(Dinosaur Jr./Sebadoh)
As a founding member of Dinosaur Jr., Lou Barlow made three records with the band before a steady rift with guitarist/vocalist J Mascis turned toxic. Barlow’s band Sebadoh, a plaintive, down-tempo project that churned just below the mainstream surface, was deemed ready for the big time in 1994. Remember kids: speed kills.
I have lots of really bad shows, where I freaked out, was too drunk, or stormed off the stage after a couple songs. The most catastrophic show was just after Sebadoh had done the Bakesale record. We were kinda popular in England and were slated to play the Reading Festival. We had a pretty good time slot too, sometime around early evening, and we were playing one of the main stages. The record label set up a bunch of stuff for us to do during the day, and one of them was a signing tent. We sat in a little tent on folding chairs, along with the band Pavement. It was a really long line of kids waiting to have their records or whatever signed, and I started drinking. I was drinking huge cans of Stella Artois and probably worked my way through three or four cans, which is a lot with those British tall-boys. We knew Pavement, so we were just laughing and having a good time. Afterwards, I stood up and immediately thought, “Oh…I’m drunk. Shit.”
We were set to play in about an hour and a half, and I was stumbling around. I wasn’t falling down, but I definitely knew I wasn’t close to being at my best, and this was easily going to be the biggest show we’d ever played. There could have been close to 10,000 people at the show. I’m not positive, but it was definitely the biggest. In England, people really pay attention to up-and-coming bands. We were being touted as the new big thing. “Here’s your time to shine, Sebadoh! You got the great time slot at the NME Tent. Don’t fuck it up!” I was walking around, getting very nervous, and I ran into this guy from one of the festival bands. I’m not going to say his name, but he was a really nice guy. I told him I was feeling a little woozy, and he said, “I got just the thing man.”
He suggested we do some speed and that it would straighten me out into a sober-ish realm where I could play decently. I had never done speed. Up to that point, I was strictly a beer and pot guy. I had done coke maybe once or twice, and I had no idea how I would react to speed. We ducked into a tent with his bandmates, who were all super friendly people. He chopped me up, what I now realize, was way too much speed. It was a fuckin’ line bigger than my pinky. He gives me this big, fat line, hands me a straw, and says casually, “Here ya go!” I snorted it and thought, “OK! Thanks!” It was a really weird time, as it was shortly after Kurt Cobain died. Sebadoh had been scheduled to tour with Nirvana before Kurt died, and there was this pall hanging over the whole festival. Hole was playing, and Courtney was just on the loose on the festival grounds. Evan Dando was there, and it was prime, mid-nineties, dark, druggy days.
So, I had done way too much speed, but didn’t know it yet. I walked on stage, we started the set, and I realized I couldn’t even fucking play. My body constricted to the point where I could barely form chords. Sebadoh was a pretty elemental band. It was really simple stuff, and at our best, we just weren’t going to deliver on that stage, with a huge crowd. We just weren’t a dynamic, technical band at that point. We were this homespun thing, and we had brought along a good friend of ours to drum, but he wasn’t really a drummer per se. I was acutely aware of the limitations of the band, because in those festival situations, I would always check out other bands, thinking, “Oh shit, we’re still really rinky-dink.” At least instrumentally, compared to a lot of what was happening at the time. We lacked that heavy, post-grunge thing, or the intricate Britpop of a band like Blur.
These festivals never brought out confidence in me, so I was already nervous. The tent was packed, the sun had just set, and everything was primed for a normal, great band to kill it. I could barely play, so I broke one of my guitars almost immediately. I just stood there, feeling this hot embarrassment flowing through me. I approached the mic and just started rambling. I told the story of the very first time I played on stage, when I was seven years old. I had learned a few notes on guitar at school, and we had to perform at this little elementary school assembly. I was supposed to pluck out a few notes of, “My Hat, It Has Three Corners.” I got so freaked out that in the middle of the thing, which was packed with parents, teachers, and family, I threw my guitar and ran off stage, screaming, “I can’t do it!”
On that stage at Reading, that memory was all I could think about. I was recounting this story and how terrible it was, and my bandmates were kind of jamming behind me. Behind me and to my right, Courtney Love was just looming. Suddenly, she started screaming, “You’re disrespecting Kurt!” She thought that with me smashing my guitar and having this meltdown on stage, I was somehow disrespecting her late husband. Kurt and I were around the same age, and I was also ambivalent about the idea of fame, but that was it. Then I smashed another guitar, and a piece of it caught the back of my head, so now I’m bleeding, melting down, with Courtney Love yelling at me. I was standing in front of all these people, and the whole tent was just a chasm of silence. I’m still really high and didn’t know what to do with myself. Finally, we stumbled through the set, but I don’t really remember. There are tapes and streams of this performance, but I can’t fucking bear to listen to it.
After the ordeal, I got off stage and met back up with the speed guy. We hung out all night tormenting people. We found out where the guitarist from Ride was hanging out, and we started following him around. We ended up in this hotel room with him and his girlfriend, and they were looking at us like, “Get the fuck out of our room.” We were just wandering around on speed with guitars. Later that night, I ended up on a tour bus with Courtney and Evan Dando, who were hanging out together doing really heavy drugs. At some point I barged into the medical tent, screaming, “I’m cut!” Of course, my injury was completely superficial. In my mind, I was trying to blow the whole show into this monumental, really honest moment.
In retrospect, and certainly within days of the show, I knew that I had really blown it. I’ve never quite recovered from it. On top of it, I had discovered speed, which gradually became a bigger part of my life—to the point where it ran me into the fucking ground five years later and ruined everything. It’s hard to think that on that night, I set in motion something really negative.