New book documents Violent Femmes’ rise to fame from Milwaukee roots

Before the Violent Femmes became a world-famous band with a multi-platinum record, they started the same way any other group would in Milwaukee: playing wherever they could.

Local clubs weren’t interested in their unique musical style, so they took to playing on sidewalks and street corners until they were first discovered while performing outside of a Pretenders concert at the Oriental Theater in 1981.

They self-funded their first album, which went on to sell more than 7 million copies.

The story of the Violent Femmes’ Milwaukee origins and improbable rise to fame is the subject of a new book in the long-running music book series called “33⅓.” 

Author Nic Brown joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share the significance of the band’s self-titled debut album and what he learned from interviewing band members and producers.

The following was edited for clarity and brevity.

Rob Ferrett: For people who aren’t familiar with the Violent Femmes, how would you describe their music?

Nic Brown: They occupy this overlapping realm of folk, punk and jazz — which I’d call a Bermuda Triangle for anybody, but they pull it off because their songs are so great. Gordon Gano, the primary singer-songwriter, had this incredible collection of songs when the band formed, and they’re so well put together that they could have worked in any setting, really.

The Violent Femmes themselves had one of the most unique arrangements of instruments possible, and that’s the biggest surprise for people when they see them. A lot of what’s most unusual about them is often invisible on a recording, but they’re a one-of-a-kind band. Their debut record is a one-of-a-kind record. It didn’t sound like anything else then, and it still doesn’t sound like anything else today. 

RF: What were their early public performances like?

NB: They had a hard time getting gigs. They busked, and they had instrumentation that made it easy for them to do that, and that was by design, too. Victor DeLorenzo, the drummer, played standing up with brushes, with just a snare drum and then what he calls a tranceaphone, which is a metal bushel basket placed on top of another drum. Gordon (Gano) would play guitar on the street, usually an acoustic guitar. And then Brian Ritchie would play an acoustic bass guitar, which to most people sounds like stand-up bass, like what you’d see in a jazz trio. It looked more like a mariachi-style bass, and Brian’s point was, he couldn’t haul a stand-up bass around. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. 

They had instruments that were made to play on the street, and the fact that they spent so much time playing on the street is part of the reason the band works so well. There are few performance spaces less forgiving than a street corner in Milwaukee, or anywhere. They honed this act on the street corners so that they could make their songs work in that setting. And because of that, when they finally got into the studio to record their debut album, they were a really well-oiled machine, despite the fact they hadn’t spent much time on actual stages.

RF: What was it like for them to try to get a record deal and record their first album?

NB: It was failure after failure, really. They tried to get a record deal before they went into the studio. They had one very small label out of New York that was interested, but that fell through, so that’s why they eventually recorded it themselves. They had a lot of pressure from some people who did recognize a spark there to do that ’80s rock ‘n’ roll production with the more processed sound and synthesizers, and they had a surprising amount of confidence at the age that they were at to stick with their sound.

Eventually, there was a label called Slash Records, a small punk label in California, and they turned the band down. But two employees at Slash loved this recording so much that they kept playing the cassette in the offices until the owner finally said, “OK, I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to sign this band, not because I want to, but because I’m so sick of hearing my employees playing it every day.” So that’s how they ended up getting their record deal with Slash Records.

They say it’s the worst record deal any band could ever have signed. But they did what they had to, the record came out, and the rest is history, right?

RF: It took four years before the album went gold and then another four years to go platinum. How did it pick up popularity and go viral in the pre-internet era?

NB: I describe it as going viral over eight years via cassette. Young people connected with the songs and shared dubbed cassette tapes. They say this album has sold 7 million copies, and I say you need to ask Maxwell how many blank tapes they sold between 1983 and 1991 and add in about 30 percent of that.

A lot of people don’t know what the album cover looks like. I had a guy recently tell me that the album cover is whatever guy’s handwriting wrote “Violent Femmes” on the blank tape, so it was a real organic word-of-mouth build-up over eight years. 

RF: How unique was Brian Ritchie’s bass playing in what you described as a “lead bass” role in the band?

NB: This is probably the most bass-forward recording in popular music history. Brian Ritchie is an incredible musician, and so this thing happens on these songs where the melodic statements that aren’t happening with Gordon’s vocals are usually made on the bass guitar, and then Brian Ritchie takes long bass solos, unaccompanied by any other instrument.

They sound so natural and great that you actually don’t even think they’re bass solos. Often, if there’s a bass solo happening, that’s when we might skip the song. I’m sorry to say, but that doesn’t apply to Brian Ritchie’s work. He’s the lead.

RF: As a musician yourself, what drew you so enthusiastically into writing this book? 

NB: The book series that it’s part of, “33⅓,” is just a classic series, and guys like me were always dreaming about what record I would pitch to write about. This album had always been in my head as that record. I published a memoir about three years ago about my career as a musician, and in it I mentioned how important this album was. 

One of the members of the Femmes management read that memoir and actually reached out to me about maybe doing a project with them at some point. So this simmering dream of mine to pitch a “33⅓” book rose to the surface, and I thought, I’m gonna go for it. It was sort of a double-dream for me to have a book in the series and to be able to write it with the participation of all three members and the producer. It’s a fan’s dream come true.