A conversation with Greg Dulli from 1998
The Afghan Whigs ringleader on Brandy vs. Monica, '60s Stones vs. '70s Stones, and his cigarette intake vs. Denis Leary's
Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).
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THE OPENERS
The Daniel Romano discography is deep and dense—call him the Ty Segall of the North. But I feel like this indie-rock shapeshifter has achieved his ultimate form in the latest iteration of his raucous power-pop band the Outfit. Last Saturday at Bridgeworks in Hamilton, the quartet played like they were applying for the job of best live rock ‘n’ roll band in Canada, and they won’t need a second interview. Delivering sky-high Sloan-worthy harmonies with anarchic MC5 energy, the Outfit also reaffirmed the three fundamental rules of proper rock performance: 1) Between-song breaks are for amateurs. 2) Matching leather vests and patches are a must. And: 3) Every band should have its own national flag.
I watched the Pavement movie, and my main takeaway is that I need Slanted! Enchanted! to become a proper touring production. (Who knew that it would take a jokey jukebox musical to make me truly appreciate Terror Twilight?) In honour of the film—a real documentary about a real band spliced with a fake biopic, a fake behind-the-scenes documentary about the fake biopic, a fake behind-the-scenes documentary about a musical that actually ran for a couple of nights, and a fake TV news report on a real museum retrospective full of fake artifacts—I hereby present my playlist of the best Pavementy songs that aren’t actually Pavement songs:
Fans of Southern Ontario indie music with a Bell Fibe TV subscription/app take note: The New Vibes—an eight-part mini-documentary series spotlighting eight bands from the Hamilton/Niagara region—is now available to stream. Check out this excerpt featuring post-punk/post-rock behemoths cute performing their sinister stomper “Callous Social Status” at Vertagogo:
Notes on this week’s additions to the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
Ty Segall, “Another California Song”: In which the restless Laguna Beach rocker swipes the keyboard line from Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” and crafts a love/hate ode to his home state that’s essentially a scrappy garage-psych update of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”
Foxwarren, “Strange”: Returning to the band that predates his celebrated solo career, Andy Shauf embraces a sample-centric approach that imagines what his Paul Simon-esque vignettes would sound like if he subjected them to an Avalanches remix. (For more on Foxwarren’s wonderful new album out today, 2, check out this segment I produced for Commotion where Kreative Kontrol’s Vish Khanna takes us on a journey across the Shaufiverse.)
Amy Millan, “Don Valley”: Though she’s best known for animating Stars’ synth-pop confections and Broken Social Scene’s post-rock anthems, Amy’s always been a country girl at heart. And while it’s named for Toronto’s most congested freeway, this empty-saloon serenade lifts you out of the downtown bustle and transports you to some faraway place in the sticks where you can actually see the stars in the night sky. (I also like it because the chorus melody reminds me of one of my favourite Mercury Rev songs, “Spiders and Flies.”)
Miya Folick & Hand Habits, “Almost Crimes”: Speaking of BSS… while listening to the upcoming all-star remake of You Forgot It in People, I was struck by how so many of the contributors have taken an album that’s synonymous with stage-crowding, clap-along spectacle and turned it into a deeply insular experience, by filtering the songs through the mindset of a lonely teen communing with the record through headphones in the privacy of their bedroom. In the hands of this indie-pop power duo, YFIIP’s most feverish track becomes its most chill, reborn as a funereal folk dirge that distills the original’s anxious energy into pure heartache. And after hearing the BSS version approximately 10,000 times over the past 23 years, this is the first time I could actually make out all the lyrics.
Alan Sparhawk, “Screaming Song”: The Low founder’s backing band for his new solo record, With Trampled by Turtles, are a big deal in the Americana/jam-band world, but on this devastating Dylanesque elegy for Sparhawk’s late wife Mimi Parker, the Turtles whip up a furious, screeching-fiddle finale like a bluegrass Godspeed.
THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Greg Dulli
The date: October 22, 1998
Publication: Chart magazine
Location: A conference room in the Cambridge Suites Hotel in Toronto
Album being promoted: 1965
The context: I’ve interviewed Greg Dulli four different times over the years—twice over the phone, twice in person—and he’s always as charming and hilarious in conversation as he is distraught and anguished on record. This was my first time speaking with him, and our conversation doubles as a snapshot of a fading moment when major labels were still sinking money into esoteric alt-rock acts like the Afghan Whigs.
In contrast to its weighty, quasi-conceptual predecessors, Gentlemen and Black Love, the streamlined 1965—the band’s first release for Columbia Records—had all the makings of rock-radio crossover record, presenting itself as the missing link between ‘70s Stones swagger and ‘90s neo-soul smoothness. The album also came on the heels of the Whigs making inroads into Hollywood—the band made a cameo in Ted Demme’s 1996 rom-com Beautiful Girls and Dulli backed up Denis Leary on the comedian’s stand-up/music hybrid album Lock ‘n Load.
You can tell an artist is a top priority for a label when they get flown up to Toronto to do in-person pre-release interviews in the conference room of a pricey downtown hotel instead of just doing advance phoners. But while Dulli was effectively in town to sell records, our discussion of 1965 inevitably got sidetracked by tangential chit-chat about such extremely-1998 topics as The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Brandy and Monica, and the DeNiro action flick Ronin.
So the last time the Whigs played Toronto [in the summer of ‘96], some guy yelled out “Free Bird” and you made him get up onstage and sing it with you. Is that still happening at your shows?
Well, you know what? I'm going to keep on doing it until people stop fucking yelling that out at our show, you know?
But then those people will start shouting for “Whipping Post” instead.
“Whipping Post,” I could rock out, though. I actually know how to play “Whipping Post.”
So listening to 1965, I noticed that you sample the “who’s hot/who’s not” line from Ma$e at the beginning of “Crazy”...
That’s not a sample. That’s me!
Well, it got me thinking about the relationship between the Afghan Whigs and R&B. On the one hand, you’ll drop familiar pick-up lines like “let’s get it on” into your songs, but coming from you, they sound pretty…
Malevolent?
I'm wondering if you're trying to subvert that old suave soul-man persona or is that something that you actually aspire to?
All I can do is subvert it, I'm not the greatest singer in the world, although I’ve got the heart of a great singer—I really give a fuck, and I mean what I say. Technically speaking, I'm not threatening Usher or anyone. But that song was fun for me. I sang “Crazy” in the first take. I was just goofing off at the beginning of the song, and I liked it.
The Whigs have always had a firm grounding in classic soul and R&B—what do you make of the commercialized modern-day Usher/R. Kelly version?
Well, you’ve also got D'Angelo, who’s a star. Lauryn Hill is a star. Nas is a star.
Is that why you signed to Columbia—to get free Lauryn Hill records?
Right! But I tell you, man, Lauryn Hill has made such a great record. I listen to it all the time. I haven't seen the video, but I saw her play down in Miami this summer and she glows from within. She’s got a religious presence—her presence is so powerful. She blows my mind. That Lauryn Hill record, they couldn't keep it out of number one. It got knocked out for like a week and came right back. It’s really rare when I look at the number one record in America and I go, “yeah, I got that record!”
Honestly, when I look at a Top 10 singles chart now, I often don’t know half the songs.
Or, if I have heard them, I hated them.
A number-one single used to mean something.
Yeah, a number-one song was bad-ass! Now, a number-one single is painful. Stuart, I loved the radio. I grew up on it, you know, and there's nothing on there for me. And that’s why I’ll listen to an old soul station or I can occasionally listen to the hip-hop station, but sooner or later, you know, “Just the Two of Us” by Will Smith is going to come on and chase me away and I have to get a CD back on.
I heard so much Led Zeppelin on the radio growing up that, by the time I was in my teens, I was sick of them. But I’m at the point now where I really appreciate hearing them on the radio, because what passes for rock ‘n’ roll these days…
…it ain't rock and roll, man, that’s for sure. Well, you know, because there wasn't any rock ‘n’ roll anymore, I wanted to make a big, sexy, rock ‘n’ roll R&B record just to fill the void. I invite all the rock ‘n’ rollers out there to come and top it, baby,
A lot of the advance press on 1965 has said this will be your mainstream breakthrough, but is that what you’re striving for? Or is being rejected by mainstream radio a sign that you’re doing something right?
In a way… but I think we should be played on the radio, I really do. And if we don't, it'll be a fucking crime.
Maybe you should chain yourself to a radio station with a stick of dynamite.
Or get up on a billboard and say you're going to stay up there until they play us. I mean, I'd be up there for the rest of my life, you know?
One last question on the R&B topic: Brandy or Monica?
I've been asked that recently! And I’ll give you the same answer: Monica. Did you hear that she took a swing at Brandy backstage at the MTV Awards?
Well, they denied that…
They denied it. But you can tell… if you go back and look at [their performance], like I did after I read about it, she's got a puffy eye! And they were not happy, man. They never got near each other onstage. But that's a great song. The song that I can't wait to hear as a single—I mean, I already listen to it all the time—is the song “Ex Factor” on the Lauryn Hill record. It’ll probably be, like, the fourth single off of it or something—but that’s the song I’m all over.
So you write the sort of songs that people like to pick apart and overanalyze, and people often assume that if you’re singing in the first person, you must be singing about yourself…
Yeah, and I fear for those people’s imaginations. Mine’s pretty fertile. I mean, there's always some experience that I've had that the person in the song has had—I'm not completely divorced from the first person. There's a level of intimacy when you say “I” or “me” where I think the listener can become “I” or “me.” It’s the intimacy of the first person that I like.
Do you think that all great music has to come from pain and anguish?
No, I think we made a bunch of great music on this record that’s not anguished. I don't hear anguish.
I've heard you describe 1965 as a happy record, but at the same time, there’s still a lot of tension in there…
Oh, sure. A leopard can't change his spots, man. I ain’t saying I’m the Prozac kid or anything like that. But there are songs of joyful optimism on this record…
I don’t know if I hear that!
“Citi Soleil,” “66”—I see both of those songs as joyful.
I guess that goes back to what I was saying off the top: coming from you, joy can sound ominous.
You can't teach an old dog new tracks—I’m me. But I attempted to focus a bit more on positivity rather than masochism. But what's positive to me is, you know… one man's shit is another man's diamonds.
So how would you characterize the difference in vibe making a record like 1965 versus Black Love?
Black Love was pretty heavy. Gentlemen was heavy too—the recording of both of those records was pretty heavy. The last time I can remember it being really fun was Congregation and Uptown Avondale—that was made in two days.
Is “Uptown Again” a conscious throwback to the Uptown Avondale vibe?
I think a little bit. Actually, my first impulse on “Uptown Again” was “uptown” in the classic Lou Reed uptown sense. Drugs are so prevalent in our society that I thought it necessary to at least touch on that and the fact it’s part of my past, and most likely a part of my future, too! [laughs] I knew “Uptown Again” was going to be a short song and I wanted the imagery to be immediate. And I always kind of map out our records—I fill in gaps where you need this sort of song, and then this sort of song… the first song and the last song helped me write the rest of the record.
No one seems to do that anymore, especially with CDs where you get 16 songs stretched over 75 minutes. There’s no flow. You used to have a certain kind of song that ended Side 1 and a certain kind of song that kicked off Side 2…
Yeah. We'll have vinyl and Side 1 stops with “Citi Soleil” and then “John the Baptist” starts Side 2. And Side 2 is a different affair than 1. I still call them records—I’ll never say CDs. They’re records to me, and I think of them that way. I still have a turntable and I still have all my vinyl. And that's the way it's meant to be heard. You hear an Afghan Whigs record on vinyl and you’re hearing it the way I want it to be heard.
It seems like this record is getting an inordinate amount of comparisons to Black and Blue by the Stones. Do you prefer ‘70s Stones to ‘60s Stones?
Yeah, I like ’70s Stones better than the ’60s Stones, for sure. Or at least starting with Let It Bleed, and then Sticky Fingers and Exile—that's the holy trinity for me. And Black and Blue, I love, but that's the weird “here comes Ronnie record,” you know? But it’s got some of the most beautiful ballads that they've ever done. “Memory Motel”—that's a get-out-your-handkerchief song. But “Hot Stuff” is a great song, too.
So 1965 was recorded in New Orleans and it sounds like it, whereas Black Love was made outside Seattle, which may have contributed to its gloomy vibe…
It was done out in the woods. It was actually a beautiful place where we did Black Love. But it was a country environment—we recorded on a horse farm,.and, you know, it's pretty lonely out there. We were like, 40 miles outside of Seattle.
A little bit of cabin fever setting in?
A little. But you choose your weapon, man. And that was a weapon to make a very introverted, claustrophobic album.
Well, my question is: how important is geography when it comes to setting a vibe for a record?
I'm interested in going to places that have a vibe. I’m already thinking I'd like to make a record in New York City next time.
You’ve said that you feel sort of displaced coming from Cincinnati, because you're not north, you’re not south, you're not Midwest….
Me in particular, I’m such a wandering kind of person. I like to think I'm never in any place long enough for somebody to get sick of me, because they always get sick of me pretty fast!
Like DeNiro says in Heat: “"Don't get attached to anything you can’t walk away from in 30 seconds if you feel the heat coming around the corner."
Or like DeNiro says in Ronin: “I never walk in any place I don't know how to walk out of.”
I was disappointed by that movie—even the car chase wasn’t that great.
Yeah, I was led to believe it was going to be the greatest thing of all time.
To Live and Die in L.A. did the “wrong way down the freeway” trick over 10 years ago…
Yeah, big fucking deal, man. I was really disappointed. What even disappointed me more was that after two hours and 15 minutes, you don't even find out what's in the fucking suitcase.
That’s one of those post-Tarantino tricks: “it’s not really about what’s in the suitcase…”
Yes it is! Looking back on it now, I should’ve known it from the get-go, because you remember the whole beginning of the movie, where DeNiro’s walking around outside a cafe and sees the people in there, and he walks around some more, and finally he hides his gun behind the thing and walks in and then walks out and picks the gun up—it’s like, what were you fucking doing out there, man? You didn't need to hide your gun! You already knew these motherfuckers, you know? That movie really bummed me out because I really went in wanting to be blown away. And I like all the actors—Natasha McElhone, phew… she's gorgeous. And they gave her a really good part, too. Everybody was an attractive character, man. The Stellan Skarsgard character… everybody was great. But they didn't have anything to do. And it’s John Frankenheimer, he’s great. I don't know if you guys saw it up here, but he did a George Wallace movie for HBO. Unbelievable, man. Even if you don't know who the motherfucker is, it's incredibly directed. Gary Sinise plays Wallace and he's dynamite. So because of that, I went, “Frankenheimer’s got it back!”
It feels like the shows on cable are better than most movies now. Do you watch Oz?
Yeah, I watched the first couple, when the lawyer, Beecher, flipped the coin on the Nazi guy, and then the Nazi guy put the guy in on him and got him drinking again and fell in love with him. But I haven’t watched it lately.
[Conversation veers into a detailed recap of Season 2 of Oz]
You’ve gone from Sub Pop to Hollywood in five years. Who are more fickle: indie rockers or Hollywood people?
They're both pretty fickle. I pay no mind to either one. I just keep rolling along. I'm Old Man River.
Who smokes more: you or Denis Leary?
Me! Denis quit.
I saw him in a Quaker State commercial last night..
Yeah. I tell ya: Denis knows how to make that money. He’s got lots of it, too. He was doing IBM too, but they fired him.
Are you trying to keep your feet in all sorts of different waters as a survival mechanism?
I mean, doing stuff with Denis was just my friend asking me to help him out.
How did you meet?
Through Ted Demme. Jonathan Demme was producing this movie, and we all went to that. I knew Ted and Jonathan, and Denis was there, and he was smoking then. We were in a non-smoking restaurant, and he and I took, like, four trips outside to smoke cigarettes, and we bonded during those smoking moments. And then I went and did this movie [Beautiful Girls] with Ted, and after we did that, Denis asked me to help him on this thing. If I'm asked and I'm interested, fuck I’ll do it—I like to have something to do. There's always something there to learn. By and large, I'm a pretty lazy fucker. This is the most work I ever do: flying around…
…and sitting on a hotel couch doing interviews.
I got to tell you, this is fine; it's all the fucking flying that I hate. I've gotten to the point where traveling holds no fascination for me anymore. I'm way over it. I enjoy performing and enjoy meeting people and hanging out and being in the place… but getting there? Fuck that.
ENCORES
Alas, a smart, sexy rock ‘n’ roll record like 1965 had no chance of reaching a mass audience at a time when alt-rock radio was veering hard into pop-punk and nu-metal. And while it eventually landed the Whigs some opening dates on Aerosmith’s Nine Lives tour and a placement in American Pie 2 (no, really!), the album also precipitated a hiatus that would last for 16 years. But if 1965 sounded out of place in 1998, it actually sounds right at home in the current alt-pop moment—for example, a song like “66” would fit snugly into Haim’s repertoire:
Prior to relaunching the Whigs in 2012, Dulli released five albums with The Twilight Singers, which gradually grew from a solo electronic project into what was essentially super-sized version of the Afghan Whigs, as documented on the excellent 2011 concert set Live in New York, which I reviewed for Pitchfork. I also wrote the Pitchfork reviews for two of the three post-reunion Whigs albums to date: 2017’s In Spades and 2022’s How Do Your Burn?
Finally: let the record show that the Afghan Whigs’ Black Love features the greatest album-closing triptych of the ‘90s, and quite possibly of all time: “Bulletproof” > “Summer’s Kiss” > “Faded.” If you know, you know.
This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please consider a donation via paid subscription, or visit my PWYC tip jar!