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from Creem magazine, March 1994
[After getting my fill of pretty hard rock boys in the very early 1990s, I went through a "manly-man" phase that included Lemmy from Motorhead and Tad. I'm not really sure what got into me — after all, I wound up with one of those hard rock pretty boys as my lifemate! But for a while, I was all about testosterone rock and I made my statement about it with this feature for Creem. I had loads of fun with it, both the interview and the writing. And Tad was just a great, great band. The sad part about this story is that Kurt Cobain died violently a few weeks after it came out, and because of the way he's mentioned here, this made my lovely story completely inappropriate as a tear sheet and sample of my work for many years. The other sad thing about this feature is I never got paid for it... or anything else I wrote for Creem. I think that was the only magazine where I got ripped off as a freelancer. According to some other freelancers in the biz, I am lucky.]
Enough of Chris Cornell's sultry-eyed girl appeal and Eddie Vedder's rock star-cum-everyman persona. What Seattle needs are manly men fronting manly bands. After all, before the Pacific Northwest became famous for its trendy-in-spite-of-itself scene, what was it known as? Home to lumberjacks and mountain men. That tradition of no-nonsense virility needs to be brought back home. And TAD is just the band to take that leap.
You can't get any manlier than Tad Doyle, the quartet's imposing frontman. TAD's music demands no less than this larger-than-life powerhouse. With a wicked sense of humor backed up by the heaviest of riffs, thundering rhythms, and an occasional ironic touch of beauty, TAD's latest album, Inhaler, is testosterone-rock at its very best. TAD is such a colossal band, in fact, that when it made the jump from indie label Sub Pop to the majors, it took not one but three labels to handle them — they're on both Mechanic and the appropriately-named Giant Records, with the huge conglomerate WEA taking on distribution duties.
So was a frail little Hollywood rock journalist (yours truly) frightened to venture onto the TAD bus, no doubt a bastion of brutal masculine activity? Was I scared of potential rape, pillage, dismemberment and the resulting missed deadline? Not in the least. True manly men are always very gracious to their guests, and the guys in TAD — Doyle, bassist Kurt Danielson, guitarist Gary Thorstensen, and drummer Josh Sinder — are no exception to the rule. Apparently unaffected by a long history of mishaps, calamities, and near-death experiences, they warmly welcomed me into their humble abode.
And quite humble it was. Apparently this was their third tour bus in a month. The other two buses weren't victims of any manly-type mayhem. The truth, pure and simple, is they fell prey to various technical SNAFUs. The guys left the last one in Milwaukee, along with all their belongings.
"They told us that they were gonna repair that bus and it would meet us in the next town, so only take one night's worth of clothes," Kurt says of the offending tour bus company. "That's what we did, and the bus hasn't caught up to us yet. We've been without clothes for six or seven days."
Transversing America with only one change of clothes doesn't faze these guys. They've seen worse. They were nearly casualties of an I.R.A.-planted bomb in a Belfast hotel, but they took it in stride. In fact, Ireland was where they found Therapy?, their opening band for this particular leg of the tour.
"See, it's the TAD factor," drummer Josh Sinder says of their misadventures. "We factor it in. We don't worry about it."
Kurt nods. "If it fucks up, hey! It's supposed to happen. If things don't fuck up, that's when we start getting nervous and sweaty and jumpy."
TAD's checkered past began in Seattle's dark ages, way before the word "grunge" became sickeningly common. There was a time when Seattle bands didn't even think of pursuing rock stardom. Explains Kurt, "Shit, all everybody wanted to do was just make a living in a band. That doesn't mean be on MTV, getting rich. It just means paying your bills doing this, instead of working at some shit job."
Tad Doyle's prior occupation was particularly manly. He was a butcher.
"Journeyman," he emphasizes. "I worked at two places. One was a packing place and one was a retail outlet. At the packing place, you have to halve and then quarter. Retail is, like, you just cut big parts into small parts. With the packing plant, it's all speed; with retail, it's finesse."
That finesse has carried over into TAD's music. The progression can be seen from the ferocious pounding of God's Balls to the rugged playfulness of 8-Way Santa. Now, with the savvy dynamics of Inhaler, TAD has really hit its stride. Take "Leafy Incline," a tune both subtle and robust, which perhaps captures the true heart of Seattle. With its wounded guitar riffing and eerie melody, it creates an aura that reflects the town's seamier side.
"Gary wrote the music," Kurt explains, "and Tad was talking about an unconnected song, actually, saying, 'I want it to sound like you're driving by and you see a leafy incline.' And I was thinking, 'Now, that'd be a good title.' The verses are about this place where maybe someone like Ted Bundy might dump a body, like, on a leafy incline overhung with trees."
In Seattle, says Gary, "There is a David Lynchian kind of—"
"A dark undercurrent up there," Kurt interjects. "Something is fucked up."
"Yeah, you might say there are a few sick fucks in Seattle," stresses Tad.
"You've got somber weather part of the year," Kurt explains. "That makes some people sick in the head."
"You can get cabin fever real easy there," adds Tad. "There's a certain chemical thing that happens if you don't get the correct sunlight. So you've got to sit underneath fluorescent lights for two hours a day or a serious psychosis happens. It's documented."
"You can get light bulbs," says Gary. "I've got a couple of them."
Some Northwestern natives handle their chemical imbalances in other ways. TAD broaches this subject in "Paregoric."
Paregoric, Kurt points out, "is tincture of opium. These days, it's prescribed for severe diarrhea, 'cause it's a stool hardener, but using paregoric as a title in that song — it's a heroin reference."
"We had to get one in there," Josh reasons.
"You know, we're from Seattle," Kurt reminds me, but just so I don't get the wrong idea, he adds, "We're not junkies."
"We just make fun of 'em," says Josh.
That's not to say that TAD is anti-drug, but the guys do have their own take on the issue. Heroin aside, here's Kurt's rationale: "I'm not condoning drug use. I'm just saying, 'I think drugs are cool — for me.'"
"Make your own decisions," Josh advises.
"That's right," says Kurt. "I'll take all those drugs. Drugs are bad for you, but they're good for me!"
A band as manly as TAD needs to do something to take the edge off those bad days. Otherwise, its members might wind up like the protagonist in the musical tantrum called "Lycanthrope." The title, says Tad, refers to "a werewolf, were-person, essentially. It's more like a synonym for anger. TMS — too much shit."
"Shit ain't right — SAR," Kurt adds. "That's when Nipsy Russell comes into the picture. You gotta take the elevator downstairs."
What? Kurt sees that an explanation is in order. "Have you ever seen Passenger 57? Wesley Snipes plays this guy who works for the airlines, and it turns out he's on the same flight as a bunch of terrorists and they hijack the plane and kill a bunch of people. Well, there's an elevator on the plane, a dumbwaiter that goes from the galley down inside the plane. And we were watching it on acid and, just, Nipsy Russell wasn't in the movie at all, but—"
"He was on our minds," Josh says.
"He was down in the basement," Kurt continues, "and he was with Isaac, the bartender on Loveboat, and they were mixing drinks. So if things are getting too tough for you, just take the elevator down. If you see Nipsy, he'll fix you up. He'll show you a table and Isaac will mix you a few drinks and everything will be just fine."
Then there's TAD's favorite consciousness-altering medium, music. "It's like a drug, you know," Kurt insists. "You gotta hit that place where the feeling's right. If you're worried about fucking up, you're not going to have any soul."
Josh agrees. "Sometimes Kurt falls down into my drum set and we end up wrestling on top of my drums, and he ends up breaking bottles and all kinds of violent stuff. Sometimes it's almost like a G.G. Allin show."
"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Tad protests.
"Without the defecation and eating thereof," Kurt concedes.
Since the subject has turned to the most masculine of onstage activities, musical horseplay, it seems like a good time to bring up rock 'n' roll's need for real men.
"I should probably tell you about my manly man theory," I begin.
All four band members lean towards me, their interest sparked.
"Manly man? Oh, do tell!" says Kurt.
"I'm really sick of these wimpy guys, pretty boys, sensitive men," I explain. "I mean, I love Nirvana, but really, Kurt Cobain is the Alan Alda for Generation X."
This sends the four manly men into gales of laughter. "Excellent! Well put! Poor Kurt! Oh man!" they cheer through their hoots.
Once things quiet down, Kurt gives the TAD-as-manly-men concept some serious contemplation. "I see what you mean — yeah, it's testosterone rock. We do tap into something like that, but it's not like we're out there, like, 'MEN!'" he finishes, flexing his voice if not his muscles.
"No, no, no, it's not Manowar," I tell him. "That's a parody of it."
"That's what Sub Pop wanted us to be, I think," he says of their former label. "We were sort of thinking that they wanted us to be, like, these retarded misogynists, coming straight from the woods into your living room."
I raise my eyes heavenwards at such a ridiculous misconception. "A true manly man is not a misogynist. He's too self-confident to have his masculinity threatened."
"Now I understand where you're coming from and I can dig it," Kurt proclaims.
A debate ensues on who else qualifies as a manly man.
"How about Pantera?" suggests Josh. "Phil's a manly man."
"Poison Idea used to have it," Tad claims, "but those guys burned out their antennas. Poor fellas."
Josh comes up with another one. "The Jesus Lizard?"
"David Yow, definitely," nods Tad.
Kurt assents. "He's down with Nipsy."
Just as we begin to drift onto other subjects — typically manful things such as guns and war — Tad brings the conversation back where it belongs. Apparently, he has an important statement to make. All eyes turn to him.
"Getting back to the manly, manly, manly man," he gruffly tells me, "There's another side to it too. For instance, I can say to you, being a manly man, that I think you're incredibly attractive and I'm not afraid to say that. And I'm being honest with you, and I'm not being a dick or anything."
"It goes hand in hand with being a manly man," Josh agrees.
"Yeah, you gotta be honest with your feelings and express them," Kurt adds. "Let your waters run free wherever you be, cast your bread upon the waters — cast your garlic bread upon the waters."
You can't be a true manly man without a touch of the poetic. Proving once and for all that TAD is most definitely the real thing.
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