Song Exploder - Liz Phair - Divorce Song

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

In 1993, Liz Phair released her debut album, Exile in Guyville. It was an instant hit, critically and commercially. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Spin and The Village Voice named it album of the year. Soon after, Rolling Stone put her on the cover of their magazine. Now, twenty-five years later, Exile in Guyville is being reissued as a deluxe boxset with photos, essays, and Liz Phair's original four-track cassette recordings. In this episode, Liz and Exile in Guyville's producer, Brad Wood, look back to tell the story of the creation of one of the songs on the album, "Divorce Song." songexploder.net/liz-phair

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. In 1993, Liz Fair released her debut album, Exile and Guyville. It was an instant hit, critically and commercially. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies, Spin and the Village Voice named it Album of the Year, and soon after, Rolling Stone put her on the cover of their magazine. Now, 25 years later, Exile and Guyville is being reissued as a deluxe box set, with a box set, with new photos, essays, and Liz Faire's original four-track cassette recordings.

In this episode, Liz and Exile in Guy Ville's producer, Brad Wood, look back to tell the story of the creation of one of the songs on the album, Divorce Song. I never been a waste of my time. It's never been, so take a deep breath and count back from time. I'm Liz Fair. I don't remember when I wrote Divorce Song, but I remember the evening that inspired it. I must have been a sophomore or junior in college.

I was dating a guy at Oberlin. It was one of those things where we were our friends, but we were kind of hooking up. So it was like a non-defined kind of relationship. And he had this little blue Miata, which stood out on campus. Like, you know, everyone wanted to ride in Shane's Miata. You know, like, nobody had that in the middle of Ohio.

And one night we went for a ride in the Miata, and I think we drove through cornfields. The way that evening ends is we were thinking about stopping at like a motel. And I think we actually went in and discussed getting a motel room. And then I think we were like, no. So it was kind of like this night where I didn't know how I felt about him. I didn't know how he felt about me, but we had a really good time together. And I wanted to write about all the little in-between moments that people have with a relationship

where you disagree about things. They're just the ordinary things that happen that if you're in that relationship are incredibly dramatic and they mean so much. I wrote pretty quickly. I always felt that it was really important to take that kernel of raw emotion

and grab it, capture it. So I was writing all these little songs, but I didn't record it until long after college. I literally wouldn't play them for anyone. I wouldn't show them, record them, nothing. And I wrote with no amplification. I didn't want anyone to hear. So I would play on an electric guitar

with my head bent over so I could hear the strings. And I think that's why my chords are interesting because when you're just playing them with no amplification might sound very good, and then when you stick it through an amplifier, you can hear every note, the ones that are dissonant as well as the ones that sound good. That was a learning process, how to get over the fact that I wrote these things virtually silently.

I had a four-track, a microphone, an electric guitar, and a little PV amp. Four-tracks are pretty basic. That was what appealed to me about them. You just stick the cassette in, press play, and record. I would go to the house of my parents' friends who were out of town, and I would swap watering their plants and taking their dog out or something to be able to set up a little recording studio in their home. I didn't want my parents to hear the words that I was singing either.

Like, that was another thing I had to cover up. I was saying some pretty raunchy stuff in the lyrics. So it was important that I just felt unselfconscious. I didn't work very hard on it because I thought I was a visual artist who just happened to write songs on the side. I didn't think I was a musician. So I put all my professionalism into my visual art

and very little of it into my music. And I think that allowed me to not overwork something. And I knew that that was a tendency of mind from visual art, I had ruined so many drawings just by overworking them. So I pretty much let the music be quick. It was spontaneous. I didn't second-guess myself a lot. Liz Fair used the name Girlie Sound for these recordings. Girlie Sound was an art provocative piece in my mind.

This is learned from Oberlin that the young female voice carries the least authority in society. And so I wanted to see if you had a little girl voice, which I sort of did, what you could get away with saying, would anyone listen? Would they care? Would it matter if you said really shocking things and a really girlish voice? Because you think of the most innocent things. You think of, you know, sunny day, little girls, you know? And like I just wanted to completely upend that.

Because having been a little girl, I know that they are devilish and fascinating and conniving little creatures. Like they are fully prepared to participate in society, just maybe not always given the chance. So I made one cassette of songs and two copies. And that was it. Hi, I'm Brad Wood. I heard the girly sound tapes.

That was at John Henderson's apartment. John Henderson lived in Chicago like we all did and ran a couple of small indie labels, put out some really cool music. And he mentioned that there's this woman he wants to put a record out with, and I was running a recording studio up the block from where he lived. John Henderson, he ran his label from that apartment.

And he let me live there because I wanted to get out of my parents' house. And he gave me, like, super cheap rent. And I think his idea was that I would help put, like, CDs in the... Like, I was going to help mail. Because I have this flashback memory of him instructing me how to do that. But then I also have a memory that I never did that. I walked down to Hendie's house and Liz had already gone to sleep. And John played eight or nine songs.

I remember divorce song specifically. And that song resonated with me more than any other song she's written. I just was struck by the lyrics and the unusual chord structure. And I'll never forget walking home with like this nervous calculation. How can I help make this happen? This is it. I was going to be the engineer for that session. And he wanted to book time at the studio with some musicians.

I'd be the drummer and the engineer. And that's really how we proceeded initially. John made it clear that he and Liz were going to produce. and Liz were going to produce it or just he? John, he was such a music head, and he did play all this great music. He was constantly like, listen to this, listen to this, and listen to this. You know, this is another feature of Guyville.

Guys were constantly lecturing me about what good music was and what band I should listen to. And it was just like constant school. He was really adamant in the studio about what he wanted to do and what he didn't want to do. And I felt suddenly what I hadn't really cared about before, I felt like he was taking too much ownership over it. And I didn't like it all the sensation of him telling me what could and couldn't be on my songs.

And I kind of woke up. Like, I didn't react until the song itself was being manipulated by someone who was essentially telling me that he knew better than I did. And that triggered something in me. And I do have a really strong memory of not feeling that the music that we were recorded. was syncing up with your songs very well. You know, I'd been working in visual art for a long time. I wasn't naive to the ways of being creative. I was just naive to the ways of making music.

And this thing just sort of, like this defiant person came up out of me that was like, no, now you're fucking with my shit. I could have and should have noticed that ahead of time. I just wasn't paying attention. So I split with John Henderson, and I didn't want to do it anymore. I don't think he wanted to do it either. I think I was not the Eliza Doolittle he was hoping for, you know? Like I was a feral little beast that was like not learning, you know?

Like, and I was fine with that. I'm like, yeah, that's right, you know. I was disappointed that we weren't going to record anymore. So I called John and asked if I could get a number for Liz and I called her at her parents' house. Eventually we did connect enough to agree to record again. My songs from Gurley Sound, I never thought about recording them in the studio. I never thought about what they would sound like. I think that's why I chose to use a template.

In my mind, I was thinking like an academic. If you don't know how to make a record, pick the very best record and then deconstruct it, figure out how they did what they did, study it, learn from the greats, and then do your own interpretation of that. So the template that I went with was sort of the most audacious template, which was Exile and Main Street, the Rolling Stones' double album. It was a presumptuous thing to say, like, oh, I'm going to do my song-by-song response to the greatest record of all time. That's when I started making charts where I had, like, all of my songs next to all of their songs. In a lot of ways, it let me feel like I was in control of something that I really wasn't, that I really didn't know what I was doing.

It gave me a focus for my nervous energy. And ventilator blues is the corresponding song to divorce song. And what I got from that song was tension, and everyone's got to release the tension. Ventilator blues, like things get so intense and people just keep slogging through life. So with divorce song, it's a lyrical corresponding thing. That was like what it is when you're in a relationship.

You're just slogging through together. There are times that you blow up and fight with each other. and it doesn't have to mean it's the end of the relationship necessarily. You just have to ventilate. So we had a lot of choices to make. What arrangement do you put on just a guitar and a vocal? There was no clear idea for most of the songs initially what was going to be hung on it.

And so I specifically wanted to make sure that the song sounded good as just guitar and voice. When Liz first came in the studio, we plugged into different guitar amps to see what worked. And Liz was most comfortable playing. through her PV backstage, which is an inexpensive... Portable. Portable, small little amp. I do remember there was like a tussle about the PV amp,

and I just didn't want to let go of it. The Liz doll came complete with a set, and you had to figure out how to make something tasteful with it. It has this bizarre reverb on it, but what we would do is put it through a chorus pedal. It has a stereo output, so one cable would come out and go into Liz's PV amp, and then we'd plug in a second app.

So she would play one guitar part through two amplifiers and then we could pan it left right. I remember sitting there and you would solo my vocal for some technical reason. And when I asked for a separate room, it was late at night, and we've been driving since noon. And when I first heard my voice back

over the big speakers, I wanted to die. Every second that that vocal was up there in that room, I was sitting on the couch, like, in a state of seizure. So on this song in particular, Liz, at least sang two times. I would have stayed in your bed for the rest of my life just to prove I was right that it's harder to be friends and lovers. I think my voice was too thin. And when you double a vocal track, any mistakes, any foibles will just sort of get lost in the wash.

But when I mixed it, we only used the double just on the choruses. At that time, I had more confidence in her singing ability. And she had, you know, I was going to sort of push my agenda. And my agenda with this song specifically was that a song is so harrowing, lyrically, that's painting such a bleak picture that, unfortunately, all of us probably at some time experience, whether it's divorce or just a relationship dying. I thought that it was best communicated in as stark a setting as possible. But when you said that I wasn't worth talking to,

I had to take your word on that. I had really specific ideas for the rhythm parts for this song, and a lot of that comes from Liz's guitar style. She does a lot of accents off the beat, doesn't play on the downbeat. The really obvious thing to do would be to play a drum pattern that hits those accents, but I had been taught never overplay. One of the things that Rolling Stones are so good at

is Charlie Watts' drumming. It's very vivid to me, you extolling the virtues of Charlie Watts. And so with Dvor's song, I wanted to have an element that complimented and pushed further the accented strumming that Liz does on that song, and that's where the percussion comes in.

What makes Dvor's song sound like a stone song, in my mind, is that it's got shakers and Cabasa playing this odd accent. And every time I hear that start, it sounds like Jimmy Miller, the producer of the Stones, playing the cowbell on honky-tongk women.

The whole song starts out with the cowbell, and then Charlie comes in with the beat. That's what makes the Stone song for so many people. It's the thing that you would hear first. And we don't have to have a bunch of big rock guitars and bluesy chords. You just need some of these very essential. It's like the whiff of, it's like a vapor of a Rolling Stone's essence.

Yeah, you just sort of like he sprits in the air and you walk through it. All the wicked guitar parts on Guyville are Casey Rice. Casey Rice to me was like the full rock flavor. He was your engineer, correct? Yes, Casey was an engineer at the studio. He'd started, I think, that year, 92 or late 91. And Casey Rice plays Smoke and Leeds. Smoking leads.

He doesn't play for the entire song, just waits, waits for two and a half minutes. And then we rock it out. Casey's guitar comes in. Part of what I loved about recording Guyville is that people dropped by to see Brad all the time. People would drop by to see Casey Rice. Either way, there was like a nice,

it was a nice way to record because there was always like new people that just might show up. You don't know who was coming to the studio that night while you're working. And so John Casey Awesome is the harmonica player. I think John Casey Awesome

was a friend of Casey's. So John Casey Awesome came into play, and we said, can you play harmonica on this? And he said, sure, I can play harmonica on whatever you want. And we just recorded him one take from the beginning of the song to the end. He just blew his brains out, just kept going and going and going. Yeah, he's playing like full velocity the entire song. Never stopped for a second. He never stopped, and he was like at 11 the entire time.

And at the end, the outro, he really was killing it. So we're like, that's all we do. All we used was the outro, and that's the only part of the song were Miontre. I go to an open high hat and play a more traditional drumbeat and we rock it out. I'm playing bass on the song. After the second chorus, it comes back to a very short verse and she sings. And the license said you had to stick around until I was dead. But if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am.

And that's the only time I think on the song that references a marriage, references a contract, which is being broken and hence the title divorce song. And I play way up the neck on the bass and abandon all the rhythm. Everything clears out for this short period. But if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am. I wanted the bass to be fragile

because Liz wasn't going to be fragile. She's brave enough to sing these words. I wanted something musical to be delicate And so have it be the big, beefy bass that suddenly just goes up the neck and decides to just be fragile. When you're in a car with someone, that's a pretty intimate environment. It's ripe for awkward interaction. And for me, divorce song, the entire thing is about that tension in that kind of, you're looking at him, he's looking at you, you're both having totally different thoughts about each other, and yet you're, like, stuck in this small confined space together.

I had a fatalist's view of love at that point. I felt like things often fell apart and it was hard to keep a relationship together. Divorce song is really about micro moments where you really want something to work out but you find your mouth speaking words as if it's not going to. Like you dare not hope.

And you have these like sensitive feelings for someone and yet you're sort of outwardly convincing yourself and everyone around you that it's probably not going to work out, it doesn't really matter. I didn't make these songs to start a career. I made these songs because they were my way of

understanding the world. They were my therapy. And now here's a divorce song by Liz Phair in its entirety. Asked for a separate room. It was late at night and we've been driving.

driving since noon. But if I would sound to you, I would have stayed in the rest of my life just to prove I was right that it's harder to be friends and lovers. And you shouldn't try to mix the two. Because if you do it and you're still unhappy, then you know that the problem is you. And it's true that I stole your lighter and it's also true that I lost the map but when you said that I wasn't worth talking to I had to take your word on that. If you know it sound to me you would have taken it and boxed it up and buried it in the ground boxed it up and buried it in the ground boxed it up and buried it in the ground Burned it up and then told me not to fire it

And you did the things you said were up to me And then accused me of trying to fuck it up But you've never been a waste of my time It's never been a drag So take a deep breath and count back from 10th And maybe you'll be alright The license said you had to stick a right to stick around until I was dead.

But if you're tired of looking at my face, I guess I already am. But you've never been a waste of my time. It's never been a drag. So take a deep breath and count back from 10. And maybe you'll be all right. Visit songexploder.com. to learn more about Liz Fair and producer Bradwood. You'll also find links to buy the song and the 25th anniversary box set.

I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that.

It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows

on my website, Rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash Live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. If you heard about a sponsor in this episode and you want to learn more, you can always go to songexploder.net slash sponsors to find all the current offers available to Song Exploder listeners. This episode was produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from intern Olivia Wood. Special thanks to Mac Burris. The illustrations on the Song Exploder website are by Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of the shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder. You can also find all the past episodes of the show on the Song Exploder website or on Apple Podcasts or Radio Public. My name is Rishi Keshe Hereway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.