Gothic Theatre
Maybelline "Chicks with Attitude featuring Liz Phair
One of the brightest talents among the wave of strong-willed female songwriters who burst on the scene in the early ‘90s, Liz Phair figured prominently in creating an environment in which brazen upstarts like Alanis Morissette could flourish. Along with Polly Jean Harvey, Courtney Love, and (to a lesser extent) Tori Amos, Phair combined intelligence with raw sexuality to subvert the eye-batting coyness that had characterized most girl groups of the ’80s. Adding to Phair’s appeal was her way of couching explicitness not in punk ferocity, as one might expect, but rather in the sort of pop melodies that could often pass for children’s songs, albeit delivered with a bit of an edge. All things considered, itYs difficult to imagine that such grand-scale, female-oriented productions as the Lilith Fair tours could have occurred were it not for the trailblazing ways of Phair and her like-minded peers.
Born on April 17, 1967, Elizabeth Clark Phair was adopted and raised by a physician father (he heads the Infectious Disease department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago) and a culturally minded mother who works as an art historian. Growing up in the affluent Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Phair was nurtured by her parents, who encouraged her creative proclivities. Although she was especially drawn to visual arts in her adolescence (indeed, she eventually graduated from college with an Art History degree), she began writing songs on piano as a grade-schooler, and by the time she reached junior high, she was taking guitar lessons. At age 13, she also struck up an acquaintance with future actress Julia Roberts (the two met at summer camp), but according to Phair, the girlsY burgeoning friendship was scuttled by a clash of egos.
While attending Oberlin College in Ohio, Phair hooked into a thriving local music scene and continued her tentative efforts to compose songs. Upon graduating, she moved to San Francisco, where she intended to pursue a career in art. Instead, she spent most of her time jamming in her living room with Chris Brokaw (future guitarist for the band Come), who was instantly smitten with PhairYs songwriting. Drifting back to Chicago, Phair divided her time between creating charcoal sketches and recording songs in her bedroom on a cheap four-track tape recorder. Eventually, she compiled her work on two cassettes, which she titled Girly Sound, and sent copies to Brokaw and one other friend. Dubs of the demos began circulating throughout the East Coast indie scene, and by 1992, samples of PhairYs work had fallen into the hands of executives at Matador Records.
Duly impressed, Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy gave Phair a $3,000 advance to begin work on a single. Soon, however, the scope of the project escalated, and with help from producer-drummer Brad Wood, Phair began developing a song cycle structured loosely as a response to the Rolling StonesY 1972 classic, Exile On Main Street. Though the connection seems tenuous on the surface, Phair took the concept seriously, as she explained to Request magazine in 1993.
“The more I listened to [Exile On Main Street], the more it was perfectly appropriate. I began to organize my songs into a correspondence with themes IYd seen in Exile. I made lists and lists of what ExileYs songs were—three words or less, what kind of song is this?—and made tons of sequence lists, different orders of the songs I wanted to do. It was like writing a thesis, taking a song of mine and somehow putting it in a dialogue with a song on Exile, both sonically and lyrically.”
Released in mid-1993, PhairYs own Exile in Guyville (the term “Guyville” was a mild slap at ChicagoYs near-exclusively male indie music scene) generated a murmur among the rock press that became a deafening roar by yearYs end. Spiked with lyrical explicitness heretofore unthinkable for a pop-oriented female singer, Guyville triggered a wave of accolades that focused on PhairYs melodic inventiveness as well as her sexual candor. Rewarded with “Album of the Year” honors by both Spin and the Village Voice (Rolling Stone merely ran a cover photo of Phair proclaiming, “A Rock & Roll Star Is Born”), Phair embarked on her first tour in early 1994, despite suffering from serious stage fright. By the spring of that year, she had also appeared on the covers of both Elle and Vogue, and even the powers that be at Playboy solicited her for a pictorial (she turned them down).
In the wake of GuyvilleYs success, Phair renegotiated a six-figure contract with Matador, which had recently entered a partnership arrangement with major label Atlantic Records. The deal called for five albums over the next several years, and Phair immediately set out to create her follow-up. Titled Whip-Smart, the 1994 release struggled to meet the high expectations generated by its predecessor. Critics were not as kind to Phair’s sophomore effort, and though to date it has outsold her debut (SoundScan reports Guyville’s sales at 296,000; Whip-Smart’s at 347,000), it wasn’t the commercial breakthrough some anticipated. Contributing to Whip-Smart’s mixed reception was PhairYs refusal to tour extensively behind the record, a decision which drew the ire of Matador co-president Chris Lombardi. Little did he know that four years would pass before the singer-songwriter would release another full-length album of new material.
As it turned out, PhairYs reasons for ducking out of the limelight were both honorable and valid. In late 1995, she and her live-in boyfriend, film editor Jim Staskauskas, were married, and despite a considerable amount of session work with producer Scott Litt in 1996, PhairYs marital contentment seemed to overshadow her interest in making an album. The sessions with Litt were eventually tabled, and Phair retreated even more deeply into domestic life. On Dec. 21, 1996, she gave birth to a son (Nicholas), which extended her leave of absence from the music business for another year.
Rumblings of PhairYs re-emergence began in the spring of 1998, when it was announced that she would join Sarah McLachlanYs Lilith Fair tour for a series of shows. Several weeks later, a date was firmed up for the release of her long-awaited third album, and on Aug. 10 the unwieldy titled whitechocolatespaceegg hit record stores. Gathering songs from sessions produced by Litt, Brad Wood, and Phair herself, the new release eschews much of PhairYs bawdy tendencies in favor of examining the dynamics of motherhood and marriage. Following her Lilith Fair dates, which end in mid-August, Phair will embark on an international tour in support of the album.
