Violent Femmes —
Peaceful Men
Gordon Gano is really not that angry
Story by Chris Ridder
The Violent Femmes — they bring all their equipment on the bus. And you can't fuck with the Violent Femmes. You cannot fuck with this band!
— From Add it Up, prev. unreleased demo, 1981
T he Violent Femmes took the national music scene by storm in 1982 after
rising from humble Milwaukee roots. Their multi-platinum, self-titled debut
album was packed with songs full of rage, angst, and frustration, and lyrics
that would make our parents cringe. 'Gimmie the Car,' which got lead singer
Gordon Gano kicked out of the National Honor Society when he played it at
his graduation ceremony, is a prime example: "...Come on Dad, Gimmie the
Car/I'm gonna pick her up/I'm gonna get her drunk/I'm gonna get her
high/I'm gonna make her cry..."
Gordon's lyrics are powerful and personal, often sung by an emotionally troubled first-person narrator — someone disenchanted with people, the society at large, and, most characteristically, plagued by a string of painful, twisted relationships. Despite the trying times depicted in the music, theirs is a message of self-exploration, honesty, and the importance of emotion.
If there's one question that seems to be burning in people's minds about the Femmes, it's how the band reconciles the plethora of clashing and conflicting values in their music. Gordon, one of seven siblings and the son of a Baptist Minister, is a Christian. "Gordon is very nice and clean-cut," says his brother Glenn, "He's someone you take home to meet your parents."
Glenn and Gordon both agree that, despite lyrics that could make even the most cynical atheists cringe, their parents were highly supportive of Gordon's musical exploration. "People think that Christians are very conservative," says Glenn, "But in fact there's a long liberal tradition in the faith, starting with Jesus himself."
"My family has always been very encouraging," says Gordon, though he admits, "There are certain songs they don't care for much." But, he says, his mother never expressed any reservations about the content of his music until she believed it could pose a threat to someone's safety.
"The first song my mother had any reservations about was 'Out the Window,'" says Gordon, "And when she mentioned that she wanted to have a discussion about it, I said, 'Mom, why did you wait so long?' But she was worried that someone may see the song as a soundtrack for suicide. If you think about it, it really is saying 'don't go out the window,' but she said some people may not be that sophisticated."
Nonetheless, Gordon struck out his own course and trusted the public's ability to interpret his music. "If I had to worry about how the lowest common denominator would receive the music, I'd never produce anything worthwhile," he says.
When I asked Gordon if he had ever questioned his faith, I began to get an idea of how it worked for him, of how Gordon's faith and the power of his self-reflection were synergistic — how in his music he's transcended the boundaries of good taste in the interests of expressing himself fully, and, paradoxically, almost comes out smelling like a rose.
"Questioning the basics of my faith — I've never had that. Questioning things of myself and how I fit into that or don't fit in, or seeing myself differently from how I thought I would and being shaken by that, then yes. And then, I don't have step one two and three for coming out of that — it's just a continuing process," he says.
Brian Ritchie, the band's bassist and a devout atheist, was against including the religious songs on the bands' first album, but eventually gave in. It may have hurt the group for a while, but they've emerged with a broader range and an extra dose of the ironic edge that initially brought them to the top of the charts. With the release of their 1994 album New Times, Ritchie said, "We don't really think it's our job to provide a consistent viewpoint. People are not consistent. Why should we be? We're not interested in selling people a message. We think it's better to just be ourselves, and if people are confused, that's fine. We're confused."
Confusion certainly hasn't hurt the band, whose members seem to have the mystical gift of turning chaos into order, and vice versa, in both words and music. As a lyricist, Gano has a tremendous gift for conveying ironies within ironies, turning the basic premise of a song on its head in subtle ways.
"I do think it comes across [as foreboding]," says Gordon, "which is strange for me. And the mood at our concerts is always up — people don't come to get down and dark. And for me, there is a lot of humor there. The concerts are characteristic of a lot of songs — we express negative things, but there's a sense of humor or irony throughout. And that's usually not a concept I had at first, it just happens."
Gordon wants to make sure that people know the narrator in the songs is not him. "Sometimes there's a song stating something contrary to good values or what I'd hope to have as my values," he says, "So it's interesting, and not always presented as something I'm opposed to — just, 'here it is.' Some people have problems not just with my songs, but with many things in the arts. Just because someone is singing in the first person doesn't mean they believe [what they're singing], or that they did it."
"He's not a tortured soul," says Glenn, who sees the music as good therapy and cathartic release both for Gordon and his fans, "he's just thinking about life experience."
© 1996 Tweak and Chris Ridder