Misheard lyrics, a Pixies tour and a studio “taskmaster” contribute to the genesis of an early-’90s indie-pop gem

by Belly

BY the time Tanya Donelly scored an unexpected hit with “Feed The Tree”, she was already on her third great band. She had left Throwing Muses – who she formed with her stepsister Kristin Hersh – to perform more of her own songs, teaming with Kim Deal to form The Breeders. But when Deal put The Breeders on hiatus to tour with the Pixies, Donnelly found herself with a bunch of great songs and nobody to play them with. Belly, then, came together almost as an expediency, assembled by Donelly in her home state of Rhode Island with former Muses bassist Fred Abong and brothers Chris and Tom Gorman, who played in local punk band Verbal Assault.

“Feed The Tree” was in the band’s setlist from almost their first show. Originally written for a planned second Breeders record, Belly quickly made it their own. The song developed further during pre-production sessions for their debut album Star, drilling down into Donelly’s insistent jangling guitar playing and soaring vocals. The success of “Feed The Tree” amplified Donelly’s songwriting gifts and helped make Star an indie-rock classic of 1993. If anyone had perhaps mistaken Donelly for the junior partner in her previous bands, here was ample evidence that she had her own formidable arsenal of quality alt.pop hooks at her disposal. With “Feed The Tree” high in the charts in both the UK and America, Star sold more than 800,000 copies. Belly soon found themselves doing the rounds from The Big Breakfast with Dannii Minogue to The Late Show With David Letterman.

1993 was a good year for an American band to set out its stall, especially one with such a storied history as Belly. “The Pixies were the big breakthrough,” says Donelly. “When they took off, we began to wonder if there was room for more of us. Then Nirvana really kicked in the doors. It felt like they’d stay open forever, but then those doors slammed shut again. But it was a lot of fun while it lasted.”

PETER WATTS

Belly in Chicago, 1993: (clockwise from bottom left) Tanya Donelly,Tom Gorman, Chris Gorman and Gail Greenwood

PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES; FRED ABONG

TANYA DONELLY: “Feed The Tree” is a weird but true tale. I was singing along to “Carolyn’s Fingers”, the Cocteau Twins song, and because it’s the Cocteau Twins, I couldn’t be 100 per cent sure what Liz Fraser was singing, so I made up my own lyrics. That became the words to the chorus for “Feed The Tree”.

CHRIS GORMAN: We had all known each other for a long time. We often went to see the Muses and were big fans. I had a lightbulb moment when I saw the Muses and they did Tanya’s song “Not Too Soon”. There it was: the Muses sound that had always been below the surface. TOM GORMAN: My brother and I were living in New York and we heard from my sister that Tanya was leaving the Muses and was thinking of starting a project. We called her almost right away.

DONELLY: “Feed The Tree” was originally in a batch of songs for the second Breeders album. We did a demo at [fabled studio, then in Boston] Fort Apache but Kim signed on for a yearlong Pixies tour. I didn’t want to wait and went back to Rhode Island to form Belly. Fred came with me with the understanding he was just going to make that first record.

FRED ABONG: My goal was to be a songwriter. With Belly, the idea was to move into the background then get the confidence to go off on my own. I just wanted to follow my own path, but I had made a commitment to complete the recording. TOM GORMAN: Tanya had done these demos at Fort Apache with Kim. I remember playing along to the tape of “Feed The Tree” and feeling a country theme, which creeps into Belly’s stuff in a few places.

DONELLY: Most of Star was recorded in Nashville, but some songs were done in Liverpool with [Pixies/Muses producer] Gil Norton. He could only fit us in for a few days, so I sent him the demos and he asked to do “Feed The Tree”, “Slow Dog” and “Gepetto”. He has an ear for the pop. I think Gil immediately saw it as a single.

ABONG: I have zero capacity to identify any potential for market success. When Tanya played me her demos I didn’t really notice the quality of her songs as much as have it confirmed that this was something I wanted to do myself. TOM GORMAN: At the beginning, Tanya was in a new role as bandleader and she was a little hesitant to give creative autonomy. But as we rehearsed “Feed The Tree” I came up with different ideas that I put to one side until it came to pre-production with Gil.

“Gil Norton dismantled me. I had to learn to simplify”

CHRIS GORMAN

CHRIS GORMAN: We did the first half of Star at Nashville in this weird little studio, and it was quite experimental and unstructured. It was very different in Liverpool, where Gil had very strong expectations, particularly with the drums. He was a taskmaster. DONELLY: Gil is a taskmaster. TOM GORMAN: I wouldn’t call him a taskmaster but he did make us play the songs over and over again to get them as tight as possible. That was his MO.

DONELLY: It’s a trajectory where at first you are OK, then you become annoyed, then you break through this barrier and hit a zen-like state. CHRIS GORMAN: It was like Whiplash. When I saw that movie, my blood ran cold. But I learnt more in seven days with Gil Norton than I had in the previous seven years. He completely dismantled me. His view was I did not have the chops, I didn’t have the swing or groove, and I had to learn to simplify, to play to a click, to lock in and be way more selective. ABONG: I respected the process and did it to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, at the time I had a little bit of a bad attitude as I didn’t want to be doing this any more. I hope there’s no bad feelings. DONELLY: At that point, “Feed The Tree” was much shorter and simpler. Gil said we needed a third verse and an instrumental break. I wrote the third verse about five minutes before I sang it.

TOM GORMAN: Gil would ask why I was playing the same notes as Tanya. I already had this arsenal of parts I’d wanted to sneak in from rehearsals and that was a good part of the process of learning to play together, as Tanya became more open to people throwing in ideas. DONELLY: The songs on Star were very informed by Tom and Chris. They had a big hand in shaping them even if technically I wrote them. ABONG: We played a show after the Liverpool sessions in a very small club and then I flew home. That was it. I moved on with my life.

GAIL GREENWOOD: Fred recorded the bass beautifully but left before the record was released. I was in a local hardcore band that just broke up, so it was perfect timing. I could sing background vocals, and it was nice for Tanya to have some extra oestrogen around. I auditioned in my own basement and 35 years later we still rehearse in the same basement before each tour. DONELLY: We had to do a video, but it wasn’t natural for alternative bands that jumped through the door in that period. In the years that followed, people were able to use their voices more strongly, but there were times in the early ’90s where we’d lose three battles but be happy because we won one. CHRIS GORMAN: Nobody in the alternative world was all that comfortable with this stuff. It was a money-making bonanza for filmmakers with professional crews who approached it like a shampoo commercial. They didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the artistry. TOM GORMAN: We were in a forest in northern California and there was a bunch of stuff the director said he wanted to do that Tanya said wouldn’t work. Then the director tried to do it anyway. CHRIS GORMAN: The director said they were going to create these characters that were in the lyrics of the song. I was picturing some kind of surrealistic childhood dream sequence, and they were pitching an old guy surrounded by naked ladies. DONELLY: His treatment included topless models hugging trees. We said we loved the idea but no topless models please. Then we showed up at the shoot and there were six models waiting. That put us in a difficult position as we had to ask them to go home.

“The early days was a lot of fun”: Belly in Brussels, 1993

TOM GORMAN: Videos cost a lot, and the record company was paying. We didn’t have the experience, knowledge or wherewithal to understand what was happening or exert the agency we had. We didn’t really understand that we could say no.

CHRIS GORMAN: We were prepared to dip our hands in bullshit and try and push in directions that were better suited to our own image but we didn’t watch a lot of MTV and didn’t expect to be played every day. We were still focused on making records and playing shows to get our message out.

DONELLY: “Feed The Tree” first picked up airplay in the UK, which I was used to. I can’t remember how many people thought Throwing Muses were English. Then it took off in the USA and the album went to No 1 [in the Billboard Heatseekers chart]. Paul McCartney wrote a note of congratulations. Isn’t that the sweetest? I danced around my kitchen with delight. What a gentleman. I lost my mind. TOM GORMAN: As the single took off, it was a wild and fast-moving experience. A huge amount of work but also a blast.

CHRIS GORMAN: We saw the trajectory the Pixies were on but felt more equivalence with the British scene. 4AD put us in touch with a lot of cool UK bands that were a lot like us. We could see that we really fit in there. We didn’t expect to break in America, where it seemed impossible to turn the ship round. TOM GORMAN: What was orton strange was when we started to see the profile of the audience begin to change. That was unsettling because there was a huge portion of our audience who had no connection to us other than “Feed The Tree”. I remember a show in the Midwest that got moved to a larger venue and it was full of frat boys. But the early days was a lot of fun. Seeing a line around the block of a club before we played was so exciting.

FACT FILE

Label: 4AD/Sire/Reprise

Written by: Tanya Donelly

Produced by: Belly and Gil Norton

Recorded at: Amazon Studios, Liverpool

Personnel: Tanya Donelly (vocals, guitar), Thomas Gorman (gtr), Fred Abong (bass), Chris Gorman (drums)

Released: January 11, 1993

Highest chart position: UK 32; US 95

GREENWOOD: We did lots of press. We did this crazy morning show in Wales with dancing eggs. DONELLY:The Big Breakfast. That was very trippy, as in I genuinely thought I was tripping. We’d had no expectations. [Throwing Muses’] The Real Ramona had done very well and I assumed that was the biggest record I’d ever be a part of. We just hoped to do well enough to be able to tour and go overseas. We were so surprised when it became a hit because it’s such a weird song. CHRIS GORMAN: I didn’t think about what the song meant. I am a melody guy. I love her melodies, I love her hooks, I love the crazy way she plays guitar. But she has an irresistible visual sensibility, so there are times when I cannot help but notice certain phrases. GREENWOOD: I loved the message of “take your hat off”, showing a bit of respect. I felt there was a feminist quality to it. But it’s also about death.

TOM GORMAN: I think Tanya had this idea that in farms they would plant a tree to use as a reference point for ploughing. As they couldn’t plant crops under the tree they’d put a graveyard there. DONELLY: It’s about death. “Feed The Tree” is very literal – you can actually do that, be buried under a tree. I think that’s what I’m going to do. And I did ride my bike down the stairs and have silver teeth. The “old man” is a reference to life cycle and maybe reincarnation. “Take your hat off” is about respect and how it has to be earned. ABONG: I went to see them in 1993 when they were playing a local show because I wanted to show them my newborn son. I was interested to hear how Gail was interpreting those parts.

DONELLY: “Feed The Tree” is not our biggest song. Technically, it’s a B-side from King called “Broken” that was placed almost inaudibly in the movie Twister. That soundtrack is massive globally. But when we reunited, I said to the guys, “Is there any chance we’d ever leave out ‘Feed The Tree’?” That would be cruel. TOM GORMAN: Now Gail does the harmonies, and their voices bring a country-folk aspect. But we also play it a bit faster and louder. It’s an interesting mash-up.

GREENWOOD: Tom does backing harmony and fills that song out. CHRIS GORMAN: The response is always electric. It always puts the hair up on the back of their necks. DONELLY: Everybody sings along and I am just a sucker for a room full of people singing.

GREENWOOD: I get a shit-eating grin every time we play it. They still go crazy for it. It takes our fans back – and it takes us back, too.

Belly’s second album King is reissued in April by 4AD for Record Store Day. Belly tour the UK in September. Fred Abong’s new album Holy Hints is out in May on Moochin’ About Records