Veruca Salt is an American
alternative rock
Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...
band founded in
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
in 1992 by vocalist-guitarists
Nina Gordon and
Louise Post, drummer Jim Shapiro, and bassist Steve Lack. They are best known for their first single, "
Seether", which was released on the 1994 album ''
American Thighs''. That success was followed up with 1997's ''
Eight Arms to Hold You''. By 1998, Post was the only original member still in the band and continued on with other musicians. Veruca Salt released the album ''
Resolver'' in 2000 and the album ''
IV'' in 2006. After a hiatus in 2012, the band reformed with its original lineup. Their fifth studio album, ''
Ghost Notes'', was released in 2015.
History
1992–1998: Formation and mainstream success
Named after
Veruca Salt, the spoiled rotten rich girl from the 1964 children's book ''
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' by
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime Flying ace, fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies ...
, Veruca Salt was formed in Chicago in 1992 by
Louise Post (guitar and vocals) and
Nina Gordon (guitar and vocals).
Post and Gordon were introduced through mutual friend
Lili Taylor, and began playing music together. They wrote songs for a year and a half before placing an ad in the
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...
for an all-female rhythm section. Instead the band was joined by Gordon's brother
Jim Shapiro on drums and Steve Lack on bass.
Songwriting was shared between Gordon and Post, though the two seldom collaborated. Rather, each would typically submit a complete song to the group and sing the lead vocals on that song, while the other would record backing vocals.
The band had performed a handful of shows when Jim Powers of
Minty Fresh Records asked them to sign. The band's first release was the single "
Seether"/"All Hail Me" on Minty Fresh Records, in 1994.
The single was a success and Veruca Salt accompanied
Hole
A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid Body (physics), body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in m ...
on a tour, before releasing their first full-length album, ''
American Thighs''. The album which included "Seether" and "All Hail Me", eventually reached
Gold status. In a 2014 retrospective,
music magazine
A music magazine is a magazine dedicated to music and culture in music cognition, music culture. Such magazines typically include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record reviews, concert reviews and occasionally have a covermount with ...
''
Paste'' listed "Seether" as number 10 and "All Hail Me" as number 39 on their list of the 50 greatest grunge songs of all time.
After signing to
Geffen Records
Geffen Records (formerly The David Geffen Company from 1980 to 1992 and Geffen Records Inc. from 1993 to 2004) is an American record label, founded in late 1980 by David Geffen. Originally a music subsidiary of the company known as Geffen Pi ...
, the band quickly gained in popularity as "Seether" became an
MTV hit. A second single, "
Number One Blind" was released along with a music video directed by
Steve Hanft. The band was unsure about the video and pulled it from MTV in a panic. As a result, Geffen ceased any further marketing for ''American Thighs''.
A stop-gap EP which was recorded by
Steve Albini
Steven Frank Albini (; July 22, 1962 – May 7, 2024) was an American musician and audio engineer. He founded and fronted the influential post-hardcore and noise rock bands Big Black (1981–1987), Rapeman (1987–1989) and Shellac (band), ...
, ''
Blow It Out Your Ass It's Veruca Salt'', was released in 1996.
In 1996, Veruca Salt appeared as
Pavement's replacement band in their video "Painted Soldiers".
Veruca Salt's second album, ''
Eight Arms to Hold You'', was produced by
Bob Rock
Robert Jens Rock (born April 19, 1954) is a Canadian record producer, recording engineer and musician.
In 1976, Rock joined Little Mountain Sound Studios, starting out as a recording engineer and sound mixer. During his time there, he coll ...
and released in 1997. Lead single "
Volcano Girls" gained exposure as the opening theme to the teen comedy film ''
Jawbreaker''.
Veruca Salt performed another single, "Shutterbug", on ''
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (''SNL'') is an American Late night television in the United States, late-night live television, live sketch comedy variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Michaels and Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC. The ...
''; instead of the featured musical group performing two songs as had been a tradition, the musical performances were split between
Sting and Veruca Salt. This change was announced at the last minute between the dress rehearsal and the live show, at the behest of Sting to producer
Lorne Michaels.
Shapiro left the band soon after the release of ''Eight Arms'', due to unease with having to learn how to play drums – an instrument he had only started playing when asked to join the band – while under public scrutiny.
Shapiro was replaced by
Stacy Jones (of
Letters to Cleo and
American Hi-Fi).
Jones toured with the band on the ''Eight Arms'' tour and appeared in the music videos for "Volcano Girls" and "Shutterbug". In 1997, Veruca Salt opened for the band
Bush in a North American tour.
1998–2012: Gordon's departure and reformation
Gordon and Post started working together on Veruca Salt's third album. However, after an argument between the two, Gordon left the band to pursue a solo career in 1998. (Gordon's first album, ''
Tonight and the Rest of My Life'', was released in 2000 and featured drumming by Stacy Jones, who had also left Veruca Salt and was in a relationship with Gordon).
The dispute between Gordon and Post has been described as "one of the greatest rock soap operas since
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1967 by the singer and guitarist Peter Green (musician), Peter Green. Green named the band by combining the surnames of the drummer, Mick Fleetwood, and the bassis ...
or
Hüsker Dü."
Post, as the only remaining band member, contributed the song "
Somebody" to the
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music, electronic band formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980. Originally formed with the line-up of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher (musician), Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke, the band currently consists ...
tribute album ''
For the Masses'' before recruiting a new lineup. Guitarist Stephen Fitzpatrick joined and went on to become one of Post's principal songwriting partners during the next decade. Jimmy Madla and Suzanne Sokol joined on drums and bass guitar, respectively. Most of the band's record label support had been fired during the
Universal/
PolyGram merger, so Post left
Geffen Records
Geffen Records (formerly The David Geffen Company from 1980 to 1992 and Geffen Records Inc. from 1993 to 2004) is an American record label, founded in late 1980 by David Geffen. Originally a music subsidiary of the company known as Geffen Pi ...
, formed her own Velveteen Records label, and signed a distribution deal with
Beyond Music. The reformed band released the album ''
Resolver'', which spawned both a single and video for "
Born Entertainer" in May 2000.
Sokol left the band at the end of 2000 and was replaced by Post's friend Gina Crosley. The band continued to tour through the summer of 2001 in the UK. Post and Crosley also attempted to form a supergroup with
Courtney Love of
Hole
A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid Body (physics), body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in m ...
and others but the project soon imploded. This allowed the pair to focus on new material for Veruca Salt which eventually yielded the ''
Officially Dead'' EP that was primarily distributed during the band's 2003 tour of Australia. That tour was precipitated by the title track (which had been released on the Resolver LP three years prior) charting on the Triple J Top 100, peaking at #13.
By 2005, Madla left to enter the restaurant business and Crosley was also dismissed. They were replaced in the studio by Solomon Snyder and Michael Miley, respectively. Veruca Salt began 2005 by touring Australia, undertaking both headline festival appearances and club shows. This session resulted in the ''
Lords of Sounds and Lesser Things'' ''(LOSALT)''. The band went on tour with Post, Fitzpatrick, drummer Kellii Scott, and bassist
Nicole Fiorentino. ''LOSALT'' was released independently by the band and included six new songs. The EP's title is an extract from
Zora Neale Hurston's ''
Their Eyes Were Watching God''. This lineup then recorded a full-length album, ''
IV'', and released it in September 2006 (like ''Resolver'' before it, this album was released a month apart from a Nina Gordon solo album). The band then went on what would prove to be the last tour of Louise Post's solo incarnation of the band. A single, "So Weird", was released to radio at the end of October 2006, but despite being critically well-received, neither the song nor the album did well commercially.
In 2007, the band recorded a cover of
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, forming the folk rock group Buffalo Springfield. Since the begi ...
's song "Burned" for a 2007 breast cancer benefit album and then went almost entirely dormant. Post took time to have a child while Fiorentino went on to play bass with the
Smashing Pumpkins and The Cold and Lovely. Kellii Scott returned to his original band,
Failure
Failure is the social concept of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and is usually viewed as the opposite of success. The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. On ...
. On March 14, 2012, the band announced on their official website that they were on an indefinite hiatus.
2013–present: Original lineup reunion
On March 15, 2013, Veruca Salt announced the reunion of its original line-up (
Nina Gordon,
Louise Post,
Jim Shapiro, and Steve Lack) with a message on the band's official Facebook page which read, "for now let's just say this: hatchets buried, axes exhumed." The band also mentioned that they might be open to adding material from their time apart into their sets at some point. The reunion marked the first time Shapiro would play drums since leaving the band in 1997. It had also been years since Lack played bass, with his time out of the band spent on overcoming drug and alcohol abuse and pursuing surfing.
On September 29, 2013, the band announced via social media that they were working on new material. Their first release since reforming came in the form of a release for
Record Store Day 2014. The band released a 10-inch vinyl EP,
MMXIV, which contained two new songs, "It's Holy" and "The Museum of Broken Relationships", on one side and a 20th-anniversary re-release of "
Seether" on the other. The band then toured both the United States and a nine-date sold-out tour of Australia.
On May 19, 2015, the band announced the release of their fifth album, ''
Ghost Notes''. The album, released on July 10, 2015, was the first to feature the band's original lineup since 1997's ''Eight Arms to Hold You''.
Post and Gordon appeared on
Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor Podcast on August 7, 2015, and revealed that Veruca Salt were approached to host a Fox comedy variety show in the 1990s.
In March 2017, the band reunited with Nicole Fiorentino for a one-off performance at a Planned Parenthood charity event; Patty Schemel, formerly of Hole, filled in on drums. The band returned to Australia in February 2018 for a series of headline shows, as well as being part of the mini-festival ''A Day on the Green'' alongside
The Fauves,
Tumbleweed,
The Lemonheads
The Lemonheads are an American alternative rock band formed in Boston in 1986 by Evan Dando, Ben Deily, and Jesse Peretz. Dando has remained the band's only constant member. After their initial punk-influenced releases and tours as an indep ...
,
Spiderbait and
The Living End. Veruca Salt teamed up with
Rock the Vote
Rock the Vote is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization in the United States. Through registering new young voters, the group aims to "channel the energy among young people around racial, economic, and health justice into one of the mo ...
for the 2018 American election, releasing a track titled "Low Grade Fever" from the ''
Ghost Notes'' recording sessions.
In June 2022, Louise Post released ''But I Love You Without Mascara (Demos ’97-’98)'' which featured several unreleased demos from the transitional period between ''Eight Arms to Hold You'' and ''Resolver''. She also released a solo album in June 2023 called Sleepwalker.
Band members
Current members
*
Louise Post – lead vocals, guitar (1992–2012, 2013–present), bass (1998–1999, 2001–2006, 2008–2012)
*
Nina Gordon – lead vocals, guitar (1992–1998, 2013–present)
*Steve Lack – bass (1992–1998, 2013–present)
*Jim Shapiro – drums, backing vocals (1992–1997, 2013–present)
Former members
*
Stacy Jones – drums (1997–1998)
*Stephen Fitzpatrick – guitar (1999–2012), bass (2002–2006, 2008–2012)
*Jimmy Madla – drums (1999–2005)
*Suzanne Sokol – bass, backing vocals (1999–2000)
*Gina Crosley – bass, backing vocals (2000–2001)
*Kellii Scott – drums (2005–2012)
*
Nicole Fiorentino – bass, backing vocals (2006–2008; one-off in 2017)
Former touring musicians
*Bill Brabec – bass (1997–1998)
*
Eva Gardner – bass (2005)
*Toby Lang – drums (2005)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Extended plays
Singles
Promo singles
Music videos
See also
*
List of alternative rock artists
References
External links
*
*
Veruca Saltat ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Veruca Salt
1992 establishments in Illinois
Alternative rock groups from Chicago
Musical groups established in 1992
Musical groups disestablished in 2012
Musical groups reestablished in 2013
Sympathy for the Record Industry artists
Female-fronted musical groups
Mixed-gender bands