L7 is back, with snarl, riffs and rage intact
The grunge revival comes for everybody, eventually, even L7. The pioneering all-female grunge-punk foursome had one hit album and single (1992's “Bricks are Heavy” and “Pretend We're Dead,” respectively), and founded the influential feminist organization Rock For Choice, but otherwise never made it as big as they'd hoped.
The group went on hiatus circa 2001 and re-formed, after a social media groundswell, in 2014.
The new rockumentary “L7: Pretend We're Dead,” compiled in large part from the band's home movies, details their rise, their mini-scandals (frontwoman Donita Sparks famously took out her tampon onstage at the Reading Festival, and threw it into the crowd), and their anticlimactic flameout, with cameos from contemporaries like Krist Novoselic and Shirley Manson.
L7 is currently working on new material, and playing occasional live dates.
This time around, “we're not gonna get wrapped up in the machine,” Sparks says. “I don't think the machine wants us, anyway.”
“Pretend We're Dead” comes to DVD and VOD Oct. 13. to do a reunion. It just sort of happened, you know?
Q: Did you miss each other's company?
A: I think we didn't, until we were hanging out together again. Then we did realize how much fun we had together.
Q: You're the one who had to be the bigger person and call everybody else.
A: At the time, we did not have a manager, and we don't have a record label. There's no one to make that call but me. … I did not know what to expect. Dee (Plakas) and I have been friends all these years, but Suzi (Gardner) and Jennifer (Finch) I hadn't spoken to in 17 years. Long time. Dee and I hang out but — she didn't want to do a reunion. Q: How come? A: I think that things were not patched up with our relationships. We're not really from that school.
Q: You mean the “talk about your feelings” school?
A: Oh, we did not talk about our feelings when we got back together. No, no, no.
Q: How do you ever clear the air? It's gotta be like therapy, right?
A: No, it's not like therapy. You just move on. If you start doing an autopsy, you're (done). It's like, let the corpse lie, or bring it back to life with the electric prongs. If you start cutting it up (you're in trouble).
Q: There's a 1990s revival, feminism has become a buzzword. It seems like prime time for you to come back.
A: People seem to be grabbing onto us like life preservers since Trump came in. It's like, “Help us!” It's probably grunge's greatest legacy, that there were so many women playing in weird rock bands.
Q: It's a lot more sterile nowadays. It's hard to imagine you guys getting away with the whole tampon thing now.
A: There seems to be a defanging of the tampon incident, which is puzzling to me, because that was outrageous then, and it's still outrageous. That was never OK. I don't know if anybody's ever done that. Kim Deal was not throwing tampons.
Q: After, were you like, “What did I do?”
A: Oh yes, I did. I didn't want my mom to find out. She was at the (movie) screening in New York, so she saw it all.
Q: In the movie, Suzi talks about how she got to be 40 and felt like she'd wasted her life being in the band. Did she articulate that to you back then?
A: A little bit. We were all sort of feeling that back then. It hurts your heart as an artist of any kind, to have a dream and see it stall out. It still gets me emotionally. To anybody who has a dream, to see it almost happen, you almost have it completely, then it gets away.
Q: So, what do you go back and tell your younger self to do differently?
A: Keep my eye on the ball a little more. There got to be a point in our career when we were having a little too much fun. Some of our friends were also having fun, but they were in much bigger bands than us and could (mess around). We had no room to (mess around). We take things a lot more seriously right now.