Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (45 page)

King Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

They seemed like psychotics who might kill you or each other. How could these guys not be role models? I never want to think we ripped off anyone, but this was definitely one band doing things right. There was no band like them at the time, and though there have been imitators, there’s been no band like them since. They seemed like an explosion, each record seems more intense than the last. We could relate to them because they came from a punk background, but they threw off the shackles of punk and created some of the best recordings of the ‘80s.

London did not live up to their expectations. “From Australia, London was like this dream world, where on any particular night you could see all sorts of incredible music,” Cave remembers. “We came fully expecting to be confronted with this paradise and we actually found London suffering from one of the most deadly boring periods in its rock ‘n’ roll history. I remember two nights after arriving in London, going to see a package concert with Echo & the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, Teardrop Explodes, and another band, all of whom we thought were making really cool records. And we just couldn’t believe our ears, it was just so bad and so boring. And I guess the Birthday Party was born from that. From a contempt for what we found in England.”

Their antipathy for the current music scene and bitterness over the squalid living conditions they faced in London made the band even more extreme and nihilistic, and their chaotic live shows began to attract a following. In an all-out assault on the audience, Cave would howl like a vampiric Jim Morrison and accost audience members, while Harvey and Howard sprayed shrill guitar noise and Pew – ridiculously clad in a leather SM cowboy outfit – pummeled out his bassline.

Despite the Birthday Party’s underlying humor, the band’s dark and sometimes ghoulish persona caused it to be grouped with goth bands such as Sisters of Mercy, whom they passionately hated.

Chris Cornell, Soundgarden

That sonic approach – where it’s kind of screaming and white noise but there’s an energy and emotion you can’t get from melody – changed my perspective quite a bit about being a singer. Until that point, the most influential band I listened to was the Beatles, where there’s nothing but melody and harmonies. The Birthday Party was a band where the singing was expressive in a way that didn’t really have a lot to do with melody, but was almost more effective sometimes.

1981’s
Prayers on Fire
and the following year’s
Junkyard
represent the band at the peak of its powers, with increasingly assured and adventurous material. Songs like
Nick the Stripper
,
Big-Jesus-Trash-Can
, and
Dead Joe
further explored the band’s love of black humor, the grotesque, and a twisted ramshackle take on the blues. Critically acclaimed, and with a growing cult following, the Birthday Party was ignored by the mainstream and continued to struggle to survive. In 1981, Pew was arrested and imprisoned on drug charges, causing further turmoil in the group. Magazine bassist Barry Adamson filled in for parts of
Junkyard
.

By the end of 1982, the Birthday Party were again ready for major changes. Firing Calvert (who later joined Psychedelic Furs), Harvey took over as drummer and the band became leaner and meaner. Also, the group gave up on London and moved to Berlin. “London was horrendous for us. We had no money, we couldn’t get any work, we were living in appalling circumstances. When we went to Berlin, we were immediately welcomed into a strong artistic circle that was very generous and interesting. For the first time, the Birthday Party was seen by a significant number of people as a band of some importance.”

Chris Conneliy, the Bells / Ministry / Revotting Cocks:

I was never into the gothic thing at all, but the Birthday Party was hilarious as well. They had really absurd songs, and also very creepy, violent songs. I know they really influenced Al [Jourgensen] and Paul [Barker] in Ministry, and it was certainly a common denominator we had. I loved the idea that the Birthday Party never really gave a fuck, they were uncontrollable. They just did what they did and to hell with everybody else. At the beginning of my involvement with the Revolting Cocks and Ministry, that was an attitude we had.

While life in Berlin proved more artistically satisfying and economically feasible, by 1983 internal conflicts – drug problems and personal animosities – had become unbearable. In addition, Cave began to exert a dominant role in the band’s songwriting that Howard, the group’s other song-writer, found objectionable. “We were no longer mischievous, fun-loving boys,” Cave says. “Things had gotten quite evil within the group.”

Though the band recorded two more EPs,
The Bad Seed
and
Mutiny!
, their music was increasingly evolving into what would become Nick Cave’s solo career. By the time of Mutiny’s release, the Birthday Party had broken up. Almost immediately, Cave formed the Bad Seeds with Harvey, Adamson, and guitarist Blixa Bargeld of Berlin’s
Einstürzende Neubauten
. He also published a novel, and a book of lyrics, plays, and prose. Howard collaborated with
Lydia Lunch
, and also formed Crime and the City Solution with his brother Harry, singer Simon Bonney, and Harvey (when he was in the Bad Seeds), as well as
Swell Maps
drummer Epic Soundtracks. More recently, Harvey has recorded two solo albums of
Serge Gainsbourg
songs. Pew died of complications from epilepsy in 1986.

DISCOGRAPHY

(Boys Next Door)
Door Door
(Mushroom [Australia], 1979)
; a relatively straight rock record that the group has since disavowed.

The Birthday Party
(Missing Link [Australia], 1980; 4AD, 1989)
; the first record as the Birthday Party, made of previously released material, and reissued with
Hee Haw
, an EP released in 1979 as The Boys Next Door.

Prayers on Fire
(Thermidor, 1981; 4AD, 1988)
; among the Birthday Party’s most consistent and ferocious work.

Junkyard
(4AD, 1982)
; features some of the band’s best material.

Drunk on the Pope’s Blood
EP
(4AD, 1982)
; a live release, featuring Lydia Lunch on one side, that captures the band’s furious live shows.

The Bad Seed
EP
(4AD, 1983)
; first of two final EP releases, now collected with
Mutiny!
on one CD.

Mutiny!
EP
(4AD, 1983)
; the final studio recordings that pointed toward the direction Cave would take with the Bad Seeds.

Peel Session Album
(Strange Fruit / Dutch East India, 1991)
; collects two previous Peel Session EPs.

Hits
(4AD / Warner Bros., 1992)
; a 20-song collection that spans the band’s entire recording career.

BIG BLACK

Steve Albini, Big Black [from a radio interview]:

I would shoot myself in the face if I didn’t have some way to blow off steam. And because I don’t like sports, and because I don’t like disco dancing, and because I don’t take drugs, and because I don’t drink, and I don’t beat my head into the floor, and I don’t have a wife to beat, I have Big Black.

Though the idea would likely sicken him, Steve Albini can rightfully claim his place as the man behind much of the so-called alternative rock in the ‘90s. As a producer – or “recorder”, the less grandiose term he prefers to use – Albini has played a huge behind-the-scenes role in defining the studio sound of literally dozens of notable bands, including Nirvana, P.J. Harvey, Breeders, Helmet, Veruca Salt, Jesus Lizard, and Bush. Just as important, though, to Albini’s legacy is his role as leader of mid-‘80s band Big Black, whose dense wall of machine-gun guitars and relentless drum machine grind pioneered the current “industrial” sound made popular by bands like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.

Nigel Pulsford, Bush:

[Albini has] done so many great albums and so much great work that has inspired us as a band. His work with Big Black was seminal and very important to me as a guitarist, [from Guitar Magazine, February 1997]

Steve Albini grew up in Missoula, Montana, far from any firsthand contact with the punk-rock underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Though he formed what was likely Missoula’s first punk band during high school, he was anxious to find more developed music scenes. Having been accepted to study journalism at Northwestern University, Albini moved to Chicago in 1981. After a few ill-fated attempts to join other bands, he began his own musical project, Big Black. From the start, his band’s basic principles (which he delineated in liner notes to Pigpile) included: to “avoid people who appeal to our vanity or amibition,... operate as much as possible apart from the ‘music scene,’... and take no shit from anyone in the process.”

Inspired as much by British post-punk bands like
Public Image Limited
and fringe noise groups like
Chrome
as by American hardcore, Albini did not feel tied to any traditional notion of what constituted punk. Big Black’s first recording, 1982’s
Lungs
EP, is almost entirely performed by Albini, on guitars and vocals, with an early Roland drum machine providing the beat. Though the record – packaged with “inserts” such as razor blades, firecrackers, and dollar bills – was as ugly and ferocious as any punk music around, it was rather tame compared to what was to come.

Wilt Oldham, Palace:

The last record that we put out [Arise Therefore], that Steve recorded, had a drum machine. And it was sort of tribute to the Big Black records. The drum machine on the Big Black credits was always treated like another band member – as Roland, the Roland drum machine. We credited our drummer similarly, by giving her the name she was born with, which was Maya Tone.

With 1983’s
Bulldozer
and ‘84’s
Racer-X
EPs, Big Black became an actual band when it added bassist Jeff Pezzati (of Naked Raygun) and guitarist Santiago Durango to the core of Albini and Roland (Pat Byrne of Urge Overkill provided some live drumming as well). The added guitars and studio-quality production (as opposed to
Lungs
’ four-track recording), made the group’s sound much fuller and infinitely more brutal. Blistering anthems like
The Ugly American
and
Texas
were packed with a sonic and lyrical aggression that spit rage at everything and anyone in shouting distance.

Big Black’s potential was most fully realized between 1986 and ‘87, with the albums
Atomizer
and
Songs about Fucking
. With Dave Riley taking over on bass, the albums further refined the band’s assault tactics. As always, Albini’s lyrics dissected the dark side of middle America. Songs like
Jordan, Minnesota
and
Fish Fry
depicted the everyday cruelties and crass amorality lurking behind rural and suburban windows. Albini’s take on the deep sickness portrayed was undoubtedly a combination of reality, fantasy, prophesy, and just messing around, though his ambiguous stance – he often seems to relish the depravity as much as criticize it – can be even more disturbing than the subject matter.

Page Hamilton, Helmet:

I think they influenced a lot more bands than people know. A lot of industrial stuff out there right now is partially a result of what Big Black was doing – a simple old programmed drum machine, guitars, bass, and one guy adding verbal jabs of excitement to the music. The way the whole thing worked together was really powerful. The sound was realty metallic and percussive – simple, nonvirtuoso – all about rhythm and dynamics.

Just as
Atomizer
’s James Brown cover drew attention to the funk roots which weren’t always apparent in Big Black,
Songs about Fucking
’s inclusion of
Kraftwerk
’s
The Model
highlighted the group’s debt to early techno acts. By then, though, the group’s marriage of punk and electronic beats was blossoming into an entirely new genre led by groups such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. In the summer of 1987, with Durango on the verge of entering law school, Big Black embarked on a farewell tour. They then promptly broke up, as Albini wrote, “to prevent us from overstaying our welcome.” Ending as defiantly independent as they’d begun, Albini proudly noted in his Pigpile notes, “Nobody ever told us what to do, and nobody took any of our money.”

David Pajo, Tortoise /
Slint
:

Everything about them was like the coolest of the cool, we thought. The drum programming was super-cool, and the guitar tones were so brittle and machine-like. I just never heard anything like that before. And the lyrics were really cool and super-dark.