laundry list of adjectives, does not
lead the type of life of which celebrity innuendo is made. (Martina Navra-
tilova rumors notwithstanding: Shortly before lang and I met, a spate of
column items reported that Martina had become lang's Navratilover. "That
was really the epitome of how ridiculous it all is," says lang. "It's like all
celebrity lesbians must date each other. It's kind of an insult. Not because of
Martina, who's awesome and who I really do like and love as a friend.")
When not on her farm in Vancouver with her two goats, four horses, one
pig, four dogs, three cats, and older sister Keltie Rae Lang, k.d. —thirty-one
and born Kathryn Dawn— lives in a little yellow house in the Hollywood
hills. She hikes. She rides her Harley. She plays pool at the Hollywood
Athletic Club. She goes to the health-food store. Her friends say she's a very
good cook. "I guess I just have a boring existence," she says, after our
Harley-riding-as-a-celebrity-activity has been thwarted for the first time and
we have taken the Car That Dare Not Speak Its Name to Petco for a twenty-
five-pound bag of Universal Supreme Wild Bird Food instead. "People are
doing biographies, but there's nothing interesting about me. I don't think
they should do them until you're dead. You just do something because it
feels right. I mean you can analyze it to death, but ..."

"But that's my job," I say.
"Okay, good," says lang affably. "Now I don't have to worry about it."
Her career, on the other hand, is the stuff of which celebrity is made. And
although she is not yet dead enough for the definitive retrospective, her
work has been a little more resistant to stereotyping than her person, if only
332 mim udovitch
because it has been characterized by change. After a brief early-eighties stint
as a free-form, industrial, jammin' performance artist in Red Deer, Alberta,

where she was studying voice at college, lang, inspired by a role as a Patsy
Cline type in a local play, hit the music scene with her then band, the
reclines, and her then style, a sort of cow-punk, sappho-billy amalgam of
pop, rock, and a hybrid extension of a kind of honky-tonk that wasn't
really being made anymore. "My starting in country music was a combina-
tion of being at the age when you start to appreciateyour roots and frustra-
tion with the constant struggle to be bizarre and over the top with perfor-
mance art," says lang. "I was really, really, really ready to hit the scene. It
was total, unbridled kinetic verve. I didn't have a lot of artist friends grow-
ing up. I was a jock, basically; that's what kept me going. And I was
exploding, being around other people, other artists, people who were feed-
ing me and also taking from me." She smiles, adding, "I had an audience."
From 1984, when lang recorded and released A Truly Western Experi-
ence on a small Canadian indie, to the recent past, when she won this year's
Grammy for best female pop vocal with Ingenue's flawlessly constructed
"Constant Craving," that audience has slowly but surely grown. Ingenue,
lang's fourth record for Sire, is an old-fashioned song cycle of unrequited
love, at once traditional and sui generis.
As such, it is miles beyond the country-informed variety of Angel With a
Lariat, lang's Sire debut and mismatch with producer and British guitar guy
Dave Edmunds. ("I like that record now, but I hated it for years," says lang.
"Tons and tons and tons of reverb, 150 milliseconds on everything.")
Along the way, lang has also released the crystalline country throwback
Shadowland, produced by Nashville legend and former Patsy Cline mentor
Owen Bradley, and 1989's country-pop tour de force Absolute Torch and
Twang, for which she picked up a Grammy. She has recorded with Loretta
Lynn, Kitty Wells, Brenda Lee, and Roy Orbison. She has made friends with
Minnie Pearl and performed to a standing ovation at the Grand Ole Opry.
She has sung to a crowd of thousands at the closing ceremonies of the 1988
Winter Olympics, in Calgary, amid what can only be called a surreal quan-
tity of red-and-white sequined cowboys and cowgirls on ice skates. She is
the only lesbian, feminist, vegetarian Canadian to have done this. But coun-
try radio, notoriously doctrinaire, wasn't buying it.
It's possible that the lesbian, feminist, vegetarian, Canadian angle may
have had something to do with this, as songwriting partner, coproducer,
and pal Ben Mink, for one, believes. "They're threatened by what they
don't understand," he says. "Like Rosanne Cash or Lyle Lovett, people who
think a little bit too much and write about that thought in words that aren't
rock she wrote 333
blatantly about beer drinking or cars." It's possible that the Meat Stinks
campaign lang did for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals didn't
do her any favors either. Certainly it didn't in her cattle-country hometown,

where her mother was deluged with hate mail and phone calls and the sign
announcing it as the home of k.d. lang was defaced with the word dyke. "It
was like you'd imagine a TV movie about something hateful in a small town
in the South to be," says sister Keltic
The meat thing, however, is only one theory. The other, frequently cited
as a problem in reviews, is that lang's relationship to country was not only
mildly satiric, as when she sang Patsy Cline's "Three Cigarettes in an Ash-
tray" sitting with three cigarettes in an ashtray, but insincere, with satire
creating a distance between the artist and the material that was never quite
bridged. "You know what? I don't buy that at all," says lang. "It's just that
in your twenties, it's like going to the buffet in a new restaurant. After you
try everything a few times, you narrow it down to the couple of things you
really like. And if it was a type of guard, it was a completely natural thing,
like quills on a porcupine. I mean, when people say, 'Oh, Ingenue is so
much more vulnerable, so much more honest,' it's just that I'm more pa-
thetic now."
Whatever the reason, the switch from countryesque to alternative lite
worked. Ingenue has gone platinum, and lang has established herself as a
major vocal technician of Streisandian proportions. As a chanteuse, her
appeal is pansexual; she is simultaneously a beautiful woman and a cute
boy, sort of like Jean Seberg after a light course of hormone therapy. She is a
babe. She is one butch babe. In a more equitable world, she would be a
Tiger Beat heartthrob. ("I'd love that," she responds to this suggestion.
"No, I'm kidding. Women send me their eight-by-tens and their measure-
ments, but the last thing I want to do is sleep with a fan. Because k.d. lang
the performer is so much cooler than me. Not that there's really a differ-
ence, but as a lover, I'm not as self-assured and cocky and invincible as she
is.")
Her total, unbridled kinetic verve —video of early stage performances

show the singer falling over, rolling around, overemoting, and generally
doing everything but gnashing her teeth, tearing her hair out, donning sack-
and dusting her head with ashes has become both more channeled
cloth, —
and more powerful. "She was like a wild bronc out of the stall when she
first started," says Mink. "I think k.d.'s learned to respond to the reins of
the business, she can jump a fence without jumping too far. With Ingenue,
she's learned to sing it objectively, as a storyteller, rather than as someone
bleeding all over the track."
334 mim udovitch
Still, there are a few things you may not know about k.d. lang. She's more
than just a lesbian, feminist, vegetarian Canadian. She's also into Green-
peace. No, I'm just kidding. She's also Jewish. "I'll tell you something," she
says, lying on the floor of her little house in the Hollywood hills, which
contains a cluster of menorahs and dreidels. "I was twenty-four before I
even knew what a bagel was. But I loved Jewish culture, and my friends
made me an honorary Jew." Lang recently found out her maternal great-
grandmother was Jewish, and the laws of matrilineal descent being what
they are, she says: "Now I'm a real Jew. I was raised as a Christian for the
first thirteen years. Who knew? I liked those corny things like God and you
walking down the sand and you go, wait a minute, there's only one set of
footprints, and it's God. And then I went through an atheist stage. I think
it's called adolescence."
Lang's adolescence, like lang's childhood, took place in the really small
town of Consort, Alberta, population 650, where her mother taught ele-
mentary school and her dad had the drugstore, and which she shows me on
a map. "See? On Route Twelve," she says. "We used to drive over to
Monitor, Veteran, Coronation, that's where the movie theater was, thirty
miles away. Like I always say, I took what I could get as a kid, and it made
me very open to art. There's a certain type of artist who isn't afraid to
embrace mediocrity or kitsch and use it as an element. I think that really

good artists aren't afraid to acknowledge the geek inside of themselves."
(This geek thing becomes something of a theme. "She's a geek — she's a little
geek, but I love her more than anything," says the next-oldest Lang gal,
Keltie, when asked to describe her little sister in one sentence. "Do you have
to embarrass me like this?" asks lang after dutifully describing her prom
dress — blue, blue piping, long and simple, prairie collar, hiking boots — and
explaining that her first song, written when she was fourteen, was called
"Hoping My Dreams Will Come True." "I'm going to look like the biggest
geek in this interview. But that's okay, I sort of am.")

Although she was just a jock, basically, placing eighth nationally in the
javelin throw as a teenager, and dreaming of becoming a volleyball champ,

lang's performance career started early. "When I was five," she says, "I
competed in a festivals, like a Kiwanis type of thing, you know

couple local
those? Well, they would have somebody come down and judge. I sang a
song called 'Robin in the Rain.' And I won. I'd sing at showers and wed-
dings: 'Midnight Blue,' 'Silver Threads and Golden Needles,' 'The First
Time Ever I Saw Your Face.' Everybody knew what my dream was, but
rock she wrote 33S
nobody ever said anything. The only thing my mum ever said was 'If you're
going to be onstage, you're going to need braces.' And I'm glad I got them,
because I feel much more confident now." ("She was very rambunctious
and a tomboy and a pest," says Keltic "That's just the way she was, a little
show-off.")
The first records lang remembers listening to, which she lists with the
patient resignation of one who has been around this particular block several
hundred times before, are Fiddler on the Roof, My Fair Lady, Chubby
Checker, and Percy Faith. She played Gilbert Blythe in her high-school
production of Anne of Green Gables, and she had a thing for women's
roller derby and Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. What kind of girl
was she attracted to as a teenager? "Anyone I could get my hands on,
basically!" /
While Consort was not perhaps literally a one-lesbian town (statistical
odds would indicate that it was a thirty- to sixty-lesbian town), neither was
it, in Keltie's words, "San Francisco North." "k.d. came out when she was
just a young teenager," Keltie says, "so it wasn't like some hideous trashy
lesbian pulp novel from the fifties. She wasn't, like, tortured about it."
Keltie herself is living proof that Consort was at least a two-lesbian town. If
there was an early trauma in lang's life, it was not her sexual orientation but
her father's leaving the family for another woman when she was twelve. "I
was him before he left," lang says. "Extremely close,
really very close to
actually. And I ran into him a couple of times after about eight years. It just
didn't seem necessary to work it up into some kind of forced relationship

with him again. He didn't put any effort into it, so I just thought, Well, I'll
carry on." Does this make her angry? "I don't really feel angry at him. I just
guess my coping system is a c'est la vie attitude. A wound is just a highway
to a new and enlightened kind of confidence, basically. Damage is one of the
things in emotional aesthetics that makes something great, like all the scars
on a tree or a banged-up coffee cup or whatever. Everything you go through
is marking your soul."
"What a romantic you are," I say.
"Or stupid," says lang. "One or the other."
"My father was a very charming man in public, and we liked him because
he bought us stuff," Keltie, who is five years older, adds. "But at home he
wasn't really there, from that whole generation of absentee dads who were
absentee even though they were sitting at the dinner table. But sometimes
you just don't know how something like that affects you. There's always
that fear of things not working out, a abandoned again, and
fear of being
also a difficulty with commitment. We'll probably end up in our rocking
"
336 mim udovitch
chairs together, on a farm somewhere, shooting traps and calling the dogs
and going, 'Why didn't we ever get girlfriends?' That's what we do now."
Another thing you may not know about k.d. lang is that she has a wicked
sense of humor and is, in fact, a scamp. ("She's still a goofy farm girl at
heart," says Ben Mink. "With a touch of cynicism. And you know how
closely cynicism is related to vulnerability.") The reason you may not know
this, although it shows in a lot of her work, is that the cultural presumption
against lesbians', feminists', vegetarians', and Canadians' having senses of
humor is (And with Canadians, the culture might have
really pretty strong.
a point. Oh, put that pen down before you write me a letter about Dan
Aykroyd. Have you ever seen Doctor Detroit? Even lang acknowledges that
residents of her home and native land are more mellow. "I think there's
something about a really severe winter that calms people down," she says.)
Anyway, for those of coming in, another thing you may not
you just
know about k.d. lang wicked sense of humor. At lunch at

is that she has a
Orso, she and her friend screenwriter Anne Meredith and I have a lively
conversation about the male-rock effect. "R.E.M. and U2," says Meredith,
"are inclined to strike a Christlike pose." "Yes," says lang, "women don't
do that." "But there are women martyrs," I say, "like Joan of Arc and
—
"Suzanne Vega," says lang triumphantly. (She also doesn't want me to write
about this conversation but agrees on the condition that I make it look
funny, not negative. "I don't even know those people," she says. "They
might become my best friends so be careful or I'll hunt you down and make
you eat tofu for the rest of your life.")
Together, Meredith and lang have so much zest for life that it's almost
frightening. "I met k.d. in an airport in Philadelphia four years ago," says
Meredith. "And it was just like when two dogs see each other on a path and
they're really excited that there's another dog. It was like comrades meeting
after the war in Prague. It was total platonic love at first sight." There's a
psychic glimmer to their friendship that is lovely to behold.
"We're lucky that in this world of ordinary people
— " says Meredith. "I
found someone as wacky as myself," finishes lang. "It's a beautiful thing to
have a friend. And nobody else would have us." Falling in with them is like
finding yourself in some kind of feminist Elks-lodge parallel universe, with a

healthy dose of seventies television references. "We were like Thelma and
Weezy or something," says Meredith, describing a road trip to the Grand
Canyon.
Meredith and lang seem to spend a lot of their time together in a realm of
rock she wrote 337
the imagination that lies somewhere between the shadowland of lang's art
and the businessland of her career. The psychic glimmer twins buy berets so
they can paint pictures like real artists, then abandon them and go on some
other flight of fancy. "I hate all that child-within, dancer-on-the-fire crap,"
says Meredith. "But it's like our children never died or something."
"In high school, I took an aptitude test that said I was ninety-eight per-
cent guaranteed to be a mechanic," says lang.
"I'd love to pull into your garage and see you wiping your hands on a
greasy rag," says Meredith.
"I'd say: How can I help you, little lady?" says lang.
"And all the cute girls would come to your garage, and the other mechan-
ics wouldn't get it," says Meredith.
This refreshing degree of explicit outness is a relatively recent thing,
dating from an Advocate interview following Ingenue's release. (Before
that, officially speaking, langwas an androgynous, feminist, vegetarian Ca-
nadian.) Lang does not believe that she was ever really closeted; she feels
that her lesbianism was more or less hiding in plain sight. But she held off
on public acknowledgement out of concern that her mother, to whom she is
very close, would have to live through a repeat of Cattlegate. And now that
she is out, she's glad. "It was totally positive, totally positive," lang says.
"Like an emotional veil had been taken away. The really, really big thing I
experienced this year was the intimacy between me and the audience, not
just because of the number of women, although that's part of it. It's that I
feel comfortable knowing that they came there knowing. That I don't have
to worry that if they finally figured it out, they would get up and leave."
I remark that this must be a hideous fear to have had.
"But it's there in a lot of gay performers," says lang. "And being out is
just great. I recommend it to people who do it. Just do it."

are ready to
This serenely spiritual tip is probably something you do know about k.d.
lang. It's been heavily featured in her press, particularly vis-a-vis her love of
nature and animal activism. "I guess nature is really my starting point, my
ground zero. It's from being from the country, I guess. Even today, when
I'm pondering some stupid human question, I watch nature. Because it
seems so pure, even though it's cruel. That's part of it. It's just sort of
comforting for me." Despite being a new Jew, she adds, "I'm sort of a
pantheist; I see God in everything, whether it's a pair of running shoes or a
whale."
One of the stupid human questions lang ponders is when the moon hits
your eye like a big pizza pie, which is to say: love. The frustrated passion
that fueled Ingenue is mostly extinguished. "I was definitely a stalker," says
338 mim udovitch
lang. "Obsession is a weird thing, like an unhealthy sort of exercise. Inge-

nue was this great work of art, this great gift, this great gesture: You see, I'm
really in love with you, look what I've done. Now that it's basically over,
it's sort of going: No, it's yours, Kathryn, it's yours. You wrote it, you sang
it, it's your record, not hers."
At the moment, lang is without a girlfriend and resents the volume of
interest in who a celebrity's lover might be. "It's like people think you have
more choices when you're famous, but actually it really limits you. It's more
limiting than ever," she says. She says that the two things she fears the most
are that Ingenue will turn out to be the career pinnacle that precedes her
losing her creativity and that she won't ever find a true love. She has said
that she thinks her voice is the only lover she'll ever have. On the other
hand, she describes herself as a natural loner who doesn't feel comfortable
sharing a bed. She acknowledges the contradiction and allows as how the
solo qualities may be a defense against the fear of ending up alone. "It's
something I'm working on. Plus I think the ultimate lover will be like being
alone. It will be so comfortable, I won't have a problem sleeping or feel I
have to entertain them or worry about them understanding me. I think I'll
know her when I see her. I hope. My biggest insecurity is my body, being
big, I have a big complex."
But she has a big, big love, right?
"I do have a big love."
On the morning before our interview time lapses, we take another stab at
a celebrity activity by taking the Car That Dare Not Speak Its Name out to
the valley with Anne Meredith to hit a few in the batting cages. After
dispensing with me, Meredith and lang are going to drive to Vegas and then
on to the Grand Canyon. Lang leans against the fence, providing chatter as
Meredith lofts the ball through the sunshine of Softball Slow Pitch Cage 8
and over the pitching-machine roof. "Way to go, pal," she says. "Hum baby
hum." Meredith and lang make fun of me for going into the cage in open-
toed shoes. "Girls," says lang. "Why do they always have to be girls?"
On her return from the Vegas junket, she will start writing music and
producing the soundtrack for Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,
the release of which has been delayed for her contribution. "It's very di-
verse, more score than it is soundtrack," lang says. After that, she and Ben
Mink will start writing for the next album. What genre this one might be is
anybody's guess; she just released a cover of the Streisand-Summer disco

song "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)." "I get glimpses of things I want
rock she wrote 339
to do that don't happen for a long time," lang says. "That rockabilly rebel is
still there, she's still inside, and it's like at the same time you're driving
forward, you're waving good-bye, kinda unwillingly, at the beauty of being
wacky and immature. Still, when I'm onstage, it's the most comfortable
place on earth. I love to sing, I looove to sing. And I'm changing all the time.
Someone remarked to me just the other day: 'Champions adjust.' So any-
thing could happen. I could meet a Tibetan monk and shave my head bald."
"When I first went away to college and she was still living at home, k.d.
sent me this letter," says Keltic "The primary reason for writing was to
send me some Charlie's Angels bubble-gum cards, and at the end of the
letter she said: Keep this, because the signature will he worth something one
day, and then she signed her name. She just picks a destiny and works
toward it."
Back at the batting cages, I foul a ball off my wrist, breaking my watch,
which I forgot to take off, and knocking my red plastic Courtney Love
barrette loose. Why do girls always have to be girls? I often ask myself that.
Lang is up. She's a power hitter, with a stance not unlike Gary Carter's, and
like many power hitters, she has a slight hole in her swing, but I don't mean
anything metaphorical by that, it just happens to be the case. She was
supposed to be League of Their Own but had a scheduling
in A conflict.
She's recently acquired an agent for acting and is up for a juicy role she
doesn't want naming it. "I've come to a new realization," she
to jinx by
says, leaving the cage. "I was holding the bat with my thumb along the
handle, and it limited me. Plus I kept my elbow up." As someone remarked
to lang just the other day: Champions adjust.
Lisa Carver, "Why I Want to Rape
Olivia Newton-John (Because I'm a
Troubled Young Lady},"
Rollerderby, 1993.
In her 'zinc Rollerderby and her musical performances as Lisa

Suckdog, Lisa Carver has been putting a wholesome face on
perversion for nearly a decade. Carver's down-home, yet always
insightful, discussions of uncommon desires lend a fascinating
view into the seamier side of the American heartland. Here, she
examines her feelings for the Australian pop angel Newton-
John.
O livia
ing out of her head

Newton-John
and
is usually portrayed in posters with light
a gentle breeze lifting her hair. Her voice is
com-
delicate
and pure. For these reasons, people think she is sugary or lightweight.
They're wrong; she's way deep. Genitorturer and other s/m underground
singers would do well to study how Olivia eschews meaningless rituals
(being dragged around by a dog collar —symbolic to the point of unreal-
ness) and goes to the original relationship that all power struggles come
from/seek to reenact: parent and baby. She plays both parts.
Olivia's message is not a simple case of contradiction, like, say, Babes in
Toyland dressing like sweet little girls while making music like a garbage
disposal with a fork in it — Olivia encompasses apparent contradictions
rock she wrote 341
without presenting them as contradictions, allowing us to redefine concepts

such as "good" and "bad." In her movies, she plays good girls who do bad
things and no one minds.
In Grease the major conflict is that Olivia's eighteen-year-old character
Sandy won't have sex with John Travolta's leather-jacketed character
Danny. In the end Sandy trades in her ponytail and letter sweater for a perm
and hoop earrings and a black cat-suit. She puts her hand on the shocked
Danny's chest and pushes him through a rotating tunnel in an amusement
park, telling him, "You're the one that I want!" (Danny's line "I got chills,
they're multiplying, and I'm losing control, 'cause the power you're supply-
ing — it's electrifying!" is entirely understandable in this situation!) Sandy is
obviously going to have sex with Danny at the day's end, and the whole
school is singing "dippety-dip-de-dip!" to celebrate. In Grease "evil"
(devirginizing a "good" fifties girl) wins out in the end. Surprising!
But Olivia is no "good girl gone bad." She does "bad" things just as
nicely as she does "good" things. In Xanadu she asks a date to sneak her
after dark into the control booth of a sort of amusement park studio used to
inspire recording artists. Delighted, she asks him to push all the buttons at
—
once get the whole thing going. "I don't know how to run this thing," he
frets, "I'm afraid I'll break something." "Well, push them all gently then,"
Olivia says impishly. There's no rebellious "we're breaking fucking soci-

ety's rules, heh, heh" pleasure here —
Olivia's wearing the same innocent,
shining smile she wore earlier while roller-skating legally in the park. Break-
ing into the studio could wreck this guy's current life, yet Olivia is happy
doing it, and she makes him happy. Somehow we know it'll all work out
fine. In a song on the soundtrack, "Magic," Olivia sings, "You have to
believe we are magic —

nothing can stand in our way." "Everything in our
culture is based on guilt and blame and obligation," says the philosopher
Khiron in Roller derby #11. Olivia doesn't operate that way. She does what
brings her and others pleasure and joy, and she knows that "building your
dream has to start now. There's no other road to take. You won't make a
mistake. Destiny will arrive." She is pure, unified beyond good and evil. —
There is a naturalness in Olivia rarely found in movies. But it is her songs
that really shake me up.
In "A Little More Love" Olivia explores the repulsion/fascination of
being somebody's baby. There is something overwhelmingly sultry in being
subject to another's whims. The music is uncharacteristically thick, low,

dragging. She begins: "Night is dragging her feet. I wait alone in the heat. I
know, know that you'll have your way. . .

." The urgency in her voice is
thrilling. She is like a snake or a great cat or a ferret in her desire. She is a
342 lisa carver
predator for the arrival of this man, no matter how much unhappiness it
might bring. On the surface, Olivia is far from her natural serene state. But
actually she is doing exactly what she always does: giving herself over
entirely to a path she knows she must follow. The air is heavy, unmoving.
... Is she waiting in the falling dark in her bedroom, little feet tucked
under her little bottom? Is she standing against a shed on top of a grassy
hill, watching for a car that might never come? There come these sharp little
jabs of trebly guitar that sound like Olivia snapping her head each time she
hears a footstep or car engine. Blond Olivia, waiting. "I'm trapped," she
cries out, angry and celebrating, "trapped in the spell of your eyes, in the
warmth of your arms. ... It gets me nowhere to tell you no. And it gets
me nowhere to make you go." He took her innocence. He takes whatever he
wants. She can't get free. "It gets me nowhere to tell you no!" Olivia cries
again, love and misery dancing through her blood, wild and electric. And so
she says yes.
I find it terribly exciting that there is no resolution in "A Little More
Love" —no destruction of one or the other, her desire or her unhappiness. It
is the one moment of waiting, caught, which will flood my body each time I
play track nine of my Olivia CD.

Like a child, Olivia responds to this guy's abuse by offering more love
again and again. "Would a little more love make it right?" She is tender.
Like a child, she surrenders. Like a mother, she is wise and knows that the
man is unhappy and afraid, and that's why he's acting like a cad. She knows
the right way, and waits for her little bad boy to figure it out. Her strength is
so supple, so free of vindictiveness. She is like the little girl J. D. Salinger's

young Seymour Glass had to throw a rock at "because she was so beauti-
ful." She is perfect.
I am one of those cads Olivia so often has the misfortune to understand
and to love. Ever since I heard Olivia's voice on the radio as a child, I have
had this fantasy about her: she is walking along the train tracks in Dover,
New Hampshire. It is a very happy, lonely place with only trees and sky. I
am following her. She knows I am there, but doesn't turn around or hurry
her step. I push her. She says oof and falls, scraping her little palms and little
white chin. Then I'm on top of her, bashing her face, which is twisted
toward me. She isn't mad. She absorbs my kicks the way a pond swallows
the rocks a child throws at it. Olivia is too pliant to be overpowered. I stop
hitting her, and beg her forgiveness; she gives it.
When was I four through eleven, my mother and father kept going to the
hospital and They had to warn me that they might die in there. Like
jail.
many future cads, I was tossed from house to house. Happily, this upbring-
—
rock she wrote 343
ing made me resourceful. I also grew to have an odd relationship with

stability. I seek it, burningly desire it, but it feels unnatural when I get it, and
I don't know what to do with it. People who have stayed with one mate or
in one place for years and years appear exotic to me. Olivia is a symbol of
eternal love. Eternal love is incredibly alluring, yet I mistrust it. These
ambivalent feelings make jerks like me be mean to wonderful girls like
Olivia. She knows. In "Sam" she waits patiently: "You know where I am,
—
and the door is open wide come on inside."
When I've finally tortured her enough to trust she'll never leave, I am
ready to roll into Her voice is like a cool hand running
her eternal arms.
across the sheets of a just made bed, and I want to do what she tells me to
do. One would feel safe in the dark with her down the hall. In "Have You
Never Been Mellow," she sings softly, her voice like butterfly wings on my
cheek, "Now you're not hard to understand— you need someone to take
your hand." That was my secret, which only she divined. You can go home
again.
There is one more thing I'd like to say in Olivia Newton-John's favor
the choice of a burping cowboy as backup singer on "If You Love Me (Let
Me Know)" was truly unique.
Sally Margaret Joy, "Juliana
Hatfield/' Melody Maker, November 13, 1993.
Joy was England's foremost chronicler of the youthful Riot Grrrl

scene. Here, in a talk with indiepop idol Juliana Hatfield, she
confronts a problem common to many young women, inside the
music world and out: eating disorders.
JL 'm spooning sugar into my tea and Juliana Hatfield is sitting opposite
me with her eyes as round as saucers. She sips her milkless Earl Grey and
looks away quickly.
Does it disgust you to see other people eat, Juliana?
"No," she assures me. "This thing is inside me."
America's "sassiest babe" grew up in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a
wealthy, conservative New England town. Her mother is a renowned fash-
ion journalist, so there's already fame in the family. But Juliana is not a
natural when it comes to her own rising celebrity status. She's introverted
and she has this funny way of suddenly blurting out something bewildering.
She's the girl who wrote the line "Now here comes a song I love so much/
Makes me wanna go f shit up" ("Nirvana"), and f shit up, she
does.
She's beginning to see how an innocent comment can come back to bury
rock she wrote 345
you in an avalanche of reproach. She has said that she was "tortured as a
child" and that her brothers "beat up on" her. Now she grimaces when I
mention these things. She doesn't want to hurt her brothers, she appreciates
that they went through a rough time when their parents divorced. But her
way of dealing with things is to write songs, and songs can be heard by
everybody.
And Juliana's songs tend to be too close to the bone for comfort.
/ hate my sister /She's such a bitch

—"Sister"
" 'Sister' is about what it might be like if I had a sister, and, I guess, also
what I think my brothers think about me," she whispers with that slightly
puzzled air of hers. One wonders how her brothers interpreted the song.
Particularly her younger brother, himself a talented songwriter, who caused
a scandal in stuffy, high society Boston last year when he became their first
recorded "carjacking" offender.

The crime, currently sweeping the States, involves stealing a car at
gunpoint.Mom's newspaper, The Boston Globe, managed to bury the story
somewhere discreet, but its more sensationalist rival the Boston Herald
named names. Oh brother.
It's fair to say that, despite her privileged background, Juliana hasn't
exactly led a charmed life. But her story so far would make for a pretty
snazzy soap opera. Think about it: "Juliana/' the gifted Sandie Shaw look-
alike from a broken home, hell-bound on achievement, driven by the need
to prove she's better than everyone else. She gets piano lessons from the age
of five and her first encounter with rock comes with the arrival of a funky
twenty-three-year-old baby-sitter when she's fifteen.
"She was the only person I knew who wore a leather jacket," laughs
Juliana, tickled by the memory. "She was the first hipster I ever met."
On to Boston University, where she studies French and history for one
semester, then a move to the prodigious, jazz-oriented Berklee Music
College, where she meets a few more hipsters, like the other Blake Babies
(her previous band), John and Freda (now Antenna). She watches, teen-
struck, as bands like Pixies, Throwing Muses, and Dinosaur Jr. start to
make big news. Blake Babies record some gorgeous pop records (the best of
which is their last, the "Rosy Jack World" EP) before splitting so Juliana
could go solo.
This is where we come in.
346 sally margaret joy
i wanna be loved by you
"Oh baby if you only knew, now I'm down to 102," is the jubilant start
to "Feed Me" (on her new / See You EP). A friend saw Juliana perform it at
a show in America. He says the girls in the audience just froze with their
mouths hanging open. They could not believe that someone had written
such an explicit song about anorexia. Moreover, they could not believe that
a pretty, slim "babe" like Juliana wasn't simply indulging in some sick kind
of boasting.
If only they knew.
Most people are dulled to the word anorexia, without really understand-
ing it. It's not just dieting a lot. It's not logical or easily cured. It's a mental
and physical illness starting in childhood. Perhaps when your parents served
your food, you felt that you weren't getting as much on your plate as
everyone else was.
Whether imagined or not, in a child's mind, this feeling can swell out of
all proportion. Unchecked, it can develop into the belief that he, but most
likely, she, is not worthy of as much food as other people, and thus not
loved as much either.
" 'Feed Me' is about anorexia, and relating it to a lack of love," she says.
"I don't know, maybe it started around college. I starved myself or binged,
but it didn't get to where I had to be hospitalized. I couldn't handle eating
with people. I hated having to blend, you know that whole social thing,
while I was eating."
Her breathy voice becomes more forceful as she tells her story. The peo-
ple in the riverside cafe are oblivious to us in our dim corner of the room.
It's so dark, I can hardly see her face.
"I hated going out to dinner because I couldn't stand having to wait for
food," she continues. "It had to be right now or I wouldn't eat at all. So I
had to eat in private so I could have complete control over it. I had to cook
the food to my exact specifications, sit in a special position, and eat in a
certain way."
Silence.
Didn't you talk to anyone about it, Juliana?

She shakes her head slowly. "No, I never talked about it because I was
embarrassed. I thought it was a pathetic problem and I should learn how to
get over it. It seemed too heady to merit talking about."

But you feel okay talking about it now?
She nods. "A lot of men and women are way more accepting of imperfec-
tions than the media leads us to believe. I used to be, like, addicted to glossy
rock she wrote 347
fashion magazines. But not anymore. I've read some books that really
helped a lot. Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth was right on target. Men
don't have to have a certain kind of body to get ahead in this world. Beauty
magazines need the advertising revenue from the slimming industry to sur-
vive. The media is sick, evil, and you gotta ignore it, or fight it. Do your
own thing."
She describes some upsetting experiences in this interview and it's diffi-
cult to know where sensitive reporting ends and the look-at-the-Lady-Di-of-

Rock-and-imagine-that-beautiful-face-in-a-pool-of-her-own-vomit glamor-
ization of a pitiful illness begins. But she is candid, relaxed, even. We're not
embarrassed talking about it.
Should we be?
"I remember going back to this hotel room after a show with all these
candy bars and eating them all and throwing up for hours. The next morn-
ing I had to fly back to the States. When I got to Heathrow, my eyes were all
red and my
was all puffy. Your guys are pretty watchful at customs.
face
This maybe thinking I was on drugs or something, came up to me
official,
and said, 'What have you done to make yourself look like that?' Huh! Like,
I'm really gonna say, 'Oh, actually I ate until I was sick last night'?"
There was a record number of girls suffering from the disease last year,
with the heaviest incidence ever among the under-twelves. Maybe, like the
official at Heathrow, anorexia is beyond the comprehension of a lot of men,
but, as they say in the rock world, the little girls understand.
"I have small relapses," she says. "I still care about how I look. But
mostly it's about how I feel. I feel better when I have less flesh on me. I feel
lighter and younger. It's weird. It's sad to say so, but I thank God I was
born like, I don't know, kinda pretty, because I know it makes life easier. If
I was fat, life would be much harder. It's sad that I have to feel grateful, but
I do. Plus I try not to take advantage of it."
On the unrecorded "Supermodel," Juliana sings, "What's the big f in'
deal?" completely unimpressed by the world of glamour and those who

inhabit it. Yet, last year, she posed away merrily for Vogue and Sassy maga-
zines. Maybe she thinks that if people are going to look at photographs of
girls, then those girls might as well be talented, independent ones. Well,
that's what Sandra Bernhard and Madonna claim when they pose for nudie
mags.
Strange. Not so long ago, Juliana had a shaved head and people mistook
her for a boy. Now she's an indie sex symbol, indeed, very much so for one
of my workmates.
348 sally margaret joy
She raises one eyebrow and rasps, "You know, maybe if he talked to me,
he wouldn't like me at all."
Is that what you were thinking when you wrote the line "I'm ugly with a
capital U andI don't need no mirror to tell me it's true"?
"Kinda. 'Ugly' is a very human thing where you hate yourself some days.
I have laid down on the bathroom floor from despair," she says, referring to
a line from the song "Nirvana."
"I have these waves of depression. Normally, like now, I'm optimistic.
But sometimes I get these pessimistic thoughts like I'm gonna end up alone,
I'm never gonna change, and most people are pathetic, and my music sucks,
and all my friends are stupid. Then I can't deal with people and I get mad."
I think I must have caught her on a downturn last year when I tried to get
her to write back with some answers for a possible interview.
Everyone said she was going out with Evan Dando, so I mentioned him,
asking her, rather cornily, what it was like being a part of a rock couple.
Uh-oh. She didn't like that. No, siree. "Girl" she wrote, "I can hear you
slobbering all the way across the Atlantic!" And then she went on to scrib-
ble freaky things about them being twins.
I was shocked. Inadvertently, I'd made it on to her "pathetic people" list.
God help anyone else who does.
spilling the beans
I know this is the bit you've been waiting for. Are you ready? Okay.
Juliana is not Evan Dando's ex-girlfriend.
Juliana isn't anybody's ex-girlfriend.
"I've never really had a boyfriend. I'm still very much a loner. I guess I do
everything backwards. A lot of people get into relationships when they are
young and they learn from them. I'm trying to learn to be a better person
before I get into all that. Yeah, I guess it's kinda unusual to be twenty-five
and never had any kind of boyfriend." Then she adds rather wryly, "I'm
starting to feel a little bit like a freak."
You can't believe it, can you, reader? Twenty-five! Looking like that! And
she hasn't been out with anyone! The "late bloomers" among you who
remember the agony of people whispering "lezzie" or "prude" will sympa-
thize with Juliana. In this bonk-u-like society, you've got to be brave to
admit to something so ignominious as being a virgin at the age of twenty-

five. But you know what? Juliana did (in Interview magazine last year). And
rock she wrote 349
when she did, she may as well have said she was a child molester because
people were so shocked.
Doesn't she want to punch the people who say she's a weirdo?
"I've got a healthy dose of self-respect," she says, narrowing her eyes. "At
college I felt superior to people. Yeah, I did feel pretty left out and awk-
ward, but I didn't want to give in just because I wanted to be accepted as
part of a group. I always liked boys, but I saw nothing potentially satisfy-
ing."
For a loner, she has a hell of a lot of songs about relationships. But then,
feelings run high in those who are single. Just listen to that feverish line on
"Forever Baby"
— "I hold him like a loaded gun/I know he might go off with
anyone." Pretty spot on for a loner.
When I ask her which artists she likes, she seems to forget J, Evan, and
Kurt, and cites someone completely obscure for "his loner instinct."
"There are surprisingly few creative people I really admire," she says.
"Except, maybe, this actor Sterling Hayden. He's got this excellent blond
curly hair. Do you know him? He was in Kubrick's The Killing. He's really
cool, a strong man, no bullshit. He's not some poofy (she rhymes it with
goofy) sex symbol." She smiles, "He's a loner."
He's a shining knight, and she wants to be one, too. She has this super-
heroic song, "Dame With a Rod," and it goes, "I gotta gun and no mercy
for scum." She says it's about "killing a rapist." Maybe it marks a shift
away from her recurrent theme of suicide, turning her hate inward. Is she
getting into some kind of Joan of Arc fantasy? Loners get so used to battling
against other people's prejudices, battling becomes a way of life.
Juliana played bass on the Lemonheads' album It's a Shame About Ray,
and she supported them on tour in the States. But she passed up the support
slot in Australia, because she says she "didn't want to go through all that
groupie shit again." She has a refreshingly intolerant attitude toward
groupies, and it's got nothing to do with your half-witted ideas about
"morals" or puritanism. Use your imagination, some of you!
If that's too difficult, listen to "Rider," where a mean and deadly riff
pounds under Juliana's snarls of "I saw you backstage pulling up your skirt/
Guilt by association makes it hard for me to work."
Get it?
Considering that groupies make up most of the females she's ever got to
meet on previous tours (with honorable exceptions going to folks like
Ruthie and Linda of Magnapop, who supported Juliana in the States, and
3SO sally margaret joy
who she likes a lot), it's not much of a surprise when she admits, "I find it
hard to relate to girls. I have these weird almost misogynistic ideas. Girls
can be so sexually competitive. I'm not into flirts."
Watching her perform at London's ULU and the Camden Underworld,

you can't fail to notice that it's all puppy-eyed boys down the front. Sure,
they love the music, the pop melodies soaring over the rock 'n' roll rage, but
what do they make of songs about anorexia, killing rapists, and loathing
supermodels?
It's a surprise that more girls haven't discovered Juliana yet. Maybe it's
her kittenish voice they take umbrage at, maybe the Babes in Toyland bri-
gade find her a little sugary. What a shame.
They're missing so much.
——
Dana Bryant, "Cards Rufus,"

Straight No Chaser, 1992.
New York-based spoken-word artist Bryant is at the forefront of

America's resurgent poetry movement. She combines a
sensibility based in jazz and hip-hop with a glittering knack for
metaphor and a glamorous personal style. Here, one diva pays
tribute to another: soul singer and former Rufus frontwoman
Chaka Khan.
electric lady
knifing the curtain
open wid bejeweled fingers
her head
laden wid citrus
sweetened hairs
medusian ropes
swingin' hot embers
heannaed bells
her lips
plentiful soft
and smakin'
sweet badass's
TELL ME SOMETHIN'
GOOD
————
3S2 dana bryant
her stomach
stripped of all
but bronze-blue flesh

beaded rings of baby
peacock feathers
her butt
swayin' chains
of lilies laced wid
sense-amelia
MARY DOOJAH WANNA
FUNK WID ME? . . .
her crotch
explodin' light
mound of venus rainin
salt V flame
on
open lifted stadium faces
she bodacious
she be
jungle bunny bessie smith
demoness
howlin' at the moon
she be
the voodoo chile jimi
hendrix plucked strings
to conjure up
she be
the brass ring my mama
said good colored girls
must not reach for
she be
the circe
that esoteric nut deigned
to tell me waz too much
she too literal
she too extreme

much too seamy
much too obscene
I say
SCREAM SISTA
rock she wrote 3 S3
your ward 8
sensibility
speaks for me
praise the day
I first heard
your illicit moans
ring stereo
in smoke filled
blue lit
basements
when my daddy said
SHE can't be music
give charlie mingus some
play
make room for charlie
mingus
ring in the new year wid
nat king cole
say?
can't be music?
if she
rushes in deep
my well
like poetry
like flush
like semen
like spit
like your bloodied face

reboundin'
one mo time
off the blows
of a so called
black faced bimbo
broke down
from wailin'
nu blues
new news
3S4 dana bryant
broke down
from
wailin' out
beyond image
to
me
can't be music?
TALKING
'BOUT
a REVOLUTION
Patricia Kennealy~A\orrison, "Rook
Around the Cook/'
Jazz & Pop, October 1970.
As editor of Jazz & Pop magazine from 1968 to 1971, Patricia

Kennealy-Morrison was in a prime position to watch, coach,
and cajole the unfolding rock counterculture. Her highly
informed and opinionated columns showed she had as much
balls and bravado as the many rock stars whose performances
she often challenged; ironically, although the magazine was put
together entirely by women, ninety percent of its readership
was male. "Rock Around the Cock" was one of the first articles
to call men to task for rock's exclusion of women.
R
when
ock 'n' roll has come a long
the streets were thick with sobbing chickies
way, baby, since the strange days
come to throng the pave-
ments outside hotels housing the Beatles or the Stones. Times've changed,
for sure; now the interested phenomenological observer can go to the Fill-
more or similar habitats and behold an audience comprised young chiefly of

men, alone or in groups, some of whom may be accompanied by young
ladies but very often not, and almost nowhere will there be seen (a) three or
more women together and not looking uncomfortable, or most especially,

(b) a lady by herself.
Odd indeed for a branch of popular art that once was almost exclusively
female in its constituents, but by no stretch is it limited to the concert
—
358 patricia kennealy-morrison
situation: I haven't any figures presently available as to the gender percent-

ages of the record-buying public under thirty, but it comes to my mind that I
do see mostly men patronizing the record stores in my neighborhood, and it
takes only a quick glance atJ&P's rate card demographic breakdown to see
that for a music magazine put together entirely by women, the readership is
some 92% male.

Not to mention women in the business end of rock, and women artists,
and the LYRICS . . . but all in turn.
welcome to the camp, guess you i all know why we're here
Given: rock 'n' roll is a middle-class phenomenon. All the following rant,
with the exception of that statement of I think unarguable fact, is purely
subjective and based entirely on my own observations in the field, supple-
mented on occasion by solicited opinions from various sources friendly and
not; of course, any further reader observations, experiments, and/or hy-
potheses are more than welcome.
Now. Concerts, contrary to popular opinion, are not devised chiefly for
the hearing of the music therein performed, though that music is a major
factor in deciding who attends which concert, but rather as a socioeconomic
ritual of some solidity, in which all participants know the roles and moves
assigned to their specific level of the whole and generally carry them out
with a good will, whether it be Jethro Tull at the Whiskey or Cost fan tutte
at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Rock concerts, few years ago, used to be primarily female
up until a
occasions, screaming seas of young girls with tear-streaked, ecstatic faces;

the whole interchange was largely gonadal in orientation. Along about
1967 the change came: rock 'n' roll became rock. More sophisticated, more
self-conscious in lyrics and techniques, more mechanically oriented, the new
music lost large numbers of its old fans and in so doing, picked up even—
larger numbers of male music-lovers who had previously avoided it. (Not to
say that there had been no male rock 'n' roll fans all along, but they had
definitely been lying low, or listening to folk or jazz or blues, and came to
rock in open and significant numbers only when it became —dare I say it?
more intelligent. I how far it is possible or desirable to go with

have no idea
the proposition that most women do not dig "progressive" rock, but think I
it is pretty clear that lots do not, the reason being that it is, indeed, too
much of an effort to make, hastening to add that this is not necessarily due
to any cerebral defect on the part of these women but more likely a reflec-
rock she wrote 3S9
tion on their education —the same could be given as a reason why many
women do not enjoy jazz.)
So concerts then became largely male occasions, and, outside of the very
small number of women who attended because they had done some listen-
ing and actively decided that they preferred the music of Group X to others
and had real musical reasons for so doing, females at rock concerts tended
to be there chiefly in the role of attendant to some man — either in a prear-
ranged, "date" situation, or as a free-floater, invariably in tandem with
another girl, there to check out the action and hopefully score with, depend-
ing on tastes and opportunities, either an unattached male fellow audience
member or a musician.
I comment once again on the noticeable scarcity of solo women at rock
concerts: whether this is due to vestigial social embarrassment at being seen
without an escort or understandable fear at being out alone late at night, I
do not know, but I tend to think it falls somewhere in between —having

made such scenes, for whatever reasons, primarily social, it has become
incumbent upon women to further elevate them into "occasions," some-
thing to look forward to, and not to treat concert scenes as casual entertain-
ment, the way most men do, just running out, buying a ticket, and going,
alone, to hear someone they really appreciate.
All of this, of course, merely serves to illustrate that given proposition:

rock is most truly a middle-class phenomenon, and these are all most truly
middle-class attitudes; for all the screaming we do about how free the
women of this generation are, things show up quite otherwise in practice.
sexy sadie
Congruent to the situation of women: rock concerts is the position (no

pun intended) of the groupie. Judging by all the criteria available, the role of
groupie seems to be the only one that most rock musicians are willing to
allow females to fill. Carrying the concept of women-as-object to almost as
great an extent as do men who patronize prostitutes, rock artists, by their
own admission, see the groupie as a rather fetching device of roughly the
same convenience quotient as a knothole, only more decorative and lots
more fun; there are no demands, no wondering where you stand in the
woman's eyes, no frantic posturing and juggling of stance —everything out
front and the rules thoroughly understood by all parties involved.
Sure, it's exploitation: but I think that in such a situation as this, you just
can't exploit anybody who so obviously wants to be exploited — for what-
—
ever reasons of her own. And much rock-journalistic fodder has been made,
what those reasons are. I don't pretend to know, outside of
to date, of just
the obvious; but neither do I intend to protest too much, just because it may
—
not be the way / do things if deriving an identity of sorts from the men
they ball makes them happy, fine, and welcome to it, but I could wish
devoutly that rock musicians acknowledge the fact that there are indeed
other-motivated women even in the rock 'n' roll business —no slight on
groupies — but there are even women who have their minds on the music AS
MUSIC and not on the musicians as groins. And I am sure that Karin Berg
ofThe East Village Other and Anne Marie Miklo of Rock and Deday La
Rene of Creem, to name a few, would back me up.
in it for the money?
For a field that Frank Kofsky claims is devoted to, supported by, and
furthered for the interests of the women of the American alternative culture,
the business end of rock 'n' roll is noticeably sparse in women who are
responsible for doing any of the prime moving that goes on. How often do
you see a woman promoter putting together one of the monster festivals
not just serving as a sometime consultant, or a sop to Women's Lib, but

really it? How many women managers are there around, or booking
doing
agents, how many women who have any real responsibility or power in the
running of giant talent firms, how many women engineers at recording
studios, how many women producers, how many women disc jockeys or
program directors, how many women are on the A&R staff of record
companies like Columbia or Atlantic, how many women are involved in
house advertising staffs for record companies, how many women run their
own record-company executive positions the way they want and are re-
garded by their male co-workers as equals on all levels? Though that last
may be asked with equal validity of women in any field, it has particular
importance in this one, which is supposed by popular belief and wishful
thinking to be loose, free, and easy, and not prone to the peculiar hangups
of other, straighter business strata. (Though one group, Ten Wheel Drive,
does have a female equipment manager, who schleps those amps as though
she means it, women are as a rule regarded as not suited to such goings-on,
lugging drum cases or sweating over a Scully twelve-track or dragging the
lead singer out of a bar at three in the morning.)
In fact, about the only thing that women appear to be thought of as good
for in this business is PR. Hype. Oh, know about Allison Steele of WNEW-
I
rock she wrote 361
FM, and Tracy Sterne of Nonesuch, and Dusty from KSAN in San Francisco
and a few others, but those are clear and men
brilliant exceptions, or so the
who run everything else would have it. Everyone else is in publicity. Now,
women are very good at hype, they do it all the time; they can brag about
their groups the way they'd brag about their grandchildren. But that's like
saying women are good at being secretaries because they enjoy looking after
their bosses. Men can hype very well too; just listen to Michael Goldstein.
Gender is hardly a qualification.
And women writers. I do tire of flailing away at that oP male chauvinist
hydra, but I tire even more of going out to do an interview and being
genteely condescended to as not much more than a particularly well-con-
nected groupie, and then, sometime during the interview, having to watch
the interviewee male drop his drink at a perfectly ordinary remark as to, oh,
the influence of eighteenth-century Irish-Scottish broadside ballads in his

work, or John Cage, or Django Reinhardt, or even nonmusical things like
the auteur theory of filmmaking, or just about anything having more intel-
lectual content than "What's your favorite color?" Male reporters draw
nary a raised eyebrow with questions having to do with pursuits intellec-
tual, techniques musical, or just plain all-around mental information, but

women journalists invariably pull down (a) suspicion ("Who coached YOU
so well, little amazement ("My God! It thinks!") Once the
girl?") or (b)
moment of truth is past and you are accepted as mind and not cunt, things
go well, but there should never have to be even that momentary caesura of
credibility.
And women artists. With my own ears I heard a member of a major

British band tell me that women in rock groups are bad news because
they're "too emotional," whatever the hell that means. Does it mean that
they miss gigs because they're drying their hair or had a fight with their old
man, that they can't pull their weight musically, either playing an instru-
ment or songwriting, that they evince unprofessional behavior patterns on
tour? I have heard all of those charges laid to MALE group members, artists
belonging to various groups at various times, so let's have no attitudes
copped that female rock artists are any more emotional than their male
counterpart prima donnas.
On the other hand, there appear to be only two roles for women rock
Joan Baez and Judy Collins and Laura Nyro can get away
artists to play.
with much, under the cover of "art songs," but where does that leave Grace
Slick and Tina Turner? Filling the —needless to say—male-specified roles of
(a) Ice Princess, or (b) Down-Home Ball. So there we have Grace, gelid,
brittle, bitch goddess incarnate —interestingly enough, she has never made
—
any formal statement of position on the function of women in rock — at the

one extreme, and Tina, or Janis Joplin — interestingly enough, neither have
they — at the other, as the earth-mother, scratch-your-back, tiger-lady stone
soul fuck. Not much in between, not much choice. And
women is losers, for sure
If women as rock artists are severely circumscribed in their choice of role

through which to communicate, then woman-as-the-subject-of-rock-lyri-
cists merely reinforces the limitations.
Almost without exception, rock lyrics are dedicated to keeping women in
their place, and we all know just where that place is: "Well, I know you
must have heard it a lot/But it's a fact/Men always seem to end up on top."
men are on top, there's only one
If place left for the rock woman, no matter
how much she does not like it.
There are a lot of reasons for this, not least among them the faggot
attitudes of the male rock-appreciating populace (not for nothing did Jim
Morrison recently complain during a concert, "The only people who rush
the stage are guys"), or their wish-fulfillment fantasy trips ("Bet I'm better
than he is anyway"). Nothing wrong with that, guys, just don't do it at my
expense.
Women in rock lyrics are generally confined to, again, one of two very
well-defined categories, and there is between the two absolute and utter
dichotomy: the Conceptual Female and the Biological Female.
These two divisions tend to fit in pretty well with the functions assigned
female rock artists: they are at least as arbitrary, and they are certainly as
rigid and and they are probably a whole lot more insulting.
as limiting,
The Conceptual Female tends to be the province of the former folkies:
Dylan, Tim Hardin, John Sebastian. She is idealized, romanticized, and she
is held to function as either a hate object or a love object: Martha Lorraine,
who belongs to Country Joe, or the unnamed lady who's "got everything
she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back" that Dylan missed so much,
or even Mick Jagger's true beloved, Ruby Tuesday, who is probably some-
where in between. The one thing that most Conceptual Females share is that
they away from the men who celebrate them in song; their state is
all got
undoubtedly the more gracious for that, but it does somehow leave said
dudes looking a bit like losers. You have to admire the ladies for it.
The Biological Female, on the other hand, exists in her creators' minds as
nothing other than sexual object, and she is by far the more numerous of the
—
rock she wrote 363
two. From the Beatles ("She's A Woman") to the Stones ("King Bee,"
"Under My Thumb," "Yesterday's Papers," "Play With Fire," "Stray Cat
Blues") to Hendrix ("Foxy Lady") to the Grateful Dead ("Little School
Girl") to the Doors ("Love Me Two Times," "Back Door Man") to James
Brown ("It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World") to Gary Puckett even, for
God's sake. The Conceptual Female may ball, but the Biological Female
gets balled: it's an important and obvious distinction, active in the case of
the former, passive in the case of the latter.

It's the real-life prototype of the Biological Female that all the leather
pants and silk shirts of the onstage rock performer are aimed at; I see this
not as specifically intended malicious oppression (I'm trying to be charita-

ble), but purely stupid ignorance, and either it has to stop or it has to
transmute. There's nothing wrong with sexism, provided it works both
ways. For ex
coda and conclusion
A rather well-known singer (male) once asked me why I write and why I
write about what I Which is a perfectly legitimate question to

write about.
ask any writer, but something there was about his well, his attitude
. . .
that caused me to make him a fairly snotty reply. And just so everybody can
know, and to continue the point I was making somewhere above about
sexism besides, the real reason I write about rock 'n' roll is because I want
to get up onstage at the Fillmore East, wearing a black leather jumpsuit and
a silver-plated Telecaster, grab the mike, sneer at the audience, "You PIGS,"
then get off forty-five minutes of the indisputedly finest rock guitar ever
heard anywhere. And then retire from the rock 'n' roll scene forever.
Now that's all very well, and it hasn't been done before, and it's just
Patricia's private fantasy,no weirder than your own; but the point is that
the way now, neither I nor any other woman will be able to do
things are
that, and not because we can't play guitar ... if a man is free to get up
there and do it, then so should a woman be free to do it, whether it's rock
'n' roll stardom, or producing, or being the president of CBS or the United
States; that's obvious. For all its self-hype to the contrary, rock is just
another dismal male chauvinist trip, with one important difference: it's got
the power and the looseness with which to change itself. It better happen
quick.
Thulani Davis, "The Blues Talk Back/'
The Village Voice, July 9, 1980.
Forcing works of art (such as songs) to represent political

stances can rob them of their complexities, and backfire as just
another form of pigeonholing. In this piece, playwright and
essayist Thulani Davis criticizes efforts to recast blues singers as
women's libbers, "to make sassy back-talk sound like
feminism." Instead, Davis explores the variety of sociological
and economic factors that have shaped female blues singers'
expressions.
M. .ean mothers have been all over New York

singers of "the other side of the blues" by Rosetta Reitz, producer of
lately, touted as
New-
port's "Blues Is a Woman" two new LPs, Mean Mothers, Indepen-
concert,
dent Women's Blues, Vol. 1, and Sorry But I Can't Take You, Women's
Railroad Blues, and a forthcoming book, Blues Women 1920 to 1950. But
there are more than two sides to the blues. The focus of both the concert
and the first LP is, Reitz says, songs that "have been neglected in favor of
the victim variety blues." To this end, one of the performers, Sippie Wallace,
81, was told by Reitz that she could not sing her most famous song, "I'm a
Mighty Tight Woman."
This "new" view of blues singers as "independent" and "outspoken"
seems to be a semantic sandcastle. It also smacks of hucksterism for Reitz
and her products, which will include at least two more record anthologies.
rock she wrote 36S
The concert, its narrative, and the LP liner notes squeeze some marvelous
music and artists into a producer's vision that ignores the complexity of the
artists' work, confuses the singer with the song, and promotes, at best, a
shallow view of what it is to be female, black, and "independent." It is a
good thing to focus interest on this music, but Reitz's concert and albums
suffer from her attempt to make sassy back-talk sound like feminism.
The blues singer is the woman who left home. Left early, at fourteen,
fifteen, even eleven. She was not an outcast so much as a castout, a been-
gone, a far-way, a woman with a will to be outside of society, a fantasy.

High or low, she could be something she could make up on her own. The
woman who left home is many women, some of whom became legends: Ma
Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Bertha "Chippie" Hill, Victoria Spivey, Julia
Lee, Alberta Hunter, Lucille Hegamin, Mamie Smith, Susie Edwards, Mem-
phis Minnie. She might have married young, married, like Rainey, a man
who came through town with a show, or married onstage at fifteen, like
Susie married Butterbeans. The blues singer worked places that moved or
didn't last long, circuses, tent shows, gin mills, juke joints, medicine shows,
theaters. She played minstrel shows like Ma, Bessie, Susie, and Ida did with
the famous Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Sometimes she was a shake dancer,
loved beads, feathers, furs, dice, and gin. Sometimes the woman who left
home hired another girl who ran away, like Josephine Baker, to press her
wardrobe, sew the sequins.
The blues singer loved the music because it fought back, lived hard, and
went on the road. She bent the notes, growled out of her throat, and
changed the words at will to suit something she'd heard in Texas or some-
thing her mama said. Maybe she had to change the railroad line from
Yellow Dog to Sunnyside or the street from Beale in Memphis to Fannin in
Shreveport. She had to make it personal for folks she didn't yet know. She
sang saying "I" and "you."
Because the blues form has so often used that "I" and "you," it always
seems, when it is done well, that the blues queen sings solely forand of
herself. While this has sometimes been the case, it is more often part of the
art. The blues singer is an entertainer and though it seems to escape Reitz's
view, she often sings songs she did not write or even know the origins of.
While the recent concert and these two albums treat lyrics as the singers'
personal views, nearly half of the songs on Independent Women and nearly
all of the songs on Women's Railroad Blues, as well as a number of the
songs featured in "Blues Is a Woman," were written by men. On such a
tenuous footing, it is a gross distortion of the artists' work to isolate mate-
rial from one theme and forget the rest.
366 thulani davis
Blues singers have covered a lot of ground. While the blues are seldom
either directly political or as subject to a political reading as, say, the spiritu-
als, they often deal with unemployment, rent, wages, and "hard luck." In
the thirties songs talked about the WPA, penitentiaries and chain gangs,
levee camps, poll taxes, migration, and natural disasters. Everything from
hair straightening to infidelity, homosexuality, gambling, dancing, and
drinking is in the blues. knew it all. Bessie Brown sang
The blues queens
"Ain't Much Good in the Best of Men Nowadays" (Independent Women),
her partner George Williams sang "A Woman Gets Tired of One Man All
the Time," and they collaborated on "Hit Me but Don't Quit Me." The
blues have never taken well to causes —they're cynical about everything but
good love and survival —and don't look well being into one now.fit
A thematic categorization, of which producers and anthologists seem so

fond, assumes the primacy of the songs' words over their music. It ignores
the survival of certain lyric lines through many generations, male and fe-
male. It ignores the ways these songs were learned and/or chosen for record-
ing. While Reitz asserts that "victim" blues were recorded more than oth-
ers, which I am prepared to believe, she overlooks the familiar record-
business pattern of overworking any product that has sold well. By the way,
is she aware of the broader victimization of black musicians, women in
particular, by the industry?

If a woman left home to become a blues singer, a moaner, shouter, even
an empress, she had to fight the patriarchal contempt for "independence"
and willfulness, an exploitative industry, American racism, and the road.
The things that make these women the true foremothers of many of us
today are things we have not been told, things not always sung on the stage
or on record, things sometimes only tucked in between those awful lines like
"I'll be your slave" that were in Sippie Wallace's song or Billie Holiday's.
Without all the misdirected overview, Mean Mothers, Independent
Women's Blues, Vol. 1 (RR 1300) is a mean record. While most of these
"outspoken" good old sass to me, they are really fun, even
lyrics sound like
when dated by their lingo like Rosa Henderson's 1931 "Can't Be Bothered
with No Sheik." Reitz has done good research, finding a great 1949 Billie
Holiday and a previously unreleased Ida Cox tune that is fierce. Both are
backed by truly all-star bands. Mary Dixon's brassy growl on "You Can't
Sleep in My Bed" puts rough edges on key words. My favorite bit on the LP,
however, is when Bertha Idaho shouts, "I don't care where you take it,
sweet papa/Just move it on out of here/I mean, get yourself some atmo-
sphere." It would be forcing the issue to call it feminism, but it sure is
poetry.
rock she wrote 367
Sorry But I Can't Take You, Women's Railroad Blues (RR 1301) is a
much less interesting record, partly because of its thematic restriction. The
railroad blues songs have very similar narrative structure, lines, and tone.
(The LP also contains several versions of a number of the tunes, which get
tiring.) The bands, singers, and even song lyrics use all kinds of train ono-
matopoeia throughout the album. The backup by some of the period's
greats —Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Charlie
Shavers, and others —turns out to be the LP's strong point.
The generally low-key sound of the whole album exhibits more of the
moaner quality in all the singers. Trixie Smith's two versions of "Freight
Train Blues" and her "Railroad Blues" are interesting, particularly the last,
which has a wonderful exchange between her horn tones and the band's.
And Bessie Jackson, perhaps better known as Lucille Bogan, has a wailing
country blues backed by two guitars, "T N & O Blues," that stands out in
this otherwise merely representative collection.
Blues Is a Woman was a concert of warmly received nostalgia thatmixed
show business with sentiment and never turned into a stomping good time.
It might have been a better show had there been fewer singers. It was a
showcase for the songs Reitz chose, but it rang hollow because performance
was secondary to lyrics.
Carmen McRae presided in the grand manner and had she sung, she
might have done some of these songs more convincingly. Linda Hopkins's
medley of Bessie Smith material was extracted from the Broadway show Me
and Bessie, and was all gloss and theater. Nell Carter provided ass-bumping
vaudeville performances of Rainey, Cox, and Hunter songs. She bent and
rounded the notes from rough to sweet in a shallow approximation of
classic styles. Several pieces by the incredible Lil Hardin Armstrong, who
came out of the concert's narrative looking like the true pioneer of the lot,
were given a hearty yet precious treatment by Sharon Freeman. Adelaide
Hall was unable to take the audience with her on "St. Louis Blues," which
should have brought the house down. Beulah Bryant, accompanied by Jay
McShann, was unexceptional, and Koko Taylor closed the show with mid-
dling material and performance.
But the real blues spirit was provided by the senior shouters. Sippie Wal-
lace, tiny and fragile, stepped out to sway gently against the piano in an
outrageous wig, hat, and fox skins that displayed real traditional style. Her
range is understandably narrowed at eighty-one, but she had a good time
with "You Gotta Know How," "Hard Boiled Mama" ("taming wild men is
all I do"), and "Jelly Roll," accompanied by barrelhouse veteran Little
Brother Montgomery on piano. The concert's finest moment was Big Mama
368 thulani davis
Thornton, who sported a man's three-piece suit (completely offsetting all
the sequins and chiffon) topped with a straw hat and showing a man's gold
watch. She sat at stage center and talked and played a few pieces she wanted
to play (not on the program) and finally wound up to "Hound Dog," her
most well known hit. She was the only performer who tried to battle the
abominable acoustics of Avery Fisher, telling Panama Francis to hit it
harder. The tinny sound of the drums and piano and the loss of bass could
not be overcome, but she wore out the harmonica and wailed and rocked
the house. She set the standard for what it's all about. She was the woman
who left home, left home early, and she reminded me of a song they say was
sung back before 1910 that women blues singers took over as their own:
"Ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do." I wish it had been sung.
Cheryl Cline, "Little Songs of
Misogyny/' BitcK 1987.
pop music, and of heavy metal
In the mid-eighties the lyrics of
in particular, came under both from prudes shocked by
attack,
vulgarity and from feminists offended by misogyny. Cheryl
Cline, a keen, feisty essayist for the rock 'zine Bitch, avoids knee-
jerk reactions by exploring the history and context of sexist
lyrics: After all, it was liberal hero John Lennon, she points out,
who once sang, "Catch you with another man, that's the end,
little girl." Ultimately, Cline comes down hard on both the
sexists and the censors.
w
. . .
ho sang these immortal
I'd rather see you dead,

lines?
little girl,
than to see you with another man . . .
Elvis Presley sang them in "Let's Play House," but they go back a ways;
they have the sound of classic blues lines and probably go all the way back
to the British Isles. The song I'm thinking of is in fact from England
recorded by four mop-topped lads from Liverpool.
"Run for Your Life" by the Beatles has always seemed to me the
quintessentially misogynist rock 'n' roll song. In "Run for Your Life" we
have the basic premise that women exist only to serve men, coupled with a
—
370 cheryl cline
seeming vindication of a crime as old as patriarchy which has traditionally

gone unpunished under the "Unwritten Law" that says a man may murder
"his" woman if he finds her with another man. All this wrapped up in a
perky beat and bubbly vocals —clap your hands, everybody, let's sing along.
Now, Blackie Lawless may be a misogynist asshole. The lyrics of early
Motley Criie songs are ugly and vicious. But
. . . I'd rather see you dead, little girl,
than to see you with another man . . .
What could be plainer than that?
>**,
But wait, you're thinking, that Beatles song was recorded in 1966. We
should have progressed beyond misogynist rock lyrics by now. Sure we
should have. But the fact is, we haven't. Social change doesn't occur evenly,
nor does ithappen overnight. In the historical scheme of things, the period
1966 to 1987 is "overnight." If you're looking to rock music for signs of
womankind, you're looking in the wrong place. All you're
great leaps for
is a few small steps. Rock music has never been in the
likely to find here
vanguard of feminism, and it isn't now. John Lennon is said to have

repudiated "Run for Your Life" and all it meant, but that, too, is only one
small step (Bitch editor's note: cf. Lennon's song, "Woman Is the Nigger of
the World"). Because "Run for Your Life" is still played —more than that,
the message of the song is still current.
The misogynist streak in rock music is still wider than a Los Angeles
freeway. To single out heavy metal as the most sexist, most misogynist rock
music is scapegoating, pure and simple. Most heavy metal songs are neither
violent nor misogynist. Now, this assertion would have both the Parents'
Music Resource Center (PMRC) and Creem magazine up in arms, but it's
true. The worst you can say about most heavy metal is that it's macho good-
ole-boy-stuff. And that's the worst you can say about most rock 'n' roll. If
Megadeth sings a variant on the "Run for Your Life" theme, Judas Priest
covers Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust." If Ozzie Osbourne, Motorhead,
and Nuclear Assault are playing antiwar songs, David Lee Roth, Ratt,
Dokken, Bon Jovi, and Cinderella are doing a lot of the usual run-of-the-
mill stupid-ass macho stuff. Everybody does love songs and sex songs and
brag songs and rebel anthems. That's rock 'n' roll.

Songs that aren't misogynist, performers who do nonsexist or even
feminist songs, should get credit for it, no matter what kind of music they
rock she wrote 371
do. Songs that are misogynist should get some flak. A lot of flak! A while
back, the band WASP was very much in the news because the Parents'
Music Resource Center had pegged them as a target. This distressed some
anticensorship rock fans because the PMRC gave WASP free publicity. I say
that's good! If someone's out there slagging women, I want know about
to
it! Let's have at 'em. Right? We can at least discuss the matter. You know
and I know that politically correct is far from well defined. You might be
ready to go at Blackie Lawless with a hacksaw, while I'd just laugh (fuck
like a beast indeed . . .). Nothing —not the question of "pornography,"
not ideas about the nature of male and female desire — is solved (if such
things can ever be solved) by sweeping everything that's the least bit
controversial under the rug.

Heavy metal, like rock 'n' roll, is neither so straightforwardly evil nor
straightforwardly stupid as its critics think. As a matter of fact, the whole
Heavy Metal Question just begs for a feminist treatment. Why is it taken for
granted that loud, hard rock is inherently male? How is it that male heavy
metal performers can appropriate feminine costume and be macho?
still
When critics sneer at glamrockers for "looking like fags," what does this
say about their attitudes toward women? Gays? Why were David Lee Roth
and Eddie Van Halen 16 Magazine pinups if heavy metal is for boys? What
does heavy metal have to do with female desire?
There's been a lot of talk in feminist circles about the appeal of the macho
man. want to make this a musical question. From what I've read, rock
I
criticsand rock fans who've bothered to think about it at all are flubbing it
badly. Rock sociologist Simon Frith hands down the rather dire sentence
that women are "structurally excluded" from the machismo of "cock-
rock," leaving us with the anachronistic idea of "separate spheres." Pop
Culture professor Robert Pattison locates rock's appeal in Romantic
Pantheism and suggests with a straight face that since rock's romanticism is
based on cock-worship, "women's place" in rock is ultimately that of

devotee. And they call heavy metal sexist? Columnist Bob Greene looks at
evidence that go for Motley Criie and concludes the whole thing
girls really
is just too sad —

and a little too weird to think about. Shades of "Kids —
These Days." Shades of Freud and the (to him) unanswerable question,
"What do women want? My God, what do they want?"
—
372 cheryl cline
what they want
When I read Lester Bangs's comment in his group biography of Blondie,

"I think if most guys in America could somehow get their faverave poster
girl in bed and have total license to do whatever they wanted with this
legendary body for one afternoon, at least seventy-five percent of the guys in
the country would elect to beat her up," I was appalled. I remembered how
I'd given a male friend of mine a poster of Deborah Harry, and how he'd
gone and taken a Magic Marker to it, drawing in a big black Tareyton
shiner —did this reveal his secret desires?
Oh well, I thought, Bangs probably exaggerated (surely no more than

half . . .) and my friend wouldn't really beat up Deborah Harry. He was
just being funny. Funny? What's so funny about giving a woman a black
eye? And even if only a fraction of the male rock audience could actually
bring themselves to give Deborah Harry a black eye, given the chance, I'll
bet lots ofthem think about doing it. I was steamed. Men are such pricks. I
wondered if they really were the animals they were said to be. I was all set to
feel righteous and indignant. Men, I thought, disgusted. Women wouldn't
But here I was brought up short, because at just that moment my eye
chanced to fall upon a poster of Vince Neil I'd pinned to my wall. As I
stared at it, I felt a peculiar sensation: My fingers itched for a Magic

Marker.
That a powerful woman brings out a desire in men to conquer her — if not
to actually beat her into submission, then to bring her under his sway in
—
some other way is hardly a novel idea. Bangs knew his audience well
enough to know they wouldn't find the idea of beating up Deborah Harry
shocking. Ten or twelve years before, Janis Joplin brought out similar reac-
tions in male writers. No one then had the bad taste to say he'd like to beat
—
her up s/m not being nearly so fashionable then. The public, published
fantasies about Joplin tended to focus on being the guy who comforted a
"sad," "hurt" Janis after she'd been brutalized by some other cad or by —
the hard life of a rebel girl. She was often "conquered" in more subtle ways.
One writer related a fantasy in which Joplin was reduced to a cookie-baking
slip of a girl who'd hold hands with you in the dark, possibly a more
repugnant fantasy than one of beating her. Given the latter fantasy, you can
at least imagine her fighting back. Come to think of it, maybe that's why
nobody confessed to a desire to club her in the minds of most fans, the—
logical outcome of such a scenario is Janis Joplin bashing the would-be
caveman with a whiskey bottle. A much safer way to ensure her submission
is to transform her into a Girl Scout.
rock she wrote 373
A powerful man, on the other hand, is supposed to inspire a desire in
women to submit, to be conquered. Ever since Elvis, submission has been

set down as a proper feminine response to rock machismo. But I would bet
that if women rock fans were given the chance to spend the afternoon doing
least some
whatever they wanted with the legendary body of their choice, at
of them would consider carrying out some kind of physical mayhem on
him.
Here's one who would:
"First I would tie you up, spread-eagled and naked, with leather straps.
Then I'd shave all the hair off your chest, and if I should nick you I'll suck
up all the blood as it slowly trickles over your body. Next I'll cover your
body with motion lotion to get things really heated up. When it gets too hot,
I'll cover your body in crushed ice and lay on top of you to melt it down and
cool you off.
"Then do things to your body with my tongue that you never thought
I'll
humanly Then when you are screaming for mercy and begging for
possible.
more, telling me how you want it all, I'll slam the spiked heel of my right
leather boot into your navel, call you a very naughty boy, and laugh as I
slowly walk away, telling you I'm just not that kind of girl."
These boots are made for walking, eh?
This letter is a contest entry sent in to a Texas radio station in response to
the question, "What would you do
to meet Motley Crue?" (She's describing
what she'd do to one of the hairier members of the band, not to the DJ), as
reported by Bob Greene in Esquire. Greene is bewildered by the letter, and
the girl's mother is somewhat shocked as well although she delivered the —
letter to the station after reading it. (Moms these days .) The girl herself . .
says she "doesn't know where the ideas came from."

You have only to glance at Motley Crue to know where the ideas came
from, and if the girl's confusion may be explained by her youth, the adults'
bewilderment seems a little says, "We seem to have come a
forced. Greene
long way since Herman's Hermits and T Wanna Hold Your Hand.' " Her-
man's Hermits? Give me a break. Has he never heard of the Rolling Stones?
If Greene were to take a sampling of fan letters written to rock stars over the
last thirty years, he might even find this one tame.
Obviously, the fans who sent in letters to this contest tried their best to
come up with the most outrageous things they could think of, so they could
win the contest was one of the winners). And of course the letter
(this letter
writers used their faverave band as a model, and Motley Crue doesn't
exactly stand for white-bread sex. Some of the letters were more traditional.
One of the winners said rock stars were like gods and women should crawl
374 cheryl cline
at their feet; another said she'd give them "anything they wanted." One boy
said he'd give them his mother, and his mother was agreeable. (What is
wrong with moms these days?)

But here's this girl who'd grind a spiked heel into the guy's navel. At least
she shows some spunk.

The question isn't whether girls should be encouraged to become
groupies. (Greene's sorrowful head-shaking doesn't seem to include the
adults who'd run such a contest. . . .) The question is: does a macho stance
always elicit a submissive reaction? Apparently not. In Sleeping with
Soldiers, Rosemary Daniels describes her powerful but ambivalent attrac-
tion to would-be Rambos, but she fails to resolve the central problem,
namely that she's a female would-be Rambo. The tough, cool sexual outlaw
is one of rock's most romantic images. It's supposed to be for the boys to
imitate, but there's no reason to suppose girls don't want to be "bad boys"
too. For every ten women who dream about being the bottom to Motley
Criie's Vince Neil's top, there must be one or two who fantasize striding up
to him in their spiked heels, belting him one across the mouth and demand-
ing, "On your KNEES, dude!"
hear no evil
The attack on heavy metal by the PMRC is crucial to its attack on rock
music in general for one important reason: liberals don't like to defend it.
They look at a Blackie Lawless (W.A.S.P.) or a Rob Halford (Judas Priest)

and they think maybe the PMRC is right, that kids maybe shouldn't be
listening to this stuff. They say, "I'm not in favor of censorship, but ..."
Once the pro-censorship forces can get people to say "I'm not in favor of
censorship, but ..." they've gone a long way in a divide-and-conquer
strategy. Get people waffling and seesawing between their belief in freedom
of speech and their gut distaste, and they might be shamed into going
against their best interests.
It isn't easy holding up the banner of free speech, for sure. To protect our
rights, we have to protect the rights of the likes of Bob Guccione and
Blackie Lawless. But while we fight for their right to exist, we don't have to
agree with their views. To support the right of something controversial to be
published and freely distributed is to fight for open discussion. It's not an
automatic vote of approval.
The attack on heavy metal can't be separated from the attack on other
rock music. To try to draw lines between heavy metal and respectable rock
rock she wrote 373
music "worth" righting for is as futile and as dangerous as trying to draw

lines between pornography and no practical difference be-
erotica. There's
tween AC/DC and the The PMRC isn't going to make subtle
Rolling Stones.
distinctions between "Nightstalker" and "Midnight Rambler," or between
Judas Priest's "Eat Me Alive" and "Let's Spend the Night Together." Their
values are not ours. We may dislike "Eat Me Alive" because of the way it
depicts sex; the PMRC and their followers dislike "Let's Spend the Night
Together" because it depicts sex.
As one anti-censorship writer put weed someone else's
it, it's easy to
PMRC is bent on weeding ours right
secret garden, and you can be sure the
down to bedrock. Think about this: one Christian anti-rock book advises
parents to remove the albums of Judas Priest, Van Halen, the Rolling
Stones, Cat Stevens, Fleetwood Mac, and ABBA from their kids' record
collections.
The PMRC claims it only wants to protect children from the damage the
sex and violence of rock music can inflict upon young minds. Their real aim
is to regulate the tastes of adults, to force their standards on others, and to
suppress, by law, what they don't like.
Terri Sutton, "Women, Sex,
& Rodk 'n' Roll/'
Puncture, summer 1989.
From the feminist movement of the 1970s, a new genre emerged:

women's music. The form, based primarily on singer/songwriter
folk styles, with soft pop and ethnic musical elements mixed in,
is epitomized by performers like Holly Near and Alix Dobkin.
For many women, however, especially those who came of age

after punk, the music speaks little to their aesthetic or sexual
experiences. In this groundbreaking article for Puncture
magazine, Terri Sutton critiques the limited, passive notion of
femaleness presented by women's music, and suggests some
alternatives.
JL 'm sitting here listening to "Foxy Lady," which I consider one of the
most erotic songs ever recorded. And I'm thinking about an article in Rock
& Roll Confidential in which Maggie Haselwerdt defines female sexuality
as "slow building," "diffuse," "buzzing," "melting," and so on, and la-
ments that rock V roll has mostly been a forum for male sexuality, with its
"male driving boat, piercing guitar lines, pounding keyboards, and expan-
sive, stage-dominating gestures."
And I'm digging Jimi's punctuating guitar jabs, the rolling drum fills, and
the fluid peaks and valleys of the deep bass guitar, and I find that I'm really
uncomfortable with Maggie's theory.

rock she wrote 377
Now you know I'd never argue that most rock 'n' roll does include and
appreciate women. But to say that women shouldn't keep the term driving
in our female rock 'n' roll vocabulary — well, that's too much to swallow.
And up the idea that for women, erotic music will necessarily
to set reflect
Haselwerdt's model of diffuse, melting, buzzing stuff that's bunk, — sister,
or at least only half the picture.

Maggie presents the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" as the best example of what
can happen when men (in this case, Phil Spector) take into consideration
"female patterns of sexual response" and build a song to fit these patterns.
She claims that Spector and the Ronettes "weave a gauzy curtain around the
sexual impulse, diffusing and romanticizing it, blurring the focus with walls
of vibrating sound," and so on.
Now, have you ever felt like that? It Hallmark greeting-card
sounds like a
view of sexuality. "Be My Baby" always struck me as cloyingly sweet. If

we're gonna talk sexy old records by producer-manipulated female puppets,
I much prefer the moment when one of the Shangri-Las asks, "Well, how
does he dance?" and another answers, "Close . . . very, very close." And
they strut right up to the dude and give him a great big kiss. But let's not
fuss about sixties tunes. My point is to argue over what is considered
acceptable female sexuality, and —as a corollary— what is considered ac-
ceptable women's music.
To get started, let's make some massive generalizations and quickly trace
the course of female sexuality as seen through the folklore of the last forty
years. I was born in the early sixties, and in the fifties —to judge by what I
can glean from books and movies —female sexuality as a separate entity
from the male variety did not exist. Romance, yes, longing, yes, but when
the big bang happened you lay there with your knees spread and took it like
a lady. Passivity. I'm not sure if you were even supposed to react.
The mid- to late sixties mythology reads that free-thinking women were
out there looking to get laid, actually going after partners, displaying desire
as distinct from desire for romance. The problem was, they were supposed
to. And then, if everyone else was fucking and coming, what was wrong
with them* Were they frigid?
Then feminism kicked in around the early seventies and women discov-
ered clitoral orgasms. By the mid-seventies, some feminists were looking to
lesbian relationships to define true female sexuality. (You know —when two
women have sex together, their sexuality isn't repressed, got it?) I'm sure
lesbians then "made love" in as many different ways and with as many
378 terri sutton
different emotions as they do today; still, what surfaced as "correct" sex

was categorized as gentle, loving, slow, careful, cyclical, and ultimately
based on the clitoris. (Sex was supposed to be focused less on the genitals,
but you were meant to come.)
Enter the eighties. Buzzing, melting, and diffuse. "Experts" say women
don't enjoy intercourse. (You don't come, so why would you enjoy it?)
Antiporn feminists say sex is something forced by men on women, who
stupidly lie there and take it. Male sexuality is striving, immediate, pound-
ing; female sexuality is damn near passivity. Cyclical is right. The
. . .
Ronettes to Janis Joplin to Stevie Nicks to the Bangles. From "Be My Baby"
to "In Your Room"; sexual activities are mentioned more often now, but
—
not female sexuality we'll do what you want, in your room. You got a fast
car, I guess I'll take a ride. What I am is what I am — just don't let me get too
"deep." The Big Easy gets tagged as one of the sexiest movies ever —and it's
just one long chase by an active male after a protesting, shy, reactive
woman.
So what is it? Biology? Is passivity bred in our bones? It's been said. But
there's too much evidence against that tired old theory. You've got your
friends; let me talk about mine. I move in a pretty small, mostly hetero
community based around both music and high school/college connections.
Couples come together; fall apart; trade partners; live together for ten years;
or they have sex with each other once and never again. It's an intricate
dance, done with a lot of humor and some tears. The women I know are not
reclining receptacles for revolving male energy, but active partners, with a
vocabulary more Shangri-Las than Ronettes. Talk at group gatherings may
throw off overlapping commentaries on saucy buns, perky tits, a big basket,
nicely rounded arms, the way a pair of boxers peeks out of faded blue jeans,
or how appealingly a silky black strap slides down a shoulder.

Moreover, most us chase down our pleasure pretty actively, whether it's
within a long-standing relationship or from the pool of the unattached.

Some are more assertive than others, but we're all working on it. After all,
we were never encouraged to be aggressive. Harlequin romances and pop
radio said let the boy come to you. This is the kind of culture that made sure
Ididn't even know how to masturbate until I was twenty. Today we learn
from each other.
Within our group, there's a whole range of needs and drives. There's
women who wake up their partners at 4:00 a.m. for sex. There are some
who wish their lovers needed it less. Some prefer fucking to clitoral-based
—
rock she wrote 379
sex, some don't. There are women who lust a lot and never do anything
about it.
Recently I've been reading erotica written by women from straight, bi,
and lesbian perspectives. If one generalization applies to them all, it's that
women's sexuality is a varied, changeable force. Sure, a good sexual experi-
ence can be slow-building and melting and diffuse; but there's times when
driving and thrusting is where you wanna be. Sometimes a chance touch of
hands is all it takes to be mindlessly lusting. Sometimes you're so focused on
that one nub of skin and blood that the whole world falls away. That
variety is female sexuality. And that erotic variety is and should be present
in the music we make and the music we enjoy.
When I first read Maggie Haselwerdt's description of "Be My Baby," my
initial thought was of some friends of mine, three women who play in a
band called Babes in Toyland. The Babes are not the Ronettes. They're loud,
they scream, they shake their hair around, they sweat. They combine won-
derful snaky bass, tumbling heartbeat drums, and shards of ragged, roaring
guitar, and come up with this witchy, sonic jungle beat. It's a hard and
pounding beat; sensual as hell and very much their own.
Now consider Kim Gordon's songs with Sonic Youth. "Pacific Coast
Highway," "Shadow of a Doubt," "I Dreamed a Dream" these are whis- —
pered and snarled messages from an ominous, tense, very sexual landscape.
You can hear confrontations and compromises of desire, feel fatal disap-
pointment and cagey pleasure. Kim's songs aren't pleasant or melting, but
they are female and erotic.
When I saw Sylvia Juncosa play in Minneapolis, I was delighted by her
physical presence. She's a big woman, and as a guitarist she uses her space:
prancing, strutting, swaying, and spinning. No singer-songwriter tightness,
no "feminine" drawing in, no minimalizing. Her playing is as expansive as
her stage presence, swooping from quiet melodies filled with space to com-
bustive traffic jams of noise. She says she considers her music to be erotic
certainly, if there's anyone who catches the swing and flow of female sexu-
ality, its sweetness and also its hard, gut-level desire, that person is Juncosa.
My purpose here is not to raise up Babes in Toyland or Gordon or
Juncosa as proponents of real female sexuality, as opposed to Toni Childs
or Natalie Merchant or the Raincoats or that woman from the Cowboy
Junkies. God knows the world needs more of the qualities that have been
labeled feminine —an awareness of cycles, of nonlinear thought; the appre-
ciation of slow growth and subtle emotions; the knowledge that time
—
380 terri sutton
doesn't trudge wearily on but stutters and sidesteps and dances. But to
theorize these qualities as naturally and inherently feminine shortchanges
both women and men.
To question women's place in rock 'n' roll as both fans and players, we
need to ask more than why so many young girls adore U2. We need to ask,
too, why they love Metallica (hey, I was there —every girl around me knew
all the words). And we need to know why they love Metallica despite (and
it's not because of it; I reject that) the fact that Metallica call them sluts.
There's a strong love there, and it's too big not to be tangled up in identify-
ing with that crushing roller coaster of sound.remember seeing the Clash I
when I was eighteen and coming out of the show buoyant and huge, want-
ing to jump and lunge and keen at the moon and fuck until the sun came up.
Feeling rich and strong and full of myself. A joy of loud driving chaotic
music is part of me, part of my sexuality, and no one can theorize that
away.
Haselwerdt claims women's sexuality is not "catered to" in male rock 'n'
roll —which "Too bad," she says; "girls don't like being ignored."
is true.
—
But feeling ignored— being left out doesn't necessarily follow from not
being catered to. As I trace my favorite male bands, from Stones to Petty to
Clash to R.E.M. to Replacements to Soul Asylum to, uh, Stones again, I see
—
that I've always included myself the connection I made was why I enjoyed
a band. I get the jokes, musical and otherwise, and know why that guitar
solo was the only one that worked; I put my head next to the speakers so I
can be enveloped by all the flying sparks of noisy passion; I dance and yell as
a fierce answer — yes! this force is in me as well. I feel the same way.
And that's where the ignoring starts, that's where rock 'n' roll is male and
doesn't "cater" to my needs. Because most male musicians have trouble
seeing that women can understand and appreciate their music on an artistic
and emotional level —on an erotic level, even without wanting to fuck the
dumb guitarist. Bands that talk about how much they respect their audience
are generally talking about their male audience. Not to pick on Metallica,
but . . . band that yaps a lot about "the kids," and then leads
here's a
chants at their shows that go "Cunt! Slut! Fuck your mother!" I mean, I can
enjoy Aerosmith and find their music funky and slippery and sexy, certainly
— and also find their attitude toward women appalling. Because the phrase
female fan does not exist in their vocabulary. (For Aerosmith read any
number of male bands.)
The more this situation bugs me, the happier I am for women like Babes
in Toyland, L7, Girlschool, and Juncosa, for driving, pounding music that
looks me in the eye and says hi. For me, the issue is not that male musicians
rock she wrote 381
acknowledge some fuzzy view of female sexuality and incorporate (ex-

ploit?) it in their music. Guys have the ability to melt and defocus too; I've
asked a few. True, it would improve their music to dig into themselves a bit
more. But, more importantly, I'd like to see male musicians realize that
women "get it," that we can relate to the swing and churn of rock 'n' roll,
that it's part of us too.

We're all in it together for another reason as well —one that seems to have
escaped the notice of Haselwerdt, who speaks of rock 'n' roll as "the beat of
sexual intercourse." Doesn't everyone know that a significant percentage of
the sexual activity enjoyed in connection with rock 'n' roll is masturbation?
And the boys' basic wanking technique is (wait for it) rubbing. Like girls.
In music, then, male and female sexuality alike can range from idioms of
drive and thrust to Haselwerdt's "melting," "blurring" patterns. Women
deserve not to be ghettoized at one extreme. And the way women will
overcome being ghettoized or ignored is to pick up the instruments and
share what's in our hearts (and in our groins), using at last an untrammeled
musical vocabulary that knows no gender limitations.
Lisa Jones, "The Signifying A/lonkees:
2 Live Crew's Nasty- Boy Rap on Trial
in South Florida/'
from Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex and
Hair, 1994.
The prosecution of Florida rappers 2 Live Crew was the most

vigorous legal battle ever fought over censorship of popular
music. Village Voice writer Lisa Jones covered the trial, where
renowned scholars defended dirty rhymes that had been
painstakingly transcribed by eager district attorneys. The
article, originally published by the Voice in 1990, was revised for
her book Bulletproof Diva.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida — JL hough the state of Florida's case against hip-
hop lewd boys 2 Live Crew has been front-page news here since June, the
dailies can't print the charge itself —too many dirty words. When the
Crew's leading mensch, Luther Campbell, hears Judge June Johnson read it
aloud for the first time to the original jury pool of twenty-five —twenty-two
whites (who turn pink) and three blacks (who turn gray) —he bolts from his
seat in the small county courtroom and storms out. Campbell probably
pictured himself doing a year of solitary confinement, and here's why:
. . . as live persons before an audience, [they] did knowingly conduct,

perform, or participate in, by words and/or conduct, a show or
performance which was obscene . . . [which] included . . . an
rock she wrote 383
apparent version of [2 Live Crew's song] "Me So Horny," consisting]
of verbal depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct deviate . . .
sexual intercourse, as defined in Florida Statue 847.0011, and actual

physical contact with a person's unclothed buttocks, examples of
which are: "Let me stick my dick in your behind," [and] "I'll be
fucking you and you'll be sucking me, lick my ass up and down, lick it
till your tongue turns doo-doo brown" . . . and in the course of said
performance . . . did simulate an act of deviate sexual intercourse as
defined in F.S. 847.0011 . . . examples of which are: placing the face
of a woman into or in very close proximity to the groin of one of the

performers, and through the
Luther Campbell, acts of another
performer, Mark Ross, uncovering and exposing the breast of another
female.
In the court hallway, in front of a dozen television cameras, another

dozen scribbling reporters, Campbell yells at his attorney, Bruce Rogow,
"What the fuck is this shit? You told me the shit was gonna be played on
tape!" Rogow explains that what he's just heard is called an "information,"
and though issued by the state, it's not evidence, just an accusation. The
judge, who has long blond hair, blushed herself as she struggled to get
through the awkwardly worded statement. The overall effect: Heidi reading
porno confessions to a classroom of retired grade-school principals.
condoms and microcassettes
In the Safeway supermarket parking lot on Las Olas Boulevard one car's
bumper sticker reads beam me up, lord, another's censorship sucks. Both have
Broward plates. That's Broward County. Home to the county seat, Fort
Lauderdale, known as "Fort Liquordale," until media darling Sheriff Nick
Navarro and the FLPD kicked out spring break a couple years back. Their
goal: to attract a calmer breed of tourist and eventually remake Spuds-
MacKenzie-by-the-Sea into the "retirement capital of the retirement capi-
tal" to compete with Miami next door in Dade County.
Broward has been better known lately as home to Hollywood, Florida.
As part of an ongoing crusade for "family values," Hollywood mayor Sal
Oliveri recently proclaimed "Pornography Awareness Week," correspond-
ing with the final week of the 2 Live Crew trial. (Oliveri's crusade has
included painting over a beach-side mural of the Coppertone Girl's nude

buttocks.) 2 Live Crew made history here last June when they were arrested
384 lisa iones
for performing songs from As Nasty as They Wanna Be, the group's third
album, ruled obscene by a Florida federal judge earlier that month. Club
Futura, where the bust took place, now sells T-shirts with the legend brow-
ard county: censorship capital of the world. Birth of a tourist attraction?
But that bumper sticker isn't for sale at the Safeway in downtown Fort
Lauderdale, a couple blocks away from the Broward County courthouse,
where 2 Live Crew is standing trial. On the display rack closest to the cash
register, instead of copies of Family Circle, you can choose from five types
ofcondoms and microcassettes sold by the three-pack. Remember that:
condoms and microcassettes.
two live jews
"Two live Jews, kosher as they wanna to be." It's day one of the trial, and
the first comes from a legal eagle in the spectator pews, one of
one-liner
many young attorneys and prosecutors who flock to the courtroom for a
piece of the action. "I'm a Jew," he says, "so I can make fun of them all I
want." The eagle is describing defense lawyers Bruce Rogow (representing
Campbell) and Allen Jacobi (in for Mark Ross, a/k/a Brother Marquis),
who have just arrived in court.
The two do cut an odd pair: Jacobi, a rock 'n' roll lawyer whose clients
have included Eric Clapton, Peter Max, and the Church of Scientology, was
raised kosher in Miami Beach, though with his deep tan and longish black
hair, you might mistake him for Greek. Rogow, professor at Nova Law
School in Fort Lauderdale and former president of Florida's ACLU, repre-
sented Mississippi civil rights workers in the sixties and has taken a half-
dozen cases to the Supreme Court. If it weren't for the distinctive schnoz,
Rogow's Ivy League suits and narrow bow ties could label him a WASP
from Connecticut, where he grew up.
The prosecution, surprisingly enough, is also awash in the melting pot.
Leslie Robson, born in Hong Kong and educated in England, finished her
law degree at Nova and is now assistant state attorney in charge of Broward
County's vice division. With her slight British accent and Eurasian features,
Robson doesn't fit the stereotype of the Southern cracker fundamentalist
after an improper acting colored boy like Luther Campbell. Neither does
her coprosecutor, assistant state attorney Pedro Dijols, a supervisor in the
misdemeanor division. Dijols, a black Puerto Rican from New York who
went to law school in Florida, describes himself as a "fan of rap music." He
tells female reporters about the tattoo on his left bicep: Underneath a
rock she wrote 38S
Cheshire cat in a fedora is the inscription, in Latin, "Let the thing speak for
itself." The motto turns out to be the prosecution's losing strategy in the
case.
Then there's her honor June Johnson, who the press pool refers to affec-
tionately as "Judge June," a Louisiana native with a dry wit, whose sideline
remarks in court evidence a concern for matters affecting women and chil-
dren. The judge, who usually tries DUI cases, even brings her mother to
court one day.
"If you think of Miami as Los Angeles," Jacobi explains, "then Broward
is the Orange County of Florida." And though everyone from Florida, says
a reporter, "is from somewhere else originally," it's amusing that it is this
group of "outsiders" who will struggle over this case that represents, in the
minds of some, the Wonderbread majority versus the "others."

It's these outsiders who will instruct, in the case of the judge, and inter-
pret, in the case of the lawyers, Florida's obscenity law, modeled after the
Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California: "The average person applying

contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a
whole, appeals to prurient interests, . . . describes, in a patently offensive
way, sexual conduct, . . . [and] lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or
scientific value."
These outsiders —and the fifty Broward County citizens who they sift
through to pick a jury of six — will raise complicated questions: What con-
stitutes a community, and is it acceptable that the standards of some people
in the community are different from others? And just what, if anything, is
obscene? As well as, what is art and who decides?
the signifying monkees
And what about the defendants? Multimillionaire Campbell, 29, presi-

dent of Luke Records, from (as the media lathers it up) the "hardcore
Miami ghetto of Liberty City," who can choose whether or not to wear a
custom-made Italian suit to court. Ross, 23, 2 Live's primary lyricist, origi-
nally from Rochester, New York, dresses in baggy clothes and beads and is
fond of "cultural rap like De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest." (Says Ross,
people probably think the group is a bunch of "backwards niggers and
geechees who don't know how to do anything but cuss, but that's not the
case.") And Wongwon, 26, a Trinidadian of African and Chinese ancestry,
who grew up in Brooklyn and founded the group five years ago on an air
force base in California with David Hobbs (Mr. Mixx, the Crew's DJ).
386 lisa jones
Mixx was not charged because detectives didn't consider his contributions
to be an integral part of the performance. Another strike against the state.
In a case that is all about 2 Live Crew's words (or, as the defense points
out, their "lyrics"— making us pause to consider if there is a difference), it's
strangely symbolic that we never hear the three speak in the context of the
proceedings (the law says they don't have to, who must prove it's the state
its case to the jurors "beyond a reasonable doubt"). The jurors watch them
like one-eyed hawks. Their body language: Ross often slumps in his seat
and chews on a toothpick. When the state plays an audiotape of the group's
infamous concert, Wongwon, who has a disabled left arm, taps out the beat
on the table with his right hand. Their clothes: Campbell doesn't wear a suit
during jury selection because he doesn't want the "white, blue-collar work-
ers who may get on the jury to think I'm uppity." Their every gesture: Ross
blows his nose often; Campbell hands his cellular phone to his bodyguard,
who sits, every day, right behind him. It must be a strain for these guys who
sell shock value to sit still for so long and be so silent. But they do — like See
No Evil, —
Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil they sit through the eleven-day trial
while words are slung back and forth all around them.
At one point a detective who testifies for the prosecution translates "Mar-
quis's babies" —a
from a song performed the night of the bust into
line —
"monkey's baby." Ross (whose rapper's ID, Brother Marquis, comes from
the Marquis de Sade) sits through the botch in the courtroom but complains
bitterly during a break. After Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (whose works include
The Signifying Monkey, a collection of postmodern criticism of black litera-
ture) testifies that the music of 2 Live Crew has artistic value, I tease Ross
that the group should change name to "The Signifying Monkees." The
its
joke doesn't go over well; no room for sarcasm in a court of law.

After all, there is a trial going on. And even though Dennis Barrie and
Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center were acquitted the week before in an
obscenity trial involving the exhibition of photographs by Robert Map-
—
plethorpe, this is Broward County a lot farther away from New York than
Ohio is. This isn't a collection of silver-print photographs exhibited in
museums; this is rap music performed in a nightclub. In fact, Campbell
never once refers to his music as art, though he often calls it "entertain-
ment" and is quick to tell you it has "artistic value." ("Rap music is not on
trial" is a constant refrain — initiated by the prosecution and carried by the
defense. Repeated so often, as an argument for and against the artistic
content of 2 Live Crew's music, it becomes a hollow slogan.)

This isn't work with a large critical following; this is music that received
scant critical attention until it ended up as a free-speech mantra. And these
rock she wrote 387
aren't "righteous rappers" like Boogie Down Productions^ KRS-One

(quoted in The New York Times as spokesman of a new black youth cul-
ture), but the Miami-based nasty boys of rap, whose rude snipes on record
about other rappers have lost them friends in the hip-hop community. (Kid
N' Play and Salt-N-Pepa are called "faggots" and "dykes" on Banned in the
USA.) The creator of this work is not a dead white man but three living
black men; "young and virile," as they're often referred to in the press,
perhaps perceived by those who wish to see them prosecuted, as capable of
violence, rape, or miscegenation.
The pipes squeak so loudly in courtroom 354, where the trial takes place,
they often interrupt the proceedings. In this small, aging county courthouse,
which is connected to a brand-new, very large county jail, prisoners are
handcuffed together in twos and led back and forth by deputies. Most of
these deputies are white, and most of the men in handcuffs are young and
black. On their way to lunch during the trial's first week, the Campbell
entourage runs into a group of prisoners and their keeper on the staircase.
The men call out "Luke, Luke, Luke Skywalker" (a name George Lucas
sued Campbell to drop), hailing the rapper as a hero. He
looks a bit embar-
rassed, but gives them a "Hey, what's up," and continues down the stairs.
Symbolism aside, this is a trial. A real trial, say Brother Marquis's eyes. If
convicted the three could be charged with a misdemeanor, fined one thou-
sand dollars, and slapped with a year in jail. When the state asks a detective
on the witness stand to confirm that Campbell, Ross, and Wongwon did
indeed perform songs ruled obscene, and that they did so that night in
Hollywood as "live persons," Judge June adds, "that's their problem.
They're too live."
motion sickness
The first day of the trial is all motions —each side attempting to get
evidence admitted and procedural questions answered in a manner that will
advance their case. Rogow, the trendsetting constitutionalist, argues that
selecting a jury pool from voter registrations lists, the method in Florida and
most states, is unconstitutional in obscenity cases. Obscenity is the only
charge, he holds, that requires jurors to bring their knowledge of "commu-
nity standards" to bear on the decision.
In a county where thirteen percent of the population is black and only five
percent is registered to vote, black people are automatically under-
represented in the jury pools, as are young people. This, Rogow contends,
—
388 lisa jones
gives the court a narrower frame of reference with which to judge commu-
nity opinion.
Rogow's motion is a sweeping gesture that feels at first too grand a
consideration for a county court. The judge rules against it, but it turns out
to be an effective framing device for the trial: establishing the importance of
a diverse jury "community standards" as more than just
and of looking at
the dominion of middle-class whites from Broward suburbs like Plantation.

Rogow's challenge even makes it to page 16A of The New York Times with
the amusing pullquote, "Middle-aged whites aren't representative, the court
is told." Campbell schools reporters during a break that the only way he
can foresee a fair trial is if "the judge lets us have black people on the jury."
And "young people," Jacobi pipes in. "And young people," Campbell re-
peats.
Later in the day Campbell signs autographs for three white teenagers
hillbillies in high-waters who sport fresh hickeys on their necks. The teens
shout in court, "2 Live Crew, doing the right thing!" Campbell tells them to
watch out, "y'all might wind up here with us."
suicide mission
Assistant State Attorney Dijols, whose usual beat is DUI cases, eventually
admits toward the end of the trial that when he first heard the state's only
piece of evidence —a barely audible microcassette recording of the perfor-
mance in Hollywood that night— he knew the case was a "suicide mission."
This is an odd admission from a prosecutor who made it very clear that he
had volunteered for the case, and was not, as Campbell had charged early
on, a "token" brought in by the state attorney to lend "ethnic credibility" to
the prosecution.
The makes every possible move to postpone the case and bolster its
state
scanty evidence.They ask that a "transcript" of the performance prepared

by the Broward County sheriff's office be admitted as evidence, to "assist"
the jurors in judging whether the performance is obscene. This amuses
Rogow at first, who says "no one gets a transcript of the performance when
they go to see My Fair Lady."
The prosecution does manage to get four songs from As Nasty as They
Wanna Be admitted as evidence, despite high-pitched objections from the
defense ("This record is not on trial!"). Judge Johnson is given the opportu-
nity to review the songs before potential jurors arrive. "Are they talking or
singing?" The judge wants to know. Rogow beats out the prosecutors to
rock she wrote 389
answer her: "They're rapping, your honor." "do you believe in having sex?"
blares from the speakers set up in the middle of the courtroom, "hell yes,"
the speakers call back. "Is this like an act you see in Las Vegas?" Judge June
asks. "No," Rogow assures her, "rapping is music that engages in call and
response with its audience."
twenty questions
Time for jury selection. First, the prosecution and defense take potential
jurors through voir dire (from the French phrase, to speak the truth), the
question-and-answer session attorneys use to determine which jurors will
best advance their case. Jurors are quizzed about explicit language, oral and
anal sex, their tastes in music, and what they know about 2 Live Crew.
Dijols questions jurors if they can stomach "offensive language" like
"anal sex, oral sex, and ejaculation" that will be dredged up in this case.
One woman replies that, as a teacher, she hears worse every day. "What
grade do you teach?" Dijols asks. "Kindergarten" (the evening news's
soundbite of choice). A middle-aged man with thick red glasses says he
heard the group's music was "promiscuous." When Rogow grills the
would-be jurors if they consider oral or anal sex to be morbid or shameful,
they all shake their heads no. No one bothers to remind them that oral and
anal sex are illegal under Florida's sodomy law.
Rogow is approached during a break by a French television crew who
inquire if all sex is obscene in America. Rogow chuckles, "No, but in
America good sex is illegal." Later that afternoon, two fifteen-year-old
white girls in Catholic school uniforms scurry over to the defense table to
get Campbell's autograph.
race is not on trial
Assistant State Attorney Dijols is shaking his head. (There's a silent style
war being waged in the courtroom between Dijols's loosely curled hair, cut
into a seventies-style shag, and Campbell's closely cropped fade.) "Race has
reared its ugly head again in this trial," Dijols rants. You get the feeling that
Dijols is the kind of person who would like to leave race out of it. He's
referring to the case of Bernard Kinnel, one of three black people in the
original twenty-five-person jury pool.
Kinnel, a truck driver, wears a gold earring and a beeper. (Campbell has
390 lisa joncs
two beepers.) In voir dire Kinnel admits to liking rap music, and even to
hearing the clean version of 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny" on the radio
once. "What did you think?" the judge asks, genuinely interested. "I didn't
give it a rating." He shrugs, and the courtroom snickers. Later, when Dijols
presses Kinnel on whether he considers himself a fan of 2 Live Crew, he
hesitates a bit, says yes, but adds that he is also a fan of other rap groups.
Rogow asks Kinnel later if he could be a fair juror despite his interest in rap.
He can, he says, because his real love is "slow music," not rap. (Might
Kinnel have been using the word fan differently than Dijols? Which speaks
to yet another subtext of the trial: How words and their meanings are so
speaker- and context-specific in this age of cultural relativism.)
Dijols moves to eliminate Kinnel as a juror based on the fact that he
referred to himself as a fan of 2 Live Crew. Rogow then charges that Dijols
is striking Kinnel because Kinnel's black. Follow the twists: Here you have a
white defense attorney (a progressive, free-speech advocate) calling a black
prosecutor (a registered Republican) a racist. (Campbell is with Rogow all
the way on this one; he nods his head up and down furiously.) Dijols is
livid. He jumps from his seat and yells at the judge: "I want the record to
state this prosecutor is a black prosecutor, a member of Mr. Kinnel's same
race!" The judge strikes down Rogow's challenge; Kinnel doesn't make the
jury.
When the trial ends for the day, reporters rush over not to Campbell, but
to Dijols: "The basic premise behind this is that blacks can somehow relate
to this music more, and therefore have lower moral standards. This music is
obscene. It would be obscene was country western, reggae, or rock 'n'

if it
roll. If they were so concerned about the black and white issue, why isn't
Campbell using black defense attorneys?" On his way out, Mark Ross, in a
pair of exaggerated "field-hand" overalls that belong in a high school pro-
duction of Huck Finn, walks by Dijols chewing a toothpick.
translating from the crew
"Cultural translators" are a crucial part of this trial.
Exhibit A: The witnesses for the prosecution, Detective Eugene McCloud,

a heavyset black man with glasses, fourteen years with the Broward Sher-
iff's Office (BSO), and Detective Debra Werder, a heavyset white woman
with frosted blond hair, married to Sheriff Navarro's chief of personnel.
The BSO had the detectives prepare "transcripts," which are their inter-
pretations of the garbled microcassette recording of 2 Live Crew's concert

rock she wrote 391
that night at Club Futura. According to Campbell and defense attorneys,

these transcripts are quite inaccurate — rife with misnomers and editorial
comments. But the state wants to introduce the transcripts as evidence; it
could be the only opportunity for jurors to read 2 Live Crew's dirty words
and finally be shocked. (After hearing the judge's first reading of the
"charge," the jury has been largely unruffled by 2 Live Crew's language
arts.)
Robson's numerous attempts to get these transcripts admitted as evi-
dence, as reading material for the jury, are denied by Judge Johnson. What
the state manages to do in lieu of this is have the detectives translate the
"remixed" performance tape line by line. So the tape plays a bit, then is
stopped by Assistant State Attorney Dijols, who works a mixing board from
a corner of the courtroom. Detective McCloud then "translates" what he's
heard (refreshing his memory with his "transcript"). This goes on for two
and a half days.
The effect of McCloud's translations is pure pathos. Here's a thirty-eight-

year-old man in a suit repeating lines like a trained parrot —some he flubs
intentionally. It's as if he's translating from the Jive (remember that long-
lost lingo?). The tape blares: all hoes suck dick. McCloud translates: all
whores suck dick. Or sometimes McCloud narrates action in the club: "Ross
[Brother Marquis] approached the girl from the back and embraced her.
The girl's breasts came out."
Assistant State Attorney Robson: "The breasts that came out, were they
the breasts nearest to you or away from you?"
McCloud: "Away from me."
At one point Robson has McCloud in the middle of the courtroom dem-
onstrating how the dancers moved onstage. Campell bitches loud during a
break: "People are supposed to be judging our concert in its entirety —as a
whole, like the law says. But the state keeps stopping the tape and they got a
man up there narrating! Worse part about it is you got to listen. You can't
say nothing. That lying motherfucker!"
At a coffee shop across the street from the courtroom, the Campbell
entourage eats lunch. Debbie Bennett, Luke Record's publicity director,
brings Campbell a plate of soul food from a Liberty City greasy spoon.
Campbell is so mad about the McCloud performance that he blows up at
lawyer Allen Jacobi in the middle of the luncheonette. Why aren't the law-
yers butting into McCloud's testimony if it's so inaccurate? We've got strat-
egies, the lawyers say. "This is some nigger shit, isn't it?" charges Campbell,
not used to delegating authority. "I may be a nigger," he belts at the top of
392 lisa jones
his lungs, "but I ain't a dumb nigger." He Word comes back to

storms out.
Debbie, forget about the soul food, order him a turkey sandwich.
After lunch there's a breakthrough. The jury has sent a note to Judge
Johnson asking if they are allowed to laugh. It's a deciding moment in the
case. Campbell calls it as soon as he can speak, which at the advice of his
lawyers is only outside of the courtroom: "That's your verdict, right there."
He grins like the Cheshire cat tattooed on Dijols's arm.
Like I said, cultural translators are a crucial part of this trial.
Exhibit B: Witnesses for the defense, Duke University professor and liter-
ary Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Newsday music critic John Leland.
critic
I have an amusing encounter with Gates and Leland in the lobby of the
Riverside Hotel, down the street from the courthouse, the night before they
testify. This is my first time meeting Leland, and when he arrives at the front
desk, Gates announces him: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Luther Camp-
bell." Certainly one could say, for the day they spend in Broward, Leland
and Gates are Luther Campbell. They explain his music, his "entertain-
ment," his "artistic value," whatever it is he does, better than he ever could.
But then, says Gates, Campbell's an artist, so that's not his job.
Leland's an old hand, having testified on the Crew's behalf on three
occasions, the first in February 1990, at an obscenity trial in Alexander
City, Alabama. He gives an entertaining, annotated history of hip-hop,
which includes a stop in Miami for the birth of ghetto bass, as originated by
the Ghetto Style DJs, of which Luther Campbell is a founding father. Jurors'
eyes widen.
Gates defends the artistic value of 2 Live Crew's music to the jury by
establishing it as part and parcel of a black oral and literary tradition that is
twice as old, and then some, as the courtroom they sit in. He breaks down
big words, for these parts, like signifying, hyperbole, and parody, and ex-
plains why works of art are rarely to be taken literally. 2 Live Crew's music,
he argues, takes one of the worst stereotypes about black men —that they're
oversexed animals —and blows it up until it explodes. The jurors study him
carefully: the suit, glasses, cane. When Gates compares 2 Live Crew to
Archie Bunker, buzzers go off in the jurors' heads. The two black women in
the jury, Gertrude McLamore, a retired cook, and alternate Wilma Wil-
liams, a retired school principal, beam at him, as if to say, finally someone
to vindicate these ignorant colored boys.
Dijols spends most of his cross-examination attempting to put literary
criticism on trial, a losing battle to fight against Gates, the dean of the
signifying monkees. Dijols asks, "Does this work advance black culture?"
"Yes," Gates answers with a straight face. Dijols continues: "Are you saying
rock she wrote 393
that this is part of fighting for civil rights and fighting for equality? Are you
equating 2 Live Crew to black leaders like Martin Luther King?" Gates
hesitates; not even he can go that far. "I never equated the two. There is a
difference between a civil rights march and exploding a stereotype."
Something Gates tells the court sticks to my head like Velcro: "There is
no cult of violence. There is no dangerwords are being

at all that these
sung." I wonder if he's seen 2 Live Crew in concert and watched them push
women to the stage floor, pour water on them, and chant, "Summer's Eve,
Massengill, bitch wash your stinky pussy!" I've been watching Brother
Marquis around the courtroom. With his signifying, double-entendre way
of dressing and speaking, I wonder if he can answer some of the questions I
have about 2 Live Crew's "entertainment":
"We recorded 'Throw the D' in eighty-seven.
was kinda X-rated and it It
was a hit. Common sense told us to follow up on our hit. We put our minds
to work and came up with this whole thing here: being the nasty boys of
rap. We knew we had to talk about something. At the time, L.L. Cool J was
talking about how bad he was, and the Fat Boys were talking about how fat
—
they were. Since Miami is up on sex anything nasty these cats go for
around here —we said, let's talk about sex.
"The bottom line is getting dollars and having your own. It's really a
black thing with us. Even though people might say we're not positive role
models to the black community, that if you ask us about our culture, we
talk about sex, it's not really like that. I'm well aware of where I come from.
I know myself as a black man. I think I'm with the program, very much so.
You feel I'm doing nothing to enhance my culture, but I could be destroying
my culture. I could be out here selling kids drugs.
"The women come onstage on their own. Sometimes we do grab a girl.
The water-fighting thing, that's not for me, but that's our job. We go out
there and do it to the best of our abilities, then we go offstage and carry on
like regular men. I'm not really like the way I talk on records and act
onstage.
"I'm not gonna try to disrespect you and call you all those names like I do
on those records. I would never do that to a young lady, especially a sister.
I'm degrading you to try to get me some money. Richard Pryor was degrad-
ing you on record. And besides, just let me do that. You got pimps out here
who are making you sell your body. Just let me talk about you for a little
while, you know what I'm saying? And make me a little money."
394 lisa jones
Campbell's souped
I'm in a black BMW convertible heading toward Miami from Fort Lau-
derdale on Interstate 95. This is not my car. I couldn't even rent this car.
This is Luther Campbell's car. Luther Campbell on one of his two is talking
car phones. The audio outfit where the had the infa-
state attorney's office
mous concert tape remixed is a place where Luke Records used to do

business. Campbell's pulling the plug at this very moment. First he's got to
yell in the owner's ear for a while.

I notice a copy of Fortune magazine on the backseat. We're speeding fast
now. Campbell thinks he spots a cop car in the rearview mirror. This is all I
need: to get busted in Broward County with Luther Campbell, I'll never live
this down. My friends think his music is nothing but "misogynistic smut."
They compare it to "farting" and say it "defiles an entire culture." They'll

disown me and I'll have to move to Miami and work for Luke Records.
Okay, no cop car, relax.
Campbell is bitching about how many people are serving him with law-
suits these days. ("They see a nigger making money and they want to jump
on the bandwagon.") He has a child on the way from his current lady, Tina,
and an eight-year-old daughter, Shanetris. (Campbell just arrived at a child-
support settlement with her mother, Terry Brinberry.) Another woman
from Miami is filing a paternity suit against him.
I share my theory with Campbell that he probably grew up middle class
and, through his music, lives out some rough-riding homeboy fantasy. He
doesn't appreciate this theory at all. 2 Live Crew is just a gig, he says tiredly.
Luther Campbell is the businessman, the president of Luke Records, the

scrupulous investor, the property owner, the little-league team sponsor, the
man whose net worth, rumor has it, is over five million dollars. The man
whose office is dominated by framed portraits of Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X.
Campbell talks about his childhood in Liberty City, growing up in a two-
bedroom house with five brothers. The Campbell brothers are all super-
achievers: one's a physicist, another's an executive chef. Luther is the youn-
gest, the spoiled one, the only one who didn't go to college. Now he makes
more money than all of them. And no, he was not in a gang. And yes, he did
get started selling records out of his car.

"Two bedrooms, you know what that means?!" he says. "All of us were
in one room, and they were in the other." Campbell's father, Charles senior,
born in Jamaica, is a custodian. His mother, Yvonne, who is under five feet
tall, was a hairdresser until her arthritis got bad. The Campbells have been
rock she wrote 39S
in court with their son for the last four days. They say they're "extremely
proud" of their son's accomplishments. A reporter in court tells this story:
Apparently Campbell would prefer that his parents not see his adults-only
act.Once they did slip in. He spotted them in the crowd and refused to do
any more dirty songs. The audience wanted their money back. Another
story: When asked if he planned on getting married anytime soon, Camp-
bell said, no, because the only woman he had ever thought of marrying was
already taken. His mother.
mr. america
"What's happening?" Brother Marquis asks Mary the bailiff, the court's
unofficial court jester, whose tiepin is a pair of miniature handcuffs. "Noth-
ing yet, you just keep smiling. You want some water?" she offers in a thick
southern drawl. "Here's your last glass."
Gates and Leland had helped, but Rogow's thorough cross-examination

of the detectives put the case to rest. The odds for acquittal are at three to
one; reporters take bets in the court hallway. Campbell's family and most of
the twenty-five staffers of Luke Records pack the court. The court clerk is a
young black woman with extensions who cracks a big smile when she reads
the verdict, "Luther Campbell, not guilty."
Campbell kisses his mother first.
Outside of the Broward County Courthouse palm trees are blowing in the
wind. TV cameramen are jogging backward to get a frontal shot of Camp-
bell as he jaywalks across the boulevard. Campbell is the tallest man in the
crowd, he is the brownest man in the crowd. His girlfriend, Tina, very
pregnant, is two steps behind him. Campbell's parents, on the sidewalk,
watch him disappear in the distance. This is a Norman Rockwell painting.
One consensus in theCrew trial is that the only thing obscene in
2 Live
America is spending money the wrong way. Another constant refrain was
"It's a job." Lots of people seem to do work that requires that they separate
what they do from themselves. It suddenly hits what an American phenome-

non Luther Campbell is. He's sold us soft porn as music, he's sold us the
Amendment as entertainment (Banned in the USA). And he goes out of
First
hisway to let you know that he is not what he sells.

As much as we think he doesn't speak for us (me, you, your grand-
mother), he speaks for our country. As American as Pete Rose, McDonald's
fried apple pie, and Luther Campbell.
Emily White, "Revolution Girl Style
NOV//' L.A. Weekly, July 1Q-16, 1992.
The first article to offer a systematic overview of Riot Girl in the

national press appeared in the L.A. Weekly. Emily White's story
was picked up by newspapers, TV stations, and magazines
across the country. Unfortunately, many subsequent journalists
didn't have White's sympathetic sensitivity and political edge,
and coverage took on a patronizing or sarcastic tone, provoking
Riot Girls to eventually declare a press ban. White's story
remains as inspiring as its subject.
M,
the world of
.aybe the girl revolution won't take shape in the public world,
men — it won't happen out on the street, where girls aren't safe.
Maybe it will begin in a private, enclosed space men never enter, that
generic space women enter and leave, often together, writing messages for
each other on the wall: a rest room. That is where Nikki McClure believes
the powerful future of girls lies, and her vision came to her when, as she
writes, "In 1990-91 a list of men who date-raped was kept on the wall of
the third stall, second floor of the Library Building at Evergreen State Col-
lege." That year the rest room became a place where women warned one
another and girls memorized the names of rapists before they were painted
over. McClure saw the potential there and started to dream: "Secret notes
are passed back and forth through sanitary napkin catdoors. ... I will
recognize you in the crowd and will slip off to the rest room where I will
rock she wrote 397
leave you a secret package. If anyone else were to discover it, they would
find a pearl necklace, each bead a time bomb added every year. We are
going to explode one by one until the bathrooms are full and we have to
wait in line to get in."
McClure's messages, however, weren't written on a rest-room wall but in
a small fanzine calledMy Super Secret, circulating through the Riot Girl
Network. Riot Girl (or Grrrrl) was started by a group of musicians and
writers and friends who decided to aggressively coopt the values and rheto-
ric of punk, fifteen years after the fact, in the name of feminism —or as they
call it, "the revolution now." Riot Girl was organized in the wake
girl style
of the "angry girl" mood, which has overwhelmed the postpunk scene in
the form of a series of confrontational girl bands (Bikini Kill, Hole, Babes in
Toyland, Calamity Jane) and a plethora of fanzines by and about women
(Jigsaw, Sister Nobody, Chainsaw, Girl Germs, Bikini Kill). After a while,
this —
anger didn't feel like a fad, it felt like hope compelling certain girls to
organize meetings every week, start calling themselves soldiers, messengers.
As of now there are between seven and ten weekly Riot Girl meetings
nationwide, more than twenty Girlcore fanzines, and bands multiplying
faster than can be counted. The members of Riot Girl are quite young, ages
fourteen and older, although I've encountered one woman wearing a Riot
Grrrl T-shirt who was at least forty-five. The unofficial centers of the girl
revolution are the punk-rock meccas of Olympia, Washington, and Wash-
ington, D.C., but it keeps growing and dispersing, drowning itself out and
resurfacing.
The Riot Girl manifesto (a rushed, two-page document that's constantly
being revised) declares, "We seek to create revolution in our own lives every
day by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit christian capital-
ist way of doing things." They urge their members to "resist psychic death"
and "cry in public." Their goals include getting "all girls to be in bands"
and making it so "girls rule all towns." They teach each other to play guitar
or drums, talk and write about sexism, even encourage women to arm
themselves. Riot Girls are often accused of being exclusive: they want to
form a life away from men and invent "girl culture."
The girl revolutionaries have a long way to go before they rule all towns.
As they exist now, they are a self-proclaimed "movement" of very young,
very angry women discovering their own power through frenzied produc-
tivity: fanzines, music, public-access shows, performance events. They meet
in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania — in apartments, concert spaces,
cluttered kitchens, pink girlish bedrooms.
Riot Girl Olympia meet Sundays in a white laundry room of the Martin
398 emily white
Apartments, usually in the late afternoon. Their faction has existed since
late February. The world they are trying to change right now is the small,
isolated world of Olympia, a town with one main street; a few wide, clear
alleys perfect for graffiti ("Your desires are reality"); a theater where movies
are always a dollar. The bars are full of quiet regulars, who occasionally
start short-lived, halfhearted brawls.
The first Riot Girl Olympia meeting takes place on a cold night when the
sky is bright violet, an unreal light. Girls start drifting in around six o'clock,
the room slowly filling until there are seventeen, sitting on the floor, waiting
for something to happen. Most are dressed in traditional Olympia girl style:
short-cropped, dyed hair; wadded-up vintage dresses; bright Woolworth's
lipstick. Allison Wolfe, coeditor of Girl Germs and the unofficial leader of
these meetings, breaks the ice: "Okay, I mean this meeting is really figuring
out what we want Riot Girl to be here. It is a different thing in every city. I
personally would like to see us rent out space and put on shows, just put on
a whole bunch of shows and blow their minds." Yes, almost everyone
agrees, and we can pass out fanzines about sexism and rape, small enough
to fit in your pocket at the shows. Men can come, but they'll have to wear
dresses.
Olympia is an important city in the underground, the birthplace of that
quickly evolving cliche, the Seattle scene. Sub Pop and Nirvana both have
their spiritual roots here. There's dedicated indie label K Records, run by
Candice Pedersen and Calvin Johnson, who've been instrumental in encour-
aging girl summer K hosted the weeklong International Pop
bands. Last
Underground convention. More than fifty bands came from all over the
world, overrunning the town. The waitresses at the Spar were ruined, serv-
ing one broke, elated table of kids after another. The quiet sidewalks were
suddenly crowded; people sat out on curbs and wandered in front of traffic,
trying to find friends or idols.

The convention opened with Girl Day, and the editors of Girl Germs like
to call that day "prdct," Punk Rock Dream Come True. For one night, only
girls took the stage: members of Bikini Kill, Kreviss (eight ragged girls
playing electric guitars), Jean Smith, Seven Year Bitch, Rose Melberg of
Tiger Trap, one after another. Tracy, of the band Heavens to Betsy, who
played their first show that night, said breathlessly, "It was the most incred-
ible thing in the world. . .
." Many Riot Girls see that night as a kind of
beginning.
One of the most engaging metaphors of the Riot Girls is their dramatic
invasion of the mosh pit. In Olympia, bands often don't perform on risers,
so only the people up front can really see, and, given the violent crush of the
rock she wrote 399
pit, those people are almost always boys. The girls got tired of this. But
—
most of them didn't want to dance in the pit it hurts your boobs. And
getting touched by a bunch of sweaty male strangers has all-too-familiar,
nightmarish connotations for many girls. Perhaps moshing is just another
one of what Barbara Kruger calls those "elaborate rituals" men have in-
vented "in order to touch the skin of another man." But the girls wanted a
space to dance in, so they formed groups and made their way to the front,
protecting each other the whole way. Any boy who shoved them had a
whole angry pack to contend with.
Such acts had reverberations in Olympia, where the scene is very small
and where in many ways life is sheltered, dreamy, idealized. Tobi Vail said
of those months early last year, when there was this surge of girl activity:
"Everything changed. Like at first when our band started, men could hardly
deal with it. A really short time later, they came around and realized what
we were doing was totally valid. In a really short time all these girls were
being inspired by each other." Kathleen Hanna spoke about the way the
punk do-it-yourself idea made their kind of feminism possible. "Something
was happening in our community," she says. "[We realized] how important
the whole punk you-can-do-anything idea was for women." It didn't matter
if what the girls said was politically correct, or if they were good at their
instruments; the point was simply to make some noise.

Hanna is the lead singer of Bikini Kill, a band that formed in October '90.
She has been instrumental in organizing Riot Girl D.C., and her energy and
drive fueled much of the activity in Olympia. She's a twenty-three-year-old
woman who sees everything she does as part of a movement, as a sign, and
everything that thwarts her as part of a conspiracy. In Spin magazine,
Hanna was deemed the "angriest girl of all." She's clearly a leader, and it's
around her that many young, impressionable girls have mobilized.
Maybe it is because she has the feverish courage of an exhibitionist.
When Hanna performs she often wears a halter and writes "Slut" across her
stomach —Madonna's Boy Toy gone over the edge. But there's nothing
playful about Hanna's performance, nothing closely resembling elusiveness.
Her voice is "Your world not mine your world not mine."
a low, loud rave:
Bikini Kill's show is not just a vague, fuck-society punk gesture, but a
focused critique of the punk scene itself: its own hypocrisy, its own glorifi-
cation of rupture even as it keeps the most basic patriarchal structures
intact.
In the same way Nikki McClure envisioned a pearl necklace, with each
bead a time bomb, so Hanna sees the conventional charms of femininity as
potential weapons. In "LiP Red Riding Bitch," she sings, "Here are my ruby
—
400 emily white
red lips/better to suck you dry." During performance she might take off her
top, while screaming, "Suck my left one." Such acts probably confuse and
terrify the teenage boys in the audience who've been waiting for this mo-
ment, but they make more and more sense to a generation of young women
who are coming to understand that contradiction might be the most power-
ful feminist tool yet, creating a kind of paralysis, or night blindness, in the
man/boy imagination. As Hanna says in Jigsaw fanzine: "Because I live in a
world that hates women and I am one who is struggling desperately
. . .
not to hate myself my whole life is felt as a contradiction."

. . .
Hanna grew up on the outskirts of D.C. and went to high school in

Portland, Oregon. As a teenager she did drugs and hung out in punk clubs:
"I was just the girlfriend of the guy in the band," liking whatever bands he
liked, waiting around for him at the edges of the club. She had been sexually
abused when she was quite young, and says that was the point where she
started seeing everything in terms of gender. Hanna ended up in Olympia,
going to Evergreen State College, eventually getting involved with the K
scene, opening a club run by women, starting bands (Amy Carter, Viva
Knievel).
In the summer of 1991 Hanna and Bikini Kill went on tour and discov-
ered that the larger design of the revolution was coming clear. Girls ap-
proached them at shows after reading their fanzines, ready to storm the
mosh pit, vowing to start their own bands. When Bikini Kill returned home,
there were letters from all over the country. Now they've been written
about in major publications The New Yorker, Spin, Sassy, The New York
Times — even as they've only written a handful of songs. In Olympia, says
drummer Tobi Vail, they "had dreamt of all these things happening, and
here they were happening."
It was also on this tour that they found a new mecca, better than the
predictable mecca of Olympia: Washington, D.C. Like Olympia, D.C. has a
thriving, politically oriented scene. It's the home of Dischord Records and
the hero-priests of punk, Fugazi. There's a punk activist collective there
called Positive Force, which organizes protests and benefit concerts and
raises money and food for the homeless. Many of the D.C. Riot Girls also
belong to Positive Force.
D.C. Riot Girl started in the summer of '91, shortly before Hanna and
Bikini Kill migrated there. It is a younger, more racially diverse group than
Olympia Riot Girl, with most of its members in, or just out of, high school.
Maybe because the meetings are led by the emotional cyclone of Hanna,
they tend to be more confessional, less about political organizing — at one
rock she wrote 401
meeting a came out, and in others they've talked about how

series of girls
they do many sixteen-year-old girls, like they are disappearing.

feel, as
It makes sense that Olympia and D.C. have become the temporary cen-
ters of the girl revolution: the two places have been trading ideas for years.
It's common to meet people in one city whose hearts are in the other. Lois
Maffeo, an Olympia transplant in D.C, says it has something to do with the

"similar spirits of K Records and Dischord." Both labels concentrate on
documenting their own scenes and have a rigorous ethic of "fairness." Both
are undergrounds dominated by the "straight edge" ethic: no meat, no
alcohol, no drugs. The Nation of Ulysses, a Dischord boy band and close
friends of Bikini Kill, phrase the reasons for staying sober this way, in their
cryptic manifesto: "Illegal drugs ... are part and parcel of a murderous
commerce, chaired by the government, and will be used as an excuse to strip
away our last vestiges of freedom."

This lack of drugs and excess in both the Oly and D.C. scenes, this
constant guarding of the body, is what makes these predominantly white,
middle-class radicals different from those of the sixties. Even those who
occasionally partake of drugs keep it to themselves. There is a sense that
"the system" is not only working on the body from outside but is something
you ingest. Power tries to enter your soul at every opening. They remain
vigilant and beware of escape; don't even lapse into sleep, Nation of Ulysses
advises their followers. On the back of their record, Thirteen Point Program
to Destroy America, they write: "Remember now that visionaries (that is
us) have historically allowed themselves only the faintest resemblances of a

'full night's rest' . . . While society sleeps, bound to this archaic ritual, we
shall take over."
At dinner with Fugazi and Bikini Kill, in a ramshackle house called the
Embassy in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of D.C, the talk isn't about
taking over society, but about remaining outside it. Former underground
heroes Nirvana have just made the cover of Rolling Stone. Fugazi's Ian
MacKaye stares at the cover: Kurt Cobain wearing a "Corporate Magazines
Still Suck" T-shirt. "Can you believe this?" MacKaye asks. "This is just so
weird." He riffles through the pages. "And here's Henry Rollins. Fuck!" As
they on sprung couches, eating pale-orange vegetarian mush and drink-
sit
ing water, the idea of Nirvana hitting the Top 40 makes them lose their
appetites. "Everyone's signing to major labels," says a bewildered Mac-
Kaye, "except the people in this room." "Yeah," says Hanna, and she's
certain they never will. Maybe this room, with its glaring overhead light,
broken clocks, and off-speed tape deck in the background, is the last
holdout against the quickly advancing corporate ogre.
402 emily white
The Riot Girls abide by this hardcore ethic: reject the marketplace and, as
feminists reject patriarchy, do not try to be part of it. Yet as they keep watch
over their integrity, they not only "purify" themselves of a sick society, they
also isolate themselves. Everyone in the Embassy living room is white, as are
most of the Riot Girls. The majority are from middle- or upper-middle-class
backgrounds. Like a religious sect, they huddle together, rejecting the world
but also somewhat afraid of it. Glorifying "youth rebellion," they some-
times will themselves into naivete. While the Riot Girls talk in a cursory
way about branching out, they haven't. And until the Riot Girls address the
socioeconomic basis of their rage —the way they have lived a life that, in
many ways, has given them the time and the freedom to express this rage,
that has given them enough economic power to desire other types of power
— their force will be limited.
But what is important about the Riot Girls, and what overwhelms their
political shortcomings, is their incurable idealism. It's a kind of idealism
thatwas rare in the so-called postfeminist era, particularly among younger
women. During the eighties, feminism diverted along two major courses:
either into the academy, where it became increasingly clouded in jargon, or
into the pop-psychology industry, where every conflict could be resolved

from "within," every rupture healed through therapy. The story of political
oppression became the story of internal repression —a narrative which cul-
minated in Gloria Steinem's incredible cop-out, Revolution from Within: A

Book of Self-Esteem. And of course now, as the Supreme Court begins to
chip away at Roe v. Wade, it doesn't matter if we're academically smart or
if we have good self-esteem. In the public world we are entering the darkest
hour of the backlash. The Riot Girls have the right kind of rhetoric with
which to face this dark hour because, like many teenage girls, they phrase
every setback, every dream, in the language of crisis.
invisible histories
Feminist "girl groups" — from early British bands like the Slits and the
Raincoats to Americans like the Avengers —are nothing new in punk. In the
early eighties, Bush Tetras sang, "I don't want to walk out on the street no
more/too many creeps," and before that the Raincoats declared, "I don't
want to be no one's little girl." Like the groups coming up now, there were
scattered bands using the form of punk rage for their own purposes, focus-
mi; specifically on women's experiences.
Yet female anger only surfaced in isolated, sporadic bursts, the occasional
rock she wrote 403
woman's voice a novelty, not a sign or a threat. Talking in her narrow, half-
lit Lower East Side apartment, as the afternoon outside grows hectic and
damp, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon says she's always felt like an outsider: "I
always idolized male guitar players. It was exciting to be in the middle of it
but also feel like a voyeur. There were isolated female musicians, but there
was never any bonding or anything." And even as Gordon has supported
bands like Hole and Babes in Toyland, she's wary of identifying herself with
any movement, reluctant to speak of herself as a "woman in rock." So, too,
are bands like L7, who refuse to do interviews on the subject, or Babes in
Toyland, who just want to be seen as musicians on their own terms. Yet it is
precisely these bands the Riot Girls have taken as their reluctant mentors;
they've realized that getting lost in a song or a show is fundamentally

different when you're getting lost in the sound of a woman's voice. And if
rock has built itself on the foundation of screaming girl fans, suddenly that
fandom isn't based in pent-up, worshipful sexuality but in recognition.

As Nirvana goes No. 1, there's the belief that boy punk is dying as an
underground and the girls are rising out of their ashes. Independent labels
are scrambling to sign girl bands. It's getting harder to find a show without
a woman somewhere in the lineup. Yet it has taken years to make it possible
for a contributor to write, in Girl Germs, No. 3: "I hear these girls, girls I
don't know, girls I have never met, make these same promises and these
same threats. They speak to me and I speak to you and I know our time has
come."
Jean Smith of Vancouver's Mecca Normal has been touring with guitarist
David Lester for nearly six years now. Smith's mixture of highly poetic
lyrics and feminist subjects tends to put people off—and then there's her
voice: a high keening that wavers between beauty and monstrosity, a siren
scream want to hear forever and at the same time can't endure. She plays
I
slow songs you couldn't mosh to. She plays out-of-tune guitars with broken
strings. She sings about Joelle washing a frying pan: "Her boyfriend/around
two corners/watching TV." Suddenly "the frying pan comes out of the
water/and flies through the air and hits the wall/all the energy/of the
. . .
history/of the situation." In "Twelve Murders," a woman on the beach is

approached by a rapist: "She pulled a knife from beneath the blanket/and
shoved it in his body."
Smith has drifted around for a long time and has yet to grow tired of
drifting. Sometimes staying on in the last town of the tour, sometimes not
living anywhere. Mecca Normal has put out records on K, Matador, and
Smith's own label, Smarten Up. If and when they are reviewed, she is often
compared to Patti Smith. "Which is kind of sad," she says. "If you are a
404 emily white
loud, aggressive woman singing this kind of stuff, she's the one woman
you're compared to. I mean, think how many people men are compared
to. . .
." Like Kim Gordon, Smith sees herself in isolation and doesn't
identify with the rhetoric of girl revolution. Yet she's had a profound influ-
ence on the current generation. Tobi Vail wrote of Smith in Jigsaw, No. 3: "I
can't think of anyone else who writes more powerful songs about what it
feels like to be a woman in a world of violence against women."

One of the more original spirits in the evolution of the punk girl scene is
Stella Marrs, an artist and performer in Olympia whose styles and theories
can easily be detected in the work of Bikini Kill (a name she dreamt up). For
years Marrs has been exploring images of femininity, rummaging through
patriarchy's memory and building art out of the debris she finds there:
ribbons, high heels, debutante dresses, old slips. "I grew up with a set of
images," she says. "They don't make sense to me. They're not my reality. So
I take those images and reinterpret the meaning." She's used high heels as
drumsticks in a performance and turned hundreds of old slips into canvases.
She them down the seams and spattered paint across them. "I made a
split
lot of lesbian separatists mad; they thought it was violence against women,"
she remarks. But for Marrs it was a way to connect femininity and rage, in
the same way the name "Riot Girl" does, in the same way Courtney Love of
Hole does when she wears a lacy dress and screams, "Ugly, ugly, ugly,
ugly."
Marrs was also one of the first women to organize collective "punk girl"
activities in Olympia. Her Girl City store was a punk-rock girls' collective
where women and artwork. Her remarkable 1986 performance

sold clothes
piece, 50 Girls 50 States/Women for World Peace, in which, she says, "I
assembled fifty women and told them to make dresses based on a given state
and the idea of world peace," was a thwarted beauty pageant, a punk
debutante parade where all the girls made outlandish dresses and marched
down the streets of Olympia. One attendee said the spectacle was like a
combination "political march and craft show." All the benefits from the
reception afterward went to Safeplace rape relief shelter. Yet although she
has been active in the community for years, Marrs, like many of the older
women I spoke with, is suspicious of the hard-line ideologues of the girl
revolution. She feels it has taken years to come this far: "It's all gaining
momentum so fast. But they don't realize how long it has taken. How hard
it was."
[f the Riot Girls have their grounding in figures from the girl-punk past,
they are also rooted in modern American feminism. It's surprising how
many are daughters of seventies women's libbers. For all their anger and
rock she wrote 405
violence, many of these girls come from nurturing, healthy mother-daughter

relationships, often families where the father was left early on as the mother
became politicized. Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile and coeditor of Girl Germs
says, "My mom's real cool; she was a sixties feminist, now she's gay." D.C.
Riot Girl organizer Erika Reinstein was first turned on to these ideas by
reading her mother's books: the "old school" Betty Friedan, Gloria
Steinem. For Christmas her mother gave her Backlash.
The Riot Girls resemble the feminists of the early-seventies mainstream in
their racial and economic isolation, in that they often fall into a simplistic
notion of man-as-brute and in their weekly consciousness-raising meetings.

Yet they depart from their mothers in important ways. Skilled creators of
spectacle (Bratmobile with their baby-doll dresses, sweaty boy dancers, and
bloody grrrl flag), they've learned from ACT UP and MTV to manipulate
imagery. Growing up in the Age of Madonna, they are pro-sex, "boy crazy
modern girl revolutionaries," as Vail wrote in Jigsaw. Many express a fasci-
nation with sex-trade work, and Kathleen Hanna dances in a strip club
when she's low on money. She says it's no more exploitative than working
as a waitress. When people ask her how she can come away from stripping
with a clean feminist conscience, she retorts, cracking her gum, "You don't
get deconstruction." Vail clarifies, "That's just a fancy way of saying you
don't get punk rock."
The Riot more than anything, to be true punks: noisy, sloppy,
Girls wish,
offensive. In the endless crowd at the April 15 pro-choice march on Wash-
ington, they caused pandemonium. Carrying a glittery Riot Girl banner,
they refused to participate in the conventional chants
— "What do we want?
Choice! When do we want it? Now!" Instead, they screamed at the top of
drowning out everyone around them. They were banging on
their lungs,
pots and pans with heavy sticks, half running on the way to the Capitol
lawn. My ears started to hurt—the sting of clanging metal. The crowd gave
them plenty of space, these girls getting out of hand, screeching like loose,
wild birds, like kids in a schoolyard.
rape culture
If the girl revolution expresses itself in ear-splitting noise, it also takes

place in writing. Girl fanzines are time bombs, disguised as thick letters.
They come with titles like G-Force, Fantastic Fanzine, Chainsaw, Sister
Nobody. They are crazy mishmashes of politics, scene reports, Top 10 lists,
love and hate mail, blurry photographs. All across the country, girls wait to
406 emily white
hear from the fanzine network, a phantom community they belong to but
never see — it's an underground with no mecca, built of paper.
Tobi Vail says, "Until I was twenty my life was the mail." For years her
friends were people she'd never met, and only when she finally tracked them
down did she give up the silent letter-writing and enter the social world.
Ramdasha, sixteen-year-old editor of girlcore 'zine Gunk, centered on girl
skateboarders, told me she doesn't have many friends at school: "I just
come home and go in my room as fast as I can and work on my fanzine and
answer letters. . . . Sometimes I go skating down at the skate park. ... I
never hang out anymore." She lives in Basking Ridge, a claustrophobic

suburb in New Jersey, and the fanzines are her dream of elsewhere. Donna
Dresch, editor of Chainsaw, was a Navy brat and found the 'zine network
was her only constant in a life spent following her father from place to
place. For two years she corresponded with G. B. Jones of J.D.s fanzine
nearly every day, without ever meeting her or speaking to her. "I made my
fanzine," she says, "as a cure for isolation."
The angry-girl 'zines, coming in homocore's wake, took advantage of an
intact, politically fertile community to spread their own message. In many
ways the angry-girl genre owes its existence to punk homocore 'zines, many
of which originated in Toronto in 1985, after Jones put out J.D.s, a "combi-
nation hardcore music homosexual 'zine" with features like the homopunk
hit parade, porno comics, and a long, loving history of Kristy McNichol.
Homocore was determined to expose the hetero bias of the punk scene and
to document a buried world of gay rebels. If punk was the music of no
future and nowhere, in America by 1985 that was a narrowly circumscribed
—
"nowhere" hardcore was dominated by straight white men. The
homocore 'zines outed certain prominent members of the scene and broke
the news "Sorry, dudes, but gay is rad."
In the past two years the readership of girl 'zines has multiplied exponen-
tially and exceeded the usual channels. This is largely due to their regular
coverage in Sassy magazine. A teen-girl magazine, Sassy came into being

five years ago, and offered a far more realistic, politically risky vision of
teenage life than any other magazine on the market. Each issue features a
" 'zine of the month," and they often feature girl 'zines. With an estimated
readership of 3 million, Sassy has been an effective means of spreading the

word.
After their 'zine was reviewed in Sassy, Molly and Allison of Girl Germs
say their mail multiplied overnight: "We couldn't keep up with it... we
got hundreds of letters from teenage girls across the country." The same
happened when Riot Girl was covered there, and Bikini Kill. One of the
—
rock she wrote 4«07
most common sights in the apartments of fanzine makers now is piles of
letters, often written on pink, flowery stationery, with circles or hearts

dotting the /'s. These are the Sassy readers, stranded in high school, who've
suddenly discovered the network and want to become girl revolutionaries.
"I want my town," they write from Oklahoma, Nevada,

to start Riot Girl in
Alabama. "Your 'zine changed my life." One fan writes, "I want to start a
band now. Since I can't really scream in my house, I know I belong on a
stage." These girls give their lives up to letters until they can free themselves.
They might be sleeping in canopy beds, but they have this dream of starting
a hardcore band.
While the girl fanzines carry many different messages, from a long listing
of the "myths of masturbation" to articles about "fat liberation" or "Why I

hate Twin Peaks/' one issue that occurs over and over in their pages, and on
every front of the revolution girl-style now, is rape. In Fantastic Fanzine, an
unnamed girl recalls being raped by her father: "He finally comes into my
room with that sad grin on. At least the waiting is over, at least." For
another fanzine writer, it's a brother: "He touched me all over while I tried
to sleep —
actually I did sleep but my nightmare was real and it woke me —
up." Kathleen Hanna sees him as a stranger in Jigsaw, No. 3: "Me trying to
figure out how not to get killed by the guy who's harassing me. I dream of
being stabbed like a bad guy in a movie. . . . And I run home scared
shitless that when I scream nobody will come."
The continuous circling of these women around the image of the raped,
violated —
body whether it appears in songs, writing, or conversations
makes their feminism very much of our time. Incest in particular has be-
come a cultural obsession, our highest-rated horror the Gothic violation of
the "inner child." Yet unlike the TV talk shows and the pop-psychology
books, the Riot Girls are not wallowing in "victimization" or even trying to
heal themselves. They aren't using confession as a psychological tool but as
form of propaganda. They aren't indulging their rape fear
a political tool, a
so much as identifying it as the ultimate oppression, a dictator that must be
overthrown. The Riot Girls are reliving, or reimagining, sexual abuse over
and over in order to bring their ranks together and to recognize each other
as part of a subculture —
a community sociologists have ominously labeled
"rape culture."
Here the revolution girl style becomes a revolution not about spiritual
freedom but about bodily freedom. When 424 women are raped in the
United States each day and roughly half of those are under nineteen, it
seems an inevitable focus for any feminism, particularly a youth movement.

For the Riot Girls, the new world might be nothing more than a world
408 emily white
where they can walk down the street at night, as far as they want, even into
the early hours of the morning.
girl culture
Recently, sociologist Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice, pub-

lished a girls which concluded that as they
ground-breaking study of young
enter the "feminine role," somewhere between the ages of eleven and thir-
teen, their confidence plummets. Brash and self-assured at eleven, they be-
come shy and insecure, even self-destructive. Sensing the violence and injus-
tice there, many girls derail before entering society. They feel the new limits
drawn around their bodies. What's interesting about Gilligan's study is not
so much the familiar image of the masochistic teen as that earlier wild and
unafraid girl who disappeared.
The girl revolutionaries, many of whom are too old and world-wise to
reasonably be called "girls," take this name because they have glimpsed that
loud, untamed figure, because their Utopia lies in the past. The Bikini Kill
girls often talk nostalgically about some first, organic "girl culture" which is
destroyed upon contact with the world of boys. Then jealousy interferes;
they often chant, "Struggle against the J-word, killer of girl love." If that
seems rather innocuous, more interesting is their sense that this "organic"
girlcommunity allowed an unregulated sexuality homosexuality wasn't —
looked down upon, says Hanna. "Girls' first erotic experiences are usually
with each other, but we're taught to forget that."
Here the girl revolution looks back to a peaceful prehistory among
women: they romanticize the past, much like some New Age Goddess femi-
nists. Yet there's another quality of this vanished girl that comes across,
most strikingly in the performances of bands like Bikini Kill, Hole, and
Babes in Toyland, and that's the inherent anarchy of little girls. When Kat
Bjelland of Babes in Toyland, wearing a sweet velvet dress, sings, "Vomit
my heart/pull my legs apart," she seems both to be reviving that violence
and bringing to it an immense exhaustion. It has taken a long time to return
to this first self and discover not an innocence but a violated, tantrum-
throwing, terrifying girl hero. She is as far from the self-sacrificing, nurtur-
ing woman as you can get, and she implies that beneath this daylight
woman's surface there is another dark, powerful life. The Riot Girls refuse
to cross the threshold into womanhood and lose that ferocious child. They
don't want her to recede. Thev want her to ascend.
Lisa Kennedy, "Speedballing with the
Home Invader/'
The Village Voice, April 13, 1993.
Increasing conservative concerns over lyrics in music hit a peak

in 1992 with attacks on Ice-T's metal band Body Count, assailed
by police groups for the track "Cop Killer." While the
subsequent L.A. riots proved that the artist was merely voicing a
common complaint, the industry nonetheless caved in to an
assault based largely in racist fears of a black nation, and Ice-T
left Time/Warner. Village Voice editor and writer Lisa Kennedy
reviewed his following album and found it both reflective of
and exclusive to her "reality."
Here's a murder rap to keep you dancing/With a crime record like

Charles Manson.
—N.W.A, "Straight Outta Compton"
This is like Charles Manson promising to never go back to the La
Bianca home again to commit a killing.
—Oliver North, after Ice-T pulled "Cop Killer"
harles Manson never imagined a nigga like Ice-T. Charlie, after all,
was just the Man's son, a racist nutjob with visions of his own supremacy
410 lisa kennedy
dancing The anxiety and outcry fanned by all those police

in his head.
malevolent associations, and the folks they could scare up, around Body
Count's "Cop Killer," coupled with the hysteria over the cover for the
rapper's latest, Home Invasion (Priority/Rhyme Syndicate), has made Ice-
T's program out to be Helter Skelter II: the blacks (of L.A.) kick off the
revolution and no (suburban) whites are safe. "Pop pop pop to the dome"
— the thin blue line gives way and welcome to the end of civilization as they
know it.
Not surprisingly, this cranked-up racial millenarianism spun into high

gear after the L.A. riots and, more to the point, the uprising's postmortem,
its "never again like this" imperative. Or as Ice-T says in "Gotta Lotta
Love," one of Home Invasion's dozen genre-nailing tracks and perhaps —
the
—
most compassionate piece of hardcore ever "And if we flip, let's all flip
together."
Of course, Charlie endures for everyone from Sonic Youth and the
Lemonheads to Hard Copy because he said very deep things —as those
society deems crazy and evil sometimes do. To a white legal establishment
and to middle-class/upper-class white folks in general, basically to the fam-
ily that rejected him, he said: You made me, you made my wretched little
family, we're your children, and this is what you've wrought. With the
sixtiescoming to a close and parents fearing their demon seed offspring, this
—
must have sounded like twisted gospel how terrifying. No doubt this same
kernel of truth, and the same loss of control —
all that talk of the ballooning
—
white audience for hardcore rap is what makes rappers like Ice-T public
enemies. And Ice-T is hardly unaware:
I'm taking your kids' brains and you ain't getting them back . . .
I'm not the nigga you want to leave your kid alone with
Because I have my own open the dome kit
And once I get them up under my fuckin' spell

They might start giving you fuckin' hell
Start changing the way they walk, they talk, they act
Now who's motherfuckin fault is that?
The Home Invader.
"Home Invasion," the album Time Warner let get away,

title track to the
begins with T instructing his crew: "All right, when we go up in this
goddamn house all I want is the motherfuckin' kids." While it sucks (in a
predictable way) that moms bear the brunt of the abuse "Dumb bitch, —
that's the reason we going up in there/She don't know what the fuck she's
I
rock she wrote 411
talking about" (remind you of the adolescent garbage aimed at Tipper G.'s
nieces in Body Count's "KKK Bitch"?) — it's clear that hypocrisy is T's real
target. "Momma's Gotta Die Tonight," a Body Count retribution tale in
which a T character hacks his dear old mom to pieces because she turns out
to be a racist, had a similar moral. Add these to a rock tradition: more songs
about the parental lie, the generational indoctrination in the big cultural
fibs.
On the cover that reportedly led to Ice-T's break with Warner and his
signing with Priority Records for distribution, a white teen boy sits cross-
legged and closed-eyed, Walkman cranked; around him swirls a chintzy
comic-book illustration of his (and Ice-T's) fantasy: Dad getting it in the
head with the butt of a rifle and Mom grabbed from behind by a masked
stranger. Like so much of this past year's Ice-T hoopla, the cover seems both
more interesting (the books at the boy's feet are by Iceberg Slim and
Malcolm X and Goines) and less scary ("Mom" looks an awful lot like Ice-
T's wife, Darlene) than what they've led us to believe.
For three weeks now, I've been walking around with Ice-T. And, I liken
the experience to speedballing (what euphoria, what dips), a reasonable
metaphor given the revved, late addition of "It's On." Here, dope rhymes
are again the product that must make it onto the street; only this time, as Ice
—
Cube who's part of the Syndicate production gang tells T, "The —
organization says it can't stay in business with us any longer." Warners as
the connection gone bad; illicit language as a trafficked, hungered-for fix —
like it, I like it a lot. I was deliriously up: these beats, the steady clips of
humor. For enough days to suggest that this was a great album, Home
Invasion remained invigorating.
It took more listens than I kept count of before a couple tracks began to
exhibit mettle fatigue, though even now their dead-on funny moments come
back to me (Evil E: "And my yellow nigga Ice-T" T: "That's me, ho," or,
"To all the virgins, thanks for nothing" maybe you have to be there).
. . .
That the three songs that show their wear are subcontracted out to Evil E,
Brother Marquis from 2 Live Crew, and a fourteen-year-old gangsta B
named Grip is just one more structural nuance that would expose a
fabulous free-associative logic if it weren't so brilliantly planned. While Evil
E's "Pimp Behind the Wheels" is standard hardcore bitching, the
hyperbolically dirty and disrespectful "99 Problems (And a Bitch Ain't
One)" is an unbelievably amusing catalogue of Ice-T's tastes (needless to
say, they're broad), with Brother Marquis doing the nasty. Plus any song
that uses the rhyme caint and dead-ends criticism with "I got a bitch who's
a man/Because they're bitches too" is all right in my book, though I
412 lisa kcnnedy
wouldn't wanna go to the videotape. And since "99 Problems" is the most
boldly misogynist piece on the LP, it's followed immediately by Grip.
Each of Ice-T's own works is buoyed by hurried, anxious samplings of a
flute here, a piano or organ there, plus the requisite and comforting
automatic report, percussive tick, and bass thump that suggest a thoroughly
prickly waiting and riding, waiting and riding. Almost all of the lyrics at one
time or another assert that Ice-T Grand Pop Pop of this genre. "In case
is the
you forgot, I invented this gangsta shit," he threatens in "Watch the Ice
Break." Embedded in these tales of moving product, capping cops, grabbing
the mike,and ascending from "the depths of hell" is a quasi-Talmudic hip-
hop dialogue: a back and forth between younger hardcore rappers and the
master, a reading of pop hoes (both fans and "soft" rappers), tongue
lashings of square and parasitic journalists; the reclaiming of "street"
authenticity. Basically, Home Invasion is a primer to the concerns of the
hip-hop nation as brought to you by Source magazine. In hardcore right

now, even acknowledging white listeners is anathema; Ice-T goes way
beyond that: "And when this shit hits/There's gonna be a lotta whites
rolling with the Africans/You can't sweat skin/Cause they'll be a lotta blacks
down with the Republicans." "Racewar," a cautionary and surprisingly
inclusive track that goes beyond a narrow black nationalism to embrace all
races down with the struggle for justice, is sure to reignite the controversy
over hardcore's true mission and real "audience."
Some critics find Ice-T's allusions to his year in the gunsights too boastful,
too self-referential. Rap self-aggrandizing? Honey. It's far more interesting
to see this frequent vaunting as a product of a man reasserting his claim on a
boyz art (Ice-T at thirtysomething is becoming an Old G), of getting his
props. "Now they killed King/And they shot X/Now they want me/You
could be next." Sure "Message to a Soldier" could be another annoying
example of Malcolm X syndrome, had not a whole nation of men in blue, as
well as a president and VP, tried to economically off him. "To think that rap
wouldn't be attacked/Is ignoring the simple fact/That they never planned

for us to speak/They had meant to keep the black man weak/But rap hit the
streets/Black rage amplified over dope beats/Now they want to shut us
down/And they don't fuck around." The science of this strategy session
falters only when T offers this (unwitting?) conundrum: "A lot of sisters got
a lot of knowledge they want to drop on our people/But right now they're
moving to shut down all hip-hop/The First Amendment had absolutely

nothing to do with black people." Say what? Why does this sound like one
more way of saying, which rappers do with great frequency, "Get thee
behind me, bitch. Swallow my line but don't bite."
rock she wrote 413
>**<
This is the second half of the ride, the drastic mood swing down into
what DJ Nitro calls, in "Depths of Hell," the "reality thing." The necessary
plunge into the swamp of resonant meanings that goes with the hip-hop
territory. How much easier it would have been if Home Invasion was the
standard narcissistic gangsta growl, if I hadn't found some room in it for my
own pleasure and dis-pleasure (for if I haven't already said it, let me take
this moment to say, Fuck tha police, Fuck tha police, Fuck tha police. And
I'm a square, kind of bourgie peacenik lesbian, but, fuck tha police).
And while my initial response to a line (oft repeated throughout the
hardcore kingdom) like "A ho is a ho, a bitch is a bitch, a nigga's a nigga,"
is, Does that mean if the ho fits, buy the spade too? I can appreciate the full
injunction, the linguistic, let's-move-on-already of it:
Press, get the fuck out of my fucking face

I ain't got no more time to waste
A bo is a ho, a bitch is a bitch, a nigga's a nigga
I'm through explaining the shit
You just making me backtrack
Plus everyone of my true fans totally understands a nigga like Ice
Muth a fucking T.
Still, hip-hop, and in particular gangsta rap, have made great claims on
reality (code for "the black experience") and rage. While insisting that it is
not a hermetically sealed art, that it is in constant dialogue with the Street,
much hip-hop has attempted to control the parameters of reality. On a good

day, this makes me claustrophic and sad, on a bad day, positively angry. To
borrow a phrase, reality used to be a friend of mine too. When did it start
belonging exclusively to black men somewhere between the ages of thirteen
and twenty-five? Which doesn't mean so much "shut up" as "I listen to you,
you listen to me." "This is real to me," says Ice-T in memory of homeys lost
last year to gang-banging, but I can count the same number of friends lost to
AIDS, and no truce in my future. Imagining an out hardcore rapper

there's
who'd sample Sylvester, Karen Carpenter, and Patti LaBelle does make me
feel better, though.
But for now, I'm tired of carrying another person's anger; something
about a culture shaped by the market means that I carry a lot more than I
am carried. Call me ahistorical, call me fed up. I understand and am
protective of the uncontestable quality of experience —the thisness of it is
414 lisa kennedy
precisely what makes criticism so hard. So as an alternative to a brooding

sociological melancholy brought on by the noise, I'd like to reclaim a little
of my own anger and doubts by sharing a bit of my reality-based week.
Some power and the pain of hip-hop (and its answer print, the
of the
boyz-life films) comes from its tenacious hold on blackness (rendering it
male and pissed); much of the rest of it comes from the way that it's
cornered the market, the way it muscled its way onto and has dominated
the playing field, the one loosely deemed "the black aesthetic." Yo, hand me
my cellular phone! Quick, buy up all the shares of anger! To market, to
market, to snuff a fat pig! That'll play even in Peoria.
It's hard, explaining the way a black woman, me, can get snagged on the
barbs of everyone else's meaning all because of a tape, a couple of movies,
and a train ride. With Home Invasion as the soundtrack to the daily, I went
about my business. I CB4, and there was Ice-T
slipped into a screening of
fooling around. The movie does what heretofore seemed taboo: makes fun
of the poses of the posses, jokes about the dizzying declension of hard,
harder, hardest in hardcore. It expresses sweet nostalgia for the old school
but zero contempt for the New Jack. As is the way with comedy, terror was
nil; my own fear of an exclusively black male planet was abating. Rap's
sacred angrier-than-thou vibe had been razzed. The softcore lesson of CB4:
my subjectivity can coexist with this.
Days later, the Menace II Society screened. Another

soon-to-be-released
"reality-based" making of a South Central OG, it's
drama about the
powerful and bone-wearying. Another "that's how I'm living" take on
brutality, it's debilitating. My precarious, super tottering practice is
balancing an at times logical, at times inchoate, anger with compassion; I
know I am not alone in doing this. And it makes me extraordinarily
vulnerable to OPP, other people's problems. Once again a movie that limits
black culture to the conflicted texts of teenagers; it led to a "bad race" day,
and it made Ice-T unlistenable.
Taking seriously the language of pure ghetto anger, as T tags it, has a
cost, and it's a lot more than the price of a ticket, or the CD. It can cost your
soul. All you enablers of black rage, you consumers of massive doses of B-
boy fury, should chew on this.
The brother said "pussy" and the older woman next to me flinched. It
was the bozo mack's second salvo of an upped disregard for the rest of us,
and even his friends, who moments before had been talking as much shit,
were now asking for something more decorous. No such luck. Just another
day on the BMT. The black women sitting within earshot of these three
stooges fell silent, even more silent then we had been before the pussy
rock she wrote 415
whipping, because since these brothers got on they had been getting off on
being loud and big. Of course it didn't end there; between Eighth and
Thirty-fourth streets there are twenty-six blocks and three station stops,
more than enough time to harangue an old guy about being homeless.
"Street News [emphasis on the street]!?" "Not the kind of street you
mean." Yeah, you right about that. Why don't you get a job? Blah blah
blah.
When these chunkheads finally departed, there was much relief. A lovely
sista, with gold hoops and a great lipstick, stood up to leave. "Ain't that
something telling that homeless man how to get a job, and here they were
talking about robbing stores, and getting some g's." A few seconds later, a
pretty little girl sat down with her mother where da fellas had been. "I'm
just gonna look at it." Pause. "You can look at it through the plastic."
Pause. "I'm just gonna look at it." Easter chocolate and a five-year-old. I'm
telling you this story so you know that there are routines that move me and
there are routines I can do without.
Language has intimacy, not just nut-grabbing anger. Home Invasion
finesses rage and gangsta melodrama and in doing so leaves something for
me. Of course, there's profound optimism buried not too deeply in a few of
Ice-T's lyrics. His missive to his city, his former nabe, in light of its truce,
"Gotta Lotta Love" is at once celebratory and edgy. (Ice Cube's similarly
themed "It Was a Good Day" is, finally, a little less generous and a lot more
self-centered.) The video is even better for the on-cameras with South
Central residents, crowding onto the street because they can —moms,
homeys, girlfriends, gangbangers speak astounded relief and grief and hope.
It's not often in hardcore that a love that's neither softcore nor nasty reigns
supreme.
SOUND
AND VISION
—
Ellen Willis, "Records: Rock, Etc./'

The JNTew Yorker, July 6, 1968.
As one of the most prominent female rock critics of the sixties

and the only one whose name continues to be evoked as part of
the genre's pantheon, Ellen Willis pioneered a personal yet
highly intellectual critical approach. Her New yorker column
translated the music's meanings into terms that would appeal to
more supposedly "highbrow" readers; but as this column
demonstrates, Willis never compromised her wry sense of
humor and her passion for the music.
he sociology of rock and postrock has been based on three concepts:

the star, the sound, and the scene. That sociology, like most, is firmly rooted
in economics. Since the simplicity that gave rock its mass appeal also made
it relatively easy to create, performers and the businessmen behind them
faced a problem familiar to the makers of cigarettes and cars: How do you
outsell a horde of competitors whose products are as good as yours? The
solution was equally familiar: attractive packaging. The crucial elements in
the package were charisma and sound —the artist's trademark, the gimmick
that unified His work and set it apart (Little Richard's scream, the Everly
Brothers' close harmonies, the Beatles' falsetto). If a performer or group did
not have a unique sound, it helped to identify with a collective sound
usually that of a subculture (rockabilly, the Mersey sound) or of a creative
producer (Phil Spector, Berry Gordy). I do not mean to conjure up the

—
4f20 ellen Willis
specter of hucksters sitting around the Brill Building cold-bloodedly in-

venting salable gimmicks. Sometimes worked that way. But mostly the
it
process was unconscious: performers whose personal style was naturally

gimmicky, or whose managers understood intuitively how to get attention,
survived and bred imitators. Actually, before rock 'n' roll became self-
conscious, commercial and aesthetic considerations were almost indistin-
guishable; the geniuses of that period, from Chuck Berry to the early Beatles
and Stones, owed their greatness to the same qualities that made them best-
sellers. (Presley was an exception, and he ended up in Hollywood singing
ballads.)
The Beatles were transitional figures. For one thing, their charisma was
much more interesting than that of any previous rock 'n' roll star. Their
image —that androgynous, childlike insouciance, the way they reveled in
their fame and wealth without ever taking it or themselves seriously —sold
records, which what Brian Epstein had in mind when he made them wear
is
mop tops and Edwardian suits. But it was also a comment on success, an
embodiment of ingenuous youth in the affluent society and "comments" —
and "embodiments" are, after all, aesthetic categories. Similarly, the
Beatles' sound —
a deliberate attempt not to sound black, contrary to cus-
—
tom was at once a commercial novelty and an artistic self-assertion. These
developments fascinated Pop artists and others for whom the aesthetic sig-
nificance of commercial phenomena was a major preoccupation enter the —
first self-conscious rock fans. The Beatles were also responsible for the
bohemianization of rock. The concept of the rock "scene" a term bor- —

rowed from jazz and implying an elite In group as much as a place
originated in Mod London and spread to San Francisco. Rock became
identified less with particular superstars or sounds than with a whole life-
style; "psychedelic" music was not so much a sound as a spirit. In 1965, the
average person, asked to associate to the phrase "rock 'n' roll," would
probably have said "Beatles"; by 1967 the answer would more likely have
been "hippies," "drugs," or "long hair." When American bohemians took
up rock, they brought along their very unBeatlish distinctions between art
and Mammon, and for the first time people talked about "serious," as
opposed to merely commercial, rock. Yet if it was
such talk was possible,
only because the Beatles (with a lot of help from Bob Dylan) had paced a
miraculous escalation in the quality of pop songs. Since Sgt. Pepper, few
people deny that "serious" pop is serious art. And though there is still some
overlap, the split between the AM-radio-singles-teenie market and the FM-
LP-student-hippie-intellectual audience is a fact of life.
With this evolution has come a shift in the way the music is perceived.
rock she wrote 421
There is, for example, an unprecedented demand for technical virtuosity.

Good musicianship was once as irrelevant to rock as
was rare; the whole it
point of electric guitars and dubbing and echo chambers was that kids with
no special talent could make nice noises. But now the music has enough
scope to attract excellent instrumentalists, as well as an audience interested
in traditional criteria of quality. Not that this audience's taste necessarily
lives up to its pretensions; often flash is mistaken for skill. Still, a few years
ago would have been impossible for an Eric Clapton or a Mike Bloomfield
it
to make it in pop music on the strength of fine guitar playing. The new
audience also favors complex music and lyrics a trend that threatened to —
get totally out of hand until Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" provided some
timely propaganda for simplicity. What all this adds up to is an increasing
tendency to judge pop music intrinsically, the way poetry or jazz is judged.
Social context is still important, as it is for most art. But although social and
economic factors were once an integral part of the rock aesthetic — indeed,
defined that aesthetic —they are now subordinate to the "music itself."
On balance, in spite of all the good music would never have hap-
that
pened otherwise, I think this tendency is regrettable. What it means is that
rock has been coopted by high culture, forced to adopt its standards — chief
of which is the integrity of the art object. It means the end of rock as a
radical experiment in creating mass culture on its own terms, ignoring elite
definitions of what is or is not intrinsic to aesthetic experience. The reason

the Beatles, the Stones, and Dylan are the unchallenged —and probably
unchallengeable — giants of pop is that through and beyond their work their
personalities have a continuing impact on the public consciousness that, if it
is not aesthetic, is something just as good. (This is especially true of Dylan,

an indifferent musician who never bothered to become a studio expert.) The
new standards are bound to inhibit further exploration in this area. In
addition, lack of a compelling image puts the new performer at an almost
insuperable disadvantage in trying to make an impression on a public
whose imagination is deeply involved with established artists. At best, new
performers are taking longer to be recognized, and fewer and fewer will
attain that special relationship to the public psyche that is so often uncom-
prehendingly dismissed as "mere celebrity." I'm thinking, for example, of
the Sweet Inspirations, a Gospel-oriented quartet whose first album came
out a while ago. They're great, and by all rights should take over the
position of preeminent girl group last held by the Supremes and before that
by the Shirelles. But though they have a hit single ("Sweet Inspiration"), I
doubt that they make that pinnacle. So what? Well, part

will of the fun of
listening to the Supremes was that they were the Supremes.
422 ellen willis
A related problem is the loss of the mass audience. Whether the upgrad-
ing of the music is in itself responsible for that loss is questionable. The
Beatles held the loyalty of their original teenage fans long after they had
stopped making simple, happy dance music; when the kids finally turned
off, it was less because the Beatles were esoteric than because they were old
hat. More recently, the Doors and Jefferson Airplane have done very well
outside the coterie. Jimi Hendrix, on the other hand, has not, though he has
all the accoutrements of the superstar —a distinctive personality (he's the
only expatriate black hippie around), a distinctive sound (achieved by

choke-neck playing on the electric guitar), and a spectacular live act (he
plucks his guitar with his teeth, sets fire to it, and breaks it up). What is
certain is that the new music has thoroughly confused the record industry;
no one can figure out how to promote it. Since the beginning of this year,
the sheer quantity of serious pop, as well as its immense variety, has defied
sloganeering. Most of the new musicians are not interested in gimmickry or

image-making; they just want to make music. It's no longer possible to
attract notice with a fancy album cover and a way-out name. And the scenes
are dying. The Small Faces are the only interesting British group to break
since Cream. The best first albums of this year's San Francisco crop come
from two of the original underground groups, the Loading Zone and
Quicksilver Messenger Service; except for a little-known group called Ser-
pent Power, and Blue Cheer, which has a certain crude energy going for it
(what I mean is, it's loud), the "second generation" San Francisco groups
are a disaster. Early this year, MGM Records, out of naivete or desperation,
tried to invent a new scene, and a few other companies went along. It was
called the Boston Sound (though there was no special sound involved) and
was promoted as antidrug and antiexotic —rather negative premises on
which The groups themselves were a dreary lot, ranging
to build a scene.
from the competently frenetic Beacon Street Union to the sublimely ridicu-
lous Earth Opera. (By the time the EO album was released, the vibrations
were pretty bad, so the group was billed as a Cambridge product. It didn't
help.) Moral: scenes may be made, but they have to be born first.
For the sake of completeness, I ought to note that there are two areas of
pop music in which sociology still dominates. First, negative charisma is
very potent. A group that is thought of as a teenybopper band won't be

accepted by most serious rock fans no matter how good it is. Ask someone
in the audience at the Fillmore East what he thinks of the Hollies or the
Young Rascals. Second, there is a minor cult of sensitive adolescent folkies
rock she wrote 423
like Tim Buckley and Steve Noonan, for no reason I can discern except that
they are probably just like the kids who idolize them. In the case of Richie
Havens, the attraction must be that he is black and friendly —an irresistible
combination these days.
Roberta "Robbie" Cruger,
"Flashbacks to Boy Howdy's
Prepubescence," Creem, 1994.
For many women, admission to the glamorous rock 'n' roll life-
stylehas come at the cost of hard, menial labor. Here, Robbie
Cruger, who transformed her job as typist at Creem into a gig as
the magazine's film critic, recalls the crazy days of
overindulgence and excitement that made up this quintessential
rock mag's glory years.
ttryi
JLypist who likes rock 'n' roll." The classified ad screamed my
name. I'd just been kicked out of Catholic school. Love beads and mocca-
sins didn't match the uniform. So in ripped bellbottom jeans, long ironed
hair, and a fringed suede vest, I sat in the Traffic Jam Cafe attempting to
pass for a cool college coed, sipping cider and reading The Fifth Estate,
Detroit's leftist underground paper. I picked it up poking around a head

shop on campus where I bought clove cigarettes. It was the late sixties. I was
not so sweet sixteen.
It was a dream job, nearly. The next week, I was working for Barry
Kramer's management/publicity/booking agency. The first day, I got to

drive a band to a baby Woodstock or Altamont-type festival at the tip of
Michigan's thumb, heading to heaven on the ride up. Kramer, a charismatic

entrepreneur, had recently launched Creem, the rock rag of the city's alter-
— S
rock she wrote 42
native press. was the city's version of the Boston Phoenix, New York's
It
Crawdaddy, and of course, San Francisco's Rolling Stone, but with an

intense edge, as only the Motor City could proffer.
Hanging with local rock royalty, I skipped homework in order to stuff
press kits for an up-and-coming Meat Loaf, finish typing a contract for an
aspiring Bob Seger, and arrange transportation for an unknown Alice
Cooper's crew. I was a willing slave working to get ahead —and get into the
Grande Ballroom to see Iggy and the Stooges for free.
Creem was a wild and wacky family. Publisher Barry and Dave Marsh,
the editor, were bickering parents. Charlie Auringer, the art director, was
like some sibling looking on, silently brooding. Another "brother," Richard
Seigel, played house hippie and circulation czar. I was kindly called The
Rudder, by author/professor Greil Marcus, and received my androgynous
pen-name "Robbie" around then.
Detroit wasn't big on peace and love, exactly. That
was nearby Ann
Arbor's domain, home of John Sinclair's Rainbow Coalition Party. The
Motor City carried a mean demeanor, more of a "Not So Easy Rider."
Tough. Rough enough to intimidate, but not harm. If San Franciscans
draped themselves in Indian prints, Detroiters wore combat boots with
crushed velvet. Exuding a biker vibe, Creem lived up to this reputation. Its
soul seared. Its heart beat hard.
A stone's throw from the Motown studios, Creem's complex was a
strange setup, three stories in some sort of industrial warehouse of concrete
and cast iron. It had seen glory days long before the huge plate glass win-
dows collected a coat of filth and the series of small dingy bedrooms in a
house attached to the back filled with ratty Salvation Army leftovers.
Barry's lair was upstairs, next to Mitch Ryder's rehearsal hall. We'd work
all day — —
and night to the updated strains of "Devil With a Blue Dress"
blasting from above.
Lester Bangs arrived like a lost cartoon character, his suitcase really
wrapped in rope and wearing a wide goofy grin. His writing reputation
preceded this gawky image of a Jehovah's Witness shoe salesman from El
Cajon, California. Like John Belushi, he became the guest who never left.
He probably planned it all along. As staff expanded, pages of copy grew.

Ongoing arguments with the printer over the use of foul language were
the norm. Finally, an expurgated issue came out. Article after article with
deleted expletives fucks and shits were replaced with blank spaces. Piles of
the paper from the distributor filled the floors as the controversy of the
censorship mounted. The shock quickly turned to fuming retaliation. No
426 roberta "robbie" cruger
payment —certainly the account was already in arrears. A panicked search

for a new printer began.
That's about when the format changed over to a slick magazine style.
Were we selling out? Just because we went glossy didn't mean we weren't
irreverent anymore or hip. Breaking the barriers, the Jackson 5 went on the
cover, showing the diversity of rhythms Creem represented. A new and
improved fanzine hybrid, we used the phrase America's only Rock V Roll
Magazine to distinguish it from Rolling Stone. Pretending we didn't look
over our shoulder at the number-one competition was a steadfast yet unspo-
ken intention. Our readers appeared to be everytown's weirdos, wiseguys,
and crackpot kids who read William Burroughs inside algebra textbooks.
Ben Edmonds, an urbane Boston surfer, as he was lovingly referred to,
appeared so quietly, he fit in perfectly as an integral part of this menagerie,
seemingly taciturn as if attempting to stay invisible. It wasn't difficult. Con-
sidering Lester's clownish outrageous profile, Dave's hysteria, Barry's tan-
trums, and Dave's battles with Barry for control over editorial, covers,
direction, and whatever other excuse they unearthed —anyone appeared
calm by comparison. My bitchiness developed as a result, to be heard over
the din of pissing egos and as a reaction against Barry's abusive bouts,
which mounted as my writing contributions increased.
Jumping at any opportunity, I boldly ventured with an audacious sugges-
tion to guest-write Dave's editorial column when he flew off to New York
on assignment. It was a cute piece about being a Creemette or something
equally self-deprecating, accompanied by a photo of me kissing the air. Yet
I'd let my true vocation sneak out of hiding, revealing my purpose for
enduring all the administrative crap. Paid my dues. However, the skeletal
crew demanded I don the sous chef's hat and still remain bottle washer,
dryer, and recycler.
A constant barrage of cryptic comments created a contest of "beat this

jab." The climate was exhilarating but debilitating. A necklace
of cleverness
of cowrie shells and leather might entice a "Hanging with Ted Nugent
lately?" kind of jibe. Compliments were verboten. Damning with faint
praise was barely acceptable. But Barry also possessed a huge heart he
showed in moments of weakness to offset his occasional tirades, surfacing
with supportive advice, a thoughtful gift, a shoulder massage, sharing some
cool song, or sincerely soliciting feedback.
As the first female writer, I felt lucky but was getting thrown bones — like
Carly Simon reviews. Stuff the fellows wouldn't touch, that smacked of
dubious merit yet needed to be assigned anyway if it could be destroyed
properly. At least I discovered Bonnie Raitt and interesting esoteric stuff,
rock she wrote 427
but I was tired of the castoffs from the girl's gulag of the reject pile. Itwas
lip service under the guise of feminism. In the early days of the woman's
movement, this seemed like progress from previous unconscious machismo,
when men used the so-called sexual revolution to their own means, accusing
women of not being liberated if they wouldn't jump in bed with them.
It galled me that despite the ideals of the sixties, the rock 'n' roll realm
had institutionalized groupies, sanctioned exploitation with freebie hook-
ers. Shattered dreams were the norm now, however, and cynicism sunk in.
My favorite rationalization was Creem's brief association with Oui, supply-

ing the music section for a lucrative fee. I wouldn't have been surprised if
Lester stooped to write the Pussy Pets copy that accompanied the spreads.
Surely I was considered a prude. Lester stopped calling me the Midwest
Milkmaid.
Now mind you, I'm embarrassed to admit in my naivete, I didn't quite get
our name's double entendre, the sexual innuendo in R. Crumb's Mr. Dream
Whip cover —where a spray can comic figure smothers a voluptuous babe in
"creem" as she moans for more. What did I think? She couldn't wait for
another issue? I honestly thought it was
euphemism for Eric Clapton's
a
band, like San Francisco's music mag referred to Mick Jagger's group. If I
asked, I'd appear the cretin. Perhaps I blushed subliminally at the infer-
ences. After all, sex was blindly celebrated at our age, not shameful or
tainted —much less lethal.
I turned from an innocent schoolgirl to an antiwar, cause-provoking

demonstrator and then into a jaded college dropout virtually overnight.
Breaking down to the pressure from the magazine's cohorts: a professional
writer now, associated with some of our generation's most erudite journal-
ists, who needs a degree? This education provided real learning. Creem
—
became my life, albeit an abnormal one not just a job but an adventure. I
shifted to my passion, obsession, and former major editing the media —
section, reviewing movies, while still typing Barry's letters and sending bills
to record label ad departments with tearsheets. Woman's work is never

done.
Jaan Uhelszki jumped aboard. A female comrade in this testosterone
soup. We bonded and remain fast friends today. As circulation manager, we
called her the Subscription Kid. Although we shared most of the office
work, taking the vestiges of sexism for granted, we never added on kitchen
duties or latrine cleaning in our spare time. We wrote after hours. That's
probably why the place was such a gross mess. But Jaan always kept one
foot safely out in the "real" world, maintaining an escape hatch in case the
imminent danger exploded into a violent display against the walls, damag-
ing equipment or bodies. She managed to juggle all her lives with aplomb.
She even handled a relationship with a key player of the staff.
What did you think? was not immune to this and began "dating"
I, too,
Dave, so to speak. It was a commune, kinda, and though we never grew
organic veggies, we did spend most of our waking hours with each other.
Partly because we were loyally dedicated to making a contribution to this
special publication we'd created together, partly because we were young
and dumb and probably also under Barry's Napoleonic spell.
The masthead was now bursting at the seams. As was fashionable in the
early seventies, we moved to the country. Barry unearthed two horrible

houses in the sticks, catty-corner from each other in a one-cow town called
Walled Lake. His home sat on a hundred-acre horse farm with a drive-in
theater at the far end. It was shared with his wife Connie, Charlie, Dave,
and a sweet flea-infested German Album and the Who's
shepherd. The Yes
Who's Next played incessantly that humid summer. Barry, Jaan, and I
first
crammed into claustrophobic quarters outside his bedroom to attend to our

more mundane responsibilities as Dave banged away on the Royal in his
room below.
Like a possessed elf, he would bound up the stairs and bounce around,
ebullient over some dazzling opinion, profundity, or witty turn of phrase,
gleeful with an astute analogy he'd conjured, captivated with a pithy cap-
tion, an inventive view. He was alarmingly bright, and his unbridled enthu-
siasm was contagious. David bordered on fanatical, in fact, but didn't limit
his exuberance to his own and praise
inspirations, giving equal recognition
to others' penetrating wisdom. Ideas rampantly rooms of Creem's
filled the
creative cesspool, spilling out brilliance perhaps. Unless it was actually just
jerking off. Too young to be pompous yet, the atmosphere was a touch
pretentious, self-congratulatory, and indulgent when it took itself seriously.
After all, it's only rock 'n' roll.
Someone would announce over dinner in one of the regular haunts in

Greektown: If John Lennon is the new Chuck Berry, that means Paul Mc-
Cartney replaced Little Richard. Lester would frown, contemplate it, burp a
condescending approval, and add, "Let's see, that makes Captain Beefheart
to rock what Thelonious Monk was to jazz." Gears shifted in our heads to
respond with a topper; an acerbic retort was always the preferred choice.
We stayed on our toes while Lester always kept us laughing lots.
By 1972, the days of and incense shops were well over. So were
be-in's
the acid casualties, it seems, replaced by updated designer drugs to deaden
the anguish of resisting adulthood. The prevailing sense of dreariness in the
Midwest never shared the Left Coast's laid-back scene: it instead blasted
rock she wrote 429
back a fight for our rights. The contempt that built up during the struggle
reached heights of rage that Creem echoed completely. Our political heroes
were slain. Music idols gone. Wehad experienced a special era that ended
with Nixon's triumph. No one would have imagined then that the following
twenty years would be a nearly exclusive Republican government. Yet the
seeds were planted.
When local icon John Sinclair got "ten for two" (a ten-year prison sen-
tence for two joints), everyone was enraged. It gave new meaning to the
anthem track of his seminal prepunk band the MC5 — "Kick Out the Jams
(Motherfuckers)." The pigs won the war. (I discovered years later that my
car was marked in an FBI file for associating with this counterculture agita-
tor's vehicle.)A benefit concert starring John and Yoko attempted to rally
our Music always gave us a lift. It was medication.
spirits.
Our lives had been changed by music, maybe saved. Inspired by such
Dylan lyrics as "the vandals took the handles" or knocked out by Hendrix,
Zeppelin, Howlin' Wolf ... the list is endless. It expressed our youthful
ideals and our subsequent anger at not reaching them. We distinctly felt a
necessary part of a chapter in history, as if we were making a difference by

challenging the status quo. Something important was occurring and a
revolution was at stake. Like the future's bigger brother, we were willing to
take our parents' and society's licks so the world would be a better place.
"Turn it down" made us increase the volume. Humor was our safety valve
— it helped give us perspective, relieved the tension. Creem tapped into this
situation, connecting the dotted lines, trying to make sense of it and find our
place in it all.
There was a sense that we felt fortunate to contribute to this legacy, an

excitement akin to Liverpool, Memphis, a Seattle of the seventies, or any
burgeoning center of talent. The synergy of ideas spawned in this fertile
environment was a product of the uniquely displaced times. Fearful of the
was paramount. Subject to
creative charge dissipating, avoiding the flaccid
heavy neurotic tendencies and fueled by adverse conditions, we were free to
be raw and unchecked. The inmates were running the asylum —immature,
to be sure, but writing was an outlet that kept us from self-destructing.
Bangs did bingein the 'burbs, however. He'd sit bobbing his head to
Velvet Underground or Black Oak Arkansas or hollering along to James
Brown for inspiration. His cockapoo puppy danced in circles for attention
in front of him. Earphones spared the household during these weekends.
We'd walk by, ignoring him, convinced he wasn't from the same planet. By
Monday morning, the den, where he'd camp next to a stereo, smelled of his
ripe oxidation. The wall was lined with empty pints of Rebel Yell. He'd
finally pass out with some megatreatise strewn about him, drummed out in
an overnight spurt that magically linked the above acts into a cohesive
concept. He blinded everyone with his prolific pieces that defied editing. He
just couldn't stop himself, in a number of ways.
The editors left the Haggerty hovel as bedrooms became office space and
we hauled out to a gentrified nuevo ricbe enclave, nearer civilization.
Friends and music community dignitaries would drop by —deejays, record
company folks, and concert promoters. We'd discuss the latest releases,
debate if the "next Beatles" would be a woman.

When Barry, the man with a million vetoes, periodically vanished into
isolation, the personality dynamic combat focused be-
shifted. Professional
tween David and Lester. It rivaled sibling animosity and alternated with
respect. Then the domestic conflicts with David and myself must have made
the scene slightly stressful. It was a preview of MTV's soap, starring Beavis
and Lester. Just as Spinal Tap is closer to truth than not, Wayne and Garth
are too. Doors closed upstairs. Walking down the hallway, volumes com-
peted. Lester blaring Kraftwerk, Ben playing the Beach Boys, David blasting
Bruce, while I got lost in Billie Holiday's blues or the Buddy Holly sound-
track. The original spark burnt out.
Writing film criticism surfaced as a dubious trade. It was easier to write
—
negative pieces slamming with put-downs is more humorous and enter-
taining. Giving a complimentary review seemed suspicious and insincere,
lacking credibility. "The Critic" is expected not just to comment, but to dig
deeply in the process of analysis, to find fault with the material under
scrutiny. A judgment is required, deciding for others whether the movie,
music, play, etc., is worthy. I grew to hate this crusty position. Despite
making it a mission to question everything held sacred, it felt more and
more callous to destroy an artist's work. What about my own? As the irony
hit, my insights wore thinner.
When I decided to quit this club to finish school, it felt like a betrayal in
my own mind, at The nest held less pull. Although local acts were
least.
hitting it big, Don McLean's "the day the music died" began to appear
relevant. Disillusioned or increasingly bored, I went free-lance in order to
quit typing business memos part-time. As the next phase shaped up, Creem
started selling out volumes, apprehensive our edge might soften into Tiger
Beat. We grew up, and so did Boy Howdy.
It achieved tremendous success during the boom of the satin-jacketed,
limo-driven mid-to-late seventies, with special Metal editions, merchandis-
ing, and Boy Howdy beer and stuffed dolls. It came into its own, found its
voice unencumbered by restrictions or causes. Circulation multiplied expo-

rock she wrote 431
nentially, which meant more ad bucks and better access to stars. The flag
still waved. The previously meager salary turned to spare change. Jaan
became their best, most archetypal writer during those salad days. The
offices also abandoned the not-so-bucolic countryside for the swanky sub-
urbs. And the above scenario repeated itself with a different set of players, a
revised agenda.
Motown had moved to L.A. Smokey's Miracles broke up. Mitch Ryder
songs were relegated to oldies stations and Raceway commercials. Wood-
ward Avenue, previously a vital five-mile drag strip for cruising teenagers,
became a fast-food trailway. Detroit was the murder capitol of the country.
Times, they were a-changing, quickly.
With Barry's untimely death in '81 and then Lester accidentally passing
on, I had to endure the pain of unresolved relationships with unforgettable
men I felt unexpressed admiration and affection for. My shadows who
embodied abandonment. Their souls burned so hot, so fast. After reaching
their pinnacle prematurely and making their mark, did they care to sustain
the success or fear it failing? Besides missing these legends, I also lost touch-
stones from an era, my past, my youth. The shaken spirit I'd groped for,
crumbled. I write this article for readers wearing the same cork-soled plat-
form shoes I did, who are now the age I was when Creem was born. I
wonder if anyone can relate to these words, or if everyone can. If we've
come full circle or if nothing has really changed.
During a recent visit to my family, I returned to the places that reflected
our posthippie heyday. A 76 gas station stood where Barry's horse farm had
been, and a minimall replaced the editorial shack. A development of dull,
costly condos surrounds the former acreage. It was sad but appropriate.
Detroit had gone from the country's third-largest city to an industrial ghost
town since I'd lived there. Maybe it will rise from the ashes.
Hindsight is only twenty-twenty if you're wearing rose-colored glasses.
As my memory of the precocious Creem days waxes nostalgic, a victim of
selective amnesia, it's wrapped in a bubble. Paying tribute, I recall an un-
conventional mixed bag of uncontainable fun, craziness, and fulfilled poten-
tial. A rare moment, too difficult to fully appreciate during those times
brief
of transition, from a rebellious prime to a repressed future. Truly, when
"Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll" ruled, the facade of glamour was realized
but unreal.
Lori Twersky, "Why Bitch?"
Bitch, August 1985.
There wasn't anything like Bitch before it crashed onto the scene
with its first issue, from which this statement of purpose is
lifted, and there hasn't been anything like it since. Wide
ranging in its musical scope, relentlessly opinionated, funny,
and smart, this newsletter spearheaded by the late Lori Twersky
proved how vibrant the combination of feminism and rock
attitude could be.
B
SAME.
ecause lots of what gets written about women in rock is ALL THE
I'm bored with sexist "Chicks ain't rockers" articles.

I'm bored with mainstream "Wow, chicks can play" rock articles.
Especially since they all seem to mention the same ten women over and
over again, creating the impression that no other women in rock exist.
Never any surprises here — if one of these writers ever mentions a female
musician in their inevitable sixties retro section, I'll send flowers. Some have
discovered eightieswomen musicians, writing things like "Wow! That Joan
Jett! How amazing for a woman to break through sexist training and dis-
cover that she has fingers!" Special mention must be made of the Newsweek
(March 4, 1985) "Women in Rock" cover story, which managed to mention
ONLY vocalists in the text, completely ignoring female musicians except for
some pix (Joan Jett; Chrissie Hynde with guitars; Sheila E. at a drum; Go-
rock she wrote 433
Gos sans instruments). Newsweek hasn't yet discovered that women have
fingers.
I'm bored with feminist "Wow, women can play rock" articles.
Again, no surprises. All reviews of women rockers by feminist publica-
tions end up saying the exact same things; "So and so is a feminist and a
good role model. So and so What on earth is this obsession with role
isn't."
models, instead of people? It's too much like "All women should live solely
to be good examples to their kids." Well, I am not my sister's role model. I
promise I won't be your role model, if you promise you won't be mine.
Just as I'm bored with the slighting of women musicians, I'm bored with
rock mags slighting women vocalists.
Maybe this is due to people who believe in Rock as Truth, and therefore
want clear lines between it and Pop the Purveyor of Plasticism. I don't care,
but I've noticed that rock truthseekers tend to put musician-dominated
material into rock, and vocalist-dominated material into pop, the idea being
that just being a vocalist isn't as real, truthful, gutsy, and street-credible as
wielding an instrument. Naturally, lots of women vocalists are then called
pop and not covered. I think male vocalists have it even worse here than
women do — critics seem quick to call a guy a wimp if he just sings, unless he
acts like a macho parody of a man to balance it out. One phooey result of
this attitude is that black women vocalists have been all but written out of
early rock history, many books on which mention no female involvement
until the sixties Girl Group sound. USA Today's capsule history of rock in
the early years (August 2), mentioned no women. Their discography men-
tions one: blues singer Big Mama Thornton. A rock 'n' roll hall of fame has
been announced, with a first awards presentation scheduled for January 20.
The list no women. Now, come on. There
of likely inductees contained
really were lots of influential black women R&B singers, honest, and we'll
—
run history pieces to prove it as well as pieces on women going through
revivals, such as the revivals of rockabilly singer Wanda Jackson and singer
Nina Simone, going on now in the U.K.
Lots of female acts don't get the coverage they deserve, for whatever
reason. We want to be where you can find info on any female rock artist, big
or obscure — from Madonna to Killer Koala, Girlschool to the Real Rox-
anne, Toyah to the Roches. We also want to cover things that aren't much
covered elsewhere, that seem pertinent: quirky fashions, groupies, dancing,
the influence of rock on women, kids and rock, and useful info for women
musicians. This is pretty vague,which means that we're free to run all kinds
of opinions, not just sexist or mainstream or feminist ones. If you don't see
434 lori twersky
an opinion that matches your own, write something and send it in. Be as
bitchy as you want to be (or don't want to be).
Bitch to us, bitch at us, bitch with us, bitch for us—that's what we're here
for.
Amy Linden, "Rodk Mom/'
NY Perspectives, July 31, 1992.
Rock mythology would lead us to believe that families are

antithetical to a libertine life-style: Mothers' rare appearances
in pop songs have been either as cautionary figures or objects of
incestual fantasy. But women have long known better. New york
Times contributor and rock 'n' roll mother Amy Linden explores
various stereotypes of rockmomdom and offers a peek at the
complicated reality.
S
'cause
o, it's
Sesame
about 4:30, maybe 5:00
Street is on (thank you, Lord,
p.m., yeah,
for cable)
it's got to be after 5:00
and Lucian is digging
his scene, and I am having what can be construed as a private moment
doing the dishes. Suddenly in he walks to get his umpteenth snack.
"No! I want that apple. I want that apple. No! I don't want that
don't
container of milk, I want that one. No! No! No! I want my daddy. You are
a doodyhead." I'm mulling over the pros and cons of putting my three-year-
old in military school, I'm this close to knocking his lights out, when the
phone rings.
The way my luck has been going, it'll be Mr. Big-Time-Rock-Mag Editor,
that faceless voice of employment who does me a major solid every few
months or so and actually returns my barrage of begging, pleading, when-
are-you-gonna-give-me-some-work calls just at the precise moment that my
tyke has transformed into Satan's offspring, producing an arena rock deci-
436 amy linden
bel level of crying in the background. Never one to back down from a
challenge, I shoot Lucian my best chill-out-or-move-out glance, and pick up
the receiver. "Hello?"
"We were just talking about you." It's Mary, the mom-unit publicist. Oh,
yeah? Great. Praising my bossness I can only hope. "Yeah." She laughs.
"We were talking about childbirth." Fab. Think Robert Christgau and you
get Dean of American Rock Critics. Chuck Eddy? Lester Bangs's heir. Amy
Linden? Breeder.
"Uh, gee, thanks," I say, as I try to kick all three-feet-plus going-on-forty-
pounds making the racket louder. This sort of

of kid out of the kitchen, only
chitchat is merely part of the Femme Bonding Thang we professional mom
types do with each other, so I can't get all that bugged about it, although I
wonder if male publicists (all three of them) and the guy writers talk about
guy stuff, like prostates.
"Yeah," Mary goes on, "when are ya gonna have another kid?" Another
kid? You mean to replace the one I'm about to sell for a Valium scrip? "Uh,
I suppose when I get laid again on a consistent basis. Ya got any artists
coming into town?" I am only kidding ... I would no sooner procreate

with a rock star, with the possible exception of Chris Isaak, who I just
wanna fuck, and Robbie Robertson, ditto, than vote Republican. "Sure,"
she says, and she names a guitar legend. A very talented dude, to be sure,
but don't all of his kids have some sort of genetic screwup? "You coulda
had your chance with Joe Blow," she laughs, naming a postmodern hero
who, rumor has it, has slept with the Yellow Pages. Weak DNA or a lifetime
of infidelity, how does a gal decide?
My chosen profession is not exactly the dating game. Most musicians
tend to be flaky, drug-damaged, self-centered, not really all that good-
looking, and short; in layman's terms, fairly low on the food chain. Fellow
journalists? Well, if and bad skin make you wet
flannel shirts Still, if . . .
after numerous cocktails or some sort of desperate need on your part to

lower your standards, you even think about sleeping with any of these
charming musically gifted sorts, especially if you meet them on a profes-
sional basis,you are branded a big-time skank and are doomed to write
capsule reviews for handout mags for eternity. "What do you feed your
son?" Mary asks. Huh? I'm trying to network here and she wants to know
about my son's dietary habits? "Why?" I go along with the game. "Is your
kid a fussy eater?" (Take mine, the human Hoover, I think). "Well," she
continues, "I feel so guilty cause I don't have time to prepare fresh veggies
for him," blah, blah, blah.
No matter how cool our gig might be, if we dare to not give our little
rock she wrote 437
spawnlings total attention all day, we are bad mothers, if we dare even for a
split second to choose our work (not even career, just work) over the kid,
like I am trying to do, as Lucian finally settles back down in front of the
tube, an apple and a rice cake clutched in his grimy paws. Okay, I'm weak,
but giving in sure is easier than, God forbid, disciplining him, and I need to
keep him quiet so I can hustle more work to make more money to buy more
apples.
I spend seventy-five percent of my day on the phone, and for the most
part the women I am talking with fit into two categories. There's the Career
Gal. Totally gig-obsessed, totally hip. Looks great, wears DKNY. Maybe a
Brit. If not, should be. She's kind, sweet, helpful. After all, being a publicist
is a perfect career move for us girls. It usually pays less than other record
company gigs, often involves being a high-grade, cool baby-sitter, and (big
plus) you get to kiss twenty-two-year-old prima donnas' butts; we've been
in training for it all our lives. Career Gals simply marvel at your ability to
raise a kid and wade through promo material at the same time. They can't
believe that you nursed while walking around the apartment with a
Walkman on. They are amazed that you can potty-train and discern be-
tween techno house and acid house. They secretly want kids, yet ask all
sorts of questions about weight gain, stretch marks, etc. When they call you
up to pitch you on some godforsaken alternative band, and the youngun is
screaming in the background, they say stuff like "Oh, is that a baby?" No,
it's a tape of a baby to ward off potential dates, like an attack dog. They
coo, "How cute." These chicks are in for a rude shock if and when they do
have kids, 'cause as any woman with a real kid at home knows too well,
cute ain't the word that comes to mind vis-a-vis a screaming child.
The second category is like Mary; the Guilt-ridden Mother. She envies the
fact that I "get" to stay at home and spend all this "quality time" with my
son (that's afterhim up from day care and throw him in front of the
I pick
TV) and is working will turn her kid into the
secretly terrified that her
future Jeffrey Dahmer. She eases her guilt by loading her kid up with hip,
but ultimately useless, promo items T-shirts, CDs, ashtrays which the — —
child simply destroys, or worse yet, ignores.
So, here I am, Rockmom: able (shit, forced) to conduct an overseas

phoner with some Next Big Thing and whip up a healthy meal for my kid,
all at the same time! Teaching my son how to count to four by blasting
Nirvana. But of course there is always a downside to this portrait of modern
motherhood. What am I gonna do if the first words Lucian learns how to
read turn out to be for promotional use only, not for resale}
Tiniiviel,
Kill Rock Stars press release, 1993.
The do-it-yourself philosophies of the women's movement and

punk converged in the early nineties at such women-run or co-
run labels as Queenie, K, Chainsaw, and Simple Machines.
Tiniiviel, a visual artist and designer, has played a pioneering
role in such ventures through her work at Kill Rock Stars (the
Olympia-based label for bands including Bikini Kill and
Bratmobile) and founding her own label, Villa Villakulla. The
following essay was distributed with Kill Rock Stars press
material for a record release.
was an
m
he was talking to
artist
.y neighbor was asking
and
me
it
he translated
made me sick. It
me about
it all to units
putting out records and
made me nauseous and

and product and he
I had
when
said he
to leave
his apartment. I went home and then I thought about why I put out records.
I don't think about units, I think about music, and when music was referred
to as product I was sick. It's the same with art, cuz it is art.
you see, I dont consciously have a plan about the records I put out. or
anything I do. I think a lot of it is a reaction to what is around me. It's away
of keeping sane. It's my way of dealing with things that upset me. I make
things and then I think about it. and then I realize that it was all a reaction
to fucked up stuff around me.
I've noticed that this is a pattern in my life to how i live, when something
rock she wrote 439
is kinda fucked around me, I withdraw and make something and only later
(sometimes years later) I realize that it was directly related to inhumaniza-
tion of art. It's so constant. It's why I quit art school. I never fit in cuz I
didn't care about galleries and I didn't understand why I didn't care about
galleries and thought that maybe I wasn't really a painter or artist and then
later I realized that galleries were a way of killing art.
I hardly ever went to museums. They depressed me. That was another
way which people told me I couldn't truly be serious about art cuz I never
went to see the old masters' work et cetera ARGHH yuck. I thought that
museums were full of dead art. I thought that they were like graveyards and
all the statues were screaming to be let outside and see the world and see the
people walk down the street and see the sun and feel the wind but they were
stuck indoors in temperature climate control environments, and the paint-
ings wanted to go to dinner parties and eavesdrop on some gossip and
instead they get a hush hush, look at the contrast in the tones and the
how lovely and oh the poor man was crazy
brushstrokes of pure feeling and
but he sure was talented, too much absynthe, you know AND YOURE
GODDAMNED RIGHT THERE WAS TOO MUCH ABSINTHE
AROUND AND MAYBE THERE WAS A REASON AND MAYBE THERE
ISN'T ENOUGH NOW!!!! oh fuck all cuz keeps happening over and it it
over so now i put out records and haven't had much time to paint since
august (what with all the other turmoil in my life).
maybe put out records cuz I don't

i like galleries and I don't like museums
and I don't like most other painters. It's hard to find the painters that are
cool cuz they are very secretive about their work and stay at home a lot. I
find noisemakers more easily, it's a more social art and I'm not the best at
being a complete recluse (though I am very reclusive). Music keeps me less
lonely.
I know that there is some sort of philosophy and theory in what I do cuz I
feel too strongly when people talk stupid shit around me. I can't usually
verbalize it. It's all feeling and instinct and reaction, survival methods,
maybe it's just a strong aesthetic. I don't like lies and I don't like ugly things.
I do like dissonance and discomfort, and I like cats and shiny things and
flowers and tequila and Jameson's and liquorice tea and Necco wafers and
food, like healthy wholesome food, usually the stuff I cook myself or that
my sister cooks, and I do like to paint even though I don't do that much of
it. But it's a really hard thing to do. I think it's one of the hardest things,
maybe cuz it's so personal, sometimes I cry when I paint but I don't really
know I'm crying and maybe I realize it later. It's a scary thing to do (paint),
and isolating. . . .
Susan McClary, "Same As It Ever Wag
Youth Culture and A/lugic,"
from Microphone Fiends, 1994.
Working in the staid held of musicology, Susan McClary

combines cultural studies and feminist theory to uncover the
political and social structures that contribute to music's
composition. Her work has been singularly pioneering.
Although she largely studies classical music, McClary also
occasionally turns to the popular; here, in a paper first
delivered at a Princeton conference in 1993, McClary considers
music's impact on the body, and the resulting panic it has
stimulated in arbiters of taste from Plato to the present.
A
music, I
.s
am
a historian who regularly studies the whole gamut of Western
tempted to mutter David Byrne's refrain "same as it ever was"
whenever some new scandal concerning youth music explodes onto the
pages of, say, Newsweek. For diatribes against the music produced by or for
the young pockmark the historical record back as far as Plato, whose an-
cient prohibitions rose again like the vengeful dead when the late Allan
1
Bloom used them to attack the musical tastes of his students in the 1980s.
Plato's apprehensions about music cluster around two principal issues,
both of which are reproduced virtually every time a controversy concerning

youth culture appears. First is the matter of authority. In his Laws he
explains that
rock she wrote 441
our once silent audiences have found a voice in the persuasion that they
understand what is good and bad in art; the old "sovereignty of the
best" in that sphere has given way to an evil "sovereignty of the
audience." Music has given occasion to a general conceit of universal
knowledge and contempt for law, and liberty has followed in their
train. To be unconcerned for the judgment of one's betters in the
assurance which comes of a reckless excess of liberty is nothing in the

world but reprehensible impudence. So the next stage of the journey
toward liberty will be refusal to submit to the magistrates, and on this
will follow emancipation from the authority and correction of parents
2
and elders.
Plato fears that unsanctioned music will instill a thirst for liberty (clearly
not a good thing in his estimation). Such music, he claims, encourages the
populace to value its own judgments and to resist authority, whether
familial or governmental. As he puts it most direly in the Republic, "a
change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all
our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling
of the most fundamental political and social conventions." 3
Plato's second set of anxieties involves the sensuous body as it can be
aroused by the musics of women or ethnic groups noted for their "laxness,"
such as the Lydians. What remain suitable for the Republic, then, are genres
of music dedicated either to the martial discipline of the Spartans or to the
moderate exchange of ideas through rhetoric. Plato tolerates music only
when it serves as a vehicle toward some hegemonic political end. Left to its
own devices (or to the dreaded "sovereignty of the audience"), music's

ability to appeal to the body will wreak havoc on society.
Denouncements of these twin threats —subversion of authority and
seduction by means of the body —recur as constants throughout music
history. Saint Augustine, who indulged prodigiously in the pleasures of the
flesh when he was young, is inclined to abolish music not only for himself
but for his entire flock. He writes concerning the effects of music in the
context of the liturgy:
I realize that when they are sung, these sacred words stir my mind to
greater religious fervor and kindle in me a more ardent flame of piety
than they would if they were not sung. . . . But I ought not to allow
my mind to be paralyzed by the gratification of my senses, which often
lead it astray. For the senses are not content to take second place.
Simply because I allow them their due, as adjuncts to reason, they
442 susan mcclary
attempt to take precedence and forge ahead of it, with the result that I
sometimes sin in this way. 4
Thus, even when serving to amplify holy words, the mere presence of music
can distract the attention from the spiritual realm and direct it back to the
sensuous body. Note especially the slippage between the body and sin in
Augustine and elsewhere in Christian writings, in which the most innocuous
of sensory responses seem to raise immediately the specter of unbridled
sexuality.
If authorities regard as suspect even the music that submits to official
guidelines, their reactions often verge on the hysterical when musicians
depart from tradition to introduce novelties into the mix. During the course
of the Middle Ages, the church hierarchy assailed most of the innovations
now treasured as the glories of Western music. For instance, twelfth-century
polyphony (the practice whereby several voices in the all-male choir sing
different parts simultaneously) is attacked thus by theologian John of
Salisbury:
Music sullies the Divine Service, for in the very sight of God, in the
sacred recesses of the sanctuary itself, the singers attempt, with the
lewdness of a lascivious singing voice and a singularly foppish manner,
to feminize all their spellbound little followers with the girlish way they
render the notes and end the phrases. Could you but hear the effete
emotings of their before-singing and their after -singing, their singing
and their counter -singing, their in-between-singing and their ill-advised
singing, you would think an ensemble of sirens, not of men; indeed,

it
such is their glibness that the ears are almost completely divested of
their critical power, and the which pleasureableness of so
intellect,
much sweetness has caressed insensate, is impotent to judge the merits

of the things heard. Indeed, when such practices go too far, they can
more easily occasion titillation between the legs than a sense of
5
devotion in the brain.
And finally, John Calvin:
We might be moved to restrict the use of music to make it serve only

what is and never use it for unbridled dissipations or for
respectable
emasculating ourselves with immoderate pleasure. There is hardly
anything in the world that has greater power to bend the morals of men
this way or that, as Plato has wisely observed. And for this reason we
rock she wrote 443
must be all the more diligent to control music in such a way that it will
serve us for good and in no way harm us. 6
One of the themes running through these citations is the fear of

emasculation. In a culture rigidly structured in terms of a mind-body split,
music's appeal to the body predisposes it to be assigned to the "feminine"

side of the axis. John of Salisbury's harangue (with its before-singing,
counter-singing, and in-between-singing) even presents a scarcely veiled
depiction of illicitly intertwining male bodies. 7 For Plato, Saint Augustine,
John of Salisbury, and Calvin, nothing less is at stake than masculinity itself
and, by extension, the authority of church, state, and patriarchy.

Up against this rigid history, we might expect the political Left to side
with the liberties evidently afforded by music as it escapes the restraints of
hegemonic circumscription. And so it has been in some cases. But as often
as not, the same apprehensions show up in the rhetoric of critics identified
with the Left as well, for anxieties over masculinity and mind-body
dilemmas are not the exclusive preserve of conservatives. Like Plato or
Augustine, the Left has often tried to harness music and channel its energies
toward pragmatic ends —most obviously in pseudofolk styles, which work
by implying an unmediated link with traditional roots while minimizing the
interference of the music itself. The political folk song is the Left's version of
the Calvinist hymn: words foregrounded to control "the meaning," music
effaced to the status of vehicle, all untoward appeals to the body eliminated.
Occasionally (most obviously in the writings of the Frankfurt School
critics) the music itself is analyzed as a terrain upon which social tensions
are enacted. Adorno's music criticism —which is unmatched as long as he
sticks to the German canon —traces the ill-fated metanarrative of
Enlightenment ideals as they collapse along the lines of their own internal
contradictions. For him the only game left in town by the 1930s is
modernism, which forswears beauty (now hopelessly complicit with

commodification) and resigns itself to inhabiting a thorny, dissonant style
that flaunts the agonies of alienation. Accordingly, he reacts with
extraordinary vehemence against jazz, which he regards as little more than
a product of the culture industry —one that has the effect of luring the heirs
of the idealist tradition from their habits of critical interrogation to

mindless, hedonistic reveling in the body. His extraordinary choice of
tropes at the climax of one of his jazz essays makes clear how much is at risk
—the loss not only of intellectual and cultural prestige, but also of virility
—
itself in this voluntary fall from grace:
—
444 susan mcclary
The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment,

a castration symbolism. "Give up your masculinity, let yourself be
castrated," the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and
proclaims, "and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which
z
shares the mystery of impotence with you."
To be sure, Adorno is arguing in his vituperations against jazz for the

continued preeminence of high art over popular culture. Yet those who
purport to speak for popular culture have often reproduced his fear of the
feminine, the body, and the sensual. Recall, for instance, the erasure of
women —whether the blues queens of the 1920s or groups of the early girl
sixties — from narratives, or the continuing devaluation of dance

historical
music as a pathetic successor to the politically potent music of the sixties
especially in the "disco sucks" campaign, where an underlying homophobia

is quite obvious, but also in the blanket dismissals of the many African-
American genres (including disco) that are designed to maximize physical
engagement.
Something of this suspicion of music is also discernible in the attempts by
many scholars of popular culture to marginalize the music itself, the better
to focus on lyrics, explicitly political concerns, ethnographic research on
reception, or issues involving the culture industry. Simon Frith, for
example, has recently claimed that the musicological study of popular
music (rap, in this case) "is more corrupting than its commercialization." 9
I would argue that there are at least two crucial reasons why the music
itself and its imagery have to be figured into the cultural studies project.
First, given the tendency in cultural studies to stress the radical idiosyncrasy
of each listener's musical perceptions, we need to ways of
find
understanding the socially grounded rhetorical devices by means of which
music creates its intersubjective effects; otherwise, the medium remains
privatized and mystified, impervious to cultural criticism. Second, without
some sense of shifting musical strategies and priorities, we cannot
adequately address issues of power or history as they involve music: we
cannot account for how musical styles, genres, conventions, artists, or songs
participate in social formation, nor for why battles over musical preferences
frequently are so bitter (see again the quotations from Plato and others
above). 10
From my perspective as a music historian, it seems to me that the music
itself — especially as it intersects with the body and destabilizes accepted
norms of subjectivity, gender, —
and sexuality is precisely where the politics
of music often reside. Without doubt, music's energies may be yoked
rock she wrote 44S
occasionally (as they were in the sixties) to a more explicitly political

agenda. Yet such moments count, I believe, as anomalous. For theorists of
popular music, the sixties may have been the worst thing ever to have
happened: because some small percentage of the music produced during
those few years articulated protests against the Vietnam War or class
oppression, our attention has been distracted from the issues more
consistently fought over in popular music —even during that paradigmatic
decade. More than that, in positioning the physicality of the music in
opposition to whatever the political substance of the "real stuff" was
supposed to be, such theories reinscribe the polemics against the body that
have characterized attempts at policing music throughout Western history.
A more productive approach to music —not pop, but
just music, all
including the ostensibly cerebral classical canon —would be to focus on its
correspondences with the body. Teresa de Lauretis has used the term
technologies of gender to refer to the ways in which film and other such
media participate in the cultural construction of what it means to be male or
female: she argues, in other words, that gender — far from being determined
by nature or biology — is produced and shaped by social discursive
11
practices. I want to propose that music is foremost among cultural
"technologies of the body," that it is a site where we learn how to
experience socially mediated patterns of kinetic energy, being in time,
emotions, desire, pleasure, and much more. 12
These patterns inevitably arrive already marked with histories — histories
involving class, gender, ethnicity; music thus provides a terrain where
competing notions of the body (and also the self, ideals of social interaction,
and so on) vie
feelings, for attention and influence. An emergent group often
announces its arrival first and most intensely in the ways its music
constitutes the body. 13 In predictable reaction, devotees of entrenched
genres frequently decry the heresy of the new as fiercely as did Plato, and for
similar reasons: to identify strongly with a particular style is to take it as
representing, quite simply, the way the world is; and people typically do not
relish having their world and its attendant values —especially aspects as
fundamental as perceptions of the body — pushed to the side as so much
debris. Yet for better or worse, this is how the ever-changing history of
Western music unfolds.
Although musical technologies of the body are frequently mediated
commercially, their commercial status in no way diminishes their impact.
Quite the contrary. Anxieties concerning music's relationship to money
appear at least as far back as the attempts by city officials to regulate the
urban minstrels who congregated in twelfth-century Paris in a special ghetto

446 susan mcclary
—the Tin Pan Alley of yesteryear. 14

Then as now, the problem is that what
feels so intensely authentic can be purchased for a price: we pay
professional musicians to push our buttons, which puts the enterprise
dangerously close to prostitution. And yet it has very often been the music
unleashed through and sustained by the commercial market —and largely
through appeals to the body —that has succeeded in altering Western
culture, whether the erotic madrigal that emerged with the printing press in
the 1500s or the public opera of seventeenth-century Venice that established

codes for depicting — better, constructing —what we take to be our own
most private feelings.
As Adorno's diatribe indicates, the most powerful musical influence in

the twentieth century worldwide has come from African-American
musicians, whose cultural traditions celebrate physicality without the
terrorism of the mind-body split that has so plagued European culture. Ever
since Okeh Records was persuaded to release Mamie Smith singing "You
Can't Keep a Good Man Down" in 1920, the music of African-Americans
has been bought and sold until it has permeated the entire globe. Without
question, the treatment of black musicians by the commercial media has
often been more than usually exploitative — artists have regularly been
denied their share of the fortunes made by others from the sale of their
music; and the reception of African-American music sometimes has
bordered on the prurient —white audiences have often come to black music
to experience vicariously the body they otherwise deny themselves; then
have castigated black musicians for indulging in physicality. But if we reflect
on twentieth-century culture, it seems undeniable that, during this period,

African-Americans took over the making of images, the shaping of bodies
and subjectivities through music. Despite the industry, even with all its rip-
offs, the commercial process has also contributed to the creation of musical
forms we know and love, and to the sensibilities that now seem so natural
to most of us, black or white.
The important question is: What qualifies as political? If the term is
limited to party politics, then music plays little role except to serve as
cheerleader; if it involves specifically economic struggle, then the vehicle of
music is available to amplify protest and to consolidate community. But the
musical power of the disenfranchised —whether youth, the underclass,
ethnic minorities, women, or gay people —more often resides in their ability
to articulate different ways of construing the body, ways that bring along in
their wake the potential for different experiential worlds. And the anxious
reactions that so often greet new musics from such groups indicate that
something crucially political is at issue.
rock she wrote 447
For the disenfranchised, one of the values of the culture industry is that it
will peddle a groove if it thinks that groove will sell, regardless of whatever
else is at stake. This is not at all to suggest that artists or fans control the
scenario —the ability of the industry to absorb and blunt the political edge
of anything it touches must not be underestimated. And cultural visibility
(or audibility) does not translate automatically into social power. Yet it has
frequently been by virtue of the market and its greed-motivated attention to
emergent tastes that music has broken out of officially prescribed
restrictions and has participated as an active force in changing social
formations —formations that Plato and his followers saw as the very core of
the political.
I would like to turn now to a couple of examples —one relatively recent,
the other nearly four hundred years old —that illustrate music's impact on
the body and the cultural reactions to that impact. The first can be
documented with unusual precision. On May 12, 1965, producer Jerry
Wexler approached some studio musicians during a recording session and
said, "Why don't you pick up on this thing here?" He then executed a brief
dance step for the musicians. Guitarist Steve Cropper later explained:
[Wexler] said this was the way the kids were dancing; they were putting
the accent on two. Basically, we'd been one-beat-accenters with an
afterbeat, it was like "boom dab," but here this was a thing that went
"un-chaw," just the reverse as far as the accent goes. The backbeat was
somewhat delayed, and it just put it in that rhythm, and [drummer] Al
[Jackson] and I have been using that as a natural thing now, ever since
we did it. We play a downbeat and then two is almost on but a little bit
behind, only with a complete impact. It turned us on to a heck of a

thing} 5
The resulting tune, Wilson Pickett's crossover hit "In the Midnight
Hour," is As Cropper's testimony indicates,
significant for several reasons.
it gave rise to a new style of soul music and provided Stax Records with the
boost it needed to make it a viable presence within the industry. Thus

whatever it was that was invented during that session quickly became a hot
commodity that was exploited for all it was worth. But "Midnight Hour"
also introduced into the broader public sphere a new way of experiencing
the body, and it soon became part of a widely shared vocabulary of physical
gestures and expressions. If you know this recording, its rhythms are
448 susan mcclary
indelibly engraved in your kinetic memory. At the mere mention of its title,
your muscles coil up in eager anticipation of its groove.

As Cropper says, it soon turned into "a natural thing" for him and other
musicians; it became virtually transparent. Yet Cropper's own account of
how it came into being indicates how very constructed this "natural thing"
was. He reveals with stunning clarity the historicity of musical grooves and,
consequently, the historicity of the body. Moreover, he bears witness to the
circularity between physical gestures and musical imagery, as the band
seized a motion already practiced by one set of kids (predominantly
African-American), figured out how to simulate that motion in their
rhythms, and sent it out through the mass media to millions of others of all
racial backgrounds who responded enthusiastically in their turn.Music

depends on our experiences as embodied beings for its constructions and its
impact; but our experiences of our own —
bodies our repository of proper or
even possible motions and their meanings —are themselves often constituted
(to a much greater extent than we usually realize) through musical imagery.
The classic response of fans to a tune like this is: "It's got a good beat.
You can dance to it." Critics often dismiss such statements as evidence of
the mindlessness, the lamentable absence of discrimination, in pop music
reception. However, if you watch fans dance to "Midnight Hour," you will
find that they have (in Wexler's words) "picked up on this thing here":
those microsecond delays translate — as though without mediation or
consultation with the higher faculties —into a very specific set of gestures
highlighting the butt, known as the Jerk. For the duration of the song at
least, the body and even subjectivity itself are organized by its rhythmic
impulses.
The fact that music can so influence the body accounts for much of
music's power. But power is not restricted to the activity of dance: the
its
ability of music to mold physical motion often has ramifications that extend
much further. Recall Plato's warning: "For the modes of music are never
disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social
conventions." 16
To be sure, "Midnight Hour" does not address social issues at all. Yet its
success on the American pop charts counts as a triumph of African-

American countermemory. For what was unleashed with "Midnight Hour"
is a form of physicality that is indispensable to African-American dance and
music, but that mainstream America in 1965 still regarded as shameful:

Peter Guralnik, for instance, writes in Sweet Soul Music about how White
Citizen's Councils responded to this music by warning of "sex, barbarism,
"
and jungle rhythms." 1
Under the influence of its groove, many white
rock she wrote 449
listeners started experiencing their own bodies in terms of an African-

American sensibility. The impact of this and similar tunes on white
Americans contributed to the political climate of cultural crossover in the
sixties, the civil rights movement, as well as what came to be called "sexual
18
liberation."
This is not to deny the commodity dimension of "Midnight Hour": the
lure of commercial success obviously motivated Wexler, and it likewise
inspired Cropper, Jackson, and Pickett (Guralnik's book deals in depth with
the economic dimensions of soul). Yet the fact that a tune is constructed to
maximize its ability to make money —as this one clearly was —does not
mean that its social effects are negligible. Without question we need to
attend closely to how
who profit manipulate our reactions. But
those
students of popular culture who hasten to trash all commercial music betray
how little they know about Western music history.
As improbable as it may seem at first glance, the early 1600s yielded a

close parallel to Wilson Pickett's later impact on the elite Western body
through marginalized and racially marked musical practices. For among the
trophies acquired through the plunder of the New World was a style of
dance music called the ciaccona.
Historical sources differ a bit with respect to the origin of the ciaccona:
some attribute it to Peruvian Indians, while others suggest the input of
African slaves. 19 Both possibilities seem musically plausible: the tunes
played by Peruvian street musicians today still resemble the ciaccona, and
the genre's characteristic cross-rhythms survive in African-based dance
music throughout the Americas. Of course, a cultural fusion of this sort
could not have taken place without the violent displacement of these two
populations by the same colonial taskmasters who also exported the
ciaccona back to Spain. Thus, while admiring the power of this music and
its impact on Western culture, we should not forget the vast human
suffering and injustice it represents by virtue of its very existence.
We are able to reconstruct something about this music by means of the
many it in Western notation,
seventeenth-century attempts at capturing
which functioned both to preserve it and to domesticate it for purposes of
European appropriation. The process of the ciaccona is a relatively simple
one: it involves a very short pattern, sometimes as brief as four seconds, that
is simply repeated as long as the dance goes on. What compels the
repetitions is a groove of jazzy cross-rhythms that engages the entire body.
When the ciaccona^ infectious rhythms hit Europe, it sparked a dance
4SO susan mcclary
craze that inspired a familiar set of reactions: on the one hand, it was
celebrated as liberating bodies that had been stifled by the constraints of
Western civilization; on the other, it was condemned as obscene, as a threat
to Christian mores. But most sources concurred that its rhythms —once
experienced —were irresistible; it was banned temporarily in 1615 on
grounds of its "irredeemably infectious lasciviousness." 20 Nor was social
pedigree a sure defense against contamination: even noble ladies were said
to succumb to its call. Like soul music at a later historical moment, the
ciaccona crossed over cautiously guarded class and racial boundaries.
Whatever the ciaccona signified in its original contexts, it quickly came to
be associated in Europe (by friends and foes alike) with forbidden bodily
pleasures and potential social havoc.
Many literary sources bear witness to the effects of the new dance. For
instance, the lyrics for one extended ciaccona describe a funeral at which
the priest slips during his Latin prayer and sings out "vida bona" —the
signal for the ciaccona to begin —to which the officiating clergy, the nuns,
and even the corpse respond by wiggling and leaping with uninhibited glee.
When they go afterward to beg forgiveness, the bishop asks (strictly as a

point of legal information) to hear one refrain and spends the next hour
gyrating with his skirts raised; his congregation continues to shake the
house for another six. At the conclusion of this carnivalesque fantasy, the
bishop forgives his flock. 21

Not surprisingly, versions of the ciaccona quickly flooded the market,
helping to expand the emerging industry of commercial music
22
publication. Even high art composers scrambled to get in on the action (a
sure way of defusing the trickle-up effect of lower-class fads), and ciaccona
patterns and rhythms resounded through both secular and religious
repertories during the first half of the seventeenth century. Its energies, in
fact, contributed to the quality of motion that characterizes early tonality:
one could argue, in other words, that the procedures we like to regard as
proof of Western musical supremacy bear traces of the West's encounter
with Native American and African-American dance rhythms.
The most famous ciaccona setting to come down to us is Claudio
Monteverdi's Zeftro torna (1632), an accompanied duet for two tenors. The
poetic text hails the return of spring and spins out verse after verse
enumerating the season's delights; but toward the end, the anguish and
alienation of the poet's inner self suddenly erupt into the text, setting up a
stark Petrarchan contrast with the splendor of the natural world. For most
of the duet, the ciaccona proliferates its dance pattern with reckless
abandon, each temporary conclusion breeding only the desire for yet
rock she wrote 4S1
another repetition. The performance by Nigel Rogers and Ian Partridge, for
instance, infuses the opening sections with a physicality that makes it quite
obvious what the fuss over the ciaccona was about: one truly does not want
23
that groove to stop, even if civilization itself is at risk.
As the lines concerning the poet's emotional state appear, however, the
music swerves into a concentrated passage featuring some of the most
chromatic, dissonant writing available to the mannerist avant-garde. The
duet ends pivoting between the overwrought agony that guarantees the
"authenticity" of the subject's inner feelings and the carefree, seductive
ciaccona rhythms of "nature," of the body. Note that this "body" is no
longer the body of color from which the ciaccona was taken; it now stands
for the "universal" (i.e., white) body — albeit a body yoked explicitly in
binary opposition with the tortured, deeply feeling mind. 24
To return to my refrain; "same as it ever was." In the aftermath of the

number of jaded critics turned away from music because its impact
sixties a
seemed finally to have been but temporary; the criterion appears to have
been that if music had not changed the world once and for all, then its
potency had been illusory, its authenticity a sham. And a kind of cynicism
replaced the Utopian euphoria of the previous years, as fans traded in rebel
rock for the bodily pleasures of disco. "Same as it ever was" could be heard
as referring to that return to dance, that return to bodily expression.
Yet what I want to imply by this refrain is that this struggle over the body
and the music that incites it has always been a central site of cultural
contestation in Western music —not just since Elvis gyrated his hips on The
Ed Sullivan Show. And while any given version of the transgressive body
creates its effects for only a short while before being absorbed, it is
imperative for critics to acknowledge and examine that struggle as it occurs

within the music —even in the face of those from the Left or the Right who
would "save" music from its own worst impulses: its ability to affect the
body. To assess music from the outside as though it were but one
commodity among many, or as though its meanings resided solely within its
lyrics, is to fail to locate its pleasures, its means of manipulation and
therefore its politics. In short, the study of popular music should also
include the study of popular music.
452 susan mcclary
Notes
1. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987).
2. Plato, Laws, 700a-701c, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Pantheon, 1961); as
quoted in Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, eds., Music in the Western
World: A History in Documents (New York: Schirmer Books, 1984), p.
7. Many of the quotations in this paper are taken from this collection
(hereafter, Weiss/Taruskin), which I recommend as a convenient source
of documents that reveal the cultural debates surrounding the Western
high art musical tradition throughout its history.
3. Plato, Republic, 424b-c; quoted in Weiss/Taruskin, p. 8.
4. Saint Augustine (354-430), Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1961), p. 191; quoted in Weiss/
Taruskin, p. 29.
5. John of Salisbury, Policraticus (1159), trans. William Dalglish, "The
Origin of the Hocket," Journal of the American Musicological Society,
31 (1978), p. 7; quoted in Weiss/Taruskin, p. 62.
6. John Calvin, Preface to the Geneva Psalter (1543), in OEvres choisies
(Geneva: Chouet &
Ciel, 1909), pp. 173-76; quoted in Weiss/Taruskin,
p. 108.
7. Medieval historian Bruce Holsinger has suggested that these new
textures may have given voice quite deliberately to homoerotic forms of
expression, especially in the thirteenth-century secular motet. See his
"The Bodies and Desires of the Early Polytextual Motet," paper
delivered at the conference Feminist Theory and Music II, Eastman
School of Music, June 1993.
8.
—
Theodor W. Adorno, "Perennial Fashion Jazz," Prisms, trans. Samuel
and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), p. 129.
9. Simon Frith, "I Am What I Am," Village Voice (Aug. 3, 1993), p. 82.
10. For a similar defense of the textual analysis of films (which has also
been dismissed by some proponents of cultural studies), see Tania
Modleski, "Some Functions of Feminist Criticism; or, The Scandal of
the Mute Body," in her Feminism Without Women: Culture and
Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age (New York & London: Routledge,
1991), pp. 35-58.
11. Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987).
12. See my Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis:
rock she wrote 4S3
University of Minnesota Press, 1991). The term "technologies of the

body" is originally Michel Foucault's. See his Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage
Books, 1979), p. 24. My use of the term is strongly informed by de
Lauretis's reworking of Foucault's models of both disciplinary and
sexual technologies.
13. For a theory of why music registers social changes more rapidly than
other media, see Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of
Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1985).
14. See Christopher Page, The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and
Ideas in France 1100-1300 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1989).
15. Steve Cropper, quoted in Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker,
Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll (New York:
Rolling Stone Press, 1986), pp. 293-94.
16. See Note 2.
17. Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the
Southern Dream of freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 11.
18. For more on the sociopolitical impact of soul, see Guralnik. For more
on how popular music contributes to social formation, see George
Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), and
" 'Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens': The Class Origins of Rock and
Roll," in his Class and Culture in Cold War America: "A Rainbow at
Midnight" (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc.,
1982), pp. 195-225. See also Susan McClary and Robert Walser, "Start
Making Sense: Musicology Wrestles with Rock," in Simon Frith and
Andrew Goodwin, eds., On Record: Rock, Pop, & the Written Word
(New York: Pantheon, 1990), pp. 277-92; and Walser, Running With
the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music
(Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1993).
19. See Richard Hudson, Passacaglia and Ciaccona: From Guitar Music to
Italian Keyboard Variations in the 17th Century (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1981), p. 4.
20. Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David

Bryant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 101.
21. These anonymous lyrics appear in Hudson, Passacaglia, pp. 7-8.
Marino wrote an extensive account as well. See also the account in
4S4 susan mcclary
Cervantes' La ilustre fregona, partly reprinted in Bianconi, Music in the
Seventeenth Century, pp. 101-02.

22. For more on the subsequent history of the ciaccona, see Hudson,
Passacaglia, p. 11, and Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, pp.
103-04.
23. Virtuoso Madrigals, Archiv 2533 087, under the direction of Jurgen
Jurgens.
24. Eventually, after but a few decades in European captivity, the ciaccona
lost its rowdy qualities altogether. Its French spin-off, the chaconne,
was used for static [i.e., "timeless"], formal rituals at ends of ballets.
Even in Italy and Germany, it came to serve merely as a technique
whose repetitive qualities made it ideal for depicting obsessive states of
mind, as in Bach's anguished chaconne for solo violin.
If the court of Louis XIV absorbed and sanitized the ciaccona,

however, his legacy did not escape African-Americanization. At the
conclusion of a paper linking modes of representation in the spectacle
at Versailles and France's interactions with the slave populations in its
colonies, Joseph Roach argues that "the Sun King's more profound and
long-lasting contribution to the performing arts, though it is a
monument to the law of unintended consequences, was made through
his role in expanding the French 'body politic' to embrace the Afro-
Caribbean world, including Louisiana. In Louisiana, the state which
still bears his name, Louis XIV rocked the cradle of American popular
music, and with all due respect to the genius of Monsieur Lully, most of
the world now prefers jazz." Joe Roach, "Body of Law: The Sun King
and the Code Noir," paper delivered at the conference Performing the
Body, UCLA (May 1993).
dream hampton, "Confessions of a
Hip~hop Critic/'
Essence, August 1994.
Everyone may be a critic, but no one likes to be criticized. Many

women writers have reported that their commentary can
unleash misogynistic responses from subjects. As Source critic
dream hampton notes in this article, TV host Dee Barnes was
assaulted by rap artist Dr. Dre for something someone else said
on her show. In this article for Essence, hampton discusses the
dangerous but crucial ground trod by women who talk back to
rappers.
JLf I see that bitch dream, I'm stabbing her," Method Man, one of
rap's fastest rising stars, let be known. He was looking for me. He was
it
furious after reading an album review I wrote in The Source, a rap maga-
zine. The compared him to Busta Rhymes of Leaders of the
article fleetingly
New School, whose sophomore album was actually the subject of my arti-
cle. Apparently I'd struck a nerve in that sensitive place called the male ego.
In his mind, I'd accused him of hip-hop's equivalent to treason jacking —
someone's style. Almost six months later, at the Los Angeles airport LAX, I
spotted Method Man's group Wu-Tang Clan outside of my terminal. Ap-
parently we had the same flight home to New York. I barely remembered
Method's beef; I waved at the member of the group that I knew and rushed
inside to make last-minute changes on my ticket. Method had never seen me
—
4S6 dream hampton
before. When he walked up to me, all beautiful and smiling, he was expect-
ing to walk away with my phone number. He held both my hands in his
he was warm and earthy. I awkward as it'd be, I'd have to fess up.
knew, as
"dream hampton." I added my last name so he'd know exactly who he
was talking to. He dropped my hands immediately. Stepped back a little.
"Look I know you're looking for me but in my heart of hearts I felt that
way and I didn't mean for you to take it like a dis but I gotta do my thing as
a writer and I never meant for you and Busta ." We went back and forth . .
like that for a while —

artist and critic (and fan), brother and sister. I knew
what was at stake. I had to be honest, confident, intelligent, and unafraid or

there was a good chance Method would have used those large hands to slap
—
me in the mouth and that was real. He'd felt disrespected, and his neigh-
borhood and our youth culture have taught him, and all black boys, to react
to disrespect with violence. Although I knew male critics who'd been ap-
proached by angry artists the same way, my being a woman made me
particularly vulnerable.
In the back of my mind was Dee Barnes, the video show hostess who'd
been assaulted at a crowded nightclub by Dr. Dre because he believed she
had disrespected him by airing an interview with Ice Cube. At the time Cube
and Dre were enemies and Cube dissed Dre. Dre was silently supported by a
community in awe of his talent. Dee's pleas for allies went largely unheard.
By the time we were ready to board our flight, I'd earned Method Man's
respect and provided him with some clarity about my intentions. "I'm really
glad I met you," he told me before he walked away.
Before I moved to New York, before I ever met a rapper, I was a hip-hop
fan. In the beginning I didn't really consider what it meant to be a girl and a
hip-hop junkie. I just was. It was the soundtrack to my high school years,
the music I roller-skated to in junior high, and the music all my little boy-
friends, and some of my girlfriends, practiced making. There have been few
things in my life that have inspired me like KRS-One's By All Means Neces-
sary or Public Enemy's Takes a Nation of Millions. I shook my butt to
It
Rakim and Doug E. Fresh. And I recognized my neighborhood, Detroit's

east side, in the sex-and-violence talesfrom Too Short and N.W.A.
I As a nineteen-year-old intern from NYU's
started writing by accident.
Him school hired to organize The Source's photo collection, I was always
ottering unsolicited opinions. As the only woman in the office I was forced
to respond to the sexism and misogyny not only in the music, but within the
magazine's pages. The guys thought it would be cute if I reviewed the Hoes
rock she wrote 457
Wit Attitude, a group whose debut album was presented by Eazy E of

N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitude). My assignment package included glossy
photos of the Hoes in leather thongs with rifles standing between their legs
and a poorly produced tape with lyrics about sexing Mandela. In my re-
view, I included everything I'd learned from my contemporary womanist

heroes Alice Walker and Pearl Cleage — I even spelled my name in small
letters like bell hooks. I blasted H.W.A. for being antithetical to the
women's movement in hip-hop, one spearheaded by progressives like
Queen Latifah. I was offended that they'd confirmed boys' most twisted
notions of womanhood —that "bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks."
I'm not puritanical. I'm a firm believer that women should be able to
exercise control of their sexuality. But for obvious reasons I'm suspicious
about how much control the Hoes actually exercise. I'm also clear that the
black woman's body being marketed, as it was once auctioned, has a direct
relationship with our oppression, both black and female.
Three years later, I am unable to even respond to H.W.A. 's second re-
lease. This time the photos the music editor gives me have them in fur
bikinis under expensive fur coats. I am spent. Exhausted. Cynical and jaded.
At twenty-two, after what feels like a lifetime of hearing brothers call
sisters "bitches" and "hoes," I can no longer feign shock when I see women
personifying these definitions. At last year's annual black music conference
in Atlanta, "Jac the Rapper," it was weekend had turned into
clear that the
an event. Thousands of black folk my age showed up. Brothers stood
around trying to look hard. Sisters, who'd also received their cues from
their favorite music videos, did their best to be sexy for the brothers. Usu-
ally in daisy duke shorts and halter tops. They wanted the men, particularly
the rap stars, to believe that they are as virile and in control as they imagine
they are in their songs. There were several incidents of violence that week-
end.Most of it was men assaulting women. But it was the totally believable
rumor that a sister had been murdered, thrown from a thirty-second-floor
balcony into the hotel's atrium, that made me realize how dangerous this
game we play really is.
I'm frustrated that other brothers don't take up my cause, that they aren't
mortally offended by their own misogyny.
I'm angry for feeling abandoned by my older sisters and brothers who
dismiss hip-hop and my generation altogether. I'm offended that black lead-
ership and black radio alike hold televised conferences where young folk are
described in the abstract, as if we'd landed (rather than been raised) in our
communities.
Consequently, I find myself in the uncomfortable and precarious position
458 dream hampton
of defending great poets like Tupac, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Kool G Rap
when outsiders want monster misogynists and murderers.
to reduce them to
Because I love rap music, its cadences, intonations, and mood swings, I've
recognized and struggled to reconcile the genius and passion of my brothers
—even when meant betraying my most fundamental politics. I'm in the
it
same position I imagine I would have assumed had my peers been the
eloquently sexist Ishmael Reed or genius/woman-beater Miles Davis. Hip-
hop may be guilty of pimping and parading the worst of black America, but
rap music cannot be made responsible for this government's institutional
racism and sexism and our family's subsequent decimation.
I was glad I met Method Man too. I wasn't, however, convinced that I'd
changed him some way. The standard myth that there are good women
in
worthy of men's respect and the others are you guessed it bitches and — —
hoes was one introduced to me by my grandfather. And I'm sure when
Method and other brothers are confronted by a woman fiercely devoted to
this culture we call hip-hop and this nation we call Black, one who can
name break beats from hip-hop classics and is willing to challenge them to
their face about their antirevolutionary sexism, they automatically label her
an exception.
I'm not convinced "exceptional" is a totally safe space. Dee, for instance,
was all of these things. But when Dre had a choice between confronting Ice
Cube, who made the offensive remarks on the air in the first place, or the
easier target Dee, he opted for the latter. He was silently supported by a
community that needs its Black male heroes and finds its sheroes dispens-
able, even annoying.
Sometimes I joke that if I could trade my generation of brothers in for a
new set, I would. I can't. These are my peers, the brothers I have most in
common with, the group that I look to for a husband and father of my
future brown babies. The challenge for me and sisters like myself is to
confront my brothers and our music with consistency, love, intelligence,
and self-respect.
Outro:
AVko's That Girl?
Tjy Ann Pcwers
Writing in the L.A. Weekly about the country singer Iris DeMent, Sue
Cummings took herself back to the night-enshrouded bedroom of her own
Tennessee youth. She recalled lying low under the covers, sneakily turning
the dial on a ball-shaped Panasonic radio. I can imagine her there, eyes wide
open in the dark, memorizing every word of the Allman Brothers'
"Ramblin' Man." The picture comes easily, as if it were my own, because
three thousand miles away I was stealing my own red transistor AM into
my own twin bed, dialing into the perilous thrill of the Raspberries' "Go All
the Way," learning to dream about freedom through an Eagles tune. Twenty
years later, those hit songs still claim space in my brain —ask me to sing one,
I'll remember every verse. And why not? The Top 40's lexicon educated me
in the possibilities of my imagination and showed me how to name my still-
forming was its novitiate in the discipline of the daydream.

desires. I
Alone in her room with the stereo on, a girl can easily invoke the living
ghost of her favorite pop star, as the record player lifts the singer's whisper
toward her ear. The same girl can also buy a ticket to share this intimate
exchange with thousands of other people, to immerse herself in a sea of
those secret meanings translated through performance into mutual under-
standing. It's called communion: each person swallows her own morsel of
this metaphorical body and becomes united with everyone else who par-
takes. The music's rhythm and the lyrics' incantatory power sweep away
boundaries, get people dancing with others they'd almost certainly ignore
outside this concert hall. But each fan still feels herself at the center of this
harmonious bond, knowing the real truth of each song — because she made
—
460 arm powers
it, back in her bedroom, and brought it here. The star on the stage sings for
everybody, she knows, but the part of her that found (and reinvented)
herself inside this music still hears the star singing right to her.
The intensity of the connection shared by artists with their fans, and fans
with each other, usually fades after adolescence. People on; pop be- move
comes what spills out of the radio as you drive to work, or maybe what
relaxes you on the weekend. Even those of us who stay close to music
forming bands or finding jobs in the industry, or maintaining the intensity
as listeners and collectors —rarely continue pop so profoundly as
to use
mirror and voice. met too many musicians now to pretend our differ-
I've
ences aren't as profound and inevitable as those that separate any two
people, and I know too much about songs as product to consider them pure.
Still, when I feel nostalgic, it's for that old red AM radio and the little
queendom it helped me build and carry around with me. And I love to think
of all the women in this book, who went on to develop new approaches to
journalism, criticism, fiction, and poetry as they traced the links between
their own stories and those the music captured — I love to imagine each of
us, huddled beneath her own mother-washed white sheet, tuning in.
The girl under the covers and the one standing rapt in front of the stage
are two of the most enduring manifestations of the feminine in pop, surfac-
ing in songs, commentary, and common lore as both essence and enemy.
Often, these figures have been invoked as proof that women who love pop
music must be hysterical, in need of the protection of parents and state,
childish in their hero worship and whorish in their itch for the boys in the
band. Think Beatlemania, groupies, Elvis fans. It's easy for a woman ac-
tively involved in a music scene to get a reputation as a slut, be dismissed as
a hanger-on, or earn resentment as a potential threat to rock's male sanctu-
ary. With more and more women joining bands, the Yoko Ono stereotype
of the greedy female dosing her boyfriend with the narcotic of sex and
dragging him away from his music certainly must be losing power. But it's
part of our history, and its impact lingers, along with that of the diseased
groupie and the dumbstruck little girl. The scores of women who've fed pop
music's coffers and its soul since its inception, not only as consumers, but as
paid and unpaid support, artistic peers, and inspiration, get stuck inside
these images too often; their contributions are continually underestimated,
and their interest in the music considered suspect. And what if some of the
roles do fit, to an extent? We're taught to feel ashamed of ourselves if we
sleep with a guy in a band, embarrassed if we spend free hours organizing a
rock she wrote 461
fan club, stupid if we volunteer to tour manage our friends' groups for
expenses and change.
We also must constantly wrangle with the spirit-girls that male artists
project out of their own fantasies into their songs, impossible princesses
offered up for our envy and identification: the perfect girls next door that
fifties rock fetishized, the twentieth century foxes of the swinging sixties,
heavy metal's mystical bimbos, hip-hop's cartoon bombshells —even punk,

that supposedly antiestablishment form, presented its version of the gamine
(now a skinhead, maybe) in lyrics and album cover imagery. And behind the
looking glass of these idealizations lurked their bad sisters, the stupid girls
sung about by Neil Young and the Rolling Stones, the man-eaters, heart-
breakers, bitches, and hoes men made into demons and fantastically
abused. These fictions attached themselves to women's real lives, gave us
something to both wish and fear we might become. The female aspect of
pop music is a many-headed hydra, demonized but powerful, mystified for
too long by fearful, powerful men. Each of the women in this book has, in
her own way, stared into the eye of this creature and recognized herself.
Women in pop have been asked to maintain such a delicate balance that
virtually any move toward uncovering the truth about our presence threat-
ens to shift the paradigm. The music's feminine and masculine sides con-
stantly tangle in ways that promise a symbolic sexual revolution, and its
drive is centered in the enormous tension created by this possibility. The

play between shared and individual identity that produces a song's mean-
ing, intensified by the dynamic effect of the music's beat, encourages listen-
ers and performers alike to explore a sense of the self as fluid; and because
of music's sensual power, this urge to change shapes most often arises in
relation to sexual identity. This is where the feminine enters, and is again
concealed. While film's gaze has always rested on woman as spectacle, and
sports gives men a chance to sublimate by reveling in the sight of each
other's bodies, popular music since the birth of rock 'n' roll has focused
overwhelmingly on male sexual expression. (See Susan McClary's article
within this volume for a historical view of how popular music has unsettled
masculinity.) But male desire in pop is ultimately narcissistic, compelled
more by its own allure than by the nearly interchangeable Peggy Sues who
stimulate it. Never before had men been allowed (indeed, required) to culti-
vate that aura of mystery, of sought-afterness, with such flamboyance. Rock
'n' roll gave men the gift of their own feminine selves, a sensual and direct
eroticism that even Hollywood's Valentinos rarely touched.
In focusing on the spectacle of an unleashed male eroticism, rock blew
open the forbidden chamber of women's sexual desire. Now women, usu-
462 arm powers
ally imagined as passive and receptive, could discover themselves in the role
of voyeur and pursuer. Fans are not the only ones to represent this tidal
force: artists also tap its energy, sometimes subverting the constraints con-
vention places on its expression, other times reinforcing those limits. "He's
so fine," the Shirelles sang, perfectly distant and passive. "Wish he were
mine." Then there was Janis Joplin, turning that need to focus on a man
into an act close to revenge: "Take another little piece of my heart," she
dares. And now there's PJ Harvey, her hunger close and unforgiving: "You
leave me dry." Harvey's song encapsulates the circular movement of male
toward female toward male that pop music allows: "You put it on the stage,
you put it right in my face," she moans, addressing a preening lover, per-
haps, but more likely expressing the limits of what she can get from her
heroic rock idol. In most pop, women's expression, linked in this way to an
elusive, longed-for, central male figure, falls back into wistfulness or frus-
tration. Male artists, on the other hand, surreptitiously discovering the
object of their desires within their own feminine subjectivity, sustain them-
selves on an androgynous buzz that has little to do with real women's
experience. Our society still regards women's sexuality as a force that needs
controlling, and for all its anarchistic tendencies, the music lives within
society. So within this culture that feeds on their libidos, women have rarely
been allowed honest expression.
Because pop, like any art form, involves real people engaged in symbolic
transformation, it's not always easy to determine what "honest expression"
or even "real experience" might mean. The contributors book pos-
to this
sess many about what lies at the
different views heart of pop and what's
missing. GreilMarcus once wrote that an analysis of popular music could
uncover "an idea of how much room there is in this musical culture, and in
American culture." It's a kaleidoscope of corners, each one reflecting the
other, but also ensuring that the whole remains a multiplicity of parts.
Women — marginalized from the defining discourse that established pop's
canon through books and magazines, its rules through the road life of
mostly male performers and the business dealings of mostly male execu-
tives, and its image through the dominant presence of those gorgeous boy
stars —are particularly conscious of the decentered nature of pop's genesis
and its effects. Filling in the gaps, women writers throw into doubt the
hierarchies of taste and of experience that order pop's history, and chal-
lenge the order that, paradoxically, relies on their willingness to be seduced
without allowing for their full participation.
Many championed that front-row girl, insisting that female
writers have
fans be acknowledged and respected. Some choose the confessional mode to
rock she wrote 463
humanize roles that have commonly been reduced to Zap comix-style car-
toons. Pamela Des Barres's best-selling memoir, I'm With the Band, cele-
brated the independence and sexual fulfillment she found in the groupie life-
style of the sixties. Des Barres's interview with Hole singer Courtney Love,
who was, at the time, married to the late leader of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain,
illuminates the changing attitudes women in rock have about sex's possibili-
tiesand dangers. Lori Twersky and Gina Arnold both address the less
glamorous figure of the teenybopper in their work, calling for a more seri-
ous consideration of a figure that, while shunned, has made possible the
careers of countless male musicians. Other writers have mustered the guts
to articulate their own desires as fans, expanding the discourse on pop's
erotics and leading toward a more thorough notion of the interaction be-
tween and audience. Joan Morgan's dissection of the perils and plea-
artist
sures of loving a hip-hop artist whose politics repulse, but whose voice feels
so intimate and right, is just one of several pieces that dance on the tight-
rope strung between one's principles and one's pleasures, where women
who love pop so often find themselves. And expanding the parameters of
another easy assumption, the musings of indie rock label owner Tinuviel or
poet Jessica Hagedorn show that the longings stimulated by music need not
be specifically directed at a male sex object; they can also be self-directed,
nostalgic, or even spiritual.
Expected to worship rock's he-gods, women who love music often exceed
the parameters of acceptable lust; like any desire, this one's not so easily
contained. Writing in the fanzine Puncture, Terri Sutton declared her love
for rock as a way of better realizing the wild side of her sexuality; Kim
Gordon made a similar claim in The Village Voice, explaining the charge
she gets playing bass with Sonic Youth. Jaan Uhelszki discovered an ego she
didn't know she had when she joined Kiss onstage for one song as the
subject of a 1975 Creem article —and that ego felt like it could have be-
longed to one of the guys. Much of what women express in these pages
involves that kind of stepping out of bounds. And often, the act of recording
the resulting insights —about what might happen if the masculine-feminine
tangle were taken a few steps farther, beyond the momentary rush of per-
formance or the realm of common fantasy or even physical reality, and
about the extent to which men in the music scene will go to ensure that
doesn't happen —has meant trouble for these writers, dream hampton re-
ceived threats of assault for her feminist critique of a hip-hop band. Daisann
McLane, refusing to put more emphasis on the Wilson sisters' ex-boy-
friends/bandmates in her profile of Heart, simply saw her job at Rolling
Stone soon fade away.
464 arm powers
So on a material level, bringing a feminist or even a perceptibily female

point of view to writing about music can be risky. But it feels dangerous on
another level, because it requires that we confront those old girl-ghosts, the
stereotypes that we are and aren't, the only language anybody else gave us
to justify our love. The only one, that is, until feminism met rock criticism in
the jingle-jangle morning of America's pop cultural revolution.
Rock criticism as a literary form arose amid the tower-toppling of the

sixties counterculture, and gained full force simultaneously with feminism's
second wave. It's impossible, I think, to separate the respect critics of the
day demanded for popular culture from feminism's classic dictum that the
personal is political. Not until this moment had pop cultural expression
seemed influential and available enough to serve as an uplifting and unify-
ing force, rather than one that leveled and reduced. The difference was the
spirit of rock 'n' roll: a homegrown mass cultural art, open to all partici-
pants, made by, for, and about its audience. This view of pop music may
seem naive in the age of multinational corporate record labels, but in the
sixties it was hardly obsolete, and it melded perfectly with the radical demo-
cratic ideals of civil rights and the summer of love.
That's how the critics who began chronicling and interpreting the music
approached it, finding meanings more layered than previously seemed pos-
sible in such a popular form. It's also the way feminists were beginning to
apprehend culture in general. Because women's lives had so often been
absorbed in what society deemed "minutiae," feminist theory inevitably
challenged the top-down cultural view, rescuing home crafts and previously
ignored literary and art forms the same way rock critics were digging up
records by Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. And rock critics, who could
comprehend the impact of oppression on artistic expression through the
stories of the African-American musicians they embraced, often engaged in
a critique parallel to the one feminists brought to their rethinking of both

societal structures and artistic canons.
Besides, what was rock writing if not personal? Its pioneers, so often
speaking in the first-person of their emotional as well as intellectual engage-
ment with the music, rejected the notion of a clear, authoritative interpre-
tive method from the beginning. It was hardly surprising, then, that women
writing about music in the late sixties and early seventies brought what
they'd learned about subjectivity and sexism to their critical work. Ellen
Willis was by far the most important practitioner of wedding of gender
this
theory to rock criticism. Her essays in The New Yorker, The Village Voice,
rock she wrote 46S
and Rolling Stone consistently challenged the assumptions of both worlds

towhich she owed loyalty, on the one hand exposing the limits rock placed
upon women and its masculinist tendencies, but also defying the rules of
conduct that the women's movement had begun to form by constantly
asserting the value of rock's much more open liberatory power. Rock, and
rock criticism, were key in forming Willis's vision of a feminism grounded
in a radical dedication to individual freedoms and a hearty embrace of
expressive sexuality. And she was not alone: Karen Durbin, Patricia Ken-
nealy-Morrison, Carola Dibbell, Carol Cooper, Jan Hoffman, Vivien
Goldman, and Donna Gaines also brought their feminist sensibilities to
writing about music, and changed music writing by doing so.
Yet for all the historical and philosophical points of intersection shared
by feminism and rock, the women who love the music have often felt
limited or even reprimanded within the movement's purported value sys-

tem. I remember once getting drunk with a bunch of my graduate school-
mates after we'd hosted a women's studies conference. Truth or dare time
came around; each woman was challenged to say something shocking, for-
bidden, about herself. "I love Guns N' Roses!" I declared when my turn
came. The room resounded with groans. "But that Axl's such a woman-
hater!" declared an elegant doctoral student who, I knew, could easily
devastate me in any discussion of poststructuralist theory. I just threw her a
loopy grin. How could I explain to someone who hadn't spent her life
gulping mouthfuls of rock's wild air that even if your consciousness had
been raised, the music's misogyny was something you could dodge if you
listened willfully enough, and that the rush was worth it? Or that sometimes
the roughness draws you into the fantasy, as if it were a chance to slay a
dragon? So I kept my mouth shut. A few months later, I found Mary
Gaitskill's essay on Axl Rose in Details, and although her reasons weren't
mine, I felt vindicated in the knowledge that another feminist could under-
stand my nonconforming reality.
Many of the articles within these pages confront this conundrum of lov-
ing a double dose of what's supposed to be bad for you: on the one hand, a
pop fantasy that can dehumanize; on the other, a feminist ideology that
declares dangerous what most attracts you. The urge to grasp the secrets of
those girls who we're not supposed to be, the ones who give their bodies or
their hearts too willingly in pursuit of the paradise they thought they'd
found in the words of a three-minute song, comes in part from our need to
reconcile the division within ourselves, to understand a legacy that's at
466 arm powers
turns unspeakably degrading and impossibly, joyfully liberating. Writing

about pop demands that women also be honest with themselves about the
fantasies we've absorbed, the ones we've let men paint on our bodies and
our souls. Itmeans admitting that we didn't totally control that world we
made in our bedrooms, and that when we bring it out into the open it
doesn't always serve us well.
One debate that has spanned rock criticism's lifetime echoes a common
argument within feminism too: are women more emotionally responsive by
nature, ready to leave the technicalities to men? I've heard women writers
defend this stance and suggest that, in women should be expected

its light,
to emphasize feeling over fact; I've heard other women violently disagree.
Several of the pieces in Rock She Wrote expose the ways rock boys shut
girls out of their creative tree-houses, assuming superiority in musical
knowledge and skill. Musical consumerism can be a competitive sport, with
record-store habitues collecting seven-inch singles and trivial facts with the
dedication of bodybuilders developing their pecs. Women have traditionally
avoided this arena, perhaps because they're confused or repulsed by its
male-determined ethos. Nineteen ninety-four's South by Southwest Con-

vention, in Austin, Texas, staged a Jeopardy! game, cooked up by some
feminist participants (including myself) as a way of demonstrating that
female trivia masters do exist. The game was supposed to be a battle of the
sexes; truth be told, however, the women finally couldn't find enough mem-
bers for their team, and a guy walked with the trophy.
It would be easy to conclude (and some men in attendance at the Jeop-
ardy! game did) that such a poor display proves women's limitations within
the pop world; they may be experts in the sentimental and the sensual, but
forget about the details. Yet there's another way to see it. Women in pop
have been denied authority, even as they've been welcomed as desiring
subjects and fantasy objects. If they claim that authority, develop it, the
man at the center may lose his place. Everything —from the metaphor for
phallic prowess that is the extended guitar solo, to the industrywide silence
that, in 1992, allowed a half-dozen record executives separately accused of
sexual harrassment to retain employment in the field —might shatter. Then
we'd have to put it back together, and the women might be in charge. So in
many subtle ways, women are still encouraged to stay under those covers,
keep their quiet, gaze adoringly, and dream alone.
But these days, the pop world really does seem to be spinning irreversibly
in new directions. The generation that's now coming into its own, raised on
women's studies and indie rock, seems determined to do away with rock's
old equations. In 1994, it's nearly a requirement for cool rock bands to have
—
rock she wrote 467
at least one woman member, and enough consist entirely of females to begin
defeating the assumption that girl bands can't be more than novelties. On
the business side, much slower to shift, female music industry executives are
beginning to appear, while many more women working independently are
building networks and vowing to help each other grab whatever access to
self-determination they can find. And the teenage fans buying those concert
tickets are now likely to be saving up for guitars and sequencers, emulating
heroines like PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Me'shell Ndegeocello, Queen Latifah,
the Breeders' Kim and Kelly Deal, and our contributors Kim Gordon and
Donna Dresch, even as they save a wet dream for that cute blond bimbo
Lemonheads.
(male, this time) in the
The youngest women in the pop scene are writing their lives differently.
The 'zine material contained here reflects a reawakening of the feminist
consciousness that ignited the fires of the early seventies. They're still wres-
tling with rock's ambiguous gifts to women; the battle, partly because it's
an internal struggle, isn't won yet. But this time, they're adding some extra
kerosene stolen from punk's irreverent do-it-yourselfism and rock's well-
seasoned sexual joy. This new writing sometimes sinks into dogma or na-
ivete, yet it clearly shows that today's rock 'n' roll girls don't fear wanting it
all.
I think of my friendNatasha Stovall: born in 1971, reared on Take Back

the Night rallies and Washington, D.C., hardcore music, an admirer of Ellen
Willis who's just embarking on what promises to be a long and fruitful
music writing career. Sometimes I envy her ability to see one step farther
than me beyond the sexism that each of us still carries inside like history's
incubus, and her confidence that the world will make room for her ideas
her belief that it should — if she can just find strong enough words. I also
know those old spirit-girls haunt her, and she's struggling to find her own
way to face them down, to tell how she experiences the mixed-up miracle of
pop's transfigurative power and claims a place to stand in this shifting
milieu. And I'm happy to meet her there. Because I think she's going to turn
her radio way up loud, and scream along.
Biographies
Trixie A. Balm (Lauren Agnelli) writes when the spirit moves her —pretty
often, as it happens: in song lyrics, letters, poems, short stories, articles,
epitaphs, etc. Lauren, as Trixie A. Balm, contributed to vintage Creem and

The Village Voice, among others. A vocalist and multiinstrumentalist,
Lauren has been a part of Nervus Rex, the Washington Squares, and the
Dave Rave Conspiracy, and is currently near completion on an album with
Brave Combo and with her main songwriting partner Dave Rave Des
Roches. Home's been NYC for a while, but she also spends time in Hamil-
ton, Canada
— "They're both inspirational to write in."
Gina Arnold is author of Route 666: The Road to Nirvana and a columnist
for The East Bay Express. She has written for numerous other publications
and is also a competitive diver. She lives in San Francisco.
Leslie Berman is a lawyer working on a Ph.D. in feminist legal theory at

New College, Oxford University, splitting her time between Hoboken, New
Jersey, and Oxford, England. She has been a writer and editor for The
Village Voice, Rolling Stone, High Fidelity, City Limits, Newsday, and
other magazines and newspapers. She is currently writing a book about
women's music.
Susan Brownmiller was active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and
a leading member of New York Radical Feminists. In 1975, she published
the groundbreaking study of rape Against Our Will. Her other publications
include Femininity, the novel Waverly Place, and most recently, Seeing Viet-
nam.
biographies 469
Dana Bryant is a poet whose writing has been featured in the anthology
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and on MTV. She has per-
formed her work around the world, has a recording contract with Warner
Bros., and performed her piece "The Jackyl" on Ronny Jordan's 1994
album. She was the 1992 Grand Slam Champion at the Nuyorican Cafe.
Dana lives in New York.
Lisa Carver is editor and primary author of the 'zine Rollerderby and leader
of the avant-art punk band Suckdog. She lives in Colorado.
Georgia Christgau has worked as a writer and editor at Creem, The Village
Voice, High Fidelity, the Distributive Worker, and other publications. Her
articles have also appeared in Ms., In These Times, Labor History, and
elsewhere. She currently writes for the Voice and for the United Auto Work-
ers' magazine, Solidarity, on music, film, and politics. Recently she fulfilled
a lifelong ambition by becoming an English teacher in a New York City

public high school.
Cheryl Cline was a frequent contributor to Bitch magazine. She now edits
the bluegrass journal Twangin'l
Caroline Coon has been a painter, novelist, activist, journalist, band man-
ager, and dancer. Her articles have appeared in the Times Educational
Supplement, OZ, Radio Times, Melody Maker, and The Guardian. She is
the author of 1988: The Punk Rock Explosion, originally published in

1977. In 1979 she managed the Clash and continues to serve as a consultant
to various artists. In 1967 she cofounded Release, a London activist organi-
zation that investigates police abuse and advocates for legalization of drugs.
She currently lives in London, painting and writing.
Carol Cooper was born in Manhattan the same year Brown v. Board of
Education was passed into law. She made her first professional sale as a
journalist eighteen years later, and after brief attempts at both archaeology
and fiction writing, settled down to writing about music and film for vari-
ous publications. In the mid-eighties, she became the first black woman
director of A&R for any major record label, at A&M. She continues to
pursue this sideline for various labels —most recently her own NegaFulo
Records.
470 biographies
Roberta "Robbie" Cruger was Creem's film writer and editorial assistant
from the late sixties to the mid-seventies. She worked in the programming/
talent department at MTV from the music channel's birth in 1981 until
1988. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles, where she is a free-lance writer
and represents music video directors.
Sue Cummings was a founding editor at Spin magazine and has written for
publications including Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. She cofounded
Rock for Choice with members of the band L7. She is music editor at the
L.A. Weekly.
Cherie Currie was the lead singer for the Runaways. She also starred in the
movie Foxes.
Thulani Davis is the author of several books, including 1 959, Playing the
Changes. She currently lives in New York City.
Pamela Des Barres is author of I'm With the Band: Confessions of a

Groupie and Take Another Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up. She
has written articles for Interview, Lear's, Mademoiselle, Arena, and other
publications. Her chronicle of the pop scene's darker side, Rock Bottom,
will be available from St. Martin's Press in September 1995. She lives in Los
Angeles.
Carola Dibbell lives in the East Village with her husband, Bob, and daugh-
ter, Nina. She stopped writing rock and other criticism so she could finish
rewriting her novel, Girl Talk. And now, she has.
Donna Dresch has played bass for Dinosaur Jr., Fifth Column, and Scream-
ing Trees and now plays in the all-dyke band Team Dresch. She publishes
the fanzine Chainsaw and runs a record label with the same name.
Karen Durbin was an editor at The Village Voice from 1975 until 1988. She
then spent five years as arts editor at Mirabella. In 1994, she returned to the
Voice, this time as editor-in-chief. She lives in Manhattan.
Marianne Faithfull has been a recording artist since 1964, when she had a
top 10 hit with "As Tears Go By." In Faithfull, her 1994 autobiography, the
angel of Swinging London documents her up and down with the Rolling
life
Stones, as a street junkie, and her triumphant 1979 comeback, Broken

biographies 471
English. In spring 1995 Island Records released her latest album, A Secret
Life.
Lisa Fancher is founder and president of Frontier Records, which has re-
leased music by the Circle Jerks, Young Fresh Fellows, Game Theory, and
many other bands. She wrote about music for Bompl and the Los Angeles
Times in the 1970s. She currently lives in Sun Valley, California.
Deborah Frost has spent most of her life on one side of a stage or another.
Before becoming one of the most individual and important critical voices of
her generation, she had written a play for Joseph Papp, peformed in Off-
Broadway's The Dirtiest Show in Town, and formed one of America's first
hard-rock all-female bands, Flaming Youth, at the dawn of the seventies.
Her work has subsequently appeared in every major rock publication and in
New York's leading dailies. She is a onetime body builder and marathon
runner. In 1994 she released the debut CD of her band Brain Surgeons on
Cellsum Records, the label she formed with her longtime collaborator, Al-
bert Bouchard.
Donna Gaines is a sociologist and the author of Teenage Wasteland: Subur-

bia Dead End Kids. She writes for The Village Voice, Spin, Rolling Stone,
's
and Newsday, and sings backup vocals for the Slugs.
Mary Gaitskill is author of the short-story collection Bad Behavior and the
novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin. She lives in San Francisco.
Sheryl Garratt is coauthor, with Sue Steward, of Signed, Sealed, and Deliv-
ered. She's currently editor of The Face.
Holly George- Warren is coauthor of the book Musicians in Tune: Seventy-
Five Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process, and coeditor of

the Rolling Stone Album Guide and the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of
Rock &Roll, for which she wrote the chapter "Women in Revolt." She is
editor of Rolling Stone Press and has authored articles for many other
publications. She played guitar in New York City underground bands
throughout the 1980s.
New Musical Express, Melody

Vivien Goldman's articles have appeared in
Maker, Newsday, Vibe, and Billboard. She released a single, produced by
Johnny Rotten, in the early eighties and has written music for several artists.
472 biographies
She has also written a screenplay and worked on several video projects. She
currently lives in New York.
Kim Gordon plays in the bands Sonic Youth and Free Kitten. She has
written art and music criticism for publications including Interview, SPIN,
and The Village Voice.
hattie gossett lives & writes at the intersection of harlem & the north
american capital of the dominican republic influenced by jazz blues & ev-
eryday peoples speech rhythms as well as the hilariously obscene ironies of

daily life, appears as solo poetry performance artist & with her jazz-roots
band in highly spiced 90s blend of words & music, writes for page & stage,
work adapted for film theater dance cabaret; published in major antholo-
gies & periodicals, author presenting sister noblues and upcoming pussy &
cash: memoirs of a working woman and hotflashin & coldsweatin in the
waitin room of the 21st century.
JessicaHagedorn was born and raised in the Philippines, led the rock band
Gangster Choir in the 1970s and '80s, and has produced a wide-ranging
body of work in performance art, drama, poetry, prose, and video. Her
novel Dogeaters was nominated for the National Book Award. She recently
wrote the screenplay for the film Fresh Kill. She lives in New York City.
dream hampton is a frequent contributor to The Source and has also writ-
ten for The Village Voice and Essence. She is a filmmaker who currently
lives in Brooklyn.
Gerri Hirshey is the author of Nowhere to Run, a history of soul music. Her
articles have appeared in GQ, Rolling Stone, Redbook, Vanity Fair, Utne
Reader, Family Circle, Esquire, and others.
Jan Hoffman was a staff writer for The Village Voice in the mid-eighties.
She now works as an editor at The New York Times Week in Review.
bell hooks is the author of books including Ain't I a Woman, Feminist

Theory, Talking Back, Yearning, Black Looks, and Daughters of the Yam.
She is a professor of African-American Studies at the City University of
New York.
biographies 473
Carolyn Johnson is a writer and a producer/director of films and videos.

Her company, Dis/Illusion Film & Video, recently completed production of
Juneteenth Community, a documentary about the century-old celebration
of the emancipation of enslaved Americans in the U.S. She is currently in
production with a docudrama about the Martinican physician and human-
ist Frantz Fanon.
Lisa Jones is a staff writer for The Village Voice. She has authored nation-
ally produced stage and radio plays and recently completed the screenplay
for Spike Lee's film version of the Toni Morrison novel Sula. A collection of
her essays, Bulletproof Diva, was published in 1994. She lives in Brooklyn.
Sally Margaret Joy wrote extensively about rock music for Melody Maker
in 1992-1993. Her cover stories on Riot Grrrls created a national sensa-
tion. She has since started a record label, Bone, and a magazine, Flower.
Christina Kelly was executive editor of Sassy magazine until its sale in 1995.
She is now a freelance writer based in New York. She also sings and plays
for the indie rock band Chia Pet.
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison was from 1968 to 1971 the editor of Jazz &
Pop magazine. In June 1970, she married Jim Morrison in a private reli-
gious ceremony. Her memoir, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim
Morrison, was published in 1992. She's the author of the Keltiad science-
fantasy series; her seven novels include The Oak Above the Kings, The
Hedge of Mist, and upcoming Blackmantle. She served as a consultant
the
to Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, in which she also appeared as a
character and made a cameo appearance. She is a high priestess in a Celtic
pagan tradition, a member of Mensa, and a Dame of the Ordo Supremus
Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani. She lives in Manhattan.
Lisa Kennedy is the features editor and former film editor of The Village
Voice. Her work has been included in the anthology Black Popular Culture.
She is currently working on an essay collection.
Amy Linden contributes to many different publications, including People,

The New York Times, Essence, and Thrasher. She lives in Brooklyn with her
son, Lucian.
474 biographies
Susan McClary is professor of musicology at the University of California,

Los Angeles. She is author of Feminine Endings: Music Gender and Sexual-
ity, George Bizet's Carmen, and Power and Desire in Seventeenth Century
Music. She has cowritten two experimental theater pieces: Susanna Does
the Elders and Hildegard.
Daisann McLane was a staff writer for Rolling Stone in the mid-seventies
and wrote the "Lady Complainer" column for The Village Voice through-
out the 1980s. She recorded an album of calypso music under the name
Lady Complainer in the 1970s. She currently writes about world music for
Rolling Stone, The New York Times, the Voice, and other publications, and
is pursuing a doctorate in American Studies, with an emphasis on Carib-
bean culture, at Yale.
Margot Mifflin is a free-lance writer who contributes to national publica-

tions, including Entertainment Weekly and Mirabella. She teaches journal-
ism at New York University.
Joan Morgan is a cultural critic and staff writer at Vibe magazine.
Tracie Morris is a New York-based songwriter, performance poet, and

critic. She has traveled internationally with the Nuyorican Poets Live and
with the band she leads, werdz-n-muze[sic]. She has published a book of
poems, Chap-T-her Won, and is featured in the anthology Aloud: Voices
from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She was the 1993 Grand Slam Champion
of the Nuyorican and the 1993 National Haiku Slam Champion.
Nicole Panter left home at fifteen and worked as a short-order cook, dish-
washer, migrant farm worker, and date pollinator. L.A. punk rock pioneer
and manager of the Germs. Featured in The Decline of Western Civiliza-
tion. Founding member/writer Pee Wee's Playhouse. Two self-published

books: in 1989, Congo Powers, in 1993 Mercury Retrograde. Recent short
fiction in Clutch, The New Censorship, Caffeine, Fuel, and Secrets. In-
cluded on the spoken word CD anthologies Disclosure and Cause. A hu-
man rights activist, Nicole has been involved in many different organiza-
tions. In April 1991, she cofounded the Bohemian Women's Political
Alliance with Exene Cervenka. Both pieces in this anthology can be found
in her collection of short stories Mr. Right On & Other Stories, published
by Incommunicado Press. She lives near the ocean in Venice, California,
with several vicious dogs.
biographies 47S
Gretchen Phillips played in the seminal late-eighties group 2 Nice Girls. She
currently leads the Gretchen Phillips Experience and plays guitar in Girls in
the Nose. Her writing has appeared in The Village Voice, DeNeuve, and
Pop Culture Press. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Rolling Stone has called Lisa Robinson "rock journalism's top insider."
Currently the pop music columnist for the New York Post and the interac-
tive Prodigy Service, her work has been syndicated worldwide by The New
York Times Syndicate and United Features and appeared in Vogue, Inter-
view, Cosmopolitan, and Spin. In the seventies she edited Hit Parader and
Rock Scene magazines and was fashion editor of the original Creem and a
contributor to Circus. On television, she hosted Radio 1990 and Night-
fligkt. She hosted the syndicated radio show Inside Track, and her rock
novel, Walk on Glass, was published by the Newmarket Press in 1982. A

member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
her pieces have been anthologized in the books Rock Revolution and The
Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years.
TriciaRose is author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in

Contemporary America (Wesleyan 1994) and coeditor with Andrew Ross
of Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture (Routledge 1994).
Karen Schoemer is a writer for Newsweek who lives in Hoboken, New

Jersey, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra. Her favorite things are cheese fries,
Coney Island, old radios, Absolut martinis, and the summer wind.
Susin Shapiro began her free-lance writing career at Craw daddy in 1974.
She has since written for Rolling Stone, Sounds, Melody Maker, Circus, The
Village Voice, The New York Times, and Ms. From 1979 to 1987 she was a
pop culture critic for the New York Daily News. She currently freelances in
New York City. Her daughter is a Ramones and Beatles fan. The beat goes
on.
Danyel Smith grew up in California, and came of age amid the Oakland
hip-hop explosion of the mid-1980s. She worked as music editor of San
Francisco Weekly and a columnist for The San Francisco Bay Guardian,
before relocating to New York, where she served briefly as R&B columnist
for Billboard. She authored SPIN magazine's "Dreaming America" column
fortwo years. She has also written for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and
The New York Times. She is currently music editor at Vibe.
476 biographies
Patti Smith wrote for Creem, Crawdaddy, and Rolling Stone in the seven-
ties.Her books of poetry include Babel, Wool Gathering, and Early Work:
1970-1979. Her albums include Horses, Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Wave, and
Dream of Life. She lives with her two children in Michigan, where she
continues to work on her writing and music.
Terri Sutton has written about popular music for Artforum, Minneapolis'
City Pages, The L.A. Weekly, The New York Times, and Spin. She lives in
Minnesota.
Ariel Swartley was a pop music columnist for The Real Taper, "All Things
Considered," and 7 Days. She has also written about rock 'n' roll for
Rolling Stone, The Boston Phoenix, The Village Voice, The New York
Times, and Mother Jones. She is now writing fiction in Los Angeles.
Tinuviel is a visual artist and writer. She formed the record company Villa
Villakulla and has worked with the independent label Kill Rock Stars.
Lori Twersky was editor and publisher of Bitch magazine from 1985 to
1989. She and other Bitch staffers were writing The Bitch/Diva Encyclope-
dia of Women in Rock and Pop when Twersky died in 1991 from complica-
tions of a lupuslike autoimmune disorder.
Mim Udovitch is a staff writer for Rolling Stone.
Jaan Uhelszki worked for Creem from 1969 to 1986, working her way up
from subscription kid to senior editor. She was a columnist for Record
World from 1977 to 1978 and is now a free-lance writer contributing to
BAM, Creem, San Francisco Chronicle, NME, and Playboy.
Emily White's fiction has been published in Quarterly West, Iowa Review,
and Sonora Review, and her journalism has appeared in the L.A. Weekly,
Newsday, and The Village Voice. She recently completed two years as a
Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She lives in Seattle.
Ellen Willis has been the rock critic for The New Yorker, an editor for The
Village Voice, feminist columnist for Rolling Stone, and a contributor to
biographies 477
many other publications. She was a founding member of the New York
feminist group the Redstockings. Her essays have been published in two
collections, Beginning to See the Light and No More Nice Girls. She is a
professor of journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
About the Editors
Ann Powers grew up in Seattle, when Seattle was just another town. She
lived in San Francisco during the 1980s and was an editor and columnist for
San Francisco Weekly. She received her M.A. in American literature from
the University of California at Berkeley in 1992. That year, she relocated to
New York City to work as a pop critic for The New York Times. She is now
music editor at The Village Voice, and has written for many other publica-
tions, including Rolling Stone, Spin, the L.A. Weekly, and Vibe. She is a
founding member of the activist group Strong Women in Music. She longs
for the West Coast, but has found a pleasing substitute in the greenery of
Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Evelyn McDonnell is a free-lance journalist who actually makes her living

writing. Born in Glendale, California, she decided to become a writer when
she was book reader in Beloit, Wisconsin. She has
a voracious five-year-old
since lived in Providence, Rhode Island, where she wrote for The NewPaper
and The Providence Journal-Bulletin and edited the fanzine OK Go Now;
San Francisco, where she was the associate editor of music and arts at San
Francisco Weekly; and New York, where she currently resides. Her work on
music, poetry, and culture has appeared in publications including The Vil-
lage Voice, Interview, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, The New York
Times, Details, Spin, Musician, and Billboard. She is a founding member of
SWIM.
Editor Evelyn McDonnell is a freelance journal-
ist whose work on music, poetry, and culture

has appeared in numerous publications,
including The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, The
New York Times, Details, Spin, Musician, Ms.,
Billboard, and Option. A former associate edi-

tor of music and arts at SF Weekly, she wrote
the first history of women rock critics in The
Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly \n 1992.
Editor Ann Powers is a senior editor at The
Village Voice, focusing on gender issues. She

was a regular critic for The New York Times
from fall 1992 to spring 1993. She was a
founding editor of SF Weekly and was a colum-
nist there until 1992. Her work has also

appeared in LA. Weekly, Spin, Musician,
Details, Rolling Stone, and other publications.
""
"For three weeks now, I've been walking

around with Ice-T. And I liken the experience
to speedballing (what euphoria, what dips).
— Lisa Kennedy, "Speedballing with the
Home Invader"
London to LA, from Creem to The New

From
Yorker, women have been writing about rock
and pop music for more than thirty years. What
they have to say is fresh, eye-opening — and
largely overlooked in the male-dominated world
of contemporary music criticism.
and I decided to stage-dive. So I just dove off

and suddenly, it was like my dress was
the stage,
being torn off me... I was raped by an audience —
figuratively, literally, and yet, was I asking for it?"
—
Courtney Love, quoted in "Rock 'n' Roll
Needs Courtney Love" by Pamela Des Barres
|
ow their vibrant, nasty, brilliant voices can be heard in this ground-
I breaking collection. There's Jaan Uhelszki onstage with Kiss, Joan

Morgan chronicling her seduction by the music of rapper Ice Cube, Lisa
Robinson discovering punk rock New York clubs, Mary Gaitskill
in chal-
lenging the definition of "PC" when she examines her lust for Axl Rose,
and Tricia Rose's bonding with hip-hop as she profiles Queen Latifah.
"/ play bass because it's heavy, funky, percussion-y. I can jump around
a lot. It's in my soul. But looking at it another way, bass is the exact
opposite of what girls are supposed to be. Heavy, loud, powerful...
— Donna Dresch, "Chainsaw"
Opinionated, provocative, often wickedly funny, the articles in Rock She

Wrote bring us feminism and funk, the big cultural picture and the
intimate details of American rock, pop, and hip-hop. It's essential reading
for all women who love music— who turn the radio up loud to sing aiong.
Concept by Tinu'viel
Cover photo © S.Kay Young

of Leslie Mali of Tribe 8

Rock She Wrote - Dest

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Edited b:

"White Noise: How Heavy Metal Rules"

"Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?"

"Masked Bawl" by Patti Smith (1974)

"k.d. lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist, Vegetarian

Copyright © 1995 by Ann Powers and Evelyn McDonnell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Manufactured in the United States of America

permission of the author.

Marianne Faithfull: From FAITHFULL by Marianne Faithfull. Copyright © 1994

Holly George-Warren: "Into the Abyss," from Option, November/December

Susan Brownmiller: "Yoko and John," © Susan Brownmiller 1981. Originally

Lori Twersky: "Devils or Angels? The female teenage audience examined,"

JessicaHagedorn: "Motown/Smokey Robinson," copyright © 1981 by Jessica

"Heavy Metal Will Stand," from Creem, May 1975. Copyright

Is No Pretender," from The Real Paper,

Race and Representation, 1992. Used by permission of the author.

Mim Udovitch: "k.d.lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist, Vegetarian Canadian

Lisa Carver: "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton-John," from Rollerderby,

Dana Bryant: "Canis Rufus." Used by permission of the author.

Kennealy-Morrison: "Rock Around the Cock." Reprinted from jazz and

Roberta "Robbie" Cruger: "Flashbacks to Boy Howdy's Prepubescence," from

dream hampton: "Confessions of a Hip-hop Critic," from Essence, August 1994.

INTRO-Evelyn McDonnell, "The Feminine Critique," The Village

Marianne Faithfull, excerpt from Faith full, 1994.

Jaan Uhelszki, "I Dreamed I Was Onstage with Kiss in My

Georgia Christgau, "The Girls Can't Help It," The Village

hattie gossett with Carolyn Johnson, "jazzwomen," jazz

Donna Dresch, "Chainsaw," jigsaw, winter 1989.

Margot Mifflin, "The Fallacy of Feminism in Rock,"

Lisa Robinson, "The New Velvet Underground," Creem,

Vivien Goldman, "The Rascal Republic Takes On the World,"

FAN MAIL AND LOVE LETTERS

Nicole Panter, "Fuck You Punk Rock/1977 and 1979," Fiz,

Lori Twersky, "Devils or Angels? The female teenage audience

Christina Kelly, "I Hate Going Backstage," Sassy, April 1991.

Patti Smith, "Masked Bawl," Creem, April 1974.

Trixie A. Balm, "Heavy Metal Will Stand," Creem, May 1975.

Carol Cooper, "August Darnell and the Creole Perplex," The

Joan Morgan, "The Nigga Ya Hate to Love," The Village

Gerri Hirshey, "James Brown: Presenting the One and Only

Gina Arnold, "Nelson Is as Nelson Does," East Bay Express,

Karen Schoemer, "Old Blue Eyes, Young at Heart," E.A. Style,

Mary Gaitskill, "An Ordinariness of Monstrous Proportions,"

WIMMIN, GRRRLS, QUEENS, AND DIVAS

Susin Shapiro, "Patti Smith: Somewhere, Over the Rimbaud,"

Jan Hoffman, "Backing Up Is Hard to Do," The Village Voice,

Tricia Rose, "One Queen, One Tribe, One Destiny," The

bell hooks, "Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister?"

Mim Udovitch, "k.d. lang: How Did a Lesbian, Feminist,

Lisa Carver, "Why I Want to Rape Olivia Newton-John

Dana Bryant, "Canis Rufus," Straight No Chaser, 1992.

TALKING 'BOUT A REVOLUTION

Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, "Rock Around the Cock," Jazz &

Cheryl Cline, "Little Songs of Misogyny," Bitch #16, 1987.

Emily White, "Revolution Girl Style Now," LA. Weekly, July

Lisa Kennedy, "Speedballing with the Home Invader," The

Ellen Willis, "Records: Rock, Etc.," The New Yorker, July 6,

Roberta "Robbie" Cruger, "Flashbacks to Boy Howdy's

Susan McClary, "Same As It Ever Was: Youth Culture and

OUTRO-Ann Powers, "Who's That Girl?"

About the Editors

Thanks to those who made it happen: Betsy Bundschuh, Sarah