Rock Chicks

by Alison Stieven-Taylor

  Rolling Stone awarded the Pixies ‘Best New American Band’. Being the next big thing didn’t sit well with Kim, who shunned the accolade. The collective music media claimed the Pixies was the most successful indie band since the Smiths. But after an exhaustive tour Thompson declared the Pixies on hiatus. Kim used her time to get the Breeders together and put out an album, Pod, which was produced by Albini and hailed as a masterpiece. The line-up featured Lovering from the Pixies, Tanya Donelly and David Narcizo (Throwing Muses), and later Josephine Wiggs (Perfect Disaster).

  The Pixies followed up Doolittle with Bossanova, produced by Norton, who was now known as the fifth Pixie. Another grueling tour took the band across the top of the world for eight months. In London they played Hammersmith Odeon and proved the critics correct—they were the biggest thing since the Smiths.

  But 1991’s Trompe Le Monde would be the last album from the Pixies. While supporting U2 on the USA leg of the Zoo TV behemoth, the friction among band members was palpable and the volatile relationship between Kim and Thompson brought the band to a halt in 1993.

  She pushed her energies back into the Breeders. Kelley took over on lead guitar, and Jim MacPherson was on drums. Donnelly left to start her own band and other members had been lost along the way. The Breeders followed up the previous year’s EP Safari with the platinum album Last Splash with Kim in the producer’s chair along with Mark Freegard. The single ‘Cannonball’ gave the band a hit, taking out second spot on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks.

  The Breeders were on the bill for MTV’s New Year’s Eve show in Seattle, along with Nirvana, Cypress Hill and Pearl Jam but the latter didn’t show. Kim was pissed. In an interview with Melody Maker, a very stoned Kim said she didn’t like Pearl Jam’s music or their attitude. The interview also involved Kurt Cobain, who said when he first met Kim she was ‘condescending’ and ‘generous’ at the same time. They’d met at a Breeders gig in New York, Cobain a fan, Kim oblivious to who he was. Within months the world would know Cobain through Nirvana’s Nevermind. Later the Breeders would support Nirvana on tour and even later Kim would mourn Cobain’s death.

  In 1994 the Breeders played on the main stage at Lollapalooza. Kim was dating Jim Greer, a music journalist and sometime bass player for Boston band Guided by Voices. Then Kelley was arrested for possession of heroin and entered rehab putting the Breeders on hold. According to Kim, watching her twin sister go through her heroin hell was the ‘worst f–ing feeling in the world’.

  Kim put her restlessness into another side project, The Amps (formerly Tammy and the Amps) with MacPherson on drums. Towards the end of 1995, The Amps put out the album Pacer, making full use of Kim’s vast library of songs. By 1997 The Amps was over and Kim went back to the Breeders. But this time it was just Kim and Kelley. The pair put together a demo tape, but there wouldn’t be another Breeders album until 2002 with the acclaimed Title TK.

  In 2002 it was time for Kim’s turn in rehab—for alcoholism. The withdrawal symptoms were truly dreadful, she said, not ‘cool junkie sick’. But Kim bounced back and in 2004 joined the Pixies on a hugely successful six-month reunion tour of the USA, Canada and Europe. It was twelve years since Kim had spoken to Thompson. ‘Bam Thwok’, which Kim wrote, was released as an iTunes single, one of the rare times one of her songs has been used on the Pixies’ records.

  Juxtaposed against the heady success of the Pixies resurrection was the personal heartache Kim was suffering. Her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Kim moved back home to help care for her.

  Late in 2007 the Breeders released their first album for six years, Mountain Battles, which reached number 12 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums, but only managed 98 on the Billboard 200.

  As her forties come to a close, there are no signs of the hyperactive state that inhabits Kim lessening its grip. This rock chick’s race is only partly run.

  1990s

  Pop Princess & Riot Grrrls

  A new rock chick emerged in the dawn of the decade. When PJ Harvey hit the airwaves, her feral, raw, sexually charged songs sung in an angst-ridden voice to scathing guitar riffs was just the ticket to shake up the staid environment. The American music rags sang her praises, spiriting the notoriously shy and private musician into the bright lights of celebrity. PJ despised the attention, shrinking like a violet. The other new rock chick on the scene, Hole’s Courtney Love, couldn’t get enough attention. But Madonna blitzed them both.

  Her Blind Ambition tour in 1990 set a precedent for live rock concerts. Choreographed routines, professional dancers, acrobats and Jean Paul Gaultier bustiers turned the show into a theatrical performance. Blind Ambition rewrote the record books for live music performances and Madonna sold millions of albums. Her single ‘Vogue’ became the mantra on the dance floors. Her power dressing, close-cropped blonde hair and scarlet lipstick was the new fashion.

  Roxette, Mariah Carey, Taylor Dayne and Janet Jackson were making the charts and Heart’s anthem ‘All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You’ became another hit for the sisters from Seattle.

  Kylie Minogue emerged out of her pop princess shell with hits like ‘Locomotion’ propelling the former Neighbours star into celebritydom. In 1990 Kylie hooked up with the bad boy of Aussie rock, Michael Hutchence, the troubled lead singer of INXS. Their relationship gave Kylie the cred she needed to move up to the next rank of pop royalty.

  Music fans turned out in the hundreds of thousands to attend the Berlin Wall concert, masterminded by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. Beamed into millions of homes around the globe, it was more like a theatrical play in which songs from Pink Floyd’s The Wall album were transformed into a series of stage acts performed by singers, actors and musicians. Thomas Dolby, Albert Finney, the Band, the Scorpions, Sinead O’Connor, Ute Lemper, Joni Mitchel, Bryan Adams, Jerry Hall, Van Morrison, Marianne Faithfull and Roger Waters were supported by Waters’ Bleeding Heart Band, the East Berlin Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, the East Berlin Radio Choir and the Marching Band of the Combined Soviet Forces in Germany.

  For a short time the world was bathed in optimism. By 1991 the Gorbachev-led Soviet Union was dissolving in glasnost and the Cold War was officially over. Nelson Mandela was released from prison and two years later would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  But the first Gulf War erupted in February 1991. In Africa war raged in Somalia. NATO was kept busy with peace-keeping troops in Bosnia and the USA participated in air strikes on Yugoslavia.

  In 1992 the world wide web was launched, changing the way we ran our lives. By the end of the decade its negative impact on the music industry would be apparent, with the first online free music download site Napster. Music lovers could only see its benefits. But the music industry went ballistic at the thought of their revenue being eroded. Although the big record companies bemoaned the theft of copyright, it was the artists who ultimately suffered, missing out on royalty payments that were rightfully theirs.

  Bill Clinton rode into the White House in 1992 with Fleetwood Mac’s hit ‘Don’t Stop’ as his campaign song. The president asked the Mac to perform at his inauguration and later again at the conclusion of his administration. He is the only president to have a sexual act named after him—doing a Clinton became the slang for fellatio.

  In the early 1990s the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, Londonbeat and New Kids on the Block were infiltrating the British and US charts. The Spice Girls, created in 1994, had a hit around the world with their first single ‘Wannabee’ two years later. The band became the voice for ‘girl power’ and the five members—Posh, Sporty, Scary, Ginger and Baby Spice—icons for the tweens and teenagers who bought more than fifty million Spice Girls albums over the next four years.

  Alternative rock bands were gaining popularity, largely thanks to the acceptance of grunge rockers Nirvana. The Seattle trio took the music world by storm in 1991, with the release of the landmark album Nevermind spurring on the likes of Pear
l Jam and Soundgarden. Of course Nirvana wasn’t only famous for its music. The marriage of lead singer Kurt Cobain to the fame-hungry Courtney Love, and his untimely death in 1994, kept the band’s name in the media well into the new millennium.

  Although slightly more alternate rock, Courtney Love was part of the riot grrrl movement, along with L7, Bikini Kill, Babes in Toyland and Bratmobile. The riot grrrls were a new wave of feminist, singing with attitude and their collective finger up at the world. Some were marked as man-haters and others tried too hard to rebel. But their music made listeners think. They sang about rape, incest, discrimination, racism and sexual abuse. The riot grrrls was part of a cult movement that published its own online magazines—zines—and communicated through chat rooms.

  Sheryl Crowe and Melissa Etheridge brought a softer rock, almost folk, feel back to the airwaves. Meatloaf made a surprise comeback with the number one hit ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, proving that the music-buying public still loved a good rock anthem. 10,000 Maniacs did a cover of Patti Smith’s classic ‘Because the Night’, written by Smith and Bruce Springsteen, and Crash Test Dummies made it into the charts with ‘MMM MMM MMM MMM’.

  Sheryl Crowe’s 1996 album was banned in Wal-Mart stores across the US because one of its songs referred to children being killed in mass shootings with guns bought at the superstores. The issue of gun control became a topic that musicians focused on as more of their peers—including rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.—lost their lives to street violence.

  In the latter half of the decade the music charts began to get a little more interesting. New York band the Goo Goo Dolls made an assault on the mainstream charts after years playing the alternate scene. Their singles ‘Name’ and ‘Iris’ gave them a level of success they hadn’t experienced before or since. The Smashing Pumpkins and Collective Soul were charting with a new sound that previously would have been relegated to the alternate charts—mainstream music was beginning to change its face. What had been known as AOR—adult or album oriented rock suited to radio airplay—was morphing into a sound that was edgier and more connected to emotions other than love. Alanis Morissette gave us hope that a new rock chick was emerging. Her ‘You Oughta Know’ rocked and ranted with a seething anger and indignation that had been missing. But Alanis didn’t follow through and her future work pushed her into the pop/folk genre.

  As the 1990s came to a close Jennifer Lopez, or J Lo, Britney Spears, TLC, Christina Aguilera, Destiny’s Child and Mariah Carey were all singing songs of love and dancing their butts off in highly choreographed videos. Cher made her mainstream chart comeback with ‘Believe’, but there wasn’t a new rock chick in sight.

  The racial and civic turmoil that had seen the world map redrawn would continue into the next decade as would our continued reliance on technology. By the end of the millennium more than 100 million people were using online technology. Email had become a way of life and so had mobile phones. There was a gadget for everyone. As we counted down the new year on 31 December 1999 everyone waited for the technology governing the world to be thrown into a spin, but the impending disaster didn’t eventuate.

  PJ HARVEY

  The Reluctant Rock Star

  Her music, which is in a constant state of evolution, crashed on to the alternate music charts in 1991. It defined her as the messenger of intensely sexual, black and visceral songs that were anything but comfortable listening—even for the artist, who has said listening to some of her tracks makes her nauseous.

  Born in 1969, PJ grew up in Dorset, in a small picturesque village on the south-west coast of England. A happy little kid, PJ frolicked around the family farm, collecting eggs and helping her father tend the animals. She was the one who twisted the balls off baby lambs and wrenched dead foetuses from sheep wombs. Her father was too squeamish to do it.

  Her father, a stonemason, and her sculptor mother had escaped London to live off the land. Both were huge music fans and dabbled in music promotion, organising for various bands and R&B ensembles to play locally. The Harvey home was filled with musicians, including her father’s best friend, Ian Stewart, one of the original Rolling Stones. It was a very stable environment. Her parents, whom she refers to fondly as old hippies, had Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, John Lee Hooker, Ella Fitzgerald and Captain Beefheart pumping on the stereo—it was an eclectic mix and offered PJ a broad musical education.

  She grew up a tomboy, hanging out with her brother Saul and his mates. Up until her mid teens she was often mistaken for a boy. Then she grew her hair and wore dresses. It was only when she started having relationships with men that she began to feel that she had made the transition from tomboy to woman. PJ didn’t start dating until she was twenty.

  she broke the news to her parents that she wanted to be a musician. They were delighted

  As a teenager she flirted with popular music, listening to Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and U2, much to her parents’ horror. But it wasn’t long before the pull of rock and R&B drew her back to her roots and heroes such as Keith Richards, Tom Waits, Howlin’ Wolf, Bob Dylan and Willie Dixon.

  Up until the age of seventeen PJ’s instrument of choice was the saxophone. When the songwriting bug hit, she picked up a guitar and taught herself with the help of the Police songbook.

  She began to think of a future in music when she met John Parrish of Automatic Dlamini, which played experimental percussion. She joined the band in 1988 and remained for three years. While singing backing vocals and playing guitar and saxophone, she worked relentlessly on her songwriting, refusing to present any of her material until she was certain of its worth.

  she couldn’t switch to carving stone, her mind was full of songs

  Automatic Dlamini undertook a five-week tour to Europe in the summer of 1989. The following year they recorded Here Catch, Shouted His Father, but the record was never released. Today bootleg copies are prized. The band’s 1992 independently produced From a Diva to a Diver featured PJ, but she’d already left to start her own band with ex-Automatic Dlamini members, drummer Rob Ellis and bass player Ian Olliver. Her musical connection with John Parrish would continue.

  Before she gave herself to the world of rock, PJ had enrolled to study sculpture at St Martin School of Art in London. But she couldn’t switch to carving stone, her mind was full of songs. Accepting her fate, she broke the news to her parents that she wanted to be a musician. They were delighted.

  The original PJ Harvey line-up didn’t make it past the first gig in a club in April 1991. The audience, thinking the band so awful, began to leave in droves. Olliver left and was replaced by Steve Vaughan, whose five-string fretless bass brought a new element to the PJ Harvey mix. Six months later, they were signed to independent label Too Pure and their first single, ‘Dress’, was released to rave reviews. PJ was being hailed as the first real rock chick of the 1990s.

  Influential DJ John Peel fell in love with the single and played it ad nauseum. The band performed live in the studio for one of his famed Peel Sessions—the tracks were later released by Too Pure in 1992. Peel’s advocacy for the wraithlike creature and her seat-squirming lyrics helped to propel her star into the stratosphere. But the speed of this would prove too much for the shy and deeply intense Polly Jean.

  The band’s second single, ‘Sheela-na-gig’, celebrated the Celtic stone carvings of the same name, believed to be fertility charms. The Sheela-na-gig, a hunched-over old woman, adorned churches, her hands clasped either side of her vagina pulling it apart, her mouth carved into the grin of madness. PJ liked the contradiction the image presented, and the song’s lyrics gave flight to the artist’s macabre sense of humour.

  Less than twelve months after playing that disastrous first gig, PJ Harvey had an album on the indie charts— Dry, released in March 1992—major labels sniffing around and more media attention than she wanted. Within weeks of Dry’s release, it
was number one on the British indie charts. Even the Americans were paying attention, hailing PJ as the new Chrissie Hynde.

  The change in her life was dramatic. Moving to London, PJ was living away from home for the first time at the age of twenty-one. She shared a flat with a girlfriend. The euphoria of being in the ‘big smoke’ shifted to angst as she tried to cope with the impersonal nature of the metropolis and juggle her new commitments. She began escaping back to Dorset whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  Dry was a collection of songs focused on unsatisfying sexual encounters, menstrual cycles and fertility mysticism. The raw anger and visceral nature of the lyrics were delivered with a savage humour that few detected, much to PJ’s chagrin. The eclectic arrangement of raw punk rock and blues riffs was almost intimidating. PJ’s voice, described as a wailing banshee, was the most distinctive John Peel said he’d heard in some time. As Melody Maker noted, ‘sex and bile and rock and roll. It’s been a long while since it was done so well ... these songs punch holes in your life.’

  fans sent her bodily fluids through the mail and others shared their thoughts about suicide. The attention terrified her

  In 1992 Rolling Stone named PJ songwriter and best female singer of the year, Spin ranked Dry at number eighteen of the best albums of the year, NME had it at seventy-first in its 1993 list of greatest albums of all time, Melody Maker lauded it at number six and it was four on the Village Voice’s best albums of 1992.

  The Dry album cover set the tone for PJ’s public face. She wasn’t interested in doing pretty. It was a close-up of her large lips, a smudge of red lipstick wiped across one side of her face. The photograph, taken by Maria Mochnacz, was a strikingly unattractive representation reeking of insolence.

  PJ’s decision to pose topless, albeit with her back to the camera, for an NME cover, caused a commotion. To PJ there wasn’t anything sexual about the photo—she didn’t think of herself in those terms,. She didn’t think she was attractive. Quite the opposite. She was consumed by how ugly she felt, commenting about the disproportionate size of her head, her large eyes and over-sized mouth.