If there’s one thing we know about Liz Phair, it’s that she does as she pleases. She’s not posing, she’s not asking your permission; she is just totally, un-self-consciously doing her thing, come what may. Lately we’ve seen the release of Funstyle (featuring the Girlysound tapes, her earliest recordings, as bonus tracks), a growing list of tour dates and a coveted byline in the New York Times Book Review. Join me as I catch up with the musician about her latest comings and goings. Do I ask her anything about Exile in Guyville? Why yes, yes I do. Would you have been able to help yourself?
Last night was kind of a weird night; I was listening to Exile in Guyville and then Funstyle, and then I somehow found myself struck dumb watching the “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.” Were you lucky and/or unlucky enough to have caught any of that?
(laughs) I didn’t even know it was happening! I think I was watching Scrooged or something; I’m doing the holiday thing. I was looking for Christmas shows all over the television last night and watching them with my son, but… what was going on with Victoria’s Secret?
Everything you would expect, I guess. Katy Perry was performing on the runway, later on they cut to a shot of Debbie Harry in the audience. It made me wonder, if the Victoria’s Secret folks had approached you asking to use one of your songs as walking music, how would you have responded?
Oh, I totally would’ve given it to them! I might’ve even dropped eight or nine pounds and tried to hit the runway if they’d wanted. I wouldn’t mind.
Thinking about that grouping – you, Katy Perry, Debbie Harry – it’s kind of like, in keeping with the Christmas theme, seeing the ghosts of the past, present and future. Are we in kind of a post-”Women in Rock” era? Who do you see as carrying that mantle?
I’m not mad at Katy Perry; I love her new song. She’s a little more polished than the “women in rock” that I associate myself with. We were more pick up an instrument, work it out on stage, hack through it. She’s more polished and more of a “singer.” She’s more of a performer than a rock n’ roll chick. But I think there’s definitely an attitude that a lot of the young women have that come from that post-punk, alternative culture… you know, she’s certainly not a goodie-good girl.
So, in “Stratford-on-Guy” you may have only pretended you were in a Galaxie 500 video, but in real life you actually got to review Dean Wareham’s book Black Postcards for the New York Times Book Review a while back and, more recently, Keith Richards’ memoir, Life. How did you land that gig and are you loving it?
I have no clue how I got so lucky and I am way loving it, like out of the stratosphere loving it. I’ve been writing for a while and to be offered two juicy books in a row – and I like both of them – it was just really, really fun. And writing for the New York Times feels like being a black diamond, kind of. Just to interface with something like that. Our family has subscribed to the New York Times for as long as I can remember; it was always lying around the house, it was our family newspaper. It’s a big, big touchstone for us. The challenge is so awe-inspiring but rewarding. I mean, that Keith Richards book, they were late in getting it, so I only had a couple weeks to read it and review it. And I was on tour. But it seemed to make sense, it seemed very Keith Richards to have to do it that way. I finished the revisions that they needed while sitting in a power truck outside the venue with roadies loading gear on and off, freezing my ass off in between a 6:30 performance and a 9:30 performance. It was very raw and intense and perfectly in keeping with the book. So it’s been pretty magical.
As somebody who’s been both baptized and crucified by critics over the span of your career – and now you find yourself in the role of a reviewer – after all of that, what kind of value do you place on critical commentary?
I have a very strong opinion about this. I think critics should say if they like it or don’t like it, but the bulk of their content should be to describe what it is. The purchaser can decide whether or not they want it. I think too many reviewers get caught up in themselves, where the material is just a platform for their own views. I have no patience for that. Don’t even bother me with that. I don’t care about you; I want to know whether I should go get this book, so you can say that you like it or don’t like it but tell me what it is. Actually describe it. I think everybody is gonna like something differently, it will strike someone differently. In a book group, whenever I’ve been in a book group, half of us love it, half of us hate it. It doesn’t make the book any less valuable, it just helps guide you as to whether or not you feel like buying it.
I have a couple of Guyville questions, of course. Do you mind talking about that?
Oh, of course! Go for it.
Singing along to the chorus of “Dance of the Seven Veils” (“I ask because/ I’m a real cunt in spring/ You can rent me by the hour…“) was certainly the first and is quite possibly the only circumstance in which I utter the word “cunt.” It was and still is and probably ever will be a powerful and loaded word; it’s a word that you hold back more than you ever use. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on that word and how you came to the lyrics of that song? And what exactly is “the ugly pilgrim thing?“
Okay, first off, “cunt” is an extremely powerful word and one that actually hurts. It hurts us to hear it, it hurts to say it, it’s a very ugly word for parts of our bodies. And I think it ties in to all of the feelings that we have about our bodies that are unhealthy – and we didn’t generate it. I wouldn’t want a guy to call me a cunt. I’m the only one that can say it and when I say it it’s because I’m trying to gather up everything that’s hurt me and flip it on its head. And the “ugly pilgrim thing,” the idea was that we’re all obsessed with celebrities in America since we don’t have royalty, so we’re just these plain, boring pilgrims. So “Entertainers bring May flowers,” it’s the gorgeous, almost like Italian, sensual stuff… Like, we’ll watch people getting killed and massacred but if you show sex, it’s so taboo here. And to me that’s the ugly pilgrim thing. “Entertainers bring May flowers” – they’re the ones that we go nutso over, it just for me shows an imbalance in the way we live our lives and the way we approach ourselves. The same way when we call ourselves “cunts,” “cunt” is about the imbalance in the approach to ourselves that comes from the culture.
What about guys who have sort of appropriated that album because it got their, um, juices flowing?
Hmmm, I’m not upset about it. To me, there’s no way you can listen to my record without hearing what I’m saying because I just don’t sing that well, I don’t perform that well. If I were to walk up to any house here on the street and just put on that record, they’re not going to immediately go, “Oh, I just love that!” Anyone who decided to fantasize about it is no different than me loving a record by a guy that, I listen to him but he’s also hot. That’s okay.
What’s your trick to standing 6’1″?
Ohhhh, I don’t know! I’m such a shorty and I really don’t think I am. I think I’m so much bigger than I am. In pictures I’m always embarrassed. I’m like, “Oh my God! Where do I get off?” It’s all mental. Yeah.
by Stacey Pavlick
