Back in the 90’s we weren’t so conscious about labelling everything with a distinct genre. Music you see was still free in those days, and Rock and Roll let’s face it has always been Rock and Roll. L7 was one of those bands that exuded cool and whatever label you stuck on them was always going to fall off anyway. Their third record ‘Bricks Are Heavy’ celebrated its 30th Anniversary last year and was a record that epitomized all that was best about the unrestrained Rock and Roll of the times. They were band that everyone could enjoy whether you were a Rock and Roller, a Punk or a Riot Grrrl… They’re heading back down under to celebrate the 31st and we caught up with Donita to talk art, music, courting controversy and all points in between.
Mark: Good morning!
Donita: Yes! Good evening!
Mark: We’re fighting the winter down here but I bet it’s a lovely afternoon over there! Are you still in Los Angeles?
Donita: I’m in Los Angeles in my studio/office. Well it’s supposed to be my studio but there’s a lot of papers and notebooks around, it’s kind of messy.
Mark: I shall call this my studio then as it sounds pretty much like that, well the messy part anyway. A few years ago now, well maybe a little further back you were one of the first bands I ever saw all on my own! I can’t remember the dates exactly, but you we’re playing, I think, with Nirvana in the U.K.
Donita: Yes we played with Nirvana in 1990 in the UK.
Mark: And then a couple of years later I remember seeing you again with Faith No More. But I of course was there for L7!
Donita: (laughs) Yes, we shared management with Faith No More and they put out their first record on the label that we were on then – Slash – with Warner Brothers distribution. We’d known Roddy from Faith No More for quite a long time, and Jennifer had known Billy their bass player for a very long time. So we were pals with those guys.
Mark: They were great days for music. An exciting scene and a feeling that Geres didn’t matter back then – you could like Punk, Hard Rock, Alternative, it didn’t matter and Grunge was still really just on the horizon.
Donita: Yeah I found more diversity of shows in the U.K. In the U.S. you played with underground bands – we didn’t play with Metal bands and we didn’t play with Hardcore Punk bands, we got to play with teh underground weird bands that were starting out. But I found in the U.K. when I would go out to see a show there that the bill was very eclectic and I liked that very much.
Mark: I always loved that aspect – that you goy to taste all kinds of music on the one bill. Everyone was just hungry then and it worked. Now here we are a few years on and you’re coming to Australia with, I guess not many bands release a classic third album?
Donita: (Laughs)
Mark: A lot f people I know have a real soft spot for that album and where we are in Perth you’ve sold out which for the West of Australia is a great feat, not only selling out teh show, but selling it so quickly.
Donita: I know, isn’t that cool? I was very pleased and surprised by that. That was really great, and Melbourne, we’re on our third show now. The only thing that’s a bummer is that they’re not all ages shows. I do like to play all ages, or at least 18 and over as much as possible so I feel bad about that, but there’s a lot of hoops to jump through like insurance and liability, so that’s the only thing – I wish the kids could see us. But other than that, it’s all great.
Mark: Maybe next time? You’ve gone down so well we will have to have you back. ‘Bricks are Heavy’ is a wonderful album, I still listen to it regularly, I bought all the singles at the time. It’s a record that’s really stood the test of time when so many albums of the same era haven’t/ Whay do you think that is?
Donita: Well thank you for saying that first off, that’s very kind and flattering. I think, and I’m not sure as I can’t speak for the listener. But I think when I hear it, it’s still pretty catchy, the songs are pretty strong and I think some of the lyrics are pretty good. You know, some of it’s good songs, people like good songs. I would say, as objectively as I can (laughs) that there are some great songs on there, if not all of them on that record.
Mark: It’s one of those rare albums that I can still play front to back, that’s to me the test of time. I loved the documentary on the band that came out a few years back too.
Donita: The heartbreak of L7? (laughs) Yeah that was a trip, I’m glad we did it, a lot of it was our own footage. It took a long time and I was very involved with the edit. There were many, many different edits of that. But I think it turned out pretty truthful. I mean certainly there are some things on there, we’re not gonna completely spill our souls, but I think people related to it. When you go into the arts, there are sacrifices and sometimes t pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Mark: It is, that’s how life works I guess. Butch Vig produced ‘Bricks are Heavy’ he did a cracking job I think. Talk us through those earlier recordings and when it came to number three was there a feeling at the time, as studio veterans by then, that you’d created something pretty special?
Donita: Well we made our first record, that took a while, that was with Epitaph and that took about a month or something because we didn’t really know what we were doing so much even though Brett Gurewitz was a great guy leading that project. But then on Sub Pop we recorded that very quickly: it was really just “Roll tape and go!” So that was exciting and we had to really kind of (laughs) concentrate and get it together because there was just no money for the recording. It was just “Go” it was live “Go!” So with Butch even though we were with Slash Records under the Warners umbrella they wanted to make it a bit more methodical. They wanted to take it song by song and instrumentation by instrumentation. So we did the drums in L.A. in a big Studio called Sound City – the place that Dave Grohl made a film about. Butch loved the drum sound there. So that made us feel like big shots but then we went to Maddison Wisconsin in the dead of Winter and did all of the overdubs. We were there for about a month doing that and Butch was encouraging our melodic side and the backing vocals that I wanted to try. Butch likes hooks and so do I! I think when we were starting out we were just trying to play as tough as we could, you know ‘melody be damned!’ (laughs) But as time went on I was like “Hey I like Pop! I like Nancy Sinatra and The Beatles and all that stuff .” So he encouraged that side of us.
Mark: And it worked so well there were some great songs on there and it didn’t hurt that it all blew up in the press and all kinds of things happened in the U.K. around 1992! It was a whole lot of attention in those pre-internet days. I remember as a teenager watching ‘The Word’ that short lived U.K. TV show and then there was Reading! Do you get sick of being asked about those moments?
Donita: No! I just wish we had had more shocking moments! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Donita: And a few more appearances on television to talk about! That was just fun, and when I see the YouTube of that show I just think it’s hilarious!
Mark: (laughs)
Donita: And that set! it was so wild looking with all the kids dancing, it was like fantasy! It was like adream come true, you know, I love that stuff!
Mark: For me that was like my generation’s Sex Pistols moment who had that infamous TV appearance many years before. Not something you could get away with in the States!
Donita: No, no way! (laughs) We would be cut so fast from the TV to the editing room floor! (laughs) I loved that psychedelic digital background and the green screens – it was fun!
Mark: A crazy show for the kids and one of the great moments from there.
Mark: As far as the shows go for the ‘Bricks Are Heavy’ shows are you going to be playing the record from start to finish or interspersing it with other songs?
Donita: We’re doing it front to back and that is challenging as we’re playing ‘Wargasm’ right out of the gate. ‘Wargasm’ is a tough one to do live, in fact we had retired it in 1992 because I sing in a very low register on that song, it’s hard to project it vocally, and it is like Math Rock! (Donita sings the riff) It’s not three chords like ‘Pretend We’re Dead and ‘Shitlist’! So there’s a lot of changes, there’s a lot of half steps, there’s a lot of down-stroking, eighth-notes, and it’s played very quickly. So we used to warm-up into it but now it’s barnstorming right out of the gate! So that’s been challenging but people love it! So we start with that and then we play all the way through front to back, all the way to ‘This Ain’t Pleasure’ which we had never played live before, and that’s also a barnstormer (laughs). So we start and finish with the two fastest songs on the record but people really dig it. But then after that we dig into, you know, the rest of our repertoire! You know the wannabe hits!
Mark: Do you play much off ‘Scatter the Rats’ I really enjoyed that when it came back a few years back?
Donita: Thanks a lot, we have to switch it up but we’ve been playing ‘Stadium West’ and ‘Fighting the crave’ from that one.
Mark: Great I must admit I did also love the single ‘Burn Baby’.
Donita: We were playing that for a while, then we retired it, it’s cool to do that and mix it up – we’ll play songs for a while then put them on the backburner, I like to keep things as fresh for the fans as we can, you know. Some bands will just play teh same set again and again, but it is good to work your brain and play new stuff. You gotta give the fans some new stuff because everything is ‘published’ onto YouTube anyway, so everybody’s seen a lot of the set, so you have to throw in some curveballs every now and again. Which we will be doing.
Mark: I can never bring myself to do that. I know a lot of friends who will look at setlists wanting to know everything about the show, but to me it’s always been about the moment, after shooting the first few songs of the show it’s camera in the pocket and let it all happen, that’s what music should be.
Donita: Yeah, I hate spoilers. I think it’s cool that people are documenting us because there were very few people documenting us back in the day because cameras would be confiscated and there was no chance to sneak it a video. So it’s a whole new world of people filming us and posting about us and blah, blah, blah. But when they film the whole set! It’s like “come on? Really” It’s a little egregious in my opinion, even though hopefully they’re just doing it as uber-fans, and not, you know trying to get YouTube views or something. But I like the element of surprise always so I don’t want to hear about a book I just want to start reading it, I don’t want to hear about a movie if it’s good, I just want to go see it. (laughs) I don’t want any plot points, and that’s the way I am about going to see a live band.
Mark: Absolutely, let’s hope one day we’ll get back to that. I’d love to see a show where everyone is taking in the experience rather than glued to their phones.
Donita: Yeah I would say that for the most part our fans are rocking. There might be someone at the back filming the whole thing, but the people at the front, they might take a couple of photos, but they’re rocking out! They’ve got their first in the air, not their phone at their face!
Mark: As it should be!
Donita: Oh yes!
Mark: So that leads nicely into something that I always love to ask. What is it that makes a great song for you?
Donita: I just heard a great quote, Tom Petty didn’t say it but he repeated it: “Three chords and the truth!” I think that is really great but… I also like a bridge and a middle 8 when appropriate. I like a good vibe on a song, a good pulse and a groove, and some hooks hopefully. But I can also dig bands like Kraftwerk and just zone out, I can dig a pulse and dig ambient stuff, but a good song I think has a certain catchiness to it.
Mark: I think its personal. it’s about the moment and the connection. For me if a song can take you somewhere, or intensifies the moment. A lot of L7 songs for me I just want to rock out and enjoy life!
Donita: You know it’s interesting because I listened to public radio all day pretty much, but I also channel surf. And if I hear a song on the radio that I like I know it instantly. So I’ll look it up and I’m old school so I’ll buy it on I-Tunes and I may not even know who the artist is, but I but it because I dig it, and it’s usually songs that are not hits. I would be a terrible A&R person because I don’t know how to pick a hit, but maybe that’s because hits aren’t so great anymore. But there was a time when if it was catchy out of the gate, it could be a hit. (laughs) But I usually know if I dig a song, and I’m not kidding, between the first 5 or 10 seconds.
Mark: I love that immediate connection. If you could have been a ‘fly on the wall’ to witness the creation of any great record in the history of Rock and Roll, just to see how the magic happened, what would you love to have seen being made?
Donita: Ooh! A Bowie record probably. I don’t know which one because they’re all so good. But his creative process is fascinating to me because he studies a lot of different artists and he also comes up with his own twist on stuff. He was just very much ahead of his time with his schtick but he was right at the perfect time musically throughout the 70’s. And he changed every record! Every record had a new look and a new sound, so I’d love to see him work on his own or the work that he did with Lou Reed on Transformer, adding those backing vocals that totally make a lot of that record for me. I just think he had a very keen ear for catchiness.
Mark: He made some wonderful albums, I love the 70’s stuff, and I’m a sucker for those early records, but I love it all really. I can never choose between ‘Diamond Dogs’, ‘Aladin Sane’ even ‘Ziggy’ – all just wonderful.
Donita: And then ‘Heroes’ you know! The Duke, and ‘Golden Years’ and his Soul period! He’s just very Hep Cat!
Mark: Everything! We’ll take everything Bowie!
Donita: Yes!
Mark: And to close a very easy one – what is the meaning of life?
Donita: Good God! What is the meaning of life? Maybe one should watch that Monty Python movie? Do they explain it in there? Because I really don’t know what the meaning of life is. I think if you’re a creative person it’s really just to try to keep going, and if you’re a person that does really good deeds, then keep your chin up. A lot of people do a lot of hard work that is really to benefit other people and that can get really depressing – so I think that meaningful work may be part of it for some. But everybody has meaning and everyone can do meaningful work, just take pride in what you do I guess? But I don’t know, I’m not a philosopher, I’m just a cavewoman!
Mark: (laughs)
Donita: (laughs) A cavewoman who writes songs!
Mark: And some damn great ones too! I can’t wait to get you over. Thank you so much for your time, it’s been great to catch up. Before we go I have to ask, is there any new music on the way?
Donita: Yes. we’ve got a new single coming out in September.
Mark: That’s great news. And next time we meet I guess it will be the show in Perth in December, sure to be the show of the year!?
Donita: Thank you for having me. Is it really going to be the show of the year? Or one of the shows of the year? That would be amazing! Let’s just say it is! Say it’s going to be the show of the year Mark!
Mark: It’s definitely going to be the show of the year, that’s my final word on the matter!
Donita: (laughs) Let’s commit to that!
Mark: (laughs)
Donita: Thanks so much for having me.