Phair Warning

33 1/3: Exile in Guyville
By Gina Arnold

Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" was undoubtedly the most talked-about, written about, buzzed-about, hyped, overhyped and backlashed-against album of 1993, and not for lack of competition: That was the year of PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me," Nirvana's "In Utero," the Breeders' "Last Splash," Radiohead's debut, Bjork's "Debut," etcetera, etcetera. In that year, the alt-rock revolution was in full swing, and the alt-weeklies made sure that everyone had an opinion about Shonen Knife, Daniel Johnston or whoever else might appear on one of Kurt Cobain's  T-shirts. They sure as hell covered Liz Phair.

There were a lot of articles about "Exile in Guyville" that year and just about every article mentioned that it was supposed to be a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones' classic "Exile on Main St." Still, mostly what the commenters talked about was how Phair sang, "I want to be your blow job queen" and "I'm only a cunt in spring," and "fuck and run."  It was considered shocking for a woman to sing that kind of thing back then.


I admit I was shocked the first time I heard Phair sing those lines. But I kept listening and grew to love the record. In fact, after reading Gina Arnold's book about the album, I listened to it again recently for the first time in many years and I was surprised by how much I still liked it.

A lot of people back then listened and didn't like it, or didn't see what all the fuss was about. (My friend Nelson recently said on Facebook, "Every time someone said it was some kind of response to 'Exile on Main St.," it just made me want to put on 'Exile on Main St.'") That's understandable: People are always going to have different reactions to the same music. But in the storm of hype about the album, and in the heightened state of indie rock criticism at the time, a lot of people had very strong opinions about the worth of the album, and about Phair's worth as a musician, as a singer, as a woman, as a human being.

As Gina Arnold relates in this 33 1/3 book about the album, lots of people said Phair couldn't sing, or that she only got attention because she was a good-looking blonde with upper middle-class parents or that she had slept her way to the top. Chicago scene fixture Steve Albini called Phair a "pandering slut."

All of this was ridiculous. "The top," in this case, was a record deal with a mid-size indie label and an album that, 21 years after its release, has yet to earn gold status, so the notion of Phair sleeping her way there was silly. As for her vocals, she was no Aretha Franklin, but she came from a scene in which Stephen Malkmus was a lead singer. The class critique was stupid too, considering how many of her contemporaries had similar backgrounds. And, well, of course people pay more attention to physically attractive people.

As for Albini's comment, well Albini was the foremost proponent of the misanthropic, negative creep school of indie rock that was popular at the time. He may not have been a misogynist himself at the time (he produced both "Rid of Me" and "Last Splash" that year and reportedly was great friends with Polly Jean Harvey and Kim Deal) but that brand of misanthropy tends to fall hardest on women.

Turd on the Run

Sexism wasn't the only factor in the backlash against Phair - indie rock audiences have always been suspicious of anyone who's getting a lot of attention - but Arnold shows that sexism was the driving force behind a lot of it.

As Arnold tells it, this was especially galling because "Exile in Guyville" wasn't just the product of a woman in a male-dominated rock scene, it was a concept album about the experiences of a woman in a male-dominated rock scene. The title referred to "Guyville," which Arnold points out, was a name for a an indie-rock-saturated bohemian community in Chicago's Wicker Park. Chicago band Urge Overkill had already written a song titled "Goodbye to Guyville."

Arnold spends a lot of the book discussing Guyville, and how its left-of-center politics concealed some very traditional sexist ideas.

The best part of the book comes when Arnold goes song by song, showing how Phair's lyrics really can be read as responses to the corresponding songs on "Exile on Main St." -- just as Phair always insisted they were. Discussing Phair's "Girls! Girls! Girls!" (the one where she sings, "I take full advantage of every man I meet") and the Stones' "Turd on the Run," Arnold writes:

Mick is chasing some hot girl who slips away despite large helpings of diamond rings and Vaseline. In 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' Phair ... is the girl with the diamond rings and Vaseline, taking Mick for a ride. She is, in short, an unapologetic turd.

In Arnold's analysis, some of the links between the songs are clear, some are vague and some are concrete but limited. For instance, both Phair's "Dance of the Seven Veils" and the Stones' "Casino Boogie" contain the word "cunt." No one ever freaks out about Jagger singing, "Kissing cunt in Cannes," but when Phair sings the same word, people get weird. Furthermore, Arnold points out that where the "Casino Boogie" is, by the Stones' own admission, little more than a string of nonsense phrases, Phair's is full of biblical allusions and critiques of the music business and the Stones, in particular.

That's not to say that Phair's album is better -- even Arnold, who professes to hate the Stones, writes near the end of the book, "deep down, I don't actually think that Guyville is a better record than Main St. I just think that I like it a lot better" -- but it does point out something that I think is important, and that I wish Arnold had talked about more: "Exile in Guyville" rewards deep listening. There is a lot going on in this record, and it deserves attention for more than its shock value.

Shining some glory

At a time when the second-worst thing (after "sellout") you could call someone in indie rock was "pretentious," "Guyville" was musically ambitious, a bona fide concept album with a wide scope of sounds and textures, and sweeping vocal melodies that took huge risks. Some pay off better than others, but the risk is what's thrilling. Listening to "Dance of the Seven Veils" recently, I was struck by the fact that hearing Phair sing the word "cunt" is now less striking than hearing the way her voice sweeps up to a higher register to sing that line. One second, she's using a lower register, sounding like a young woman trying to be one of the guys, the next she's a very feminine-sounding soprano.

With the backlash long over, Phair's disappointing post-"Guyville" records behind us and the whole music industry radically changed by the Internet, the 1993 critical backlash against Phair strikes me as only of historical interest. Arnold finds some modern parallels, such as when Lana Del Rey was panned after her appearance on "SNL,"and Arnold has a point.

I don't think Phair was pandering. She may or may not have been pandering later on in her career, but not on "Exile in Guyville." She wasn't trying to push buttons like Madonna, and she wasn't selling herself as a sex symbol like Britney Spears. (She wasn't Lana Del Rey either, but I'm not going to get into that now.) Phair was taking some big risks as an artist, and as a human being. She was brave.

I don't think Phair expected the level of attention she would receive. No one did. The alt-rock boom brought a spotlight on all kinds of artists who never expected that kind of attention and weren't prepared for that level of scrutiny. I mean, things were so weird then that Daniel Johnston got signed to a major label! But I am sure she knew that people tend to react when a woman starts talking frankly about sex. Everyone knows that -- women, most of all. Still, she went ahead and sang all kinds of stuff that could get her in trouble, because sometimes that's what you have to do when you're a songwriter and you're trying to follow a concept to its conclusion. You decide to write a song-by-song answer to "Exile on Main St.," and you know you're going to get to some pretty sleazy places.

I saw Phair play the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in 1993, just as "Guyville" was getting a lot of attention. If I remember clearly, the opener was Smog, and Bill Callahan sang a song with the line, "Every girl I ever loved has wanted to be hit." A woman in the audience hissed when he finished that line, but I don't think anyone really thought he was telling us that he, Bill Callahan, was a serial abuser of women. I didn't, anyway.

Phair didn't get that kind of benefit of the doubt.

I remember her pausing that night to compose herself before launching into "Flower" (the "blow job queen" song). On the record, it's sung as a round (like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat") with overdubbed vocals accompanied by weird, unidentifiable instruments and low-budget studio trickery. Onstage that night, she sang it a capella in one long, up-and-down melody, like a silly campfire song that begins with the line, "Every time I see your face I get all wet between my legs." But first, that night, she took a deep breath and said to herself, "Okay."