Reunited in rock
Meat Puppets put tragedy behind them
Larry Rodgers
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 15, 2007 12:00 AM
The Meat Puppets are back, and the Kirkwood brothers are talking again.
To anyone familiar with the tragic tailspin that bassist Cris Kirkwood's life became in the mid-'90s, that's no small wonder.
His heroin habit sabotaged the Meat Puppets just as they were solidifying their status as one of the most important rock acts to come out of the Valley since Alice Cooper.
"I cost us everything," he said.
His descent put the brakes on the national success he, his guitarist brother, Curt, and drummer Derrick Bostrom were enjoying: A radio hit with 1994's Backwater, healthy rotation on MTV, concert bills with Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and hefty royalty checks.
Cris ended up being disowned by his brother and losing his wife to a heroin overdose and a close friend to suicide by pills. He finally landed in prison, with a bullet permanently lodged in his back.
But now, with the release of the first Meat Puppets album featuring both brothers in more than a decade, a cleaned-up Cris has an opportunity to make amends and return to something he loves more than drugs - the trio's aggressive, irreverent mix of punk, psychedelic rock and country. And a legendary underground band with deep roots in Phoenix and an influence that reaches far beyond is once again being talked about in terms that don't include pity and regret.
Curt calls Rise to Your Knees, which hits stores Tuesday, one of his favorite Meat Puppets albums. Cris sees the 15-song disc as a second chance to "grow old making loud noises with my brother."
Accepting blame Cris acknowledges that he torpedoed the Puppets in their heyday.
"I wrecked the band," Cris, 46, said a few weeks ago during a lengthy chat at the house he now occupies on a shady street in central Phoenix.
With the success of Backwater and marketing by London Records, the group was poised for a run at the type of mass appeal attained by their friends in the Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots, as well as a newer band from Tempe, the Gin Blossoms.
But the label got cold feet when word got out about Cris' dance with the needle. It was the start of a decade of misadventure that left the Meat Puppets disbanded and Cris financially ruined, bloated to 310 pounds, his teeth rotting.
His brother tried a few times to help Cris but ultimately decided to keep his distance as Cris drifted into oblivion and played little, if any, music. The two went for long stretches without communicating.
"I just stayed away from him," Curt, 48, said in a call from his home in Austin. "I never felt I'd play with him again, because you get to the point where you think (junkies) are just not going to make it."
Likewise, Cris - who says he has been clean since 2005, when he completed an 18-month term for the 2003 fight in which he was shot - put thoughts of a Meat Puppets reunion out of his mind.
"I never really held out any hope of getting the band back together. So much time had gone by and I had hurt myself so bad. I was a mess," said Cris, who, since regaining his freedom, has lost 140 pounds and had his teeth rebuilt by a generous dentist.
Brotherly love But even during Cris' darkest days, which included several shorter jail stints for drug possession and probation violations, Curt never could bring himself to officially fire his brother from the Meat Puppets.
When Curt released 2000's Golden Lies with other players under the Meat Puppets' moniker, he described both his brother and Bostrom, who left the band on bad terms with Cris, as on extended hiatus.
In early 2006, word reached Curt through his son, Elmo, that Cris was back to his old self.
"He just seemed like a living human being again. It wasn't the Living Dead zombie thing that I had to step away from," recalls Elmo, 23, who plays in a Tempe-based band called Kirkwood Dellinger.
Some phone calls in which Curt played new songs for Cris led to a face-to-face reunion at a mutual friend's house in Tempe in spring 2006.
"It was sweet for me to be able to see my brother again and show him that I was OK," Cris said. "We ended up playing some guitars, messing around a little bit."
Curt's take: "I'm just surprised he was ever gone. He seems to be a bit stunned from the whole experience."
Curt, who can be heavy on sarcasm and short on sentimentality, stayed true to form when asked about his brother's rebirth, which came with the help of Cris' musician girlfriend, Ruth Wilson, her mother and stepfather (a psychologist and physician): "I'm glad he's back and that he's not a violent (expletive) anymore. Somebody else had to shoot him instead of me. I wanted to shoot him before."
Last straw The past decade of Cris' life contained a number of spots hovering close to rock bottom.
His wife, French-Canadian writer Michelle Tardiff, died in their bed of an overdose in 1998 and a close friend, musician Pete Sievert, committed suicide on the couch at Cris' Tempe home in 1999.
"It just completely broke me," he says of his wife's death. "I'll never get over it, but I've learned to live with the wound to a degree."
But it was Cris' shooting by a security guard at the downtown Phoenix post office that triggered his recovery.
Cris, who says he can't feel his right foot and parts of his right leg because of the injury, admits grabbing the guard's baton and hitting him (he claims the guard hit him with it first) as Ruth was mailing a drawing he had sold. The guard opened fire, and the bullet struck dangerously close to Cris' spinal chord.
That incident brought a prison sentence, giving him time to break heroin's hold. He said he also has given up drinking, his only remaining vice a smoking habit he picked up in stir.
With a soft, serious tone, he vowed to never return to drugs: "It destroyed everything I loved. I'm so glad to be rid of it."
"He's had enough," said Wilson, 40, now clean after her own struggles with alcohol and heroin. "I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that he won't be going down that road again."
Worst and best The Kirkwoods' musical journey started with their upbringing by their mother and a string of stepfathers in north-central Phoenix's Sunnyslope neighborhood.
"It's one of the worst places in the world, so I'm ready for just about anything," said Curt, who moved to Austin via California several years ago. "In the meantime, it's in the middle of one of the most beautiful places.
"I love Texas in a lot of ways; I was born here. But I really like Arizona. That's like my home."
A stint at the upscale Brophy College Preparatory did nothing to change the pair's twisted view of life, which would fuel the music of the initial Meat Puppets records and performances in the early '80s.
The classic 1983 album Meat Pupppets II captures that off-center energy. It opens with the driving Split Myself in Two, with frenetic vocals and guitar by Curt. That's followed by a bluegrassy instrumental, Magic Toy Missing, and later, the Nirvana-covered Plateau.
No real rhyme or reason to that playlist, but the Puppets never were concerned about pleasing their audience. That might be blamed on their earliest crowds.
Competing with bands playing covers of danceable mainstream music, the Puppets and such likeminded groups as Victory Acres cut their teeth playing off-nights in bars frequented by bikers and cowboys.
When punk rock became more widely accepted, the Meat Puppets refused to conform to its musical and sartorial rules. They played chaotic versions of such country tunes as the Sons of the Pioneers' Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Marty Robbins' El Paso and took the stage in cutoffs and Converse sneakers, their hair long and frizzy.
The Meat Puppets' post-punk, pre-grunge sound and wild, profanity-laced stage shows earned them a contract with California's SST Records, home to such seminal punk acts as Black Flag and the Minutemen.
"They were doing it their way, not . . . following something else," local pop historian John Dixon said. "They always had a sense of humor and melodies that kept my interest up."
By 1990, with a string of SST albums under their belt and their musicianship and Curt's songwriting evolving, the Puppets landed the deal with London Records. Its second album for the label, 1994's Too High to Die, topped 500,000 in sales on the strength of Backwater. London was ready to mount a full marketing campaign for 1995's No Joke! until Cris' habit became known.
A new phase A dozen years later, working with small label Anodyne Records and without lofty expectations, the Kirkwoods are gearing up to take their new batch of music on the road.
The songs on Rise to Your Knees are economical and focused, with longtime friend and Puppets fan Ted Marcus handling drums. The sound veers from fairly straight-ahead rock to roots, pop and psychedelia.
Curt, a divorced father of two, calls the album "an accumulation of big campfire sing-along songs."
Like any Meat Puppets album, the new disc has its share of eccentricity: layers of psychedelic, sitarlike guitar on Light the Fire, a banjo intro by Cris on Tiny Kingdom, Eastern-style wah-wah guitar and chanting on Disappear. And, of course, Curt's often-trippy lyrics.
One chorus, in Vultures, might reflect what the Meat Puppets have been through:
"Maybe I've been wasted and maybe I'm amused / And mostly it just seems like a whole lot to lose / In such a small time."
Back onstage The reunited band already has played a handful of shows, and positive reviews suggest that the musical DNA both brothers mention hasn't faded. (An extended tour starts in late August, with a Valley date yet to be set.)
"Cris is better (onstage) than most people who have never been junkies," Curt said.
"It's weird, he's lucky. It probably helped him. He's all heart and soul now."
Accessed on 8/1/07
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/0715meatpuppets0715.html
Meat Puppets put tragedy behind them
Larry Rodgers
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 15, 2007 12:00 AM
The Meat Puppets are back, and the Kirkwood brothers are talking again.
To anyone familiar with the tragic tailspin that bassist Cris Kirkwood's life became in the mid-'90s, that's no small wonder.
His heroin habit sabotaged the Meat Puppets just as they were solidifying their status as one of the most important rock acts to come out of the Valley since Alice Cooper.
"I cost us everything," he said.
His descent put the brakes on the national success he, his guitarist brother, Curt, and drummer Derrick Bostrom were enjoying: A radio hit with 1994's Backwater, healthy rotation on MTV, concert bills with Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and hefty royalty checks.
Cris ended up being disowned by his brother and losing his wife to a heroin overdose and a close friend to suicide by pills. He finally landed in prison, with a bullet permanently lodged in his back.
But now, with the release of the first Meat Puppets album featuring both brothers in more than a decade, a cleaned-up Cris has an opportunity to make amends and return to something he loves more than drugs - the trio's aggressive, irreverent mix of punk, psychedelic rock and country. And a legendary underground band with deep roots in Phoenix and an influence that reaches far beyond is once again being talked about in terms that don't include pity and regret.
Curt calls Rise to Your Knees, which hits stores Tuesday, one of his favorite Meat Puppets albums. Cris sees the 15-song disc as a second chance to "grow old making loud noises with my brother."
Accepting blame Cris acknowledges that he torpedoed the Puppets in their heyday.
"I wrecked the band," Cris, 46, said a few weeks ago during a lengthy chat at the house he now occupies on a shady street in central Phoenix.
With the success of Backwater and marketing by London Records, the group was poised for a run at the type of mass appeal attained by their friends in the Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots, as well as a newer band from Tempe, the Gin Blossoms.
But the label got cold feet when word got out about Cris' dance with the needle. It was the start of a decade of misadventure that left the Meat Puppets disbanded and Cris financially ruined, bloated to 310 pounds, his teeth rotting.
His brother tried a few times to help Cris but ultimately decided to keep his distance as Cris drifted into oblivion and played little, if any, music. The two went for long stretches without communicating.
"I just stayed away from him," Curt, 48, said in a call from his home in Austin. "I never felt I'd play with him again, because you get to the point where you think (junkies) are just not going to make it."
Likewise, Cris - who says he has been clean since 2005, when he completed an 18-month term for the 2003 fight in which he was shot - put thoughts of a Meat Puppets reunion out of his mind.
"I never really held out any hope of getting the band back together. So much time had gone by and I had hurt myself so bad. I was a mess," said Cris, who, since regaining his freedom, has lost 140 pounds and had his teeth rebuilt by a generous dentist.
Brotherly love But even during Cris' darkest days, which included several shorter jail stints for drug possession and probation violations, Curt never could bring himself to officially fire his brother from the Meat Puppets.
When Curt released 2000's Golden Lies with other players under the Meat Puppets' moniker, he described both his brother and Bostrom, who left the band on bad terms with Cris, as on extended hiatus.
In early 2006, word reached Curt through his son, Elmo, that Cris was back to his old self.
"He just seemed like a living human being again. It wasn't the Living Dead zombie thing that I had to step away from," recalls Elmo, 23, who plays in a Tempe-based band called Kirkwood Dellinger.
Some phone calls in which Curt played new songs for Cris led to a face-to-face reunion at a mutual friend's house in Tempe in spring 2006.
"It was sweet for me to be able to see my brother again and show him that I was OK," Cris said. "We ended up playing some guitars, messing around a little bit."
Curt's take: "I'm just surprised he was ever gone. He seems to be a bit stunned from the whole experience."
Curt, who can be heavy on sarcasm and short on sentimentality, stayed true to form when asked about his brother's rebirth, which came with the help of Cris' musician girlfriend, Ruth Wilson, her mother and stepfather (a psychologist and physician): "I'm glad he's back and that he's not a violent (expletive) anymore. Somebody else had to shoot him instead of me. I wanted to shoot him before."
Last straw The past decade of Cris' life contained a number of spots hovering close to rock bottom.
His wife, French-Canadian writer Michelle Tardiff, died in their bed of an overdose in 1998 and a close friend, musician Pete Sievert, committed suicide on the couch at Cris' Tempe home in 1999.
"It just completely broke me," he says of his wife's death. "I'll never get over it, but I've learned to live with the wound to a degree."
But it was Cris' shooting by a security guard at the downtown Phoenix post office that triggered his recovery.
Cris, who says he can't feel his right foot and parts of his right leg because of the injury, admits grabbing the guard's baton and hitting him (he claims the guard hit him with it first) as Ruth was mailing a drawing he had sold. The guard opened fire, and the bullet struck dangerously close to Cris' spinal chord.
That incident brought a prison sentence, giving him time to break heroin's hold. He said he also has given up drinking, his only remaining vice a smoking habit he picked up in stir.
With a soft, serious tone, he vowed to never return to drugs: "It destroyed everything I loved. I'm so glad to be rid of it."
"He's had enough," said Wilson, 40, now clean after her own struggles with alcohol and heroin. "I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that he won't be going down that road again."
Worst and best The Kirkwoods' musical journey started with their upbringing by their mother and a string of stepfathers in north-central Phoenix's Sunnyslope neighborhood.
"It's one of the worst places in the world, so I'm ready for just about anything," said Curt, who moved to Austin via California several years ago. "In the meantime, it's in the middle of one of the most beautiful places.
"I love Texas in a lot of ways; I was born here. But I really like Arizona. That's like my home."
A stint at the upscale Brophy College Preparatory did nothing to change the pair's twisted view of life, which would fuel the music of the initial Meat Puppets records and performances in the early '80s.
The classic 1983 album Meat Pupppets II captures that off-center energy. It opens with the driving Split Myself in Two, with frenetic vocals and guitar by Curt. That's followed by a bluegrassy instrumental, Magic Toy Missing, and later, the Nirvana-covered Plateau.
No real rhyme or reason to that playlist, but the Puppets never were concerned about pleasing their audience. That might be blamed on their earliest crowds.
Competing with bands playing covers of danceable mainstream music, the Puppets and such likeminded groups as Victory Acres cut their teeth playing off-nights in bars frequented by bikers and cowboys.
When punk rock became more widely accepted, the Meat Puppets refused to conform to its musical and sartorial rules. They played chaotic versions of such country tunes as the Sons of the Pioneers' Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Marty Robbins' El Paso and took the stage in cutoffs and Converse sneakers, their hair long and frizzy.
The Meat Puppets' post-punk, pre-grunge sound and wild, profanity-laced stage shows earned them a contract with California's SST Records, home to such seminal punk acts as Black Flag and the Minutemen.
"They were doing it their way, not . . . following something else," local pop historian John Dixon said. "They always had a sense of humor and melodies that kept my interest up."
By 1990, with a string of SST albums under their belt and their musicianship and Curt's songwriting evolving, the Puppets landed the deal with London Records. Its second album for the label, 1994's Too High to Die, topped 500,000 in sales on the strength of Backwater. London was ready to mount a full marketing campaign for 1995's No Joke! until Cris' habit became known.
A new phase A dozen years later, working with small label Anodyne Records and without lofty expectations, the Kirkwoods are gearing up to take their new batch of music on the road.
The songs on Rise to Your Knees are economical and focused, with longtime friend and Puppets fan Ted Marcus handling drums. The sound veers from fairly straight-ahead rock to roots, pop and psychedelia.
Curt, a divorced father of two, calls the album "an accumulation of big campfire sing-along songs."
Like any Meat Puppets album, the new disc has its share of eccentricity: layers of psychedelic, sitarlike guitar on Light the Fire, a banjo intro by Cris on Tiny Kingdom, Eastern-style wah-wah guitar and chanting on Disappear. And, of course, Curt's often-trippy lyrics.
One chorus, in Vultures, might reflect what the Meat Puppets have been through:
"Maybe I've been wasted and maybe I'm amused / And mostly it just seems like a whole lot to lose / In such a small time."
Back onstage The reunited band already has played a handful of shows, and positive reviews suggest that the musical DNA both brothers mention hasn't faded. (An extended tour starts in late August, with a Valley date yet to be set.)
"Cris is better (onstage) than most people who have never been junkies," Curt said.
"It's weird, he's lucky. It probably helped him. He's all heart and soul now."
Accessed on 8/1/07
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/0715meatpuppets0715.html