INTERVIEW with Donita Sparks by Bec Harbour
When I was learning bass as a teenager, Bricks Are Heavy was one of the albums that I decided to learn the bass lines from, plugging away to ‘Shitlist’ and ‘Everglade’. L7 were a band that I loved, they stood on that border between punk, grunge and a little bit of metal chucked in, and they were female, so there was that identification that maybe I could be like that.
L7’s third album, Bricks Are Heavy hit 30 years last year – of course the events of the last few years have delayed their celebration of this. I got to see their 2016 tour and I know what an epic show they put on.
Donita Sparks and Suzy Gardner formed L7 in 1985 in the art-punk community in LA’s Echo Park and after a few line-up changes, the classic line up of Sparks and Gardner, Dee Plakas (drums) and Jennifer Finch (bass) settled in.
Today my chat with guitarist, Donita Sparks seems to be plagued with tech issues – the guy setting up the laptop could not get the sound working on their end to tell me there would be a delay of 10 minutes and then when Sparks arrived, we could not turn off the video because Zoom decided no. Sparks prefers to concentrate on the voice aspect of interviews and after we realised that we couldn’t turn the video feed off (and a nice compliment for my giant Monstera plant in the background) this is solved by throwing a napkin over the feed of herself and the camera.
Bricks Are Heavy was a seminal album in the 1990’s for a number of reasons. The music scene was very dominated by male led bands and there was an all-pervasive notion that female led bands were somehow less. Bricks Are Heavy blew that out of the water (along with several other artists) with heavy riffs, some stunning melodies and a whole stack of LA art scene cool, even the blokes of my generation conceded that they were great.
I wanted to get the political aspect of our conversation out of the way up front and asked about Rock For Choice and how relevant these events are in the present day. “We started Rock For Choice back in 1991 and around 1996 we pulled back as we felt that we were becoming the spokespeople for it, we are feminists, but we are not experts…” Sparks said, “…but yeah, it is really shocking some of the recent developments in the US on this…”.
I asked if they would consider going back to these events considering that the Supreme Court in the US had overturned Roe v Wade and in some states the rights to abortion had actually become illegal. “I like to encourage younger bands to pick up the baton, it affects them the most”, Sparks says in a measured tone, “Rock For Choice is still an entity at The Feminist Majority Foundations in Los Angeles, anybody could do a Rock For Choice benefit with their blessing. I do try to encourage the younger bands to do this…it’s not in our immediate future right now…”
I moved on to Bricks Are Heavy, the whole reason for this tour, I glided past the fact that Butch Vig had produced the album and honed in on my favourite song from the album. ‘Wargasm’. I had no idea until I was doing research for this interview that they had used a Yoko Ono sample – I asked Sparks about the prevailing influences and timing of the record, remembering that there was the first Gulf War in play, recession as well as women trying to push through the next glass ceiling in the early 90’s.
“We were told by analysts, journalists, that we were a bit more political than some of our peers. I think that’s true,” Sparks stated matter of factly, “And yet we always had a wink and a nod. Wargasm is a very serious song that I wrote there but it does have some humorous imagery in it, that’s very dark humour…”
Sparks continues with saying that she has always tried to balance the heavy message with something humorous, something that might not be “so on the nose” to try and get the message across, messages that are woven into the very fabric of Bricks Are Heavy. And thinking about this as I write – it has worked with the acceptance (maybe not the understanding) of a generation of men who listen to a feminist band with gusto and how much the music of L7 has done in this space.
We talked about live music in the 90’s and the place that L7 has, when I related my experiences as a 5’2” girl who wanted to dance to bands/music and being told to get out (and sometimes being forcibly removed) of mosh pits and how much it grated on me when I was removed for bands like L7 when they had a such a feminist message.
“I think there are some people who are just there for the music, they are OK with me but I don’t like anybody hurting anybody else, being a bully or pushing anyone else out of the way,” Sparks said, “But from a musical point of view, there are still people, who aren’t politically inclined who still rock to L7 and I am proud of that cross-over.”
L7 are on tour in December and selling out fast
Wednesday Dec 6th – Auckland, Powerstation
Friday Dec 8th – Sydney, Metro Theatre
Saturday Dec 9th – Brisbane, The Tivoli
Tuesday Dec 12th – Adelaide, The Gov
Wednesday Dec 13th – Perth, Rosemount Hotel
Friday Dec 15th – Melbourne, Croxton Bandroom
Tickets From:
