The LA Times perfectly summarized L7’s image saying L7 causes nightclub ceilings to rain sweat,
small women to dive off stages and entire crowds to shake their heads rhythmically, violently
to the beat. Its sound is characterized by howls and throbbing waves of distorted fuzz guitar, its
image by torn jeans, wild hair and whatever shirts its members happen to have been wearing that day.
The members of L7 were all LA Transplants with
the exception of bassist Jennifer Finch who grew up near the City.
The band’s origins began with guitarists and vocalists Suzi Gardner & Donita Sparks
who met in the mid 80’s. Up until this point the pair were playing in separate pop acts around LA
with Gardner telling Spin Magazine “Donita and I met each other in 1985,”. “We’d been floating
around the same town, kind of following each other in jobs, and bands, and even with dudes,
we had a lot of people telling us that we ought to meet.” she'd say.
After finally meeting, Sparks would play Gardner some of the material she was working on
and they seemed to gel pretty quickly.
Sparks herself was a native of Chicago who was a rebel from the get go learning to question
everything. That attitude was instilled by her parents who would bring her to political
rallies as a child. But the music scene in chicago never really spoke to Sparks
so she moved out west to LA and got a writing job at LA weekly while also playing in bands.
The classic lineup of the L7 didn’t come together over night as Gardner and Sparks had what they
called and i quote “the psycho rhythm section” before bassist Jennifer Finch joined in 1987.
And the band at this point had a male drummer but the following year Dee Plakas came on board.
The classic lineup of L7 would be born & the group’s name would
be derived from a mid-century slang for square.
L7 soon developed a name for themselves through their live shows, which saw them blow away the
headliners. They became staples of popular hollywood hotspots spots including Raji’s,
Club Lingerie and the Gaslight. And the band would draw comparisons to punk pioneers The
Ramones with Joey Ramone taking it as a compliment teling Spin magazine
“They’re fun, they’re exciting, and they’re spirited,” “That’s how I feel we played a major
role in inspiring them, and we’re proud of it.” “ In addition to the Ramones the members would cite
a female band from San Francisco called Frightwig as also being huge influences on them as well.
From the beginning L7 had two goals in mind One was to tour the United States and the
other was to tour Europe. In order to facilitate their first goa,, they had to release a record,
which they did in 1988 with indie label Epitaph. But sadly Epitaph would fold several months after
their debut LP came out. And without a label, L7 would hook up with Seattle band Cat Butt
who happened to have one member who worked for subpop. It was that connection that led L7 to
signing with Subpop becoming the only LA band on their roster. Sparks would reveal in the book
Grunge is Dead “L7 had toured the country in 1988, but we had never played Seattle.
We were fortunate enough to hook up with Catt Butt and headed up to Seattle.
My first impression of the town was flyers everywhere. It just seemed very alive,
very youthful. The music community seemed really connected from my eyes" she'd say.
Subpop was the perfect partner for the band to reach their second goal of touring Europe.
Jennifer Finch would tell the Orlando Sentinel that Subpop was and i quote
“'the Gateway to Europe,' While signed to Subpop L7 would release a 7 inch single on
their collectors subscription series and it would soon be followed up with an EP in 1990.
Because of their connection to Subpop L7 soon became regulars at clubs around Seattle and It
got to the point that a lot of people started to think the band was from Seattle instead of LA.
While the band had a lot to celebrate, being an all-girl group also came with a lot of sexism
and hardships as industry people and some music fans lumped them incorrectly as part of the Riot
Grrl movement or just another female rock band. In an interview with Spin Magazine the article
would state "What L7 doesn’t want to be is a women’s band, either in “genre,” or in audience.
“There was the girl band thing, there was the fox core farce, there was the Seattle band farce,
there was the grunge-rock thing,” Sparks says. “We’ve been around longer than all that stuff.
Basically we’re a rock band from Los Angeles.”When we formed, we just wanted people to play with,”
Gardner says. “We didn’t care what set of organs they had. We just wanted to f***rock.”
The band members also weren’t immune from misbehaving music business types as one promoter
seually harrased one of the members resulting in the band going to the bathroom in his hat. T
In the book Grunge is Dead L7 would take a shot at the Riot Grrl movement with Sparks
saying ““We’re not a Riot Grrl band. I remember once seeing one of the bands passing out flyers,
but not passing out any of the flyers to men in the room. Other than that I don’t
really know completely what their agenda was. It was never really my bag. In one interview i
read with the band they would claim that almost 90% of their audience at live shows were men.
Given their rising popuarltiy around Seattle and the fact that they were on Subpop,
the band soon made friends with Nirvana & even opened for them in 1990. This was during the
time when Kurt Cobain and company were being wined and dined by record labels while they were
road-testing songs including “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Nirvana Drummer Dave Grohl would tell
Rolling Stone “One of the first people to say they thought [Nevermind] was going to be huge
was Donita Sparks of L7,”. “And I didn’t believe her. I was going, ‘There’s absolutely no way.'”
While the band was no stranger to major record labels, and entertained their fair share of
offers there were several problems. One was that labels had no clue how to market L7, and the other
was that by signing to a major label they may lose their credibility, creativity and identity.
Following their stint with Subpop, they would sign with Slash/Reprise Records with Finch telling the
Orlando Sentinel “At the top of our agenda was distribution, and we've run into problems with
both of our previous indie releases. Slash acts as an indie although they have major distribution.”
The band would relocate to Madison Wisconcin and record with Nirvana/Smashing Pumpkins producer
Butch Vig for their first release with Slash Records. Madison was chosen to get away from the
distractions of big cities like New York and LA. The resulting album would be 1992’s Bricks Are
Heavy which would be a career high for the band and produce their biggest single with
'Pretend We’re Dead.' The album would peak at number 160 on the billboard charts and
Sparks would tell Spin the origins of the song revealing “I was in my apartment in Echo Park
listening to the cassette I’d made, trying to write some lyrics. I was heartbroken at the time.
I was actually devastated. And the first thing that came to my mind was, “I just pretend that
you’re dead.” And I didn’t mean it in a malicious way, not like I wanted him dead or anything, but I
truly felt that the only way I could get through this was to pretend this guy was dead...And then
it became kind of a commentary on Reagan/Bush–era apathy" she'd say. In a separate interview
Sparks would tell Loudersound looking back at the band’s big break with bricks are heavy
“We were just, like, sluggin’ it out in the underground in LA for many years,”. “By the time
it hit, it was just like: ‘About fucking time.’ We had peers that were getting signed and stuff too.
So it felt like we were sort of pranksters from the underground. The underdog band" she'd say.
Not everyone was celebrating L7’s jump to a bigger label with Finch recalling to the Orlando Sentinel
“We’ve been around for so long that we have a strong fan base that’s really on our side,” “But
there has been some problems with Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll (an alternative scene magazine). They really
have the idea that there should be fanzines, record companies, distributors and bands such as
ours all working together to create this beautiful independent scene. We gave that six years of our
lives and tried to make it work, and we felt that going to Slash was really a compromise.
It was really difficult for us. I think we’ve become a better band, and a little more diverse,
but I certainly don’t think that we’re churning out upper-echelon, mainstream hits" she'd say.
Slash/records offered L7 big time touring opportunities opening for the likes of the
Beastie Boys, whose crowds were sometimes less than receptive
The promotion for Bricks are Heavy landed the band in hot water across the pond in the UK.
During an appearance on the UK variety television show “The Word’ Sparks would drop her pants on
television. The day L7 appeared on the program the show presented a bare butt competition and
secretly recorded guest Oliver Reed who was drunk in the green room Sparks was
angry at the show’s treatment of Reed and dropped her pants on TVtelling Loudersound
“That was a really long day,” “The other artists on the show were cool, but I thought it was a
bit mean-spirited that they had a hidden camera in Oliver Reed’s dressing room.
I don’t know, parts of the show seemed slightly mean spirited and I wanted to, um, fck shit up.”
In the summer of 1992 L7 would perform at the Reading Festival. That year L7 performed
on a sunday, which was mostly made up of grunge bands or alternative acts including the melvins,
screaming trees, mudhoney and nirvana. And the news surrounding the festival was heavily
dominated by the birth of kurt cobain's daughter and the health of nirvana's front man according
to the guardian newspaper there were conflicting reports over exactly what happened during l7's
performance. According to one review by the independent it claimed l7 was pelted with mud
for and i quote apparently for the crime of not being men but the story doesn't seem to check
out as mudhoney. who played the same day were also hit with mud most of the other stories claim that
the band was having technical difficulties with their audio and onstage equipment As a sign of
protest front woman donita sparks removed her tampon on stage & throw it into the crowd.
It was during the early 90’s that L7 started championing a number of
political causes including reproductive rights and protecting the environment.
The later of which earned the band a lot of death threats. Sparks would tell Spin
Magazine that their activism soon fell by the wayside later on in their career as a
lot of their press interviews focused solely on their political opinions instead of music.
Two years after Bricks are Heavy was released the music scene had changed.
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was dead, and a new era of bands were taking over including Green Day,
The Offspring and Brirpop . The years on the road promoting bricks are heavy took a heavy toll on L7
with drugs and alcohol soon becoming the main focus of the band members. In 1994 the band would
release a much darker Hungry For Stink, and Sparks would look back telling Loudersound
“Hungry For Stink is darker. I think I was in a bit of a mood at that point,” “I was just in
a dark place. That is reflected in songs like Baggage and My Sanity. It’s not a super-joyous
album. We’ve always been a band that’s had shit going down even when things are on the upswing
By 1996 Bassist Jennifer Finch would leave the group. Finch attributed her leaving to financial
disagreements, concerns with her health in addition to dealing with the loss of her father.
By 1997 L7 would be dropped by their label. The band would once again went the indie root
forming their own label called Wax Tadpole. They would put out the album Slap Happy in 1999 and
partnered up with a label called Bong Load Records that was supposed ot help with license, market and
distributing the record. Billboard magazine in 1999 would interview several record retailers
who admitted that the buzz around the band had died down from almost half a decade earlier. One
retailer in new york called rocks in Your Head New York tleling the magazine “L7 peaked 6 or 7
years ago. They were part of hte promising waves of all-female bands including babes in toyland and
bikini kill it seems like L7’s audience has gotten smaller" they would say.It was around the time of
slap happy being released that L7's distributor would close its doors and offered to sell copies
of Slap Happy back to the band but they couldn’t afford it, so the leftover copies ended up in
a landfill. It was around the new millenium Gardner quit the band and by 2001 they were
finished. In the years that followed the former members would pursue other musical
projects, but by the 2010's things were set in motion for a full reunion of the classic lineup.
The roots of the reunion began in 2011 when bassist Jennifer Finch was diagnosed with thyroid
cancer. Sparks would reach out to her former bandmate and at the time Sparks and . Gardner
meanwhile only lived several blocks from sparks but the pair hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade. For
Gardner Music had taken a backseat in her life as she was caring for her mother. But soon enough the
band was back together with drummer Dee Plakas. They would tour extensively in addition to
releasing a documentary titled Pretend We’re Dead The band would release their latest album in 2019
titled Scatter the Rats. That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching.
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