On being misunderstood, working with Ryan Adams, and the dawn of Girlville.
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Phair, now 52, knows what it feels like to have the tide turn against you.
But Phair has never put much stock in typical markers of success.
Im not Liz Phair anymore.
I become the observer rather than the observed.
[In spring 2018], my friend Caroline had come into town, and we were having lunch.
She said, Im coming to see you next month in Nashville.
Im like, Im not playing Nashville next month.
She said, I bought tickets.
Youre playingExile in Guyvillein its entirety.
I was like, Wait.What?
This cold sweat went through my body.
No one actually told me when those dates were.
It was two months of dates!
When the tour started, I sobbed on my way to the first gig.
I didnt remember how to be that person.
It took a few shows before I could be onstage and not freak out.
I cant be an artist and think of myself as a star.
I cant do the two at the same time.
Some people are born with a theatricality that I dont have.
TheExilesong that pops up in my head most often isnt one of the famous songs, but Canary.Interesting!
Thats one of the more personal songs.
I had a people-pleasing personality.
And my older brother was in trouble so much that I was the designated good child.
There wasnt much room for my resentments and rebellion.
That built up until I exploded.
I remember being in geometry class, and I kept getting 100s.
He turned around one time and looked at me with such resentment.
He hated my guts.
I remember thinking,Fuck it, Im done with this.
My life became getting onstage, when I was never someone who shouldve been onstage to begin with.
The one thing that I really didnt want to do became my whole job!
And there was no way to get out of it.
Oberlin was the best school that would take me after I stopped going to high school.
What were your emotional problems?My brother had problems.So it made … [sighs].
I dont want to drag my family through anything, you know?
So Im not gonna talk about it.
But that was a stressor that was going on.
Were your parents accepting of your rebellion against upper-middle-class values?Not at all.
My mother went to Wellesley.
My dad went to Yale.
The life of the mind, literature, theater, the symphony are all very meaningful to them.
They had a good life, and they wanted that for me.
But becauseI was adopted,they took a somewhat hands-off approach.
Had I been their natural-born child, would they have allowed as much freedom?
Theres something about the society of men that thinks they have it all dialed in.
Youre living in a world we made for you.
Great,but we madeyou.Right?
Exilewas about believing in my perspective on life, against considerable pressure to conform to their takes on things.
Its about showing them that I can play their game and do all right in it.
I felt constrained and invisible, and I wanted to kick their asses.
Because youre right, they were jerks.They acted smarter and more skilled than me.
My father was an infectious-disease doctor.
Death, dying, and illness were things I knew about.
It gave me a perspective that music is one of the good things in life.
Theres no need to parse it to death.
If you like a song you could hear at TGIFs, thats fine.
I was ahead of my time, in that sense.
In the 80s, there were clear winners and losers.
That doesnt exist anymore.
Now theres more diversity in our culture.
TheGuyvillesong that brings it into focus for me is Help Me Mary.
Its almost spooky how you predicted the future.
Weave my disgust into fame / And watch how fast they run to the flame.Voila.
Its almost like witchcraft.
Did you know fame was gonna happen?If you talk to Matador, yeah.
I walked in there and said, Im gonna make you a million dollars.
It appeared like I was some ingenue.
A brilliant primitive?Yes.
I was a sophisticated artist at that point but angry and depressed and unhappy.
John Henderson, who ran the label Feel Good All Over, had been my roommate in Chicago.
He heardmy Girly-Sound tapes,and I was stuck living at home.
Hes like, Give me $100 a month and you might stay in my second bedroom.
And then he would sort ofMy Fair Ladyme.
Listen to this music.
Now listen to this.
All the men who mansplained music to me made me better.
And this is very muchme:I said, What phone call do we need to make?
So yeah, I cold-called Gerard and said, I need money to make a record.
You should sign me.
and Madonna didnt mean I couldnt make indie rock.
That was my goal, to be like, Shut the fuck up about Green River versus Fugazi.
Its not that fucking hard!
I thought Id make a big splash in the indie-music scene.
I didnt know national attention would follow.
I wasnt thinking along gender lines.
I wasnt thinking about branding.Ooh, good girl says dirty things.
Good girl says dirty thingsis a fantastic concept.Thats my brand!
I even sped up the tracks on Girly-Sound to make myself sound even more like a little girl.
That was the game I was playing.
The person I was as a human being and the person people expected to meet were really far apart.
Whom did they expect to meet?Someone taller.
Were there also assumptions about how easy it was to get you into bed?Yeah.
There was a period when everyone was saying Id slept with them, and I hadnt.
That seems to be what I remember from my early 30s.
And it pissed me off.
I get hit on a lot.
Everybody sort of takes a shot.
Because men think youre game?Not just that.
It feels like I understand the male mind better than some people.
This whole idea that men just want sex, I dont think thats true.
I think theyre actually looking for intimacy.
I think thats more what theyre craving.
So when your indie recordGuyvillebecame a phenomenon, was that difficult?Yes.
If Id only had success in the indie world, my music would have been contextualized more accurately.
They would have understood a little more of the art project behind it.
Rather than thinking that I was literally saying I wanted to be your blow-job queen, you know?
Once youre in a wider world, andPeoplemagazine picks it up, the nuance is gone.
And of course, Matador was like, Keep going!
Keep up the blow-job songs.More blow-job songs!
I was in no way prepared for the attention.
Matador was great, but emotionally, I didnt have any help.
Suddenly, the attention was national and my parents knew about it.
Was that a surprise?I didnt think they would even hear the record.
I believed that only Wicker Park and maybe Brooklyn and the Pacific Northwest would listen to it.
I mean, I was also stoned a lot back then.
So that explains some of it.
Your parents never asked you to send them a copy of your record?No.
They were quite disappointed that I was going into entertainment.
While everyone else was saying, Youre amazing, my family was like, You saidwhatin public?
Fame is a dirty word in my household.
So its not that you used the wordcuntin a song No, it was that too.
But mostly, they thought entertainment was dirty and undignified?Yeah.
And you know what?
The truth is, they were right.
I was someone people could relate to.
Because I was more mainstream than the people I was around.
The Jesus Lizard?Yeah.
And Ihadbeen a good girl for a very long time.
You said you were stoned a lot during this period.
Was that to escape?Probably.
When I get high, the world shuts up and I can focus on creativity.
I have to write sober, have to perform sober.
But when I get high, my guitar playing gets so much more interesting.
But then I have to finish it a song, my book while Im sober.
What do you do thats different?Im weird.
I pursue wrongness if it excites me.
In eighth grade, I learned the basic chords from a really wonderful guitar teacher.
As a visual artist, I look at the neck of a guitar as a canvas.
I like to add jazzy notes or weird, wrong notes.
Brad [Wood] will tell you I lean annoyingly toward jazz.
When I perform now, no one hears my actual guitar playing because of all the other instrumentation.
Tell everyone else to turn down.I like the way we sound.
I tour for one reason: the fans.
I dont make a lot of money at all because I stage it to within whatever budget weve got.
I make some money, but not as much as youd think.
If youre a rock star, youve got fun money.
I never seem to get to the fun money part, and Id like to.
When you madeFunstyle, you were already making fun of yourself as a has-been whod been forgotten by everyone.
And that was eight years ago.Im not sure what youre getting at.
It wasnt until he left for college four years ago that I really wanted to put a record out.
During the puberty years, the teenage years, you have to be around more.
Thats when it gets very real.
What are you going to do with the songs you made with Ryan Adams?Nothing.
Did you finish any songs?No.
But he was unreliable, and I wasnt willing to go along with his process.
What was his process?Im not gonna go.
It goes back to being a child: Sit still and look pretty.
When I think about #MeToo, I think about my determination to continue forward.
Did I take him up on it?
Thatsnothing.Guys hit on girls all the time.
Can I ask a question?
Out of everything in the book, why is the Ryan Adams thing such an interesting topic?
Because hes been in the news, and its a pithy way to discuss sex and power.It worries me.
Theres an aspect that ends up being reductivist, and it contributes to the problem rather than solving it.
The real aspect is, can women be heard?
Can we work and be equal contributors?
Youre not the only one singling out Ryan Adams as a hot talking point, and its sad.
It does need to be talked about, but so do the larger issues.
Lets talk about theLiz Phairalbum …I want to talk !
Nobody ever asks me about it.
I love listening to those joke songs.
I listen toFunstylemore than a lot of my other material.
Those songs arent gonna help you with your emotional problems.
You cant help but want to fuck around with them.
Liz Phair was an album someGuyvillefans hated because you tried a mainstream sound.
But the language and the concept have to be broad.
I get a big high out of throwing myself into something new.
As my mom said, Oh, great, something else youre not qualified to do.
I didnt considerLiz Phairthe same asWhip-SmartorWhitechocolatespaceegg.I can compartmentalize.
None of this isme.If you want to know me, come see my visual art.
Meet me when I was 9.
Liz Phair isnt me, so what does it matter if Im co-writing?
IsntWhitechocolatespaceegga precursor toLiz Phair a little bit of a warning that you would leave indie rock?
With Shitloads of Money, its like you wanted to start scaring people off.Not really.
If you listen to Girly-Sound, what do you hear?
The songs are ridiculous.
Theyre talking about money, about spending, about pop culture.
My manager said, I want to know why you change styles so much.
True me is me and a guitar.
But thats what you fucking pay us for!
This is what kills me.
You pay us because we create realities for you.
And no one ever claps for that.
They want it to be confessional, like it just dropped out of my ass.
I should be paid for my ability to create what doesnt exist thats what Im really good at.
You need three things in art.
It needs to be true to your soul.
It needs to be resonant in the greater culture so a lot of people feel it.
Those are the things Im always searching for and failing to find, most of the time.
People talk aboutyour two Capitol albums as sellouts.Did it at least work?
Did you get paid?I got a big check when Matador signed to Atlantic.
And then when they went to Capitol, I got another big check.
I made a good chunk off touringLiz Phair, which was hard-earned.
I think its impressive that Ive been able to keep a career going.
Go to the next band.
Its no big deal.
Youre giving away too much power to a band.
I feel like were talking aroundMeghan ORourkes 2003 reviewofLiz Phair.Yeah.
The [review that called me a] sellout.
She pissed me off because I thought she was taking cheap shots at me as a woman.
I dont believe that even if I were 70 and wearing something hot that theres anything wrong with that.
I want 70-year-olds to feel hot!
What she did was like a real public shaming.
[She said] it was shameful and I was a terrible mother for doing that.
I say, give me more freedom while Im here on this earth.
Meghan ought to try wearing some hot clothes and having a good time.
She might be happier.
With record reviews, I dont even mind, if you write it well.
Im kind of proudPitchfork gave me a 0.0forLiz Phair.
Mim Udovitchwrote a Slate reviewthat really summarized the reaction.
She said the album didnt represent the artist that Liz Phair fans thought they knew.
People thought they knew you.They didnt.
I think they do now.
Ive been more open, more myself.
But you cant have ownership over a band.
I have never gottenmadat a band.
I do not relate to that.
I couldnt get enough work in Chicago.
And L.A. has so much pie!
In the song, you worry whether hell be okay.
Is he?[Sighs.]
Hes gone through some things that were difficult.
Hes going to be okay, I think.
Hes proud of that song.
But we dont talk about it in his world, Im strictly mom.
Did becoming a mom change the way you thought about your music?It did for a while.
Youre listening to different stuff, youve gotTeletubbieson the television, and that converged with the pop period.
I had all this angst about it.
When I became a mother, I had a totally different perspective.
I realized it was ridiculous:Oh, you poor thing.
Your job is to get up onstage and sing, and people clap for you.
Did motherhood make you more artistically conservative?No.
came in that period.Instead of complaining about life, I got more positive, I hate to say.
He always was, and still is.
Bowie is still in the back of your mind?Sometimes.
I just tried to do some Modern Loversy songs.
I enjoyed going into Jonathan Richman territory.
Im gonna use him as a muse.
All the record labels heard the new songs and were like, That doesnt sound likeGuyville.
People literally said that to you?They say it all the time.
I suffer from moderate claustrophobia.
Crowds are hard I dont like being hemmed in.
Theres always an exit strategy in my mind.
I was a sophisticated visual artist before I madeGuyville.
I was working for Leon Golub and Nancy Spero in New York, and Ed Paschke in Chicago.
I was doing big, black charcoals about disease and identity.
And when I got locked into thisGuyvillething, I felt like,Fuck, its a trap.
UntilLiz Phair, I was trying to get out.
I will gnaw my own foot off to get out of any kind of trap.
Guyville was not my home.
Guyvillefans want you to live in Guyville?Tough shit.
And Im not living in Winnetka either.
Theres now a generation of young indie-rock women who admire or emulateGuyville.
It was always my aim to …
This is a hard interview.
The trouble at home was something I couldnt talk about, and I still dont want to.
But I want people to say whats hard and whats hurtful for them.
I wanted to change the world in certain ways, mostly for women and largely for myself.
Its why I want to get back out there.
My Liz Phair now are these young women.
They give me motivation, excitement, a sense of safety, and inspiration.
Do you have a piece of paper?
I saw this Venn diagram on a young womans Twitter page, the header.
[Phair draws an illustration on a piece of paper.]
I want that on my epitaph.
Its the fucking story of my life.
Thats the loneliness I live with, at all times.
But all of a sudden I can see them.
I lived in a SoMa loft with my friend Nora Maccoby.
She bugged out, so he and I hung out together.
He said, Record your songs.
Send them just to me, not to anyone else.
We did everything wrong in San Francisco.
We partied all day long.
Wed go out and make a run at get men to buy us lunches and dinners.
We had three outfit changes a day.
Wed be high for most of the day, or looking for weed.
Why did you leave?I ran out of money and moved back home.
Get your shit together.
I sold my art to people for $300 apiece.
I had a safety net I could go home and do laundry but not much of one.
My parents were fed up with the dilettante lifestyle I was leading.
I was 22 when I graduated college, and 24 when I madeGuyville.
Where did you make the Girly-Sound cassette tapes?It happened over the course of a year.
Did you tell anyone you were making music?No, not at all.
I played guitar and wrote songs for years, and would never perform them in front of other people.
Maybe thats why my style is so, whats the word?
And you write that you were unable to date for ten years after that.
When was that?That was ten years ago.
I date, but Ive had trouble getting into a solid relationship.
Ive been a serial monogamist my entire life.
But the older I get, the harder it is to find a match.
Its hard to get someone who wants both.
Theres also a chapter in your book about having an affair while you were married.
Id been working on some music.
I realized instantly, no.
Right after the Rory episode, I was paralyzed in life.
Just crying every night.
That was one of the things that pulled me back to the living.
Ive been saved so many times by other peoples honesty.
And I wanted to be that.
I wanted to contribute.
Whats happening in theWhitechocolatespaceeggsong Only Son?Thats brother.
Im writing from thepoint of view of my brother.Table for One is also written from his point of view.
I dont think hes spent as much time thinking about it as I have.
We come from the same adoption agency were not related [by blood].
A lot of my problems and his stem from being adopted.
Theres a testing of boundaries, like, Will you love me even if Im bad?
Theres insecure attachment youre always expecting someone will give you away.
How awful.It is hard.
My parents loved us to within an inch of our lives.
We had a secure and stable household.Wewere the disruptive elements.
Mom and dad have it dialed in, which can give you a bad complex.
Youre like, Whats wrong with me that I cant replicate this nice life?
And youve still never tried to find your birth parents?No.
I have enough people I love, never mind a whole other family I have to check in on.
But Im not ready, and probably never will be, to interact with them.
You dont think meeting them could help you resolve some issues?No.
Those things formed very young.
Are you a parent?
I am.So you know about those first two weeks of bonding.
And I didnt get that bonding.
I just sat by myself.
I think that does something.
It also makes me search for who I am.
What is love supposed to feel like?
What is healthy love?
It made me sensitive to the deeper questions because the trauma was probably deep.
