Originally published in Uncut Take 307 (December 2022 issue)…
What’s up with what’s going down? While grunge was often stereotyped as self-indulgent angst, Rock For Choice founders L7 embodied the movement’s strong moral and political creed, as well as its sharp sense of humour. Released at the height of Nirvanamania, “Pretend We’re Dead” was a pithy tirade against apathy and conformism, couched in the language of supercharged bubblegum pop. Its insanely catchy riff was allied to a bulldozing Butch Vig production, designed to sound good on the radio without sacrificing any crunch.
“Pretend We’re Dead” duly cracked the UK Top 40 in April 1992, landing L7 a slot on the main stage at that year’s Reading Festival, and an appearance on Channel 4’s The Word. Both occasions were enlivened by co-frontwoman Donita Sparks’ “absurdist” feminist protests – lobbing a used tampon into the crowd, pulling her pants down on live TV – that burnished L7’s rebel credentials. The band may have struggled to repeat the magic formula of “Pretend We’re Dead”, but for helping to destroy rock’s complacent macho façade, their legend is assured.
When we speak, L7 are in rehearsals for a US tour in support of the 30th anniversary reissue of Bricks Are Heavy. Attempting to accurately recreate its songs has revealed hidden depths. “Suzi’s been trying to decipher the solo that she played that was recorded and then played backwards,” explains Sparks. “How I’m gonna get that spacey sound on the riff, I have no idea!” Nevertheless, scenes of mayhem can be expected when they reach that point in the set. “For a lot of people, ‘Pretend We’re Dead’ was a generational anthem. I can tell the song holds up live. It sparks up the audience, and they’re so joyous when they’re singing it.”
SPARKS: We always had a ‘thing’ from the very beginning, because we weren’t playing the sex card. I think people were a bit mesmerised by the way we looked, because we always had this fashion mash-up sense. People were just staring at us at first.
GARDNER: We had overlapping things that we liked: punk rock and hard rock and pop and surf. It was a great combination of styles and sensibilities.
SPARKS: LA took itself kinda seriously and it was not very political at all, which was a frustration of mine for years. So it was cool to connect with people up in Seattle who we felt were our tribespeople.
VIG: L7 opened for the Butthole Surfers at the Palladium in LA when I was producing Nevermind. I went to the gig with Nirvana, I think Dave Grohl was dating [L7 bassist] Jennifer Finch at the time. I thought they sounded amazing, and they looked cool as fuck. They came by Sound City the next couple of sessions and hung out. I thought they were super-cool, funny and had tons of attitude. One afternoon we ordered Texas BBQ for lunch and Nirvana and L7 had a food fight. It was pretty crazy, very funny, but a terrible mess that the assistant had to clean up.
SPARKS: Other bands were signing to majors and we just thought, ‘Let’s go for it’. But the label that we signed to was a cool, once-independent label called Slash. They had signed X and The Germs and Violent Femmes. We only really tasted the major label thing when the videos came and the machine started to click in.
GARDNER: There definitely was pressure because the recording sessions were at bigger studios. But I think we rose to the occasion.
SPARKS: I think I got braver with expressing my melodic side as time went on. At first, we were just trying to be these tough cookies with almost a lack of melody. But power can only take you so far. It’s great to have a hook, it’s great to have songs – I’ve always loved that stuff.
VIG: They were a tight band, they had that sort of ‘clique’ that develops when you hang out as a gang all the time. They could finish each other’s sentences and had a wicked sense of humour. They were really fun to hang around with, they didn’t seem to have any patience for alt.rock’s doom and gloom.
SPARKS: “Pretend We’re Dead” was originally written as “Pretend You’re Dead”. I was going through a very difficult breakup – it was so time-consuming and frustrating that I was like, ‘OK, I’ve just got to pretend they’re dead.’ I didn’t want that person dead, it was just the way I could cope. After a couple of days, I was like, ‘Oh, pretend we’re dead – now that’s a cool lyric.’ There was horrible apathy going on with politics in the United States and people not voting. We had Reagan all those years, and then the first President Bush. It was scary times, they were clamping down on civil liberties. So it was a call to action for people to wake up and smell the coffee, because bad stuff can happen. I suppose I was trying to inspire without being preachy.
GARDNER: It just seemed obvious that we were going to sing about our life experiences and comment on the world around us. I’m grateful that our music had a message.
SPARKS: We were allowed to choose our producer. Nobody told us what to do; I think people were terrified of us! I liked Butch a lot – he was from the Midwest, I’m from the Midwest, there’s a certain lack of pretension. He wasn’t too big for his britches. He wasn’t already huge, because Nirvana’s record hadn’t come out yet. So he gave us a lot of attention and a lot of encouragement.
VIG: I fell in love with “Pretend We’re Dead” the first time I heard it. It was heavy but also super-hooky.
SPARKS: Butch really liked the drum sound at Sound City. But Nirvana had the budget to stay at Sound City their whole recording, we did not. So we recorded the drums in LA and then we went out to Butch Vig’s studio in Madison, Wisconsin, in the snow and the cold.
GARDNER: I had never experienced that length of time in a snowy place – it seemed like The Shining!
VIG: L7 took Madison by storm. Within 24 hours they had met all the local oddball street musicians, bartenders, bookies, drug dealers… It was a constant procession of freaks coming by the studio every night. To this day, when I’m back in Madison, I still run into people who say, “Those L7 gals were really wild, hey?”
SPARKS: We would take a cassette tape home every night of the work that we had done, and I would listen in my room with headphones on. That’s where I got the idea for those call-and-response vocals. I love when Dee Dee Ramone comes in with a backing thing, or any time you can hear Keith Richards in the background, that’s always like a bonus. And it makes it cool to perform live when everybody’s got their little part in it, you know?
GARDNER: One of the cool things about our band is that everybody can provide vocals when necessary. And it’s neat to hear all the different voices and personalities.
VIG: We spent a lot of time on the overdubs for “Pretend We’re Dead”. For some reason I kept hearing a reference to Tommy James’ “Crimson And Clover”, so we decided to add tremolo guitars and lots of ear candy and psychedelic effects to the track.
SPARKS: For the riff, we were just trying to get an effect that would stand out from the thickness of the rhythm bed. We were putting so many fucking pedals together that it started to sound like a synthesiser.
VIG: Peter Love, aka Spydog, was my good friend and tour manager for my ’80s band Fire Town. He was a real character, always hanging around the studio, and he struck up a friendship with the band. They partied hard. Peter ended up doing some backing vocals at the end of “Pretend We’re Dead”.
SPARKS: He just cracked us up. We got him to do some bizarre vocals on the end of the song when he was kinda tipsy, and we put a bunch of effects on it. So there’s joyousness in that song too, even though it’s serious.
VIG: I knew it would be a big single for them. It was heavy but tight, super-hooky and the lyrics were brilliant.
SPARKS: The video shoot was a shitshow. The director wanted to try this shot with Suzi lying on the floor. The crane was not fastened securely and it came crashing down and hit Suzi right on her cheekbone. It could have been way worse. But it was bad – the shoot was cancelled and she had to have surgery. When we reconvened, [my ideas] were being dismissed by the director. I had to put my foot down. It was a bummer, but it turned out cool.
GARDNER: There were struggles throughout our career where we really had to stand our ground. But that’s just part of the process and ultimately we navigated those difficult times.
SPARKS: We flew over to the UK, and it was my birthday, April 8. The record company brought in a Bart Simpson cake for me, and one of the guys said, ‘How does it feel to be a pop star? You’re on the charts in the UK!’ We were like, ‘What?!’ Oh my God, it felt so cool. Sometimes we’d go out to a club and hear it being played, or we’d hear it on the radio over there. It was amazing, mind-blowing. Who would have thought?
GARDNER: No 21, that’s pretty groovy. I thought we’d do a couple of regional US tours, get in a fight and break up!
SPARKS: We were riding high. But even when you’re riding high, it’s not perfect. At Reading, we had mud thrown at us the whole time. That was a huge heartbreaker. I was like, ‘Fuck, I thought the UK liked us. Are we over already, is this some backlash?’ So clearly, I took out the tampon – I was hormonal, I was on the rag, so maybe I took it more personally. Mudhoney got the mud too. But all kinds of gender politics come to mind when you’re being pelted with mud. Triggers get set off. There was a kind of a misogynistic bent to it. So they threw mud, I threw blood! It was an absurdist moment, but it also was political in my mind.
VIG: I don’t know who else would have had the balls to throw a tampon on stage. They were fearless. Their shows were legendary, almost like performance art.
GARDNER: The four strong personalities that make up this band, we’re all free spirits who’re gonna react in a certain kind of way. I love the way our stage banter happens, the way crazy stuff goes down.
SPARKS: We were on tour with Faith No More. And on one of our days off we had to go into London to do The Word. There were a couple things going on that I thought were weird, like they were filming Oliver Reed with a hidden camera in his dressing room. OK, that’s fucked up. And then there was a male ‘best bum contest’ going on. It was kind of shocking, actually, because that wouldn’t be on in the US. So you can’t objectify women now, but you can objectify men? Fuck that. That’s not cool. Anyway, I was like, ‘I think I’m gonna drop my pants, fuck this bum contest.’ And so I climbed up on my amp and that’s what I did. There was quite the hullabaloo in the production office. But the kids in the audience dug it and our crew was laughing hysterically.
GARDNER: The entire career of the band ’til now, there’s surreal moments that you can’t even begin to explain. They’re pickled for posterity, but the way you’re feeling when that’s coming down, usually you’re sleep-deprived and you’re nervous, you’re on television and shenanigans are going on… but I’m happy about Donita’s spontaneity.
SPARKS: The fact that we weren’t a bunch of hotties probably worked in our favour, ’cos we weren’t expected to play up to that glamourpuss stuff. We’re as vain as any other rock people, but we’d rather look cool than beautiful. We’d rather give attitude or humour than glamorousness, and that resonated with a lot of people.
VIG: Nineties alt.rock was pretty much a mopey dude’s world, and L7 were a breath of fresh air. They redefined punk feminism, formed Rock For Choice, musically pushed the envelope by mixing hard rock with a punk sensibility. And they were kickass, definitely trailblazers and a huge influence on generations of feminist rockers to come. I think “Pretend We’re Dead” still sounds really fresh.
GARDNER: A lot of our song messages are still relevant today. It’s a shame that things haven’t gotten better in certain areas, and that’s a drag. But these songs make me happy in a way I can’t describe, that just goes all the way to the marrow. You know, I was a kid in my bedroom in the suburbs, and I got to take it all the way to Reading. Do I live in a mansion? No, but I got to live a dream – I got to live a rock’n’roll dream.
Fact File
Written by:
Donita Sparks
Personnel includes: Donita Sparks (vocals, guitar), Suzi Gardner (guitar, backing vocals), Jennifer Finch (bass), Dee Plakas (drums)
Produced by: Butch Vig
Recorded at: Sound City, LA; Smart Studios, Madison, WI
Released: April 1992
Chart peak: UK 21; US –
TIMELINE
May 1991 L7 sign to Slash, by then a subsidiary of London Records
November 1991 Recording sessions for their third album Bricks Are Heavy begin at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles
December 1991 The band decamp to Madison, Wisconsin, to complete the album at Butch Vig’s own Smart Studios
April 1992 “Pretend We’re Dead” released as the lead single from Bricks Are Heavy, climbing to No 21 on the UK charts
August 1992 Donita Sparks throws a used tampon into the crowd after being pelted with mud at Reading Festival
November 1992 L7’s performance of “Pretend We’re Dead” live on The Word culminates with a flash of “full frontal nudity”
September 2022 The 30th-anniversary remaster ofBricks Are Heavy is released by Licorice Pizza, followed by a US tour on which L7 play the album in full