Planet of Sound, February 1993, Number 12
"This could adversely affect the show..." -Matthew Sweet, after his first, pre-concert, taste of Skyline chili...
"My husband says I'm a hyper-psychotic or something..." -waitress at Skyline, serving Matthew Sweet and band...
HISTORY
After graduating high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1983, MATTHEW SWEET moved to Athens GA, and became enmeshed in the thriving college music scene - with The Buzz of Delight, a studio project showcasing his own songs - and in a supporting role as guitarist for Oh-OK, a band that also included Linda Stipe and Linda Hopper (who has recently resurfaced as vocalist for Magnapop). When dB Records simultaneously released EPs for both bands, Sweet "finally got tired of putting so much energy into Oh-OK, when it wasn't really my (own) thing...when I quit their band, they really hated me...(but) I always thought Linda Hopper was great, it's really great to see her doing something..."
THE ULTIMATUM
Sweet's work with Buzz of Delight led to a solo career which has seen three solo LP's released on three different labels - Inside (Columbia, 1986), Earth (A&M, 1989), and the flawless masterpiece Girlfriend, originally recorded for A&M. While in the process of recording Girlfriend, Sweet's main supporter at the label resigned in the midst of a power struggle. Doubting the new regime's willingness to provide any real promotion for the release, Sweet and his manager confronted A&M, asking for either a promise of support or the rights to sell the album elsewhere...MATTHEW: "So I got dropped, but it wasn't like I got dropped out of the blue...it didn't upset me so much at the time, but as time went on, and every single label in the world turned it down, then it got a little depressing..."
SWEET REVENGE
Zoo Entertainment eventually recognized Girlfriend for the gem that it is, released it in late 1991, provided solid promotional support, and watched happily as sales and radio air play exceeded everyone's projections...Eager to cash in on Sweet's a new popularity, Columbia re-issued Inside (previously unavailable on CD), but A&M is yet to follow suit with Earth...MATTHEW: "(Inside) was my anti-alternative record...Earth is more like Girlfriend...I don't expect (A&M) to be kicking themselves, (but) if they released it now, they'd be admitting their mistake...(for fans of Girlfriend) I wouldn't recommend (either album), but if someone just intrinsically liked the music so much, they could find things to like on those records...I expect people to hate everything I do...almost all records are easy to hate..."
ORGANIC SOUND
The live drum, loose, garage-rock feeling which works so well on Girlfriend was a change in direction from Sweet's previous work...MATTHEW: "For the longest time I tried to make the drums sound really natural through programming, but (then) I started playing drums on my demos, and ultimately I found that even my terrible live drumming just felt a lot better with the music...the drums aren't that important to me, but that step turned around my viewpoint on how to record the music..."
SWEET/YOUNG THING
"(Neil Young) is somebody I like, but I didn't get into anything of his until about three years ago...when I started getting into a really dry, basic kind of sound (on the Girlfriend demos), (my manager) kept bringing up Crazy Horse...and finally he (made) a tape (with) some stuff like "Cinnamon Girl" on it, and when I heard that, it made a lot more sense to me...it sort of affirmed for me that that was a cool direction to go in..."
STRESS REACTION
"Early in the year ('92) I toured for about three months straight, really solid, it was an incredibly busy schedule, flying around doing TV shows, tons of interviews, all day every day, video shoots, and all this stuff I'd never done before, and it was really overwhelming-at the end of that tour I was supposed to leave and go on a promo tour in Australia, but instead I had this bizarre nervous breakdown, where I started crying spontaneously, and vomiting all the time..."
HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT
Unknown to many, Sweet wears glasses off stage...MATTHEW: "The other night we came out of this show, and there were a bunch of fans waiting for autographs, and I walked right past them and they were saying, 'Is he coming out? Is he coming out?' "
For the past fall's tour (which included a blistering show at Bogart's), Sweet's live band included guitarist Ivan Julian (Shriekback, Richard Hell), bassist Brad Jones (Marshall Crenshaw, Jill Sobule) and drummer Ron Pangborn. MATTHEW: "(The live sound) is a de-evolution from the record...it's more brutal and loud and noisy...and messy...a lot more electric..." ME (to the band): "So what's the real Matthew like?"...BAND: "an endearing asshole..."
VELVET CRUSH
Sweet is credited as producer for the crunchy, totally addictive debut from Velvet Crush, In the Presence of Greatness. MATTHEW: "It wasn't like I was the producer, it was much more casual than that...They'd come down and we'd do two or three songs on a weekend...just like I did my demos, on an eight track at my home, just really quickly with one mic on everything...I'm supposed to work on another record for them, after I finish mine...(early in 1993)"
JAPANIMATION
"Japan was great, tons of fans brought me everything associated with Japanese animation that you can imagine, I have a collection, (and) they knew that I have this tattoo of a Japanese animated character...a character called 'Lum,' she's in the 'I've Been Waiting' video. I'd pull up my sleeve and these groups of little girls would just erupt with excitement, which was totally cool..."
ROCK VIDEO
"I'm really into video games...I usually go for the direct brutal killing, shooting, slaughter kind of games, SEGA Genesis is really the best system, ultimately."
BASS
"I hate fancy bass playing...bass was the first instrument I played, I'd learn Stanley Clarke, and pick bass lines off Yes records, all the most complicated, musical stuff, and then I got into Generation X, the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks and everything, about the 9th grad, and realized that one note, really fast, was somehow better..."
BAM, July 16, 1993, Issue 412
HIS JUST DESSERTS: Matthew Sweet savors his musical vindication
By Darren Ressler
Relaxing in his Midtown Manhatten hotel suite a few hours before an industry-only showcase at Wetlands, situated over in Tribeca, a few blocks south of hectic Canal Street, Matthew Sweet is finishing up interviews and some personal business before heading over to debut new songs from his first eagerly anticipated release, Altered Beast. Sweet eschews rock-star confidence by confessing conflicting feelings: a rush of unabashed excitement and panic at the thought of publicly unveiling his latest creations. Despite the unexpected success of Girlfriend, Sweet is still having a hard time dealing with his success, but he sets his feelings of uncertainty aside when told that some newfound fans will be looking at Altered Beast as his second rather than his fourth album.
"On one hand, I guess that I should feel lucky that everyone thinks of me as having this brand new career as [Altered Beast] will give me the chance to build on the momentum of 'the first album,'" chuckles Sweet. "I've been around for a while and I guess that I was finding my way all along, so I wouldn't say that I was ready for what happened with Girlfriend any earlier than it happened. I had to kind of find out how to make records that worked for me on my own time. It's funny that some people will think of Altered Beast as my second record. But I guess for a second record, I'd say that it's really good!"
So, no sophomore jinx here? "Well if there is a sophomore jinx, I don't think it'll be anything compared to the jinx that I went through in the early years of my career," Sweet responds. "I made a couple of records that very little happened with and that took many years. Every step of the way is hard when you haven't had any success, and I had my share of bouncing around labels. It was a long road to getting where Girlfriend happened, and by the time that did happen, I completely didn't expect it or particularly care about it at that point."
Sweet pauses momentarily, then picks up his train of thought. "[Girlfriend's success] really turned me around as far as changing the whole outlay of my life, and it's something that I have to deal with now. I used to think, 'Well, if I like my music and I'm happy, then everything is fine.' Now I have this huge Other Thing staring in my face, which I don't want to face, but it's there. But rather than stick my head in the sand, I try to just deal with what people think one way or another and not take it too seriously."
Someone once cautioned James Baldwin, "Be careful for what you set your heart upon, for it will surely be yours." The singer/songwriter/guitarist can certainly attest to the validity of these words. At 26, an age when many individuals are still striving to realize personal and occupational goals, Matthew Sweet found himself in an unusual predicament. Unlike those peers still aspiring to attain goals, the Lincoln, Nebraska, native had already savored a full plate of his most hoped-for rock 'n' roll dreams. However, for some strange reason, his career had ground to a halt.
Sweet's longtime passion for music led him to the University of Georgia at Athens in '83, where he quickly engulfed himself in the capitol of the New South's burgeoning musical renaissance. While bands like R.E.M., Pylon, and the B-52's were coming to national prominence and putting Athens on the map, Sweet quietly hooked up with Lynda (sister of R.E.M. vocalist Michael) Stipe's band, Oh-OK. Brandishing a quirky, downright charming pop ethic, Sweet's chiming six-string perked up the once guitar-less outfit and spiced the band's taut Mitch Easter-produced Furthermore What EP, issued in 1983 on DB Records. Sweet soon formed the sugary pop duo Buzz of Delight, along with former Oh-OK drummer David Pierce, and released the Sound Castles EP in 1984, also on DB.
He toured with the transmuting all-star revue, the Golden Palominos in '87, then moved to Princeton, New Jersey, and went on to record two critically well-received, but commercially unsuccessful solo albums - 1986's Inside (Columbia) and 1989's Earth (A&M). When A&M dropped Sweet, he found himself broke, labelless, and in the midst of a divorce. But he continued to hone his songs and believe his day would come. And it did in 1991, in the unexpected form of Girlfriend, Sweet's dramatic third solo effort, which he'd been shopping with his manager for nearly eight months. Rejected by every record label in existence, Sweet was given his third lease on life by the newly formed Zoo Entertainment, even though Zoo execs had initially passed on Girlfriend.
Laced with tracks ranging from gorgeous Beatlesque ballads, to gritty, sonically viscious rockers, Zoo's gamble paid off tenfold - Girlfriend received heaps of critical praise and constant MTV rotation of the title track's inventive, Japanese animation video. Throw in loads of radio airplay and the long shot sold in excess of 400,000 copies, with brisk weekly sales slowly inching Girlfriend toward the coveted gold plateau. Suddenly, Matthew Sweet - the once-unwanted and shunned troubadour - was becoming the new voice of Generation X.
Only in America, kids.
With the last two years of his life reading like an unbelievably rags-to-riches fairy tale, Matthew Sweet decided not to rest on his laurels, and began writing songs for his fourth effort, Altered Beast, while on the road supporting Girlfriend in 1992.
For Altered Beast, Sweet enlisted many of his same friends who played on Girlfriend, such as guitarists Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd, and Ivan Julian, and drummers Ric Menck (of the Sweet-produced outfit Velvet Crush) and Fred Maher (coproducer of Girlfriend). Some new additions include pianist Nicky Hopkins of Beatles/Rolling Stones/John Lennon fame, as well as drummers Jody Stephens (Big Star), Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello's Attractions), and Mick Fleetwood. As Sweet eagerly opens up about the evolution of Altered Beast, he's mindful to drive home the reason on why he chose to venture into uncertain territory with coproducer Richard Dashut (Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham), as opposed to working once again with Fred Maher.
"I wanted to work with someone different from Fred [Maher] just because I wanted to change my environment and to make sure I made a really different kind of record," explains Sweet, noting that his unlikely selection of Dashut, who was also looking for a challenge, helped him attain a rawness and spontaneity. "I didn't want to make Girlfriend II, and I thought that if Fred and I got in there in the studio, there would have been all of this pressure on all of us to repeat it."
If Girlfriend is the accidental hit that Sweet never anticipated, then Altered Beast proves that he can be as equally brilliant when he's being a bit more deliberate. "The Ugly Truth," the first single, demonstrates Sweet's desire to allow his songs to be a little rougher around the edges. But he hasn't forsaken his hook-laden pop ways. "Reaching Out" and "Falling" are luscious ballads built on beautiful vocal harmonies and winsome melodies. And when it comes to tracks dripping with passion, "Devil With the Green Eyes" and "Someone to Pull the Trigger" are emotional maelstorms. Though he doesn't openly favor any of his songs (25 were recorded, 14 made it onto the album), Sweet seems quite delighted to talk about "The Ugly Truth," especially since he directed the clip.
"The video was shot outside of Palmdale, California, out in the desert. I was looking for a really sort of deserted area to film it. The video is a sort of homage to Vanishing Point, which was a movie that came out around 1970," explains Sweet, who's also finished the clip to "Time Capsule," which he describes as "exotic."
"[Vanishing Point] was sort of an existentialist road movie, like Easy Rider, about a guy who is on a trip on a bet that he can make it in a certain time," releates Sweet. "It's really a suicide trip, and the actual movie had a lot of footage in the middle of nowhere in the desert. I happened to have a 1970 Dodge Challenger, which is why I saw the movie. I started to get the idea of making a car chase video, and we got the look of it from Vanishing Point."
Finding the location to shoot was easy for Sweet, given that he relocated to Hollywood with his new wife, Lisa, shortly after Girlfriend. Although Sweet and his wife had feelings of trepidation about their move westward from Princeton, New Jersey - the couple liked the pastoral setting and its hour-by-car proximity to New York City - he admits that SoCal life is quite enjoyable. But just because he picked up camp and moved 3000 miles, don't expect any identifiable changes in Sweet's new material.
"It's been a good experience, living [in Hollywood], and it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be," he reflects. "It's been a great place for me as far as making videos and being close to the label. I could never have had the amount of involvement that I had on this record had I not been living there."
The Sweets' spacious pad in the hills is roomy yet affordable, and comfortably fits the couple, their cats, and their many possessions. "Wherever I've lived -l Nebraska, Georgia, New Jersey, etc.- has never affected my music," he insists. "I'll write the same kind of thing no matter where I am, because when I write, it's a totally imaginary, emotional world and it doesn't have anything to do much with my surroundings. I just kind of write what I write, no matter where I go."
As Sweet prepares to finish up some business before heading down to his showcase, he openly frets about the obsessions some have developed about his past work. "I caution people against getting too hung-up on Girlfriend," he warns, reiterating remarks he made while doing press for the album - that, despite the strong imagery of its songs, the album isn't entirely autobiographical. "Although Girlfriend was a record that I think was different from a lot of records, and it might have seemed to have a lot of emotional things in it which aren't that common in records, I think that, compared to Altered Beast, it's a little more of a lightweight effort."
"I think that people may tend not to be able to absorb the new record as quickly and easily, because it deals with more difficult subjects in more convoluted ways. I think that ultimately adds depth to the whole experience, but I don't expect, in a real commercial way, for that to translate. That makes me wonder, because in a way, I think that I made a better record, but whether or not people will see it like that, I don't know."
While many who've tasted a modicum of success become insular, it's heartening to see Sweet publicly wrestle with his uncertainties, vulnerablities, and naivete. Where he could easily take the position that he knew that things would always work out for him, he wraps himself in a blanket of honesty and even lets loose a secret: His breakthrough album only afforded him the luxury of getting out of debt and paying his rent. Little else changed. Oh well, he'll just have to wait one more album to acquire the real trappings of success. Still, life is pretty good for Matthew Sweet.
"I never really took time off after Girlfriend, but it was hard for me to turn down the idea [of recording] right away after years and years of begging people to let me make records," the songsmith says. "I think it was good because I didn't have time to worry about the pressures of whatever was expected. I really made the album I wanted to make at the time in a true fashion to myself. I'd say that I still have a hard time in my life no matter how good thigns go for me careerwise. Sometimes when things are going the best for me in my career, it's the hardest time for me to deal with emotional things. But I'd say that right now, I'm pretty happy. Today, I'm doing fine."
Reflecting on what he's just said, Sweet continues: "My main goal isn't to be like Madonna, and I have no desire to be an adored figure who dances around in front of society. Maybe the way I feel will naturally keep me from becoming that kind of person.
"'What do you want?' I want to be able to keep paying my rent, making music, and playing shows. It's a big mental trip doing what I do and not becoming someone who hates themselves. I'm trying to groove through it and get into as many hobbies as I can."
Beyond his inescapable urge to continue crafting more of his riveting pop songs, Sweet is interested in working in film - either as a director or writer - which is a direct byproduct of his involvement in making his videos. He already has several ideas, including a clever sci-fi scenario. However, Sweet knows that bringing such plans to the screen requires a lot of time and money. Plus, he knows the awesome power of dreaming and he's got his hands pretty full at the moment with his music.
"In the meantime," he says, "my goal is the same as it ever was, which is to get the chance to make another record."
Chicago Tribune, Friday, June 18, 1993
4th of July date in Grant Park startles local favorite despite album success
Matthew Sweet says he's still a little startled about being asked to headline the annual 4th of July concert in Grant Park, but it's no surprise to Chicagoans - who played a major role in making his "Girlfriend" album a hit last year.
After putting out two commercial duds for two major labels in the 1980s, Sweet was staring at Strike Three when he found no takers for Girlfriend. Finally, Zoo Records, which had initially rejected the album, had a change of heart and released it in late 1991.
Acclaim was nearly unanimous among local critics (it also finished seventh in the Village Voice critics poll) and WXRT was all over the record, putting at least four tracks in heavy rotation ("Girlfriend," "Divine Intervention," "Waiting," "Evangeline"). Sweet became a concert fixture around town, opening for Robyn Hitchcock and the Indigo Girls, and playing sold-out headlining shows at Metro, the Riviera and Park West (the latter two on the same night in November).
Girlfriend sold a remarkable 60,000 copies in Chicago alone, Zoo Records says, out of a total 400,000 nationwide.
For Sweet, a Lincoln, Neb., native who now lives in New Jersey, his Chicago success is thrilling, and a bit daunting.
"I keep asking people if they really want me to headline that July 4th show," he says with a laugh. "I'm going to be a little nervous, because it's the single biggest show I'll have ever done."
Audiences for the Grant Park throwdown usually are in the 35,000-40,000 range, says program director Norm Winer of WXRT, which is co-sponsoring the show (also on the bill are Belly and the Jayhawks).
"Sweet's success has really been unique and broad-based in Chicago, crossing over to a number of different radio formats," Winer says. "He works in a wide range of styles, which sets him apart from a lot of artists."
Recorded with pristine clarity by co-producers Sweet and Fred Maher and engineer Jim Rondinelli, Girlfriend sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time. Its guitars were nasty but not grungy, while Sweet was brought a subversive edge to his love songs.
For the follow-up, Altered Beast, due in mid-July, Sweet chose to record with former Fleetwood Mac producer Richard Dashut.
"I really wanted to avoid making Girlfriend II and though I really like those guys [Maher and Rondinelli], I thought to go with the three of us again would create a more pressurized situation, where we would try to remember what worked the last time," Sweet says. "I wanted a different flavor this time,"
Altered Beast retains the sonic elements that made Girlfriend so exciting: the buzzing guitars of Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd, the heavily compressed mix that gives the instruments a thrilling clarity, and a sense of conceptual unity in which songs seem to play off and respond to one another.
"The records I like are low-tech productions, with no reverb and lots of room sounds," Sweet says. "You listen to radio these days and all you hear is that sizzling, bright high end. Everything sounds alike."
Although Sweet's aesthetic has often been compared to bands such as the Beatles and Buffalo Springfield, he bristles at the '60s retro tag. "I grew up listening to late '70s new wave," he says. "I make records like I do for different reasons than Lenny Kravitz does."
"What I'm more interested in is 'Why do old records sound so great, have so much energy and spirit? And why do new records sound so terrible, so that you hear nothing but drums?' I'm not interested in re-creating an era - what I'm interested in is getting down the most basic, raw, emotional statement I can make."
However, where Girlfriend took chances at every turn, Altered Beast has more than a few readymades, and it loses steam shortly after the halfway mark. It's a bit heavy on filer, and Sweet acknowledges that he has difficulty editing himself.
"I divided the album into two parts because I realize 14 songs is a lot for people to get a handle on in one sitting," says Sweet, who even toyed with the idea of releasing a double album. "I wanted a shorter record, but we recorded 25 songs and I had trouble getting down."
Sweet remains an acerbic lyricist, and his view or romance is deliciously twisted.
"It's not as literal a record as Girlfriend. It's more like I'm going through these different possessions" - hence the album's title, Sweet says. "I'm a real black-and-white person. Every time I write a really loving song, I need to do a really hateful one to balance it."
Chicago Sun-Times, June 20, 1993
New set of pressures comes with stardom
By Jim DeRogatis, Pop Music Editor
Matthew Sweet's chiming pop songs are among the prettiest sounds to be heard on alternative-rock airwaves, but the singer-songwriter has a dark side.
"I don't like knowing people, and I don't like people knowing about me," he sings on his new Zoo album, Altered Beast.
Not exactly what you'd expect to hear from a long-struggling rocker coming off the most successful album of his career. Girlfriend, which sold more than 400,000 copies in 1991, made fresh, irresistable guitar pop out of the turmoil surrounding the breakup of Sweet's marriage. But now he's achieved a degree of success and started a blissful new relationship, his music has an even more troubled undercurrent.
"During the year of touring with Girlfriend and dealing with the success and my personal life and all the other things I had to deal with, I felt a lot of pressures and a lot of different anxieties that are just as bad as when you have a divorce," the singer says. He spoke during a break from rehearsals for a tour that will take him to Grant Park on July Fourth.
"I think the key to all this is that you're always going to have problems and turmoil, and success has nothing to do with getting rid of that stuff. A lot of the songs reflect my feeling of pressure in general way, and songs like 'In Too Deep' and 'Knowing People' are almost comical releases."
Ultimately, the contrasts between Sweet's edgy lyrics and sweet vocal melodies - and between the songs' careful arrangements and guitarist Robert Quine's chaotic outbursts - make Altered Beast even more satisfying than its predecessor.
In keeping with Sweet's fascination with technological toys, the album is named after a Sega Genesis video game about a man who transforms himself into a beast with supernatural powers. The theme of transformation and the dual nature of good and evil runs throughout the album, which arrives in stores July 13.
The disc includes two versions of the first single, "The Ugly Truth" (distinguished by Flying Burrito Brother Byron Berline's lulling fiddle) and "Ugly Truth Rock" (marked by Richard Lloyd's noisy guitar). And the 12 songs are evenly divided by a sample from the film "Caligula" in which a histrionic Malcolm McDowell declares himself a god.
The sample was originally included as a joke on producer Richard Dashut (a veteran of Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham), but Sweet decided to keep it. "It made perverse sense as a kind of desparate man's attempt to be more than human. And it fit in with the darker songs," he says, laughing.
Although now Sweet has enough clout to direct his own videos - including one based on a script by "Singles" director and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" author Cameron Crowe - he hasn't had an easy time reaching this point.
His recorded history streches back to the early '80s when he moved from his native Lincoln, Neb., with Michael Stipe's sister in Oh-OK and with his own group, Buzz of Delight. Former bandmates have since accused him of being a carpetbagger who moved to Athens only to get a record deal, and the charge still stings.
"I was a sensitive kid when I went there, and I was just starting to stick my neck out about my songs," he says. "I was going to move and go to school somewhere and Mitch Easter really influenced me because I was pen pals with him and he said if it was him, he'd go to Athens.
"I'd become friends with Michael Stipe, who wrote me postcards, and Linda Hopper, the singer from Oh-OK started writing me saying, 'Come to Athens, it's really great.' These were the first people who lived in a music world outside of Lincoln who'd heard a tape of something I did and said they liked it, and it meant a lot to me."
But Sweet started to fall out with Athens scensesters because he wanted to go his own way - and because he made no effort to hide his desire to succeed.
"My feeling was like, 'Why can't mainstream music be good?' " he says. "Why can't 'Blackand White' [by the dB's] be a No. 1 song? Whereas a lot of people's thinking was , 'Unless nobody likes it, it's not good.'
"Back then, people were coming to me and saying, 'You shouldn't do a deal with Coumbia. You should get four guys and tour like R.E.M.' And I was like, 'Unlike the rest of you, I don't want to be R.E.M.' It's taken me a long time to find out who I was, but I got there eventually, I think."
Sweet's first solo album, Inside, was released on Columbia in 1986; Earth followed on A&M in 1989. His first two albums have a colder, more modern sound than the retro-leaning Girlfriend and Altered Beast.
"I wanted to live in my time and make modern music," Sweet says. "Now I've come full circle because I found that the best thing for my music is to make it in an organic way. I can get more enjoyment out of it if I leave the high-tech stuff to the video games."
In a classic recording industry blunder, Girlfriend was recorded in 1989 for A&M but ultimately rejected. Sweet was turned away, along with most of the label's alternative rooster (including Soul Asylum, which went on to record the biggest album of its career on Columbia). Sweet, of course, has had the last laugh.
"Just the success on my own terms is enough that I don't have to feel bitter about throwing it back in their face," he says. "And when I think if it had come out on A&M and done nothing because nobody gave a ---- there, it would have been worse. In a strange way, everything happened for the best."
While record companies have been slow to recognize Sweet's talents, his fellow musicians haven't. All of his albums feature contributions from stellar players such as Television guitarist Lloyd, Golden Palominos drummer Anton Fier, former dB's guitarist Chris Stamey and drummer Ric Menck (formerly with Chicago's Reverbs, now the leader of Velvet Crush).
On the new tour, the band includes Lloyd, bassist Tony Marcuso of the Cruzados and former dB's drummer Will Rigby (Sweet pays tribute to the dB's by covering the influential pop group's single "Judy" in his current set).
"Why have so many talented people worked with me? Probably the fact that I have a record deal," Sweet says with feigned modesty.
But of everyone who's worked with the singer, Quine is by far the most important contributor. A veteran of Richard Hell & the Voivods and Lou Reed's band, the guitarist has a wider variety of distinctive noise-guitar sounds than all of his imitators combined. Unfortunately, he's reluctant to tour.
"Quine doesn't like touring and really wants a lot of money, mostly because he doesn't want to do it," Sweet says. "Besides, we figure maybe we can stay friends if we don't tour together. I guarantee you that if we'd toured together for Girlfriend, we'd never have recorded together for Altered Beast."
Quine, it seems, knows something about Sweet's dark side.
Illinois Entertainer, July 1993
By John Everson
"The worst thing about it for me now is that everyone acts as though it's a given that the record will be really big. And that makes me feel this pressure, like, if it isn't, they'll all think I'm a failure or something."
If a trifle nervous on the eve of the release of his fourth album Altered Beast, alternative rock darling Matthew Sweet is definitely not a failure. Three was the charm - three labels, three albums - for the Lincoln, Nebraska native. Girlfriend was the surprise hit album that would not die throughout 1991-'92. Selling almost a half a million copies, it put Sweet and his record company on the map, and certainly raised high expectations for his fourth LP Altered Beast. But for Sweet himself, the idea of superstardom - its money, its fame, its pressures - is a shoulder shrugger.
"They're like 'I couldn't be more poised right now the way Girlfriend was successful.' But those stakes were never the thing that drove me; it was always wanting to make the records," Sweet says. "I only needed success because they weren't going to let me make records if I didn't have it. Well, now I have success - so I get to make records. I've kinda got everything I want. I get to get guitars I want periodically. I might be broke for a while, but every now and then I have a little money. The things I wanted I have - and now it makes me wonder how much further I really want to go. But it's kinda like too late now to turn back. There's too many people involved now and I have a career and a job. So I'm trying to just suck it up and be positive about it!"
Sweet certainly has a few things to be positive about: a new wife ("we got married in March - but we've been living together for years and years," he downplays), a new album, and a record company that didn't dump him after just one album (are you listening A&M and Columbia?).
I first met Matthew Sweet at a luncheon last Summer at Chicago's Hard Rock Cafe. Sweet was there to sign a guitar for the restaurant and was definitely more interested in the goings-on around him than the plate of Mexican food he periodically picked at. Sweet still remembers that afternoon.
"Did they ever put up that guitar?" he asks. (They did.) "I was kinda curious about it that day because I was suspicious. I wasn't that big a celebrity, you know?"
Sweet still appears unaffected by (and unaware of) the extent of his celebrity. Of course, he hasn't had a lot of time to dwell on it. The rock industry rollercoaster hasn't slowed down to let him off since the 1991 release of the album every major label turned down three years ago - Girlfriend.
"The last year has been a whirlwind," he admits. "I toured straight up through December, and then I got back from England right around Christmas and started up recording on the 5th of January."
The core songs for Altered Beast were written on a short break Sweet had from touring last fall.
"It just kind of happened. I'd planned to spend more time writing, but I'd managed to make demos of 12 of 15 songs in October when I was home for a week. When everybody heard those demos - which contained a lot of songs that are on this record - [Zoo] said 'Why don't you just go right in and make a record.' At that point, Zoo had not had Green Jello take off [with their single "Three Little Pigs"]. That's now a bigger record than Girlfriend was, so the pressure's kind of off me for a second."
For those who don't hang out in Aladdin's Castle arcades or own a Sega Genesis system, it might help you to know that Altered Beast is the title of a video game as well as the title of Sweet's new LP. This is not an accident.
"It was like a vacation once I got in to the recording studio because I stayed in one place and we played some Genesis, some Super Nintendo - Freedom Fighter 2 is totally amazing on Super Nintendo," Sweet enthuses. "But my Genesis system was there, which is why I ended up calling the record Altered Beast. I was laying on the floor, trying to think of a title for the record, and saw that game sitting there. It suddenly made all this sense to me. It just sort of fit.
"First you have to understand that in [the game] Altered Beast, you're this guy who's working your way through a graveyard or something, and there's all these demons and ghouls coming up out of the ground to kill you. You're trying to find a certain power-up that makes you into the 'altered beast,' which is this half-man, half mythological creature. Like in Greek lore: a boar or an ox on the top and a man on the bottom - that's what the altered beast is.
"Some of the songs on the album were told from really extreme points of view, almost caricatures of whole other ways of thinking than I would normally be. Those are what I call the 'altered beast' songs - 'Knowing People,' 'Devil With The Green Eyes,' 'Dinosaur Act,' 'In Too Deep' - so it started making sense to me. I was trying to come up with a title that was about change.
"But also, it fit within my mind with the landscape of the video game in that some of the songs came out of the 'altered beast' songs and would be really human again. Just like you turn back into a human in Altered Beast. So it made sense to me, and I thought it worked really well with the Caligula speech in there; it all kind of went together to form this concept for the record that really didn't exist before I made it."
Did he say Caligula? Yep. Altered Beast included two quotes from the Malcolm McDowell cult classic; one, where members of the Roman Senate, first hesitantly, and then with unanimous concord, vote to proclaim Caligula a god starts off Side Two of the album. The other quote closes out the album, though you'll only hear "the period of mourning is over" if you leave the album running for a while after the last song has finished.
Sweet explains: "The very little bit at the end, that actually comes in the movie right after the 'He's a god now' sequence. Caligula looks across the crowd with this drunk-with-power look on his face and he baas like a sheep. And they all start baaing like sheep! In some sort of perverse way it makes fun of the whole crowd mentality of trying to be a rock star. I in no way meant it to be sarcastic towards my audience or anything. I just thought it was funny.
"The little bit I put at the end was because [Altered Beast] ends on this sort of melancholy note with 'Evergreen,' and if you were just sort of sitting there and staying too melancholy for too long, that might come on and kind of startle you. It'll either make you mad at me for putting it there or make you laugh. I've never really tested that on anyone, so I haven't gotten too much reaction. All I know is my then-girlfriend, now-wife Lisa really hated it and she tried to get me to not put it there. So I thought "Good, it makes girls mad...'"
The Caligula connection came through producer Richard Dashut, who Sweet enlisted for Altered Beast because of his longtime association with Sweet favorites Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham.
"Richard is a big fan of the Caligula movie, and I think that maybe he and Mick Fleetwood used to have kind of a routine about it. And so Dashut set out, as we were making the record, to try to get me to be Caligula. So I'd pretend to be Caligula and then he would be like one of the Higher Court with me and everyone else who worked at the studio would be the Lower Minions. It was all done in good fun and completely in jest and it kind of became this comedy routine we would do in the studio.
"At one point we actually rented the movie because I had never seen it, and we all had Caligula names. I was Skepticlese adn Dashut was Optimus. He was always looking on the bright side. He would say 'Yer gonna be huge, Sweet, so get used to it,' and I was like 'No, way, I'm gonna fail totally' - that kind of thing. So we finally rented Caligula and somebody stuck a mic in the TV room and recorded parts of these speeches. All along I was trying to collect bits of stuff in case I could use them to connect things. I sort of abandoned that idea because the songs had messy stuff at the end of them that worked better than trying to apply something.
"In the end when I was sequencing the record, I wanted to split up the sides, kind of like I did with record noise in Girlfriend. I tried a couple things, and one was the Caligula speech - really as a joke for Dashut. But as people started hearing it, it sounded kind of awesome, and when we hard-edited it into 'Ugly Truth Rock,' it just seemed really cool. It made sense to me in this greater metaphorical sense of representing man's desperate attempt to become more than the feeble animal he is."
Sweet's determination to break Altered Beast into two separate sections resulted in one of the stranger first releases for an album: a double single and video of the same song: "Side One" of Beast features a country-style run-through called "The Ugly Truth" (reminiscent of Girlfriend's "Evangeline"). "Side Two" segues from the Caligula speech into "Ugly Truth Rock" which is - you guessed it - a rocked-up version of the same song.
"When I recorded it, I definitely wanted to try two versions of the song," Sweet explains. "I definitely did not want to put both on the record. Then when I did them, I couldn't decide which one I liked better. There were very definite camps on either side among everyone I knew."
So the inclusion of both songs was an attempt at diplomacy?
Sweet laughs: "I make the final decisions on everything, and this record was exactly the way I wanted it to be. But I'm also interested in knowing what other people think. And as I've kind of gotten more power to do exactly what I want to do, I sort of care more and more about what other people think - because I don't have to listen to them. Especially with this record, where there was just so much pressure about it. Even though I didn't really feel that pressure in the studio, everybody else sort of felt it when it was turned in. There was sort of a big gasp to find out if [the album] was okay or not.
"It was actually my manager who wanted me to put both versions of 'Ugly Truth' on the record. And since I wanted to look at the record as sort of two distinct parts, I thought that was kind of a cool thing to have that song on both of them. Plus, we really wanted to put both versions on a single and we were afraid if we didn't put both of them on the record, and then the single came out and everyone played the other version or something, people would be mad when they bought the record that they didn't get the version that they liked. [He takes a deep breath after that explanation.] So now it's turned into this monstrosity where it's a double first single for the record and I'm actually cutting a video for it for both versions of the song."
Sweet says he's excited about the release of "Ugly Truth" as a single for other, more artist-integrity reasons.
"When I was 20 years old and started a career of making records, people said 'If you have a hit, it will be the dumbest, most blantant song you ever wrote,' and that was kinda true with 'Girlfriend' - it's a pretty dumb, blatant song. The song that you don't care about - the outtake - will become your big hit. But I really feel I've gotten away with something on this record because I think 'The Ugly Truth' actually has substance to it, even though it's a pretty basic song. Kind of a statement of: 'We're all here, and we're screwed, and there's no way out of it. Yippee.' Which I think is a little more than your average Top 40 kinda song would say."
Fans of Girlfriend won't care much which songs are chosen as singles. They'll find 14 guitar rock gems on Altered Beast to add to permanent roatation on their CD player. Sweet's songwriting continues to run the gamut from, er, sweet, gentle odes of affection ("Life Without You," "Reaching Out") to vitrolic comments on people and the shallow, sallow states of human emotion ("Dinosaur Act," "The Ugly Truth," "Knowing People," "Do It Again"). The meaty guitar riffs with strange twists of distortion return intact, courtesy again of Television's Richard Lloyd (who Sweet met in the late '80s while touring with Golden Palominos), Robert Quine, and verteran Ivan Julian. Girlfriend drummers Ric Menck (of Velvet Crush - and a former Champaign, IL music scene vet) and one-time Was (Not Was) member Rob Pangborn returned as well to trade skin-slapping duties with Girlfriend co-producer and longtime Sweet cohort Fred Maher.
Some new textures were brought in with the addtion of Beatles/Stones veteran keyman Nicky Hopkins and drummers Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello), Jody Stephens (Big Star), and Mick Fleetwood. Sweet seems to have a thing with drummers. "I know eight million of them," he laughs, pointing out that none of the six drummers on Altered Beast are touring with him this summer. (He has recruited former dB Will Rigby!) Sweet also seems to have a thing for Fleetwood Mac.
"I'm a big fan of old Fleetwood Mac - you know, the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac," Sweet admits, noting that drummer Anton Fier of the Golden Palominos was responsible for that addiction. "And I also am a big fan of Lindsey Buckingham and the Tusk-era of Fleetwood Mac." That love resulted in the hiring of Dashut, who brought in Mick Fleetwood.
"I wasn't expecting to really use anybody from Fleetwood Mac on my record, and early on, when we had demoed the songs," Richard said, 'I played Mick some of your songs and he really liked them.' And I said, 'Oh, well we could get him to play drums on some.' He said, 'Oh, he'd really love it if we asked him.' Once I got wind that he was at all interested in that kind of thing, I just asked, 'Do you want to come in.' He ended up coming in a couple of times and we had a lot of fun recording. Unfortunately, only one of those tracks is on the record - 'Reaching Out,' which was actually recorded live with Nicky Hopkins and Mick Fleetwood and I. There's a couple of songs that will probably be bonus tracks on the CD5 singles that will have him on them as well.
"Mick was sort of quiet and a little melancholy at first, and then when we kinda got to know each other better, he sort of warmed up and was kind of different.He's a really interesting person; he ahs this certain sort of vibe that you can see how he just pulls people in and makes things happen. But it's almost like he has this little boy lost quality that makes people feel sorry for him. He's an interesting guy, very funny in a real subtle way."
Getting ack to the album itself, Sweet notes that Altered Beast is both more and less personal than the material on the last record.
"It's less personal in that you can't listen to this record and try to pin it to my life. Everybody knows I've been on tour ever since I made Girlfriend, and so obviously my different feelings of frustration and anger and love and lust and whatever I had are in those songs. But it encompasses a much wider range of characters than I think Girlfriend did. It's not like one guy singing about different relationship things. It's like all these different people in a way.
"I really tried to go in thinking 'O.K., I can be a real lousy bastard in this song, you know - and it's O.K., I'm gonna explore how it feels to be that way.' So I tried to get in more viewpoints that weren't necessarily my own in the songs. I didn't do it in a really conscious way, but I think in all the interviews I did about Girlfriend, where I tried to expalin I could be anyone in a song, it really made me understand where I was at in my songwriting [and that] I should try to get even more extreme about doing that."
One notable example of this character donning is in the song "Knowing People," where Sweet exclaims: "I don't like knowing people/I don't like people knowing about me/get outta here."
"I think of it as a really funny song, but it sounds really serious. And I've had that emotion where I've been like, 'I don't ever want to meet another human being in my life,' you know? Actually, that song was born out of a line from a teen movie Three O'Clock High where there's this bully - what they call in the movie a 'touch freak' - and he accidentally gets touched by this guy who's s'posed to write a profile on him for the school paper, so he really threatens this guy. And he gives these speeches: 'I don't like people knowing about me. I don't like anybody knowing about me.' So whenever I get really angry or frustrated, I'd recite this thing. For the longest time I wanted to write a song that expressed that."
Another Beast expression of raw emotion comes in the album's lead-off track, the distortion-rich "Dinosaur Act."
"Sometimes I imagine it as this weird dance that old poeple go and do when nobody can seem them," Sweet jokes of the title. "It's the dance they do before they go out to the dinosaur graveyard. Sometimes I would flippantly refer to Seattle bands as a dinosaur act - 'Oh, another dinosaur act' - and sometimes I would refer to my own thing that way, as a sarcastic reference. Someone would ask 'What are you up to?' and I'd say 'Oh, I'm still out with my dinosaur act.'
"In the song, I kind of imagined it as these two people who once knew each other when they were young and now they've sort of re-hooked up when they're old, and the guy who's the altered beast in the song is trying to convince her 'Come on with me, baby, and I'll take you on one last spin - I know what makes you tick 'cuz I remember when it all began.' That is the direct relationship in the song, but people look at it in a number of different ways. And it wasn't lost on me that the first song on my record after Girlfriend is 'I'm coming back with my dinosaur act.' It's my favorite kind of song when I write it, the kind of song where it doesn't have one exact meaning. You could look at it on a number of different levels, but it still has a concrete way it talks when you go through the song."
With his fourth shot in the studio, Sweet was able, at last, to make the album he's always wanted to make.
"Nobody messed with me. I went in and did just what I wanted to do and I kinda had fun doing it and I did it really offhand like I wanted to. I just really didn't anal-ize over anything. It was done quickly - maybe more quickly - than Girlfriend was. It's not as clinical a record as Girlfriend, not as clinically dry and perfect. It's not as isolated sounding. It's more of a jammy mess which is what I wanted to do. If anything, now I'm starting to realize the only effect of Girlfriend was to give me a little more clout to kinda push my ideas across."
Sweet says if the new album gains any new fans for him, Girlfriend will probably achieve the half-a-million sold gold record mark, which he admits "would be fun. Then, if I do fail for the rest of my life, I can go: 'I had a gold record.' And I can bring people into my dusty backroom and say: 'I was once...'"
He trails off in thoughtful consideration and I take the liberty of finishing the sentence for him: Matthew Sweet, a.k.a. rock guitar-wielding Altered Beast.
Philly Rock Guide, August 1993
By Joe Kirschen
Success may have earned Matthew Sweet some long overdue respect from record executives and an untold number of new fans over the past year or so, but it hasn't done much for the ego, or Sweet's immunity to the elements, for that matter. So when the hot New York sun focuses in on him through the window of a small office on the seven millionth floor at BMG, Sweet puts his sunglasses on to continue the interview. Then, concerned he's acting too much the rock star, apologizes for how this probably looks.
Maybe he's afraid he'll wake up tomorrow morning and find he's still the struggling singer/songwriter from Princeton, N.J., trying to garner interest from the labels. Or possibly he's staying true to a conviction that keeps him from falling into the rock star image thing.
Straddling the fine line between international popularity and no-return rock and roll superstardom (God forbid), Sweet finds himself in a quandry with a new album - yes, the big follow-up.
Beaming back to October 1991, Sweet's sitting on a song-writing panel at the College Music Journal's annual Music Marathon seminar/trade show in New York, passing the guitar with the likes of Marshall Crenshaw and John Prine. The largely unknown Sweet plays an acoustic rendition of one of the songs that'll be released in about two weeks on his third album, Girlfriend, wowing the 100 or so registrants in the room. The year turns a digit, and Girlfriend, about three months old by now, is receiving the initial sparks of airplay that, by summer's end, will have turned into an all-out radio explosion. With Beatlesque production, well-crafted songs, jagged, full-throttle guitar attack and memorable melodies, Girlfriend is a breath of fresh air for the world and a moral victory for Sweet.
To begin with, the album was nearly never released. A&M Records, at the time newly owned by Polygram and in the process of restructuring, decided to shelve the album indefinitely. Finally able to persuade A&M into letting him try another label, Sweet shopped the album to Zoo Entertainment, which, among others, initially passed on it. The ordeal spanned several months and sent him into a period of deep introspection where he began seriously considering giving up music entirely and returning to school. In the end, the experience made him realize he'd continue music no matter what the outcome of the album. Zoo eventually took a risk with it, and the rest is history.
"When I made it, I was really sure it was better than anything I'd done," Sweet reflects. "I knew it was more right. It was like the most me of any record I'd really done. So it was all the more devestating what happened before it came out, just because I finally thought I did something good, and of course it would be the one that nobody would do anything with, because taht would be the way the world would be. So it kind of made me frustrated.
"But it was a good thing, I think, that I went through that before Girlfriend became really successful, because that was the fully opposite direction mind-blowing experience of completely not knowing even how to deal with that. Because for so long I just thought it would never happen. And when it finally was happening it was just like a bizarre, surreal experience."
Which brings us back to the quandry. The success of Girlfriend opened doors for him that had never opened before. He'll be making records for the majors, probably for the rest of his career. But on the other side, you get the feeling he almost misses the freedom that comes with the role of the struggling musician. He despises the corporate posturing thing, is totally uncomfortable with the star image, and now he has this really intense job. The last tour, for instance, lasted about a year and a half. Then there's the interviews, the photo shoots, the videos...Well, it could be worse.
"It's a weird experience having success, because now I'm in this position where it's kind of prime. Like, if I really go for it and do everything right, I could do really well. And there's this whole business thing built around it. And I'm ambivilant about how far I want to go with it. But it's kind of too late. It's like I'm trapped. It's like a rocket ship. Either I'm going to like choke and jump off and like fuck it all up and then never know what might've happened, or I've gotta try to just go, 'okay, I'll just deal with it."
Fortunately for Sweet, he hasn't had to deal much with the pressure of following Girlfriend. The new album Altered Beast just sort of happened without much forethought. After more than a year on the road, Sweet went into the studio last October and hastily demoed some songs he'd written for the new album. He figured he'd come back off the road in December and spend a couple more months writing. But back on the road about a month later, the record company contacted him, told him the demos sounded fine and asked him to begin recording.
The result is a package of songs somewhat different from the previous pop classic. For better or worse - and the album shares both - this is Sweet in his latest, purest sense. Not entirely a concept album, it remains cohesive for the most part, tying into the Altered Beast idea. The title is burrowed from an arcade game in which the hero is transformed into a more powerful creature, allowing him to conquer his enemies before returning to his human form. Songs like the lead-off "Dinosaur Act" and "Knowing People" buy into the concept with Sweet letting go and pouring his own negativity into the tracks as if he'd been transformed into a demon of some kind. Meanwhile, "Devil With The Green Eyes," "Life Without You" and "Time Capsule" are tracks that could have easily been included on Girlfriend. As with the previous album, Sweet showcases guitarists Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd. Keyboardists Nicky Hopkins also plays on the album.
Where Girlfriend was instantly accessible to new ears, Altered Beast will take a few listens before seeping in. But it offers the same crisp production that helped characterize Girlfriend - guitars up front without reverb or muddying effects, drums quieted into the background, maximum stereo separation and vocals way up front.
The ideas for the songs, for the most part recorded while on the road, were derived from the stress Sweet encountered following Girlfriend. "I just felt that there was a lot of turmoil in the songs, and I felt like the record reflected me going through this kind of ringer during Girlfriend," he says. "Kind of like tension and imagination and illusion and weird stuff. So I was looking for a title that would kind of emcompass change in an interesting, modernistic kind of way.
"It's definitely the record I wanted to make, for better or worse. But I think in ways it's deeper kind of than Girlfriend, even if its a little more difficult to get into."
Altered Beast falls in line with the evolution Sweet is allowing in his music and in his life. His recent marriage to longtime girlfriend Lisa and a new life and residence in Southern California have added to the whirlwind of change that apparantly accompanies dramatic success as an artist. Again, Sweet is quick to point out that by moving near L.A., he isn't playing into the rock star image thing. It's simply more convenient, he assures, to live near where you work. Plus, he's getting more involved in making his own videos - he's worked out a formula of keeping his face out of videos as much as possible, at the same time keeping the record executives happy - and he's learning more about film making, an interest he's had for some time. And he's playing the corporate posturing game as best as he can without comprimising his art.
"Sometimes I wonder how famous I can get without becoming really gross and obnoxious about it," he laughs. "But I will not just suddenly make mainstream videos with naked men with wings on them like every other group in the world that becomes really big."
HITS, October 18, 1993
Time For The Ugly Truth From Matthew Sweet
By Gary Graff
Matthew Sweet has just gotten off the phone with his father in Nebraska, and there's an "uh-oh" tone in his voice. Seems that Sweet Senior has been poking around the attic and found a bunch of reel-to-reel tapes his son made during his teen years. "He wanted to know what to do with them," Sweet says. "I'm horrified to think what they could be. I said, 'Maybe you should save those. Don't give them to anyone.'" Sweet chuckles, but there would probably be some interest. Since the success of his third album (and first for Zoo), Girlfriend, he's become something of a modern rock icon, hailed for his songwriting skills and rock & roll sensibilities that embrace both past and present. It's generated something he never experienced before -- expectations. But anyone who doubted whether he could do it again has been rebuked by Altered Beast (Zoo), Sweet's latest effort. Dark, Powerful and more varied than Girlfriend, it's another impressive achievement for the multi-talented Nebraska-born huphenate. Not so impressive was Sweet being required to endure the slobbering praise of HITS' own fawning suck-up artist "Glen" Gary "Glen Ross" Graff.
You've moved recently from the East Coast to L.A.
My then-girlfriend/now-wife and I wanted to get out of Princeton because it was just real impractical. When I was home for a few days, I had to go to New York all the time. It was either move to New York or Los Angeles. I chose Los Angeles because I was not looking forward to living in a small apartment, and that's all I could have afforded in New York.
Having both grown up in Nebraska, we like to drive around and have a thing about space. The traffic being a drawback here is a lie; I almost never get into bad traffic... nothing like sitting and waiting at the Holland Tunnel.
As happy as you sound, the new album has a dark tone to it.
I've gotten different reactions from people to it. Some say it's really harsh; some say it's really mellow. There's definitely a lot more going on on this record; it's wilder, maybe a little harder to digest than Girlfriend. I feel it may even be difficult enough that people will write it off before taking the time to get into it. I look at it now and think it has a lot of the frustration and confusion I felt over the course of last year, thrown into this really different lifestyle. That's why Altered Beast made so much sense as a title; I felt like an altered beast, going through one major ringer last year.
But Girlfriend was incredibly successful. What could be bad about that?
I've tried to analyze what was so hard for me to deal with. Before I had success, I spent a lot of time alone, so I was constantly working out my emotions on a daily basis. Since the success of Girlfriend, all of a sudden I was never alone and was having to talk about myself and analyze myself like I was this other person.
Right before Girlfriend came out, I'd sort of come to terms with the idea that I would never have big success. I reaffirmed the reasons I did music - which were purely selfish and personal - and I decided I would continue without selling lots of records. When Girlfriend did real well out of the blue, it was a real shift. It made me feel awkward and uneasy.
Did it affect your creative processes?
Sure. There was no time to write songs all of a sudden. I felt like I was closed off from my emotions. As time went on, I realized I was storing up all these ideas and writing songs in the moments when I could just band on my guitar. In October of 1992, I went home for 10 days off. I spent a week making demos and realized I had a lot of songs. Even though I could have used a break, I went right into the studio.
Richard Dashut was an interesting choice to produce.
When I stated thinking about the next record, I didn't want to make Girlfriend II. I thought the best way to make it different would be to work with a different team of producers. As much as I love Fred [Maher}, we had been doing stuff together since I was really . It was time for a change, for me to stick my neck out and work in unfamiliar territory. I thought about co-producing myself, but with the pressure after Girlfriend, I thought it would be best to have an ally there, and Dashut came to mind. I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say... and we hit it right off. I told him I didn't want to make a Fleetwood Mac record; I wanted to make a raw, trashy, fast kind of record. He was really into that.
What kind of pressure did you experience?
It's good I went in straight off the road because I didn't have time to think about that. But Girlfriend sold only about 400,000 copies, more worldwide. In a way, I feel lucky that it wasn't that big. In one way, I'd love if I sold a million records. As it was, it got me out of debt. But there's not much expectation from the public; there's a large protion of the public that doesn't even know about me right now.
Did you make enough money to change your lifestyle?
Only a little bit. I got a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the one I used in the video for "The Ugly Truth." I had a fear of gearheads as a kid; now I'm becoming one myself. Last year, when I was touring, it was great; I got guitars when I wante dto and stuff like that. But I'm still paying a rent that's real comparable to what I was paying before Girlfriend. Back then, it was a real struggle; now I make the payments on time.
People Weekly
A surprise hit, turmoil in the follow-up
By Ron Givens
"It was like I was begging them to let me put out one more record," says Matthew Sweet about the bad old days. The year was 1990, and he was shopping around his completed third album, Girlfriend, which A&M had declined to release. Zoo Records had also passed. Then almost a year later, Zoo's president happened to hear it in the hall, and the rest is career-reversing, nearly gold, alternative-rock history.
With Altered Beast, Sweet didn't have a chance to labor in obscurity. "A lot of people cared about what I was doing and had all these opinions," he says. "But I was left to do what I wanted, for better or worse." To avoid repeating himself, the songwriter tried to make a "trashy quick" record, slam-banging 25 tracks before ending up with 15 on the album. "I was letting myself go in many directions, no matter how wigged out," he says. "There's a lot of turmoil on the record. I really felt I'd been put through the ringer in the past year. I got a little weird and anxiety-ridden."
Altered Beast was produced late last year, right after Sweet came off the road from promoting Girlfriend. He didn't even have time to help his wife, Lisa, move them from Princeton, N.J. to Los Angeles, where he was recording. For a boy in Lincoln, Nebr., who used to record songs in his bedroom as a teen ("I was too shy to let other people hear them") and who signed his first record deal while attending the University of Georgia in that low-key-rock breeding ground, Athens, the shift was shocking. "I finished the album and there I was, living in L.A.," he says. "It was really surreal."
By Bud Scoppa
"The Pope, the Bulls and now, Matthew Sweet," proclaimed the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot in July 1993. Huh? I'll explain. In the wake of a papal visit and the Bulls' third straight NBA championship, Sweet headlined a big Fourth of July show in Grant Park, and the crowd rivaled those for the Pope and the Bulls' victory parade, in both size and level of adoration. Kot's incongruous triumvirate may have been assembled with tongue in cheek, but I'm here to give the proclamation credence. With the formerly airborne Michael Jordan retired from the sport he revolutionized, and the Pope sounding more fallible every day, one has to look elsewhere for both soaring thrills and spiritual discourse, and Sweet's music contains plenty of each. Don't expect to be uplifted by Matthew's message, however. When he looks heavenward, he finds neither God nor a goal; all he sees is the sky.
Though his metaphysical conclusions are uniformly bleak, Sweet wraps his bitter pills in containers so tasty and appealing that they're extremely easy to swallow, after which they begin delivering their unsettling messages in ever-deepening time-release increments. Among his contemporaries, Sweet has few rivals when it comes to the mating of style and substance.
Girlfriend and Altered Beast, Sweet's third and fourth albums, document the coming of age of this introspective, individualistic young songwriter/musician. The 29 songs that comprise the two works eloquently and unflinchingly confront desire and despair, commitment and betrayal, the leap of faith and the fall to earth, infinite possibility and final closure -- the beginnings and endings that bookend life's chapters and, ultimately, life itself. In formal terms, these are classically structured pop songs whose deceptively simple language expresses complex issues on a number of levels. And, while it resonates with echos of pop avatars the Beatles, Byrds and Big Star, musically and thematically Nebraska-bred Sweet (whose high school years were played out to a soundtrack of Generation X, the Buzzcocks, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe), served his apprenticeship in the DIY hotbed of Athens, Georgia.
He was drawn there as a teenager by the cutting-edge pied pipers of R.E.M, whom he'd met in a near-empty clib in Lincoln, hoping to get them to autograph his indie single of "Radio Free Europe." With what would become characteristic aplomb, he hooked up with Michael Stipe's sister in Oh-OK before forming his own group, Buzz of Delight. At 19, he was signed to Columbia Records, which released his first album, the largely ignored Inside (1986) before moving to A&M and recording the promising 1989 album Earth. While he searched for his own muse and did stints with the Golden Palominos and Lloyd Cole, Sweet was steeping himself in the enduring music of the Beatles and the Byrds, while continuing to explore the subversive British punk/new wave movement, and these potent influences began seeding his own evolving sensibility.
A self-admitted child of the portastudio generation with a need to control everything, Sweet initially was drawn to the easily accessed capabilities of machines, and his first two albums pulsed with robotic grooves. During the sessions for Earth, he began an ongoing collaboration with guitarists Richard Lloyd (Television) and Robert Quine (Richard Hell and the Voidoids), whose fiercely idiosyncratic but inherently supportive approaches came as a revelation. Earth's most striking incongruity, the juxtaposition of the wild-eyed outbursts of Lloyd and Quine with the soulless cadences of drum machines, now sounds like a subliminal wake-up call to Sweet's slumbering muse. The call was answered not long afterward when he began demoing the songs that would make up Girlfriend.
"After I got off the tour for Earth - an album with a lot of programmed drums and keyboards - I set up and played live drums in my living room," Sweet told Guitar Player's Mike Mettler. "I was terrible, but it was amazing how that changed my songwriting. Live drums just capture the right feel for my songs. It's funny that people now view me as a Lenny Kravitz type, someone who's really into perfecting a certain kind of 'old' sound, when it's only because it worked best for my songs that I returned to the basics."
This change in methodology was one of two major factors leading to the artistic transformation that would result in Girlfriend; the other factor was intensely personal. During the same period, not only did Sweet's marriage fall apart, but not long afterward, he fell in love with the woman who would eventually become his second wife. This runaway romantic rollercoaster crashed head-on into Sweet's previously deliberate songwriting impulsese, and when the smoke cleared, Matthew had metamorphosed into an intuitive, intensely expressive visionary artist with an array of songs so resonant they seemed to have a life of their own, even in living-room demo form. (You can hear for yourself on Girlfriend: The Superdeformed EP.)
With an album budget provided by A&M, he took this new material into a tiny New York studio and began matching them up with a formidable and committed cast of musicians that included guitarists Lloyd, Quine, Cole, drummers Ric Menck (Velvet Crush) and Fred Maher (who also co-produced), and pedal steel player Greg Liesz (k.d. lang's Reclines). Matthew played bass and rhythm guitar as well as performing and layering all vocals. Engineer/mixer Jim Rondinelli concocted a bone-dry highly compressed sonic environment in which each element seemed to inhabit its own space while viscerally rubbing against every other element on the track. From the Revolver-esque guitars that heralded the beginning of "Divine Intervention" which oponed the album, to the bruised, deeply melancholy vocals of the closing "Nothing Lasts," this music managed to sound at once familiar and unprecedented, lovely and fierce, personal and universal. Sweet titled the album ...Nothing Lasts and turned it into A&M.
This is where the story gets weird, particularly in the sense that the
album is now considered by many to be a masterpiece of '90s pop. But at
the time of its delivery, circumstances conspired to put the completed project
on indefinite hold. Earth had sold a measly 7,000 units, and A&M
had been purchased by a larger conglomerate and was being forced to trim
its roster. Beyond that, nothing Sweet had done up to that point could have
prepared label insiders for this stunning achievement, to the extent that
people weren't willing to believe their own ears. As a consequence, the
album became available to any label that wanted it. But
every major label turned it down -- and that includes the label I work for,
Zoo Entertainment.
While decision makers around the record biz were passing on the album, copies of the cassette began circulating in the alternative underground, and Matthew found himself with a great many fanatical supporters among major label alternative promotion reps, rock writers, and record store employees. Happily, Zoo did an about-face and decided to release the album, by then retitled Girlfriend (Matthew's idea, as was the evocative photo of teenaged Tuesday Weld that graced the cover). As soon as it was released on October 1991, the album reacted: the press was astounding (an album of this stylistic and thematic substance is a rock critic's dream), record store clerks played it endlessly, alternative radio stations embraced it, pushing Girlfriend all the way to #2 on the Radio & Records New Rock chart, right behind U2's Achtung Baby, and MTV jumped on the Japanese animation-driven video clip for the title track. At year's end, the prestigious Village Voice critics' poll had the album ranked at #7. As of this writing, the album has sold nearly 450,000 copies in the U.S. It's still selling, and it's still being played by people who've come to consider it essential.
There are a number of reasons the album has touched people so deeply, but the most fundamental reason is the startling and seamless fusion of artistry and honesty. Almost without exception, the 15 songs of Girlfriend explore the unrelenting desire to believe in something, particularly the redemptive power of romantic love, and some guiding principle in a godless universe, both desires catalyzed and made palpable by the knowledge of inevitable mortality. That Sweet is able to convey these harrowing interior struggles with such veracity and in such seductive musical settings is his greatest gift, and his fallen choirboy's voice seems the ideal vehicle for these universally relatable expressions. Never have obsession, despair and mortal dread sounded more beautiful or captivating than on "You Don't Love Me," "Looking at the Sun," "Divine Intervention," or "Thought I Knew You." As Sweet's devotees have discovered, Girlfriend's songs deepen over time, revealing secret after secret, even the seemingly two-dimensional title track takes a sinister turn in its final line, "And I'm never gonna set you free." In most of these songs, Sweet could just as convincingly be addressing the ever-elusive, ever-receding visages of his woman or his God.
If one could stop time or make it up
If two could realize
the best of luck
If could locate a God above
And you only wanted to be loved
Then I'd try to hang on to the past
But you know that nothing
Oh, no, nothing lasts...
Sweet spent the entire year after the album's release on the road, fronting a shifting lineup of musicians. The sound he fashioned on stage was loud, raw and abandoned as he took many liberties with his songs that many who'd come to see him perform were shocked. But Sweet, as we were all discovering, is not the kind of artist who's content to play it safe. As he told Bruce Haring in the L.A. Times, "I always want to stick a pin in the balloon."
Sweet seems driven to defy expectations. But unlike such image-conscious artists as Dylan and Bowie, who transformed themselves from album to album, Matthew more closely resembles his spiritual godfather, Neil Young, who oscillates endlessly between captivating loveliness and window-shattering clangor, sometimes within the same song. Furthering the parallel, Young followed his accessible career breakthrough, Harvest, with a series of corrosive, challenging albums that subverted his level of stardom, but substantiated his artistry while ultimately sustaining his singular career. Nowhere is Sweet's own refusal to be pinned down nor to hunger after stardom for its own sake more apparent than in the songs and sound of 1993's Altered Beast.
But let's back up a bit. By the time he went on the road in support of Girlfriend, Sweet had perfected his songwriting modus operandi. Unlike those writers whose process requires strictly controlled conditions and tools, Matthew generates and develops song ideas anywhere and everywhere, primarily in his head. By the time he demos them on his home ADAT setup, the songs are already fully formed, and they flow out of him quickly and seemingly effortlessly, 12 or 14 at a time. As he's matured artistically, Sweet has learned to harness his feelings and experiences in the service of his songs, so it isn't surprising that the unexpected success of Girlfriend, the deepening relationship with his new love, and those long months on the road would have a pronounced effect on the songs that were germinating in his head during that period.
Despite all the positive things that were happening in his life at the time, what comes through most clearly and consistently in the songs that would make up Altered Beast is fear, underscored by fatalism. It's a fear that seems to grow out of deep insecurity, loss of control, the nagging sense that some cosmic irony is about to intrude on his life, first tantalizing him with the promise of endless possibility, only to rip away everything he desires at the very moment he's closest to possessing it. This ominous scenario is expressed most vividly in the dark and delicious "Devil With the Green Eyes," in which some powerful presence -- it could be God, Satan, a woman, or jealousy, but it's most likely the artist's own psyche -- he issues a dire warning:
If you come close enough to see I am inhuman
I will tell you why you're feeling so uncertain
Every word I say
Has a way of turning evil in you
And your heart is breaking
What are you gonna do now
That you're tired of faking it?
What are you gonna do now?
Well it's hard to take it
When you know what happens each time
the devil with the green eyes
Said you were never meant to be mine
'Cause I came up from a dark world
And every love I've ever known is dead
This pronouncement is further charged by its setting, a turbulent track driven by Sweet's relentless bass line and acoustic rhythm guitar, over which Quine flails away maniacally with a wall-to-wall solo that is as gorgeous as it is violent. The message is so dark, the track is brutal, it almost seems as if Sweet is pushing away those listeners who embraced him in Girlfriend, or at the very least, pushing away those listeners who bought into the superficial hype and missed the deeper emotional content. This sense of misanthropy is made overt in "Knowing People," wherein the speaker fires a series of cruel salvos at the object of his contempt:
Are You made like God?
When you start to bleed
Do you really know
What it is to breathe?
Without a mind to think
Or a hand in fate
You're an animal
Filled with love and hate and
You
And the way you move
And the things you say
Your desperate dreams are pathetic
I don't like knowing people
And I don't like people knowing about me
It isn't until he sings the line, "Your desperate dreams are pathetic," that you realize the object of his contempt may well be himself.
This is disturbing subject matter, and, in dramatic contrast to Girlfriend's alluring contours, Sweet has chosen to place his troubling revelations in a lacerating, sonically challenging context -- a context more likely to repel listeners than to lure them. And, true enough, Altered Beast has sold only half the numbers of its predecessor. Has Sweet chosen to undermine his own hard-won success, or is he simply obeying the commandments of his dangerous muse?
"I didn't have time to worry about the pressures or whatever was, expected. I really made the album I wanted to make at the time in a true fashion to myself," he explained to BAM's Darren Ressler. "I'd say that I still have a hard time in my life no matter how good things are going for me in my career. Sometimes when things are going best for me in my career, it's the hardest time for me to deal with emotional things. But I'd say that right now, I'm pretty happy. Today, I'm doing fine."
But you get the sense that he can't help looking over his shoulder, and into his own embattled spirit, for some hellhound on his trail. At the same time, the sure knowledge that nothing lasts makes each moment of fulfullment, when it does occur, unbearably, brutally beautiful and bittersweet.
...But all your prayers they brought no answer
Your faith was a lie
And there's no difference
Between the earth and the sky
There's no reason
We have to die.
The last two lines of this lyric from Altered Beast's "Evergreen" can be read two ways, and the addition of a period makes all the difference: "There's no reason. We have to die." If you don't believe this duality is intentional, you haven't been paying attention.
Yes, Matthew records for the label that employs me, and I've come to think of him as a friend. These facts may undercut my credibility in this critical overview, but you're mistaken if you take any of this as hyperbole. Girlfriend had me in its thrall from the first time I heard it on a second-generation cassette, and its subsequent impact inspired me to fight for months to get Sweet signed to Zoo. Likewise, the songs that would wind up on Altered Beast affected me even in their original state as home demos, and they've intimately interacted with my life ever since. I've heard "You Don't Love Me," "Looking at the Sun," Devil With the Green Eyes," and "Someone to Pull the Trigger" hundreds of times apiece, on demo tapes, on record, and in live performance, and none of them has ever failed to move me. These songs have become part of my life - they belong to me, too, now - and I can think of no greater compliment to pay an artist.
Erstwhile rockcrit Bud Scoppa is Zoo's VP A&R. Assisting in the preparation of this piece was Zoo A&R Director Scott Byron, who brought Sweet to the label. Byron also compiled the discography.
Request
Matthew Sweet's 'Altered Beast' is a melancholy triumph
By Bill Holdship
Pop. It's a loaded term these days, but one you can hardly escape when discussing the music of Matthew Sweet. Of course, some definitions are in order here.
Rock critics first used the term pop back in the '60s, when popular music meant everything from the Beatles to the Beach Boys to garage rock, all of which served as prototypes for less commercially successful subgenres liek new wave and power-pop. But critics still associated those sounds with pop, even when they were produced by bands that had as much chance of making the Billboard charts as Michael Bolton does of regaining his hairline.
All this is a convoluted way of saying that Matthew Sweet is, along with Paul Westerberg, one of the finest pop songwriters of his generation, even if his first two albums, 1986's Inside and 1989's Earth, stiffed commercially. Before he could finish his third album, Girlfriend, A&M dropped him, and no other label seemed eager to pick him up. Then one day, a rock critic turned Zoo Entertainment A&R executive named Bud Scoppa was sitting in his office listening to Sweet's tape, when company president Lou Maglia passed by and decided to sign Sweet, whom he'd previously rejected. Girlfriend went on to sell 400,000 copies and earn particularly lavish praise from rock critics.
But even critics who loved Girlfriend may be amazed by the depth and scope of Sweet's latest effort, Altered Beast, which ranges from Neil Young & Crazy Horse-like thunder to some stunningly beautiful ballads. In fact, Sweet - perhaps due to his Nebraska upbringing, followed by stints in Athens, Georgia; Princeton, New Jersey; New York City; and now sunny Hollywood, California - currently represents a middle ground between the New York art-rock thing (as in Television and Lou Reed, thanks to Sweet's being the young buck who got guitar wizards Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine, and Ivan Julian to play on his records and at his shows) and L.A. pop sensibility (as in Brian Wilson), with dashes of Brit-pop thrown in for good measure. His new song, "Devil With the Green Eyes," would fit cozily next to a track by the Beau Brummels, America's own version of a British Invasion band, on '60s AM-radio.
It should go without saying that pop music is a topic to which Matthew Sweet has given a lot of thought. He is reflective as he sits on the patio of the new L.A. residence he shares with his wife, Lisa (the inspiration for the song "Girlfriend"), and four cats, even though he looks awfully tired following a hectic weekend of video shoots for Altered Beast.
"When I was a teen, pop meant the indie-pop world of the bands I loved, bands that came out of that whole power-pop thing, like the Shoes, the dB's, Let's Active, and Cheap Trick," he says. "Although power-pop is troubling because the minute you add any other term to pop, it really limits it severely. Power-pop to me immediately makes me think only of the Shoes, the Romantics, the Raspberries, the Records, and the Knack. And pop-rock sounds like another term for wimpy rock or something.
"And then there's my own personal meaning of pop, which is melodic music. Music that has interesting melodic turns in it or a melodic effect. I would put people like Brian Wilson into that category, so I guess you could say that pop is one of the things that offends me least as a label when it comes to my music.
"And as I get older, I think of it more and more as pop in the sense of Andy Warhol pop. When I was first developing my style and defining myself as an artist, I didn't want to go out and have to dance and do all the things that were required of big artists during the mid-to-late '80s. I knew I was never going to be CBS' next George Michael, and it made me feel inferior in a certain way, to the extent that I was always trying to find a way to express myself in a bigger way, so to speak. But now I'm getting closer to an age in the world where I can get across the idea that something can be simple and pure and still actually be valid, probably the way that pop art was in the '60s when it became ultraminimal.
"I'm presently very interested in those kinds of boundaries, but by the same token, I'm not interested in music that has no intrinsic meaning or feeling, you know? There are plenty of people who think that make noise that's interesting but has no meaning to me personally or emotionally and has nothing to do with my life. So I can't let go of that Brian Wilson sort of melodic, melancholy thing, because that's what drew me to music in the first place. On the other hand, I'm so bored by just average music that, if you give me an inch, I'm going further. If I can get away with making a horrible buzzing noise, I'll do it, you know?"
In addition to Wilson, Sweet mentions Young and Lindsey Buckingham as prime examples of artists who court those pop boundaries, which is more than a coincidence, since he is most often compared to the former, while he shared Buckingham's longtime friend and co-producer, Richard Dashut, for the Altered Beast sessions.
"The reason why Neil Young is still so valid today is because he's one of the only people who has the thing that used to be great about rock music in particular but is gone now, meaning that passion and real feeling and vulnerable quality of being human," Sweet says."People always talk about my Neil Young influence, and they think of it in terms of musical style, but the Neil Young influence I have is more of a general feeling regarding the raw, free nature of it. That's what draws me to my hall of great artists. It isn't that I want my music to be like theirs. It's that I want to have the spirit that achieves that same transcendence.
"You know, there was a time when rock 'n' roll had all the element of surprise to it, but that's gone now. It's gone! And that's one of the things that bums me out the most about it and is the only thing that makes me consider perhaps not always doing it. Because it seems like it's hard to be new in any kind of way and really good, unless it's by mistake and solely momentary. Like you get new groups that come up and they don't know what they're doing, but they're actually good without knowing it. Unfortunately, it isn't a directed thing, and it usually doesn't last long.
"Girlfriend was a really clinical, isolated-sounding record, and when I first thought of Richard Dashut, I was thinking that I want to make a really raw, out-of-control record, where we can try anything and nothing is too radical.
"I'm a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac, even the Peter Green stuff is cool. But at the time they made Tusk, Lindsey was really bumming out that the punks thought Fleetwood Mac was just middle-of-the-road nothing. So Tusk was like this weird, raw departure for what Fleetwood Mac was expected to be doing. And I knew that Lindsey had taken control, but that he had worked together with Dashut, producing it, so I just thought...
"Plus, that band spent so much time in the studio that he's a master at relieving studio tension. And, finally, he's a person who's seen dreams come true, you know? I'm like always sure that my next record is going to bomb, and Dashut is like, 'Sweet, you're doomed to be successful.'"
As a result of the pairing, the two have become fast and true friends; in fact, the sound bite from the film Caligula, which breaks the new album in half, as well as the video for "Ugly Truth Rock" (which is presented on the album and on video in two different versions: a country-folkish stomp and a hard-rockin' raver a la the Rolling Stones "Honky Tonky Women" and "Country Honk") were seeds planted by Dashut. The former began as a studio joke to reduce stress in which the pair would play Caligula and a court member with absolute power. "And then it made perverse sense in context with the Altered Beast concept," Sweet says. "That speech by Caligula just seemed to represent the desperate, insane attempt of man to be something more than he is - a god - and yet he's still only mortal. Unfortunately, however, we rented the clean version of the movie, so it didn't make a lot of sense."
The latter had to do with a dream car and the viewing of a classic American 1971 film, Vanishing Point. "First of all, I claim to know very little about old movies or anything," he says. "It's completely hit-or-miss what I know about. I find the things that appeal to me. It's a lot like with music, you know? I don't have a wide-ranging knowledge of music either, but I have a real instinct for things I think are cool. And so I find them.
"My wife, Lisa, and I have a pretty extensive collection on Jean Seberg. She was like the big French new-wave actress because she did the original Breathless, and one day somebody commented that Lisa looked like Jean Seberg, so we rented that movie, and we suddenly became rabidly interested in Jean Seberg. We collect all this stuff on her. Since she was so obscure, none of it's expensive or anything. Just really hard to find. In fact, I found the photo of Tuesday Weld [which graced Girlfriend's cover] when I was looking for Jean Seberg items. So that's really all the movie memorabilia I have. It's been so overblown that I collect all this stuff, but I have a little bit of stuff on people who are inexpensive to collect like Kim Novak and Adam West.
"I had never seen Vanishing Point, either. On top of that, I know nothing about vintage cars. I've driven a Honda Civic wagon for the last 10 years, so I've never been into cars. Then one day, probably about 1985, I was driving down the street, and a 1971 or '72 Plymouth 'Cuda passed by me, and it was like, 'I love that car! I want that!' From then on, every time I saw a 'Cuda or a Challenger, 'cause they're almost identical, I knew it was my dream car. I thought, 'If I ever make some money...' At the time you could get one for five grand, but it was inconceivable for me to have five grand at once to spend on something. It turned out that Dashut had sold his 1970 Plum Crazy [purple] Challenger to someone three years before, and while we were making the album, the guy who bought it called up and said his wife was making him sell it." Even though Sweet still couldn't afford the car, Zoo president Maglia, a vintage-car buff himself, fronted him the money to buy it.
"Once I knew I was going to get the car, we rented Vanishing Point in the studio because Dashut said I had to see it. 'It stars your car, man! A 1970 Challenger!' It was about the same time that we started brainstorming about making videos with muscle cars, but as it developed and the reality of videos for the album came upon us, and my own stubborness as wanting to have more and more control artistically [which resulted in Sweet getting the OK to direct his own videos this time, thanks to the encouragement of a new friend, Singles director Cameron Crowe], it became important that we turned the idea into reality. So, in fact, the reason I'm so sunburned right now is that I just got back last night from spending two days in the desert filming my own mini Vanishing Point [for "Ugly Truth Rock"]. Actually, we didn't steal from the film as much as we stole from the ear and the vibe and the love of that car."
Ironically, those three objects of pop culture - the Caligula speech, the Vanishing Point reference, and "Ugly Truth Rock," the centerpiece of the new album - ended up having more in common than even Sweet originally intended, since one deals with corruption today; the second with corruption in those groovy, right-on '60s; and the third reveals that corruption is timeless, dating back to at least ancient Rome.
"The way that happens is magical," says Sweet with a laugh. "But I can tell you that it wasn't lost on me after the fact. That song ["Ugly Truth Rock"] was basically a personal political song in that I reached a point in my life where I said, 'OK, I'm here, but this is really f-ed. It's really bad, and there's no way out of that.' And the ugly truth does may every one of us a liar, which is my view of life in certain ways. It's just people desparately covering up for everything that's really wrong. And that can translate to all levels of everyone's life, be it a fear of death or just the constant problems that hound you."
Perhaps this is just a bit dark for someone considered a pop artist; but then, this is a man who wrote "Someone to Pull the Trigger," a song about suicide, for his new album. "Well, I guess that has to do with my personal melancholy problem or something," he smiles, contraily. "To me, life is intrinsically tragic. But if you pay attention to that, you'll be sad all the time, so I try to find a balance. That's always been the function of my music. It was more a personal thing than trying to be a rock star or anything like that. It was a personal, emotional thing for me." He pauses. "Maybe I just needed therapy but didn't have it, so I write songs instead."
The BOB magazine in September 1993 (Issue No. 46)
By Jud Cost
Matthew Sweet, sunburned and with three-day stubble, ushers me into his Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, rental house-cautiously upscale evidence of the heady success enjoyed by his breakthrough 1991 album, Girlfriend. "It was really hard to find something in Laurel Canyon in our price range," Sweet says. We gingerly step through an art project that Lisa, Sweets wife, has laid out on the living room carpet and, toting a six-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale, head for the back yard, all overgrown elegance, like a miniature replica of Gloria Swanson's pad in "Sunset Boulevard."
Sweet is shagged out from three days of video shooting under the broiling
sun of the Palmdale desert for Altered Beast , his new album, so
he's changed our meeting place from Zoo offices in Hollywood to his digs.
" Newcastle Brown is Robert Quines favourite beer in the whole world,"
Sweet chuckles, referring to ex-Voidoids guitar slinger featured along with
Television's Richard Lloyd on both Girlfriend and Altered Beast.
" He'd die if somebody showed up with it. I always have a lucky feeling
when I drink Newcastle Brown," he adds, as we plop down on rickety
wrought iron chairs, shaded from the sun by a tatty bistro table umbrella,
and snapping open two brews. As a small army of finches twitters in the
background, we discuss the meteoric success" of a guy who's been in
the indie or major label record scene for almost a decade.
The BOB: Well to paraphrase Dorothy, "I've the feeling we're not in
Nebraska anymore."
Sweet : When Lisa and I first moved here, during the session for the new
album, I didn't really think of the implications : getting ready to do interviews,
and now I live in LA. So that's been the standard interview opener . "So,
you're in LA now, eh ?" [laughs ]. I'd been living in Princeton,
New Jersey for a couple of years, but it had become a bit of a grind being
so far from the central city, so we knew we had to move to either New York
or LA. Since both of us grew up in Nebraska, it was more of a exciting thought
to move into unknown territory like LA. It's exotic here, kind of like going
to Hawaii, and not as brutally hot as I thought it might be.
The BOB:What was it like growing up in Nebraska ?
Sweet: It was great. It was a safe, middle-of-the-road place. I'm from Lincoln,
which is a college town and the capitol city, with a fairly liberal viewpoint,
and they had cool record stores that got in lots of imports. I wish I could
say that I grew up on a farm, but I was just your average mid-American,
middle-class kind of kid. The summers and winters in Lincoln are harsh,
but I got a real sense of the seasons, as a kid it was always something
you'd look forward to, the changing times of the year. Now I joke with my
New York friends on the phone, "It's still sunny today."
The BOB: Were your parents musical ?
Sweet: All my aunts played the piano and had really good voices. I inherited
their musical instincts if not their voices [laughs]. I had an uncle, Bud
Day, who looked a lot like me in photos, who played trombone in the University
of Nebraska ten-piece orchestra. I would listen to my parents' sound-track
albums, like What's New Pussy cat?, Help and A Hard Days Night.
Those were the first records I ever heard. My parents listened to a
lot of Irish folk music, some classical and, a little later, Willie Nelson,
which drove me crazy. I hated country music because my parents played it
all the time [laughs]. Later on, after I'd moved to Athens, Georgia, I got
into Gram Parsons but to me it wasn't country-rock - it was country.
I read lots of interviews where people remember their parents playing
these really cool roots records from the age of eight. But I was a late
bloomer. I didn't buy my first record until I was 12- New World Record
by Electric Light Orchestra. I played the violin and was jut getting
interseted in electric guitar. I thought I could make my violin electric,
just like ELO, and then I'd be, like, cool. For about a minute I thought
that [laughs]. Then in the seventh grade I got an electric bass and listened
only to Yes records for a couple of years, learning all the bass lines exactly.
The BOB: Was the violin your first instrument ?
Sweet : I started out playing the recorder in the third grade. There was
a girl who I liked who also played the recorder, and I liked to watch her.
My brothers and sisters and I had been forced to take piano lessons, which
we hated. I was an especially sensitive young person, so it really tormented
me. I wanted to be free from an early age. So I didn't really enjoy the
piano, but I always had an ear for music and could figure out a tune off
the television. The best I ever got technically as a musician was learning
those incredibly complicated bass lines off Yes records by playing them
for five hours after school.
The BOB: Did you loosen up in the late '70's and get into the punk/new wave
stuff ?
Sweet : Right I went straight out of Yes into the new British Invasion thing.
That was the first time I'd listened to records for any other reason other
than being this muso bass-head, not because it had a great bass player,
but because it was music that meant something to me. Things like Generation
X, the Bazzcocks, the early Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe made me want to
write songs. They made me think the melodic thing I felt could make sense
in a edgy world.
The BOB : Any high school bands you were still in Lincoln ?
Sweet : By the ninth grade I was so proficient technically - abnormlly so
for a kid as young as I was that I met some older college kids when I'd
hang around hotdogging at music stores. I started playing in a band that
had been called Spectrum and covered the Top-40 before the new wave hit.
Then they changed their name to the Specs, and we played tunes by the Jam
and the Vibrators alongside older '60s things by the Yardbirds and the Who.
I was always more into the melodic side of the new wave - like early XTC.
I could appreciate the over-the-top aspect of punk, but if it didn't have
song sensibility the stuff didn't hold my attention for long.
The BOB : You met up with R.E.M. while you were still in Lincoln ?
Sweet : I used to read a paper called the New York Rocker all the
time, and I was really into the dB's, the Individuals, and the Bongos. I
had this compilation album that had Richard Hell and Peter Holsapple tracks
on it,and there was some stuff on it by Mitch Easter that really intrigued
me. I'd read a mini-article about him in Rolling Stone that said
he had his own studio and did his own stuff. So I sent away for a single
he'd just produced by this band called R.E.M. on the Hib-Tone label, because
I'd read a review which suggested I'd like it.
I'd gotten into Big Star at that point and Chris Stamey and the dB's, thanks to this guy I worked with at a record store in Lincoln. I played him my first bedroom 4-track tapes of songs I had written. He immediately thought of other pop band with weird voices, which gave me hope thatmaybe I could sing too. So I was really on an American kick, I sought out the Sneakers stuff, "I Am the Cosmos" by Chris Bell, and one of my all-time favourites, "The Summer Sun" by Chris Stamey - all singles I really loved.
When I got the R.E.M. single in the mail I didn't like the "Radio
Free Europe" side - I thought it was to Britishie - but the other side
, "Sitting Still" gave me this little chill. I became convinced
that there was something really great about them. They came to Lincoln,
and there were maybe 10 or 12 people there. I went up to them and asked
to sign my 45, and they couldn't believe I had it. I met Jefferson [Holt,
R.E.M's manager] and Michael [Stipe], and we went out to dinner at a Mexican
restaurant next dorr to the little club they were playing, the Drumstick.
I said "Tell me about Mitch Easter," and they loved that I knew
who Mitch was. They were so nice to me. "Mitch will be so excited that
you know who he is," they said.
The BOB : R.E.M. really did it one brick at a time, a truly populist band.
Sweet : It was really grass-roots. They went to every town and made friends
with people, and grew in a really organic way. I don`t think am the only
one woth a story like that. They were great guys. So they said, "You've
got to write Mitch. He'd love it and send you tapes of Let's Active stuff."
I gave them my four track song demos, they said I should come down to Athens
to visit. So I wrote Mitch, and he'd send back these ten-page letters. This
was really exciting because it was my private thing. No-one in Nebraska
cared about these obscure records.
The BOB : What finally convinced you to move to Athens?
Sweet : I'd always planned to go away from college. My sister went to school
in Mssachusetts. Finally Micheal wrote a postcard and said,"I really
like your tape. You should come down to Athens and play the 40 Watt Club."
And I started to get postcards from the girls in Oh-OK. So I told my parents I wanted to go to the University of Georgia. Eventually my dad flew down with me to check it out, and they agreed I could try it for the summer and see how I liked it. Of course I moved down there and promptly blew off school.
I always feel funny talking about that period. There's a lot of weird
feeling. The Oh-OK people still really hold a grudge against me for quitting,
to this day. Linda Hopper, now in Magnapop,goes around trashing me, but
there was a time when I'd get postcards from her saying "Lynda (Stipe,
Michael's sister) and I want you to come and play with us." Unbeknownst
to Lynda Stipe-now the truth can be told-Linda Hopper was secretly having
rehearsals with David Pierce and me to join our band, Buzz Of Delight.
The BOB : You were in two bands down there, Buzz Of Delight and Oh-OK, at
the same time?
Sweet : Well, it looked like Oh-OK was just going to break up, and they
had some really good songs that were going to be unrecorded, so I went to
Hopper and told her I'd join Oh-OK and line up Mitch to produce. So I did
all the work of making the record, and they just thought they'd get big,
just like R.E.M.
Murmur had just come out when I moved down there. It was a magic
time for R.E.M. was starting to snowball. It took me months to realise after
I'd moved to Athens that everything wasn't as happy as they'd acted. I felt
kind of back-stabbed in that town. I was a sensitive person and sort of
hidden about how I did my music-Ikind of with-drew from the scene-so as
soon as I got my deal (with Columbia Records) I jetted out of there as fast
as I could. I made a point when I went to CBS of never claiming to have
anything to do with Athens, so they couldn't say I tried to use Athens.
The BOB : Did things change much while you were in Athens?
Sweet : Things really turned dark there when R.E.M. got famous, because
everyone wanted that fame so bad. Maybe I wanted it too, but I had this
musical goal all of my own and wasn't going along with the way it was done
there. There was this book "Out of Bounds" by Roger Brown that
accused me of being a bandwagon jumper. Funny, because I didn't think I
had a beef with him, but he got together with David (Pierce, of Buzz of
Delight). After it came out he called me and said he didn't say that stuff.
All it was was sour grapes. Unfortunetly I got a deal, and it happened so
fast, and I was young and didn't know what I as doing, and was hated for
it.
The BOB : Before you left Athens, the Buzz of Delight stuff came out, didn't
it?
Sweet : We did a EP with Don Dixon instead of Mitch Easter. They were my
first demos done in a real studio, Dixon's place in Charlotte. Peter Dyer
of DB Records called and said he wanted to put it out-biggest that ever
happened oin my life-which was totally unexpected. I never thought anyone
would believe me as a singer. Immediately am thinking, "If they'll
put that out, then I can do a 10-Record opus" [laughs] - really out
of control. So I borrowed money from my dad and went into a studio in Atlanta
the summer 1984 and recorded 14 new songs. It actually got to the point
of being a test pressing for DB-the Buzz of Delight-but it was just left
hanging there without a lot of interest. And I started feeling bad about
it, like it wasn't good and I was terrible. Then I made a second version
of the album with Dixon-two versions of an album that never ame out.
The BOB : With so liitle material actually released, how did you get the
deal with CBS?
Sweet : Jefferson Holt told me that this guy he knew at EMI, Steve Ralbovsky,
an A&R guy there, really liked the Buzz of Delight EP and wanted to
hear more. So I sent him a package with my new stuff on a cassette. Within
a couple of months Steve moved to Columbia and set up a meeting with the
guy who'd just done the Cinda Lauper record, Girls just want to have
fun, Rick Chertoff. I had no idea what they were going to say-no conception
they'd want me to be a solo atrist. I thought they maybe wanted some songs
for Cindy lauper.
The BOB : You didn't have to think it all over too long, I suppose?
Sweet : I knew my parents wouldn't give me money to live if I quit school
- they'd tell me to get a job - but I wasn't going anywhere. And Columbia
said they'd pay me money to live on because they thought I could sell millions
of records once I found my way as a songwriter. They said they'd buy me
an eight-track on this development prototype deal where they had the option
to people's work without really signing them yet. This was my dream.All
I wanted to do was make demos. "You can do the only thing you really
love in your life,we'll pay you to do it, and you can tell people you're
signed to a major label." There was bitterness around Athens about
that. It was just too easy. People came up to me and said, "You're
not really going to sign to Columbia. You should have a band and tour and
build up your folloing, like R.E.M.". I immediately did 30 songs on
my new gear and turned them in before I even signed the contract in the
spring of 1985.
The BOB : Your Columbia album, Inside, featured lots of different
producers,studios, and song writing partners.
Sweet : I moved to New York and co-wrote some stuff with Jules Shear. I
tried all these things for Steve. A lot of what I did- people thought I
was being manipulated- it was just my reaction to the way of thinking that
had frustrated me in Athens: that everything had to sound like an old song
and be four guys. I was hearing things the new Scritti Politti record, which
at least sounded very futuristic, and I really wanted to live in my own
time. I felt, "How can I matter when everything great's been done ?"
So I was trying to find this whole othe path. The most important thing about
Inside was that it was a total learning experience for me. I worked
with every kind of producer. At that time if you wanted to work with a name
producer they'd get as much as they could for a couple of tracks and not
be tied down for an entire album. I got three records worth of knowledge
from that one album.
The BOB : I take it your partners mostly contributed lyrics to the arrangement.
Sweet : That's how I met Pal Shazar, Jules Shear's wife now. She had an
LA band called Slow Children and had more of an urge to write lyrics than
anything else. And often-times that's the hardest thing for me. I was moving
at such a fast rate - experimenting and learning - that I never spent long
enough with one song to find where the bit of lyric that I had would fit
in. I had this big backlog of melodic things with no lyrics, so Pal would
take home tapes of me humming tunes and add words. I felt that I was on
a personal quest : too commercial for college radio and not normal enough
for real radio.
The BOB : Hooking up with Richard Lloyd was a brilliant stroke. How did
that happen ?
Sweet : In the spring of 1987 I toured as bass player for the Golden
Palominos, and Jody Harris [ex-Raybeats] was the lead guitar player. When
he couldn't make it to do some shows they hired Richard Lloyd to fill in.
I was totally excited. Television was one of the bands that had given my
life purpose. And we really hit it off. He liked my songs. I hadn't heard
his solo stuff-a real poppy thing he got going. So he could take the pop
side of my music and understand that I wanted edgier stuff. I me Robert
Quine through Fred Maher, who'd played with him in Lou Reed's band and the
latter-day Voidoids. Oh, and of course I met Fred Maher when he was hired
by one of my Inside producers, Francois Kevorkian, to do the same
kind of drum programming he'd done for Scritti Politti.
The BOB : So the next stop was A&M for the Earth album.
Sweet : Ralbovsky wanted to go to A&M, but A&M's laywers weren't
quite as clever as they thought, and couldn't get him out of his Columbia
contract. So he wound up as the lame duck in a breach-of-contract battle,
the end result being that all his Columbia acts, including me, were screwed.
But he did get them to pass my option, so he could eventually take me with
him to A&M. But things really dragged on and on, and it began to look
like Ralbovsky would never be free to go. So I began to shop demos for what
would become my next album, Earth, to other labels, and I went back
to Nebraska. Eventually of course it did come out on A&M. In retrospect
I think that if it were recorded more organically, like Girlfriend,
it would sound pretty good. There are some good songs in there. But it had
this Clearmountain-era slick mix, done by a third party, which gives it
this high-tech thing that bugs people.
The BOB : You used Trip Shakespeare for backup vocals on Earth.
Sweet : Ric Menck touted them to me. I first met Ric when he wrote me a
fan letter for Buzz Of Delight. He had the Reverbs at the time and sent
me the record. We like a lot of the same things. He was one of the first
people, maybe the first person who really believed in and supported
my music. I know he was the first person who ever told me, " You're
going to be really big someday." I rely on Ric to tell me what's out
there - anything that's a threat. If there's anything good, I have to hear
it and think it's terrible [laughs].
He came down to Athens to stay with me, but it was a long time before I found out how good a drummer he really was. He'd tell me, " People come up to me and say I'm really good." He visited me back in Nebraska when I was programming for Earth , and we jammed, and that's when I realised he'd be great to tour with. That first tour under my own name, to support Earth , was Ric, Paul Chastain on bass, and Eric Peterson on lead guitar. The Velvet Crush album with Ric and Paul that I "produced later, was some demos they recorded at my house. really all I did was turn on the gear. Anyway, Ric found me Trip Shakespeare to do backup vocals.
It's ironic really, because the key to finally getting my sound on Girlfriend later was to do them all myself. But these guys were powerful, almost operatic, singers with amazing harmonies. I'd just hired Leah Kunkle, Mama Cass's sister, for the album, so I started getting this perverse idea that I'd put the three Trip Shakepeare guys with her and reform the Mamas and the Papas [laughs]. Fred Maher produced two albums for them on A&M after they dropped me, so obviously they had more faith in Trip Shakepeare than they did in me [laughs].
He came down to Athens and stayed with me, but it was a long time before I found ou6t how good a drummer he really was. He'd tell me, "People come up to me and say I'm really good." He visited me back in Nebraska when I was programming Earth, and we jammed, and that's when I realised he'd be great to tourt with. That first tour under my own name, to support, was Ric, Paul Chastian on bass, and Eric Peterson on lead guitar. The Velvet Crush album with Ric and Paul that I "produced" later, was some demos they recorded at my house. Really all I did was turn on the gear. Anyway, Ric found me trip Shakespeare to do backup vocals.
It's ironic really, because the key to finally getting my sound on Girlfriend
later was to do them all myself. But these guys were powerful, almost
operatic, singers with amazing harmonies. I'd just hired Leah Kunkle, Mama
Cass's sister, for the album, so I started getting this preverse idea that
I'd put the three Trip Shakespeare guys and re-form the Mamas and Papas
[laughs]. Fred Maher produced to albums for them on A&M after they dropped
me, so obviously they had more faith in the Trip Shakespeare than they did
in me [laughs].
The BOB : Did you plunge right into Girlfriend after Earth
failed to make a dent?
Sweet : Soon as I got back back from that tour to support Earth -
I'd just split up with my first wife - I set up a drum kit in the living
room, and that was the seeds of Girlfriend. I finished on my own
after Ralbovsky left A&M, and they acted like they liked it, but nothing
happened. I knew that this was my last chance, major labelwise, if I didn't
get the next one happening. So A&M gave the tape to their young radio
guys, they said this would not get on the radio. It would be a hard sell.
It took eight months of everybody rejecting it - including Zoo-to get me
thinking of going back to school and maybe doing little independant records
if I could find somebody who'd be interested. But eventually Zoo bought
the album from A&M for 40 grand, which turned out to be 150 grand because
it did so well. Girlfriend took off and changed my life entirely.
The BOB : Whose idea was it to put Tuesday Weld in the cover?
Sweet : Lisa and I started collecting stuff on Jean Seberg after watching
Breathless. We got into this collecting binge. During that time I
found these little square photos of Tuesday Weld, who I knew nothing about.
When Girlfriend was in limbo I began to fantasize what I'd do for
a cover if I could buy the masters from A&M. I realised that these square
photos would fit the CD box exactly, and when Zoo picked it up, theu were
totally into the idea. I'd always had the scene that these pictures were
taken up in the hills on Mulholland Drive, and one day we found the exact
spot.
The BOB : Goodfriend, your acoustic and live promo-only album, was
a pretty meaty release all by itself, did you have any input into that?
Sweet : Zoo put that together because we'd been getting lots of in-store
play of Girlfriend that sold records for us, and they thought this
would do more of the same thing over the holidays. I didn't have as much
input as I'd have liked. For instance, the Zuma cover rip-off - I'd
never do that kind of thing. It's never been my intention to make people
think of Neil Young when my record's playing. I'm really not as big into
Neil Young as people want me to be. I hate live recordings so I never listen
to it. And the acoustic stuff I did one morning at home. It's funny though,
a lot of people have gotten into my music because of the promo - Cameron
Crowe, the guy who wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High, for instance
- he loved it. And now he and I have worked together on a treatment for
the video of "The Ugly Truth" for the new album.
The BOB : Tell us a little bit about the new album, Altered Beast.
First of all , what's the name mean?
Sweet : Well, I stole the title for a video game. I went to video arcades
a lot back in Nebraska. When I was sequencing the album I began to think
that some of the songs have this mnstrous vibe. In the game you have to
find these power-ups that change the little guy into a half man/ half beast
to defeat his enemies. I thought it was an ominous and edgy title, although
I worried for a while it might be a litttle to metal-y. Halfway through
the album, as a break between the two segments we used a sampling from the
Penthouse movie Caligula. It's where Malcolm Mc Dowell is snapping
and goes before the senate to declare himself god. It even began to make
sense to me-man's desperate attempt to be a god.
The same people who played guitar on Girlfriend do it again this
time: Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine, and Ivan Julian. And Nicky Hopkins plays
piano. I knew he played with the stones, but I had no idea he'd played on
John Lennon's Imagine album. He was great, wonderful. I got Jody
Stephens from Big Star to play drums on one track. When I was doing showcases
for Girlfriend he played with me on a Big Star cover I was doing,
"Don't Lie to Me." I kept bugging him that one day he'd get out
his drums and play on one of my records.
The BOB : Have you finally come to terms with your own voice? As a simplistic
way of looking at it,