Start Choppin
“Just one of the songs” developed from “ri , melody and drums” for Where You Been takes memorable shape – under an accidental name
THE journey to “Start Choppin” goes back to a show in Santa Cruz in June 1991, when Dinosaur Jr – singer/ guitarist J Mascis, bassist Mike Johnson and drummer Patrick Murphy – were watching their young support act impressed. As Nirvana blazed through a powerful set, Mascis turned to Murph and said, “This band is going to change everything.”
They certainly did. By the time Dinosaur Jr arrived at Dreamland Studio near Woodstock in autumn 1992, alternative rock was on mainstream rock radio, videos were on MTV, and bands like Pixies and Sonic Youth were on David Letterman. “Start Choppin” – the second single from Where You Been, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year – tted the musical mood. It was recorded and mixed by John Agnello, who had worked with mainstream artists like Cyndi Lauper. He endeavoured to capture Dino’s unique sound as cleanly as possible. Although “Start Choppin” was the poppiest song on the album, it still featured gnarly guitars, a pummelling rhythm and Mascis’ trademark slacker vocals. The track was an alternative hit in the US, while in the UK it went to No 20. The parent album was a UK No 10 and sold 250,000 copies in the US – the band play the album in full this month at the Garage in London.
Such success was unexpected but not unwelcome. Dinosaur Jr had formed in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1984, eventually settling into a trio of Mascis, Murph and Lou Barlow. Aer their breakthrough third album, Bug, Barlow le in 1989 following constant clashes with Mascis. The band regrouped, signed to Warners through Sire, and added Johnson on bass as they entered their commercial peak.
“When we started, we idealised bands like Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Meat Puppets,” says Mascis. “We just wanted to follow in their footsteps, to be a power trio, go on tour and make records and hopefully never have to get a job. We had achieved that and then were le in this weird situation because we had no other goal. ‘Now what do we do?’ Then things got weird as everybody was looking for the next big thing.”
“Start Choppin”, with its Hendrixin¤uenced intro, falsetto vocals and thundering solo, was no “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Jeremy”, but it showed that even songs from the skronkier end of the underground could make an impact. Its B-side, “Turnip Farm”, fared even better aer featuring in the 1993 Winona Ryderethan Hawke lm Reality Bites, earning Mascis his sole platinum record.
“When it came to ‘Start Choppin’ and Where You Been, we were really up for making this record,” says Mascis. “We were in a good space. This was the aermath of Nirvana, and it was interesting to see how much of this stu§ the public could take.”
J MASCIS GUITARS, VOCALS : We had been playing a lot live and were all doing pretty well mentally. We were well rehearsed and ready to go.
PATRICK “MURPH” MURPHY DRUMS : It took us a while to solidify with Mike [Johnson] and get the sound cemented, but when we began to record I really felt we were a band again.
JOHN AGNELLO ENGINEER : The rst meeting with that band changed my life. This was before Green Mind and they were talking to the major labels. They came to Columbia and the record company brought me to the meeting as this younger, long-haired guy they could work with. J didn’t like the suits so didn’t sign with Columbia but asked me to do Where You Been. This was when Don Fleming was briefly in Dino. When Fleming produced Sweet Oblivion with the Screaming Trees, he asked me to engineer. So I went from zero alternative rock to doing two really important grunge records in a year.
MURPH: The studio, Dreamland, was this big wooden church. I remember setting up the drums and it sounded like John Bonham. I was so excited.
AGNELLO: It’s a beautifulsounding room. The reverb on the drums on the song is 90 per cent the room. They all played in the same room and at sunset the sun would come through the stained-glass windows. It looked beautiful.
MASCIS: It seemed cool. It had good equipment and we trusted Agnello. We’d never worked with him before but he seemed to know what he was doing. He was the last of the old school, starting as a tea boy and then working his way up in the studio.
AGNELLO: We all lived in a house about ve minutes from the studio. For the rst ve days I was paranoid. J was so quiet, I was convinced I was about to get red because he wouldn’t talk or look at me. Aer a while, I realised that was just how he was, so I became the clown, doing jokes and stupid things to get a response. That’s been our relationship ever since.
MASCIS: I don’t remember much about writing “Start Choppin”. It was just one of the songs I had for the record. It would usually start with a ri, melody and drums. The drum for me is part of the song, so there’s not much room for Murph to come up with stu but I’d always keep in mind his style when writing the song.
“I said I’d edit a master. J said to me, ‘Sounds good, start choppin’’” JOHN AGNELLO
MURPH: J is like a composer. He has all the instruments sorted out. Things are set in stone, so there’s not a lot of changing. The way he plays guitar, he’s literally mimicking what I play on the drums – the kick and snare are exactly in sync with the down and up beat. That’s how he writes and its why he needs the drum part exact because otherwise it throws him o.
MASCIS: I have no idea what I was writing about. I need lyrics because I have to sing them, so I do my best, but I wouldn’t write lyrics otherwise. It’s not that lyrics aren’t important, but I wouldn’t do them unless I had to. It’s like when you are at school and cramming for a test, the lyrics are like that – doing your best in the time you have got.
MURPH: Most of J’s songs are about relationships, things going on with him or among his circle of friends, but you never found out who or what specically. J never talks about what his songs are about. He doesn’t even talk to his wife about it. It’s in his head all worked out while on the outside he is totally silent.
AGNELLO: The whole dynamic between Mike and J and Murph was fantastic in a wacky way. Mike was very straight, very practical and musical. Murph is super enthusiastic and really friendly. And J is laconic. It made for an interesting dynamic.
MASCIS: I do remember what amp and guitar I used. I have a good memory for equipment. I had this ’58 Telecaster that became my favourite guitar and this tweed Fender Bandmaster amp that sounded really cool and became the sound of the album. It’s what Pete Townshend used on Who’s Next. The studio had this API desk and lots of fancy mics.
AGNELLO: From my mentors, I learnt how to get direct recording – the microphone right in the speaker so all you get is the sound of the amp. That is what makes those Dino guitars sound so huge – there’s very little air between mic and speaker, and you can hear every nuance of J’s playing. It’s about really great ngers, really great guitar, really great amp, really great mic and really great mic-ing. I’m not really commercial, but I wasn’t there to make a lo- record; I was there to make a very clear but powerful Dino record.
MASCIS: We’d track as a threepiece. Then I’d have two main rhythm guitars, le and right, and the lead would come in and out. For the intro, I think we recorded that aerwards to get a cleaner sound.
AGNELLO: I don’t think we recorded the intro separately. They didn’t play to a click, so to add that to the beginning on tape would have been very dicult.
MASCIS: There were the two rhythm tracks, the two tracks for the intro, and I’d have recorded four leads for the solo and then picked the best one. I usually do four because aer that it gets worse.
AGNELLO: When you compile or comp a solo, you have four tracks
“I never wanted to be a singer and I don’t enjoy it that much” J MASCIS
and pick the best bits and bounce them from track to track. I had a box made, the ABCD box, and you could switch between the four dierent tracks. It could be pretty fucking crazy because sometimes he’d play a solo from the beginning of the song to the end, solo the whole way through, over the verse, chorus and everything. We’d then go through the tracks, make notes, and I’d hand him the box so he could switch between the four tracks to comp his own solo. He mostly used one main track but could switch out a note. He’d basically play the solo on this box.
MURPH: The intro has a Hendrix vibe and we were total Hendrix freaks. I taught myself to drum to Axis: Bold As Love. But this isn’t something we’d talk about. Most bands would be sitting around playing and somebody would say, “What do you think of this, it’s kind of got a Hendrix vibe…” That’s not J. He’s writing on his own and then brings it to us saying, “Here’s the song and this is how you play it”. I might be thinking, ‘Cool, that sounds like Hendrix’, but it’s not discussed.
MASCIS: I sang by default because we red our singer early on. I never wanted to be a singer and I don’t enjoy it that much.
AGNELLO: We did vocal overdubs in Baby
Monster in Manhattan. J hates vocals. I’d put ba es in front of him so he couldn’t see anybody, but that didn’t help. Now he records his own vocals alone and that’s perfect because he doesn’t like being around other people anyway.
MASCIS: I don’t have titles until I have to make the record cover. Until then they are called things like “Song No 7”.
AGNELLO: It drives me crazy because they are all working titles, so when the record comes out, I have no idea which song is which.
MASCIS: I called it “Start Choppin” because we were chopping up the twoinch tape to create the best version, taking the chorus from one tape and a verse from another and then sticking them together.
AGNELLO: I said I’d edit a master. J looked at me and said, “Sounds good, start choppin’.” When the record came out the song was called “Start Choppin”. It’s got nothing to do with the song, it’s the edit.
MURPH: It was nerve-wracking watching an edit because if they got it wrong you’d have to do another take.
MASCIS: The B-side, “Turnip Farm”, was on Reality Bites – it’s the only platinum record we had. I wrote it about my friend’s brother who had just died of AIDS. I keep the platinum record in the bathroom of the studio in the attic. It’s pretty much the furthest away room in the house.
AGNELLO: Originally, Andy Wallis mixed the album. I visited one time and there was a weird vibe. I was in the control room in New York with Mark Lanegan when I got a copy of the master on cassette. I played it and had a heart attack because it sounded so awful. Mark was laughing because J had fucked up. J and Mark were great friends but they would fuck with each other. I sent my cassette of the rough mix to Warners and said I didn’t want my name on the record, here were the roughs, which sounded much better. They asked me to remix the record. That saved my life because if people had heard the original mix I’d never have been hired again.
MURPH: We had a fairly big budget for the video. We went to New York and it was all quite exciting, with a sound stage and professional crew. It felt like the big time.
MASCIS: That was a bad video. Some guy was meant to do it but he sent a treatment I didn’t like. I had to dress up as a sheep or something. The guy we used instead didn’t really have any ideas. He was Artie, whose face was the sun on the cover of our rst record and is the rst person I know who died of Covid. I don’t remember what else happens. There weren’t many good ideas in that video. It was a disaster.
MURPH: With all the money spent on the video I knew there was something happening. It felt like the most poppy and accessible song on the record.
MASCIS: I never expected it would do well. We hoped it would but had no real faith. I never felt my voice was commercial enough for radio. But I’d hear it on the rock stations.
MURPH: It’s one we play whenever we tour. It’s got such a denite chunky beat, you can see everybody bobbing up and down.
MASCIS: It’s always been very hard to play live. I remember when we went on Lollapalooza, it sounded pretty bad. I think the challenge was the vocals. I feel we can play it better now.
MURPH: “Start Choppin” is one of our best songs. We’ve been playing it for 30 years and it just seals itself in and becomes muscle memory.
AGNELLO: “Start Choppin” and that whole record was about watching those guys in the room, playing those songs in this cavernous church. It was a spiritual experience, awe-inspiring. The way they vibed together, played together and respected each other’s dierences. There’s a reason this song is revered and it’s that it has a magical quality that you really don’t get too oen. The magic was in that room, and I’ll never forget it.
Dinosaur Jr play Where You Been at The Garage, London from November 12–15