Ryan Adams is an...um...interesting dude. Pretty sure if I had been married to Mandy Moore for 6 years I'd remember it. Seems to be a lot of pretending things didn't happen surrounding that guy. I like that people shout at him to play Summer of '69 a lot.
Liz was interviewed tonight as part of Pitchfork's "In Sight Out" series and took some questions from the audience. A friend of mine attended and said someone asked Liz about the sessions with Ryan Adams and her answer was basically that she respects Ryan immensely, but can't jump on a train that is running all over the place and wants to do it her way.
I love a lot of Liz's stuff. Obviously Exile is amazing, but I also loved Whip-Smart and whitechocolatespaceegg. I didn't like the self-titled (didn't like the Matrix songs) though I chalk that up to record company f'ery as much as I do a misguided change in musical direction. The album after that was OK but just seemed like something Sheryl Crow forgot to record. Funstyle was kinda fun, if very odd and a bit insider-y. I'm always gonna give any new stuff she does a listen, for sure. Funny, many a male rock artist/band have completely spent any creative cargo they had after a few albums.....but they are rarely referred to as a "living tragedy."
There's a lot of great material from the sessions for that album that is well worth hearing. If you haven't already, try to track down a copy of the comeandgetit EP. The five songs on it are among the best of her post-WCSE material.
Yes -- from the pool of material we have (Liz Phair itself, comeandgetit, the iTunes exclusive "Insanity" and a couple of leaked outtakes), there's an excellent (and logical) successor to WCSE to be found...
I guess after today’s news, we may know the real reason Liz abandoned the double album she was working on with Ryan Adams.
It's possible, but of course we won't really know until (unless) Liz herself comments on it. But I haven't read any of the Ryan Adams stories yet beyond the headlines -- has Liz been mentioned and/or quoted?
Liz hasn't been mentioned or quoted yet, although it's possible she's one of the women interviewed for the New York Times piece who didn't want to be publicly named for fear of retribution. Sadie Dupuis (of Speedy Ortiz) tweeted earlier, "it’s insane how much of each year i spend knowing horrible secret stories about men and waiting/praying for them to break publicly". Given that she and Liz are friends and toured together for several weeks last year, I wonder if Liz was the source of any of that knowledge.
I doubt the (finally) exposed details of the horror show that is Ryan Adams has much relation to the Liz Phair album thing. She's much older than 15, and apparently that's not his thing. Plus, his MO seems to be the old "casting couch" trope of "Stick with me baby, and I'll make you a star," and he couldn't pretend to be able to make her a star because she already is one.
Only one of the women Ryan Adams preyed on was underage; the rest, including his ex-wife and ex-fiancee, were younger than him but still adults. And it's not like Ryan Adams hasn't pursued women older than him in the past. He dated Juliana Hatfield at one point, who is the same age as Liz. (Interestingly enough, Juliana was one of the first who tweeted a link to the New York Times piece, then posted another tweet stating, "i imagine that a lot of rock star guys are scared right now".) While Liz is already an established artist, working with Ryan may have still helped restore some of her commercial and critical cachet. Also, it's not like Mandy Moore was an unknown. That said, Liz may not have been one of the women he preyed upon, but could have still pulled the plug on the album if she'd become aware of or even suspected his predatory behavior towards these women. Based on what I know of Liz, it's not something she would tolerate.
It puts those social media teasers of Phair at Ryan's studio in a very different context now. Plus the timeline of the couple times he talked about her in the interviews.
Someone on Twitter asked Liz to weigh in. mentioning the material she recorded with him that remains unreleased. She responded, "If I do, I’ll write about it. But I think you can extrapolate. My experience was nowhere near as personally involving, but yes the record ended and the similarities are upsetting."
When I think "tragedy", I think a life wasted on drugs and alcohol and bad life decisions. Liz made an ill-advised pop album that did no favors to her and lost her audience in the process, but its not like she's laying in a cemetery somewhere because she threw her life away. As far as I know, she has a great personal life with a family and everything, so I can't see her being placed alongside the likes of Amy Winehouse or Janis Joplin or Whitney Houston or the countless others who threw their talent away because of addictions.
Liz Phair's memoir, Horror Stories, is being published on November 5 by Random House. Here's the synopsis of the book: "From the two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter behind the groundbreaking album Exile in Guyville comes a haunting memoir in stories in the tradition of Patti Smith's M Train When Liz Phair was just starting out in the Wicker Park, Chicago, music scene in the early 1990s, she mostly encountered a**holes--mostly men, who didn't respect her and were determined not to see her fail, exactly, because they didn't care enough about her to wish failure on her--they just wanted her to get out of their space, to disappear. "Girly Sound" was the name of the cassettes she used to pass around in those days, and in 1993 those songs became the landmark album Exile in Guyville, which turned Phair, at twenty-five, into a foul-mouthed feminist icon. Now, like a Gen X Patti Smith, Liz Phair tells the story of her life and career in a memoir about the moments that have haunted her most. Horror is in the eye of the beholder. For Phair, horror is what stays with you--the often unrecognized, universal experiences of daily pain, shame, and fear that make up our common humanity. In Phair's case it means the dangers of falling for "the perfect guy," and the disaster that awaits her; the memory of a stranger passed out on a bathroom floor amid a crowd of girls, forcing her to consider our responsibilities to one another, and the gnawing regret of being a bystander; and the profound sense of emptiness she experienced on the set of her first celebrity photoshoot. Horror Stories reads like the confessions of a friend, a book that gathers up all of our isolated shames, bringing us together in our shared imperfection, our uncertainty and our cowardice, smashing the stigma of not being in control. But most importantly, Horror Stories is a memoir that asks questions of how we feel about the things that have happened to us, how we cope with regret and culpability, and how we break the spell of those things, leeching them of their power over us. This memoir is an immersive experience, taking readers inside the most intimate moments of Phair's life. Her fearless prose, wit, and uncompromising honesty transform those deeply personal moments into tales about each and every one of us--that will appeal to both the serious fan and the serious reader."
I'm sure this will be a hell of a read. I'd rather have a new album, but any new creative work by Liz will have my curiosity.
A new interview, with a few crumbs on the new album: Are you making progress on your next record? I am. We just got out of a couple days in the studio with the band I’m touring with, and we’re gonna go back in [soon]. I’m writing up a storm. The session that we did, [we had] five songs, three of which I wrote that week. So it’s pretty strong amounts of new material coming out right now. Is that due to feeling energised from touring? Yes. I don’t know how I would do it without that, because I think I just get too precious when I’m left to sit in my room too long. [Laughs] Then I write these songs that are very deep and meaningful and me, but no one else gives a ****. It’s really important to get back in front of your audience. "You’re Loved, Then You’re Hated, Then You’re Loved": A Candid Chat With Liz Phair
Just got a ticket to see Liz in Manchetser this year. Been hoping for a UK tour, and then..... YES!!!!!!!
Nice, lengthy interview here: https://www.vulture.com/2019/09/liz-phair-horror-stories-in-conversation.html
Among other things and sort of by the way, that (great!) interview is a thermonuclear critique and takedown of the awful indie-sexist title of this thread.
Yes I wish the thread title here could be changed to something more like “A Liz Phair Discussion thread”... I’d also love it to be merged with the other Liz thread (the thread that promised two new albums!)..
the minute she used the word "mansplained", I'd had enough of her too. Never heard or saw the fascination. that sad photo of her at that club, playing to about 50 people... wow, yeah, she's the real big deal. over and out.
