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Gold Stars 1992-2002
The Juliana Hatfield Collection
by Juliana Hatfield
My name is Juliana Hatfield.
I grew up in a small coastal Massachusetts town. As a young
girl, I was enamored of Olivia Newton-John and I saw Grease
six times when it came out in theaters. But when I discovered
the Replacements in high school, it was true love. With these
as my two main inspirations (Replacements and Olivia Newton-John),
I set out for the big city and the Berklee College of Music
in hopes of starting a band. There I met John Strohm and Freda
Love and we three teenagers formed the Blake Babies. We put
out a few records, toured the country a few times and then
broke up in the early 90's. Since then I have been on my own,
except for a Blake Babies reunion tour and album (God Bless
the Blake Babies) last year.
My first album was Hey Babe.
The title wasn't a sassy ironic come-on (though it did land
me on the cover of Sassy magazine) or a quasi-empowering take-back-the-phrase
kind of thing. It was an earnest plea to be accepted into
the rock-and-roll boys club continuum. And I thought I had
made a rock-and-roll record. "Hey babe," sang Lou
Reed. "Hey babe," sang J. Mascis. I was just trying
to continue the tradition but I knew that as a girl it was
hopeless and that I would never be accepted on equal terms.
The almost universal misinterpretation of the title and of
my intentions was the first in a long line of misunderstandings.
Become What You Are was my
first major label experience. It was a really simple concept:
capture me and my touring band (Dean Fisher and Todd Philips)
playing the songs we had been doing live over the past year
or so. It happened to be a moment in time when girls with
guitars were all the rage, and so, though the higher (than
my) industry standards of (commercial) success were never
something I aimed for, I was given a taste of it. The singles
"My Sister" and "Spin the Bottle" broke
through and I was swept up in a relative whirlwind of publicity
and sold-out shows. But I was never comfortable with the attention.
I thought it had come too soon. I hadn't earned it yet.
Next came "Only Everything".
I turned up the volume and the distortion and had a lot of
fun blocking out the world with some cryptic lyrics (including
a song in crude French that I knew no one would understand)
and sing-along melodies. It featured the single "Universal
Heartbeat" ("A heart that hurts is a heart that
works") and the accompanying video in which I play an
evil aerobics instructor trying to push my students until
they collapse.
For my next project I went
to Woodstock and made what I called God's Foot. I produced
it and played a lot of the instruments myself. My record company
at the time seemed underwhelmed by my masterpiece so I begged
them to let me go. The bloom was off the rose and I didn't
want to stay where I wasn't appreciated. After my weeklong
hunger strike, they finally assented to my departure, with
effusive tears and hugs and good wishes. But they didn't let
me take God's Foot with me. They held onto it and never released
it. "Mountains of Love" and "Fade Away"
are from this album.
At first I was traumatized
by the idea that God's Foot would never be heard. Then disillusionment
set in and I took to my bed trying to figure out what to do
next. I knew from the early days in the Blake Babies that
if no one wants to help you out, you do it yourself. So I
booked six days in a studio in a converted firehouse in Providence
and made Bed, the album. It sounds as raw as I felt. It has
no pretty sheen. The mistakes and unattractive parts were
left in, not erased. Just like my career. Just like life.
Beautiful Creature started
as a bunch of demos for what I envisioned as an acoustic album,
utilizing the myriad producers and musicians in Los Angeles
during my year-long sabbatical there in 1999. As the recordings
progressed, I realized the demos themselves could work as
an album. But when I returned to Boston, I felt unsatisfied.
I needed to express a darker side. This was my idea: a loud
release of tension featuring a rock drummer and bassist (Zephan
Courtney and Mikey Welsh) and lots of long sloppy guitar solos.
And no love songs. The result was Juliana's Pony: Total System
Failure, a not-at-all attractive reaction to the ugly side
of humanity, specifically American culture.
Gold Stars is my eighth full-length
album. It contains songs from each of the previous seven plus
two covers (one by the Police, one by Neil Young). Oh, and
there's a song from my 1997 Please Do Not Disturb EP. Got
it?
In the past ten years, trends
have come and gone, money has been made and spent, what went
up came down, and I have continued to do what I love which
is making music. Creating something out of nothing. Learning
by doing rather than by calculating and strategizing. This
is my own version of success, on my own terms and in my own
time. I sort of tried to play the game for a while in the
mid-90's but I was disqualified because I wouldn't smile for
the camera. The pressure to be something I was not was constant
and unrelenting. It was a battle to maintain a sense of authentic
self when that self was still in the developmental stages.
I will continue to write, record,
and perform my songs as long as I can and as long as it feels
right. I am still motivated by the same things I was in the
beginning. The goal has always been to just be myself.
Zoe/Rounder Records, One Camp
St.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617.354.0700 (p), 617.354.4840 (f)
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