Grant Lee Phillips' Comments On Fuzzy

"It was a pretty exciting time. You're taken off guard as a young band. You don't know what all of it means to find your record on the shelf and your band name on a marquee. You're met with all sorts of new characters in your cast of relations, and a good many of them are there for the opportunity that your art/product represents. The naive parts of me thought, wow, there sure are a lot of new nice people around! Some of them have proved to be genuine, but it was a learning lesson.
There was so much pressure to make it great. Then there was the question in the back of your head: Will this be the last as well as the first? In some ways, that accounts for the urgency on the album, and it also accounts for whatever's misdirected on it. But I think it's a pretty solid record." Source: EliotWilder.com, 2001

"The lyrics are full of sexual imagery. I've been told by more than one woman that Fuzzy happens to be the record of choice when it comes to finding a nice background to, well, you know... These songs have to entertain me and bear repetition. Talking about it is the worst thing of all - I could probably point out things in there that would destroy me, and obviously I won't, but the less vulnerable I choose to make myself, the harder it is to write. To dig it all up, to scrape it like a surgeon leaves me feeling like a gold mine that's been stripped and is just a hole." Source: Let's Go To Work, Q Magazine, ca. 1994

2. JUPITER AND TEARDROP
Phillips suggests there is more "glam" in his own band than meets the eye. "Well, it's all there," he insists. "Even 'Jupiter and Teardrop' off our first album, the opening chord and everything, you know, it's a hair close to 'Moonage Daydream'! You know, I like all that stuff. Sometimes the melodrama and the greasepaint allows you to get a little bit 'closer to the heart' in a way. 'Cause you can't be sure if it's real or it's put on, or if it's a testimony. But it does allow you that chance to get closer to the heart, sometimes. Eeew, what a terrible line! Let's erase that. Isn't that like an awful Jefferson Starship song?" Source: Stomp And Stammer, June 1998

Gonzo: What's Jup about?
GLBuffalo: Self explanatory.
Source: SonicNet.com, Online Happening With Grant Lee Buffalo, 09-22-1995

Question: Have you heard the new Bowie album, Heathen?
GLP: No, I like the cover though.
Question: He does a version of "Cactus" from [The Pixies'] Surfa Rosa.
GLP: Really? Oh my goodness! I have to call David Lovering and talk to him about it. That's great. That's the thing that's always cool about Bowie. He's such a fan to begin with. He knocked on our trailer one afternoon at a music festival in a Brussels. I think he heard "Jupiter and Teardrop" from the side of the stage and thought that I was ripping him off, which I was. But as fate would have it, I was in the cafeteria tent when he was knocking at our door. I wish I would have been there. I would have made him a cup of tea or whatever he might desire. He's David Bowie for Pete's sake.
Source: UGO.com, July 2002

3. FUZZY
"A demo recording of Fuzzy was picked up by Bob Mould's Singles Only Label in the summer of '92, and before too long was gathering significant airplay at Boston's WFNX. In October of that same year we signed a recording deal with Slash Records. The same acoustic-based song that blazed its way to Beantown hurled us in stark contrast to the climate of the day. Perhaps that's my lesson - stick to the back roads, the hounds won't catch us if we cut through the stream." Source: Storm Hymnal - Gems From The Vault Of Grant Lee Buffalo (inlay), 2001

4. WISH YOU WELL
"Wish You Well is D minor to A minor a few times and then C to G. The Chorus is F to C before it winds up in A somethin'. Most of the chords are played with less fingers than tradition would call for which allows for greater drone on the high E." Source:Messages From Beyond

7. STARS N' STRIPES
"I can't say what makes the song tick or even if I have a greater emotional investment in that one really. It's an odd song with chords that I couldn't even name set to a beat that nobody on earth could dance to." Source: Messages From Beyond

10. AMERICA SNORING
MR. SONIC: What is your song America Snoring inspired by?
GLBuffalo: Steve Perry.
Source: SonicNet.com, Online Happening With Grant Lee Buffalo, 09-22-1995

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