A L S O_.T O D A Y

Blue Glow
Will Smith is the man on the "NAACP Awards"; more reruns than you can stand

Full "Steam" ahead
By Dakota Smith
Alessandro Gassman, the Italian star of last year's award-winning film "Steam," is poised to become the next European heartthrob to find an American audience

Dusty Springfield, 1939-1999
By Joyce Millman
Remembering "the Queen of White Soul," a one-of-a-kind singer

AMERICAN BANDSTAND | PAGE 1, 2
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Several of the new songs -- "The End of You," "Living In Exile" -- seem to be addressing the perils of fame. Are temptation and dealing with fame something Sleater-Kinney have struggled with?

Well, I don't know. I think we've struggle a bit more with that personally than we have as a band. When all three of us are together and we're confronted with an offer from a major label, it's very easy for us to say no, actually. Personally, though, we all deal with it differently in terms of how it affects our personal lives or our relationships to the communities we live in, or our desire to have things that we want. Those things come into play, but we all know what's best for the band vs. what might be best for us individually. And we have to make decisions for the band.

With all the critical accolades you've received, especially for the last two records, was there a lot of pressure on the band as you recorded "The Hot Rock"?

The biggest pressure comes from within. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves. When I brought "Call the Doctor" home after we finished recording it, I literally jumped around my apartment listening to that record. This was before anyone had written anything about our band. I was like, "I love this record! Wow, we made such a good record!" That moment to me was equally significant to any of the accolades that were put upon us later. And I was really proud of "Dig Me Out" and I'm really proud of "The Hot Rock." So I think first and foremost that's the most important thing. You just sort of hope that other people understand what you're doing.

Plus, you can't really take all that pressure into the studio. You really would implode. It's so stressful anyway. If you're thinking not only about yourself and your bandmates, and the engineer and producer, but also about the invisible entity that is the media or the fan, it is just too hard

So you weren't feeling like you needed to duplicate your past success?

Well, we would have failed if we tried to make "Dig Me Out" again. We would have failed on a personal level, because it would have been coming from a dishonest place. If you continue to write from a place that's honest at least you're going to come up with material that's interesting and true and emotional. It does sound different, and that was a big relief. As a listener, "Hot Rock" is a much more diverse record and has a vastness to it that some of the other records didn't, and I'm really happy with that.

If you were a Sleater-Kinney fan, are there things about the band you would criticize or that would annoy you?

(Laughs) That's a hard question. It's hard to be objective. Being in the band, I always want us to be doing something different, but the biggest complaint that we get is for not staying the same. People are like, "What happened to 'Call the Doctor,'" or "What happened to songs like 'Little Babies'?"

I guess sometimes I wish we could be less, hmm, complicated (laughs). I really wanted this record to be really simple. I kept telling Corin, "It's going to be minimalist. I'm just going to play the same guitar part the entire song." Somehow, it just got really complicated. So to answer you I would say, simple. Simple pop songs. More of those, please. More pretty melodies, please.

Would you trade some of your critical success for more popular success? Would you rather have sold 5 million copies of your CD?

No, not really. Five million people having our records? That would be really strange. I don't know if I could sleep at night.

No, I'm really happy with the audience that we play to. Our music means a lot to them. They're intelligent and have a pretty good understanding of it. I like that we can still play in a small setting. We've definitely grown, but I like our connection to the audience. The larger you get the bigger the disconnect with your audience gets and that starts to get scary.

Right now I feel really comfortable with the fact that I live a very normal life. I can come home from Sleater-Kinney and almost separate myself from it. Sleater-Kinney is a job in some ways, though it's clearly different from a 9-5 job. But I have a multitude of other things that I like to do. And I like that I have friends and know people that don't solely identify me based on my connection with the band.

So how does it feel to be a "woman in rock"?

(Click)

Hello?
SALON | March 4, 1999

Joe Heim is a frequent contributor to Salon.