Baring Their Fangs
11/30/2003 Yahoo! Music Lyndsey Parker
In the early-to-mid-'90s, the term "women in rock" actually meant something. The fierce, fabulous females of the Breeders, Veruca Salt, Throwing Muses, Hole, Velocity Girl, Babes In Toyland, L7, Sleater-Kinney, the Blake Babies, Bikini Kill, 7 Year Bitch, and countless "riot grrrl" bands were asserting themselves, grabbing headlines, making passionate and aggressive music, and proving once and for all that rock 'n' roll was not a boys' club. But then something happened. Instead of the phrase "women in rock" becoming obsolete--because being a female rock musician had finally, thankfully, lost its novelty and shock value--it became a label for the Lilith Fair set. And while kinder, gentler female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Jewel, and Paula Cole were certainly talented and deserving of attention, let's face it, they didn't really rock per se. "Women In Folk" would have been a more fitting description. And these days, things have gotten even worse: With the exception of Amy Lee from Evanescence, nearly every female on the charts right now is a pop or R&B strumpet, a record company pawn who, chances are, does not write her own songs, play any musical instruments, or have anything truly important to say. Where are our women in rock now, when we need them most? Enter Australian transplant Brody Dalle (formerly Brody Armstrong, until she reclaimed her maiden name after her recent divorce from her husband of six years, Rancid's Tim Armstrong). For the past five years, the snarling, raccoon-eyed Brody has led the defiantly punk and most definitely rockin' Distillers--writing all their songs, playing one mean guitar, and singing in her rough, raw, smoky, yet unmistakably feminine rasp. And while Brody insists that she's no role model and doesn't want to be (see her comments below), hopefully some young girls who watch her kicking ass in the Distillers' new "Drain The Blood" video will be inspired to pick up an electric guitar and make rock 'n' roll rackets of their own. Brody and her guitarist Tony Bradley recently dropped by LAUNCH's studio to perform a special stripped-down version of "Drain The Blood" (it was still plugged-in, and it still rocked) and to chat with LAUNCH editor Lyndsey Parker about new album Coral Fang, the current state of both punk rock and women in rock, and whatever else was on their minds. Here's what they had to say:
LAUNCH: What do you think the term "punk" really means these days? It seems a lot of bands that are currently called punk aren't really very punk at all.
TONY: I don't know. I don't personally like to be lumped into any certain sort of genre of music. It's kind of like, what is punk? I don't know. What punk was 20 years ago isn't what it is now. I don't know what it is now. Apparently you buy it at Hot Topic and you wear it on a T-shirt.
LAUNCH: Tell me about music you guys first got into when you were growing up. Did you listen to punk as kids?
BRODY: Well, when I was kid it was like, Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Cyndi Lauper, then when I got a little older it was, like, Archers Of Loaf, Nirvana, Mudhoney, stuff like that. And then I found Discharge, which is an early-'80s punk-rock band, so I kind of moved in that direction.
TONY: Basically all the stuff from the early '90s is what I loved, like Nirvana and Sonic Youth and Babes In Toyland and Dinosaur Jr., all that stuff.
BRODY: Oh, there was also Wire, and the Pixies and Joy Division...we were actually going to do a Joy Division song, "No Love Lost," but we didn't have time to do it.
LAUNCH: When did you first get into playing music, instead of just listening to it?
TONY: I actually started when I was really young--I played the saxophone when I was a little kid so I could sit next to this girl that I liked. So I owe it all to her, actually! But really, I've always just been kind of shut-in, a playing-guitar-in-my-room kind of guy. I'm too shy. This is actually my first real band.
BRODY: I was given a guitar by my uncle when I was about 13, and that kind of changed everything for me. I had lessons with this stoner-hesher dude who lived down the street; he taught me songs from bands that I loved at the time and then I formed a band with these other kids in the all-ages scene. That lasted about two years, and then I learned a little bit about the business and then voila! Here we are.
LAUNCH: Was that down in
BRODY: Yeah.
LAUNCH: It's almost hard to believe you grew up in
BRODY: No, I sold it to charity. [laughs]
LAUNCH: So how did you end up coming to the
BRODY: Um, er, there was this man on the street in
LAUNCH: And what was your impression of
BRODY: Well,
TONY: The West Coast is way better than the East Coast, from the bottom to top. The East Coast is just an angry, cold place.
LAUNCH: Tony, where from the East Coast did you move to
TONY:
LAUNCH: And what was your opinion of
TONY: I loved it. I'd wanted to move to
LAUNCH: That's being a good role model for the kids: "Don't go to school!"
TONY: Seriously, don't go to college. It really was a waste of time for me. Maybe for other people it's good, but for me it was just a giant waste of money and time.
LAUNCH: How did you end up hooking up with the Distillers, then?
TONY: I made it to
LAUNCH: Brody, I recently read about a place called the "Rock 'N' Roll House," or something like that, in
BRODY: Oh, you mean the Rock 'N' Roll High School. It was named after the Ramones song. It was just, like, a school for girls that was set up by a woman to teach young women how to use amplifiers and stuff like that. There were drum lessons and guitar lessons and bass lessons...whatever your instrument of choice was, you could basically go there and learn how to play it. It was actually a really great idea in theory. It just didn't quite work.
LAUNCH: How come?
BRODY: You know, just a clash of personalities, power struggles and that sort of stuff in between the adults. I didn't like being or playing under a banner of a girls' school, either. I kind of found that to be a little more detrimental than actually helpful.
LAUNCH: You mean because it was sort of a novelty? Like, "Ooh, girls are playing rock music!"
BRODY: Yeah. It was like, "She's from Rock 'N' Roll High School, she sucks." You weren't taken seriously at all, you know? So like I said, it's great in theory. but it doesn't really work out in the world.
LAUNCH: Have you found things have changed now that you're playing in coed band? Or do you still think rock's kind of like a boys' club?
BRODY: Oh, there's lots of girls out there playing, lots of women playing. I mean, that's undeniable.
LAUNCH: I don't want to belabor the "women in rock" thing too much, but it's inevitable that if you're a female in a band, that's the main thing people are going to focus on at first.
BRODY: That shouldn't be an issue, though, I don't think. And that's why I kind of kept that whole two years of my life of Rock 'N' Roll High School in the closet. It's kind of my dirty little secret.
LAUNCH: Is there any kind of jealousy among your the band members because you get more attention than them?
BRODY: I get jealous when the guys get free dresses.
TONY: I love free dresses. Short ones.
BRODY: [laughs] No, no, there's not any jealousy. That element doesn't really exist in our band. I think in most bands the singer plays a major role anyways, and the fact that I'm female seems to be a really big deal, so both of those factors kind of parlay into me being up in front. But it's not intentional. All I really ever wanted to do is just be the guitar player, you know?
LAUNCH: Then how'd you end up being a singer?
BRODY: 'Cause no one else would do it! But I just wanted to be like [Black Flag's] Greg Ginn and just play. That's all I wanted to really do--be a good crazy guitar player. But it never really happened.
LAUNCH: It seems in about 10 years ago there were a lot of bands dubbed "women in rock" who actually rocked. But now all the successful female artists are pop and R&B.
TONY: Yeah, it's on the cover of Rolling Stone this month. It says "Women Who Rock" and there's Missy Elliott, Alicia Keys, and Eve--basically all women who don't really "rock." I don't get it.
BRODY: "Rock" has become kind of a broad term, hasn't it?
TONY: Yeah. Apparently, Alicia Keys rocks the sh-t out of everything! [laughs]
LAUNCH: Evanescence is pretty much the only female-fronted rock band that's getting some attention.
BRODY: There's been a drought, yeah, and I think people are sick of it, so it's time for something different, you know? I really am still trying to figure it out myself. I've been playing all these years, but it just happens that right now is kind of the time to surface, I guess.
LAUNCH: Brody, you were on the cover of Rolling Stone yourself recently, the only female among all these hard rockers on the cover of the "summer rock tours" issue. Was that an honor for you?
BRODY: It was totally bizarre, 'cause I couldn't comprehend it. I still don't really comprehend it. It was awesome. It was a really, really great thing.
LAUNCH: Can you talk a little bit about your lyrics? Are they autobiographical? Some of your songs are about pretty serious stuff.
BRODY: Oh, it's just poetry. It's just a bunch of metaphors. I didn't really want to be obvious on this record, so it's just a bunch of words strung together. It's painting pictures. It's just imagery.
LAUNCH: Do you get any fans telling you, either in person or letters or emails, that your lyrics have touched them or affected them in any way?
BRODY: Yeah. For sure, yeah. All the time.
LAUNCH: Do you feel any sense of responsibility to your young fans looking up to you?
BRODY: I don't feel comfortable playing that, no. Why would I be responsible? That's kind of dangerous. This is not follow-the-leader. I'm not the leader, you know? I'm just like everyone else. The craziest story was this girl who was at an autograph signing at Lollapalooza, in
LAUNCH: Wow. That is intense. Let's switch to a lighter subject. I understand you're a lot happier with this album, because you weren't that happy with your second record because the recording was rushed...
BRODY: It was rushed, but I think just in terms of the band's cohesiveness and where we're at now, I kind of tend to think that our last record was our first record, and this is more like our second. The actual first record [2000's The Distillers] was kind of just thrown together and thrown out there. I'd actually never made a record before, so that was my first attempt.
LAUNCH: What was it like to work with producer Gil Norton on your new album this time around? He's produced some pretty impressive artists.
BRODY: He's brilliant. He's really, really good at his craft. You know, the first thing he ever did was Echo & the Bunnymen--that was kind of his breakthrough--and he did all of Pixies' stuff, which is pretty much the reason that we hired him. And he did the Foo Fighters, Dashboard Confessional...
TONY: He's "Papa Gil." He's like your dad--a nice guy. He's sweet.
BRODY: Yeah, he's very paternal.
LAUNCH: In what other ways this record is different from your previous ones?
TONY: We had five weeks to record it instead of having two weeks. And also, the engineer wasn't smoking crack this time. True story!
LAUNCH: Really?
BRODY: Yeah, that is a true story. We had two weeks [on 2002's Sing Sing Death House], and the engineer was smoking crack so we ended up dwindling our time down to a week and a half--for 14 songs!
TONY: When you're on crack, you don't hear very well...
BRODY: Yeah, so we would just spend 16 hours trying to get a bass tone down.
TONY: This time, we still had 16 hours to get a bass tone, but it actually was to spend time to getting a bass tone. It was intentional, yes. Definitely intentional.
LAUNCH: That's funny. I assume you didn't use the same engineer on Coral Fang?
BRODY: Definitely not!
TONY: This time was cool. We had a great crew of people--brilliant producer, great engineer, great studio in the middle of nowhere by ourselves. It was just us and the crew, no distractions. And Brody wrote f--king awesome songs. It was just cool. It came together very nicely.
Baring Their Fangs
11/30/2003 Yahoo! Music Lyndsey Parker
In the early-to-mid-'90s, the term "women in rock" actually meant something. The fierce, fabulous females of the Breeders, Veruca Salt, Throwing Muses, Hole, Velocity Girl, Babes In Toyland, L7, Sleater-Kinney, the Blake Babies, Bikini Kill, 7 Year Bitch, and countless "riot grrrl" bands were asserting themselves, grabbing headlines, making passionate and aggressive music, and proving once and for all that rock 'n' roll was not a boys' club. But then something happened. Instead of the phrase "women in rock" becoming obsolete--because being a female rock musician had finally, thankfully, lost its novelty and shock value--it became a label for the Lilith Fair set. And while kinder, gentler female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Jewel, and Paula Cole were certainly talented and deserving of attention, let's face it, they didn't really rock per se. "Women In Folk" would have been a more fitting description. And these days, things have gotten even worse: With the exception of Amy Lee from Evanescence, nearly every female on the charts right now is a pop or R&B strumpet, a record company pawn who, chances are, does not write her own songs, play any musical instruments, or have anything truly important to say. Where are our women in rock now, when we need them most? Enter Australian transplant Brody Dalle (formerly Brody Armstrong, until she reclaimed her maiden name after her recent divorce from her husband of six years, Rancid's Tim Armstrong). For the past five years, the snarling, raccoon-eyed Brody has led the defiantly punk and most definitely rockin' Distillers--writing all their songs, playing one mean guitar, and singing in her rough, raw, smoky, yet unmistakably feminine rasp. And while Brody insists that she's no role model and doesn't want to be (see her comments below), hopefully some young girls who watch her kicking ass in the Distillers' new "Drain The Blood" video will be inspired to pick up an electric guitar and make rock 'n' roll rackets of their own. Brody and her guitarist Tony Bradley recently dropped by LAUNCH's studio to perform a special stripped-down version of "Drain The Blood" (it was still plugged-in, and it still rocked) and to chat with LAUNCH editor Lyndsey Parker about new album Coral Fang, the current state of both punk rock and women in rock, and whatever else was on their minds. Here's what they had to say:
LAUNCH: What do you think the term "punk" really means these days? It seems a lot of bands that are currently called punk aren't really very punk at all.
TONY: I don't know. I don't personally like to be lumped into any certain sort of genre of music. It's kind of like, what is punk? I don't know. What punk was 20 years ago isn't what it is now. I don't know what it is now. Apparently you buy it at Hot Topic and you wear it on a T-shirt.
LAUNCH: Tell me about music you guys first got into when you were growing up. Did you listen to punk as kids?
BRODY: Well, when I was kid it was like, Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Cyndi Lauper, then when I got a little older it was, like, Archers Of Loaf, Nirvana, Mudhoney, stuff like that. And then I found Discharge, which is an early-'80s punk-rock band, so I kind of moved in that direction.
TONY: Basically all the stuff from the early '90s is what I loved, like Nirvana and Sonic Youth and Babes In Toyland and Dinosaur Jr., all that stuff.
BRODY: Oh, there was also Wire, and the Pixies and Joy Division...we were actually going to do a Joy Division song, "No Love Lost," but we didn't have time to do it.
LAUNCH: When did you first get into playing music, instead of just listening to it?
TONY: I actually started when I was really young--I played the saxophone when I was a little kid so I could sit next to this girl that I liked. So I owe it all to her, actually! But really, I've always just been kind of shut-in, a playing-guitar-in-my-room kind of guy. I'm too shy. This is actually my first real band.
BRODY: I was given a guitar by my uncle when I was about 13, and that kind of changed everything for me. I had lessons with this stoner-hesher dude who lived down the street; he taught me songs from bands that I loved at the time and then I formed a band with these other kids in the all-ages scene. That lasted about two years, and then I learned a little bit about the business and then voila! Here we are.
LAUNCH: Was that down in
BRODY: Yeah.
LAUNCH: It's almost hard to believe you grew up in
BRODY: No, I sold it to charity. [laughs]
LAUNCH: So how did you end up coming to the
BRODY: Um, er, there was this man on the street in
LAUNCH: And what was your impression of
BRODY: Well,
TONY: The West Coast is way better than the East Coast, from the bottom to top. The East Coast is just an angry, cold place.
LAUNCH: Tony, where from the East Coast did you move to
TONY:
LAUNCH: And what was your opinion of
TONY: I loved it. I'd wanted to move to
LAUNCH: That's being a good role model for the kids: "Don't go to school!"
TONY: Seriously, don't go to college. It really was a waste of time for me. Maybe for other people it's good, but for me it was just a giant waste of money and time.
LAUNCH: How did you end up hooking up with the Distillers, then?
TONY: I made it to
LAUNCH: Brody, I recently read about a place called the "Rock 'N' Roll House," or something like that, in
BRODY: Oh, you mean the Rock 'N' Roll High School. It was named after the Ramones song. It was just, like, a school for girls that was set up by a woman to teach young women how to use amplifiers and stuff like that. There were drum lessons and guitar lessons and bass lessons...whatever your instrument of choice was, you could basically go there and learn how to play it. It was actually a really great idea in theory. It just didn't quite work.
LAUNCH: How come?
BRODY: You know, just a clash of personalities, power struggles and that sort of stuff in between the adults. I didn't like being or playing under a banner of a girls' school, either. I kind of found that to be a little more detrimental than actually helpful.
LAUNCH: You mean because it was sort of a novelty? Like, "Ooh, girls are playing rock music!"
BRODY: Yeah. It was like, "She's from Rock 'N' Roll High School, she sucks." You weren't taken seriously at all, you know? So like I said, it's great in theory. but it doesn't really work out in the world.
LAUNCH: Have you found things have changed now that you're playing in coed band? Or do you still think rock's kind of like a boys' club?
BRODY: Oh, there's lots of girls out there playing, lots of women playing. I mean, that's undeniable.
LAUNCH: I don't want to belabor the "women in rock" thing too much, but it's inevitable that if you're a female in a band, that's the main thing people are going to focus on at first.
BRODY: That shouldn't be an issue, though, I don't think. And that's why I kind of kept that whole two years of my life of Rock 'N' Roll High School in the closet. It's kind of my dirty little secret.
LAUNCH: Is there any kind of jealousy among your the band members because you get more attention than them?
BRODY: I get jealous when the guys get free dresses.
TONY: I love free dresses. Short ones.
BRODY: [laughs] No, no, there's not any jealousy. That element doesn't really exist in our band. I think in most bands the singer plays a major role anyways, and the fact that I'm female seems to be a really big deal, so both of those factors kind of parlay into me being up in front. But it's not intentional. All I really ever wanted to do is just be the guitar player, you know?
LAUNCH: Then how'd you end up being a singer?
BRODY: 'Cause no one else would do it! But I just wanted to be like [Black Flag's] Greg Ginn and just play. That's all I wanted to really do--be a good crazy guitar player. But it never really happened.
LAUNCH: It seems in about 10 years ago there were a lot of bands dubbed "women in rock" who actually rocked. But now all the successful female artists are pop and R&B.
TONY: Yeah, it's on the cover of Rolling Stone this month. It says "Women Who Rock" and there's Missy Elliott, Alicia Keys, and Eve--basically all women who don't really "rock." I don't get it.
BRODY: "Rock" has become kind of a broad term, hasn't it?
TONY: Yeah. Apparently, Alicia Keys rocks the sh-t out of everything! [laughs]
LAUNCH: Evanescence is pretty much the only female-fronted rock band that's getting some attention.
BRODY: There's been a drought, yeah, and I think people are sick of it, so it's time for something different, you know? I really am still trying to figure it out myself. I've been playing all these years, but it just happens that right now is kind of the time to surface, I guess.
LAUNCH: Brody, you were on the cover of Rolling Stone yourself recently, the only female among all these hard rockers on the cover of the "summer rock tours" issue. Was that an honor for you?
BRODY: It was totally bizarre, 'cause I couldn't comprehend it. I still don't really comprehend it. It was awesome. It was a really, really great thing.
LAUNCH: Can you talk a little bit about your lyrics? Are they autobiographical? Some of your songs are about pretty serious stuff.
BRODY: Oh, it's just poetry. It's just a bunch of metaphors. I didn't really want to be obvious on this record, so it's just a bunch of words strung together. It's painting pictures. It's just imagery.
LAUNCH: Do you get any fans telling you, either in person or letters or emails, that your lyrics have touched them or affected them in any way?
BRODY: Yeah. For sure, yeah. All the time.
LAUNCH: Do you feel any sense of responsibility to your young fans looking up to you?
BRODY: I don't feel comfortable playing that, no. Why would I be responsible? That's kind of dangerous. This is not follow-the-leader. I'm not the leader, you know? I'm just like everyone else. The craziest story was this girl who was at an autograph signing at Lollapalooza, in
LAUNCH: Wow. That is intense. Let's switch to a lighter subject. I understand you're a lot happier with this album, because you weren't that happy with your second record because the recording was rushed...
BRODY: It was rushed, but I think just in terms of the band's cohesiveness and where we're at now, I kind of tend to think that our last record was our first record, and this is more like our second. The actual first record [2000's The Distillers] was kind of just thrown together and thrown out there. I'd actually never made a record before, so that was my first attempt.
LAUNCH: What was it like to work with producer Gil Norton on your new album this time around? He's produced some pretty impressive artists.
BRODY: He's brilliant. He's really, really good at his craft. You know, the first thing he ever did was Echo & the Bunnymen--that was kind of his breakthrough--and he did all of Pixies' stuff, which is pretty much the reason that we hired him. And he did the Foo Fighters, Dashboard Confessional...
TONY: He's "Papa Gil." He's like your dad--a nice guy. He's sweet.
BRODY: Yeah, he's very paternal.
LAUNCH: In what other ways this record is different from your previous ones?
TONY: We had five weeks to record it instead of having two weeks. And also, the engineer wasn't smoking crack this time. True story!
LAUNCH: Really?
BRODY: Yeah, that is a true story. We had two weeks [on 2002's Sing Sing Death House], and the engineer was smoking crack so we ended up dwindling our time down to a week and a half--for 14 songs!
TONY: When you're on crack, you don't hear very well...
BRODY: Yeah, so we would just spend 16 hours trying to get a bass tone down.
TONY: This time, we still had 16 hours to get a bass tone, but it actually was to spend time to getting a bass tone. It was intentional, yes. Definitely intentional.
LAUNCH: That's funny. I assume you didn't use the same engineer on Coral Fang?
BRODY: Definitely not!
TONY: This time was cool. We had a great crew of people--brilliant producer, great engineer, great studio in the middle of nowhere by ourselves. It was just us and the crew, no distractions. And Brody wrote f--king awesome songs. It was just cool. It came together very nicely.
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