L7: Revolution in Process

Emily Vosburg

 < BACK

L7's beauty process involves a little mascara, some bleach, maybe a bit of red lipstick, and a lot of chutzpah. Is this beauty process an ugly and painful one? Sometimes, yes.

When bassist Jennifer Finch left L7 midway through the process to return to college, the band's third album, The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum [on Reprise], became an adventure to record. Singer Donita Sparks says the bassist's amicable departure "was a shock, even though I kind of saw it coming. We just had to pick up and go on."

Former Belly bassist Gail Greenwood stepped in at the reccomendation of L7's friends the Lunachicks. After a brief West Coast tour to test the revised line-up, Sparks, guitarist Suzi Gardner and drummer Dee Plakas decided Greenwood fit perfectly. "Dee, Suzi and myself have been playing together for ten years," says Sparks. "And then here comes the new chick, you know? [We thought], 'What's this gonna be like?' And it was a yukfest. It was hilarious.

"We really thought there'd be more of a 'where's Jennifer?' backlash, and there wasn't any. Everybody really liked [Greenwood] a lot. She just has a really unpretentious way about her that connects with the fans."

"Unpretentious" also adequately describes L7's Beauty Process. The album openly explores a full scale of emotions, but does so with a sense of humour. "[It's] kind of painfully funny," explains Sparks. "Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying."

Gardner penned "Me, Myself And I" with that in mind. "I wrote that for myself," she says. "It's kind of a nonsensical number, but at the same time, there's something funny and sad about it. It's just about being alone and dealing with being alone and kind of crackin' up about it. My favorite line in the song is, 'The only friends I have left are my idiosyncracies.' And the other thing that makes me crack up [is], I said the words 'couch' and 'potatoes' in the same song: 'I lie here on the couch thinking about potatoes!' You gotta laugh!

And sometimes you even have to get a little punch-drunk with enthusiasm for those brief silly moments life offers. Sparks says "Lorenza, Giada, Alessandra" is about three Italian L7 fans the band met before a show. "We wrote the song onstage as we were calling them up onstage, because apparently they had learned how to play all of our songs. For me to remember their names, I had to keep chanting that ['Lorenza, Giada, Alessandra'] over and over again in my head. Dee just started playing a drumbeat to it as I was saying it, and then we started playing music to it."

"They were just so cute; we couldn't stand it," says Gardner. "It makes me feel pretty good when people try to learn our songs. A lot of times at shows we'll have a couple kids onstage dancing, and we'll just hand them our instruments and let them rock out right at the end. I watch my guitar really carefully and make sure they don't break it, but we'll let 'em play anyway.

"A lot of times I reflect on life and situations that are happening, and I'll go, 'Oh my God, I'm in a John Waters movie,'" she continues. "And we've actually been in one [Waters' 1994 film Serial Mom]. That's pretty wild!"

L7 are anxious to hit the road again to, as Gardner jokingly puts it, "bring the music to the people." They'll start touring Europe this month and return to the U.S. to tour in April.

 < BACK