By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
February 16, 1997
Veruca Salt rocks.
So how come some folks still are describing the Chicago-based rock group as wispy?
“I’m not sure,” said guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Nina Gordon. “I don’t think we even look particularly wispy.”
“I think there were elements of our debut album that were kind of small sounding,” continued Louise Post, who shares the same band duties as Gordon. “But that wasn’t because we were trying to be lo-fi. We just didn’t have a lot of money to get the sounds we wanted.”
There are no such limitations on their latest album. Whereas 1994’s “American Thighs” showed Veruca Salt’s potential, “Eight Arms to Hold You” realizes it. Produced by Bob Rock (Metallica, Def Leppard), the record has the huge sound that the band has always coveted. The musicians sound confident, accomplished and charged. Their guitars are cranked up and their voices have the fierce edge that has always been their forte at concerts.
In the three years since their breakthrough single, “Seether,” became a staple on alternative radio, expectations have been high for Veruca Salt to accomplish what Liz Phair, Loud Lucy, Triple Fast Action and Urge Overkill couldn’t. Billboard magazine wrote an article stating that Chicago was the new Seattle and that Veruca Salt was one of the favorites to put the city on the rock ‘n’ roll map.
Chicagoans, too, wanted another Smashing Pumpkins, and they wanted it fast. Despite the fact that “American Thighs” went gold, selling more than 500,000 copies, Veruca Salt’s inability to become the next big thing overnight was enough ammunition for naysayers to categorize the band as a failure.
The fact is, it took the Pumpkins years to get to the top of the rock ‘n’ roll heap. Post and Gordon didn’t even meet until 1992, and Veruca Salt has been recording together for just three years.
“You can’t worry about what people say about you all the time,” Gordon said. “We learned early on to weigh your press. Don’t read it.”
Post added, “Well, we still read it.”
They just might not keep it around. Although Spin magazine gave “Eight Arms” the thumbs up, Rolling Stone recently sav- are bland, quasi-metallic exercises that border on tunelessness, sung by Louise Post and Nina Gordon in unflattering monotones,” it said.
Gordon flushed the latter review down the toilet in Madrid.
“In a way it’s great to get a review like that out of the way
because it was so over-the-top,” she said. “A lukewarm review is a
little more touchy because you might agree with some of the stuff he or she said in it.”
Named after the working title for the Beatles’ second film, “Help,” “Eight Arms to Hold You” has a strong grasp on the listener. Gordon and Post’s seamless harmonies are the band’s calling cards, but they also exhibit newfound confidence as songwriters. Their forthright and clever songs are propelled by a bombastic scream of scratchy guitars.
The first single, “Volcano Girls,” boasts a line that gives a sly nod to the Fab Four’s “Glass Onion,” in which John Lennon sang, “Here’s another clue for you all/The walrus was Paul.” In Veruca Salt’s version, it goes: “I told you about the seether before/ . . . Here’s another clue if you please/the seether is Louise.”
“I can’t believe that more people don’t get that Beatles reference,” Gordon said. “They’re just one of the most influential bands ever.”
During a recent interview at the Wishbone restaurant at Wood and Grand, located just a couple of blocks from their rehearsal space, Post and Gordon were enjoying a light lunch of salad, spinach lasagna, juice and cornbread. They have been friends and bandmates for just five years, but you’d think they had been childhood buddies from the way they instinctively finished each other’s sentences.
Actually it was a childhood pal of Gordon’s who hooked up the duo. Actress Lili Taylor, with whom Gordon attended summer theater camp as a child, befriended Post at a New Year’s Eve party five years ago and suggested that Post hook up with her buddy Gordon.
“It all goes back to Lili,” Gordon said, sipping a soda. “She’s the cat’s mama.”
Wearing a summery yellow and white dress that matched her pale features and blond hair, Gordon looked nothing like Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, whom she said she resembles in some photos. And with her dramatic dark hair and head-to-toe black outfit, Post could’ve passed as Isabella Rossellini’s younger sister.
Both acknowledge that they have fun dressing up, but it’s this type of scrutiny of their looks that initially made them dress down for concerts and photo shoots.
“When we first came out, we were doing shows and kind of dressing up,” Post remembered. “Then we got all this attention and we were kind of embarrassed by it. We didn’t want people to pay so much attention to us. Our kind of instinctual response was to dress down and blend into the background.”
“People had this tendency in the press to focus on what we looked like, and we felt like meat,” Gordon continued. “So at a certain point we were just like, `We’re not going to doll up the meat.’ It felt more comfortable to wear jeans and T-shirts and hide behind our hair and stuff. Now we do what we want. I think we’re comfortable in our abilities.”
Early on in their career, Post took to strapping on a Les Paul Custom – one of the heaviest guitars on the market – to prove that she could rock with the big boys.
“I was on a suicide mission,” Post said. “There is a prevalent attitude toward women whenever they’re pursuing a career that is potentially high status that they’re not really doing it; they’re just trying to do it. I think people looked at us like, `Are they a legitimate band or are they just girls trying to be in a band?’ That was definitely the message we got from all angles.
“So there was a reason I was playing the martyr with that guitar. Very few women played it, ’cause it’s so heavy and kind of a macho guitar. But I loved the beautiful sound it created and I really liked that the guitar became a part of my identity. There was no way I was going to switch. But now I’m switching because I can’t do that anymore.”
She’ll tour with a lighter instrument more along the lines of Gordon’s Gibson Melody Maker.
Both women said touring and recording still is a kick for them. But they’re also looking forward to when they can get married and start families.
“Our motto for a while was that we were going to make T-shirts that said, `Huge fast so we can have babies,’ ” Gordon said.
Laughing, Post added, “Neither of us is close to marriage.”
They are both involved in high-profile relationships, though. Gordon is dating Figdish frontman Blake Smith. And Post recently collaborated with her boyfriend, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, on a couple of numbers for the soundtrack to Skeet Ulrich’s film “Touch” (which is in its opening weekend). She sings the title track and “Saints in Love.”
Post is reluctant to talk about Grohl, who still is married. But when told about the old wives tale that the person you spend New Year’s Eve with is the person you will be with for the rest of the year, she said, “That’s exactly why he wasn’t with me on NYE, ’cause I’m never going to see him this year. We’re going to be on tour the whole time.”
Laughing, she said to Gordon, “I’m going to see you this year.”
Veruca Salt, which also includes bassist Steve Lack, will be hitting the road without Gordon’s brother, drummer Jim Shapiro, who has left to pursue his own musical projects. (Gordon goes by her mother’s surname.) He has been replaced by Stacy Jones, formerly of Letters To Cleo.
“I miss Jim, but I’m really excited for him, too,” Gordon said. “It’s always a challenge to try something new and that’s exactly what he’s doing.”
Veruca Salt expected to face its own challenges working with Steve Albini on last year’s EP “Blow It Out Your – – – . . . It’s Veruca Salt,” but found the producer to be a “great guy.”
“We heard all the same rumors that everyone hears,” Gordon said. “That he’s misogynist, that he won’t let you do anything poppy or melodic. He was great to work with, and we had a really great time working with him. The very first thing he did was tell a really obscene joke that can’t be reprinted in the Sun-Times. It was kind of like we were debutantes to him and he was just breaking us in like he had Tourette’s or something.”
Post added, “He was a lot of fun.”
