take an authoritative and passionate tour around one of the most prolific & sprawling cult indie catalogues: GBV! Jules Gray has got his head and his arms around this one.
GUIDED BY VOICES: THE LAST GREAT ROCK & ROLL BAND
Words & curation by Jules Gray, cover art by Mick Clarke!
You are about to hear some music that may at times remind you of any or all of: The Who; The Fall; R.E.M; Peter Gabriel; The Beatles; The Sex Pistols; and, though I’m perhaps unnecessarily loath to admit this; Oasis. But more than this, it will mostly sound utterly like itself. If that sounds at very least intriguing to you, then carry on. If not, well, carry on anyway, because you never know.
Guided by Voices are one of those bands with a ridiculously large discography, and that can be not so much daunting as downright off-putting. I’m going to make it as easy as I can for you to begin loving them as much as I do. Why? Because they are the last great rock & roll band. Or, if that’s too bold a claim for you, theirs is the last great rock & roll story. And really when I say “they” and “theirs”, I mostly mean “he” and “his”. Guided by Voices is, to all extents and purposes, Robert Pollard. The supporting cast come and go through a metaphorical revolving door (apart from the occasional soul who is forcefully ejected), but Bob is the sole constant. It’s his vision, and they’re (mostly) his songs.
Music wasn’t the young Bob Pollard’s first love. Both he and his younger brother Jimmy were crazy about sport. They were gifted athletes too, particularly Jimmy. But sports injuries put paid to any future for both of them in that particular arena. Bob fell back on his other love – music. He became so obsessed with music that he began making art for fantasy bands’ album covers. He’d even make up songs for those fake bands. He’d sing them to Jimmy, who can still remember those early songs. Eventually Bob was persuaded to sing for a band and he’s been doing that ever since. Bob’s early bands played shows in and around his hometown of Dayton, Ohio (where he still lives), but outside of a hardcore few, nobody seemed very interested in their music. Guided by Voices made their first record, a mini-LP called Forever Since Breakfast, in a proper recording studio in 1986. It didn’t sell. Bob and his bandmates would get drunk and throw some of their unsold copies at the walls. They had no idea that they were destroying pricey collectors’ items of the future.
For the next few years, Guided by Voices became a hobby band. Bob had a regular job to hold down, working as a junior school teacher. They stopped playing gigs, but they still made records; a series of what were in truth little more than vanity pressings. Bob decided he didn’t like the way their first record had sounded, and turned his back on using proper recording studios. They couldn’t afford them anyway. So instead they recorded in garages and basements, sometimes using multitrack tape machines, sometimes a 4-track set up which utilised the humble cassette. Occasionally, Bob would even make do with singing and playing directly into a boombox. Despite all this economising, these records still cost money to press. Bob’s first wife and his parents asked him when he was going to give up his silly hobby and grow up. In 1992, Bob made what he declared was going to be the final Guided by Voices album, Propeller. This time the economising extended to the record not even having printed artwork. Instead, band members and friends hand decorated each and every one of the 500 copies. And that was to be that. His family had won – he was going to settle down, work at his 9-5, and put his dreams aside.
A copy of Propeller found its way to the independent label Scat Records. This all happened behind Bob’s back – he was too fearful of ridicule to sanction courting any bona-fide record labels. But Scat loved what they heard, and offered Bob a record deal only weeks after he’d broken up his band. He was knocked out that anyone genuinely liked his stuff enough to offer him a deal. Yet at the same time he believed in his own talent enough to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Age 36, he would soon quit his job to embark on a career as a rock & roller. He’d been a teacher for 14 years by this point. It was certainly a brave move, but validation came when the band scored a sizeable indie hit with the Bee Thousand album in 1994. They became the toast of the indie rock scene, and the darlings of the music press. They’d by now resumed playing gigs, but this time around they were a hot ticket.
As momentum grew, they moved to a bigger independent label, Matador, and then to a quasi-major label, TVT, and then, when the big time refused to embrace them, back for a second term at Matador. Band members came and went and sometimes returned for second or third stints in the band. But all great rides must come to an end. In 2004, Bob made what he declared was going to be the final Guided by Voices album. Sounds familiar, right? But this time, Bob stayed true to his word. Well, at least he did so for seven years. Not that he stopped making music during this period. He put out a raft of solo albums, albums by side projects, one-off collaborations, and archival releases. That childhood hobby of making fake album covers had by now become his parallel career, and he usually makes his own album art using his signature collage style. Original Pollard collages get sold through his website, providing him with a secondary income. He never stops. There’s an old joke that he can write five songs while taking a crap, and at least three of them will be good. Bob’s album releases, group and solo combined exceeded the 100 marker three years ago. And, yes, the good ship Guided by Voices has set sail on two further journeys, with the current crew showing no sign of running aground any time soon. But for this introduction to their world, we’ll concentrate on the music they made between 1992, when they were first noticed by the music business, and 2004, when everyone assumed it was all over. Is anybody ready to rock?..
1. Over the Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox
(from Propeller, 1992)
…This song does not rock. (Although, actually it does.)
Where to begin? I thought about starting at the beginning, but the vanity project years are probably best enjoyed once you’re already familiar with their more celebrated work. So we’re starting at the point where somebody outside of Dayton, Ohio first sat up and took notice. But to be honest, we’re starting with Over the Neptune because it’s arguably the greatest album opener of their career. You’ll hear the sound of a band setting up, followed by the stage banter quoted above. Then you’ll hear the sound of an enthusiastic crowd chanting “GBV! GBV! GBV!” All is not as it would seem. The band you hear getting ready to play is indeed Guided by Voices, but it’s an old recording from a mid-80s show. They are local nobodies-in-particular. The chant is smoke and mirrors, overdubbed by the band and friends in the studio (Bob had decided to splash out on a studio for a few songs, as this was supposed to be the last hurrah, remember?) in an ironic gesture to their lack of success. Real life would come to imitate art, and in time every Guided by Voices gig would see the band arrive onstage to the sound of this same chant, only now played out for real.
As for the actual song, it both initiates the sound of the group’s classic years whilst at the same time being somewhat atypical. Guided by Voices tended to record very short songs, at least in those days, but this is a fairly long track, being in truth two (or possibly two and a half) songs joined together. Originally, it was supposed to then flow into a further set of songs, all outlined on a boombox demo tape. Partly this was down to Bob’s open fondness for prog rock (despite such music being very much out of favour at the time), but mostly it was conceived out of financial necessity. If the band did almost a whole side of songs in one run through, it would help keep the studio costs down. But they didn’t make it further than the end of Mesh Gear Fox, so that’s all you get.
2. Tractor Rape Chain
3. Hot Freaks
4. I Am a Scientist
(from Bee Thousand, 1994)
The first album for Scat, Vampire on Titus, was almost wilfully gnarly. Whether this was a declaration of freedom to do whatever he wanted, or a testing of the boundaries of what would be accepted, is hard to say. Bee Thousand was recorded in a similar fashion, on a 4-track machine for the most part, but the two records are like night and day. Whereas Vampire wallowed in the murk, Bee Thousand shone through it. Bob had decided to make the best record he could, and he went back through his suitcase of old songs, pulling out the best of his unused melodies and fitting them with better words. And then he wrote two or three new gems to make the record even better. Don’t be put off by Tractor Rape Chain’s title. That brutal juxtaposition of words belies a soaring contemplation of a relationship in crisis. The music for Hot Freaks was cooked up by Bob’s trusted sidekick of the period, the unlikely named Tobin Sprout. Bob went over to Tobin’s house to add his newly-written lyric, bellowing the half-comedic, half-psychosexual words at full pelt, while, outside the house, Tobin’s wife was attempting to run a friendly neighbourhood garage sale. I Am a Scientist was Bee Thousand’s jewel in the crown. A manifesto and a cry from the heart set to one of Bob’s catchiest tunes to date. Seek out the wonderful video on YouTube. Apart from anything else, this promo film uses a better mix for the song, fattened up with overdubbed guitar. I wish this version was available on disc. Bee Thousand became the band’s most well-known record, and yet they’d barely begun.
5. Watch Me Jumpstart
6. Striped White Jets
(from Alien Lanes, 1995)
When most Guided by Voices fans are asked to name their favourite album, there are two answers which all but drown out any alternatives. Roughly speaking, there’s the Bee Thousand contingent, and the Alien Lanes contingent. Alien Lanes was their first LP for the Matador label. It had already been recorded, again for next to nothing on a 4-track machine, before the band received their advance. That’s the way to do it. Despite the limitations of their primitive recording methodology, songs like Watch Me Jumpstart and Striped White Jets still sounded powerful; full of confidence and energy.
7. Motor Away
(released as a single, 1995)
8. My Valuable Hunting Knife
9. Game of Pricks
(from Tigerbomb EP, 1995)
Shortly after the release of Bee Thousand, the band was persuaded to go into a regular recording studio to remake I Am a Scientist for an EP release. Soon after Alien Lanes, they likewise re-recorded some of that album’s songs with a less lo-fi sound. Maybe Matador were hoping for a breakthrough hit, or maybe they were just peeved that the band hadn’t spent any of their advance. Motor Away became a single a-side, and the other two took pride of place on another of the many EPs the band released during this period. All three remain live favourites, with Game of Pricks in particular guaranteed to send the assembled masses (band and audience alike) into a frenzy of sweat and beer froth.
10. The Official Ironmen Rally Song
11. Drag Days
12. Don’t Stop Now
13. Cut-Out Witch
(from Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
The sessions for Under the Bushes Under the Stars went on far too long for Bob’s liking. He preferred to cut records fast and then move on to the next thing. Both Kim Deal and Steve Albini had expressed a desire to work with the band in multitrack recording studios, and so the 4-track lo-fi sound was set aside. Bob’s vision of the album kept morphing, as did its title, and his list of which songs to record or, even once recorded, which to include, seemed to change as often as he changed his socks. Meanwhile the recording sessions dragged on and on. In the end, Bob’s patience snapped and he grabbed the tapes and took them back to Dayton to get them “lovingly fucked with”. The album, when finally released, consisted of one full-length LP and a companion 6-song EP. I’ve chosen four standouts. The slow-burning Official Ironmen Rally Song was chosen to be a somewhat unlikely single a-side, and the majestic Don’t Stop Now could have been called ‘the ballad of Guided by Voices’. At one point in the album’s tortured genesis, it was to have been a concept album documenting the story of the band itself. In a perfect world, Don’t Stop Now would be the last song played at any of their concerts.
14. Psychic Pilot Clocks Out
(from Not in My Airforce by Robert Pollard, 1996)
15. Subspace Biographies
(from Waved Out by Robert Pollard, 1998)
Bob always had so many songs ready to record, that even an easy-going indie label like Matador couldn’t keep him happy by releasing an album plus a couple of EPs a year. But this perhaps wasn’t the main reason why he began a parallel “solo” career in 1996. The then-current lineup of GbV was falling apart. Tobin was compelled to leave to raise a young family, and Kevin the drummer had fallen off the sobriety wagon spectacularly. Meanwhile, bass players were joining and leaving every few months. By 1997, Bob was fronting a whole new group of musicians.
There wasn’t really that much distinction between a Guided by Voices record and a Robert Pollard record back in the 1990s. Bob always maintained that he was Guided by Voices, anyway. Some of the songs for Not in My Airforce were originally slated for the next GbV album, and vice versa. Band members would play on Bob’s solo records, and yet some band recordings would be by Bob alone. The psychedelic-tinged Psychic Pilot was a heartfelt meditation on mortality. Both it and the anthemic Subspace Biographies from Waved Out were absorbed by the mothership, and became GbV live staples.
16. Teenage FBI
17. Surgical Focus
18. Hold on Hope
(from Do the Collapse, 1999)
Little divides opinion amongst GbV fans more than Do the Collapse, their debut for TVT Records. In Ric Ocasek of The Cars, they had elected to go with a big name producer, and although they had already begun the move away from their 4-track lo-fi days, this time they were going full-on ‘creamy’. To be fair to Ocasek, he passed on some of Bob’s more obviously pop-oriented songs and tried to preserve GbV’s more idiosyncratic leanings. That being said, at least one eye was being kept on making a commercial record. Teenage FBI had already been recorded for an EP in a fairly straight-ahead reading, but the Do the Collapse remake was dressed up with a burbling synth. Surgical Focus, meanwhile, was catchier than the flu, with a great Pollard vocal performance. Bob was more dubious about Hold on Hope, which at Ocasek’s insistence had taken on the form of a power ballad, albeit a distinctly odd one. But when TVT presented the band with a choice of state-of-the-art single remixes for the song, Bob rebelled. Enough was enough. The remixes never made it further than the promo release stage. He’s distanced himself from Hold on Hope ever since.
19. Pop Zeus
(from Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department by Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard, 1999)
20. Stifled Man Casino
(from Tower in the Fountain of Sparks by Airport 5, 2001)
Signing to a bigger label to concentrate on bigger productions and more extensive promotional duties meant that GbV’s release schedule was forced to slow down considerably. To offset the inevitable frustration of this, Bob had insisted on a condition in his contract which stated that so long as TVT were granted first refusal, he was free to release as many extracurricular projects as he wanted to. To this end, he set up his own label, Fading Captain Records. There was no stemming the tide now; Bob began to release anything and everything. Many moaned that quality control had been all but abandoned. Others complained about no longer being able to keep up with the sheer volume of product that Bob was putting out there. However, the best of these side projects were as good as anything he’d done, and included songs which would undoubtedly have graced Guided by Voices records had they remained at Matador.
When Bob had rebuilt GbV in 1997, following the demise of the oft-called “classic lineup”, his most valuable recruit proved to be guitarist Doug Gillard. Doug became Bob’s loyal right-hand man until the breakup in 2004. He returned to the fold in 2016, and, at the time of writing, is still there. For the Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department project, Doug recorded all the musical backing on his home studio gear, to which Bob added his vocals.
For the Airport 5 project, Bob hooked back up with Tobin Sprout. They’d remained good friends, and Toby would often lend a hand on GbV records, even when he was no longer an official band member. Repeating the method he’d used with Doug, this time Toby did the music for Bob to add his lyrics and vocals to.
Pop Zeus and Stifled Man Casino are solid gold GbV classics in all but name. As with the pick of Bob’s solo records, they were added to the band’s live repertoire.
21. Fair Touching
22. Glad Girls
23. Chasing Heather Crazy
(from Isolation Drills, 2001)
For their second, and, as it would transpire, final attempt at the big time with TVT, the band dialled down the production embellishments, and concentrated on a big rock guitar sound. To realise this, they had a new producer on board in Rob Schnapf. Bob had already road-tested Fair Touching in one of his side projects (Lexo and the Leapers), but here it was given its definitive setting. Back in the Forever Since Breakfast days, the young Guided by Voices were often compared to R.E.M. Despite being an R.E.M. fan, Bob went so far as to change how he sang to avoid comparisons with Michael Stipe. Yet Fair Touching testifies to how this major influence could still occasionally emerge. TVT asked Bob to write more potential hit songs about girls, so he obliged with Glad Girls and Chasing Heather Crazy. A song so saturated with catchy hooks that it almost (but I stress almost) over-eggs the pudding; how Glad Girls wasn’t a major worldwide radio smash is beyond my ken.
24. Everywhere with Helicopter
25. Cheyenne
(from Universal Truths and Cycles, 2002)
It didn’t happen. Guided by Voices never made the big time. You would assume that their return to Matador was more accurately a retreat, with tails between legs. Yet it never honestly seemed like failure; band and fans appearing to shrug it off as just another chapter in Bob’s story. What is success, anyway? Bob still had enough of a profile and a more than sizeable loyal fanbase. He could still succeed well enough, despite having to admit that he was unlikely now to ever become a household name. And at least his career could now be conducted on his own terms. Bob had felt constricted by TVT’s expectations. He disliked the promotional tours and the “meet and greets”. He also didn’t like the idea of only one Guided by Voices album every two years, and he certainly didn’t want to compromise so much that he was going to agree to any of those DJ remixes. Old school GbV fans who had been sickened by Do the Collapse (though likely much less despairing of Isolation Drills) were heartened by the notion that the band might be about to return to the basement. That’s not what they got, though. For the remainder of their initial run, Guided by Voices settled on a sound somewhere between Under the Bushes and Isolation Drills – they would sound well appointed, but not expensive. They released four singles from Universal Truths and Cycles, their first record from their second term with Matador. These are my favourite two.
26. The Best of Jill Hives
27. My Kind of Soldier
(from Earthquake Glue, 2003)
Admittedly I’m in the minority, but when I’m asked which is my favourite Guided by Voices album, I answer neither Bee Thousand, nor Alien Lanes. Oh, alright, nobody ever asks me, so instead I have to make a point of telling everyone: my favourite GbV album is Earthquake Glue. It was the first album of theirs I heard that, once it had finished, I felt compelled to listen to again immediately. It also reminds me of The Who quite a lot - both because of Bob’s melodies, and Kevin March’s expressive drumming – and I really like the Who. It sort of pains me to represent it only by its two most obvious tracks; the two singles taken from it. Yet I’m trying not to be overly dictated to by my personal peccadillos here, so let us just be moving along. Do me the favour of making a little ‘note to self’ first though - should you like what you are hearing so far, give the whole of Earthquake Glue a listen sometime.
28. Night of the Golden Underground
(from Fiction Man by Robert Pollard, 2004)
Bob is also capable of writing some of the prettiest and gentlest melodies you’ll hear, as this little solo gem can testify. Fiction Man was made from Earthquake Glue leftovers, yet it’s a terrific album and you’d never for a minute know you were listening to songs that had previously been rejected.
29. Girls of Wild Strawberries
30. Huffman Prairie Flying Field
(from Half Smiles of the Decomposed, 2004)
And so we reach the end of our journey (although I hope it’s merely the end of your first of many investigations into the band’s back catalogue). In 2004, Bob announced that the next GbV album and tour would be their last. They went out in style with a would-be final marathon concert on New Year’s Eve. It lasted over four hours, though there was admittedly a lengthy break while everyone toasted in the new year of 2005. Members past joined in the musical celebrations. By the end of it, Bob looked exhausted, but happy.
Their would-be final album is held in high esteem by the fans. And if Propeller gave us the perfect opener for this playlist, then Half Smiles of the Decomposed gives us the perfect closer. Huffman Prairie Flying Field is propulsive and filled with the spirit of mystery and wonder. It is suspected that Bob had kept this gem in his back pocket a while for just such an occasion. Tobin Sprout called around and strapped on a guitar to join in the big send-off. If only Bob had considered doing a second take on his vocal – he’s more than a little bit flat here and there. But no matter. Bob delivers a final vow with the lines; “I've come to start up my head / Been closed and locked up / For far too long”, and then the last four words are repeated over and over as the music slowly fades away, disappearing over the horizon. Bob now had his eyes fixed on the future. But that’s another story for another time.
Thank you for reading and for listening. Jules, June, 2020
Jules Gray is a singer/songwriter and an amateur music historian.
Want even more GBV? Try Zeppelin Over Dayton: Guided By Voices Album By Album the new book by Jeff Gomez to which Jules was a contributor!