Episode 48 (Bonus): Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes on how "My Sweet Lord" inspired him to play guitar

Hi, this is Joan Baez. You are listening to Everything Fab Four and Salome.com. Welcome to Everything Fab Four, a podcast focused on fun and intelligent stories about the Beatles. I'm your host Ken Womack, music culture columnist for Salome.com and a Beatles scholar and historian. No other band or popular phenomenon for that matter has enjoyed the global impact the Beatles have and continue to have more than 50 years later. They are part of our human fabric. They created music that continues to bring people together and just about everyone has their own Beatles story to tell, some that are surprisingly deep and unexpected. This show seeks to draw those stories out in interesting and insightful ways. Remember, it's a Beatles world and everyone has a story. I went to see the concert for Bangladesh when I was very young and I was not really into music yet, but when I heard the electric guitar on My Sweet Lord, I was like, "What's that?" I asked my friend who was next to me and he said, "That's an electric guitar." I made a note. Electric guitar. You've got to learn that. Today's guest is American musician Bryan Ritchie, who is perhaps best known as the bassist for the folk punk band, The Violent Femmes. Hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Ritchie co-founded The Violent Femmes with percussionist Victor D. Lorenzo in 1981. The duo was later joined by singer-songwriter Gordon Gano. Ritchie came up with the band's distinctive name on a whim, employing it during their early days playing in Milwaukee's coffee houses. In August 1981, The Violent Femmes were discovered performing on a street corner in front of the Oriental Theater by James "Honeyman" Scott, the guitarist for the pretenders. That night, Chrissy Hynd invited the Femmes to play an acoustic set prior to The Pretender's show. In 1983, The Violent Femmes released their self-titled debut album, which emerged as a key soundtrack for the burgeoning alternative and college-oriented rock movements. The inaugural LP featured many of the band's best-known songs, including "Blister in the Sun," "Kiss Off," "Added Up," and "Gone Daddy Gone." The album became the Femmes' most successful LP, eventually earning platinum status from the Recording Industry Association of America. Over the years, the Femmes have recorded 10 studio albums, including "Hallowed Ground" in 1984, "The Blind Leading the Naked" in 1986, and "Why Do Birds Sing" in 1991. The group is widely considered to be a key influence on the 1980s and 1990s alternative rock scene. Welcome, Brian Ritchie. Here we are, obviously, on this August occasion of the, can you believe it, 40th anniversary of that inaugural album. What is it like to look back at that period of time in a proto-punk band? How does the horizon look to you? Oh, you mean from the vantage point of the past? Yes. Well, we did design the album to be, to endure. I mean, we made what we thought was going to be a timeless recording, and amazingly, it has turned out to be one. And we did that by avoiding the clichés of the time. Some of the music sounds like '50s music or even earlier. The recording was very simple, acoustic sounds. We used very conservative reverbs. So we were trying to make something that would last, but we certainly didn't know that it would, because let's face it, at that point, when we made the album in 1982, and it was released in '83, rock and roll itself had not been around for 40 years. So we have no way of looking into the future. Yeah. And we're actually further away at this point than you were at the time from that August moment. And you mentioned the clichés of the moment in 1980 and the early 1980s. There were a bunch weren't there. There were a lot of sounds that were, were becoming trite. Yeah. And we heard that not only sounds, but approaches, like even because we do consider ourselves a punk rock band. Some people would dispute that, but that's because they weren't there at the time when punk rock was a much more malleable form. So, but punk rock was in the, in the, in the process of becoming codified. And we, we just resisted that by doing it differently. And we did it in our own way, but we still thought that we had the punk energy. Well, it's been a thrill to be able to return to the record and give it a really expansive listen. And there's no doubt, right? That in addition to those punk tendencies, there's a healthy dose of, of folk music. I wonder if we could even back up and talk about your own musical past, you know, were you raised in a musical family? I was not raised in a musical family. When I decided to get into music, that was definitely not anything that anybody took seriously or that there was probably assumed to be a kind of a weird hobby. Because in Milwaukee in the 1970s and 80s, you know, when, when we were starting, there were no professional rock musicians. That guy, Leslie West from Mountain, he had moved to Milwaukee and he would drive around town in a limousine. So we knew that there were such things as rock stars and that it was possible that they might even be in Milwaukee, but we wouldn't be one of them. So yeah, it was, it was not that I just loved the music and started playing it because I wanted to. And I was pretty much self taught, although I had a couple of good teachers and I was in the jazz band in school. So they gave me a lot of encouragement to study jazz, which was the actually was the first year that a jazz band was in the Milwaukee public schools because up to that point, even jazz was considered like outside our music and forget about studying rock. Now kids study rock. It's, it's, it's funny. I find it very amusing. There's schools of rock everywhere right here on the Jersey Shore. We just had the rock academy up in Woodstock open up a show for us. And it was, it was remarkable how good they were. Like they even played some pretty obscure material like television. See no evil, which was what I was listening to when I was in high school, but I wouldn't have considered playing it because it was so complicated. Well, so when you were in the jazz band, were you playing bass? Is that the instrument you started with or did you start with an acoustic guitar like so many folks? I started with acoustic guitar and I was in the folk music too. And I, and then I quickly graduated to electric guitar. I was playing rock music and funk because I was, was going to mainly a black school. So I was playing with the black musicians. We would do like Ohio players, uh, Herbie Hancock stuff like that. And then got into jazz a little bit. I was in a wedding band. So when you're in a wedding band, you're thinking, wow, this music is crap, but I'll do it to make some money. But in fact, it's really good training because it, it teaches you how to play a lot of different kinds of feels and grooves and styles of music just because you have to. When you were growing up in the seventies, what, what sort of, uh, what sort of music was inspiring you? You mentioned some already. I'm just curious that it's such a rich period. Um, you know, I, I know so many people have plaudits for the 1960s, but I adore the 1970s. Well, the seventies in retrospect, uh, appears to be a golden age, but at the time we thought basically that the commercial rock industry was appalling, you know, because you had all these things like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles and stuff that people are still listening to, which is shocking. But, uh, now that I look back at it, we still, we didn't have any problems finding great stuff to listen to, which was even in just in the rock field would be stuff like T-Rex, Roxy Music, um, Iggy, uh, and then later in the seventies, when punk rock happened, that was it, you know, that was like the, the generation, my generation. Those bands I mentioned earlier were a little bit older and it wasn't until punk rock came along that I thought, okay, people are making music for, for me. But still, it was not commercial at that point. So the, the, yeah, people had hijacked radio, hijacked the record companies, and it wasn't really representing interesting music, except as peripheral, you know, like somebody like Lou Reed, yeah, he was, he was there, but he wasn't at the top of, uh, the industry's list. Right. He was more of a, you know, either you knew him because he was an independent or because of the New York, greater New York regional area. Yeah. They were still pushing stuff like the Eagles and they still are. It's, it's just, you know, irritating. So we, as you know, uh, our podcast is, uh, often discusses the Beatles. What do you, what do you make of this moment that we're in right now where the Beatles are having this kind of, I suppose, renaissance with the new single they released this week and revisiting their compilations from the 1970s, ironically enough? Well, I'm in Australia at the moment because I live here and McCartney is in the process of touring in Australia and, uh, he's creating quite a sensation. And then as you mentioned, they've released a new single. But what I find the most amusing about this is that because the Stones have a new album, it has reignited that, that old, very old Beatles versus Stones paradigm that everybody was talking about like 60 or 80 or 100 years ago. And I just find it amusing that people are still talking about it. It's kind of made up anyway, isn't it? I mean, if you are an aficionado of either or both of those bands, you don't have to give up one for the other. It's kind of an artificial stance. It is. But like for me personally, the Stones are a presence because I've seen them play so many times. I've seen McCartney play many times as well, but that's not the Beatles. Whereas the Stones, you still, even now, even, even without Charlie, they still have the flavor of the Stones when you go to, could see them live. Would you have ever counted the Beatles as one of your influences? Well, they were a primary influence because it was buying, I bought a couple seven inch singles at a garage sale. And that's probably what inspired me to start playing electric guitar. That and also I went to see the concert for Bangladesh when I was very young. And I was not really into music yet. But when I heard the electric guitar on My Sweet Lord, I was like, what's that? I asked my friend who was next to me and he said, that's an electric guitar. And I made a note, electric guitar. I got to learn that. That's great. What were those seven inch singles you bought? It was She's a Woman and I Feel Fine. That's a good, that's a good pairing. And the other, the other ones were even earlier, like Twist and Shout. And I think maybe the B-side for that was from Me to You or something. That blew my mind. Twist and Shout, just the kind of emotion of the vocals. Still, I think is one of the greatest vocal performances in rock music by John. And what was the other one? Love Me Do, I think. These are the ones that were on, that were not even on Capitol Records. It was on VJ and I forget what the other label was, Swan or something. It's hard to believe that now more than 50 years later, I even remember any of this stuff. It's kind of amazing, actually. It's kind of remarkable. Yeah. So the Beatles were, I mean, of course, my earliest musical memories from hanging around with my cousin, the first two songs that I can remember, since we're talking about Beatles and Stones, the first two songs that I actually remember were A Hard Day's Night by the Beatles and Get Off My Cloud by the Stones. And my parents told me that when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan's show that I was, I immediately went berserk and started jumping around the house and acting crazy, but I don't remember that. So when did you become, well, actively writing songs and creating music of your own? Well, I was probably about 13 when I bought those Beatles things and by the time I was 15, I was already performing in bands. And then, yeah, I was practically a professional musician when I was 15, as much as you could be. And you're still seven years away from that first album at that point? Well, I was 20 when the FEM started. So like more like five years until we started the band, I think. And yeah, it was pretty fast. You know, at first you're in a lot of bands, but they only do one or two, three gigs, and then you move on to another band. I was even switching instruments like I switched from guitar to bass, although even now I play both of them. But like McCartney, you still identify as a bass player. How did you, so how did the FEMs come about? And if you could just, for the moment, relive the backstory for us. Victor and I were playing in a lot of different bands and we, well, we had also started playing on the street with this guy named Dorway Dave, who was a hobo. He was an actual hobo. And that's in Milwaukee? Yeah, he would go from town to town on the train. Anyway, we met him when we started playing with these acoustic instruments out on the street at the time that was unheard of in Milwaukee. And Gordon had been introduced to me by a club owner in Milwaukee, who just advised me to listen to Gordon, which I did. And I really liked what he was up to. So we got together and played a few songs. And then we played at his high school, which caused a riot. So we played as a duo. At that time, Victor would have probably come with us to play, except for the fact that he was on tour in Europe with a theater company that he was with at that time. So I told Gordon, yeah, when this guy Victor comes back from Europe, we should get together with him, which we did. And that was the start of the band. And so it came together then pretty quickly. Very quickly. We didn't even rehearse, we just started performing. Gordon was playing at this little coffee house called the Beneath the Daw Cafe. And Victor and I brought our instruments there. And we just sat in with Gordon right off the bat. You know, we didn't even rehearse. We and we still don't rehearse. Well, that's confusing to me because every band director I've ever had tells me that, you know, rehearsing is essential. What's wrong? Well, since we're on a Beatles theme, I'll quote John Lennon. John Lennon says, 1000 hours of rehearsal are worth one hour of performance. So, you know, we just thought that playing was more important than rehearsing. Well, and playing for, and you would play anywhere, right? I mean, you would play on street corners, I understand. Yeah, we tried to play in the clubs in Milwaukee, but see, what we were doing because we were using acoustic instruments, the people could not even identify that what we were doing was rock music. They thought this is not rock music. So we were not getting gigs in the rock clubs. That's why we're playing in a coffee house. We played it in a jazz club called the Jazz Gallery. And actually on this new compilation that's being released, there are some songs from both of those venues. And yeah, so we were pretty much outsiders and been playing on the street. It wasn't until we opened up for the pretenders that we started to get a little more respect from the rock people. And was that pure happenstance that you happen to catch the ears, I guess, of those guys? Well, we had set up outside their gig, which we did because we had been kicked out of a venue that we were trying to audition for, which was called Century Hall. But we call it Centipede Hole. And we went in with our instruments and said, Hey, we want to audition. We want a gig at your club. And they said, No, leave, please. So we were dejected. And we saw that the pretenders were playing at this Oriental Theater. And we just set up in front of there and started playing as we usually would do. But this time, they heard us. And then they asked us to open the show for them. Well, that must have been a thrill, right? I mean, were there any jitters? Or did you guys with all those hours already a performance and just go edit? Well, we were thrilled. I mean, it was kind of like a Cinderella type story. We've got up there and we played three songs to at first when we came out, everybody was booing. Oh, yeah. And then by the end of the three songs, half the people were booing and half were were cheering. So we considered that a victory. And yeah, every once in a while, we still do a show with the pretenders. And last time I saw Chrissy Hein, she said, Oh, you're still here. That's great. Well, you are still here. So the album, what you did that in a matter of was it a days or it fits inside a month, right? The recording for that first record. Well, the recording was probably about I'm going to say 10 days. I'm not sure you might want to ask. Victor probably knows better than I do. But it was it was a reasonably short amount of time to record it. And then we mixed it as well that the mixing took longer, which is weird. But we did end up with a good mix. And yet it was still a good amount of time, though, between completing the production and getting that thing out into the world, right? We sent it to about 70 record labels. Okay, so this was on spec then. Yeah, we did it on spec. We sent and then we sent it to which was I mean, that was the scary part because that was we spent about $10,000 to do that, which was a lot of a lot of money for a bunch. I wasn't I didn't even have an apartment. I was I wasn't homeless, but I was kind of couchsurfing. You know, we were not in a position to spend that kind of money, but we believed in the project. So we did. And we got a loan which was cosigned by Victor's father because he was the only solvent person in the entire extended family. And yes, so we're quite nervous when we're in the studio, like, oh, wow, we're investing all this, we have the loan, we have to pay back. What if we don't sell it? And we didn't sell it because zero. Well, everybody turned it down except slash said that they would they would put it out, but they wouldn't give us any advance or any money for it. It would be like strictly on a royalty basis. And the royalty that we signed for was, as our lawyer recently said when we were renegotiating the deal. This is the worst record deal I've ever seen. And what made it the worst record deal ever? No advance and a very pathetic royalty. So slash slash puts it out. You toured behind it right by going to to more coffee houses and places like that. By the time it was released, we were we were able to tour almost anywhere in the well, in the Western world kind of, which at that time, okay, so we released it in 1983. By the end of 1983, we had had already toured all over the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe. And then in 1984 was the first time we came to Australia. So it was a pretty fast rise. But it only meant that we were playing from 100 or 200 people in all these cities around the world. We were not hugely successful. But there was a really strong buzz in connoisseurs, I guess, and young people who are really wanting something different. It was and it really was part of the birth, right? And it's a term now that has been so misused, it almost has no meaning. But it really was part of the early 1980s alternative movement, right? Well, we were one of the one of the main bands there. And yeah, and there were there were several things happening at that point. There were the aspiring commercial acts like U2. Then there was Hardcore Punk and some of the indie stuff like SST. And we were kind of, I mean, we were just off on our own. And we signed with Slash, which was an indie label, but they immediately then they did a deal with Warner Brothers. So we ended up on Warner as a result of that. And as far as alternative goes. And again, you know, so many bands call themselves alternative now like Coldplay. And it has no almost no relation to what was alternative in 1983. You know, where one might think of Susie and the Banshees, obviously you guys, even R.E.M., right? Yeah, groups of that nature. And it wasn't a kind of alternative to the dinosaurs of rock and roll, who by that point, you know, had literally lost members due to death and and and other sorts of, well, you know, life events. Folks were ready for something other than, as you said earlier, those kind of cliches. And that first record to me, when I listened to it, it is just so, you know, for a record that is wanting to be different, which it succeeds, it is just a rich record with, you know, blues at times, Willie Dixon, you know, or at least blues antecedents, you've got, you know, obviously the the songs that are that are most well known, like Blister in the Sun and Add It Up. But there's, there's that acoustic quality to it as well. Kind of a simple tracking behind it. You must have been pleased to see that album go into the kind of slow burn that it did over the next several years, eventually earning gold records and going platinum, etc. It was the only album to go platinum without it ever having been on the Billboard Top 200. Right. And that's a cool stat for the band, right? I mean, that just suggests that you won over the hearts and minds of your audience, almost retail one by one, go playing one or 200, you know, fan venues. It was a word of mouth success and also support from college radio that that got it happening, not anything that was going on in the commercial music world. Anyway, you know, looking back, plenty of great notices, you know, from some pretty serious stalwarts suggesting for people to check you out. Yeah, we had our moment in the sun. Not a blistering moment, necessarily. Not really. When you go back and listen to the record now, do you, can you enjoy it as a kind of seamless product and experience rather? Or when you hear it, do you hear the glue and the tape and the, you know, the things that hold it together? Well, I don't listen to it. But if I did, I would, I would, when I do, I do hear it sometimes, you know, like sometimes a car will be driving by and I hear this music and think, wow, that sounds great. And then my ears focus on it. And I realize that it's gone, daddy, gone, you know, like that has happened to me. And oh, well, at least I thought it sounded great. Uh, so yeah, or I'm at a party, sometimes people get this really stupid idea that they're going to honor me by playing, playing it at a party or something. And yeah, when I hear that, I think, wow, that holds up. That sounds great. So when you hear that, in other words, you'd rather hear somebody else or other kinds of music. Well, the funniest thing was I went to a sushi place in Los Angeles and I walked in and I was the first person there and I sat at the bar and I started to order some sushi and then on came blister in the sun and I was like, are they doing this because they recognize me or what? And I thought, well, soon it'll be over. That's okay. I'll be able to enjoy my sushi. But then kiss off. Oh, no. Then please do not go. They were listening to the album. Oh, no. And I called the server over and I said, excuse me, could you change the music, please? And she said, what's the matter? Don't you like violent fans? And I said, no, I love them. In fact, I've been at every one of their shows. Did she satisfy your request? Yeah, she looked at me like I was insane, but then she did change the music. I still don't understand why I didn't want to hear it. And I don't think she knew I was in the band either. That's interesting. And there are certain folks who don't mind hearing their own music, but to quote John Lennon again, you know, he didn't want to hear himself on the radio, you know, in his later years, he wanted to hear other bands and get a sense of what was going on. What do you listen to these days? Well, I run a festival in Australia. So luckily that brings me into contact with a lot of new artists. And we do music from not only from rock music and pop music, but all forms of music, including jazz, classical, hip hop. And there are quite a few good artists, but one of the Australian artists I really like is Courtney Barnett. No, yes. She's great. Kind of has a good sense of humor like you guys, too. Yeah, I think she is kind of in our ballpark. I always get stymied when people ask me this question because I don't have all the names. I mean, we've had so many hundreds of acts, which are amazing. Some of them are known and some are unknown. Like last year, we had some pretty interesting retro bands, which kind of fit in with our generation, like we had Pavement, Peaches. It's a lot of fun. Everything FAB4 is presented by salon.com, the premier news, politics, innovation and arts website. For more information, visit everythingfab4.com, where you can learn more about our podcast and my latest Beatles-related books, including John Lennon in 1980, The Last Days in the Life, and a forthcoming biography about the beloved Beatles roadie Mal Evans. The Everything FAB4 theme song, Seize the Day, is provided courtesy of Black Rabbit, the high-octane Beatles cover band and innovative psychedelic rock project from Rockaway Beach Queens in New York City. Like what you heard today on Everything FAB4? Be sure to subscribe, give us a rating, and recommend the show to your friends. Plus, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter at EF4 Podcast. Distributed by salon, Everything FAB4 is a Wonderwall production. Remember, it's a Beatles world, and everyone has a story.