Together Again,
For The First Time
By Jaime Black
photo by Allison Dyer
T
o hear Veruca Salt tell the story, it
wasn't supposed to happen like this.
"One of the things that happened
early on, we were playing a show in New
Orleans, and Vicki Peterson from The
Bangles was there," Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Nina Gordon recalls. "We were just
this young little baby band touring probably for the first time, and she came to one
of our shows, and she said, 'Watch out, you
guys, because that male record industry
world will conspire against you, and pit
you against each other, and try to pull you
apart, and that's what happened in our
band.' And we were like, 'No way. That
will never happen to us. We're such good
friends.'"
I spent time on the phone with Gordon
and her co-founder/songwriter, and lead
singer, Louise Post, who are promoting
Veruca Salt's new album, Ghost Notes. Both
shared (some) light on their shared past both personal and professional - and
speaking with a palpable, kinetic energy
about the band's current second act.
Additionally, while Ghost Notes might list
as the fifth Veruca Salt album on official
discography lists, it's really the group's
proper third full length album. That's
22 illinoisentertainer.com july 2015
because, for the first time since the late
'90s, the original, classic lineup of Veruca
Salt has reconvened, including dual leads
Post and Gordon, as well as returning original drummer Jim Shapiro and bassist
Steve Lack.
"We really had this very symbiotic relationship," Gordon continues about her
relationship with Post during their initial
run in Veruca Salt. "And so when everything started to tumble, part of it was we
were so close and it was true what Vicki
Peterson had predicated started to happen.
And we were blown to bits because we did
fall prey to all of that. The final nail on the
coffin ended up being just like a clichéd cat
fight, and we were both devastated by that
because we are feminists, and we felt really strongly that our friendship was the
thing."
Veruca Salt burst on the scene in 1994
with their inescapable alt-rock anthem
"Seether," off the group's debut full length,
American Thighs (produced by Brad Wood,
back again behind the boards for Ghost
Notes). Part of the "Next Seattle" batch of
'90s Chicago acts – along with Liz Phair,
Fig Dish and Urge Overkill among others,
the band's brash and bratty power punk
and dual female vocals quickly set them
apart, gaining the act national exposure on
rock radio and MTV. The band followed up
the momentum of Thighs with 1997's Eight
Arms to Hold You, a big, bold, shimmering
guitar rock record produced by Bob Rock
(Metallica, Mötley Crüe). That record was
jettisoned by its lead single, "Volcano
Girls," a kindred - if not thematic - followup to the smash-and-grab spirit of
"Seether" before it.
Yet unknown to (most of) the band at
the time, Eight Arms would serve as the
end of an era for Veruca Salt, with Post and
Gordon's professional relationship on the
other side of that record coming to a messy
end over personal matters. With the dissolution of their partnership came the end to
Veruca Salt as it had existed for the first
half decade. The members disbanded during the early stages of a third Salt album.
"Nina and I weren't communicating
well enough to keep everything afloat and
to keep a well oiled machine going, and so
things began to unravel," Post reveals.
"And so by the end it was sort of like they
have been unraveling for sometime. In
fact, it's like Steve Lack said he knew in
Hawaii when we were making Eight Arms
to Hold You that we were not long for this
world. He could feel it coming and he was
already sensing the end, and we didn't
know that necessarily. But Steve could see
it, he could see the writing on the wall."
Though both Gordon and Post
remained musically active following their
split, the absence of one another as singers,
songwriters, and creative collaborators
was ever-present in both artists' works.
Post continued on as the sole original
member under the Veruca Salt moniker,
releasing two full lengths albums: 2000's
intensely intimate and seethingly (no pun
intended) wounded Resolver, and 2006's
under the radar IV, as well as the Officially
Dead and Lords of Sounds and Lesser Things
EPs. Gordon, meanwhile, also put out two
albums: the AOR -friendly Tonight and the
Rest of My Life in 2000, and 2006's Bleeding
Heart Graffiti. Surprisingly -for Record
Store Day 2014, something largely incredible happened: the classic lineup of Veruca
Salt released new music, in the form of the
MMXIV EP, which featured two brand
new band compositions. Suddenly, Veruca
Salt - the Veruca Salt people think of when
they think of Veruca Salt - existed again.
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