John Henderson - recording girlysound

[Cherubs Ass]

I wish that Liz had recorded Girlysound back then, that would have been great.  Do others agree or do they prefer that it was untouched?

[JeremyEngle]

I'm pretty sure Henderson didn't have faith in Liz's abilities and wanted to re-record those songs with someone else playing guitar (I could be wrong). And he wanted to make her sound more "vulnerable", which probably meant less weird and less confrontational.

Their falling-out resulted in Liz putting out two weird classic rock albums on her terms, with her own guitar playing leading the songs. Of course, Henderson was not a fan of either record (which, to me, just seems positively ludicrous). I am SO glad she didn't forge onward with him.

I sometimes wonder if "Dance of the Seven Veils" was inspired partly by him. So many questions...

[shmoopy]

I'm pretty sure Henderson didn't have faith in Liz's abilities and wanted to re-record those songs with someone else playing guitar

Curious... what makes you say that?
This article touches briefly on the subject:
http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/club/2471/00000135.html

Phair drifted after Oberlin, whiling away a year in San Francisco trying to make a go of it as an artist before coming home broke to live with her parents. To indulge her "poetic, drippy side," she began writing lyrics, playing guitar and singing songs into a four-track tape recorder in her bedroom. Eventually she filled up three cassettes with music, dubbing them Girly Sound, for the amusement of a few friends. John Henderson, who runs the respected Feel Good All Over record label in Chicago, heard the tapes and was intrigued. Soon Phair moved into his Ukrainian Village apartment, an easy walk from Brad Wood's Idful recording studio. The idea was that she would re-record the best of the Girly Sound songs there and make a more finished album for commercial release. "It was an opportunity and a fluke, and I went with it," Phair says. "The music was the same thing as art, only I got recognition. So I thought, 'Cool! I'll do this for a while.'" "Typically, she'd write a song and play it for me and it would be there, entirely," Henderson says. "She had such a weird way of playing guitar, because she was trying to incorporate everything that one would hear in a fully produced record. It was percussive and melodic at the same time." But when Henderson and Phair tried to re-create that feel in the studio with Wood, they floundered. Henderson and Phair soon began quarreling about what direction to take: He wanted a stripped-down but precise sound, possibly with outside musicians; she wanted to rock, on her own idiosyncratic terms. "We both wanted something for me," Phair says. "He was projecting onto me what he wanted my music to come out like, which was wrong. So I blew him off." Henderson was the first member of the music community to find out how tough and stubborn Phair could be. He became so disgusted by what he saw as the musical compromises she was making that he stopped showing up at the studio; Phair moved out of his apartment and began working with Wood exclusively on the music that would become Exile in Guyville. "I'm reminded of the famous Greil Marcus quote about Rod Stewart, something about how he wanted to be a rock star and all that entailed-sitting by the pool, having sex with groupies and snorting coke-and if he had to write great songs to do it, he was perfectly willing to write them," Henderson says.

"I think she betrayed her talent in much the same way." Henderson nonetheless tipped off Wood that Matador was interested in Phair's music based on the Girly Sound tapes. "The relationship between Liz and me had become so strained that I realized it wouldn't last long enough for the album to be any good," Henderson says. "So I figured why not let somebody else do it." Wood called Matador copresident Gerard Cosloy the next day. But the split was less than amicable: Henderson hasn't had any artists record at Idful since, even though he has made a number of albums in Chicago.

Despite his significant early role in its creation, Henderson didn't receive any credit on Guyville but says the album isn't anything he'd want his name on anyway. "I have very little ill will toward Liz," he says, "unless you consider aesthetics." In listening to the Girly Sound tapes, which pile on irony, wit, bile and sophomoric poetry in equal measure, it becomes immediately apparent why there would be disagreements over how to make a commercial pop record out of these songs while trying to retain their initial charm. Sometimes, a pallid compromise was all that was achieved: In its gussied-up form on Whip-Smart, a song such as "Shane" loses the disarming intimacy, the almost spooky interplay between Phair's voice and guitar achieved on Girly Sound. But in general, Wood deserves credit for helping Phair make the shift from bedroom folkie to rock headliner.

The impression I get is that Henderson wanted to stay true to the sparseness of the Girly Sound tapes and Liz wanted to make an album that was more ambitious and accessible. As much as I love Exile In Guyville, and as great as I think it is, I can kind of see where he is coming from...

[JeremyEngle]

I got that impression because of this quote:

"the whole battle between me and john really was that he wanted a far more sparse and vulernable sound. he envisioned my songs recorded at their barest essential and always liked it when my voice was sort of fluttery. he would deny this -- I know he would -- but would have to concede that to an extent I really wanted to have more of my energy and aggressiveness..." (chickfactor magazine)

and this:

 "He wanted a stripped-down but precise sound, possibly with outside musicians"

and because one time when I was talking to Liz, she told me that every single producer she ever worked with wanted to keep her guitar playing off the album... then she paused and said "except Brad!"

It struck me as odd that the writer of the Tribune article you quoted would bother to say that he wanted a "stripped-down, precise sound, possibly with outside musicians" while Liz wanted to do it her way. What else could "outside musicians" have meant? Brad & Casey and a bunch of other people ended up playing on that record, but Liz's playing led the band, so it wasn't Liz who insisted on keeping it utterly stripped down to the "barest essential" (see quote above). If that's what he wanted, and by all accounts it was, the "outside musicians" thing sounds to me like someone else playing the guitar, and nothing else (hence "barest essential"). Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Can you believe we're actually talking about this? What would Liz say?

The only way to find out for sure is to ask Liz. Something makes me think that's a detail even she could recall.

Either way, I'm still glad the album got made the way it did. The Girly Sound tapes were pretty much perfect as they were, and so was Guyville.

[TrampolineFrSpace]

Ken posted a summary on the Mesmerizing website.  Is all of this in the Girlysound thread or the ATO Records thread?

I'm hopelessly behind in my reading.