by: Harold Demuir, pages 17-18
[NOTE: I do not have the entire article. I posted what I have. A relatively complete version of this article is the August 11, 1989 BAM article ]
"Elephants are very similiar to us," says Natalie Merchant of the diverse assortment of pachyderms who populate the cover of the recent 10,000 Maniacs LP, Blind Man's Zoo. "They're very social, and they have the ability to alter their environment to the point of destroying it. Elephants are very gentle, and they have no natural enemies in the wild. Their size protected them for years, until we started killing them for their tusks."
As Merchant makes clear on Blind Man's Zoo, however, elephants aren't the only victims of human callousness. Indeed, the album (produced, like 1987's breakthrough In My Tribe, by Peter Asher) is a tuneful catalogue of inhumanities. The childlike wonder of earlier discs is supplanted by a sense of outrage and empathy for the victims of imperialist oppression (Please Forgive Us, Hateful Hate), economic inequality (Dust Bowl), irresponsibility (Poison in the Well) and religious zelotry (Jubilee). The opening track, Eat for Two is a decidedly unsentimental account of an unwanted pregnancy. "It seems so obvious to me, but people seem confused by that song," says Merchant. "One journalist said, 'Your band appeals to yuppies, and babies are a yuppie phenomenon, so it's a pleasant little yuppie song.'
"The only thing that everyone agreed on," continues singer/lyricist Merchant, "was that we wanted this album to be darker. It's a very eyes-open look at the world -- there's more bitterness, there's more betrayal, there's more anger than there's ever been on one of our albums before. It just felt like something we needed to expel from ourselves - maybe the next album will be extremely pleasant."
But it's Please Forgive Us - a heartfelt plea inspired by the Iran-contra affair - that's bound to emerge as the disc's most controversial track. "Elektra seems anxious about it, because it's definitely an opinion that a lot of people don't hold," Natalie confirms. "I think that we as Americans must be held accountable for what is done with the money that we give to other people's armies. The people that I'm asking to forgive us - and who I swear will never forgive us - are the people who are caught in the crossfire, people who are completely innocent but find their lives devastated by these wars that we as taxpayers have funded. The Iran-contra scandal revealed that so much happens that we are never meant to be aware of, and I was trying to address that feeling of powerlessness and bewilderment in the song."
The Maniacs, a combo of musical misfits from the remote upstate New York burg of Jamestown, first made underground waves with the sprawling, rough-edged folk-rock of the EP Human Conflict Number Five and the album Secrets of the I Ching (both released on the band's own Christian Burial label), before broadening its constituency with Elektra's 1985 release of the more focused The Wishing Chair. But it was the immaculately recorded In My Tribe that brought the group (which also includes guitarist Robert Buck, bassist Steve Gustafson, keyboardist Dennis Drew and drummer Jerome Augustyniak) to a mainstream pop audience.
And although their recent accessibility has helped the Maniacs get their message heard, it's a bit of a surprise to find the soft-spoken Merchant, often pegged as a shy eccentric, growing comfortable with her role as an artist/advocate. The Maniacs have aligned themselves with various humanist causes; most recently, the band asked Elektra to delete the cover of Khomeini supporter Cat Steven's Peace Train from future pressings of In My Tribe.
"I could never go on stage and try to express these opinions to an audience," Merchant says. "I'm frightened just thinking about it. But I can sing about these things, and I can write about them in the privacy of my own home, where I can think clearly and make a statement. The force behind it is choosing something that's really infuriating me at the moment, defining what infuriates me about it, and asking myself how I can bring it into human terms that everyone will be able to understand."Jubiliee, the six-minute epic which closes Blind Man's Zoo, is a compelling narrative of religious intolerance and bigotry, and uses an arrangement reminiscent of In My Tribe's Verdi Cries, with Merchant backed by seven classical musicians rather than her bandmates.
"Jubiliee originally had thirty verses," she explains. "It was the whole side of a tape, just me playing piano and singing for a half-hour. The verses I didn't use were more imagery, more descriptive, more action, but eventually they became irrelevant.
"When I write lyrics, there's always pages and pages, and then I become more specific and cut it down to what's essential. I keep reminding myself it's just a three-and-a-half minute song, and that I don't want to interfere with the melody or clutter up the song with so many words that people can't digest it."
Even so, Merchant's not worried that fans may not take to the downbeat subject matter of the new material. "My understanding is that people will feel a kinship in the songs, because a lot of the people who are listening are being victimized in the exact same way. Maybe those people can use it as a kind of therapeutic exit from what's happening in their lives, and maybe it will help people who aren't suffering to understand people who are.
"People seem to find something about the music that's realistic and has some validity in their lives," continues Merchant. "I got a letter from a woman who said that after hearing What's the Matter Here? (from In My Tribe), she thinks twice before spilling her rage onto her children. And several people who heard Don't Talk wrote me letters saying that they came from alcoholic households and that it made them feel less alone to hear a song about it."
In addition to broadening the band's following, the sales success of In My Tribe helped reverse the financial straits that kept its members (all of whom, aside from the 25-year-old Merchant, are in their 30s) living with their parents until recently, and which led to the pre-In My Tribe departure of founding guitarist/writer John Lombardo.
"John found himself thirty-three years old and borrowing money from his father to put gas in a car that he couldn't afford....