THE MAKING OF...
Blister In The Sun
Forty years of the acoustic punks’ ramshackle hit – heard in film soundtracks, a burger ad and even the White House
by Violent Femmes
FEW songs can have brought aband as much joy and pain as “Blister In The Sun”. Written by teenage singer and guitarist Gordon Gano before he joined Violent Femmes, it became the band’s biggest and best-known track, taking the Midwestern acoustic punk trio from indie outsiders to platinum success via film soundtracks and sports fanfares.
But from such licensing arrangements, conflict arose. When Gano licensed “Blister In The Sun” for use in an advert for the Wendy’s burger chain, bassist Brian Ritchie sued him.
It all seemed afar cry from the band’s origins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Gano, apreacher’s son, first hooked up with Ritchie and drummer Victor DeLorenzo. They were an unorthodox trio: Ritchie played revved-up acoustic bass, DeLorenzo had aself-made drumkit, while Gano sang in a bratty whine his songs that balanced antiheroics with bright-eyed wisdom.
Violent Femmes in Chicago, 1983: (l–r) Gordon Gano, Victor DeLorenzo and Brian Ritchie
PAULNATKIN/GETTYIMAGES;MIKEBENSON;JANETSCHIFF
At first they played anywhere that would have them, from jazz clubs to laundromats –even street corners, which is where The Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott stumbled across them, inviting them to open for his band during aperformance at Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre.
Recorded in 1982 with producer Mark Van Hecke, “Blister In The Sun” –where Gano sings cheerfully about being “strung out” and “high as akite”, before talking about “big hands” and stained sheets like achirpier version of Lou Reed –was not originally selected as asingle for the band’s self-titled debut. But over time the song wormed its way into the public consciousness, so that by the early ’90s its ramshackle arrangements and singalong chorus had become ahit via films like Grosse Pointe Blank and My So-Called Life.
Legal disputes settled, Violent Femmes returned to action in 2013, albeit without DeLorenzo. “Blister In The Sun” is now once more akey part of the set and it’s a song that Gano never gets tired of playing.