The Vaselines interview: Success in Seattle

Published on Thursday 4 December 2008 15:53

THERE IS NO POINT IGNORING the elephant in the room, so let's just acknowledge the beast before moving on: The Vaselines would not be where they are today – back together for the first time in 20 years, playing their first ever dates outside the UK, and writing new songs – if not for the patronage of the late Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain.

This humble, scrappy indie band from Glasgow, fronted by then-partners Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly, released only one album, Dum Dum, and their entire catalogue boasts just 19 songs. But they were one of Cobain's favourite bands (he even named his daughter after McKee) and, in the years following their initial split, The Vaselines' music was introduced to a new, international audience, when Nirvana recorded covers of their songs Molly's Lips, Son Of A Gun and Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam. Not bad for a band who say they were "making it up as we went along", and were together for no more than three years.

"Is that all?" asks McKee. "It seemed longer."

"I always say there are three people who are key," says Kelly. "Stephen Pastel (of fellow Glaswegian indie shamblers The Pastels] for putting out the record, Calvin Johnson (of US indie shamblers Beat Happening] for playing it on his radio show in Olympia for Kurt to hear it, then Kurt and the rest of the guys for covering the songs. It is hard to do any interview without talking about it, but I don't feel bad about that. If it wasn't for them, we'd just be another band who put out a record, sold a couple of hundred copies and split up."

Cobain's favourite musical partnership met at a party in the mid-1980s. Kelly was trying to get into art school and McKee had started teacher training when they formed The Vaselines as "something on the side while we were planning to get our real thing together".

"I was told, quite directly, that I had absolutely no musical talent whatsoever," remembers McKee.

"Who told you that?" asks Kelly. "Was it me?"

"At school," she answers. "I wasn't even allowed in the recorder group, they wouldn't let me. But you know what? It didn't stop me. I taught myself to play Greensleeves on the recorder."

That DIY spirit was to serve the band well. The Vaselines were shambolic and slightly snotty, but there was a feral charm in their primitive, melodic ditties and boy/girl chemistry. It is tempting, in retrospect, to romanticise their brief lifespan, but McKee's abiding memory of their time together is of "being hungry and cold". Kelly recalls "really roughing it on tour with The Pastels, sleeping in a DHS hotel in Bristol with blood up the walls. I slept in a binbag one night. So we paid our dues. We paid everyone's dues".

But before their debut album had even been released, their label went bust, McKee and Kelly broke up and the band went the same way. "Most bands split up at the height of their success …" says Kelly, "…but we split up at the depths," concludes McKee.

Cobain then asked them to reform in 1990, to support Nirvana in Edinburgh. "At that point, Nirvana weren't the band we know now, they were just a bunch of guys from Seattle putting out their first LP," recalls Kelly. "Kurt was quite introverted. I just remember him wearing fingerless gloves, sitting on a chair saying 'hi, so great to meet you'. But from then there was always a connection between us."

Kelly sang onstage with Nirvana at the 1991 Reading Festival, as Nevermind was about to break big. His post-Vaselines band, Captain America (later, Eugenius) also toured with Nirvana and Cobain wore their T-shirt on the cover of NME. "We hung out with them, but Kurt was always doing interviews, so we never got to know each other. I met him again in Los Angeles and he said 'aren't you really getting sick of being associated with me all the time?' That was the last time I ever saw him."

McKee's post-Vaselines musical endeavours have been more sporadic. Now a mother of three, she teaches yoga, which has influenced the meditative strains of her band, Suckle.

"It's just a way of being creative," she says. "I never saw music as my main job. I didn't really like the whole music business side of things, it's just one disappointment after another. So when The Vaselines split up, it wasn't a big loss, it was more of a relief. Now it's much more enjoyable, I don't know if it's because I'm older, or I've finally learned how to play the songs."

McKee and Kelly shared a stage for the first time in years when they toured together in 2006 to promote their respective solo albums. Vaselines songs were played. Despite some reluctance from McKee ("because my voice has dropped since my screeching days"), the pair then decided to reform as The Vaselines for a benefit gig earlier this year, backed by members of Belle & Sebastian.

"I was just sick of being on stage on my own," says Kelly. "I really wanted to dust off the electric guitar and make a racket so that's why I suggested it. We asked the guys from Belle & Sebastian because we knew they would pick up the songs really quickly. They worked everything out and showed us how to play the songs!"

This summer they made it to the States for the first time, where their gigs in New York and at the Sub Pop label's 20th anniversary celebrations in Seattle were lapped up by the cult following they have acquired. "There's an audience for us now that wasn't there before," agrees Kelly. "In the past, it was confrontational, we were rough and ready, and it was a bit of a scramble to the end of the song. Now that's definitely changed – people actually want to see us. Before, they would just go back to the bar."

Just back from some festival dates in Brazil, the revitalised Vaselines are poised to play their biggest ever gig in their home town and have even started writing new material.

"It sounds like The Vaselines, surprise, surprise," says Kelly. "There's no minor chords in Vaselines songs, so that's one thing you don't have to worry about. And they're all very short, so it was easy to go back to that."

"But I think the subject matter will change," says McKee, referring to their self-confessed "smutty and juvenile" back catalogue of songs, boasting titles such as Rory Rides Me Raw – which is allegedly about McKee's chafing bike saddle. "They are not about sex, I'm clarifying that – there was no sex in the Vaselines," she claims. "I bought Rory with the money I got from playing our first show – 50. I wonder what happened to that bike? I loved it."

"Evidently, from the song," deadpans Kelly.

The bantering chemistry is clearly still there – and so is the feeling they're making it up as they go along. "There's no plan, it's more like freefalling," confirms Kelly. "When we started the band, we never thought there was a career in it, and I've never really lost that idea. I've always felt I've got one foot in the music business but I still feel a bit of an outsider."

&#149 The Vaselines play ABC, Glasgow,12 December.