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Soul Asylum's DAVID PIRNER says persistence is the secret to his success, by Gary Graff.


We all saw it inaugural night - Soul Asylum's David Pirner, rocking up a storm and falling flat on his rump on the night Bill Clinton was standing so tall.

What happened? "I just jumped off the side of the stage - sort of", says the 29-year-old singer/guitarist/songwriter with a sheepish grin. "It was kind of a slapstick routine. We just love that stunt".

If nothing else, that moment of recklessness stilled a few Soul Asylum critics who hadn't quite accepted the Minneapolis group's rise to stardom. Even so, many critics still don't know what to make of Pirner's new status as a modern rock sex symbol - a punky cover boy whose doe-eyes make girls swoon while their boyfriends get sweaty in the mosh pit.

Turns out Pirner doesn't know what to make of it, either. As he waited for the start of Soul Asylum's "MTV Alternative nations" tour with the Spin Doctors and Screaming Trees, David Pirner spoke with Guitar School about all that's happened to his band during the past year.

GUITAR SCHOOL: Many old-time Soul Asylum fans are now crying "sell-out". Does it piss you off?

DAVID PIRNER: I don't know. I think our persistence is kind of frustrating for people; we're the kind of band that won't go away. The only sort of backlash we've been getting is from writers who say "Geez, I really wanted to hate this record, but I can't". It's a back-handed sort of compliment. It's a good thing to have a record you can't hate, no matter how much you= try.

GS: Why do you think those critics are giving Soul Asylum a hard time?

PIRNER: They're having a hard time categorizing us. After all these years, I think people are starting to respect our individuality, and critics are having a hard time lumping us in with all the groups that capitalize on all our hard work. We believe in working really hard and being really persistent. Keep on believing what you believe and eventually people will believe in you.

GS: What do you mean by "groups capitalizing on our hard work"?

PIRNER: Well [laughs], I guess punk rock is back in fashion. People are always asking me about these bands from Seattle, and I always say, "What were people saying about the Stooges or the MC5?" People try to put demography together with a sound. To me, there's a lot of Detroit riffs in what's going on now in music. People don't seem to be in touch with that lineage. I'm not sure how people miss that. They're always trying to jump on the new thing, I guess.

GS: Have you ever been guilty of the same thing?

PIRNER: I can't say. I'm aware of the fact that the Ramones have something in common with the Stooges. When we came around it was kind of the third or fourth wave of what had come before. And I'm sure it was going on some place before it was going on in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

GS: Did you write Grave Dancers Union with the goal of making the songs more accessible and mainstream-friendly?

PIRNER: Absolutely not. I think we try to be as unguarded and unpremeditated as possible. We go into the studio with a set of emotions and try to flush them out. We make the aggressive parts aggressive and the pensive parts pensive. We just go with the song and try to translate our attitude into instrumentation that will get our ideas across as accurately as possible.

GS: What accounts for the blunt and direct nature of the songs on this= album?

PIRNER: I think I tried to simplify things where they seemed confused and convoluted. I tried to concentrate more on cohesive ideas and not so much on flailing all over the place with a riff here and a riff there. I tried to write the songs as a unit.

GS: Did that change the actual exercise of writing?

PIRNER: Yes, and no. In the past I'd bring parts and we'd jam on them forever. This time, I had brought in complete songs, and let the band interpret them. I'd play a song, and the band would come up with their parts, as opposed to bringing in a part of a song and everybody trying to find complementary parts. It was also more fun because it was different, and a different sort of liberty for the band.

GS: Where did the country and folk elements come from?

PIRNER: I became better friends with my acoustic guitar this time. I worked at home, and figured if I could play a song just sitting around with an acoustic guitar and make it sound like a song, then I was one up on how I'd previously done things.

The style that things end up in is pretty much an accident. There's good music and there's shitty music -I don't care if it's jazz or country or a waltz- it just has to work for what you're trying to get across. We made no attempt to "punk-rockify" everything just because it's stylistically timely.

GS: How did you get hooked up with Booker T.?

PIRNER: I called up my guy at CBS and said "I need an organ player". He said, "Who do you want?" I said Art Neville because I'm a Meters fan. He said, "Well, I can get Booker T.", and I freaked. He's such a legendary figure in my mind. A week later, I was in the studio when Booker T. walks in with his hat, sits at the organ and starts polishing off all the keys. I was blown away; I just sat in the control room and applauded everything he= did.

GS: Is it easy to tell the new fans at your shows?

PIRNER: Oh, yeah. They know the MTV songs. Whenever we go into "Somebody To Shove" or "Black Gold" they all jump up. It's strange. It reminds me of when I saw Los Lobos when "La Bamba" came out; it was kind of disturbing, because the band had all these records and nobody knew anything by them. At least these are our own songs.

GS: Is it better to have a few albums and a few years under your belt before you achieve a level of success?

PIRNER: Well, that's interesting to think about. If it happened on the first record, I would think that's the way it is for everybody. I guess we paid our dues. We've done the dirty work, pretty much.

GS: Did you consider doing Lollapalooza?

PIRNER: There was some talk of it, but not really. We wanted to do it if Neil Young was gonna do it, but we didn't want to wait around for them to figure out what they were doing. Everything on Lollapalooza has such a coolness quotient to it, it just got overwhelming. We went out and opened for Keith Richards. Though it was fun, it was not a great tour for us.

GS: Why not?

PIRNER: It was a lot of days off, a lot of waiting, real short sets, and people did not come early. It was a real Keith Richards thing. We were just the opening act, as opposed to being on a bill of new bands with curiosity seekers coming to the show. He was great, though. We got on really, really well. He lived up to everything you could want from somebody like that -he treats you like a human being, has fun playing music and respects other people. And he shared his vodka and Orange Crushes with me!

Kudos To Rafs