Ahead of the british band Elastica even releasing their debut album there was a monumental amount
of hype around the group. Some dubbed them as the new wave of new wave bands to come out of the UK.
The group’s first album would be a big success, but the band’s decade long existence would
be dogged by infighting, lineup changes, lawsuits, drugs, aborted studio sessions,
and life under the spotlight. Today let's take a look at whatever happened to the band.
Elastica frontwoman and guitarist Justine Frischmann would grow up in a middle class
family in a West London suburb. As a child she was surrounded by music whether it was
going through her brother’s records,which consisted of David Bowie and Blondie albums
or being encouraged by her russian mother who herself wanted to be a singer. She would begin
writing and studying music at age of 11 and had aspirations of being an artist but her parents
pushed her into architecture. Frishmann’s father,was a hungarian holocaust survivor
who never spoke about his experiences during world war 2 and would go on to become well
renowned structural engineer who was the chairman of engineering consultant company Pell Frischmann
working on some of the most storied buildings in London including Center Point and Nat West Tower.
Frischman would describe her father saying to the guardian and i quote my father is an incredibly
positive, ambitious, world-embracing person, and seeing that has been really important to
me - which is why I try not to drag him into the pathetic little world of the music business'.
Frischmann would study architecture at University College London,
but she never saw herself at this point in her life playing music professionally or even getting
up on stage. She would tell spin magazine “i never really thought i’d be brave enough to get onstage.
It’s a particular set of balls you need. It happened by accident. Cause i started playing
guitar with a couple of people from college and they started taking it seriously.” she'd say.
It was now 1989 and she was referring to muaisican brett anderson. Both anderson and frischman would
co-found the british group Suede. Frishmann though wasn’t happy with her role in the band and thought
their songs were too indulgent and long telling Spin magazine “there was too much horror involved
and I was the token girl standing at the back strumming a guitar and i became frustrated
telling the guardian in a separte interview'I just thought it was better to be Pete Best
than Linda McCartney,' 'Apart from anything, I couldn't deal with being the second guitarist
and having this strange, Lady Macbeth role in it, along with being general mother to four blokes.'
By 1991 Frischman while living with Anderson struck up a relationship
with Blur frontman Damon Albarn. Albarn’s band hadn’t hit it big yet and the Suede
track 'Animal Lover', is about this time. Soon enough Frischmann would start her own
project with another ex-Suede bandmate of hers drummer Justin Welch. The band’s roots dated
back to June of 1992 when the bassist would join forces with Annie Holland, who allegedly never
played the instrument before joining the band By August of 1992 the band put an ad in melody maker
looking for a second guitarist. The ad asked for a guitarist who was influenced by The Fall,
The Stranglers and Wire. The band would find guitarist Donna Matthews
The group would write fast, punchy songs that usually clocked in under 3 minutes.
For Frischmann the project was cathartic with her telling the the LA Times . “I think a lot of
songs come out of frustration, where you can’t say something to someone so you sing it instead--kind
of like revenge without getting the blame.”Her approach to music was pretty simple telling
the Guardian I have a low boredom threshold. I want the best bits - verse-chorus, verse-chorus,
that's it. The whole thing of playing middle eights and triple choruses to finish isn't music,
it's brainwashing. If you want to hear the chorus again, rewind it.
Also, I don't feel any kind of need to bare myself in public. I'm not into angst. Someone
like Brett has a lot of ghosts to exorcise. I don't. I've always liked humour in music.'
In October of 1993 the band released their first single ‘Stutter’, which dealt with the subject of
bad sex. It was heavily promoted by BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq who also signed the band to his
labelDeceptive Records. Stutter was such a big hit thatall 1,500 copies of Stutter sold out in the UK
in just two days. Perhaps part of the hype around the band was also Frischmann’s famous boyfriend
Damon Albarn. But the band’s strategy wasn’t to get rave reviews or have the media fawning over
them. The LA Times did a really great piece on the group in 1995 that summarized exactly what
happened writing and i quote “Here’s the widely heralded quartet’s game plan: Record a song that
excites everyone who hears it but refuse to give a tape to more than a few industry friends--forcing
eager talent scouts to scramble for ragged copies. No one wants to miss out on a hot new signing..
Add to the mystery by playing your first show under a fake name in an obscure club away from
the heart of London--and then limit the number of copies of your first single to just 1,500,
causing a rush to stores. No one in the style-conscious British pop scene wants to be
without the record of the moment" they'd write. The plan backfired. By 1994 before the band put
out their first album, or even had a major record deal Elastica was gracing the covers of the weekly
music magazines in the UK and getting a lot of coverage. Even without an album to their name,
readers of melody maker in a 1994 poll voted Frischman as their second favourite female singer
with first place going to Courtney Love of Hole. Frischmann, would look back at the strategy
the band employed telling the LA Times “The truth is none of that was designed
to get attention for us,” I have seen so many bands get caught in the rat race in England
and destroyed by the hype machine, and we were trying to avoid that. It just backfired on us.
The more we did to downplay things, the more people got interested in it.“It was madness
in a way. Suddenly all these copies of the demo were sitting on top of people’s desks and there
were like a dozen (label representatives) coming to our first show. Everyone was saying we were
this great new band, and here we were without even enough songs for an album" she'd say.
Many in the press lumped the band in with Blur and Oasis who were helping rekindle america’s intrest
in british music. But the attention caught the band offguard with Frischmann telling the Times
“It was surprising to see people start showing such an interest in what we were doing because
it was so different (from) what anyone else was doing in Britain at the time,” “We weren’t
trying to launch a movement. We were just into pleasing ourselves, and we happened to love the
music of bands (from the ‘80s) like Blondie and Wire and the Fall and the Stranglers" she'd say
The band would take almost half a year off in 1994 from doing any press to ensure they weren’t
overexposed and it was during this time they were also recording their first album and became the
subject of a bidding war between American labels. They would end up signing with Geffen Records in
America as their british label didn’t have the resources to promote the band across the pond
and while Geffen didn’t offer them the most money the offered the band the most creative control.
Melody Maker magazine would team up with the band and ask readers to name the group’s first LP.
Some of the rejected names included ‘Edible Liar’ and ‘Tie Me Up And Give Me Toast’ – One
name the band was considering to use was Keys, Money and well a british term for cigarettes but
this was eventually rejected because of fears of it being considered offensive in America.
The contest would prove to be underwhelming as the group’s first LP would be self-titled.
Released in March of 1995 the group’s debut album would receive a mostly positive reviews
from critics, while their detractors claimed the sound was derivative of their influences.
In fact two of the group’s influences The Stranglers and Wire claimed the
tracks ‘Line Up’ and ‘Connection’ borrowed heavily from their catalog.
Both bands would receive out of court settlements with Elastica.
The most successful single off the album would be connection which would earn the group an
appearance on the billboard hot 100 charts in america peaking at number 53. The single
helped the ablum go gold in the states moving over 500,000 copies while the record topped
the UK Charts.. In fact Elastica were one of the most successful british acts in America in 1995
The band would fill a spot in lolapalooza’s lineup that was vacated by sinnead o’connor
and they would tour relentlessly for the next several years.
But the life on the road proved to be too much for some of the band members
Bassist Annie Holland would leave the group in 1995 with Frischmann telling Rolling
Stone what happened revealing “She left on good terms. It was really her saying, “I love you guys,
but I don’t want to do this anymore.” She was tired of the grind. Either you like this lifestyle
or you don’t. And tHe band would have to interview about 36 different bassists to fill her role.
Frischman’ personal life by 1995 was crazy. It was the same year that britpop was hugely popular
and blur were having a massive year. THe media attention that Frischmann and Albarn were getting
was crazy. . THe couple had moved to Notting Hill and despite being the it couple at the time
they only spent three weeks together the entire year due to touring commitments.
Having any sort of private life was impossible given that anytime they left their home
they’d be photographed in the tabloids.
Frischman by her own admission was naive about fame, but also tried to shun it. She would tell
the Guardian It invades every area of your life and makes you paranoid in a really peculiar way.
It takes the spontaneity away. I always thought being famous
would bring me freedoms and I suddenly realised that the opposite was true,
that when you have people peering into your life, you have to really, really watch your step.
And live in a very closed way. You have to be very careful of voicing any opinions or doing anything
that people might disapprove of - and I've always been someone who says really awful things.'
'I was definitely the most miserable I've ever been in my whole life,' she'd say. .
In what was to foreshadow Frischman started to enjoy America more than the UK. No one
really cared about her personal life in States and she was taken more seriously as an artist.
After a 2 year tour supporting their debut album the band was barely functioning. For Frischmann
the writing was on the wall when Annie Holland quit telling Spin “we should have stopped there,
but we were completing with the big boys. I felt this might be the one chance to do something and
it killed us really." she'd say. When the band reassembled in 1996 to work on their follow up LP
Fleschman and guitarist Donna Matthews relationship was so strained as they wrestled
for creative control over the band that they refused to appear in the studio on the same days.
Adding to the mix that Matthews and drummer Justin Welch had struck up a tulmultoius romantic
relationship coupled with booze and drugs, it was a combustible situation. Frischmann would
admit to spin magazine that all three members of the band in addition to Albarn were using
heroin . 'By 1998 Frischmann was caught between her boyfriend and her bandmate Donna Matthews
who despised each other. Each person thought the other was a bad influence on Frischmann.
Eventually both Albarn and Matthews would exit frischmann’s life the same week in 1998.
By this point in time the studio bills were piling up for Elastica
having wasted $50,000 pounds on recordings the band never used. The band would also lose their
American recording contract after their label merged with interscope. However, things would
eventually work out. Annie Holland would return to the band the same year. by 1999 the band would
wrap up recording on their second LP The Menace and play the reading festival the same year.By the
time the band was ready to release their second LP musical trends had changed. Britpop had fallen
out of favour with american audiences and MTV would interview a man named Aaron Axelson who
was instrumental in getting the band on radio in San Francisco on the station KITS-FM when
he was a musical assistant. By the year 2000 music director and while he was still a fan of the band,
he was disappointed with what he heard on the second LPtelling MTV
"The climate at radio hasn't been too favorable to British music over the last couple of years,
Musical trends are cyclical, and right now it's more hard-edged.
I"I'm being a realist about it,""I don't think there's a slot here in the format."
The album for it's part would fail to chart in America and peaked at number 24 in the UK
In 2001 the band finally called it quits with Frischmann releasing a statement that read
“Believe it or not Elastica have been together for
almost ten years which is probably as long as any band should be together.
I know it’s hard to believe but then we did spend quite a while in the middle dithering
and being perfectionists. The band has broken up on extremely good terms with each other.”
Felschman still dabbled in music working with her
friend MIA – but by 2005 she would move to America, relocating to Boulder Colorado
to attend buddhist inspired naropa university and study painting telling the guardian
“I’ve always been a fan of the States,”“We did a lot of touring here and I loved the land,
I have a kind of pagan part of me.”. “Being on the bus early morning, travelling across America
and seeing this incredible ancient landscape was really inspiring. I grew up in the city:
I know London has its parks but you never get away from the sound of the traffic" she'd say.
Meanwhile Donna Matthews, would become a missionary working with the homeless.
Welch meanwhile would still involved in playing music. In 2008 Frischmann would
relocate to the San Francisco area and has continued to paint and married a scientist.
In more recent years Elastica has gotten offers to reform but the chances seem unlikely. Frischmann
would tell The Guardian “ At this point when I look at the videos of my performances
I feel that it’s another person,...“I don’t really have any desire to make music,”
Then In 2017 the band would reconvene to work on reissuing their first album which would come out
the same year on record store day. THat does it for today's video guys thanks for watching,
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