Originally published Oct. 6, 1994.
Until a few years ago, Kansas rocker Melissa Etheridge was floating around in rock ‘n’ roll near-obscurity.
Save for a strong taste of success with her 1993 single Ain’t It Heavy (which earned her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Performance) Etheridge was yet another female singer who had a penchant for writing close-to-home songs and filtering them through rusty guitar chords, getting a little nibble at success every now and then.
Her fan base was sparse yet appreciative. Her first two records went platinum, but were never good enough to make her a hit on MTV and never unrecognized enough for her record label, Island, to just give up and drop her. She toured small halls, sometimes selling the places out, sometimes barely making enough dough to pay the sound man.
This year, though, Etheridge has witnessed – and gasped at – her soaring popularity, her rise to one of MTV’s and VH-1’s newest faves (actually, she was VH-1’s August Artist of the Month). Her latest album, Yes I Am, has sold about a million copies; she’s all over adult contemporary and a handful of album rock radio stations; she played Woodstock ’94 and made all the critics smile with her ode to Janis Joplin.
Plus, she was the opening act on the newly rehatched Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” tour.
For Etheridge, her own hell has frozen over.
“No way have I ever dreamed of opening for the Eagles,” she said by telephone last week. “It was wonderful. And playing Woodstock, God, that had to be the single most awesome experience of my life. Not only playing there, but also being there. I was standing on the side of the stage when Joe Cocker did With A Little Help From My Friends. I don’t think I’ve ever been so emotionally moved.” Etheridge plays at 8 tonight at Starplex Amphitheatre in Dallas.
Etheridge, 33, is a champion at taking her immediate success in stride. Little has changed, she said, and little will ever change. “I’ve spent the majority of my career on the road and playing in front of people, y’know. Sure, now I’m playing to bigger crowds in larger places, but that’s all just a part of success. And it’s been a long time coming.”
The question is: How did it come and why did it take so long?
Since 1988, when her self-titled debut disc came out, Etheridge has walked the tightrope between Obscure Gem and Popular Poster Girl for Rock ‘n’ Roll Women. Last year, though, Etheridge dropped the bomb on the music industry: She proclaimed her sexual orientation, and it didn’t include men.
Soon, she was being compared to k.d. lang, the country-turned-pop singer who also proclaimed her homosexuality and was later condemned by Nashville for doing so. Pop music has a tendency to let its hair down a bit more, and while lang found a new audience, Etheridge was expanding hers.
“My coming out did help (my popularity),” she said. “It gave an angle for music critics and writers to write about, but I’m not into any of that. That’s just what they choose to talk about. Every reporter or whoever asks me about that now, about being a gay woman in rock.
“And now the gay community wants me to start doing a lot for them, to be a spokesperson or something. I just wanna be a rock ‘n’ roll singer. I mean, I worked a long time to get here, and that’s how I got here, by making connections and by hard work. I’m not on some sort of political mission. I just like playing my music.”
Etheridge did, however, touch on politics on All American Girl, from her new album. “When I sat down to write American, I wanted to write a song for the working woman, a song about abortion, AIDS, whatever. But I’m not saying anyone is wrong or right; it’s only an observational song.”
For the most part, Yes I Am is a teeth-gritting rock album, a return to the sound of Etheridge’s first two “plain rock” albums. “I got a little experimental with my last one (Never Enough), and I’m grateful for it. I mean, I got a Grammy out of it. What more could I ask for?
“But I’m more of a live performer than a studio whiz, and that’s what I wanted to capture on Yes I Am. I wanted strong rock songs, songs that would go over well with my audiences and that I would feel comfortable playing.”
For Yes I Am, Etheridge put her connections to work, rustling up some of the biggest studio sidekicks to back her up. Besides longtime band members bassist Kevin McComick and drummer Fritz Lewak, the album is filled with feedback from guitarist Waddy Wachtel (Keith Richards, Warren Zevon), organist Ian McLagan (Small Faces, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen), keyboardist Scott Thurston (Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt), bassist Pino Palladino (Don Henley, Tears for Fears) and James Fearnley of the Pogues on accordion.
Etheridge said it was producer Hugh Padgham (whose credits include Sting and Phil Collins) who made the whole thing sound great. “I wanted the sound of real music slapping against tape, and that’s what I got. I’m very happy with it. This is something I’m very proud of.”
Etheridge, whose current musical tastes include Seal and Tori Amos, traces her musical interests back to they day she got her first guitar. “I was 8 years old, and I guess my parents realized that I had worn out the tennis rackets.”
Music always blared in Etheridge’s house, and none of it meshed. “I listened to Tommy James and the Shondells. My sister listened to Led Zeppelin and my parents listened to Harry Belafonte,” she said. “It was a mixed-up place.”
Throughout high school, Etheridge played in country bands, “because that’s the kind of music most people liked and listened to. But rock just won me over, and I’ve been like that ever since.”
After her show tonight in Dallas, Etheridge is off to Memphis for Saturday’s “Elvis: The Tribute” concert. There, she’ll join Bryan Adams, Jeff Beck, Tony Bennett, Michael Bolton, Jon Bon Jovi, James Brown, Cher and Roger Daltrey for a pro-King concert, which will be available on CD and as an undoubtedly pricey pay-per-view special sometime in December.
On Oct. 23, she’s off to London for the Stonewall Equality concert, a benefit show thrown by the 5-year-old Stonewall Group, a UK organization that’s devoted to lobbying for social change on behalf of lesbians and gays in the United Kingdom. Etheridge will share the stage with two of the biggest names in pop music, Sting and Elton John.
Says Etheridge: “Now, that’s something to be nervous about.”
