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Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books breaks down seminal albums in startling minutiae. Each volume takes a seminal album and breaks it down. The books are freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration.
Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books breaks down seminal albums in startling minutiae. Each volume takes a seminal album and breaks it down. The books are freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration.
Continuum's "33 1 / 3" series of books breaks down seminal albums in startling minutiae. Each volume takes a seminal album and breaks it down. The books are freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration.
It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch. The series is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice A brilliant serieseach one a work of real loveNME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon 2 Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype [A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK) We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com 3 Also available in this series: Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans Harvest by Sam Inglis The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller Meal Is Murder by Joe Pernice The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli Electric Ladyland, by John Perry Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard Let It Be by Steve Matteo Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk Aqualung, by Allan Moore OK Computer by Dai Griffiths 4 Let It Be by Colin Meloy Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz Grace by Daphne Brooks Murmur by J. Niimi Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli Ramones by Nicholas Rombes Endtroducing by Eliot Wilder Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese Low by Hugo Wilcken In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper Music from Big Pink by John Niven Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy Doolittle by Ben Sisario Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis Stone Roses by Alex Green 5 Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth The Who Sell Out by John Dougan Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti Loveless, by Mike McGonigal The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck Court and Spark by Sean Nelson 69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor Aja by Don Breithaupt Rid of Me by Kate Schatz Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite If Youre Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef 6 Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel Horses by Philip Shaw Master of Reality by John Darnielle 7 8 Gentlemen Bob Gendron 9 10 2008 The Continuum International Publishing Group lnc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com 33third.blogspot.com Copyright 2008 by Bob Gendron All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents. Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer waste recycled paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gendron, Bob, 1975- Gentlemen / Bob Gendron. p. cm. - (33 1/3) eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-4625-0 1. Afghan Whigs (Musical group) 2. Alternative rock musiciansUnited States. 3. Alternative rock musicUnited StatesHistory and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. 11 M1.421.A326G46 2008 782.421660922-dc22 2008022030 12 13 Table of Contents Dedicate It Intro: Hard Time Killing Floor I. Back from Somewhere II. Bandwagonesque III. Rebirth of the Cool IV. Now You Know V. Ladies & Gentlemen VI. Take Me Away VII. Epilogue: Each to Each 14 15 Dedicate It Many thanks to David Barker for taking the chance, believing, and viewing music as art still worthy of meaningful prose. Grazie mille to the original members of the Afghan Whigs (Greg Dulli, John Curley, Rick McCollum, Steve Earle) for agreeing to oft-lengthy interviews and, in Greg and Johns case, giving me contacts, personal tours, valuable face time, and honest responses; without their participation, this book would not have been possible. Merci to Lee Heidel, for contacts and music, and to Robert-Jan van der Woud, Keith Hagan, and Chris DeVille, for contacts. Journalistic integrity, diligent reporting, and historical context are too often absent from the agenda-promoting opining that today passes for music criticism. For setting and maintaining an irreproachable standard, and being a good friend, sincere thanks to Greg Kot. His writing has always been and remains a primary inspiration. Thanks as well to my friend and colleague Andy Downing for lending an ear and taking an interest. And many thanks to my editors past and present Jonathan Valin, Robert Harley, Chris Martens, Heidi Stevens, Lou Carlozo, Kevin M. Williams, Carmel Carrillo, Emily A. Rosenbaum, Scott L. Powersfor their expertise, advice, and guidance. Danke, to Jeannette Chernin for being a caring sister. Extra thanks to Michael L. Miller for constant support and kind words; a better friend doesnt exist. Utmost gratitude to my mother, Nanette, who always permitted my music obsessions and allowed me to work at an indie record store and travel to 16 concerts long before I was old enough to drive. Most of all, supreme love and thanks to my beautiful wife, Ann, for all of the love, encouragement, faith, laughter, and patienceand for going to the fateful Whigs concert with me in Austin one week before our wedding. This book is for you, and in loving memory of George J. and Leona Gendron. And thank you, the reader, for purchasing this bookor at least, browsing through it long enough to encounter this passage. Like it? Hate it? Email me thoughts or questions at afghanwhigsbook@yahoo.com. I will reply. Unless otherwise noted, all factual information and quotes are from the authors interviews or experiences witnessed firsthand. 17 18 Intro Hard Time Killing Floor Greg Dulli lies motionless on his left side. His body is crumpled, his eyelids shut. The singers expression is blank, his mind unconscious. His wavy black hair mashes up against a pillow. Wrapped up in white sheets, Dulli looks limp and frail, particularly in the eerie pall cast by the yellow-haze sunlight filtering through the window. The bumpy outline of his physique, like an ancient mummy, seems small and insignificant. If not for the methodical blip of heart monitors tracking his breathing, one could easily presume him dead. He almost is. Dulli is in the midst of a fifty-hour coma that, before it ceases, will see the singer flatline and receive Last Rites. As the Afghan Whigs frontman remains stationary on a bed in an Intensive Care Unit at a downtown Austin hospital, bassist John Curley slowly paces outside the rooms door, staring down at the floor in disbelief. His solemnity has nothing to do with the groups future, which, as an active band, will effectively be over within a year. Hes concerned about whether or not Dulli will surviveand if he does, whether hell recover without suffering brain damage or related health issues. Hours before being forced into traction, Dulli led his Cincinnati ensemble through a sweaty, revue-style concert in front of a packed house on December 11, 1998, at Liberty Lunch. Teasing out songs with impromptu banter and snippets of Prince, James Booker, and Beatles tunes, the 19 Afghan Whigs were again proving themselves the most riveting live rock act goinga band so formidable onstage, Dulli was able to convince Columbia Records to pony up the money to allow the group to travel with horn players, backup singers, and a pianist. Persuasive, smooth, and confident, hes someone who doesnt easily take no for an answer or back down from a challenge. Particularly when his friends are involved or his ambitions questioned. While they give no indication of prior turmoil during their two-hour-plus show, upon arriving at the now-leveled Texas venue, the Whigs are met with good-old-boy attitude. Along with Dulli, opening act Alvin Youngblood Hart and tour-support vocalist Steve Myers, both African-American, customarily pound on the metal fire door in order to gain entrance for soundcheck. An angry redneck greets them: Niggers. The remark sends Dulli into frenzy. He grabs the hick by his billy-goat beard, yanking him around as a pit bull would a chew toy. After learning of the incident, Liberty Lunch managers pledge to remove the offending employee. The concert goes off as planned. But this being Austinland of George W. Bush, and the very city where the Whigs were sued by a girl who was accidentally nicked by a water pitcher passed around in the crowdTexas-style justice is about to be served. Long after finishing the closing Miles Iz Ded, and at the end of a scheduled after-show meet and greet, Dulli enters the mens restroom to urinate. The last thing he remembers is washing his hands. Its probably best that he not recall the specifics of being hit from behind, smacked with what he believes was a 2 x 4 before being kicked twice in the head while he was already down. Or that he recollects his assault at 20 the hands of a loser named Teitur, the same rube who rudely answered the door and learned that Dulli isnt someone to take lightly before milling about in the club so he, with assistance from fellow bouncer Porkchop, could blindside his target and fracture his skull. Or that Dulli relives hitting the Lunchs unforgiving concrete floor, headfirst, with no chance to reactlet alone fight back. Or that he reflects on his pool of blood being left on the floor by Liberty Lunch management, which concocted a false defense and protected Teitur and Porkchop by sneaking the tandem out a side door before police arrived and started asking questions. Or that he knows that as news of the attack hits the wires, haters light up Internet message boards saying the singer deserved his fate. It takes a rare breed of artist to inspire such reactions. Keeper of a radiant aura and mojo hand, Dulli knows this. Hes no stranger to arousing passions, inciting opinions, and provoking responses. Suave and debonair, the magnetic front-man worked stages with a self-assured sensibility and larger-than-life presence that went unrivaled during the 90san era when unkempt grunge noisemakers, punk-pop pretenders, and cartoonish rap-rock oafs dominated, leaving soul, style, and sensuality by the wayside. Dulli is a mans manthe type who assists a male fan by doing the awkward prom-dance asking for him, and the very next moment steals away an undeserving dudes girlfriend, all the while taunting her date. Does he love you? Because if he doesnt, then meet me backstage, he exclaimed with regularity during the Whigs 1965 tour, only half-kidding. Dressed in a dark suit, puffing on Camels, and sauntering as a casual playboy, he was the center of attention every guy wanted to be and the sex symbol every tumed-on girl wanted to fuck. 21 And on Gentlemen, in he swaggers, the chain-smoking assassin who has a dick for a brain, invading our dark subconscious and secretive past. Like no record before or since, Gentlemen is fraught with the psychological warfare, bedroom drama, Catholic guilt, reprehensible deception, and uncleansable shame that coincide with relationships gone seriously wrong. Its seemingly thick skin is rife with argument, infection, claustrophobia, temptation, accusation, illness, addiction, blood, scourge, and spite. Certainly, the albums psychoanalytic posturing, vindictive blame, and sinister betrayal offer sanctuary for self-loathing romantics and catharsis for unrepentant sinners. Yet behind the bulletproof veneer and cocksure innuendo reside anguish, sickness, pain, and disgust, emotions mirrored on the records suggestive coverwhere two children, playing the grown-up parts of embittered lovers, depict obvious disconnect, the twisted image a potent metaphor for the albums themes of anger, hurt, confrontation, disappointment, and contempt. And then theres the music. Dullis liquor-cabinet confessions are chased with some of the blackest-sounding rock ever committed to tape by a white band. Hopped-up on primal energy, the mesmerizing R&B, funk, slide-blues, garage, and chamber-pop strains are tied to a come-hither soulfulness perfumed with hyssop and stained with nicotine. To this day, Gentlemen remains as cursed as its controversial narrator, an album out of time even in its time. Released on October 5, 1993, it has sold 162,000 copies, a respectable number, but far fewer than works by many alternative bands of the day. The situational ironies run deep. The Afghan Whigs were the second non-Seattle and first East-of-Denver artist signed to Sub Pop, the very imprint whose meteoric rise helped launch countless coattail-riding 22 groups with flannel shirts and four-day-old-growth beardsthe same bands whose in-vogue distortion and soft-loud songs ran contrary to the Whigs loose, sexy dynamic. Gentlemen was the Whigs major-label debut, and still it bore the hip black-and-white Sub Pop logo. Not that it mattered. MTVs fleeting flirtation with Debonair mirrored radios widespread disinterest. Despite glowing reviews and feverish tour support, Gentlemen faded from view. And yet it remains dearly beloved to almost everyone whos heard it, taking its place amidst Richard and Linda Thompsons Shoot Out the Lights, Marvin Gayes Here, My Dear, and Bob Dylans Blood on the Tracks as one of the rawest, most searing break-up records in history. This book is about Gentlemen and how it came to bevia a polarizing frontman whose fierce bravado, GQ appearance, and gloves-off exuberance concealed deep-rooted mental depression and chemical dependency; and the invaluable contributions and chemistry of a driven quartet, whose differing personalities, backgrounds, and tastes comprised a band that truly sounded like no other. Its about boundariesbetween North and South, black and white, rock and soul, personal and private. Rivers and hills provide Cincinnati with natural borders, but Dulli, Curley, guitarist Rick McCollum, and drummer Steve Earle were too curious to stay on their side of the tracks, too obsessed with how blues, booze, drugs, and sexstrictly taboo in their conservative hometowncould ignite a groove, seduce a girl, and stroke the ego. Its a story about what happens when intellectual sophistication and blunt reflection are star-crossed with outspoken braggadocio, a charismatic mixture that managed to alienate the mainstream horde and arms-folded scenesters while, for good measure, 23 instigated outsider jealousy, condescending rumors, and, ultimately, insider sabotage. Now. 24 25 I. Back from Somewhere When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because its always twenty years behind the times. Mark Twain (attributed) Cincinnati is nestled in the Southwest corner of Ohio, a geographical location that stirs debate about whether or not its a North or South cityor, for that matter, Midwest, East, or West. Notoriously conservative and highly segregated, most residents tend to stay within their own neighborhoods and are very slow to adopt changes. Rolling green hills, hidden enclaves, and wooded areas afford a bucolic setting uncommon to most metro areas. It is beautiful country, and nature makes its presence known everywhere you turn. Downtown, the Ohio River separates the Queen City from its nearby Kentucky neighbors of Covington and Newport. Both are a one-minute ride away. Settled in the late 1700s, Cincinnati was an abolitionist town and stop on the Underground Railroad. For slaves lucky enough to escape, freedom was potentially just a half-mile swim away. Conversely, for those seeking vices, a jaunt over to the Bluegrass State offered what the increasingly moderating Cincinnati climes lacked: liquor, prostitutes, drugs, and gambling. With such narrow borders separating sin from temperance, and slavery from freedom, pronounced tensions and divisions quickly developed. 26 Bounty hunters camped in Cincinnati, hoping to recapture slaves before they permanently disappeared into the North. Abolitionists stumped there as well, risking their lives for those of others. A major race riot erupted in 1829. And while a majority of residents sided with the Union in the Civil War, a number headed south in favor of the Confederacy. In the same way it divided racial opinions, the citys straddling bearings caused cultural clashes, with country bumpkins and progressive urbanites claiming the same territory and further muddling identity issues. Today, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center sits off the Ohio Rivers banks in lower downtown. The base of the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge looms in front of the south entrance. Opened to pedestrians in 1866, the stone-tower span served as the prototype for the Brooklyn Bridgealso designed by Roeblingand remains the primary pathway for automobiles and pedestrians traveling between Covington and Cincinnati. Fittingly, the sound of a car driving across the Suspension Bridgethe demarcation of social, racial, and political boundariesmarks the beginning of Gentlemen. John Curley doesnt say a word as he drives his station wagon across the Roebling overpass. He doesnt have to. In the background, one can detect the haunted intro to Gentlemens opening If I Were Going. Its a hot mid-May afternoon, and the rubber grooves of the Mercedess tires are dancing across the bridges metal grates, creating a buzzing sound thats reminiscent of an agitated hornets nest. Most drivers unconsciously tune it out. But listen closely, and the noise produces uncomfortable, claustrophobic tones. It was here in April 1993 that Curley hung a microphone out of his car 27 while Dulli drove, capturing the perfect noir prelude to an aurally cinematic drama. Curley was bom March 15, 1965, in Trenton, New Jersey. Save for his senior year of high school, he was raised in a nuclear family environment in Delaware before moving to Cincinnati for a photography internship at the Cincinnati Enquirer. He hasnt left since. Solidly built and slightly chunky, he now looks like a barrel-chested teddy bear. Salt-and-pepper whiskers sprout like weeds throughout his formerly all-black beard. He wears a plaid button-down shirt over a white T-shirt, khaki pants, and Ray-Ban pilot sunglasses. Bedhead hair rounds out his informal demeanor. When Curley grins, a small gap between his upper left teeth appears and adds to his laid-back charm. Eyebrows dominate his forehead when he thinks. Calm and collected, he speaks with a slight drawl. He currently plays in the Staggering Statistics and runs Ultrasuede Studios, a red-carpeted spot that would be right at home on the Partridge Family. Yet everything about him confirms his primary occupation as a devoted husband and father of two children. I remember really liking music since about the time I was in the first grade, Curley recalls, as Tom Pettys American Girl plays on a Sirius Radio amidst the whooshing air conditioning. I got a cassette player and would record my favorite songs off the radio. I think its always been the twin interests of music and recording. And I think photography also falls into that because its using machines to be creative. For a musician whose posture, physique, and approach evoke those of John Entwistle, its only apropos that Curleys motivation to pick up a bass at age fifteen came after hearing 28 the Whos Quadrophenia. It was like hearing the bass for the first time, he admits. A music teacher who forced him to learn exercises and repeatedly practice taught him the basics. Later, some cooled-out stoner jazzheads opened his mind up to musical theory and improvisation. Absorbing the music of Earth, Wind & Fire, Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas, the Beatles, and Jesus Christ Superstar did the rest. With the Whigs, I draw on stuff that I know will work. Greg and Rick are more naturalthey dont have the intermediate step of having to remember what works with what. They just go there. I knew enough to be able to thread the gap, and connect with the drums. So musically, that helped us. And then, of course, having a singer like Greg. Greg Dulli was born May 11, 1965, in Hamilton, a town about twenty-five miles northwest of Cincinnati. Its where hed spend his entire young life. Since his mother was a soul fanatic and only eighteen years old when she delivered him, Dullis childhood was filled with music. He recalls purchasing his first single (the Jackson Fives I Want You Back) when he was four and remembering his mom spin Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Supremes, Lee Dorsey, Al Green, and the like on the turntable. On visits to his grandparents house in West Virginia, he soaked up the country sounds of Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, and Kitty Wells. Neighborhood kids exposed him to rock, with Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Kiss being favorites. I was in Kiss Army. I probably still amnever did get my discharge, Dulli cracks, a shit-eating grin washing over his face as he lounges in the living room of his 29 late-eighteenth-century house on a sultry August day in New Orleans. For a moment, his expressioncute, curious, mischievousresembles that of an eleven-year-old who just snuck a long peek at a gorgeous woman in the shower. Its a look that repeats every time he has a good idea, turns wise, or talks about what makes him happy. Casually dressed in a blue polo shirt, shorts, and sandals, Dulli exudes breezy California cool. His frame is more filled out than it was a decade ago. Specks of gray color his tousled hair. He gulps iced tea by the gallon and lights incense for ambience. Yet aside from a mellower disposition, Dulli possesses all of the savvy charm, contagious energy, straight-shooting candor, and biting humor that have made him a permanent part of alt-rock folklore. As he talks about his upbringing and takes an extended drag from one of the countless cigarettes hell inhale during the next nine hours, a History Channel show about the Antichrist airs on a muted television thats always left on to ward off wrongdoers. As if picking up on the shows unpleasant vibe, the conversation steers to Dullis strict father. Unlike his supportive mother, Dullis music-alienated dad refused to allow the singer to take any sort of lessons. But that didnt hinder Dullis passion. A Catholic altar boy, he sang in church but would occasionally accompany his neighbors to their Baptist church. It was fun. Theyd throw-down and people would start rolling their eyes in the back of their heads and fall on the ground and speak in tongues. Im like, Well youre fucking nuts, but theres the joyousness of it. He also took up the drums, heading over to friends houses to practice and pick up what he could. Other outsider influencesHunter S. Thompson, Keith Richards, 30 Cincinnatis uptightnessfed his early desire to experiment with marijuana and cocaine. Religion had already lost its hold, though its precepts would haunt Dulli for years. I stopped going to Catholic church in the eighth grade because I began to have philosophical differences. I found it hypocritical. I told my mother, who was very Catholic, that I didnt want to go to church anymore. She told me if I stated my reasons in an essay, shed read it and decide if it was okay. I wrote a three-page essay stating my reasons I wanted to leave the Catholic church and left it on her dresser. When I came home from school the next day, she sat me down. She was crying. But she said I had stated my reasons and that I wouldnt have to go to church anymore. I never went again. At fifteen, Dulli joined his first band as the vocalist for Helen Highwaternamed by Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins. While the group originally played Stones, Kinks, Who, and Doors covers, a guitarist suggested that it become a Skynyrd tribute act. Dulli bristled, leading to a betrayal that shaped how he would view band organization and discipline. Rather than being fired, Dulli discovered hed been replaced by a Ronnie Van Zandt look-alike after hearing music waft out of his old guitarists house and spying his former band jamming in the basement. The experience devastated him. It was like catching your wife fucking somebody else. It broke my heart. I was like, Im not doing this anymore. But once Dulli enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, band life beckoned. He started the Black Republicans as a freshman before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles. After his mother got sick and needed him to serve as his sisters legal guardian, Dulli returned to Cincinnati and 31 reformed the Black Republicans, which became a going concern by 1985. Around that time, Dulli began noticing a weird, older dude he thought to be about forty coming out to the shows. Finally, at the end of one gig, the seemingly out-of-place fan came up to talk to him. It was Curley, who made it a point to tell the vocalist he was a better bassist than the one in the Black Republicans. Dulli took the bait. I said, Well, come on out. Lets see what you got. I knew our [bassist] was going back to college. And he was great. To this day, my favorite bass player Ive ever played with. The two had actually met once before, at an apartment, under less-auspicious circumstances. Dulli was writing somebodys term papers and got distracted by the sounds of the Allman Brothers Bands One Way Out being blared at loud, shaking-the-pictures-off-the-wall levels from across the hall. Ironically, Dulli was a fan of the band and the album (Eat a Peach) but insists the volume was unbearable. I went to knock on the door and said, Youve got to turn that down, man. The guy who answered was the dude who came to our gigs. And I remember peaking in the door and seeing some freakish long-haired dude sucking on a bong who turned out to be Rick. Rick McCollum was born July 14, 1964, in Louisville, Kentucky. Like Dulli, he was brought up Catholic and started playing drums in junior high. But he soon switched to guitar, self-learning from playing records back at half-speed. McCollums mother died when he was just twelve, and his father, who passed ten years later, was already on his way to an early grave via alcohol abuse. Understandably shy and rail thin, McCollum admits to having been a loner throughout his 32 childhood and tenure in the Whigs. His mysterioso reticence inspired the nickname Moon Maan. Greg gave it to me because Im a smart guy but at the same time I was very quiet and hard to pinpoint, says McCollum, talking on the phone from his home in Minneapolis. I didnt really get close to anybody. Nobody could ever bond with me and I kept a shield around me from everyone. I didnt put too many opinions out just because thats the way I was; it hides your personality. Hes super quiet, very polite, and pretty inward, confirms Dulli. I could tell he was one of those in-his-room kids, had no friends, and played guitar twelve hours a day. And thats exactly what he turned out to be: a savant. Not that McCollums Type B personality meant that he was someone to pick on. Rick is like tightly wound cable, cautions Dulli, who often introduced McCollum onstage by saying, Folks, you dont have to do heroin. You just have to look like you do heroin. He has no body fat even though he just piles donuts in his mouth. I remember when Steve Earle took him on. Earle went from upright to on his back in less than a second. It was fucking Matrix-type shitswift and surreal. In that half-second that he went down, I made a mental note: Dont fuck with Rick. Even though he grew up in Kentucky, McCollum remained mostly unaware of Southern Rock until his college years and didnt play slide guitar until Dulli later tasked him with the challenge. Instead, McCollums tastes gravitated to 70s R&B such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Bootsy Collins, and 33 Brickmusic that focused on the grooves and beats first and foremost, and riffs and vocals second. Its a soul music type of thing. It might be geographical, where, the further south you go, the more prevalent it is. After the Black Republicans broke up, McCollum continued to jam with Curley. Dulli relocated to the Arizona desert, where he worked a midnight shift, taught himself guitar, and wrote half of the songs for what became the Whigs self-released and roughly amateurish debut, 1988s Big Top Halloween. He joined a band called Bakersfield Mistakethe moniker referencing VD the bassist caught while gallivanting in Bakersfieldwhose lifespan was cut short after said bassist screwed the drummers girlfriend. Aptly, a sexual liaison led to the advent of the Afghan Whigs. Bored and without a band, Dulli moved back to Cincinnati with the intent of starting his own group. He was also sitting in with Curley and McCollum, who were trying out drummers. Dulli explains: They didnt get any drummers that were as good as me. I said, Dont get that guy. Dont get that guy, either. Then Rick put up an ad and Steve Earle answered. Steve was a great drummer. Thats when I was like: This could be cool. So maybe Ill stay as the second guitar player and singer. Steve Earle was born March 28, 1966, in Cincinnati. Raised by Protestant-Catholics, he became enamored with the drums after attending a ninth-grade sock-hop dance at which he noticed the drummers double-bass kit. It sounded so powerful, he says on the phone from his home in Ohio. I loved the way it looked and seeing how much fun the guy was having. Thats pretty much it: Its loud, its cool, Ill do it. 34 Primarily influenced by Keith Moon, John Bonham, and Ringo Starr, and a fan of some heavy metal, Earle took lessons from an old-school jazz hound that steered him toward Louie Bellson, Buddy Rich, and Philly Joe Jones. His tolerant parents-who appear in leather in the Whigs Debonair videoallowed band practices in their basement. Earle had attended University of Cincinnati for two years when he tried out for the Whigs. The audition consisted of playing the Temptations Psychedelic Shack, Zeppelins Rock and Roll, and the Churchs One Day (McCollum had a flair for goth), as well as a few other covers. By Halloween 1986, the quartet was loosely rehearsing. Christened by Curley as a play on the name Black Republicans, the Afghan Whigs performed their first show at Jockey Club in December 1986. From the startthey quickly became a regular attraction at a local lesbian pool hallit was clear the Whigs werent going to be a typical college-rock band. The members claimed disparate personalities, interests, and backgrounds, and yet, these differencesand some common bondsmelded into a distinctive being. Dulli also possessed uncommon vision and organizational skills. Determined not to repeat the errors of his previous groups, and inspired by the machine-like precision of James Brown, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Berry Gordy, he took charge and put the band through boot camp. Two other influences weighed heavily on Dullis progressive shaping of the Whigs into an explosive act that appealed to both sexes. I saw the Zen Arcade tour and it changed my life. Hsker D was something primal, really intelligent, and overwhelmingly powerful and beautiful. I also remembered that at lots of the punk rock shows I went to, there was a 35 preponderance of dudes. I remember thinking: There are a lot of dudes here. Theres got to be some way to have there be not so many dudes. The answer to that was black music, because you could dance to it. Girls liked it, pretty girls liked it, pretty girls will stand in front of the dudes. Thats what you want. A lot of hardcore and punk lacked sexuality. And I like sexuality. And I like sensuality. When I first saw Prince, I was [blown away]. Id say the 1999 and Zen Arcade tourswhich I saw around the same timewhile divergent, were wildly similar and equally inspirational. You could say I spent the rest of my life trying to reconcile those two experiences. Before such enterprising ambitions took hold, the Whigs got their ya-yas out. Stages doubled as spaces for wrestling matches. Multiple occasions found members too liquored-up to play. Equally stubborn, Curley and Dulli knew exactly how to annoy each other. In Montana, they stopped the van on the side of the road, got out, and brawled. At a show at Bunrattys in Boston, Curley smacked Dulli upside the head with the headstock of a bass. Dulli retaliated by taking off his guitar and dropping Curley with one punch. The melee continued backstage, where the promoter informed them they hadnt fulfilled their contractual commitments and needed to continue if they wanted their pay. The Whigs had no choice. No money meant theyd be marooned. And as they did that night in Massachusetts, the group split up countless times. Even as Dulli was leaning on the band to get serious, uncertainty ruled. No one was paying attention, but we broke up right before we got the call [to do the seven-inch single] from Sub Pop, recalls Dulli. We went to play one more gig. That concerta Wednesday night Rock 36 Against Depression show at Chicagos Metro, which by then had already made certain the band was a regular part of its schedulesaved the Whigs. Sometimes you just get so excited about a band, or someone in a band, or what they are doing as a band, that you work hard to support and help and plan and plot and co-conspire, gushes Metro owner and early Whigs convert Joe Shanahan. We were like, How much more can we do for these guys? This has to continue. Shanahan got his wish. Soon after having after-show drinks at Smart Bar with Curley, Shanahan, and former Metro booking agent Fred Darden, Dulli phoned Sub Pop co-owner Jonathan Poneman: Okay, well do the single. Days before, Dulli had actually told the Seattle tastemaker no. 37 38 II. Bandwagonesque Were the Whigs to emerge in todays entertainment-obsessed and information-overloaded age, they wouldnt remain unknown for long. Nowadays, a band, no matter how good or bad, has to strive for anonymity or obscurity. And even then, given the preponderance and enthusiasm of bloggers, theyre unlikely to succeed. But during the late 80s, attracting attention was a slow, arduous process. No Internet meant that underground groups didnt have the fortune of happening upon a record deal, posting a Myspace page, or being crowned Spins Artist of the Day. Affordable home recording wasnt yet an option. Venues were scarce. Funds were nonexistent. Word-of-mouth buzz, regional touring, and demo tapes did the heavy lifting. A small network of sympathetic promoters, club owners, managers, and labels was only beginning to develop. At the time, it was only Bob Lawton, Steve Carl, and our agency, remembers former Bulging Eye promoter Scotty Haulter, who became the Whigs first manager shortly after Dulli gave him a cassette at a concert. There werent venues in every town. People would rent out VFW halls or do shows on whatever money they could scrounge up. It was really exciting. You did it for a lot of different reasons. If anything, the challenging conditions weeded out lesser bands given the fact that groups were forced to earn their due rather than rely on unsubstantiated hype drummed up by publicity teams. At the time Sub Pop first got word of the 39 band, the Whigs were getting about $100 per show, a case of beer and, if they were lucky, a floor on which they could crash. Not that they expected much. At home in Cincinnati, every member save Curley roomed at a mangy four-bedroom house at 2340 Flora Street. Doubling as party central for the surrounding area, the Whigs version of Fulton Street mirrored a low-rent frat house. A single light bulb illuminated the porch. Rickety wooden stairs led to the front door. Empty beer bottles littered the lawn. Rent totaled $300 a month. And even with five guysHaulter and a rotating cast of associates bunked there to help keep bills to a minimumone man was always short his $60 share. Amazingly, the accommodations represented a step up for Dulli and McCollum, who had previously shared an efficiency apartment. The Whigs practice space was equally econo. Looking to vacate Earles parents basement, they were invited by a bohemian couple to play in a tarpaper house on the comer of Luckey and Vinton. Despite the structures leaning angles, broken windows, and rotting wood, the setback locationsnuggled in a hollowwas ideal. No one complained about volume levels as the band worked up the chops necessary to secure better time slots at local venues such as Sudsy Malones, Jockey Club, and Bogarts. It was at one such show in 1988 when the Whigs scored an opening gig for the Fluid, a Denver act that at the time was the only non-Pacific Northwest band on Sub Pops roster. As was typical for the cash-starved imprint, Fluid drummer Garrett Shavlik served as one of the labels unofficial talent scouts. Liking what hed heard at the concert, he mentioned 40 the Whigs to label honcho Jonathan Poneman, who told Haulter to send off a demo tape. Despite agreeing with Shavliks taste, Sub Pop didnt act immediately. The label wanted to keep its exclusive Northwest focus. Striking a deal with the Whigs would compromise the balance. Finally, an intern convinced the powers-that-be that something needed to be done. A 45-RPM single for Sub Pops Singles Club made the most sense. Poneman extended the offer, which came with an invite to play a show at Seattles now-defunct Squid Row club. While most bands wouldve drooled over such an opportunity, the Whigs took a wait-and-see approach. A sizing-up courtship dance between the broke label and the equally broke, little-known band ensued. I think all parties involved wanted to see what the other had to offer, admits Poneman. So youre Sub Pop, huh? What the fucks up with you? You guys are hot shots from Cincinnati? What the fuck are you all about? And why the fuck do you live in Cincinnati? It wasnt anything hostile. Everyone just wanted to see what the other party had to offer. We did the single [I Am the Sticks, limited to 1,500 copies] and went out and played, says Dulli. And those guys are like, You should move to Seattle. And were like, No. And theyre like, Maybe well call you. And were like, Alright. I think [it was] the fact that we said no at first and then said we wont move out there. It probably was basic human nature: 41 Our resistance made us more interesting. That and a potent show in front of just twenty people led to a Sub Pop dealthe first for a band east of the Rockies. The thing that sold me was passion, great songwriting, a very spirited vocal delivery, and a fucking incredibly intense live performance, explains Poneman. [And] Gregs song-writing. He was and remains a great lyricist and the sort of singer, particularly in the live context, which is riveting. He really had a soulfulness. Not soulful in an R&B context, but something where you felt like he was really exorcizing some demons and really pouring out his heart in his vocal delivery. It was somewhat evident in those early demos but it was so completely front-and-center when we saw them perform. They were very much a band with a point of view and cohesion. Those guys, early on, really were like brothers. The bond extended to how the band coughed up the money for a lawyer at the contract signing. Part of the payment was a bag of quartersliterally. Unrolled. But we put rollers in there, so he could do it, laughs Dulli, who was then working odd jobs as a painter, roofer, cook, photo technician, and cabbie. Those quarters might have come from Earle, who took them from his dad, who did candy machines for a living. Then we had a bag of quarters in the back of the van to beat somebody in the head with in case they tried to steal our shit. We were fucking classy. Classy enough to meld in with an enviable roster of misfits that included a lanky quartet singing about a girl named Sickness being hounded by crotch-sniffing dogs (Mudhoney), a butcher howling about drunkards driving a pickup on a 42 barely frozen lake (Tad), and a band bemoaning a broken heart while lauding masturbation (Nirvana). Fitting in with the labels grunge sound would be another matter. Like nearly every Sub Pop album made in the late 80s, the Whigs Up in It was cut with the labels inhouse producer, Jack Endino. During the week in September 1989 when the band recorded at Reciprocal Recording studios, everybody slept on Ponemans floor. Noisy and boozy, the record confirmed the groups Midwestern rock/post-punk influences and effort to blend in with Sub Pops murky rawness. Still, there are faint hints of the soulful and lyrical elements that would later blossom. And right from go, the Whigs played more notesand more dynamicallythan their peers. I was trying to fit in with the Sub Pop sound, admits Dulli. So things got faster, things got heavier. Although a couple of songsSon of the South and SouthpawSub Pop hated. They were like, You cant put those on there. Im like, Fuck you, man. Watch. Sounding apart from anything Sub Pop had ever released, Ciaphas was a tune Dulli didnt even try to sneak by the style police. Endino warned the band ahead of time. We tried to record it for Up in It and Endino said, Theres no way theyll go for this. The song would reemerge four years later with new words and a new title: My Curse. Up in It was very consciously a Sub Popstyled grunge record, says Poneman. They had a lot of other things going on musically but recording with Endino, the whole presentation was something they had tailormade to fit our vibe. Thats not to say the songs wouldnt have been that way anyway; they were more conscious about that sort of thing. 43 With the later records the R&B thing really started to emerge. The one thing I remember about the Afghan Whigs and Up in It in particular is that we had, up to that point, really nailed it with our graphic identity. Frequently distinguished by Charles Petersons black-and-white jacket photos and symbolic cover art, Sub Pop albums were instantly identifiable and of the moment. Because of the labels aesthetic reputation, the Whigs surrendered control of the artwork and almost immediately regretted the decision. Perhaps confounded by the bands singularity, the label choked. Dulli recalls the ugliness. The arm was going sideways. It had not been airbrushed at all. The back was an orange-and-black nightmare. The lettering was orange on the front. We were fucking mortified. I came up from Key West and we were starting the tour. I remember calling [Sub Pop] from a pay phone and going, I fucking hate you. Look what you did to us. Dulli quickly stepped in and orchestrated a redesign. While some first-edition copies still circulate, the refurbished coverfeaturing a vertical arm on the front and, on the flip-side, Curleys bracing black-and-white snapshot of a young, defiant black girl leaning on a stereo speaker standing in front of a weathered Cincinnati building tagged with FUCK YOU graffitiprevented the Whigs debut from being the worst-looking Sub Pop album in history. No design problems plagued 1992s Congregation, whose commanding cover imagea nude African-American woman holding a crying, white, equally naked baby girl while seated on a dark red blanketsuited the bands increasing 44 incorporation of black influences. The thought-provoking picture (the flipside art depicts the same pair staring upward) can be interpreted as a metaphor for black music existing as the birth mother for every style that followed. It could also be an extrapolation of the undefined albeit twisted relationship/ racial issues broached on the title track of the bands 1990 Sister Brother single, a song whose twinkling piano accents hinted at the groups creative growth. Less than two years removed from Up in It, Congregation drastically improved upon the former in the areas of songwriting, diversity, and subtlety. Without forsaking their rambunctious rock roots, the Whigs latched on to the funk, swagger, eroticism, and innuendo that would from then on distinguish them from all comers. Arrangements reflect a pronounced shift toward soul and McCollums riveting slide guitar work. I cant recall yet if Im black or if Im white and wrong, Dulli staggers on the title track, the lyric seemingly anticipating the passionate reactions that awaited the bands fusion of North and South via Southern soul smoothness, garage bluster, and hip-swaying soul. Congregations role in the Whigs evolution isnt restricted to the bands gradual development of its own sound. Apparent from the start of the brief mood-setting intro, the record marks the beginning of the Whigs viewing albums as a unified constructa concept they enhanced and perfected on Gentlemen. Dripping with hedonistic desires, Congregation also witnessed the bands brotherhood tighten via an unlikely source. McCollum explains: The major bonding thing in Congregation was that all three [Curley, Dulli, McCollum] of 45 us knew Jesus Christ Superstar. I listened to it a lot when I was five or six. It was that Catholic thing. We were all Catholic boys growing up. That suppression. At the same time, we had the most evil thoughts in our heads but tended to laugh about them. It was something that separated us from other people and other bands. That the band ironically happened to rehearse Congregations lustful material at Our Lady of Perpetual Helpa shuttered church/convent/school complex located directly across from a field where Pete Rose played Little Leaguehad to have only helped matters. Like McCollum, Dulli also took to Jesus Christ Superstar as a boy after hearing his babysitter play the record. The groups decision to cover the rock operas flea-market-evoking The Temple on Congregation is concurrent with Dulli inhabiting the guise of a glorified pusherman over the course of the albums thirty-nine-plus minutes. Here is where his oversized ego and oversexed personality first appear. Like the merchants in The Temple who believe theyre bigger than Jesus, the singer embraces a bacchanal identity. Too much of everything isnt enough. A stream of searing one-liners, titillating imagery, disposable admissions, and lewd proposals make evident that Dulli has settled into the role of devils playthingand philanderer. His intentions are illicit and insidious; scruples and morals dont enter his vocabulary. Theres no need or want for absolution. As such, the predatory invitations (Tonight), submissive behaviors (Im Her Slave), dominating assertions (Conjure Me), manipulative persuasions (Let Me Lie to You), and scathing put-downs (Dedicate It) find him in control. Dullis conscience is clearor, at the least, any guilt is 46 couched too far back in his mind to matter. Hes too busy making the rounds (It was all just meat to me / You were only meat to me, he coos on This Is My Confession) to ponder any personal culpability, embarrassing shame, or equitable blame. After all, all is fair when playing the field. However steeped in callous circumstances and cunning maneuvers, Congregation is as compunction-free as the frontman is lascivious. The self-loathing and self-reproach would wait. So would the bands labelfor a pair of eleventh-hour additions, one of two similarly timed fateful twists that would alter the groups fortunes. Wed already turned in the artwork, explains Dulli. I remember calling Poneman and saying, Ive got two songs I have to record. One of them has to be on the record. It will just be uncredited at the end. The feverish song, Miles Iz Ded, and its memorable Dont forget the alcohol chorus, served as the consummate finale to an album that reintroduced carnal delightsand the enticing prospect of getting into the opposite sexs pantsback into an indie-rock era primarily defined by angst, depression, and downers. Dullis other last-minute idea, an invigorating cover of the Supremes My World Is Empty Without You, had an even greater impact. As the B-side to Conjure Me, it became the bands breakthrough in England. In addition to the songs, the other unexpected albeit unsurprising developmentSub Pops dire financial straitsforced Dulli to change his address. While the band recorded Congregation in July and August 1991 at a professional studio in Woodinville, Washington, mixes and overdubs were handled in Californias Sun Valleyan 47 outpost as sweltering as the towns name implies. That place was like a jail cell, says Curley. Gregs sentence was a little longer than mine. I got paroled early back to Cincinnati. That was right when Sub Pop ran out of money, sighs Dulli, who suddenly found himself stranded outside of Los Angeles. I was supposed to be able to get the money to go home but they didnt have any money for a plane ticket or a rental car. I was stuck. I had to get a job. I moved in with my girlfriend. She would soon be immortalized. 48 49 III. Rebirth of the Cool The Congregation tour was the beginning of people coming to see us and selling out places because the Afghan Whigs were playing. We were starting to get something going: getting good reviews, having a lot of good shows, going back to places we had played before, and playing bigger places. Like every member of the Whigs, John Curley fondly recalls the groups late 1991 to mid-1993 tours. But the bassist admits that they were on the road for so longthe band crisscrossed Europe and the States multiple timeshe cant remember specific details. Neither can Dulli. The vocalist estimates that the Whigs played between 230 to 240 concertsa staggering number considering that, save for a few exceptions, the band, soundman Steve Girton, and a manager tooled around in a van while towing a trailer full of gear. And nothing tests a bands will like being cramped together in a van for weeks at on end, always seeing the same faces, killing down time between shows, and rarely getting any privacy. When they could afford a cheap motel, logistics dictated that only two people got their own beds. Under such duress, a groups bond either strengthens or everyone comes out hating each others guts. For Dulli and Curley, road life meant long shifts behind the wheel. Earle only drove when supervised. In Oregon, he took off from a gas station with the pump still attached to the vehicle. On another occasion, the drummer landed in the 50 wrong state after everyone else had fallen asleep. McCollum was permanently barred from chauffeur duties due to the fact that hed gotten in a wreck in his own driveway. That allowed plenty of time for playing pitch, reading, and listening to the radio, with Dulli absorbing tunes to work into the bands ever-evolving live sets. While the Whigs never lacked for onstage chemistry, the Congregation tour witnessed the band transform into the kind of supremely tautalbeit spontaneously loosewell-oiled machine that Dulli revered about James Browns old groups. Such mastery only comes from collective experience and playing in front of crowds night after night. You get to know each other so well, you can almost read each others minds. It becomes almost telepathic, says Earle of the bands knack for both flexible changes and tight grooves. Thats what I found what happened with John. It also comes from growing up on some of the similar influences and going where the other person would assume youd go with the riff. For the microphone-phobic McCollum, concerts became outlets for self-expression. I always stressed in the back of my mind that there is nothing more boring that watching someone holding a piece a wood and playing something. After a certain point, the guitar has to be an extension. To be able to be lively onstage was the main thing I wanted to do. Thats the only place I became extroverted: onstage with the guitar on me. I had this little bubble around me but at the same time, Id connect with the audience and make it feel like Im not from this world. Not to have to look at your guitar when 51 youre playing [becomes] second nature. This is a person up here with just an extension of his body thats playing and writhing with the beats. It makes for a more interesting stage show. Rick really shines when he thinks no one is paying attention to him, adds Curley. As soon as he thinks youre paying attention or looking at him, he starts doing it differently. But when hes just over there doing his thing and he thinks no one is paying attention, its magic. With McCollum surprising from the shadows, Earle bringing up the rear, and Curley functioning as the soldering agent, Dulli pushed it all over the edge. You get good or you go home, says the singer, describing the Whigs anything-goes shows and cover-song mash-ups. You either evolve and make it fresh to yourself every night or youre fucking dead in the water. Youre a cover band. It would be as simple as I heard this song on the radio on my way here and this kind of sounds like that. Or this would fit over that. Youre sharing with the audience, who clearly knows the song too. Its as simple as making someone smile out of recognition in the audience. Youre connecting. No two shows were the same. Performances reacted to the crowds moods, the days headlines, and the citys locale. As the bands interplay advanced, Dullis legend as an uninhibited frontman who bantered with the crowd, took requests, challenged hecklers, blew cigarette smoke in peoples faces, called out lackadaisical concertgoers, quoted popular song lyrics, dished on the history of rock and roll, offered up opinions 52 on pop culture, and acted as the superlative ladies man began to spread. So did the Whigs reputation for stringing together smart medleys that sandwiched their own songs around related covers. The bands affinity for Motown and Stax, as well as its unabashed love for great pop hooks, surfaced nightly in extended versions of Turn on the Water and You My Flower. Partial renditions of tunes such as the Beach Boys Surfer Girl, the Shirelles (via Carole King and Gerry Goffin) Will You Love Me Tomorrow, and the balladic standard Blue Moon helped establish mood, underscore irony, and eradicate tension. The soul music excursions, seat-of-the-pants improvisations, and candid dialogues were as foreign to the grunge/shoegazer era as the Whigs visual appearance. Never known for flying the flannel, the band made a deliberate attempt to stand apart from the alt-rock scene, whose fashions were already being exploited by national retailers. For the Whigs, ripped jeans, tennis shoes, rumpled T-shirts, cutoffs, and long hair were out. Formal button-downs, suit coats, turtlenecks, the color black, and, most noticeably, short hair were in. Just as grunge bands scraggly looks seemed congruent with their fuzzy distortion, the Whigs stylish makeover paralleled their increasing panache and sophistication. Dulli recalls waking up one morning in Basel, Switzerland, after having passed out drunk the night before. There obviously had been a party in my room. There was a naked girl in bed with me. As I got up, there were booze bottles everywhere. CD covers with smeary shit on them. 53 Overflowing cups of cigarettes. And a garbage can filled with bottles with hair all over them. Im like, Wow, somebody cut their hair. And then I went like this [brushes his hand through his hair], and Im like, Oh god, its me! I remember that it upset some people. Looking back on that gang, I was kind of the first dude to cut his hair. I remember thinking about David Bowie. He would be one thing and then he would not be that. And then Prince. Im like, Lets draw the line between us and the flannel bands right now. It was conscious and calculated. And entirely successful. The Whigs also benefited from the seemingly overnight sea changes occurring within the music industry. The Congregation tour overlapped with college rocks categorical mutation into alternative rock. Bands that had struggled to fill small clubs were now headlining big theaters. Heavy metal, butt rock, and overproduced pop died quiet deaths. MTV and radio stations switched up their formats and playlists to incorporate the new sounds, even though many of the days leading bandsSoundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Faith No More includedplayed a hard-rock style not far removed from what was deemed outmoded. Seeking to cash in on a trend and disguise their late-to-the-game ignorance, major labels opened up their wallets and scrambled to fill their rosters with acts that had any connection (real or imagined) to Seattle. For artists being wooed by the big boys, there was no better bartering chip than being tied to Sub Pop. Every label wanted to sign a grunge band from Seattle, says Curley. They wanted a Sub Pop jewel in their crown. We were straight with everybody, but those guys had so much 54 money. My god. The only time they spend it on you is when theyre trying to get you to bed. Once you put the ring on, the money stops and the accounting starts. Dulli was also mindful of the wining-and-dining stakes. Not one to suffer fools, he recognized that the mad signing spree was like nothing that had ever occurred in history and, therefore, was unlikely to happen again. I was really conscious of the shelf life of that sort of spending frenzy. I flew around for a while and talked to everybody. I did a bunch of stuff I always wanted to do, he says, naming visits to swank hotels, meals at four-star restaurants, and dugout seats at Yankee Stadium. I wasnt being disingenuous. They were calling me, and I was the manager of the band at that point. We had no manager. I did all of the meetings. I helped draw out the contract. And I did not take a percentage. That was my fringe benefit. There was a degree of calculation going on. And it wasnt a one-way calculationthey were calculating too. In the end, Elektra won out over the other dozen-plus suitors because of personnel, size, and repute. We signed with Elektra because we had somebody there that had been a fan of the band for a long time and supported us coming up, explains Curley. He had the support of the president, it was a small company, and they had put out great rock records in the past. We felt we were going to be part of something that was going to continue to be what it was. Dulli concurs. It was the smallest label. The other labels were so massive. Getting lost in the shuffle was uninteresting to me. Elektra did Ween, Metallica, the Cure, and Jackson 55 Browne. They were wacky. They had Bjrk! I liked the eclectic nature of the label and it had a cachet. And I liked a lot of the people on the staff. Chief among those the band admired was President and CEO Bob Krasnow, who, upon arriving at Elektra in 1983, downsized the bloated talent roster to ensure that every artist received dedicated attention. Despite Elektras major label status, the Whigs became just one of a few dozen acts on the imprint. Nobody dealt with the situation in a classier manner than the Afghan Whigs, says Jonathan Poneman, talking about the bands split with Sub Pop. I remember Greg saying to me, I was just a boy when I came to the label and now Im a man. Its kind of a corny thing to say but the sentiment behind it was very true. They made a very fair deal. They treated us with an enormous amount of personal and professional respect. Its no coincidence that, fifteen years later, Dulli and Sub Pop teamed up again. Released as an EP in October 1992, the Whigs final recording for Sub Pop, Uptown Avondale, epitomized the bands soulful maturation. Haunted interpretations of Freda Paynes Band of Gold, Percy Sledges True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, the Supremes Come See About Me, and Al Greens Bewareall deep tracks that address the ravages of romancespoke to how deeply ingrained R&B had become in the bands sound. In their own way, the Whigs were paying tribute to and reviving a dormant Cincinnati soul tradition that began in the 1950s with King Records, a local race music imprint that recorded crossover singer Hank Ballard, boogie-woogie pianist Ivory Joe Hunter, unsung rock 56 pioneers Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris, and, most famously, a young James Brown. 1 Queen City natives the Isley Brothers and Bootsy Collins carried the torch into the 1970s. And just as Uptown Avondales R&B flavors heralded a major advance, the EPs pronounced shot on location creditsit was recorded in early August at Cincinnatis Ultrasuede Studios, then located in a loft space above a pottery shop at 4046 Hamilton Avenueaffirmed that the narrative organization alluded to on Congregation had come full circle. I began to see everything in a cinematic way where Im telling a story, whether its abstract or linear, its a personal statement of cinema verite, explains Dulli. Coming from my background of studying film and taking the viewer or listener on some kind of journey, it started with Uptown. That is the bridge between the two versions of the Whigs. Poneman agrees. The Whigs went on to forge a unique musical perspective. I think in the records that they did for Sub Pop, they were really just starting out. Uptown Avondale was just a segue between what they were doing on Sub Pop and the more R&B-tinged stuff that was really going to define who they were. To this extent, the bands chilling reading of Come See About Me served as a sonic harbinger. While Diana Rosss mood on the snappy Motown original is optimistic, the Whigs shape her trios confident plea into a despondent call ridden with dejection, loneliness, misery, and disgust. When Dulli utters hurry, hurry at the coda, he barely manages to get the 57 words out of his mouth. He sounds as if hes lying facedown on the floor, overcome with defeat, and certain that his love isnt returning. Hes spurned, angry, crippled. Robbed of its hopeful urgency, the song doubles as a disdainful kissoffalbeit one on which the narrator, despite his wishes, never gains the upper hand. As Come See About Me intimates, absence may indeed make the heart grow fonder but the endings arent always happy. Too much time away stresses relationships by triggering doubts, changing hearts, inviting temptations, and hampering growth. Naturally, anyone that spends more than a year away from home and tours the world is susceptible to such circumstances and challenges. Succumbing to some measure of debauchery is a foregone conclusion. Having the foresight to understand the potential consequences isnt nearly as automatic. It may not even be part of human nature. Dulli first met Kris in her native Louisville when she was twenty. The two were smitten with each other at first sight. She became his first adult loveand, ultimately, the first and last girl hed ever live with. We lived together for a year. But during that year I was gone almost the whole time. Whereas my indiscretions were random and on a semi-nightly basis, she was probably seeking consolation with a bit more permanence. When I got back from the third [leg of the] tour, thats when she told me she had hooked up with a new dude and he had been in our apartment. Wow. I think I reacted in the way someone raised in a patriarchal family in Ohio would react. It was in retrospect that I began a closer examination of my contribution toward the dysfunction of the relationship and 58 the fact that I was being a hypocrite. I did what she did. I just did it with numerous people and it was what it was. Then I began to examine my own failings and why the thing went down. 59 60 IV. Now You Know Sometimes you can go home again. After splitting with Kris, Dulli moved back to Cincinnati and into a place on Stettinius Avenue located across from the park. Withdrawn and depressed, the singer entered a solitary soul-searching period during which his cat served as his primary companion. He upped his drug use, began to sketch out lyrics, and immersed himself in the universes of Van Morrisons Astral Weeks, Marvin Gayes Here, My Dear, and Bob Dylans Blood on the Tracksnot surprising given his fragile state. Yet the record that received the heaviest amount of rotation in Dullis apartment wasnt a 33 1/3-RPM LP but an old-school soul 45-RPM single seemingly lost to everyone but dusty show deejays, R&B aficionados, and crate diggers. And even then, the singer didnt opt for the traditional A-side. A chart-topping R&B smash and number-three pop hit in May 1970, Tyrone Daviss sweeping Turn Back the Hands of Time is a song of longing, regret, and second chances. Recorded for Dakar Recordsa label that billed itself as The Sound of Chicagothe tune is emblematic of Daviss enviable pairings of velveteen and vice, grit and groove. Upon hearing his voice, you dont need to see a picture of the Mississippi-to-Chicago transplant to know that he was a ladies man who proudly hung thick gold chains around his neck, left his shirt unbuttoned at the chest, stuffed an oversize handkerchief into the left pocket of his colorful smoking jacket, and donned flashy pinky rings. According to producers 61 Leo Graham and Leo Sacks, despite his flamboyant personality, Davis was a down-to-earth gentleman. That helps explain why I Keep Coming Back, the B-side to Daviss biggest hit, sounds so sincere. On the surface, the song (cowritten by Graham) is a crawling-back-to-you plea, a tandem apology for mistreatment and declaration of true love. Soul music is replete with myriad examples of such confessionsthe aural equivalent of a dozen roses and a box of chocolate. But Daviss on-his-knees proclamation goes deeper. It speaks to a particular woman as an addiction that the singer wants to drop but, like anyone caught in the throes of a gripping dependency, lacks the willpower to quit. Wasting no time, the songs opening lineI wanna leave you / But I just cant leave youclearly identifies the vexing emotional push-pull, with the conflicted protagonist soon opening up about having recurrent nightmares. Its as if hes an alcoholic going cold turkey and sweating out the DTs. Even though he knows better and wants to break free, his candid reflections and vulnerable state cause him to realize how badly he craves his partner. He knows that he screwed up, but hes not beneath begging, even screaming to return to what he feels is home. Completely lovesick, he takes his most serious oaths at the end of the song, swearing his honesty and professing, I lay down and die, a sentiment that can be read as both a barometer of pain and pledge of selfless sacrifice. Alternatively silky and ravaged, cool and embellished, Daviss performance makes it all utterly believable. Never once does it seem that hes going through the motions to simply get back in his babys good graces as a way to bide 62 time while he continues to play the fool. Over a slinky guitar motif, delicate brass accents, and Willie Hendersons sympathetic arrangement, Davis testifies like a junkie who has hit rock bottom, mulled his mistakes, and is ready to reform. Dulli instantly bonded with the songs message and vibe. I went to that song because it was my confessor, my friend in the night. It was a comfort to me, a shoulder to lean on. Not that he had time for much consolation. The Congregation tour placed the up-and-coming band back onto stages with little room for any breaks. The demanding schedule also meant that, for the first and only time in its career, the band would have to write an album on the road. And while the foursome had collaborated on all preceding projects, an unspoken expectation within the group meant that the need for new material fell to Dullia responsibility that, contrary to perceptions and reports that made him out to be a self-serving egomaniac, he didnt invite. I never wanted to do that. I really didnt. There was no conscious Im taking over the band. To this day, collaborating with people is one of my favorite things to do. Dulli hadnt any premeditated plan or specific agenda when he began writing for Gentlemen. While possessing such focus helps shape concept albums, the approach also tends to make them stiff, bloated, and restricted. Rather than come together naturally, the results are forced to fit into a deliberate schematic. Spontaneity, rebelliousness, emotion, and loosenessbellwethers of great rock and rollare compromised if not totally exhausted. For every Zen Arcade 63 and Southern Rock Opera there are a dozen Kilroy Was Here and Music from The Elder debacles. With the vocalist free from topical constraints, Gentlemen revealed itself in an organic manner. The early emergence of the title track functioned as the starting point to something bigger. I came up with the riff in Tampa and really liked it, recalls Dulli. Everybody went to Clearwater to go swimming. But I went back to the hotel and wrote, Your attention, please [the first line of the song] and all of that stuff. I had a melody during the soundcheck and started writing the words. I knew then that would be the album tide. Another verse was written en route to a hardware store; the band was searching for a van part in swamp country. Fountain and Fairfax soon followed. Dulli sensed that his first batch of songs shared a similar vitriolic spirit, and followed that muse when the band headed to Europe, where he wrote a bulk of the albums lyrics. By late August 1992, the group was trying out early versions of Gentlemen onstage. Trial runs often featured Dulli singing different words or simply uttering gibberish to fill the space. A lot of times, I just scat lyrics, he explains, accounting for the sometimes-incomprehensible verses of yet-unreleased songs heard on bootlegs. Its mostly phonetic sounds that sound good to me. I write the words last. I come up with the riff, I arrange the song, and then Ill scat the melody on top of the song. Ive never written the words first in my life. Its all based on how the song is going to go, how am I going to feel during the song. 64 To anyone within earshot, there was no doubt about how or what Dulli was feeling. In writing about intimately personal issues before his wounds had a chance to scab over, questions arose about whether the songs were appropriate for the bandor whether his mates would want to plunge into such dark, psychosocial worlds and angry fare. Understandably, the singer had doubts. I remembered being really self-conscious about it. When I started listening to shit, Im like, Man Im dragging these guys into the rabbit hole. I even asked the band and said, Hey, we can go another way. I was prepared to disassemble and reassemble if they wanted to. But they liked it. That they went with me speaks volumes of the mutual respect in the group, especially between me, Rick, and John. We were the three who started the band. Thats not to discount Steve Earle. The group dynamic was reflected in the collective excitement for the new material. Curley cites the moment that Dulli devised the riff for What Jail Is Like while onstage in San Sebastian, Spain, as one of his all-time favorite memories. The songs ferocious bent is partially the by-product of its hostile birthplace: Basque Country. There were only a few so-called terrorists in the world at that point. The [Basque organizations] were some of them. There was some anticipation of getting to go there and see what that was really like. The club was really weird. It was two rooms divided by a triangular wall that came to a point right at the center of the stage. Onstage you could see everybody but the two sides of the room couldnt see each other. 65 Divisionphysical and mental, real and imaginedis a common concern on Gentlemen, surfacing most explicitly on When We Two Parted and, to a lesser extent, on Be Sweet, a song written in Bordeaux and debuted in Paris. Composed toward the end of the writing cycle, both tunes reflect transferences of anger and shifts in perspective. No longer is Dullis finger exclusively pointing at someone else. Its now up in his face as well. The tracks are also the only original compositions on the album that feature a shared writing creditboth given to McCollum. I dont come up with Be Sweet without Ricks riff, Dulli divulges. If you gave me a guitar, I dont know how he plays that. You have to move your fingers into weird jazzy areas that I dont know how to do. McCollums guitar of choicea 1964 burgundy-mist Fender Jazzmasterattests to his modesty and versatility. Known for a biting treble and fluid lead action, and designed for the player to have extra control when bending notes, the instrument was originally marketed to blues and jazz artists. Their dislike of the oddly shaped models proclivity for feedback is precisely the reason why it became a favorite of noise-inclined indie-rock artists such as Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Dinosaur Jr. McCollums utilization of the Jazzmasters overlooked capabilities also extended to the guitars pronounced slide tones and colorful textures, which became fundamental to the Whigs soundand their penchant for stringing together era-defying medleys. As the Congregation tour progressed, the bands profile and allotted stage time grew. Rather than draw from Up in It, a record the group was now well beyond, the Whigs used the 66 opportunity to take risks and play more soul. Three Supremes songsMy World Is Empty Without You, Come See About Me, I Hear a Symphonymade regular appearances in sets. The bands reputation for embracing black music preceded it everywhere. No one really does that kind of music anymore, Dulli told a Netherlands deejay during a September 1992 on-air interview, responding to a question about the groups infatuation with soul. Its kind of been forgotten except for oldies stations and things like that. To my way of thinking its a style and art form that never went out of style, and we want to remind people that these songs are still there. For their thanks, the Whigs were saddled with the hideous soul-grunge tag. While selling them short, the label doubled as a backhanded compliment: Its generic reach indicated the difficulties critics were having in trying to pin down the bands sound, which, even going back to Son of the South, never subscribed to a conventional model. John and Rick used to tell me things like, You cant do that, says Dulli. And Im like, Why? Who says? There are no rules in rock and roll. Its lawlessness. That is what we are here for. We are here to break the rules. Thats the fun of it. Hence, Dullis idea of capitalizing on an everyday source for the beginning of Gentlemen. Im very sensitive to sound. I can conceptualize a sound and have it represent a place in time. To me, the singing bridge was just a very lonely, traveling sound. Traveling has always been a strong, powerful metaphor for me because Ive done plenty of it. And Ive 67 lived in so many different places. But my hometown was grounding. As much as Gentlemen was written on the road, it came together in Cincinnati. Still above the pottery shop, Ultrasuede was again key, serving not only as the recording location for the albums opening track, but as the spot where the group fleshed out arrangements and tracked Gentlemen demos. By spring 1993, Elektra helped finance a European jaunt during which the Whigs fine-tuned more material. As an added bonus, Dulli met a Belgian girl with whom he had a short albeit very passionate love affair. It was Jane in particular who helped me move past all of the stuff, he says. By that time I already had this thing sussed out and ready to lay down. We came back from Europe and were home for a month. Then we went to Memphis. Its hard to imagine any studio more suited to the Afghan Whigs tastes than Ardent. Its history is that of Memphis soul and American music in general. Opened in 1966 with equipment that owner John Fry schlepped over from a rudimentary set-up at his parents garage, the facility has hosted Leon Russell, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, Rufus Thomas, and Albert King. Its where Led Zeppelin recorded Led Zeppelin III, the Replacements cut Pleased to Meet Me, ZZ Top made Tres Hombres, Fandango!, and Eliminator, Cheap Trick laid down In Color, R.E.M. turned Green, Cat Power perfected The Greatest, and the White Stripes devised Get Behind Me Satan. Ardents soul roots run even deeper. During the late 60s and early 70s, it was the beneficiary of receiving clients from its 68 neighbor down the street: Stax Records. The Staple Singers Respect Yourself and Ill Take You There, Sam & Daves Soul Man and I Thank You, and Isaac Hayess Hot Buttered Soul comprise just a scratch list of the enduring classics Ardent committed to tape. Local upstarts and power-pop legends Big Star also cut its three studio gems#1 Record, Radio City, Third/Sister Loversthere. The experiences made a lasting impression on Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, who, years later, became Ardents managera position he still holds. Back in the early 90s, he also served as a combination talent scout/studio promoter. All of us, and me in particular, were fans of Big Star, says Dulli, describing the chance meeting with one of his heroes. We were playing a gig in LA and Jody Stephens came. Unbeknownst to me, he was running the show at Ardent. He basically invited us to record our next record there. Im like, Theres my man. Hes invited us to play at Ardent. This is a slam dunk. Indeed it was, both in theory and in practice. As a gear-head, Curley was ecstatic to get the chance to record at a first-rate studio. The initially overwhelmed McCollum appreciated the better equipment and chance to improve upon the flat production of Congregation. After meeting the staff in advance, the band officially departed for Memphis in early May. The Whigs bunked at the Oakwood, an apartment complex converted from an old hotel located just ten minutes away from the studio. Dulli cleared all of the potentially sensitive logistical issues in advance. 69 I told them that I would be producing the record. I knew John Hampton, who was going to engineer the record, was a producer in his own right. But this was very personal to me. Even though I produced Congregation, on this one, I had to have the final say. Before I came, I did not want it to be an issue. I did not want to have a personality clash with someone who had a much larger resume than me. Was he okay with that? And he was. Ardent houses three separate studios, all of which were booked once the Whigs arrived. Primal Scream was in the process of recording Give Out But Dont Give Up in Studio B. Dulli recalls Andrew Loog Oldham producing a Spanish Rolling Stonessounding bandmost likely Ratones Paranoicosin Studio C. The Whigs holed up in Studio A. Overhauled in 1991 at the request of producer extraordinaire Tom Dowd, the twenty-five-by-forty-foot space had been transformed into a live wood room outfitted with a Studer 827 twenty-four-track analog recorder and Neve console replete with Flying Faders Automation. It remains Ardents choice tracking room. As originally intended, recording sessions began with Hampton serving as main engineer and Jeff Powell as assistant engineer. But two days into recording, Hampton got called away to do a quick mix for a Little Texas record. The band was asked if it would relax for a few days while Hampton finished the job. Dulli had other plans. We were already starting to roll. Im like, Fuck that. Why dont we just keep working with Powell? Hed never done a 70 full-blown thing before. Hamptons like, Well, if youre sure. We basically took Powell from a second engineer and elevated him within the studio. Personality-wise, we flowed with him. And we didnt want to go back to another dude coming in off of something else. Jeff just fit us. Hes sly, really one of the funniest guys Ive ever met. Hes really dry. Hell drop ten bombs on you and a couple of them go off two minutes later and youre, Oh my god, thats fucking hilarious. His humor level is very sophisticated. Hes a down-home dude. Hes from Missouri. There was something very similar about our upbringings and the stories we told. He was our age. It was almost predestined that that would happen. Having worked his way up at Ardent from an entry-level desk job, Powell didnt completely lack experience. Sitting in the chair next to Dowd and Hampton taught him about theory, microphone technique, sound panning, and meter monitoring. What he didnt know much about was the Whigsa factor that ironically worked in his favor. I was a little bit nave about the Whigs. I had met them once. I got to see part of a show that they had done in town years before and knew that I really liked it. But I didnt own any of the records before I worked with them. Again, I was just always in the studio working in those days. Sometimes when you are just going project to project, if youre not careful, you can miss what is going on in the outside world. I think that was an advantage because we were just doing our thing and it happened to turn out the way it did. 71 Just as importantly, Powell understood his role and kept within his boundaries. Both were essential when working with a band like the Whigs. As engineer, he was responsible for running the equipment, recording the audio, interpreting what the producer wanted, and getting the requested results to come out of the speakers. All final creative decisions rested with Dulli, whose direct approach blended with Powells aim-to-please ethic. Basically, when Greg says, I want this, you should be able to deliver it and deliver it quickly, Powell remarks. Thats what he expects. And Greg thinks so fast sometimes, or comes up with ideas, he doesnt want somebody to argue why this cant be done or thats not how you should do this or that. You just do it. There is no wishy-washiness of what Greg wants it to sound like. The desire for control dates back to the bands origins, and Dullis experiences when he allowed an outside party take the reigns. Curleys lifelong fascination with machines and his attention to detail made such decisions obvious. If there was going to be any debate about production, it would be handled within the band. Greg and myself are Type A personalities who are more comfortable knowing whats going on and wanting to be involved in the process, sometimes to a fault, explains the bassist. It seemed like more often than not when we would do that it would wind up getting screwed up, or youd wind up doing it yourself and it was twice as hard. We just thought, Who is going to do a better job than we are? At least we wont screw it up. Its possible it could be better but at least it wont be wrong. Gregs production experience comes from 72 ideas and opinions, and having listened to and analyzed songs. Hes always thinking about that stuff. Hes on a constant search not to become bored. Dullis industriousness facilitated the Gentlemen recording process. Even if in skeletal form, nearly everything was in place before the band arrived in Memphis. After completing If I Were Going, he had eight of the records songs assembled in a working sequence. Now You Know, I Keep Coming Back, and Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer evolved in Memphis. Ciaphas, the shelved Up in It song Dulli wrote in West Virginia and played for his grandmother, morphed into My Curse. In combination with the bands tireless touring and shaping of new songs on the road, the advance preparation allowed the album to be completed in what Powell approximates as 18 daysa figure that accounts for both mixing and recording but not a brief period in between when most of the band went home. By major-label standards, it was a speedy pace, particularly given that groups were then known to take full advantage of the now nearly extinct big budgets. Moreover, Gentlemens total costapproximately $60,000was well below industry standards. The swift timetable, prudent spending, and solid planning all signified an inevitable truth: from its hurtful Los Angeles origins to its organic construction, Gentlemen was and remains a record of fate. While many great albums gel from random accidents and come together from unexpected mistakes, everything about Gentlemen owes to kismet. Once settled in the studio, with Powell having replaced Hampton and developed a symbiotic relationship with the 73 band, the Whigs wasted no time completing the tracks. Dulli occupied the rear left isolation booth with Curley directly across in the rear right space. McCollum camped out in a small booth in the right front corner. Earle sat in the middle of the room, his mates shielded from the blaring drums. A typical day witnessed the band start with a song, from which Powell would focus on pulling a good drum and bass take. After several run-throughs, Dulli would head into the control room, listen to the playback, and pick the best performance. Once a decision was made, other pieces of the song were built around the rhythmic core. Vocals were added last. Powell credits the expediency with which the material came together to Dullis non-muss approach. We tried to leave the live guitars on there as much as we could. If we needed to fix something or add a solo, wed pull the guitars in the control room, dial up our sounds, and do overdubs. We didnt get a part and say, Lets layer five guitars down for this. Its pretty much what went down live with a little embellishment here and there. Thats why there is still space on the record that you can hear. Every single crack isnt filled up with something just to fill a space. Its not cluttered up with every idea that pops into somebodys head. For his part, Powell relied on a balance of instinct and direction. I go from record to record, but I do have certain places that I start from. Or if Greg were to say, I want a roomy guitar sound, Ill stick a mic halfway across the room. Typically, it would be standard 57s and 421s on guitar amps, shoved right down the throat. I remember they had a little amp called the Growler that was awesomesome little cheap 74 amp that had a ripped-up speaker. That was important to the sound. So was Dullis drive for originality. While most of the periods alt-rock groups requested producers and engineers make them a carbon copy of the Butch Vig/Nirvana Nevermind formula, the Whigs were adamant about having Gentlemen sound apart from the polished, coattail-riding flavors of the day. It made for more work but kept the sessions lively. On a lot of records you get into a lull at some point, says Powell. Bands think, Well, theres our guitar sound. Lets use that same guitar sound for this song, too. Greg was always pushing the envelope on that. Dont be lazy and dont be afraid to get your ass out of the chair and go move a microphone or try a different amp. Theres a big difference between a records soundwhich, given enough money, resources, personnel, and studio trickery, can be manipulated into anything, and a bands inherent sound (or its aural chemistry), which, no matter what, cannot completely be duplicated or mimicked. Its why no matter how closely Jason Bonhams technique resembles that of his father, and no matter how perfectly he plays the beats, Led Zeppelin will never sound exactly like the Zeppelin of old. The slightest change permanently alters the dynamic and therefore affects the overall sound. The impact of member turnover isnt as easily detected in lesser bands, which lack the rapport, talent, patience, vision, and experience of their superior peers. Such characteristics are a large part of what makes a group great. And the Whigs had them in spades. 75 Working with the Whigs in different studios in different time periods and with different gear, they always sounded like the Afghan Whigs to me, explains Powell, who was involved with all of the bands post-Gentlemen output. Most great bands, they sound like that band in two notes when they put their fingers on the strings. I think there is more emphasis on thattheir touch and style of playing. A lot of that is the combination of Greg and Ricks guitar playing. Together, it has this roaring sound. One thing that I tend to do is hard-pan stuff. Gregs guitar is all over in one speaker, Rick is all over on the other side. It makes it a much more stereo experience. You can really separate a lot of the things out, to see what Greg is doing and what Rick is doing and see how it combines to make that sound thats them. Its a sound thats totally idiosyncratic. While Dulli owns most of the songwriting credits, Gentlemen is the masterwork of a four-headed hydra. Its songs are strangely arranged, often tuck-pointed with irregular tempos, bizarre fills, difficult solos, and jazzy harmonics. They exist in a vacuum removed from contemporary tastes and trends, past or present. They couldnt have been made by anybody else. Recalling their demo form, Dulli is quick to declare that none of the songs would exist in their current iterations without the ideas and contributions of Curley, McCollum, and Earle. The great thing about the Whigs is that the three string guys are rarely playing the same thing. We are playing three interlocking parts. While I may have made suggestions, they were very intuitive guys. I would make suggestions but their ideas came intact and they are their own. Its really hard to impose your will on playing personalities as strong as John and Ricks. Thats why we were very much a band. While I 76 would make suggestions, and a lot of times they would be used, they were reacting to my songs. In recording studios, this partnership was nearly exclusive. Up until Gentlemen, the Whigs played every instrumental note on their records save for the piano (as well as a few odds and ends on Big Top Halloween). But for Gentlemen, Dulli recognized the possibilities afforded by the major-label deal and Ardents top-notch room. Still, the guest list was extremely limited. Ohioan and Royal Crescent Mob member Harold Happy Chichester sat in on piano and mellotron. Barb Hunter played cello. And most memorably, Scrawl vocalist and Ohio resident Marcy Mays sang My Curse. Marcy was one of my favorite singers, Dulli explains. I loved Scrawl and I loved her as a person. I felt she had the worldweary quality, but the simultaneous defiance and resignation to bring that song to life. Mays was also brought in because Dulli couldnt bring himself to sing My Curse after rewriting it. He nonetheless attempted to impose his will on Mays, who had none of it. She started doing it and I started interrupting her, saying, No, dont do it like that, do it like this. Then she tried it like that and Im like, No dont do it like that, do it like this. And finally she told me to please leave and come back in an hour and I could say stuff then. I came back and listened to it and Im like, Nice job, Im sorry. Dulli wasnt demanding perfectionism; he was after raw emotion. Conflicted, lacerated, claustrophobic, naked, real, out of controlexactly the sensations Dulli was feelingis how Gentlemen sounds. There isnt a fake or false move on 77 the album. And one particularly productive evening guaranteed that an honest, on-edge vibe would be forever preserved for all to hear. Even for the most focused bands, twelve-hour days in the studio tend to stifle creativity. To loosen up, the Whigs took a trip to a Mississippi casino and paid multiple visits to area bars. But Dullis twenty-eighth birthday called for a more festive celebration. The band rented a limo and headed out for a deserved evening of debauchery. Powell begged off as the Whigs familiarized themselves with the areas finest strip joints. Before the night was over, Dulli had taken an interest in one of the ladies. Like any red-blooded man looking to impress a beautiful girl, Dulli decided to try what for mere mortals is normally impossible. Loaded up on cocaine and out of his tree, he ripped off six songsincluding the final vocal takes of Fountain and Fairfax When We Two Parted, Gentlemen, What Jail Is Like, and Debonairin one evening, all while the stripper sat in the studio. Its one thing to sing six songs in a row; its another to do it while flying on coke. Dulli may not always be in tune, but theres no denying the authenticity of what hes feeling. He was just on, recalls Powell. It was just coming out of him. Hed come in and listen and say, I cant beat that. Thats awesome. Next! The feat may not have the same audible effects as Guns N Roses Rocket Queenfor which the live-action sounds of W. Axl Rose fucking then-drummer Steven Adlers girlfriend and ex-stripper Adriana Durgan in the studios vocal booth 78 were recordedbut its inspired just the same. And yes, Dulli slyly notes that the ploy worked. Anything for love. Gentlemens closing instrumental, Brother Woodrow/ Closing Prayerthe only song besides Now You Know devised in Memphisdidnt require such flair, but it lays claim to its own mystique. As if passing on Memphis folklore via assimilation, the compositions spoken introduction remains a mystery that may or may not involve Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. A collector of odd ephemera, Powell explains. I had this tape called the Drunk Preacher. Wed listen to it a lot and laughed about it through the whole session. At the very end, this drunk preacher, hes like, Brother Woodrow, lead us in a closing prayer. So we actually lifted that off the cassette. Ive heard that it is Sam Phillips. Id played it years before for Tom Dowd. He swore that it was Sam Phillips. But Ive never got any proof. The story I heard when they gave it to me was that it happened in Nashville, and that there was some street bum that used to yell at everybody and preach hellfire and damnation, and he was drunk off his ass. They thought it was funny, brought him in, gave him a bottle of whiskey, and put him on tape talking to the air. I dont know which one is true. Galvanized by Dullis marathon singing performance, the Whigs finished recording several days ahead of schedule. The sessions did not yield a single leftover track, continuing what for the band represented a career-long trend. The group 79 always penned as many songs as a particular album requiredno more. Dulli wasnt a prolific writer but he was smart. He knew enough to leave lesser songs behind rather than take them into the studio. If a tune wasnt good enough to make the album, it wasnt good enough to record. This once-elementary tenet steadily faded away during the 90s as the compact discs larger storage capacity (and higher-priced retail cost) enticed bands to fill up all 79-plus minutes of space with inferior material, resulting in a glut of albums that extended the length of traditional LPs by a half hour but which added little in the way of worthwhile content. While most performers lacked such discretion in the CD ageand permanently marred potentially great albums by backloading songsthe Whigs managed to err on the side of judiciousness. Gentlemen clocks in at a relatively lean 48:56a time that, using the LP as the customary measuring stick, averages out to less than twenty-five minutes a side. With the basics completed, the albums eleven songs were prepared for mixing, a process in which balances are set, effects added, and vocals are floated on top of it all. Everything is boiled down to two tracks to be sent away for mastering. Despite his conceding the engineering tasks to Powell, Hampton was still slated to come back and mix. But again, Dulli had other ideas. During the free time, the vocalist prodded Powell to try his hand at mixing one of the songs. Powell initially declined. He felt like he was stealing Hamptons gig and knew that his approach would differ. But 80 Dullis persuasion won out. Powell executed a mix, Dulli heard the results, and loved it. The vocalist asked Powell to tackle another track. This time, however, the outcome was radically different. At the time, Curley was coproducing, recalls Powell. So Curley and me jumped on the next one. Greg had been outside shooting baskets. He comes in and says, Let me hear what youve got. I said, Well, Greg, were just getting rolling on this one, were still working on the drum sounds. And he says, Well let me hear what youve got. I hit play, and it probably didnt make it to the first chorus and he said, Stop. So I stopped the tape machine. He bounced the basketball once and goes, You guys couldnt be further away from what Im hearing in my head. And as a matter of fact, Jeff, can you give us a minute? Overcome with grief, Powell walked back to owner John Frys office to tell him he was getting fired. Upon returning to the studio, he got the news: Dulli was taking over as sole producer, Curley was headed back home, and Powell was in as the records mixer. For mastering, the Whigs had the good fortune to land Bob Ludwig, whose lengthy resume includes mastering records for U2, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead,. Bruce Springsteen, and countless catalog reissue projects. Ludwig is one of the champions, affirms Powell, relieved that the iconic engineer took a hands-off approach to Gentlemen and didnt destroy it with compression, the audio industrys equivalent of steroids in professional sports. While it makes the records appear to sound louder, thus giving them 81 a competitive attention-getting edge for radio play, it destroys dynamics and fatigues listeners. He had the good sense not to straighten it out. The great ones listen to it and do what little processing they want to do. They may add a little tippy-top, make it a little brighter and shiny, add a little more oomph on the bottom and low-end. But for the most part, they leave it alone. Once treated as crucial threads of a records fabric, cover art and liner notes have largely become mere afterthoughts in an era when music is increasingly downloaded as compressed bytes and albums are bypassed in favor of individual tracks. Whereas 12.25 x 12.25inch images were once the norm, thumbnail-sized pixels now pass for brilliant when displayed and finger-shuffled like postage stamps on iPod screens. Liner notes and credits are virtually nonexistent in the digital world. Packaged media is also following this trend. In an effort to keep costs down, many compact discs are housed in nothing more than bifolded cardboard with information printed in microscopic font on one panel. The notion and definition of an albummusic, art, presentation, sonics, lyrics, creditshas steadily devolved, the degeneration paralleling musics continuing freefall into disposable, background entertainment that many believe should be free. Yet this regression was underway before downloading became reality. Long before Napster helped usher in revolutionary distribution methods and entitlement attitudes, purists decried the CD for desecrating cover art and ruining sound quality. Their outcries reached fever peak in the late 80s, just as the format became the record industrys dominant playerand savior. However nostalgic, the complaints 82 werent without merit. With pictures on discs shrunken to 15 percent of their former size, details became scant. Opportunities for unusual designs were forfeited. Meanings and messages were minimized. One had to squint rather than effortlessly stare, dream, and wonder. And, for recreational LP devotees, CD inserts didnt easily lend themselves to the assorted cutting, snorting, rolling, and passing of drugs. Moreover, the formats sound was reliably cold, plastic, and veiled. By their very nature, compact discs expedited the death of the album as representing an involved, immersive experience. Such wholesale shifts didnt immediately erode traditional viewpoints and art budgets; that would come at the turn of the century. While working with a smaller canvas, most artists continued to view records as an interconnected platform of sound and visiona conviction that, in addition to the support of dedicated indie labels, explosion of hip-hop, discerning ears of younger generations, and demands of deejays, accounts for why vinyl continues to thrive as a cottage industry. Theres a reason why, as CD sales plummet, LP sales are holding steady. Growing up, Dulli scoured liner notes to learn who produced what and where the label was based. The process helped shape his worldview and taught him that different locales were responsible for specific sounds, cultures, and methods. Curley was similarly enthralled as a teenager, smelling and feeling the covers and holding the sleeves while the album played. As both the uproar over Up in It and look of Congregation demonstrated, the Whigs were disciples of the old-school belief of the album constituting an interrelated wholethat artwork, feel, music, and presentation comprise a 83 complete package. No single component is greater than the sum of its parts. And Gentlemen is nothing less than a four-sense experience. The records cover art is another reason why it is an all-time great album in every sense of the term. Photographer Nan Goldin is renown for her documentation of autobiographical images and underground subcultures. She is a champion of intimacy, mood, tension, discord, unease, vacancy, and tone. Her work favors interior settings, stark immediacy, yellowish light, and contrasting hues. Goldins best-known snapshots depict waif-like subjects staring into bathroom mirrors, standing in bleak rooms, partying in seedy bars, wearing drag-queen outfits, taking showers, and sprawling out on beds in various states of embrace, undress, and temperament. Prostitution, drugs, sex, pain, and domestic violence figure prominently. A tumultuous childhoodher sister committed suicide by throwing herself under a train; Goldin turned to drugs and moved in with a foster familyforeshadowed her photographic pursuits and reckless lifestyle. In the late 70s, Goldin left Boston for New York Citys Lower East Side, where she became one with the neighborhoods subterranean scene. She blossomed into a full-blown addict and alcoholic, all the while chronicling her passionate relationship with an abusive boyfriend in a series of photographs. In particular, Nan and Brian in Bed, NYCa 1983 image that doubles as the cover for The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a book of Goldins work that bears the same title as her early 80s slideshowepitomizes her stark autobiographical honesty. 84 In the shot, Goldin is lying on her right side on a bed. Her head rests on a pillow thats pushed up against a decorative headboard. Her left hand is adjacent to the pillow, the only comforting object in sight. Her mouth is obscured; all expression comes from her body language, face, and eyes. She looks at Brian, who is seated to her right and near the bottom of the bed, with a troubled gaze thats at once sad, weary, adoring, distraught, and defeated. Shot from behind, Brians naked back is turned to her leer. He smokes a cigarette but remains in complete isolation. His obliviousness makes it easy to pretend that Goldin isnt on the bed let alone in the room; either way, his position wouldnt change. His face is mostly out of the cameras range, and yet, whats visible of his lips and left eye communicates deadened blankness. Physically and mentally, Brian is somewhere else, goneor, at the least, wishing that he was. A yellow-orange tint illuminates the room. Recalling the manner in which shadows, lines, and bars are used and appear in film noir, the wall behind Goldin is brighter and lighter, as if lit by a hesitant sun. But at the left edge of her pillow, and beginning of Brians lower back, the same wall grows darker and redder, and progressively becomes so as the viewers eye wanders over Brians head. Sickly and burnt, the colors are reminiscent of a Caucasians unwashed nicotine-stained fingers. As if suggesting shared fault and blame, the same muted light that brightens the interior directly behind Goldins head shines even more intently against Brians face and upper body. The luminescence appears to be coming in through a window, but no opening is visible. Like the communication between Brian and Goldin, the windows presence is only suggested; any certainty is cut off, removed. 85 Radiating claustrophobia, vulnerability, suffering, grief, and contempt, the photo exists as an uncomfortable albeit moving distillation of bedroom drama. The image is deceptively frozen. Hundreds of thorny conversations, bittersweet memories, argumentative exchanges, and dismissive accusations play out within its framework. It hurts to look at, and yet, we cant help but be drawn in by its ugly truths. Atmospherically, the photo projects a hazy glow thats the visual equal to the stale disinfectant smell of hospitals. Just as the latters stench evokes death and dying, the mournful shot-through hues of Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC convey similar dissolution: the demise of a relationship. In doing so, it made for an ideal muse for Gentlemen. Dulli counts himself as a big fan of Goldins work. He remembers being instantly captivated the first time he saw Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, recognizing how the photo imparted understood dismay without giving too much away. On a purely human level, it doesnt take much imagination to place Dulli, cigarette and all, in for Brian, and Kris in the role of Nan. The photos depiction of a situation nearly all lovers experience is part of its magnetism. Inspired by the snapshot, Dulli conceived his own iconic image: Gentlemens cover. While Dulli borrowed and duplicated many elements, the two biggest changes between the records cover and Goldins photograph involve perspective and age. The original work is shot from behind in that the most central object of the photographBrians backfaces the viewer. While Dulli directed photographer Billy Phelps to shoot from those angles as well, he settled on a head-on perspective. We see scene as if peering through the implied window in Goldins shot. 86 The other alteration is less subtle and more striking. Teeming with metaphor and depth, the female and male subjects are no longer adults; theyre kids. I just remembered thinking that [the body language depicted in the photo] is learned behavior that starts when we are children, explains the singer. And thats why I substituted the children for the adults. I think you lose innocence as soon as you pop out: Youre in it now. Youre safe in there. Its not that you dont experience beauty here. But especially in my nihilistic late twenties, I had a bit more of a pessimistic view of human nature and relationshipsalthough that really hasnt changed much. An extension of and tribute to Goldins photograph, the cover of Gentlemen conveys many of the same emotions and vibes. The expression on the little girls face is similar to that of Goldin. Shes lying down on the bed in a related posture, and her eyes look in the vicinity of the boy, whose back faces his mates stare. Where Gentlemen differs in mood and meaning is how it portrays the male. Even though we cant see most of his face in Goldins photo, Brian appears to be in his own zone, impervious to Nan. He doesnt look relaxed but hes not agitated. His head and glance are pointed straight out toward whats facing him. Gentlemens flipped perspective provides the benefit of allowing us to read the boys face. But it holds no easy answers. Burdened by sadness, hopelessness, guilt, rejection, and frustration, he looks like he wants to cry, that a small tear could run from the comer of his eye at any moment. But he also looks as if hes harboring considerable anger, spite, and animositysentiments seemingly absent in Brian. The boys head is also slightly bent to his right, and his eyes stare off in that direction. He seems caught in the 87 moment, under siege, unable to achieve the escape afforded Brian. He is a prisoner of his own bedroom, and while the picture gives him a degree of control, he cant break away. Disgust consumes him. The longer we look, the more acrimonious he seems to become. The hostility and exasperation make perfect sense; they lash out on the albums songs. Devoid of Goldins contrasting lighting, the Gentlemen cover also opts for similar pale yellows and a murky aura. Dulli is quick to heap praise on Phelps. I couldnt have done it without him. He certainly had the composition ideas. That composition is his, the way that looks. I give total credit to him. Despite being produced with the childrens parents present and its rendering signifying anything but copulation, the cover didnt agree with labelmate Linda Ronstadt. Sherry Ring, who at the time served as the Elektra publicist for both Ronstadt and the Whigs, lent her daughter as the model for the cover. She initially had a few motherly misgivings but, given that she was at the sessions and promised by Dulli that the outcome wouldnt be inappropriate, didnt second-guess her judgment. Not until Ronstadt chimed in with a scolding opinion. I was working with Linda and I told her I was working with this band called the Afghan Whigs. I said my daughter was on the cover and I think I showed it to her. She said, You let your daughter do that album cover? I cant believe it! I said, Well, to be honest, I didnt know it was going to be quite what it turned out to be because Greg sort of kept assuring me 88 that it wasnt. He lied, Ring says, half-jokingly. Its not something I showed around her kindergarten class or however old she was at the time; it wasnt like show and tell. Look, Linda is very womens lib and very protective of children. It wasnt out of line. I thought it was very Linda. Still, Ronstadts snap judgment reeks of sanctimonious grandeur. Likely unbeknownst to the Whigs or Ring, the singer appeared on The Johnny Cash TV Show in 1969, at the start of her career, joining the Man in Black for a duet of the Carter Familys I Will Never Marry. In the broadcast, Ronstadt is adorned in a striped purple jumper that barely covers her hips. Yet the lovely Lolita attracted more attention for what she wasnt wearing. During rehearsal, June Carter Cash noticed Ronstadt didnt have panties on. Snapping into the role of protective wife, June Carter ordered a handler to go out and buy Ronstadt underwear. Told that she needed to put on the newly purchased undergarment, Ronstadt began bickering with the feisty Mrs. Cash. Needless to say, June Carter won out. And how. Watching Ronstadt make eyes at Cash and strategically place her hands between her legs during the performance is priceless. Powell, who has a copy of Gentlemen hanging above a closet in his office, expressed surprise upon hearing about Ronstadts knee-jerk reaction. She didnt listen to the record, then. She went by looking at that. Thats the kind of thing that Gregs really good at. Hell give you enough rope to hang yourself if youre going to be an idiot about something. Thats part of his sense of humor. I think its hilarious. 89 So does the rest of the band. Thats one of the high points of my musical career, beams Curley, delighted the Whigs irked one of Elektras flagship artists. You can interpret that cover a lot of different ways, including in a naughty way as well, which obviously people are going to do. But I never interpreted it that way or believed it was meant in that way, that simplistic. Dullis feelings toward Ronstadt are more bluntand, like the Cash episode, telling of her hypocrisy. Im like, Linda Ronstadt: Youre dressed like a whore on the cover of Living in the USA with roller skates, curls in your hair, and shorts up to your twat. Fuck you. That was my attitude toward Linda Ronstadt, who was a great singer. Now shes kind of a bore. 90 91 V. Ladies & Gentlemen The thematic concept executed in both the music and on the cover of Gentlemen is followed through in the albums CD booklet. Its first two pages resemble the beginning of a movie script; the paragraph layout of the songs functions as a table of contents. On the opposing page, the bands name and album tide stand alone, making it clear that the listener is about to enter an isolated world. Of the subsequent seven pages, five are given over to lyrics and two to photographs, one of the band at the comer of 12th and Jackson in downtown Cincinnati, the other of an oval-encased shadowy figure against a wall. The inside back page rolls the credits and the last page depicts just the little boy, again sitting on a bed, shot from a side angle and looking even sadder. Repeating an idea first established on Uptown Avondale, the credits again read like those of a film: Played by John Curley, Greg Dulli, Steve Earle and Rick McCollum. Greg sang. Shot on location in Memphis, TN at Ardent Studios, MayJune 1993. Except If I Were Going shot April 1993 at Ultrasuede, Cincinnati, OH. Produced by Greg Dulli. Thus, the vrit feel carries through in the lyrics, production, design, photography, and music. Working in harmony with urgency, intensity, sophistication, self-confidence, and astonishing hooks, the provocative naturalism and song-cycle sequence beget an unbreakable cohesiveness that, like all great music, permits Gentlemen to achieve the most elusive distinction of all honors: timelessness. 92 If I Were Going Smothering from the second it begins, If I Were Going never gives the listener a chance to breathe. A tribal drumbeat blends in with the distorted murmur of the Roebling Bridge. The queasy sonic combination signifies the gateway to an abyss, the entrance to a maze. As in Goldins photo, we know something here isnt right. Ominous guitar chords rattle and lather up the tension. As soon as Dulli opens his mouth, its immediately apparent that his character is in a weakened defensible position. He needs to plot out in advance how hes going to handle itan obviously uncomfortable state of affairswith his partner. Rather than feeling joy over the impending encounter, hes wracked with nausea and dread. Feigning ignorance isnt an option; that tactic only adds to the discomfort and dredges up the past, leading to further argumentative conversation. So he broods, opting for a devious plan based on the fact that shes still buying the words that come out of his mouth. Or so he thinks. Lies and deceit have become weapons of choice. Dulli cant distinguish the fabrication from the facts. Hes lost all sense of his identity. Hes sick of it all, sick of himself, but hes in so deep, hes going to press on. Theres no escaping the monster. It has invaded the heart, the head, the home. Its not visible or physical. Like an all-consuming parasite, it eats the host alive. There is no cure. There is no escape. There is no hope. Curleys single bass notes toll like a death knell. The song suspends itself in mid-air, hovering as a threatening, dictating 93 forecast of whats to come. As a prelude, If I Were Going is frighteningly precise: The Whigs capture guilts physical toll and psychological trauma in just over three minutes of time. But there is much more to say. The walls-closing-in hum returns. A faint percussive throb lingers in the distance. The direct bleed-in to the next song is a guidepost: Gentlemen is more than a collection of tracks. Were in it now. Gentlemen The storm has arrived. A staggered R&B beat and fierce guitar squall pull back the curtain to reveal anger and contempt. The song swaggers as it slithers, starts as it stops. McCollums coiled chords strike like venomous snakes attacking their prey. Nobody plays a duplicate part. But everyone locks into the same bounding groove. Dulli is ripped. Hes raging, seething, foaming at the mouth. Guilt may be on his characters mind, but for now, its taking a backseat to sadomasochistic pursuits. Sex is an infection. He and McCollums dueling, intertwined guitars create a massive sound not unlike that of a string section furiously scraping bows against violins. The revved-up chorus is a hurricane of disgust, sarcasm, and indignation. The very definition of gentlemen is perverted until utterly subverted. Graciousness, courteousness, and honor are dead. Long live vulgarity, churlishness, and boorishness. By the second verse, sex with one partner has become a task, a marathon contest in which pleasures are removed and revulsion sets in. The upshot of the relationship split is 94 availability: Theres time now for conquests, more spreading of the wealth. Dullis person is, at least mindfully, in control. Arrogance prevails. Ladies come to him, not the other way around. You also becomes an excuse for Dulli to challenge himself. How many women can he infect? When he sings For you, you, you, and me too, hes indiscriminately pointing, as if randomly selecting pretty faces out of a crowd. Whats it matter? Its just another tryst, another acquisition, one more name to add to the list. Hes Mr. Superlove. At the break, McCollum unleashes a scorching wah-wah solo while Earles drums slam like bedroom doors. Staked to springloaded guitar fills and snapping rhythms, on the third verse, Dulli staggers in like a displaced drunk. Hes loaded, looking for trouble, and will settle for whatevers available. Open the liquor cabinet and let the spirits flow. Just dont delay. Indecision triggers reflection and contemplation, and that has forced him to reconsider everything. What was once familiarspecifically, the qualities and words associated with being a gentlemanare almost imperceptible. Lies have stripped away meaning and identity. Dullis character is now so far gone hes unknown to even himself. Be Sweet A clipped, finger-picked blues riff and jazzy beat give way to one of the most self-loathing introductions in rock history: Ladies, let me tell you about myself / I got a dick for a brain / And my brain is gonna sell my ass to you, Dulli sings, with the exaggerated breathiness of a lounge crooner. McCollums hypnotic phrasing borders on that of a rumba. Ba-bahm, ba-bahm. Bahm-ba, bahm-ba. The timing parallels the tick-tock of an antique wristwatch. Taking swipes at himself, 95 Dullis character is as certain of his faults as he is his desire to ditch commitment and stick to fucking. The frank disclosure gives McCollum authority to break the metered pattern, allow acidic distortion to well up, and spit it all back out with caustic intent. It burns. As does Dulli, who confesses shame for his actions. The error of his ways netted freedom, but at what cost? The prom-dance waltz of hell-bound sinners continues. Ba-bahm, ba-bahm. Bahm-ba, bahm-ba. No sympathy. Ba-bahm, ba-bahm. Bahm-ba, bahm-ba. Loneliness. Another swell of feedback arises, but this time, rather than fling acid into bare eyes, McCollum underlines the alienation with a mournful Southern slide. Its melancholys first appearance on Gentlemen. Dullis wracked mental condition is such that it can no longer be concealed with He-Man boasts: On my grave / Am I OK? / Im sure / Im not. A decay of clashing guitars and wiry reverb let the revelation sink in. On the third verse, Dullis character is ready to accept liability. The admission is at once sincere and pompous. Yes, his partner gave him more love. But not enough to fulfill his libido. And the jokes on you, sisters. The reason hes trolling is because hes on a quest to understand himself: What kind of person is he? Has he always been this way? To whom does the blame fall? If he and his ex both engaged in the same behavior, are they both wrong? The kiss-off is the punchline. The directiveAnd baby, you be sweetis at odds with everything in the song, most explicitly, the protagonist. Its an empty, impossible, contradictory, and ironic sentiment, one that leaves a bad aftertaste and plagues the narrators self-esteem. While 96 Dullis character could be uttering the line to the general audience referred to at the songs beginning, hes more likely repeating the phrase to himself. Kris actually said those very words to the vocalist when they broke up. Echoing in his head, the idiom is another painful reminder of his character. The bands soulfully sleazy exitMcCollums high-pitched slide notes, Curleys nimble bass maneuvers, Earles punchy rhythmic combinationsreflects a dynamic ushered in on Uptown Avondale and fully realized on Gentlemen. Heightened levels of instrumental complexity, tempo shifts, moody charisma, and lyrical awarenessas well as the emergence and examination of guilt, buried on Congregationare evident just three songs into the album. Debonair Funky chords, skin-smacking gospel-choir handclaps, and a crawling, sensuous bass line: the black-sounding and Motown-influenced Debonair begins like a lost Soul Train trackalbeit one with aluminum-tinted punk overtones. During the verses, a scuffed R&B rhythm interlocks with Curleys stairstepping grooves. The song encourages dancing, and even the rolling bridge, which rises to match Dullis anger, remains loose, game for a shakedown. The entire song revolves around a rotating pattern whose altered tempos, well-placed instrumental dropouts, and bass-driven foundations give it an urban edgeand foreboding menace that offsets the merry vibe. There is no secret about the intent. Unrelenting and unforgiving, Debonair plays up misery and anguish, and doesnt let go until its victims are skewered. This aint about 97 regret / My conscience cant be found / This time I wont repent / Somebodys going down, promises Dulli, his smokers cough filtered through an ugly haze of distortion. And Debonair is all about ugliness. The vocalist prizes anger over kisses; his characters mindset is that of a little boy who takes the easy way out rather than that of a man who holds it together; hed rather snap than examine his sense of right and wrong. Things take an even more fiendish turn. Reprising the bridge of If I Were Goingwhich also shares the same chords as DebonairDulli now sings the words as if shoving them down his lovers throat. Hes out for blood, bent on revenge, resolved to humiliate, eager to abuse. The masochistic chorus is waived about as incriminating evidence of transgressions, rationale to attribute blame and inflict suffering. The performance is merciless. Dullis chomping-at-the-bit wrath runs contrary to the musics upbeat energy. And yet the second bridge and third verse, while not as forthcoming as in Be Sweet, again undress Dullis characters cocksure guise. He isnt contrite, but Catholic guilt gnaws awaythe truth will condemn him to hell. The monster has revealed its face. Its him, its her, its everyone caught up in lies and indiscretions. They are forever damaged, forever stained. The mark will not go away. When We Two Parted A down-tempo ballad, When We Two Parted offers the first respite on Gentlemen. But any sense of relief is illusory. As dark, menacing, and moody as anything on the album, the song eviscerates the lines between the personal and public. 98 McCollum and Dullis guitars moan in commiserate agony, the notes mimicking the flow of a slow-drip IV. For the first 2:20, Curley and Earle primarily keep the song from frayingand just barelywith understated, minimalist lines. On the occasions guitar notes creep into the mix, they poke and prick like sharp needlesapt for a song riddled with puncture wounds. McCollums weeping country slide reluctantly pushes the tune ahead, but not before rubbing until it bleeds. Dullis vocal boost briefly allows the budding pressure to escape, with McCollums plaintive slide chirping over a swampy progression. But the uptick doesnt last. A wordless chorus of oohs, ohs, and oa-ahs act as decelerators. A desert of quietude returns. The refrain creeps along until Dulli again ups his vocal intensity. In tandem with McCollums glissando lead, he carries the song to its conclusion. Nothing is over- or under-played. The soulful arrangement, which could pass for a Stax side, is so wrenchingly demonstrative that it almost neednt have words. Almost. Dulli sing-speaks in hushed, whispered tones. He milks syllables. At first blush, the tenderness seems consoling. But hes not here to soothe or pacify. Dullis sweetness is derisive, his concern acerbic, his exaggerated timbre condescending. Hes relaying and repeating whats being played out and insinuated in bedroom dramas. The words could very well be the thoughts running through the head of the boy depicted on the albums cover. The frontmans character revels in self-deprecation, assuming the roles of the Great Pretender and aggressor. The digs dont quit. Dullis quips continue as the music groans in reaction to the illness and abhorrence. 99 Traces of solicitude crop up in the second verse before quickly turning to scorn. Exchanges between the lovers are severed. Dullis person is witness to watching his partner retreat into a self-abandonment thats put on her. As much as the dysfunctional relationship scars him, hes crawling on top of the wreckage rather than sinking beneath it. His partners withdrawal affords him elevated authority and unquestioned dominance. And please allow me to present you with a clue / If I inflict the pain / Then baby only I can comfort you / Yeah, he sermonizes, knives out, realizing the genius of the disclosure. His statement is true, and he knows it. The torture will persist until a cry for mercy is sounded. But with honesty shredded, and interpersonal communication debased into a cruel form of charades, the future is bleak. Entropy ensues. Fountain and Fairfax With Dulli slashing open guitar strings to sound an alarm, and Earle pouncing on a jumpy Bo Diddley beat, the irresistibly catchy Fountain and Fairfax announces itself as a walk-on-water anthem. Barrelhouse pianos and sitar-like slide-guitar lines ratchet up the bomp-de-bomp action, and the turbulence escalates all the while threatening to explode. Jittery chords, boogie-woogie rhythms, and battered piano keys crisscross and zigzag but never get tangled. Halfway in, a cello is thrown into the bonfire, and the tune becomes a conflagration of blustery R&B, New Orleans soul, overamplified blues, resplendent chamber music, and blaring rock. It has no choice but to bum out at the end. 100 His throat raw, larynx shredded, and pitch off-key, Dullis primal vocal effort feeds the maelstrom. Meters are pushed into the red. Between 1:49 and 1:53, the singer wails Let it dry up with the rough desperation of somebody whos just been stabbed and is determined to scream bloody murder before collapsing in a heap. It sounds as if hes gurgling blood as he ejects the last few syllables from his mouth. Sonic fingerprints of Dullis cocaine binge are smeared everywhere. He really is slobbering now. High on stimulants, he howls with retribution and rubs stink in the noses of adversaries. Tempers boil with ridicule and mockery. By the time hes said his piece, hes spent. Hypocrisy, finger pointing, false promises, drug addiction, treachery: the songs topics are congruous with Gentlemens oeuvre. But Dulli is not the person in the song, which draws its title from the meeting place at the intersection of Fountain and Fairfax Avenues in Los Angeles. The singer explains: Its the Crescent Heights United Methodist Church and they have AA meetings there. I went to a meeting with my friend who was confronting alcoholism and asked me to go with him. I went, and because it was in West Hollywood, I felt like there was a lot of forced pathos going on: hand across the brow, then my uncle raped me Very highly dramatic. I was trying to take the piss out of a couple of the Hi my name is blank and Im a blank, Hi, my name is Ass and Im an ass [people]. Not that the song is completely devoid of the personal; nothing on Gentlemen is. Some lines are based on Dullis breakup, including Baby, forever, but I dont like to be alone so dont stay away too long, which Kris told the singer. 101 What Jail Is Like Claustrophobia infests Gentlemen, and never more blatantly than it does here. A crystallization of the Whigs molding of divergent influencesnoise-rock, Motown, pop, punk, hard rock, garage, gospelinto their own sound, What Jail Is Like owes to the bands experimenting with soul and atmospherics on Uptown Avondale. Take away Dullis vocals and the pungent distortion, and its easy to picture the Supremes, dolled up in matching backless dresses, beehive dos, and glossy lipstick, singing What Jail Is Like on The Ed Sullivan Show. Its another invitation to dance. Without warning, McCollums saw-toothed feedback careens until brought under control, folding into a melody established by Chichesters clanking roadhouse keys. The coarseness goes mute during verses and reappears for bridges and the racing chorus, which sprints to a mad finish. As McCollum and Dulli scratch and claw at their strings like feverish desperados, Earle makes the rounds on his kit. After the untamed burst, everything falls back into a calm pocket of silky piano, restrained guitar, and rounded rhythm. The song is bipolar. All the better for the lyrics, which put on a defiant front in the face of debilitating shame. The title serves as an apt metaphor for amorous infatuationand all its associated traps. Dullis character bargains throughout, cautioning his partner not to comer him and warning her what will happen if she does. In this cat-and-mouse game, fear is the brass ring both parties chase. You think Im scared of girls / Well maybe / But Im not afraid of you, Dulli announces near the onset, hunkering down for a long fight. He slings a few zingers, but the truth 102 begins to slip out. Pride is neutralized by ignominy; and, while unstated, an underlying fear of women adds to the cyclical misery. By the third verse, admiration turns into indignation. Dullis negotiating and admonishing lead to dismissal. Loneliness is selected as the best available option. His character is left with smug I-told-you-so satisfaction and a slice of wisdom that could double as Gentlemens epigram: Resentment always goes much further than it was supposed to go. My Curse Up until now, everything on Gentlemen is told through a male perspectivealbeit one thats aware that the dysfunctional culpability, fault, and compulsion are shared. My Curse ends the monopoly. Sung by Marcy Mays, who gives the performance of her lifetime, the steamy canzone is an emasculator that erases any vestige of testosterone-ridden superiority or chauvinistic spite. While Dulli never once leans on self-pity as a crutchan achievement that alone hoists Gentlemen above the music of its angst-ridden peers and, later, whiny emo descendentshis handing off to Mays of the most naked psychological expose on the record drastically changes the point of view and opens up the dialogue, making it irresponsible and impossible to simplemindedly interpret the record as a misogynist take on sexual and social politics. Dulli explains the strategy. I liked that it came out of nowhere. I sing song 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Whos this? To me, it tilts the perspective. It gives a voice to the woman. In my way, I was trying to concede that she had a voice all along and that I never listened to her. It goes a long way in 103 describing my relationship with Kris. Through the ups and downs that we had, ultimately, relationships are built on friendships and we were very good friends. And we still are. The Whigs wisely play the role of a backup band on the track, with folksy acoustic guitar and spare piano leading into a full instrumental entrance. The song twists and writhes, McCollums greasy slide mimicking the motions of two bodies rolling underneath the sheets. Crescendos shade Mayss teeth-gritting vocals, and this warped minor-chord wedding dance rides out on a wave of saloon blues and southern breezes. The fear that the male manages to temporarily reign in on What Jail Is Like catches up to him here. Mays spits the counseling back in his face, canceling out any advantage he might have held against her. She proves just as capable of flagellation and acting as a wronged victim. Under her heels, Dullis patronizing character is a slave. Shes leads him around by the collar; he pleasures her. Dullis substitution of Mays into the lead also subverts the common male fantasyin her voice, oral sex becomes cunnilingus. Flipping western custom, the man gets on his knees. She smiles, knowing that she possesses her own secrets. And, no matter how much she has to bite her tongue, in her head and between her legs they shall remain. And still, as Dullis persona indirectly and directly acknowledges in preceding songs, Mayss words concede that the males capitulation is tethered to an unhealthy codependence spurred on by her own sadomasochistic desires and culpable temptations. In him, she recognizes herself: You look like me / And I look like no one else / We need no 104 other / As long as we have ourselves. For good or bad, the revelation damns both partners to each other. What has transpired cannot be scrubbed out, erased, or forgotten. Sex is both an outlet for the purging of guilt and the creating, sharing, and prolonging of pain. Love and pleasure are synonymous with blood, scourge, and hurt. Friends until the end. Now You Know The last track written and completed for Gentlemen, Now You Know is pure emotional catharsis. A screaming tantrum of energy, verve, and rancor, the song doesnt give out until Dulli is forced to give inthe music actually fades out before he finishes. He cant and wont be contained. Now You Know begins as a giant, rolling snowball and ends as an avalanche. Dulli and McCollums lacerating guitars tumble around in a back-alley tussle, Curley is up for the down stroke, and Earle hits everything in sight. Chichesters barrelhouse playing is a perfect foil for what comes across as a barroom brawl. The raucousness mounts as the tune progresses. It gets so rowdy that McCollums fractured slide struggles to be heard amidst the din. Every word here is free-styledthe vocals were cut in one take. Dullis manic performance is a by-product of stream-of-conscious adrenaline, synthetic stimulants, and visceral willpower. His throat-scraping yowls are unedited; his mannerisms unrefined. He reaches for falsetto heights, sometimes succeeding, other times falling short and out of tune. The imperfections add to the authenticity. Before he 105 leaves the studio, Dulli is determined to leave blood on the floor. While Mays may have evened the power struggle on My Curse, Dullis character uses this opportunity to reflect on the fallout and take solace in knowing his partner wears similar bruises. The repercussions of the ongoing deceit are myriad. Somebody is going to suffer the consequences. Scathing rhetoric and confrontational mayhem ensue. Blame, denial, betrayal, divide: Which one shall he use? As if in reply to Mayss Zip me down / Kiss me there command, Dulli offers up a demand of his own: Let me kiss that beautiful mouth / Tell me is it the same? / My sweetness / My everything he asks, before derisively wondering if his condescension is comforting. He knows well the answer to both questionsand has known since he thought up the songs first line. The taste is rotten, the sensation contaminated, the disgust mutual, the disdain demeaning, the bitterness everlasting. I Keep Coming Back The Afghan Whigs interpretation of this Tyrone Davis B-side is the rare remake that manages to top the original. Curley pumps out a dirgey melody on a B3 organ. Dulli fingers a deliberate bass line. McCollum enters a twilight zone and taps into voodoo, his magnetic notes dripping with redemption and solemnity. The song acts as a cleanser. Every bit as persuasive as the 1970 versionand even more romantic, heartfelt, and sincereit stands as the most soulful, emotionally penetrating morsel of black music recorded by an alternative-rock band. 106 This is Dullis tuxedo-clad moment, where his dreams of being Marvin Gaye singing in a black nightclub and winning over the crowd come true. All the ugliness has gone, the vindictiveness extinguished, the animosity exhausted on the preceding track. For 4:52, devotion replaces anger. Just as When We Two Parted is an anti-valentine, I Keep Coming Back is a testament of sensuality, honesty, and love. As it did for Dulli back in Cincinnati, the song here functions as a cocoon, a protectoran escape. Whats nearly lost in the translation is that, while Dullis emotional investment is beyond reproach, the words arent his own. By the end of Now You Know, at least in the cycle of the record, I had nothing left to say, admits the singer. I needed to have someone else say it for me. And so, while the Whigs sell the song and the sentiment, the secondhand nature destroys any expectation of Gentlemen achieving peaceful closure. Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer The film credits roll. An unidentified voice calls upon Brother Woodrow to lead a prayer. Alternatively beautiful and sorrowful, the finale serves as a needed breather. It allows us the chance to try and absorb the records harrowing purgation without overdosing on or suffocating from its impact. And yet the cinematic instrumentals forbidding overtures suggest theres no happy ending to whats gone down. 107 Theres no way there could be. The will to love is diminished. Faith is trampled. Personal identities are cast into doubt. Dullis character might be an asshole, but with his protective veil of arrogance lifted, conclusions arent so clearcut. Tacked onto the end of most records, Brother Woodrow would be excessive and gratuitous. Here, its not only necessaryits indispensable. We need to come down before we can come out. Released on the same Tuesday in October 1993 as Yo La Tengos Painful, Jamess Laid, and Pet Shop Boys Very, Gentlemen failed to crack Billboards Top 200 Album chart. But in the week after its release, it debuted at #17 on the Heatseekers chartreserved for best selling titles by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 chart. A week later, the record slipped to #36. It marked the last time Gentlemen would be on any Billboard album chart. Critical reactions were overwhelmingly positive. In a profile piece for the October 16, 1993, Billboard, Rick Clark wrote that Gentlemen is a riveting journey that may in time be regarded alongside such downer classics as Lou Reeds Berlin, Neil Youngs Tonights the Night, or Big Stars Third. A month later, the trade publications review of Gentlemen deems it a bluesy grunge offering in league with the best of the genre. In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Tom Sinclair awarded Gentlemen a B+ and opined: On the major-label debut by ex-Sub Poppers Afghan Whigs, guitars scratch, bleed, cry, and soar all around singer Greg Dullis tormented howling. 108 Lyrically, the albums a downer, but the brooding intensity of these anthems-for-the-alienated is as addictive as cheap drugs, a subjectalong with deviant sexthat the Whigs appear to know something about. In his Consumer Guide column for the March 1, 1994, edition of the Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave Gentlemen an Aand said: With the turn-ons of Liz Phairs music-qua-music a commonplace, how about giving it up to Mr. Greg Dulli? No Butch Vig or Steve Albini tidying or toughening up this suckerthose conflicted guitars are a direct function of the singer-writer-producer-guitarists agonized self-exposure/examination. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, esteemed music journalist Greg Kot also championed the records ambiguous facets. One listen to this riveting song cycle of romantic burn-out establishes that the album tide is meant ironically. Other conclusionsabout the decency of the character singing these songs, for exampleare not nearly so clear-cut. Public Radios Sound Opinions cohost added: Dulli captures the moment when infatuation loses its bloom and gives way to something a bit more realistic. Amy Linden was similarly moved in the New York Times, where she observed that Mr. Dullis eloquently articulated shame, guilt and frustration at what has gone wrong and what he could have done to prevent it give Gentlemen power and purpose before concluding Mr. Dullis willingness to tackle adult themes and to examine his sexual psyche places the Afghan Whigs miles above the whining collegiate concerns of many alternative rock bands. 109 A three-and-a-half-star review in Rolling Stone boasted: On Gentlemen, the Whigs break from the sludgy guitar morass favored by fellow Sub Pop expatriates like Nirvana and Mudhoney. Instead, they opt for a clean, oddly detached hard-rock sound that shifts erratically between purgative and disarmingly pretty, adding tension to Dullis caterwauling. Overseas, New Musical Express granted Gentlemen a 9 (out of 10) rating, and later, ranked it #20 on its Top 50 LPs of 1993 list. Melody Maker raved, positing, Gentlemen is an album which can only grow in stature. The UK magazine later declared it the runner-up Album of the Yearsecond only to the Tindersticks self-tided debut. The enthusiastic press carried over to reviews of the bands animated concerts, which, while laden with exaggerated entertainment devices, functioned as thematic extensions of the album. So did the various B-sides tabbed for the groups overseas singles. Both formats are mostly relics today, but common to a period that encouraged artistic excess and exploited a collector mindset. Akin to scraps that are trimmed from USDA prime meat and later reprocessed into ground beef, songs recorded for but left off albums often got a second life as bonus tracks on a range of CD singles, seven-inches, and, for a brief period, Cassingles. The thinking held that hardcore fans would willingly drop money on a pricey import to get exclusive music they couldnt find anywhere else. Despite smacking of greed and elitism, the strategy flourished until filesharing and artist Web sites made it possible for listeners to avoid having to spend $12 for one new song and several others they already owned. 110 Yet Gentlemen challenged industry convention in that no studio extras existed. The absence of such planned aural mediocrity forced labels to look elsewhere for value-added material and, ultimately, resulted in an inspired string of rare/ unreleased tracks that rivals any associated with a single album. The B-sides of the import singles of Debonair, Gentlemen, and What Jail Is Likereleased between September 1993 and August 1994are drawn from live radio sessions and a one-off July 1993 recording stint at Cincinnatis Audiocraft studios. Taken as a whole, they are an inextricable supplement to Gentlemen. Every cut relates to Dullis disposition. Each was deliberately chosen. And every song is riddled with despair or calamity. The Audiocraft excursion produced four songs, including a chamber-music rendition of Scrawls Ready recorded with local singer-songwriter Niki Buehrig. She and Dullis subdued duet unfolds like an ex-lovers thinking-of-you letter that is never stuck in the mail. I thought Id feel better / If we got together / To talk it all over/Just in case Id ever need you / Be ready, the pair sings, the readiness taking the form of an invitation that exists as a polite formality and is understood by both parties as such. Gloomier and more despondent, a starkly beautiful and irony-free cover of Little Girl Blue shatters hearts. Backed by Chichesters piano, the Whigs do justice to Rodgers and Harts 1935 pop lament associated with Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, and Doris Day. I know how you feel / I know you feel like youre through, coos Dulli in a sympathetic and woeful voice, sounding as if hes just lost his best friend and any reason to live, and, like the girl in the song, should be placed on suicide watch. Hunters cello and McCollums slide 111 guitar sigh woefully in the background. The four and a half minutes personify depression. Most famously, the July session returned a consummate interpretation of James Carrs The Dark End of the Street, which became a staple of the Gentlemen tour. Dan Penn and Chips Momans Muscle Shoals classic has been covered by dozens of artistsPercy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, Richard and Linda Thompson, and Frank Black included. Most performers have approached the song from a cautiously optimistic perspectivethe adulterous narrator is still sneaking in shadows to meet his lover and, although worried the pair may eventually be caught, the singers tone and/or bright nuances suggest the protagonists will escape all ramifications save guiltor treat it as rehabilitative penance wherein the tune is used to teach a lesson. None come close to matching the terror, defeat, and anguish inherent in the Whigs rearrangement. They confiscate the song as their very own. Stripped and slowed down, the tune comes on like a loath march to the electric chair. Dulli calmly sings as a convicted thief deserving of his sentence; hes so sorrowful that it seems as if hes already been caught, that hes singing the words after the fact, humming them to anybody who will listen. McCollums wavering distortion shivers against cold walls. Hunters mournful cello echoes funeral taps. The impact is sinister, heartbreaking, and utterly personal. The other B-sides are in similar emotional shambles. Live renditions of Tonight, I Keep Coming Back, What Jail Is Like, and Now You Know throb with rawness and intensity. A backwater country-rock stab at the Ass Ponys 112 Mr. Superlove falls out with scenes of domestic violence that betrays the grinning instrumentation. A bloodthirsty version of Patti Smiths Revenge, a funked-up take on Martha Reeves and the Vandellas Easily Persuaded, and a Dulli-led My Curseall recorded February 1994 for the John Peel showspew vengeance and cynicism. A mercurial medley of the Supremes My World Is Empty Without You / I Hear a Symphonyboth longtime concert favoritesamplifies the bands fondness for taking happy songs and turning them sad, and, correspondingly, combining seemingly incongruous elements, like garage-rock and soul, post-punk and R&B, to create singular music. A Mark Goodier Session, broadcast on August 30, 1993, for BBC Radio 1, engendered another Scrawl numberthe corrosive Rot, the title of which sums up the general malaise that courses through all of the cover songs. Theyre all thematic, confirms Dulli. There was a degree of nihilism that ran through all of that stuff. I come from a long line of mental illness in the form of different things, the worst being outright dementiaa long line of depression. This was all before there became widespread treatment. Coming from where I came from, you were a pussy. And fuck you, suck it up, and get over it. Thats obviously not the best way to attack that condition. So you self-medicate and look for ways to bring yourself out of it. That usually involves stimulants and depressants, legal or illegal. At that point, looking back, I was finally treated for depression in 1997. But from 1993 to 1997, 1 was an immensely and complicatedly unhappy person. 113 114 VI. Take Me Away As the band develops its own sound, a feat nearly accomplished on Gentlemen, expect the Whigs to move out of the club circuit and into a much bigger spotlight. Variety, December 1993 Shortly after Gentlemen was released, a star-crossed fate began to befall the album and the Afghan Whigs. At once, critics predicted that the group was primed to break out and, while adulatory in their assessments, were often hesitant to fully commit. Acclaim was often qualified with slight reservations that, likely owing to a confusion of what to make of the album, sent the band into a limbo in which they were praised, came thisclose to mainstream success, and yet never completely broke through. The record suffered a similarly tortured fate on most year-end lists. Like a prized underdog, Gentlemen was acknowledged but remained just beneath what was deemed to be the upper echelon. Granted, 1993 was a very, very good year for music. Nirvanas In Utero, PJ Harveys Rid of Me, and Liz Phairs Exile in Guyville all deserved spots on the highest reaches of every best-of list. The Flaming Lips Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, Yo La Tengos Painful, the Breeders Last Splash, Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream, and P.M. Dawns The Bliss Album? werent far behind. Yet apart from Melody Maker, Vox, and Spin, which named Gentlemen the seventh-best album of the year, no other major 115 music publicationRolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Select, Q, The Face, NME, Musik Express Sounds (Germany), Les Inrockuptibles (France), Rock De Lux (Spain) includedranked it in the Top 10. Some didnt deem it worthy of the Top 30. In a January 1994 features piece for the Los Angeles Times, Richard Cromelin summed up the predicament: The Afghan Whigs album Gentlemen wasnt a commercial smash, and it didnt show up on a lot of year-end Top 10 lists, but it just might be the overlooked masterpiece of last year. Results of the Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop Poll support Cromelins statement. Tallied from the collective responses of 308. critics, Gentlemen placed seventeenth and netted twenty-four total mentions, confirming that the record didnt place on most Top 10 lists yet made a lasting impression on a few dozen journalists. It placed thirteenth in Canadas similarly tabulated Eye Weekly poll. USA Today and the Chicago Tribune gave the album honorable mention status. The under-appreciated slights extend through most best-of decade lists. Gentlemen doesnt crack Mojos 100 Modern Classics or The Mojo Collection. Rolling Stone leaves the record off of its Essential Recordings of the 90s (which nevertheless includes albums by Korn, Lenny Kravitz, and Hootie and the Blowfish) despite promoting Gentlemen to a four-and-a-half-star-caliber album in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. The record fails to rate in Pitchforks Top 100 Albums of the 1990s; the Whigs arent even listed as an example of an unfortunate casualty that almost made the cut. And Gentlemen is nowhere to be found on Chicago 116 Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatiss list of The Ninety Best Albums of the 90s published in Milk It!, the Sound Opinions cohosts handy anthology on 90s alt-music. The dissenters? Spin, which lists Gentlemen at #99 of its 100 Greatest Albums 1985-2005, and CM], which places it as the fourteenth-best record of the 90s. Radio and television yielded similar frustrations. Reviewing the Debonair single in early October, Billboard spouted, Early press rumblings bill this act, on its first major-label outing, as a big thing waiting to happen. The speculation proved false. In early November, Debonair debuted at #25 (out of 30) on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, where it spent thirteen weeks, peaking at #18 and spending most of its residency in the lower twenties. The bands name was misspelled Wigs in every entry. MTV briefly rotated the Debonair video on its 120 Minutes show, for which the band also made an in-studio appearance. But the medium failed to demonstrate any lasting faith, treating the Gentlemen video with related tepidness. A starred review of What Jail Is Like, the third and final single taken from Gentlemen, in the July 9, 1994, Billboard said it all: Programmers who missed the brilliant first single, Debonair, and fine follow-up, Gentlemen, should not let this be three strikes. Simultaneously hormonal and cerebral, talents like this will garner fans for years if afforded proper exposure. Few listened. What Jail Is like didnt even land on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. Then again, Gentlemen wasnt cut out for what passed then (or now) as radio-friendly fare. The records intellectual content, cognitive twists, painful honesty, and consummate 117 eloquence simply made it too legitimate, too uncomfortable, and too genuine for public airwaves. Not to mention that the Whigs sounded like nobody else. Originality is seldom encouraged in the mainstream, and the bands soulfulnessabsent from a commercial era touting hand-me-down acts such as Gin Blossoms, Stone Temple Pilots, and Candleboxserved as a further impediment. Historically, black and black-influenced music have been shunned in favor of sanitized remakes and flagrant counterfeits that almost always outsell the superior original. American Idol is evidence of Americas ongoing appetite for sterilized mediocrity. The Whigs combination of style and soul sent nearly everyone scrambling for comparisons. Matt Diehls review of Gentlemen in Rolling Stone illustrates such tunnel-vision thinking. In less than 270 words, he name drops no fewer than nine other bandsPearl Jam, American Music Club, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soul Asylum, Hsker D (via a Zen Arcade mention), U2 (via a Bono mention), Joy Division, and Soundgardenas points of reference rather than focusing on the Whigs inventiveness. Problem is that Diehl, or any other critic guilty of laziness, could have listed a dozen more iconic artists and still would fail to capture the essence of a band whose creativity, for better or worse, isolated it. Gentlemen didnt fare much better in indie-rock circles. Granted, the Elektra affiliation automatically distanced it from snobs that refused to go near anything on a major label. And just as it didnt parlay into an advantage on the commercial circuit, the small Sub Pop logo on the albums back cover 118 didnt carry any weight in that everyone was already well aware the Seattle imprints entire roster had been raided. Yet the biggest hindrance had little to do with pretension or labels; it related to Gentlemens subject matter. Indie-rock doesnt handle sex too well, particularly when openly discussed. Reacting against the chauvinistic views usually reflected in hard rock, elementary attitudes of pop, and stereotypical silliness of modern country, indie-rock tends to treat sex with kid gloves. The topic is often broached (and concealed) via hush-hush whispers, wobbly vocals, and delicate poetry. Any sense of sexual pleasure, fun, and eroticism is either bypassed or lost in translation. Testosterone and estrogen are commonly feared. As demonstrated by the shy makeup of the monstrously successful Juno soundtrack, the indie world at large still hasnt crawled out from under its protective shelter. It isnt ready for lines such as Cause she wants love / And I still want to fuck, the frankness of which doesnt jive with the scenes timid values and lo-fi moxie. And the Whigs were anything but apprehensive, especially onstage, the one forum where they enjoyed unmitigated success. Having graduated to headliners, the band regularly performed 90-to-120-minute shows replete with Supremes covers and snippets of songs like PJ Harveys Sheela-Na-Gig, Dr. Dres Nuthin But a G Thang, Princes When Doves Cry, Teenage Fanclubs Alcoholiday, Madonnas Express Yourself and Into the Groove, and Pavements In the Mouth of a Desert. In a clever homage to their influences and independence, the front of the groups concert T-shirts depicted Stax Records finger snap logo with the fingers now 119 holding a cigarette. On the back, the tagline THE NEW SOUND OF YOUNG AMERICA was written underneath an AW logo scripted in the fat Motown font. From the tours beginning, Dulli played up his role as dynamic frontman, taking more liberties with songs, banter, and situations than he did on the Congregation outing. He was also attracting notice from fashion and lifestyle magazines for his looks and, while the band couldnt get on the radio, Dulli became an unlikely alt-rock sex symbol mentioned in publications such as Seventeen. The GQ attentionand the volatile mix of the Whigs urban cool, live flamboyance, and perceived arroganceignited an inevitable jealous backlash. Denigrators accused the viewed group as cartoonish, overhyped, and undeserving. A majority of the potshots were reserved for Dulli, whose outspokenness, bravado, and looks were lampooned with the kind of severity normally reserved for pop celebrities. The most ignorant attacks accused him of thinking and pretending he was black, further underscoring that a certain taboo remained attached to black music and that a priggish America couldnt shake its obsession with racial or sexual boundaries. Most infamously, Dulli inspired the creation of Fat Greg Dulli, a faux zine whose sole mission was to ridicule and belittle the singer. Some excerpts from Issue 6: Greg Dulli Subscribes To: Sassy to keep in touch with what the little girls want and because hes determined to one day be named Sassiest Boy in America! 120 Mirabella to nurture his feminine side! National Geographic. Photos of topless African chicks and old guys with plates in their lip are good decor for the tour bus! Newsweek, Tiger Beat, Martha Stewart Living, Cigar Aficionado: Somebody sent his name in with all those little subscription stamp things and he still cant get off these damn lists! Greg Dulli One-Night Stand Kit Nifty Afghan Whigs money clip and dice cufflinks; 8 miniatures of Wild Turkey; 2 packs of Dunhills; 1 bottle of rib sauce; 3 moist towlettes; Karaoke With The Staples Singers tape; Best Of America karaoke tape; 1 Today contraceptive sponge; 17 condoms; Don Flemings phone number Exciting News Items From Our Midwest Sources: (its old) Greg lives in Hyde Park, a wealthy section of Cincinnati, with bandmates Steve Earle and Jason from Throneberry. He used to drive a blue Chevy Econoline van, but now hes usually seen just walking. Hes nearsighted and used to wear big round blue glasses, but that was years ago and we presume his swarthy good looks won out and hes opting for contacts. He keeps mum about his relationships, probably because hes just saving the material for the next record. Hes a big fan of Italian food and barbecues and he doesnt really do drugs. He used to wear navy blue pocket t-shirts and black chinos alot, although sources infer that he may have just been wearing the same outfit. A lot. Hes said to remember everything friends say, much to their surprise. Greg goes on exotic vacations 121 and recently went to French Morocco and Amsterdam. Greg doesnt wear cologne and one source says hes a sloppy kisser. His birthday is May 10th. That is grade-school taunting. What can I do?, says Dulli, conscious that its always better to get some kind of reaction than none at all. In the end, for someone who portrayed it to not give a fuck about me, I was like you sure put in a lot of effort into not giving a fuck about me. Despite sold-out shows, positive press, Dullis exposure, and a climate favorable to alt-rock, sales of Gentlemen stalled out. Attempting to pinpoint reasons for its (or any records) lukewarm popularity is an inexact science. A litany of subjective factorsincluding promotional efforts, media saturation, label budgets, public tastes, and commercial appealobstruct any definitive verdicts. Yet historical research proves clearer. A clash of dubious label decisions, incongruous planning, atrocious undermining, and artistic character triggered a downward spiral that found both the band and label retreating. Even before they signed to Elektra, Dulli was well aware of the myriad challenges that the Whigs presented to publicists. There was a panel during [the 1993] College Music Journal Festival that I believe was actually titled How Do You Market the Afghan Whigs? We were so fucking weird. What were we? I think we were so hard to pigeonhole, you couldnt call us anything. There was soul-grunge. That was silly. I actually marveled at people trying to figure us out. Few ever did. 122 In an October 1993 Billboard article, Terry Tolkin, Elektras then-director of A&R, explained the labels marketing strategy for the still-forthcoming Gentlemen: We are going to take out an extensive campaign in a lot of the indie publications, as well as concentrate on creating a lot of visibility in retail. There is so much competition at the time it is coming out, but we believe when people hear the record, it organically sells itself by the buzz it generates. Buzz is what sold Gentlemen yet buzz alone usually isnt enough. Without the advantages of the Internet, bands were dependent on radio and video, and for the Whigs, that support didnt happen. Sherry Ring, the groups Elektra publicist, recalls meetings in which frustrations concerning the Whigs album sales dominated conversations. To me, its unbelievable that theyre not U2. They were just fantastic. But in praising the band shes also quick to absolve the label from any culpability. I personally dont think it was the label fucking up. Elektra and the people under [Bob Krasnow] were so dedicated and into good music. It wasnt like the music business is today where there are priorities and if the song isnt a hit then you go onto the next thing and it has to sell a certain amount of copies. Elektra was always behind all of their bands no matter how much they sold as long as the music was great. It just might have been the timing. And sometimes thats what it comes down to. Yet Rings recollection of what might have gone wrong also comes with revealing qualifiersI think maybe they didnt fit into a certain niche, Maybe they wanted to be more indie/alternative and really they should have been more 123 rockthat illustrate an obvious disconnect between label and band, and fundamentally, Elektras inability to fully understand what it had. I think there were more people out there that would have liked us than found out about us, says Curley. I really felt like we were not really on [Elektras] radar. They had signed this band that people were saying was good. The president wasnt entirely convinced. He was willing to give us a shot, and that was enough. He was going to put his weight behind it, but I dont think it was one of their priority things. I think it took them a little by surprise when [Gentlemen] was so well received by the press. Unbeknownst to those outside the band, the Whigs were also contending with internal -sabotage. Dulli learned that the perpetrator behind Fat Greg Dullia slur still used by his harshest criticswas not only a woman, but that she had help. It turned out to be not only that girl but [one person] at Elektra who didnt like me. It was a conspiracy. While Dulli and Curley opted not to name the culprit, the man who on his MySpace page claims he coined the phrase alternative music, saved both Sub Pop and Touch & Go Records, and spent more than half a million dollars in label expense funds boasted of his slimy deeds on a fellow exElektra staffers blog in June 2007: I supplied Yvonne Garret with the unflattering photos of him and she wrote it and put it out. Greg spent months trying to figure out who did it! gleefully admitted Tolkin, who backstabbed a band he was being paid to help. 124 Such hijinx compounded bumpy relations. Dealing with the corporate machine for the first time in their career, the Whigs were already trying to find a middle ground that satisfied Elektras requests while staying true to their own principles. We were always looking for opportunities to become more successful. But it had to be within the scope of something we were comfortable doing, explains Curley. At the point we were on Elektra and [later] Columbia, there are a lot of compromises. You cant say no to everything. You have to pick your battles. If you say no to everything, then they wont care. Theyll move onto the next band because theyll think youre a pain in the ass. In that regard you have to make compromises. I dont feel that we ever did anything that made us feel bad about ourselves, or if it wound up that way, that was the last time it ever happened. High standards soon put the band at odds with the labels hard-sell propaganda ideas, which began to reflect the growing discrepancies between the imprint and the band as well as the general mishandling suffered by most exSub Pop acts that jumped to the big leagues. Elektra exhorted the Whigs to perform at multi-act concerts sponsored by radio stations that rarely, if ever, played their music. The label also requested that the group play instores at inopportune times. The more they were pressured and pushed, the more the Whigs withdrew from the process. I sort of began to sabotage it, says Dulli, copping to his role in jeopardizing any possible greater fame and album sales. I wouldnt play the game. I wouldnt do the meet-and-greets. I wouldnt go to the instores. I became so aware of the fucking bozo factor that was going on. When we started playing these 125 radio festivals, I just never felt comfortable. Whether it was real or imagined, I just felt like a whore. I couldnt do it. Playing in a record store? I wasnt going to do that. Rock and roll is nighttime. We were being asked to play morning and daytime shit. Who knows [what would have happened] had we played the game and played acoustic songs on the radio and gone to this and that. I wasnt willing to do that. I dont regret not doing it. I go with my gut. It has served me well. If I didnt get something from it, [its] okay because it was my choice. We had already basically learned and decided that those [promotional gambits] were not for us, adds Curley. [Radio stations] would try to get cool bands to play their festival with the promise that they would play their music, and then they wouldnt play the music and youd wind up playing this festival with a bunch of bands that you didnt belong onstage with. It was bullshit. Maybe we blew off two or three of them that we should have done. But we also blew off a hundred of them that we shouldnt have done. In the end, for us it was the right decision. Whether we would have sold a few more records or not, I dont know. That is the whole part of it that I didnt like. The more I thought about it, the more it took away from the part I did like. For Dulli, who in spite of an extroverted stage personality claims he is extremely self-conscious and private, the demands became unreasonable. Expectations that he mingle at after-show meet-and-greets were too muchand too phonyfor someone battling depression and confronting demons. 126 I wouldnt hang out and meet people after the shows. Shows to me have always been real. I go out and fucking give it up. To act like I just watched a movie with everybody else and Im walking out to the parking lot and I can casually talk about it [with them]? I cant do that. Especially with an album where Im stripping naked and pulling the bones out of my skinthats the way it felt to me. I wanted to leave. While the honeymoon between Elektra and the Whigs had significantly cooled by early 1994, it was completely over by early April. The group was in New York to play what at the time was its biggest show yet. Before the end of the concert, Dulli instructed the tour manager to call a cab and have it wait outside the rear entrance. As soon as the final song of the encore ended, the singer jumped in the taxi and left, abandoning a host of label personnel, radio deejays, and assorted industry hangers-on awaiting him backstage. Elektra fumed. It became irreparable at that point, says the singer. I had sent a message that they took as a giant Fuck you. Which in retrospect, it kind of was. Maybe they thought I was looking a gift horse in the mouth or biting the hand that fed me. I looked at it as self-preservation. Had I stayed I think I would have lost something I could not have gotten back. While it may not seem a big deal to anybody else, it seemed like a big deal to me at the time. All I wanted to do was be by myself. The following day, Dulli headed to Elektras New York offices to present an idea for a What Jail Is Like video that culminated with his crucifixion on Golgotha. The label wasnt having any of it. Nothing was ever filmed. 127 I remember slam slam slam. I walked out and went back to the hotel and was like, Were done here dude. We toured, went back to Europe, and toured some more, and made some money. That was that. I had pissed off a whole bunch of people. And I didnt even do anything that offensive. I didnt break a promise. I just did what I wanted to do and that proved unpopular. I paid for it with the shutdown of the machine. Ill take responsibility for it but I wont apologize because it was self-preservation for me. Being the biggest rock star on the planet has never ever been my aim. Dullis New York retreat coincided with an era-defying moment: Kurt Cobains suicide. News of the Nirvana singers death, and the circumstances that led to it, lingered in Dullis thoughts. At a concert in Hoboken, New Jersey, that occurred one night after Cobains body was discovered, and right after the New York show, an obviously shaken Dulli dedicated When We Two Parted to the fallen vocalist: When we first came to Seattle to record and play, the fellas in Nirvana came out and kind of made us feel really welcome cause we felt kind of weird for not being from there, kind of young and stupid and hillbillies and stuff, so. Its been kind of sad to lose somebody that you know and you really like, so were going to do this next one for a friend of ours. In retrospect, Dulli isnt shy about shouldering responsibility or ashamed of his actions. I gave what I could but I refused to give what I didnt want to give. I think some of my actionsthere was some cause and effect. And I think I was the cause, and we all saw the effect. If pejorative backlashes and label politics werent enough hassle, the Whigs were also grappling with and concealing 128 serious internal problems. As the last member to join the band, Steve Earle had always been content remaining behind the scenes and following the groups lead. He readily admits that Dulli either wrote, suggested, or showed him the drum parts on Gentlemen. But Earles carefree nature didnt last out the tour, where the former Mr. Happy Go Lucky turned ugly. Curley bitterly recalls the drummers steady decline into an embarrassing drunk. Everybody had their moments where they drank too much onstage and played a crappy show. But Steve had a problem with drinking where he couldnt drink two beers. He had to drink all of the beers. Or none of the beers. Steve was drinking a lot, and drunk more often than not. He was not himself anymore. I dont think anybody in the band was friends with him anymore. It was a bad scene. The worst part about it is here you are doing something you love with your bud, and now its a bummer. Youd rather be home and not doing it. The best job in the world, and its a job. It wasnt every single day, but the number of those days increases as the dynamic starts to go sour. He was funny until he got pathetic, says Dulli. And he was a trooper. He got in the van with us for a lot of years. I think as a social experiment there is probably always going to be an odd man out, a dude who doesnt keep up with the rest of the guys or doesnt share the common vision. And he became that guy. On top of the alcohol-induced tension, Earle butted heads with the band over bringing his girlfriend out on the toura violation of the one rule most rock groups keep. The Whigs 129 told him no, and that if he insisted, hed be forced to rent a car and drive separately. It was decided that shed meet up with Earle in Texas, where the band had a string of mid-April shows. But before the group arrived in the Lone Star State, the tour snaked through Florida, where Earle hooked up with another woman. Once in Houston, Earle connected with Mary Kay at soundcheck and entrusted her with a few errandsfilm development among them. The drummer forgot that the pictures were of him and the other girl from Florida. Incensed at what she saw, Mary Kay used the photographic evidence to shoot Earle down with ammunition hed provided her. However humorous, the escapade gave rise to a power grab that likely came out of Earle being forced into capitulation. We played Dallas and that was really frosty, recalls Dulli. I dont know what happened between Dallas and Austin maybe he fucked her really good or somethingbut by the time we got to Austin, MTV was meeting us there. And they wanted to talk to me. By that time, Rick and John hated talking to the press. Steve, theres no way we were going to let him talk to the press because the one time he did, it was fucking embarrassing for everyone. So I was the dude. Right before the MTV interview, Mary Kay came up to me and said, Greg, we need to talk to you. And Im like, Whos we? Steve and I. I look over at Steve and hes hanging his head. She brought up something about the management. Im like, Who the fuck are you? Youre Cincinnati town whore and now youre Steves manager? Fuck you. Shes like, No, fuck you, because I am representing Steve now. And Im looking at Steve and hes 130 like, Ugh. She said, I want to know why its always you. Why youre the one always interviewed. Why its always a picture of you. Dulli replied using common sense, noting that band-associated photos werent always of him and that the reasons he was pursued as an interview subject might have something to do with his being the singer and songwriter. But Mary Kay didnt back down. She pressed for Earle to be included in the MTV interview. Dulli recalls the uncomfortable situation the dilettante manager created with the networks producers. Let it be known that I didnt say no, [MTV] did. And then with Steve, it was just painful after that. Earles ignominious free-fall climaxed at the Reading Festival in late August. The band was jazzed. It had a propitious early-evening time slot on the main stage. Marcy Mays even joined the group for My Curse. A never-released new song (Ascension) was performed. But the show had a hitch that Dulli will never forget. We were playing Debonair. Halfway through, the drums stopped. Earle fell off his stoolwasted in the middle of 70,000 people. At that moment we were effectively done. We played one more gig with him in Manchester. He couldnt keep his shit together. Despite the setbacks, the Whigs stuck by their drummer. In the winter of 1994, the quartet began wood-shedding new material in advance of a final hometown Gentlemen show scheduled for Christmas time at Bogarts. During rehearsal, Earle made a strange requestone also known as the punch 131 line to the joke about what the last thing a drummer says before he leaves the band: Hey, can we work on some of my songs? The Whigs complied out of sheer curiosity. Earle had never written anything in the bands history. The results? Three repeating chords and a chorus. Two days later, Dulli was buying marijuana at someones house when he got a call from Curley. Earle wanted to meet with them. Hed quit the band. Thats a really long story, very complicated, says Earle, who on the phone elected not to discuss the issue. Personalities clashed after awhile. I just really wasnt happy in that situation anymore. Its too bad, because I really enjoyed playing with those guys. McCollum also remained mum on the subject, though the guitarists tensed-up speech and penchant to change the topic all but concurs with Dulli and Curleys feelings: Earles friends now abhorred him. Everyone agrees that the vibe had spoiled. I dont think Steve was happy, says Curley, trying to maintain a balanced perspective. Speaking in a reserved tone, its apparent that the bassist is still both saddened and enraged at what unfolded. Earle is a sore topic. We were all dealing with shit, collectively and individually. Im still trying to learn how to figure out how I feel, communicate it, decide when its worth saying something and when its not, and how to say it. Im not that great at it now, and I was a lot worse at it then. Im going to guess everybody else was on the same timeline. And then youre in this thing 132 and you dont know how to get off of it. You dont want to pull the plug and fuck your friends or let people down that have given you their backing. None of us are quitters. Its not easy to get us to commit to stuff, but when we do, it gets a full commitment. It was just hard at the end trying to. Curley pauses. We started to go in different directions. Musically, Steve was a metal guy and still into that. We wanted to go more R&B and I dont think he was into it. Because of the short notice, the Whigs needed to scramble to find a replacement drummer for the Bogarts gig. The Breeders Jimmy MacPherson was brought in for a few sessions. But there was too much to learn and not enough time. The show was canceled and the band were out of a guaranteed paycheck. It was dumb, charges Curley, who says the band was worth a little more than $20K when Earle split and demanded an accountant. Because we all would have made some money off of it. But I guess that speaks to how he felt about things. Dulli is less understanding. He views Earles bombshell as the most selfish maliciousness possible. He was trying to hurt us. Im sure there was one drunken night where we were all-for-one and one-for-all, if one guy leaves we break up the band. If that one guy was John, Rick, or me, we wouldve broken up. But we werent going to let fucking ding-dong take us out. As soon as he quit, it fucked us. We had $12K sitting 133 on the table. And $3K of that was his. At that point I was like, Fuck you, dude. Fuck you. And fuck you forever. Youre dead to me. The Afghan Whigs survived Earles stunt and the other travails associated with Gentlemen only to encounter a ruinous July 1994 shakeup at Elektra in which Sylvia Rhone replaced Bob Krasnow and practically rendered the group invisible. On August 2, with no fanfare, the label issued a seven-track What Jail Is Like EP featuring the title track, three recycled European B-sides, and three live songs (also included on overseas singles) performed in Denver in May 1994 for KTCL Radio. It was much too little, too late, and remains the only official domestic release with live Whigs music. Having recruited Paul Buchignani to fill in on drums, the band staged a brief club tour in the summer of 1995 to debut fresh material in advance of sessions for its fourth proper album. Darker, denser, and dramatically soulful, the intentionally cinematic and funkier Black Love appeared in March 1996. It showed just how disturbed and unhappy Dulli, since relocating to Washington State, had become. like Gentlemen, the record begins with field-recording effectsthe sound of train yard close to Ultrasuedecaptured in Cincinnati. Yet the instrumental arraytimpani, cello, organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, sleigh bells, conga, pedal steel, and hammer dulcimer are presentweigh the music down. The production decisions often stifle the melodies. Removed of the trappings, the best songsCrime Scene Part One, Blame, Etc., Going to Town, Bulletproof, Summers Kiss, Fadedbecame live favorites. 134 Dulli acknowledges the shortcomings. I had lost my mind. I should have had someone there in the studio to go [gently but assuredly wagging his index finger]: Nooooh. After getting help for depression, Dulli didnt make the same mistake twice. He invited everyone down to record in his new co-homebase, New Orleans, a city where the 24/7 vibe matches the festive feel of the songsand the singers cocaine highs. I used all 24and 24 the next day and 24 the next day. Id go three days without sleeping. At one point, I went eight days without sleeping because I was exploring sleep deprivation as a drug. All I needed was a Hershey bar and a Coca-Cola to keep going. I remember at Mardi Gras I was on the sixth day and somebody offered me cocaine. And Im like, Dont waste your coke, dude. Im so far past coke right now. Im on caffeine and fumes and its so weird. I was seeing things. And it was cool. Curley used to say that I was the dude who loved going over the edge except that I never found the edge. I was like Wile E. Coyote. I had gone off the cliff hours ago but I was still running in the air. Released on October 27, 1998, 1965 is an island in the Whigs catalog, a joyous record that simmers with ass-shaking R&B, cocky swagger, sensual horns, bawdy boogie, unquenched lust, and black-soul grooves that never quit. George Drakoulias and Dave Biancos mix helped make 1965 the best-sounding Whigs album. New drummer Michael Horrigan and the bands move to Columbia Records added a palpable energy missing since Earles exit. The label fronted the money for the big-band revue Dulli always wanted. Onstage, the Whigs felt like deities, and played like it. 135 I was singing about a celebration within myself rather than a bunch of shitty stuff that had happened in which I had become an over-accomplished miserablistand then, quickly became one again, says Dulli, proud of the bands swan-song album and tour. The singer smiles, his boyish grin a sign of a man whos grateful for having endured ordeals and addictions that should have put him in an early grave. I liked the guy who sings those songs. That dude is cool. 136 137 VII. Epilogue Each to Each Citing geographical distance, the Afghan Whigs quietly announced their split in early February 2001. Reasons for the amicable dissolution dont go much deeper. When I had a kid, those guys knew that my days were numbered even if I didnt, says Curley. Greg was living in LA and he was staying here. And then the time came for us to go out [there], and I was going to be gone for two months. I didnt feel like I could be gone. I didnt feel like I could be committed to the band the way I had been, and to my family, and be fair to both of them. Its not possible. I was hemming and hawing and [Greg] just called me out on it. It was actually a quite civilized and nonemotional conversation. All the times when I quit screaming or Greg quit screaming, none of those [conversations] lasted. The one that was for real was two friends talking. Even though the band had worked on new material during the previous summer, the break-up decision didnt come as a total surprise. By late fall 2000, Dulli had already released his first album and toured with his ambient-leaning side project the Twilight Singers, whose King Only appeared in Whigs 199899 sets. The song was performed at what became the Cincinnati groups last gig by default. Billed and played as a normal hometown show at Bogarts on September 25, 1999, the concert bore none of the conceits and disappointments 138 that accompany final performances. For Curley, a more fitting ending couldnt have been scripted. Im glad we didnt do a farewell show for a lot of reasons. I think part of it is the cheese factor; its such a clich now. Everybody does a farewell show and then a reunion tour and then a farewell show and then a reunion tour. I mean, look at the Who. Theyve been doing that for twenty years. Content to play bass in the Staggering Statistics, a local indie band that doesnt travel, Curley now labors at Ultrasuede Studios and records garage-rock acts like the Greenhomes. But primarily, hes a devoted family man. So is Earle, who, akin to Curley, resides in the Cincinnati area and plays in a band. As the leader of the power-pop quartet Earle Grey, the former drummer has abandoned the trap-kit in favor of guitar and vocals. McCollum has likewise stepped out of his own shadow and taken to singing. He fronts Minneapolis-based Moon Maan, playing guitar and theremin. Having made four Twilight Singers albums and a solo record in a six-year span that also witnessed him guest on numerous LPs by other artists, Dulli remains both musically engaged and contemporarily relevant. A long-running partnership with exScreaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan progressively blossomed into the Gutter Twins, whose Saturnalia debut stands as one of 2008s best albums. The collaboration reignited a passion, mystique, and personality in Dulli not seen since his time in the Whigs. Yet the frontman has clearly 139 moved past his old quartet. Since the initial Twilight Singers outings, hes rarely played much Whigs material onstage. It felt like cheating on my wife with everyone watching, Dulli confesses, explaining a reluctance to indulge in nostalgia. In a lot of ways those [Whigs] songs will have to live on in their recorded form, but thats okay. If I were starved for material then Id worry about it. But now is exciting for me and obviously exciting enough for other people that theyre coming to the showsand coming not expecting it. If I do it, theyre thrilled. Some of the [younger] people are like, Whats that? Yes, the Afghan Whigs are now old enough to be unknowns to new generations of music listeners. In June 2007, the band was honored with what in the music industry represents the ultimate symbol of vintage agethe career retrospective. Beyond exposing longtime followers to previously unreleased photos and serving as a CliffsNotes for newcomers, Unbreakable (A Retrospective 19902006) provided further evidence of the Whigs permanence, originality, initiative, command, spunk, and influence. The compilation was greeted with widespread acclaim. Reviews acknowledged the musics era-defying qualities and asked, again, just how large-scale success avoided the group. They also recommended diving into the Whigs back catalog, knowing that no matter how good, no single-disc retrospective could fully portray the album band. Most tellingly, reports that the group was reconvening preceded the anthologys release. The news set off a flurry of feverish reunion rumors, some complicated and fueled by the 140 emergence of another band desperately and derivatively calling itself the Whigs. Yet theres no substituting for an American original, and the excitement over the possible reunion validated that the Whigsthe real Whigshad so memorably struck emotional chords, inspired lasting reactions, touched central nerves, and left indelible impressions that their music wasnt going to fade away. In addition to a loyal following that continues to keep the groups lore alive, and fans that have picked up on Dullis various projects, people that for whatever reason didnt see the band want a chance to experience the Whigs. Promoters and club ownersincluding mega-fan Shanahanrecognized this, and presented the band with a serious financial offer to tour. But the wish would remain fantasy. Dulli, Curley, McCollum, and Horrigan did in fact meet again in the studio. Two new songs (Im a Soldier and Magazine) were recorded. New pictures were taken. Old stories were told. Debates over which tracks should be placed on the retrospective were decided. By all accounts, plenty of fun was had. I think the catching up and hanging out part for me was more fun than the music part, admits Curley, who keeps in regular contact with Dulli and McCollum. Thats how we spent most of our time together. I was just looking forward to hanging out. And honestly, at this point in my life, thats what Id rather be doing. Just watching TV with them or going out to dinner. Dulli is even more resistant to reuniting. He seems too smart and too classy to try and recreate the past, knowing well that 141 such gambits are almost always losing propositions. The singer values the Whigs music and experiences, and his brotherly friendship with Curley, too greatly to put them all at risk. In the grand scheme of things, I have fond memories. Not so fond that Im going to go back and do it again, because Im not. I loved my time in it. More great times than bad. Thats really nice to be able to say. I grew up in that band. I think that when it ended, its why I stopped for a couple of years. I wasnt going to find a new girlfriend that fast. It took me a while to get to where I felt comfortable playing music again and doing it on my own terms. So far, his approach seems to be working, thanks in part to healthy diversions. Dulli owns two Los Angelesbased barsShort Stop and Footsiesand renovated the Royal Street Inn and the R Bar in New Orleans. The entrepreneurial pursuits reflect the future-gazing mindset of a musician who swears his troublemaking days are through. After years of battling depression, demons, and himself, Dulli is embracing life. I remain interested in music, but for the most part I read books and go to baseball games and watch movies at home and practice cooking. Rehab bars and hotels. There are other ways to be inspired. Im out here trying to pave my way to retirement to Hawaii when Im fifty. Ultimately, if I can get a little bar by the ocean, and just kind of hang out, maybe play piano shows at the bar on Friday nights, Ill be psyched. 142 Now its through. 143 Visit for a fascinating history of King Records and other related articles/discographies on Ohio soul. 144 1 http://www.shakeitrecords.com/history-links.html 145