Whipsmart

Narrator: With the sudden fame that came with the success of Exile in Guyville also came the weight of expectations. Exile in Guyville was a huge seller for Matador Records, selling 250 to 300,000 thousand units in 93 and 94. This was a level of success unmatched by any other artist on the label. While the Matador label is well respected for it's roster of critically acclaimed artists, the acts on the label with the exception of Liz have had little commercial or widespread appeal. It is telling that the only two gold albums that Matador has ever had has been Exile and Whipsmart

Due in large part to Liz's album sales, Matador was a highly sought after indie label and many major labels were looking to form a distribution deal with Matador. Atlantic records formed a distibution deal with Matador and Liz's next album deal. Atlantic could see the music horizon and wanted to get in on the game. With such acts Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, and Courtney Love breaking new ground for women in rock in the early to mid 90's, Atlantic realized that female artists would have a much higher profile in the second half of the decade and they were eager to get in on this trend.

The release of Liz's second album whipsmart would be her major label debut. Liz Phair would have a huge record company bringing to bear all of it's resources to make her an all out rock star. The results of these efforts were questionable.

Whip-Smart took about a month of discontinuous work to record. The album was recorded during two different sessions. Part of the album was made in August of 93 in Chicago and in Febuary of 1994 in The Bahamas.

Liz Phair: We started studio time at Idful....and we were sucking and it was not doing right. I realized that was what had happened in August and if we didn't do something drastic, so i pulled probably my one and only major rock move and said "Godammit! let's go to the Bahamas," let's go somewhere where there is warm weather so no one can bitch and we wouldn't get any phone calls. So they found the studio in the Bahamas.

Casey Rice: We had a lot of problems with distractions during the recording of the second record. The phone ringing, people dropping by the studio, and so on. Liz thought it would be good if we could get out of Chicago and go to New York to finish recording and mixing. I thought that was a bad idea as New York is probably the most expensive place in the world to travel to with the idea of making a record. We got some quotes from New York area studios and they were as I expected: very high. I decided to call Compass Point in that Bahamas on a whim. It turned out to be substantially cheaper than the places we were checking out in New York. We also really liked the idea of recording where so many records we knew so well were recorded. Back In Black by AC/DC just to name one!

My highlight of going to Compass Point was meeting Terry Manning, who runs the place. He has recorded some fantastic records over the years and they all sound great to me. We got to take a peek inside the tape vault, it's quite a walk through history. There is a polaroid of me somewhere holding a 7" reel of 1/4" tape in a box marked on the outside with magic marker in someone's handwriting with the simple label "Feel". It's the tape used to make the single for the first Big Star LP. I was holding the actual tape of the mix of "Feel", a song I quite love. It felt quite special. Also, I played Terry's Fender Telecaster on "Jealousy", which he said Jimmy Page used on Led Zeppelin III a bit. I played through amps used to record the first few ZZ Top records too.

Liz Phair: There was one night we found casey in the studio, me and Brad had went out and we found him, we were poolside. It got earlier everyday the rum and orange juice, and we were like where's Casey? And we went back in and he was sitting there, on the end of "May Queen" doing these bells, he was just completely drunk, just sitting totally quiet with these bells. And every once and a while, we couldn't hear the song, we'd hear this "Ringgggg!!!!" and we walked in and he was like SHHH!!!!!!! Ring!!!!! and his eyes were like red and glazed over. He was so cute (laughs) That's like one of my fondest memories of Case.

When it came time to record Whip-Smart, Phair chose to stick with the same independent-minded recording team she worked with on Guyville. Whip-Smart was "directed" by Phair and recorded and mixed by Brad Wood (eschewing the terms "producer" and particularly "engineer", Wood prefers to be credited as recorder and mixer, finding this a more accurate description), with assistance from Casey Rice, primarily at Wood's studio, Idful Music. Wood's initial work included recording indie bands like Seam, Tar and Red Red Meat, and after meeting Phair at a wedding, recorded Guyville with her in '92. After Guyville made its big splash, Wood was able to parlay the interest in the LP into financing for his studio. Both Capitol Records and Sub Pop invested in his career, enabling him to pay off debts and completely upgrade the studio.

Brad Wood: Often, she'd bring in a song and we'd record the whole thing that day. I'd have to write a drum and bass part right on the spot. She liked the idea of spontaneity.

Narrator: On the majority of the songs, tracking would begin with Phair laying down a keeper guitar track. After getting the guitar down, Wood would record drums, bass and other elements and "try to make the whole thing sound like a real band." He calls it an "assbackwards" way of recording, yet it's clearly appropriate to Phair's circumstances.

Casey Rice: I don't think the process was that much different than the first one, just sitting around talking and recording. I think what did differ, however, were the decisions made about how to mix the record. I felt like the others were second guessing who this new Liz Phair audience might be (since the first LP had sold quite a bit), and trying to tailor the sound to meet expectations. I thought we should have just carried on with the way the first one sounded, but I think there was some push to somehow "improve" things.

LIZ PHAIR: Guyville was stuck and pounding on a door. With this one, suddenly I had a vista. Where I was stationary, watching what was going on around me, this time I'm going somewhere, because I'm up and out of it. It doesn't have that sort of frustrated, tense -- a detractor might say whining -- quality to it. It's more confident-sounding, maybe, a little more playful. And it isn't quite as much man-woman, man-woman, man-woman. There's lots of love songs and a lot of didn't-go-right songs, but there's a lot of other kinds of songs, too. And yes, there's some smut. Exile in Guyville was a more sexual album. This is the opposite, an emotionally based album that ended up being more sexual. I made a rock fairy tale. A little myth journey -- from meeting the guy, falling for him, getting him and not getting him, going through the disillusionment period, saying, 'Fuck it,' and leaving, coming back to it." There is a real entrance and exit to the album, with each song rolling on to the next one. Crater Lake" illustrates when "you think [the relationship is] done, but it isn't really done. The following song, "Alice Springs," is saying, 'I guess it will never work'; the subsequent song, "May Queen," says, 'Work? Who wants it?' Like, I got over and out. It's a real encapsulated thing. It's almost more representational, like 'Here are the songs that mark my journey,' instead of 'These are the songs I sang on my journey,' which is more Guyville. So in a sense, it's more removed.

Bill Wyman, Rock Critic: Whip-smart was the most anticipated non- superstar release of 1994. Rolling Stone and Spin fought bitterly over who would put her on the cover; then-Atlantic records prez Danny Goldberg (now Warner Bros. Records CEO) said the record would "hit gold quickly." After the record's release, in September, everything seemed to be in place for a smash: A slip-clad Phair smiled from a Rolling Stone cover that proclaimed her "Rock's Newest Star"; reviews almost unanimously celebrated the album; MTV grabbed the first video, for the rocking "Supernova," and ran with it; radio stations have been playing the song silly for months.

So why is Whip-smart in danger of falling off the Billboard 200 album chart after just ten weeks?

It could be that Whip-smart has run up against a hard fact of the record industry: There are basically only two things that sell a lot of records. One of them is touring, and Phair scotched a plan fall outing. "A tour is essential," says a local industry watcher. "You have to go into the market and generate press and just physically be there."

It turns out that the second thing that can sell an album is a hit single - a real old- fashioned top 40-style hit single, not just an MTV buzz clip.

Narrator: It turns out this was not in the making either. 'Supernova' introduced Liz Phair to many new listener's that had only heard the buzz about her to that point. Supernova made inroads on MTV and on alternative format radio, but it never crossed over into mainstream Top 40 success. To make matters worse there was a long delay between supernova and the albums second Single , Whipsmart. Even the choice for the second single has to be questioned. While Whipsmart is a classic Liz song, it does seem to be a bit quirky and esoteric to really play to the masses. By the time the more accessible third single, "Jealousy", was released the album had pretty much petered out and neither whpsmart or jealousy got near the video or radio play of supernova. You can't really blame the record company for not getting behind her follow up singles when they were saddled with an artist that seemed unwilling or unable to put in the work to make the album a success. Even Liz admitted as much.

Liz Phair: I think I've participated as fully as anyone in preventing myself from getting that big. After Whip-Smart came out, I canceled my tour. I canceled all press. And I wouldn't talk to anybody about business. I decided it was more important to get back to living my life.

There's nothing special or magic about the pop star anymore. Everybody knows how it happens, everybody knows what toll it takes. The magic isn't in the rise, the magic is in the disintegration, like Kurt Cobain. We know how they got there, let's see how they fuck up. This is my most harried subject, because I'm constantly changing my mind about it.

Narrator: The week the Rolling Stone Liz Phair cover hit the stands and her new album came out, The Village Voice Rockbeat column had a little blurb on the aforementioned cover. It seems that Rolling Stone's arch-rival Spin had a cover story all ready, but when Rolling Stone demanded exclusivity she dropped Spin like a plutonium potato. Naturally, Spin got all pissy and immediately cancelled a favorable review of Whip-Smart. She's struggled to get favorable press in Spin every since.

Liz Phair: "I canceled the tour that fall because I had done a shitload of press in the summer for the release of the album, and I felt incredibly emotionally fragile. People were picking at me and poking at me and manipulating me, and I was fighting with photographers who were trying to put me in skimpy outfits and shit, and I got so overwhelmed by the end of the summer I just kept thinking, 'What the fuck am I doing? I could go back to grad school or do something. I don't want to hate my job.' And I felt that if I went out with the guys and did the band thing that it would be forever known as me and these guys, and that it would be impossible to get away from them at that point. I'd either have to go out with my band and do the rock thing and be a road Rock'n'Roll act, or I'd have to make a change so that I could try and love my job again."

Liz: I just couldn't go out with those guys and do it the same way as we did it before. It felt like I was just repeating something and I didn't have my heart in it at all. There is so much in this business that makes me feel like I do it to sell things. It just felt like if I did it I would have to be with that band forever... The Liz Phair Band. I just realized that if I went out right then to promote the record I'd be in a much worse place.

(My Record company) totally wanted me to tour (editor's note: A letter from her label's legal department reminded her she was expected to tour). Basically they wanted me to be public, I wanted to be private. All these people wanted me to be really big and I felt like this tiny pea in the center of all this chaos. I didn't want this success. I kept thinking this is wrong. Why do all these people want it so much more than I do.

When I canceled the tour I was a basket case. I was thinking that I was way in over my head and I was the biggest hypocrite of all. I hated what I was doing. I could've got a job like I was suppose to after school in a respectable profession. I would have hated my job, but so what. Instead I was writing music that I loved and it turned into a job that I hated.

Brad Wood: She canceled the tour, and that was the end of it. She never spoke to me or guitarist Casey Rice and I can't speak for bassist LeRoy Bach about playing again. I don't know anything about it. She never said, "I don't want to work with you anymore." She never said, "Let's do a tour." I never heard anything. After a three-year working relationship with Liz, I have to read about it in the newspaper articles. Which is sort of her modus operandi. (It) would have been fun. There's nothing like walking out on a stage in front of 5,000 people screaming their brains out. We kind of had a suicide pact, where if one of us quit or was fired we'd all leave. We did it to have a good time and hang out with friends. Once it became apparent that she didn't want to work with us live, she saw the band as a dead weight.

Brad Wood: She was never all that welcome a presence in the Wicker Park scene anyway, and would say an awful lot of disparaging things about the way we lived, what we wore, the women we dated, and the cigarettes we'd smoke, the whole musician-as-a-career-choice thing. I didn't appreciate this. I've been raised to do this since the third grade. It's my vocation and I'm quite proud of it. Interview with Brad Wood

Casey Rice: I didn't really want to do engineering that much, and I didn't want to play in a rock band. I was totally disgusted with all of the music industry horseshit after the Liz Phair thing. It made me feel like an ass. There were a ton of people hanging out all of the time, wanting to be your friend because you were the guy that played the second guitar parts.

Liz: I've learnt so much from (Brad) and Casey. I noticed that when I went on tour. I learned from them how to play live and how to rehearse and how to get your songs across. Definitely the studio stuff like how to make tracks. My main thing why I want to use a new producer is for a different sense of timing. There's some natural retarded rhythms on my "Girly Songs" that I always felt I had to change in the studio with him to incorporate the rest of the instruments and so forth. I feel it is important for me to write in those different timings.

Narrator: During a rather tumultous time in her musical career, things seemed better in Liz's romantic life. Liz Phair married film editor Jim Staskauskas on March 11, 1995. Jim is a film editor and met Liz while working on her Stratford-on-guy video. The two met sometime in the fall of 93. Liz would move in with Jim and his son Aidan, a teenager, prior to them getting married. The three lived together in an apartment in Wicker Park. "It's weird for Aidan, and it's weird for me," Phair concedes. "But luckily, we get along."

Liz Phair: I knew my husband was The One because he made me wait. People told me that he liked me, they said he would ask me out to dinner, they told me he was single, available, and interested. And it dragged on and on. I was like, "What's up with this?" I'm thinking, 'Who is this dick? He had the whole editor, bigger-better-older-than-you thing going. But I also had an immediate physical reaction to him. Well, it was three weeks, but it seemed like forever. He just waited. I think I liked that about him -- he wasn't diving right into it. I'm kind of a diver, but he played me really well. He played me like a goddamn fiddle.

There's one song called 'Jealousy' that I'm really proud of... I never experienced jealousy until I met my boyfriend (now husband Jim). I did not realize how much I had controlled situtations in the past and how demanding I had been, without being perceived as demanding, ever. I prided myself on the fact that they loved me this way because I was in some way better. It didn't occur to me that maybe I was being a manipulative jerk, you know?

The whole attitude of Whip-Smart is affected by him, affected by my new way of seeing myself. But I really couldn't say. I've never been able to write about people. In fact, I wrote some songs that were directly about him, and they didn't make the album. One tender love song "came out sounding like Don Ho. It was supposed to be the ultimate light-rock Carly-forever love song, and here I am making, like, 'Tiny Bubbles.'"

Narrator: After an extended honeymoon in the Bahamas, Liz began a small solo tour during April of 1995. This tour allowed Liz's fans to get a stripped down version of the liz Phair musical experience. Performances consisted mainly of Liz and her guitar with a couple of songs played at the piano, chopsticks and canary. Performing solo did seem to give Liz the freedom stretch out artistically with her music. Several unreleased tracks from liz were played during this time including Beginning to See the light, Wasted, You Have No Idea, I'll get you High, and Ride. Liz also performed many girlysound songs including If I Ever pay you back and Sometimes a Dream (is what makes you a slave).

That, along with a handful of dates around the release date of Whipsmart, was about the extent of her touring. Liz seemed to have a healthy dislike for touring and indirectly her fans.

Liz Phair: Attention doesn't fill you up, it depletes you. That's usually at shows. You go afterward to sign some autographs and that's when I see that they're completely waiting for something, like little kids at a birthday party, 'Is there a clown? Is there a pony?' They want something. They want their own personal snippet to go home and remember. All these hungry mouths, all these gaping baby birds. Some people see me as a wounded soul and want to get that. Some people see me as the girl that scorned them in the schoolyard and they want me to be bitchy and bratty. Some people see me as a kind of hippie collegiate. Think of all the different perceptions of what the songs say and that's the variety you get coming back at you. This kind of attention just eats at you.

Narrator: After almost totally blowing off touring behind the Whipsmart album, Liz did do press to promote the album. After a while, even that became too arduous a task.

LIZ: Now I have to host photo shoots. One day I just decided to bag out on it. I fucking wanted to get paid. What I finally came to was I wouldn't be so pissed off if I was paid $300 dollars a shot, like if I was paid the way a model would be for a job...I wanted whatever the general person was going to be paid. I wanted my cut because I was fucking mooing and cowing and walking around trying to be their little doll and I just got ill with it. It made me literally ill. I wanted a day rate.

Liz Phair: I had to go to the big picture to write this second album because no one's giving me any time to be a part of life, to then write about life. I'm not part of it anymore. I'm stuck in that little fake universe of narcissism. It's only recently that I finally got it. I was just Miz Career Girl, out there doing it, staying on top of it. I couldn't write off the year I'd just gone through, but I had to pick, what does Liz Phair want to say? What does Elizabeth Clark Phair want to say? A couple of songs were really current that I'm really proud of, like 'Jealousy' or 'Support System' or 'Alice Springs'. Actually, that's not current, but I changed the words so it feels current.

I don't think I've ever had such low self-esteem as I did [during the Whip-Smart period]. All these people were saying these things about me. I would just sit and think, 'Am I about that? Am I not? It's like I was blown by the wind, going with whatever was around me. I isolated myself by hanging out in the indie world where I didn't belong, where they had ambivalent feelings about me in the first place. I was in a phase in my life where I needed to be cool -- the existential problems of the late teens and early 20s. I had no priority scheme, had no idea what I wanted in life, and I was really self-involved -- that's a vulnerable position to be in. Couple that with the kind of attention I was getting out of nowhere and it's a really volatile situation.

Inside I was really flipping. People wondering so much about me, and what I had done, and who I was made me feel like I had no idea.... It's like someone who analyzes something to death because they're afraid of being caught off guard, the one who didn't know. That's what sounds like to me -- trying to cover all the bases so I'm in on the joke. I look at (myself circa Whipsmart) and I feel sorry for me then, because I really didn't flourish under that.(Listen to a .wav clip of Liz discussing how much she dislikes the music industry here)

I have never seen success in the music industry not corrupt. Maybe, Sheryl Crow is the only example. She made a second album that's as good as the first. And she seemed to handle it.

But a lot of people, nearly everybody, starts to falter after their first album, particularly if it's successful. I say just push them through second album, this part of the learning phase.

I went through. I know what happens to you. My self-esteem dropped lower than it's ever been. It dropped and dropped. And it didn't have anything to do with my past. As I grew up I was special enough, attractive enough, interested in enough, loved enough, but there was nothing like the success that came with Exile.

It came right out of leftfield for me. I was inundated. I'd never grown up a rock chick. I didn't know what to expect or what it was about. There were all these people writing these things about me and I'd read them and I ended up having no good, solid, identity for two years.

Until then the biggest decisions I'd had to make were which party to go to, what should I wear, should I get laid, whether I should get stoned on any day or not. And, suddenly, there was all this stuff about this girl full of hate, who was totally sexed up one minute and freezing cold the next.

I got painfully self-conscious, miserable, lost weight. It probably wasn't the most excitingly successful point of my career.

It was such an odyssey for me to get off Whip-Smart. I felt like I hated the music industry, and all the attention. I was miserable. I don't want to sound like I didn't care what people thought, but I had to grow and make music that excited me again. If I still talked about the way I felt when I was twenty-four, I'd be dead inside.

"I like the making part but not the selling. Yes, I'd taken their money but it still pissed me off. I was like, 'Screw this, my husband has a great job, I don't need to do this'."

The second record, all you can think about is how everything you say could be heard by thousands of people. It's very unproductive. That's why second records suck. I was all about just getting past the second-record thing. I could hear what everyone was thinking, and it really killed the whole career for me. There are so many issues around a sophomore record; so many people kept trying to define me. I really did try to pass on it and use the old stuff. I had so many songs about public perception, about being an artist. They were so terrible I had to use a old material because all I could write was songs about how hard it is to be a rock star. Nothing else was going on in my life.