DID YOU SPILL OUR PINT? by Kevan Roberts Kerrang! July 6, 1996 They're the Biffa Bacons of rock - they started off by biting each other and they've spent the last decade with their dukes up. They're the Screaming Trees and, as Kevan Roberts discovers, making their ace new LP 'Dust' made them madder then ever... 'Fame sucks!' screams the headline on the Seattle Weakly. So who's complaining now? Pearl Jam again? The Presidents Of The USA? Foo Fighters? No, the article begins, 'How success nearly ruined the Screaming Trees'. Hello? Screaming Trees? The constantly bickering four-piece who, even in the earliest days of the Seattle hype, were pretty much ignored in favour of such also-rans as The Fluid and Love Battery. Yup, *that* Screaming Trees. After years of anonymous toil, the band from the agricultural rodeo town of Ellensburg, Washington, finally made a mark in 1992 with their 'Sweet Oblivion' album, which sold about 400,000 copies. Then they disappeared. Faced with the prospect of following up their sixth and biggest selling album, the band rushed into the studio to record a set of songs which they now readily admit were "depressingly average". Unfinished, the seventh Screaming Trees was consigned to the scrap heap and so too, it seemed, were the band themselves. Their guitarist Gary Lee Conner is reflecting on this as he chugs on an iced-coffee in a small café in Seattle. He can afford to smile about it now, because Screaming Trees' new album, 'Dust', has finally been released to rave reviews. "The main reason it took us so long to come up with a new album was because we had such high expectations of ourselves," says Gary. "The first sessions we did for the album went really quickly. But when we listened back to them, we realised that they were just *so* mediocre." Some sources insist that the original album was rejected by your record company, Epic. "Well, it was never really finished. They might have suggested that we record some of it again, but it was our own doing really. We weren't happy with it." The band insisted upon re-writing and re-recording the entire album, this time with producer George Drakoulias, whose work with The Jayhawks and on the first two Black Crowes album they'd admired. Only one song was retained from the original sessions - a re-worked version of 'Dying Days', which features an incendiary solo from Pearl Jam's Mike McCready. "When we realised we should do the whole thing again, that's when the frustration set in," says Conner. "We were banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out how to write songs we would like. I was scared we might have gotten to the stage where we'd already peaked." Then there were the rumours. About huge, heavyweight fights between Gary Lee and his brother, bassist Van Conner. And, more particularly, about the exploits and habits of Mark Lanegan, the band's singer. There were already plenty of stories surrounding Lanegan's and Alice In Chains' singer Layne Staley's alleged excesses when the two bands toured together in '93. More recently, it was claimed that he'd formed an unholy trinity with Courtney Love and Earth's Dylan Carlson. But accordingly to anyone who knows him, Lanegan has now cleaned up his act, although he's still as unpredictable as ever. The day before I speak to Gary Lee, word began flying around town that Lanegan had gone AWOL. In fact, our original interview was to have featured Lanegan, but he cried off at the last minute. "Something came up," is the only explanation offered for Lanegan's departure. Still, life in Screaming Trees has seemingly been this turbulent since 1985, when they started out as a covers band. The two Conners and original drummer Mark Pickerel (now in Truly) teamed up with Lanegan after the singer reportedly bit Van's ear at a party, and suggested getting a band together. Their first rehearsal was, by all accounts, a shambles, with Lanegan collapsing in a drunken stupor having first consumed an entire crate of beer to calm his nerves. "Well, that's not strictly true," insists Gary Lee now. "I think we did one song first." The Trees recorded their first album for producer Steve Fisk's Ellensburg-based Velvetone label, then joined SST - home to their hardcore heroes Black Flag, The Minutemen and Hüsker Dü. Three albums followed - 'Even If And Especially When', 'Invisible Lantern' and 'Buzz Factory' - before the band made their major label debut with 'Uncle Anesthesia' in 1991. 'Sweet Oblivion' was next - and then, well, nothing... "The past couple of years have been total hell," says Gary Lee. "Basically, for three years, all I've been doing is getting up at 10am, writing songs all day and night, and then at the end of the night taking the tape over to Lanegan to see what he thinks. "The relief of having done it now is so amazing. To be able to sit back and think, 'We finally made the record', is incredible." And what a record it is. As powerful as it is diverse and intricate, 'Dust' is Screaming Trees' masterpiece; their 'Nevermind' or 'Superunknown'. It's secured them a slot on this year's Lollapalooza - guaranteeing an entire new audience for the band. They'll be joined onstage by ex-Kyuss guitarist Josh Homme, who's currently studying at the University Of Washington in Seattle. "Fame doesn't suck," concludes Gary Lee Conner. "We want as many people as possible to hear our music. "Me and Van were talking last night, and we've had a lot of opportunities that we thought were our big shots. Maybe we're both wrong once again, but I'm pretty sure this is it. If we don't go to the top with this one, we probably never will." [more articles]