Too High to Die
Introduction
With the dismal commercial showing of Forbidden Places and the overwhelming
popularity of Nirvana and grunge fresh on everyone’s minds, Meat Puppets set
out to record their next album for London Records. The problem, at least from the band’s point
of view, was that the label was dragging its feet on “letting” them
record. The problem, from the label’s
perspective, was figuring out an angle with which to market this eclectic band. What to do?
First off, indeed, the label did drag its
feet. Meat Puppets dutifully turned in
numerous demos, all of which were termed as not being radio friendly. Next, the label gave the band the go ahead to
record an album of acoustic versions of previous “hits.” Finally, based on a series of fortuitous live
performances, a cover of the Feederz “Fuck You,” the agreement upon an
indie-hip producer, and the radio readiness of what would become their highest
charting single, London gave the go ahead to record and opened their
promotional coffers.
The experience with London, however, left
a bad taste in the mouths of Curt, Cris, and Derrick. Their artistic freedom seemed to be squashed
and their ability to work how they wanted with whomever and whenever they wanted
was gone. The band was angry at best,
hopeless at worst.
Context of the Record
As discussed in the previous chapter, in
1991 Nirvana’s Nevermind came out
just two months after Meat Puppets’ Forbidden
Places. Similarly, Nirvana’s next
record, In Utero was released in
September of 1993, four months before the January ‘94 release of Meat Puppets’
next album, Too High to Die. In the two years between the bands’ releases
Nirvana became the world’s most recognizable rock band while Meat Puppets
floundered to find an audience larger than they had while on SST and London
Records struggled to find a marketing strategy for pushing their musically
eclectic band.
So in the Spring and Summer of 1992 Meat
Puppets did what most bands do after releasing an album, they toured. But this was their first time touring in
support of a major label record, and the tour reflected this. For one thing, as they had required the band
to hire a general band manager, London also required them to hire a tour
manager. For a band that had been
self-managed for the past twelve years, it wasn’t clear why another layer of
management was necessary, but perceiving that they had little choice, they went
along with it.
The Sociology of organizations suggests
that businesses within the same industry tend to mimic one another
structurally; this is known as isomorphism.
Businesses mimic each other because (A) this is the way things have
always been done and (B) this is the way everyone else is doing it. Structural isomorphism is often followed at
the expense of organizational learning and change; businesses continue to mimic
each other often to their own detriment.
The major label music industry of the
early 1990s is no exception to the rule of structural isomorphism. With the huge success of Nirvana, as well as
the successes of other punk/indie projects and bands like Lollapalooza, the Red
Hot Chili Peppers, and Jane’s Addiction, “alternative” was born, and labels
were putting big resources into packaging a set of disparate bands (some new
and naive [i.e. Paw], some old and weathered [i.e. Sonic Youth]) as a marketing
genre.
As isomorphism goes, labels sold these disparate
bands in a way that suggested they shared certain sonic, visual, and lyrical
codes (Weinstein): a hard rock/punk rock
mix (think Black Sabbath mixed with the Ramones), ripped jeans/flannel
shirts/long hair, songs of disaffection.
Of course these newly found mainstream codes had been around for a
decade or more, pioneered by punk and indie rock bands from the seventies and
eighties. Major label executives simply
tapped into, and sometimes bought out, the shadow indie industry discussed in
the last chapter.
It was in this epoch of rock history that Meat
Puppets and London Records found themselves after 1991, after the release of Forbidden Places. For one thing, it caught the attention of
London executives that many of the money making bands in the post-Nevermind alternative market, especially
Nirvana, were name dropping Meat Puppets as an important influence on their own
art. For another, the general hard rock
sound of Meat Puppets, especially in their live shows (a little less frequently
on their records), was popular with grunge (alternative) audiences. And Meat Puppets’ long-haired t-shirt and
jeans “look,” for what it was, was now hip.
The executives at London decided alternative/grunge was the way to
market the band, fit their gelatinous peg into a now well-established hole.
Another example of industry isomorphism, can be seen
in the ways that London Records dealt with Meat Puppets in the first years of
their relationship. They required them
to get “professional” management, a professional producer, and a tour manager,
among other things. They did this
without much regard for Meat Puppets’ previous decade-plus of
self-management. Why? Because it was the way it had always been
done and the way that all the other major labels dealt with their bands.
London’s new marketing strategy for Meat Puppets
meant a couple things. First, it meant
that label executives would be pressuring the band to act alternative (i.e.
make music that could be marketed to an alternative audience). Second it meant that Meat Puppets would need
to find a way to make the art-based music they always had while also making it
sound good to their alternative genre obsessed employers. For a band as fiercely independent as Meat
Puppets, pleasing London Records while also following a “pure” artistic musical
path was frustrating. Two early 1993
interviews I conducted with Derrick (January) and Cris (February) shed light on
the frustrations the band was feeling during this time.
At the time of the interviews I was conducting
research for my Sociology dissertation (1996) at Northwestern University, the
topic of which was “selling out.” I
wrote the band at the address they provided on their records. Derrick wrote back with his and Cris’s phone
numbers, but not Curt’s. In the
interview I asked Derrick why he didn’t give me Curt’s phone number as
well. He said that I’d get a lot of
“crap,” meaning information, from him and Cris, but that he didn’t think Curt
would “particularly want to address himself to your particular topic” (personal
interview). Later on in the interview
Derrick tells me that Curt is “more into being a celebrity than he is being a
straight musician. He’s into being a
personality. Somebody who has a unique
outlook on life that people find interesting” (personal interview).
Derrick’s comments highlight Curt’s presentation of
himself as above and beyond the frays of the major label business world. Whereas Cris and Derrick were more than
willing to talk with me (as I’ll show momentarily) about what they saw as the
evils of the music industry, Curt (at least back in 1993) preferred to stay out
of that argument, at least practically.
Instead, as I’ll show later, he would air his gripes more obliquely, in
his lyrics.
1993 Interviews with Derrick and Cris. At the time of my interviews with Derrick
and Cris in 1993 Meat Puppets were in the midst of a stalemate with London
Records. Forbidden Places had tanked, therefore marketing them as a straight
ahead rock band with country leanings wasn’t working. The band, of course, wanted to continue
making records like they always had.
This meant putting whatever mélange of musical styles on the album they
wanted as long as it tickled their own collective fancies. London would have none of this. After all, marketing is about focus and
accessibility, not flights of fancy and self-gratification.
The
problem, it seemed, was one of art versus commerce. Meat Puppets wanted to make art (that might
sell product), London Records wanted to sell product (they may or may not be
art). But the bottom line, being
employees of a major label, was that Meat Puppets would now have to view
success not solely in artistic terms, but instead “view things in terms of
success or failure on a financial level, which we never really had to do
before” (Cris, personal interview). And
the financial level they were being asked to aim for was much greater than
anything they had achieved previously.
We’re
talking’ about, even the Metro [in Chicago] would only hold, say, 500 or 600
people. And you can’t be setting your
sites that low. You have to be lookin’
to shows for, like, 30,000 or more if you want to be big. (Derrick, personal
interview)
It wasn’t
that the band was against selling records or playing larger venues, it’s just
that making art and commerce come together came as a new challenge in their
career. As stated by Cris:
I’m not
averse to selling a bunch more records.
But it doesn’t drive me crazy or anything. It never has.
The goal never was to only sell records.
It was to have a band and to be able to make music for a long time. It was never something I wanted to get into
and cash in on. It’s just one of the
only things I found that interested me, making music. And that doesn’t mean being a rock star. It’s playing the music and trying to make the
two align. It’s an interesting sort of
conundrum. (personal interview)
Indeed, continues Cris,
I’d love to be huge. The gear that would come with it. All the little toys that you could get. Being huge to me means unlimited supply of
tape. I could really lose myself to what
I really love. (personal interview)
The
problem, again, was that Meat Puppets saw themselves as artists first,
commercial artists second.
Bands like us who get into it mostly for music
have a harder time breaking through than people who are more oriented toward
the business. (Derrick, personal interview)
They
were hard to sell because, as Derrick states,
our music
is uncommercial at its core. We don’t
even care about what it sounds like. We
just care about how it fits together in the connection to our brain while we’re
actually doing it. (personal interview)
Cris
concurred with this sentiment when he said that “we’ve always been willing to
make music without anybody getting it.”
At the same time, Cris and Derrick both
felt that Meat Puppets’ music was accessible to a general audience. It wasn’t so esoteric that they couldn’t be
sold. Indeed, people did buy their
records and go to their shows.
We
basically feel that what we do, what we’ve always done, people can like. We don’t consider ourselves to be
inaccessible. We never thought that our
stuff was that far out. (Derrick, personal interview)
We do fill
the Metro up fairly good with people that can dig our trip. We’re not that far out or anything. (Cris,
personal interview)
Along with their feelings that their band
was at least moderately accessible, Cris and Derrick also recognized that their
involvement in Meat Puppets was a career choice. This was how they and, importantly, Curt and
his kids, made economic ends meet.
Curt has a
couple of kids that are almost ten. You
have to start thinking about that. When
you’re a kid it’s like “Pile in the van, let’s go to the next gig. How much you wanna pay me? $10?
Great!” But you start to get
older and you get more responsibilities and you have to think about it.
(Derrick, personal interview)
Cris
again concurs, “For my brother’s kids, I would like us to be more
popular” (personal interview). He just
wasn’t sure at this point in the band’s career that they knew how to make fully
accessible commercial music, he wasn’t sure Curt could write a mainstream hit.
And what I
think about them asking us to write hit songs is that I know my brother, who’s
our main song writer, is a really unique and strong artist. But I don’t know how good he’s gonna be at
taking his talent and imitating Bon Jovi with it. (personal interview)
The
answer to the stalemate between Meat Puppets’ artistic ambitions and London’s
marketing strategy, it turns out, was Nirvana and the suddenly hot alternative genre. Once a marketing category arose the label
could, in a isomorphic fashion, push Meat Puppets as a band that was like
something else. They were an alternative
band.
They saw
all that alternative shit getting popular and they were like “Alternative!” A name had arisen for it. (Cris, personal
interview)
Cris, seeing the big picture of how business works,
of how marketing genres come and go (and, consequently, how Meat Puppets
eclectic style can only fit into a particular genre moment for a moment), recognized
alternative for what it was, “ punk rock finally coming to the surface. It’ll be gone in a couple years. And what will be next? Booger rock?” (personal interview).
In
looking at Nirvana and alternative rock in 1993, Cris made a distinction between
the real thing (bands that had walked the same indie path as Meat Puppets) and
newer, seemingly more surface oriented bands.
His criteria for the Buttholes Surfers being a deserving band as opposed
to some others seems to be (A) his personal relationship with the band’s
members and (b) a certain level of talent and creativity.
God, please
let the Buttholes imitate Nirvana enough on this new record to sell a cajillion
copies. ‘Cuz they’re sweet people and
I’d love to see them make a lot of money, ‘cuz all of them have more talent,
and more fuckin’ open-mindedness which, to me, equals talent to a degree, and
more fuckin’ humor and a broader consideration of everything than 99% of the
shit that’s on MTV. (personal interview)
Cris
voices some of his band’s frustrations and his own bitterness toward Nirvana’s
success and the rise of alternative in suggesting that these new bands were
well thought out and isomorphically packaged , as opposed to Meat Puppets who,
as artists, were a messy package of truly alternative music. To start, he suggests that Nirvana are
students of
punk rock. You just distill out all the
best elements of it, and it’s already getting more and more popular anyways,
and you put on some cute little beads and some torn jeans and a jacket and you
make it obvious how to get to it. (personal interview)
Cris
went on to say that, although he liked Nirvana, he also recognized them as
being a careful pop group that put out a careful record and played a “safe live
show.
My point
here is not to air Cris and Derrick’s dirty laundry from 1993. It is only to show how they felt about the
situation their band was in. Meat
Puppets was a critically acclaimed, musically adept, hard rocking band that
London Records couldn’t figure-out how to sell.
Then came Nirvana. Then came
grunge. Then came alternative.
All of a sudden there was this new kind of hard rock which made
dinosaurs out of just about everybody that was signed, that wasn’t wearing a
punk rock sort of look and playing a little more aggressively. Suddenly this is the new thing, grunge or
alternative. (Curt, personal interview)
Seattle became cool, a
certain look (“cute little beads and torn jeans” says Cris) and sound (“a new
kind of hard rock”) was selling. “All
these things started adding up,” says Curt.
“You could at that point say ‘Nirvana’ and it would turn heads.”
But, again, Meat Puppets didn’t see themselves as a grunge
band. They may have had some grunge
elements, but they saw themselves as much more.
Yet they were committed to a major label path. They were committed to the challenge of
selling records to a larger audience then they had before. In this respect, they were committed to
playing London’s marketing game, to being a grunge band. “We were going to need to fit into a grunge
bag,” says Derrick,” and “we were forced to play to this grunge audience”
(personal interview).
Specifics Leading Up to the Record
It was within
this context of ambiguity as to how to market the band and, ultimately, selling
them as an alternative/grunge band, that Meat Puppets second album for London
Records, Too High to Die, came to be
made. In this section of the chapter I
describe in more detail the details by which London gave the band a green light
to make the record.
In the dog days between making Forbidden Places and the recording of
what would become Too High to Die,
Meat Puppets were running out of money.
They toured the first half of 1992 and were ready to make a record, but
London didn’t think they were. Rather
than accepting and releasing whatever the band gave them, as had happened on
SST, London would actively reject many of the demos Meat Puppets would send
them.
There’s a lot
of songs that are written, and once the songs are written the label generally
won’t accept the first ten. We like to
go in and record. On SST we’d get ten
songs that we liked and then we’d go into the studio and record them and that
would be that. London wants us to write
three times that many songs so that there can be lots to choose from. (Derrick,
personal interview, ‘93)
Or, as Cris put it, “They control you more by denial rather than
trying to make you do shit” (personal interview, ’93). The band was doing what they always did,
making music, and weren’t being allowed to release it on record and, thus, were
not making any money. They found
themselves in a situation in which they were trying to please the label, but
the label wasn’t pleased.
The frustration of
not getting to do what they wanted to do, of being on a label they felt wasn’t
supporting their aspirations, led at least Cris and Derrick to have a bit of a
defeatist attitude towards it all. Going
back to 1993, both of these Meat Puppets told me they weren’t confident that
London was the right label for them.
Indeed, according to Cris, the gap between what the two entities wanted
became so wide at one point that the band almost left London Records:
We almost
got dropped. We just got sick of
them. We almost dropped ourselves. Just like, “You guys don’t get it. You don’t want to try to get it. Go die.
We don’t care. We’ll find
somebody that does.” (personal interview, ’93)
Derrick
reiterated Cris’s sentiment in equally adamant terms:
Great. Let them drop us. Who gives a shit? If that’s what it’s all about, fuck ‘em. I don’t give a damn. (personal interview,
’93)
Meat Puppets were on the back burner at
London Records after the weak market showing of Forbidden Places. But in
lieu of leaving the label, they took what was given them and that was to hire
professional management, find an A&R person that both band and label were
comfortable with, hire professional tour management (who took a significant
chunk of the band’s tour receipts), and tour (with minimal financial support
from the label). By the end of 1992 the
band members were hurting for cash and this, of course, played into the label’s
hands:
“Suddenly,
here’s this band that’s been this pillar of fuckin’ idealism and ‘do it your
own way’ being shoved around by the one stick that everybody gets shoved around
by — financial,” Cris said. In effect, he felt the band was being told, “You
can’t do your work at all. You can sit at home, or I hope you like your
Circle-K job.” (A & I, 163-67)
But the
band was determined to succeed; they always had been. Says Derrick,
We were committed because that’s all we did. We had committed to the path we were taking
being three very strong-willed people.
And it’s the same thing with sports teams who go for like the World
Series or the Stanley Cup. They don’t
take their eyes off of the prize. And so
that’s what we did. We kept at it.
(personal interview)
One thing the band did in the Fall of 1992 was record a couple
of songs with Tom Werman, a producer who had scored big hits in the 1970s and
‘80s with the likes of Ted Nugent and Cheap Trick. In September they recorded “Things” (a different
version of which made it on to Too High
to Die) and a song called “Animal” (versions of which were released on a
five-song London Records promo CD and featured on two movies, 1994’s Love and a .45 and 1995’s White Man’s Burden). However, for reasons Curt says he can’t
recall, London didn’t like these demos:
“It didn’t really pan out. The record
company didn’t like it” (personal interview).
By the end of ‘92 the interested parties found A&R, and a
compatible vision, that they both could work with and Meat Puppets went into a
Phoenix studio with a local engineer and recorded a demo.
Once we finally got somebody in place who we were comfortable
with, who they were comfortable with, who was in the position to reach the
compromise that needed to be made and give enough assurances both to us and to
them, we were able to get approval to make a demo, and we made a demo for Too High to Die in January of ’93. (Derrick,
personal interview)
But the logjam didn’t end
with this demo. For one thing, according
to Derrick, the band went “way over budget” on the demos, which they spent a
week recording. This, he says, led to a
“bone of contention” with the label.
Most important from the label’s standpoint was the lack of an obvious
radio friendly single in the demos. They
didn’t much like the sound of the original demos so they asked the band to
rerecord a few of them: “Until they were
certain that they heard a single that they liked, they wouldn’t give us the go
ahead to write the record” (Derrick, personal interview).
London explored a few different marketing angles with the band in
these days. One was to push them as a
novelty band. In particular they had the
band record one song four times, a song the band adamantly insisted was not to
be taken seriously, at least not as a single.
We had this one song which was kind of a joke song, that was
designed to be a parody of other bands, and it got sent to them as part of the
usual submission of demos process, and they didn’t get that it was a joke. They just heard that it sounded like other
bands. And we were like, “We’re not
doing that song. It’s a parody of our contemporaries.” They made us do the song like four times
before they finally gave up. (Derrick, personal interview).
Cris recalls this as a song that
Derrick wrote called “Don’t Touch My Stuff.”
“(W)e
recorded this song called ‘Don’t Touch My Stuff,’ with Derrick singing and
playing guitar,” Cris said. “It’s a song that Derrick had written, who hadn’t
written anything in years. He wrote this thing on a lark, and it was funny. He
couched it in all this antimilitaristic cartoon drivel, that Derrick is wont to
slant things as. It had this Nirvana kind of feel to it, like ‘Teen Spirit.’ It
could have been on the record as a little Derrick song, but not as the fuckin’
single. (A&I 165, 1995)
Pushing Meat Puppets as a novelty act,
of course, didn’t sit well with Curt, Cris, and Derrick who thought of
themselves as serious artists.
“They
wanted to push us as a joke, just like they pushed that song ‘Sam’ off the
[previous] record. Like, ‘Oh, wow, listen! They sing fast!’ Well, yeah, but
we’ve also got 15 years of musical history. What about us as a fuckin’ band?
How about that shit that we actually do? I mean, if we were, I don’t know, the
Dead Milkmen or something, it’d be one thing. But we’re not, you know?” (Cris,
A&I 165, 1995)
When
it became apparent that the novelty act angle wasn’t going to work, and with
the band’s manager pressuring the label to let them get to work (they needed
money), marketing Plan B was implemented: They were like, "Maybe we'll put out an EP of some of your older stuff done accoustically. We'll put it out on our indie imprint there at London, and not spend any money." That would have been in the Spring of '93. We were, "Okay, that's what that is. This is what they're giving us." (Curt, personal interview, 2012).
Plan B, have Meat Puppets record
some of their “classic” older material acoustically and put it out on a smaller
imprint of an already smaller imprint label.
Band members were mixed in their enthusiasm for this project. On one end, Derrick felt “We’re screwed”
(personal interview 2012). To him it
seemed to signal a dead end, the label was throwing in the towel and marketing
the band as an oldies act. At least one
other band member agreed with Derrick,
“They
asked us to re-record our old crap, said Cris, indicating that the band was
fairly flabbergasted by the absurdity of this request. “They wanted us to do Up On The Sun, all acoustic. And we were
like, ‘Oh, okay, so you’re gonna sell us as an oldies act? Whatever.’ It didn’t
matter how we felt about it. We were broke and up against the wall. (A&I,
163, 1995).
Curt, on the other hand,
went along with the idea more willingly.
Indeed, he seems to give some credit to the executives at London for
their prescience.
I thought it was a pretty cool idea to do these acoustic things,
and they wound up later that year getting recorded by Nirvana, and they didn’t
have any idea we were doing acoustic versions of those things. So maybe there was something to the record
label’s thing. (personal interview, 2012)
It was during this time, in early 1993, that the band and label
were still looking for someone to produce the next record. The band was suggesting all sorts of people
who had produced their favorite records, people who produced Neil Young and
Lynyrd Skynyrd, producers who had recorded platinum records. But the label, inevitably caught by the
gravity of isomorphism, was looking for someone “cool,” someone with
punk/indie/alternative credibility. Into
this void stepped Paul Leary, guitarist for Butthole Surfers, a band with
unquestioningly solid punk and indie credentials.
And
they were tellin’ me about it, and I just said in passing, ‘Well, hell, why
don’t you let me do it?’ And they went, ‘Okay!’ I fooled somebody into thinkin’
I was cool.” (Paul Leary, A&I 164, 1995).
Not
only was Paul indie cool, he and the members of Meat Puppets were close
personal friends dating back a decade or more.
Additionally, Paul had a fair amount of studio experience that Cris, at
least, was impressed with.
Paul had been into studio shit, into
the actual gear, how it worked. He got
so into it. I remember this one time, they
had a neat little house and they were putting a studio together and we go in
there and there’s Paul doing all the welding on a patch bay. (Cris, personal
interview, 2012)
Paul had also recently
finished producing the Bad Livers’ debut Delusions
of Banjer (Quarterstick, 1992), which Curt and Cris both liked. So Curt and Paul had been discussing the
possibility of working together. In
March of 1993 Curt, Cris, and Derrick attended the Butthole Surfers’ album
release party for Independent Worm Saloon
at the annual South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. It was here that Paul agreed to produce the
band’s acoustic record.
So
in the Spring of 1993 Meat Puppets and Paul Leary met up in Memphis at The
Warehouse recording studio. As Curt
remembers it they recorded acoustic versions a few songs including “Lake of
Fire” and “Plateau.” At some point in
the sessions, however, the band decided to record some fully electric rock ‘n’
roll, for fun if nothing else. One of
these songs was “Fuck You,” a song written by Arizona/California band the
Feederz. Meat Puppets included “Fuck
You” as part of a set of demos that included their acoustic songs as well. A full-on psychedelic rocker, London agreed
to scrap the acoustic sessions in favor of a full-length electric rock album
after hearing “Fuck You,” with Leary and Meat Puppets as co-producers.[i]
The
Record
Before
getting down to work in the studio, however, Meat Puppets went out on tour with
Soul Asylum who were touring on their hit record, Grave Dancers Union. Curt
liked this as it seemed to provide a natural sort of break between the now
aborted acoustic record and the now schedule full-on electric rock record. He liked the laid back environment of working
at The Warehouse in Memphis, too, which is where it was decided that the album
would be recorded.
We were able to inhabit the place a
little bit more. I wasn’t uncomfortable
at Capitol, I was just minding my own business cuz in the other room there’s
Donna Summer. (personal interview, 2012)
Cris corroborates
Curt’s assertion that The Warehouse in Memphis provided a more relaxed
atmosphere for recording than what they had experienced a few years earlier in
Hollywood, with one exception.
I was staying right out on the mighty Miss, in an extend-a-stay kind
of thing, kind of a slightly beat-upish looking one, but with our balcony
overlooking the river. And the studio
itself was in an old converted cotton warehouse. So a big old building with big old wooden
beams and a couple of studios in there, and the whole time we were doing it in
the ‘B’ studio, there were these Memphis rappers who were like, you know, I
mean rap. The urban black
experience. There was some fucking hard-core
kids in there. It was like, “Alrighty
then. You kids aren’t just rapping about
guns, you have them.” (Cris, personal interview, 2012)
Curt, however, suggests that the
band’s relationship with the rappers was congenial to the point of playing basketball
together.
There was more rap, the Bar-Kays were in one room. In the others were local dudes, rappers, like
Al Kapone and his posse, Skinny Pimp, and 211. We would play basketball with these guys, play
a lot of ping pong, lots of basketball because they have basketball
inside. It was an old cotton warehouse
so the main area was this warehouse, and then the partitioned off studio
spaces, but the main area was vast so you could play basketball in there.
(Curt, personal interview, 2012)
Another
advantage to being in Memphis with Paul at the helm was the lack of direct
label supervision. The band and Leary
were given money and told to make a record.
There was the occasional visit by Laurie Harbaugh, the A&R person
charged with mediating between the band and the label, ”So we had to be careful
and not look like we were wasting time” (Curt, personal interview, 2012).
By
the time the band went into the studio to record Too High to Die, in May of 1993, Cris, Curt, and Derrick were
keenly aware that London Records would like them to make a grunge/alternative
album. And they weren’t necessarily
averse to the idea, either. They were,
after all, professional rock musicians trying to make a living doing what they loved. The key, of course, was to make the record
that they wanted while also pleasing the label executives. Curt, especially, was looking to make a Meat
Puppets’ record that would fit in with the current genre du jour without compromising his indie ethics: “I was definitely aware of what was being
played. And what could I do that
wouldn’t hurt my feelings to make that happen” (personal interview, 2012).
The
answer the above quandary, for Curt, was AC/DC and 1970’s hard rock:
I saw how those productions were mirroring the basic setup that
AC/DC had done, or Deep Purple sort of stuff, seventies rock that we heard on
the radio a lot. And I was just like, “That’ll
be cool. That’ll work with this stuff.”
(personal interview, 2012)
And Curt knew how that was done:
You layer these rhythm guitars, you know, not too many of them
but definitely kind of pillar them on each side and make the drums and bass
heavy. Pretty simple stuff really. Putting a rhythm here, and here’s your lead,
kind of identical tracks, and splitting them for the rhythms and making it
loud. I just made it a heavier rock
album. (personal interview, 2012)
The
result of a laidback studio, a producer who was practically a member of the
band, the lack of direct label supervision, and Curt figuring out how to make a
grunge/alternative record was, as Derrick puts it, “the best sessions we had
ever done” (Derrick, personal interview, 2012).
Cris agrees, saying, “The cool thing about Too High to Die is that it was completely the record that we wanted
to make” (Cris, personal interview, 2012).
There
were eight months in between the recording of To High to Die and its release and the band kept busy by playing
live shows in and around Phoenix and touring, and London Records kept busy by
finding ways to market the record.
During this time there were a few events that led to what would end up
being Meat Puppets’ most successful commercial album. Two important things happened in October of
1993 that got the ball rolling. First,
the band played Wavefest, a one-day rock music festival put on by radio station
96Wave in Charleston, South Carolina that drew in the tens of thousands. And not only did they play Wavefest on
October 3, 1993, they headlined with Hootie and the Blowfish opening.
The record company got independent radio consultant types to
come down. And here’s where you start
seeing how the in-house thing works. They
outsource these people who have a reputation.
They get paid. They go back with
their endorsements to radio stations and go, “You should push this song.” They get paid for each station that adds it,
and they make a lot of money. They came
to that show and we blew it out so they hopped on to endorse what we were
doing. That was a big thing. (Curt,
personal interview 2012)
Here, then, is where the label
starts to get behind the new album in a real way. Independent radio promotions people, hired by
the label to check out the band, gave a big thumbs up, telling London Records
that Meat Puppets were a band worth pushing.
Serendipitusly,
one month before Wavefest, in September of ’93, Nirvana released the follow-up
to their smash-hit Nevermind, In Utero. Just as Forbidden
Places and Nevermind were
released within two months of each other, the bands’ next two albums were
released within four months of each other (this time, though, In Utero is released first). Meat Puppets and Nirvana’s paths cross again
right after Wavefest when Nirvana invites Meat Puppets to open a week’s worth
of concert dates on their tour. For this
tour Nirvana invited a number of their favorite bands, bands that had
undoubtedly been influences upon Nirvana, to open for them. Breeders, Half Japanese, Jawbreaker,
Mudhoney, and the standup comedian Bobcat Goldthwait each spent roughly a week
with Nirvana. Meat Puppets time began on
October 27 in Kalamazoo, Michigan and ended November 5 in Amherst, New York. This invitation to tour with Nirvana was
another sign for London Records that Meat Puppets might be a band worth
pushing. If the world’s most popular
rock band gave Meat Puppets a thumbs-up, then their fans might also chip in and
buy some records.
What
comes after their stint on the Nirvana tour, however, elevates Meat Puppets to
full-push level. The stories about how
it happens vary a little, but they all suggest that during some after show
partying (A) Kurt Cobain asked Curt and Cris to teach him to play some of their
classic Meat Puppets II songs so he
could play them on Nirvana’s upcoming MTV
Unplugged special, but (B) Curt and Cris convinced Cobain that it would
work better for them to actually show up to the show and play the songs with
Nirvana. Cobain thought it was a great
idea. The songs were technically
challenging and he didn’t have a lot of free time to learn them, he would sing
and Curt, Cris, Krist Noveselic, and Dave Grohl would play. However it was arranged, rumor has it that
MTV wasn’t happy with Kurt’s choice of performers, Curt and Cris went on stage
with Nirvana and played three songs (“Plateau,” “Lake of Fire,” and “Oh, Me”)
on November 18. A month later, on
December 14, the show aired on MTV.
A final
piece of the puzzle for London Records in deciding to embark on a full-on
marketing campaign for Meat Puppets’ new record was the discovery of a radio
friendly single, “Backwater.” The push
for the song as a single, according to Cris, began back in early October of ’93
at Wavefest, the show mentioned earlier at which some big wig radio promoters
caught the band’s show.
These guys saw the set and said, “These guys are rockstars!” And they made the record company take another
look at us, made somebody else at the record company come and take a look at
the record. One of them heard
“Backwater” and decided that song was something. So they made that the single. (personal
interview, 2012)
“That started spreading a little
bit,” agrees Curt, “like, ‘Yeah, “Backwater”.’
That’s when our manager was like, ‘Oh, that’s radio ready’” (personal
interview, 2012). Derrick concurs:
Then they
started putting out “Backwater” to DJs and started getting feedback from
them. They liked it. And they began to call in their various and
sundry favors to get us airplay. (personal interview)
And that was it. The combination of industry consultant types
pushing “Backwater,” a strong performance at Wavefest, and slots on Nirvana’s In Utero tour and MTV Unplugged sealed the deal.
London Records moved Meat Puppets’ new record to the top of their Spring
’94 promotion queue.
All these things started adding
up. You could at that point say “Nirvana”
and it would turn heads. We had the
consultants on board and the promoters, and then everybody at the record
company in their kind of herd-like fashion was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s ok to go over here. The herd is going over here. You don’t want to be stuck out there by
yourself.” So by the time it came out in
January ’94 everybody was pretty into it. (Curt, personal interview, 2012)
With a firm decision made to push the record,
London Records came up with a couple of promotional ideas that, in the first
instance, was unique for a Meat Puppets’ record and, in the second, rubbed the
band the wrong way. First, Too High to Die is the only Meat Puppets
record to this day that prominently features photographs of the band on its
cover. All other Meat Puppets’ records
feature pieces of art by the band or relatives of Curt, Cris, and Derrick. And though most of their records do have a
picture of the band somewhere on the cover or inner sleeve, the close-up
pink-tinted image of a dress-wearing Curt on this record smacks of an idea
whose genesis was at an administrative level higher than the band itself.
While Curt
confirms this, that the label was against using an art piece for the cover, he
also says that he wasn’t upset by the labels request to use a photo. For one thing, the label, says Curt, “spent an
arm and a leg on that session,” using Michael Halsband, a credentialed photographer
Curt would turn to again ten years later on his collaboration with Bud Gaugh
(Sublime) and Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) called Eyes Adrift. And while Curt remembers the dress wearing to
be Halsband’s idea, Cris says it was the band’s.
That was us. That was us just farting around. That was a photo shoot we did up in
Sedona. They didn’t ask us to do that. That was just a photo shoot we had done
farting around with dresses on. (personal interview, 2012).
It was the record label’s idea,
though, says Cris, to tint the cover image pink.
Overall, though, as Curt
states, the band was okay with putting a photo on the record. After all, the band was allowed to choose the
final picture and the label was showing all signs that they would push this
record harder than any other Meat Puppets had released, and this commitment
showed in the professionalism of the photo shoot.
I didn’t really mind because
I was glad the record was coming out, and they let us pick the photo. We spent a lot of money. We spent probably a week shooting all around
Phoenix and then went up to Sedona. It
was definitely a whole shit load of pictures taken and some really cool stuff.
(personal interview, 2012).
A
second promotional strategy employed by the label was to solicit testimonials
from prominent rockers of the time as to Meat Puppets’ influence upon
them. Pasted on the jewel box of every
new Too High to Die disc were the
following two quotes:
“THE MEAT PUPPETS GAVE ME A
COMOPLETELY DIFFERENT ATTITUDE TOWARDS MUSIC—I OWE SO MUCH TO THEM.”
--KURT COBAIN
“THEY’RE MY FAVORITE
F**CKING BAND.”
--DAVE PIRNER
The purpose of quotes from Cobain
(Nirvana) and Pirner (Soul Asylum) was, of course, to promote Meat Puppets as
progenitors of alternative rock. London
put these testimonials on the record without consulting the band, and the band
wasn’t too happy about it but, as with their acquiescence to the album photo, at
this point they were committed to doing whatever the label thought was best to
market the band: “We were disgusted by
the label putting quotes from other artists on our records, but at that point
we were going to do whatever” (Derrick, personal interview , 2012). Curt sums it up well when he says that he
voiced his concern to the label, but was convinced it was in his band’s best
interest to play along:
I think that’s the only time
I ever said anything. I was like, “Oh
really. That’s so cheesy.”
And they were like,
“No. It’s just respect and don’t tell us
how to do our business.”
And I was like, “Oh I get
you. You’re trying to sell it.”
(personal interview, 2012)
What Others Say About the Record
Meat
Puppets made the record they wanted and
they made some compromises with London in order to get their record to the
market and have it promoted at the highest levels. Too
High to Die was released on January 25, 1994. It was certified Gold nine months later and
is still the band’s best selling record.
As with most records that sell well, critical response to Too High to Die was mixed, more so than
any other record they had made.
On
the positive side, there are many who consider Too High to Die to be a “perfect record” (http://performermag.com/2012/02/06/file-under-unjustly-fogotten-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/)
and “the perfect album” (http://www.teenink.com/reviews/music_reviews/article/7185/Too-High-To-Die/). These are reviewers who judge the record on
its own terms, as opposed to comparing it to the band’s entire catalogue. Some consider it to be “almost flawless”
(http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1),
having “very few flaws” (http://sputnikmusic.com/review/429/Meat-Puppets-Too-High-To-Die/)
with “not a bum note on the album” (http://performermag.com/2012/02/06/file-under-unjustly-fogotten-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/). It’s “superb”
(http://www.warr.org/puppets.html), an “amazing feat”
(http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/meat_puppets/too_high_to_die/index.html),
and “epic” (http://www.teenink.com/reviews/music_reviews/article/7185/Too-High-To-Die/),
a record “No Modern Rock enthusiast should be without” (http://www.warr.org/puppets.html). One writer suggested the album’s
semi-precious nature when he wrote that, “I would just wig out if my copy was
lost or stolen. Nothing else, just completely flip” (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/meat_puppets/too_high_to_die/index.html).
While some writers positively reviewed Too High to Die on its own merits,
others compared it to their output of the last thirteen years. For instance, Jed Leigh Mosenfelder writes
that the record is the band’s “most solid effort to date”
(http://www.warr.org/puppets.html), while another reviewer suggests Too High to Die is “the best work you’ll
ever hear out of the Meat Puppets” (http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1). Finally, Benjamin Ricci tells us that the
album contains the bands “most listenable. . .songs to date” (http://performermag.com/2012/02/06/file-under-unjustly-fogotten-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/).
Too
High to Die also received its share of negative reviews, probably more so
than their other records because of its popularity. While some reviewers simply did not like much
of the record, calling it “real tripe” (http://www.warr.org/puppets.html), and
others didn’t like it because, well, “Alternative. Sucks.” and “a band like the freakin’ Meat Puppets defines everything bad
about that broad genre” (http://metalexcess.com/2009/04/15/meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/) the most common criticism of the record seems to
stem from reviewers’ disappointment at its general lack of creative material, a
criticism that probably comes from the reviewers’ high expectations of the band’s
creativity based on its previous seven LPs.
Mark Prindle, for instance, writes that the album has “few surprises”
and is “generic” (http://www.markprindle.com/meatpuppets.htm#forbidden) while
another writer suggests songs on the album are “formless” and draw on
“aimlessly” (http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1). Again, it seems logical that many of these
negative reviews stem from the fact that the album sold many copies; it’s a
valid hypothesis that many of the reviewers had never heard of Meat Puppets
before Nirvana Unplugged and
“Backwater.” C’est la vie.
Some reviews mentioned Curt’s guitar
playing on Too High to Die. Curt’s guitar on the album is described as
“buzzing,” “moody and atmospheric,” “rugged and dark”
(http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1),
“blistering”
(http://performermag.com/2012/02/06/file-under-unjustly-fogotten-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/),
and “a guitar flavor that can’t be described” (http://www.teenink.com/reviews/music_reviews/article/7185/Too-High-To-Die/). But even Curt’s guitar suffers criticism on
this album. Mark Prindle states that the
record is full of “(j)ust a
bunch of over-‘heroic’ guitar riffs that are okay, I suppose” (http://www.markprindle.com/meatpuppets.htm#forbidden).
There
were still, of course, the usual jabs at Curt’s vocals, even though he took a
few voice lessons in preparation for the record. One reviewer, for instance, writes that the
song “Why?” might have worked, “if Curt could sing” (http://www.warr.org/puppets.html), while another mentions how his vocals “rasp and crack
beyond forgiveness” (http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1).
As
per the discipline, reviewers did their best to fit Too High to Die into an already established and easily recognizable
genre. But it wasn’t easy to do. On the one hand, in line with the
contemporary popularity of grunge, the album is seen as a “competent
alternative album” (http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1). On the other hand, numerous writers
recognized a definite country and/or folk element to the record. It is variously described as punk-country,
country rock, having a country twang, folk rock, folk pop, pseudo folk, it has
songs that “lean very much to the folk side”
(http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/meat_puppets/too_high_to_die/index.html)
with a folk harmony and folky twinge.
Finally,
some reviewers fell back upon the only solid, although admittedly general,
genre classification that any Meat Puppets’ record can accurately have,
“rock.” It is reviewed as solid rock,
terrific rock, hard rocking, having hard rock songs.
Some
reviewers point out the record’s commercial success, mentioning that it went
gold while others paid special attention to those testimonial stickers placed
on the CD jewel cases. Still others
focused on the influence that Meat Puppets’ appearance on Nirvana Unplugged had on the solid sales of Too High to Die.
“And then, God said ‘Let there be Backwater’” (http://www.epinions.com/review/musc_mu-124760/content_190394896004?sb=1). This statement represents a main focus of
many reviewers, “Backwater.” Almost
universally writers praised this song.
Some focused on its “beautiful guitar work” (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/meat_puppets/too_high_to_die/index.html),
while others mentioned its “super-trippy video” (http://performermag.com/2012/02/06/file-under-unjustly-fogotten-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/). Whatever the focus, most reviewers liked
“Backwater.” Even Metal Misfit, from
metalexcess.com, the writer that mentions how much he hates alternative and how
Meat Puppets are a prime example of his hatred of alternative, states that
there is “ONE positive thing
about this album, “Backwater” is a really good song.” (http://metalexcess.com/2009/04/15/meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/)
Conclusion
Despite the delays in making the record
and the frustrations Curt, Cris, and Derrick felt toward the executives at
London Records, all three Meat Puppets agree that Too High to Die was the record they wanted to make. Once the recording began they were largely
left alone. The studio and lodgings were
comfortable and they made the record with an old friend, Paul Leary. As already mentioned, a month before the
record’s release Nirvana Unplugged aired
on MTV. Shortly after this Kurt Cobain killed himself, no doubt influencing sales
of Too High to Die in a positive
direction. These events, combined with
tours with Stone Temple Pilots and Blind Melon and the radio success of
“Backwater” led to the best selling record of the band’s career. Too
High to Die went Gold in October, 1993.
But success wasn’t all it was cracked up
to be. These same tours and the success
they engendered brought the band into contact with the dark side of rock and
roll groupies. After show parties were
filled with the worst kind of “fun,” and Cris chose to indulge wholeheartedly
in the omnipresent drug taking that accompanied them. It was during this time also that the
Kirkwood’s mother became seriously ill and, eventually, died. Cris was her main caretaker and her death hit
him hard. He chose even more drugs as
his companion in her wake.
The ups and downs of these last couple
years of the original Meat Puppets are evident in their last record
together. Darkness, death, and “no fun”
permeate No Joke! like no other
record they made prior to or after. The
next chapter looks at these last turbulent months.
[i] “Fuck You” didn’t make it on to Too High to Die, however it was released
as part of a promo single for “Backwater.” (London, 1993, CDP 1118)
It’s better to burn out than to fade away. ~ Kurt Cobain Quotes
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