Wild Love

In 1995 Bill released what I would say was his first major work Wild Love. This record was distinguished by a more lush sound than his early work. It has a plain cover with a frame drawn on it and a small picture of a cloud and lightening and rain. 

Bathysphere is another song about him wanting a life at sea but not liking water, this Bill sings about wanting to live in a bathysphere but he doesn’t know how to swim. I presume this is a metaphor and that he didn't really want to live in a bathysphere. It is a curious theme to write two songs about wanting to live at sea but not liking water or being able to swim. Bathyspheres are essentially surveillance devices for looking at the ocean. Wild Love is about someone cutting down his wild love. Sweet Smog Children is about his young fans and how he feels awkward talking to them. Bathroom Floor is a song about a girl bleeding and the narrator says the mother thought she was a late bloomer but the mother didn't know she'd "already bloomed and died". The Emperor is instrumental and seems to refer to Julius Caesar. Limited Capacity is about him being a loner and so is It’s Rough. These songs talk about women lying and how he prefers listening to records to human company. Sleepy Joe has a narrator who talks to another man who says he can’t feel anything and the narrator wants to be violent to him “I’d like to break a chair across your back, and throw you in the ocean, then tell me you don’t feel a thing” because the man had sex with “Jenny”. The Candle is another song about cheating. The narrator has sex with his girlfriend but she thinks about the other man during sex. The narrator thinks it's unfair as he is a constant presence for the woman and this other man was there just one day and the girlfriend is burning a candle for the other man. This song refers to Bill Callahan being "dark" again, with the woman saying “a light I need a light”. The next song is possibly one of Bill's most controversial songs about women. Be Hit is a song about women wanting to be hit, and the narrator not hitting them so they leave him. Prince Alone In The Studio is about the Artist Formerly Known As Prince (Prince changed his performing name to Love Symbol in 1993). Prince is described in the studio where he prefers music making to women and sex: “He finally gets that guitar track right, and it's better than anything any girl could ever give him Because Prince is alone, Oh Prince you are so alone”.It is a strange depiction of an artist in the 1990s who was known for songs about sex and did not give the appearance of being alone particularly. One could say that Bill really projected his own feelings onto Prince in this song. The final song Goldfish Bowl has a domestic theme, the narrator does not like his girlfriend watching him like a hawk and he says that wild love can’t grow in a small apartment where its like “a fish in goldfish bowl”. Bill is an intelligent man, but for a 29 year old there is a lack of reflexive awareness in this song — he is the one that is putting their relationship in a goldfish bowl as a songwriter and performer and recording artist. 

Bill was criticised in the 1990s indie music fanzine culture for being a misogynist, especially for the song Be Hit. This charge has never really been answered by Bill, but the music press stopped mentioning the issue as fashions morphed in the hedonistic early 2000s. 

The next blog post I am working on will be the start of a section on Bill's reaction to Will Oldham's affair with Cindy Dall, which Bill wrote 2 LPs and 1 EP about, marking it out as one of the most important events of his life. For some reason the music press has not really reported on this affair. 

Burning Kingdom

Bill released the Burning Kingdom EP in 1994. He was about 28. It has a nice picture of chandeliers on the cover. The first song My Shell is a sad song about him being a loner who won't let people close to him: a woman gets close to him and steals his jokes and then he hates her, won’t let her back in, and wishes she was dead. It is a strong reaction to someone stealing your jokes. Renee Died 1:45 is a song where Bill says he gets burnt and hurt by women more than any man can hurt him, and he recognises his jealous tendencies “is it because I’m a jealous bitch”. On My Family the mother is smoking pot in the bath and the narrator hears her butt squeaking against the bath and the father watches lesbians on TV. The narrator does not want to be like his father who is “planting footsteps where I hope I’ll never be”. The sister writes to say she’s not coming home and that she will write to him, but he thinks she won’t really keep writing to him. So the narrator is very lonely in a dysfunctional family with a sister who has left. Drunk On The Stars is about how Bill would like the romance of being a sailor but he doesn’t like the sea water getting on him. He says he lives in a “pointless town” that he is “try[ing] to put on the map” with his artwork. Then he laughs at the sailors being cold. Not Lonely Anymore is about how he is a loner again, saying he is not lonely now he realised he only needs himself not a girlfriend “I’m not lonely anymore now that I realised that I have 2 hands not 4”. So its really about him pushing other people away. I think Bill Callahan was dating Cindy Dall in 1994. 

In the mid-1990s Bill was reported to be friendly with another Drag City artist, Will Oldham of Palace and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Will Oldham filmed Bill's “My Family” film clip. Bill Callahan’s girlfriend Cindy Dall played Bill's sister running away from home in the film clip.

Julius Caesar

Bill's third LP Julius Caesar (1993) came out on Drag City, his first proper release at age 27. The title Julius Caesar refers to the assassinated Roman leader. Given Bill Callahan’s parents background I think it is likely that the title is also a JFK reference. Julius Caesar took absolute power in Rome and was essential in the transformation from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire under his heir Octavian. The cover art is a single chair (like Forgotten Foundation) with nobody sitting in it. The single chair signifies the assassination so nobody is in the chair, but also that Bill  is a loner. 

The record lyrically is largely about Bill being a loner and a jealous man, themes which reoccur over his career. The first track is about a starving girl swallowing glass. Track 2 is about him being a jealous ex-boyfriend who remembers having sex with an ex “I remember entering you, I’m going to be drunk so drunk at your wedding”. Track 3 is about Bill driving to a winter rates sea side motel and listening to AC/DC’s Highway To Hell and feeling like the psycho Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle was the inspiration for the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. Bill has said that he drove to the seaside motel after the friend's partner was sick of him living with them after he walked in on them having sex. Track 7 When You Walk is about how he only feels like he is a human being who “walks” when he is with the woman. This theme continues over his career. It shows a kind of codependent nature with women, where he can't feel like a man unless he is with a woman. The next song follows the theme of the woman making him feel better, this time she makes him feel like Star Wars instead of his “English Grey” personality. Track 9 is back to being about his jealousy, this time of other men who have connections. Track 10 is about stealing at the grocery store if the power goes out. Track 11 is about his jealousy about his girlfriend — a “wild horse” — and how he thinks that he isn’t her "chosen one" anymore and then he tells her to “ride into the sun” where she will be destroyed, which is kind of cruel. There is a kind of violence to many of these songs. Track 12 What Kind Of Angel is a song about a woman having sex with a lot of people and telling him that he doesn’t have to use a condom and he says “what kind of angel is that?” and then he says she’s the “angel of death”. So his women troubles are really dominating this record. When he is happy with the women it is because they are making him feel like he can "walk" or feel like "Star Wars". Otherwise he is mostly unhappy with the women in his life. The final track is about how there is nothing he would rather see than for someone to fail. This song references Lou Reed. 

Drag City

After the end of the Cold War there was a recession in 1990, and in 1991 Grunge music became popular as the cultural expression of the recession. This was widely seen as an event where 1980s underground and alternative bands became mainstream, and even as a “win” for the underground. However people had mixed sentiments about the development, as can be seen in the name of the documentary “1991: The Year Punk Broke”. In Europe there had been a genuine musical underground that smuggled First World music of “freedom” into the tightly controlled Communist Second World countries. 

Alternative music was a wide grouping of different genres. Over the course of the 1990s the various alternative genres blurred into each other, and also blurred with mainstream musical genres and by the late 1990s there was no longer much cultural or political distinction remaining between mainstream and alternative music. 

Bill was influenced by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, a band that was part of conceptual artist Andy Warhol’s The Factory. After the Cold War bands like The Vevet Underground became part of the new mainstream globalising culture, and President Vaclev Havel requested Lou Reed perform at a 1998 State Dinner hosted by US President Bill Clinton.

Bill signed onto a small Chicago record label Drag City for his third LP. 

Drag City was a then-tiny independent, started around 1989 by Dan Koretzky and Dan Osborne. its first release was by the band Royal Trux. Drag City appears to be a reference to the Drop City counterculture artists community in Colorado in the 60s and 70s. Drag City split the profits 50/50 with artists. Drag City had many artists from privileged backgrounds. Bill's parents were intelligence workers, Will Oldham and David Grubbs’ fathers were lawyers. Neil Hagerty’s father was in the US Army, and David Berman’s father was Richard Berman the right wing political consultant.

Drag City bands frequenlty wrote about cowboys, explorers, and the frontier. The American indie bands of this period were the beneficiaries of America as the sole superpower in the post-Cold War world, with English as the global lingua franca. The frontier they explored was the globalising neoliberal world.

Early Worx — Sewn To The Sky and Forgotten Foundation

Bill's first records as Smog were released independently. They were experimental and Bill pushed musical boundaries, indeed he even said he was a "guitar innovator" in one song. Sewn To The Sky was released in 1990 when he was about 24. The cover art is a black and white drawing of a tree and a moon. Kings Tongue is about him feeling pretty mean and refers to his problems with the ladies. Confederate Bills And Pinball Slugs is about him wanting to be famous, and the idea of having different faces for different people and audiences. Puritan Work Ethic is a cool song about the problem of money joking about how people don't know how he makes his money to treat the ladies so fine. As an experimental piece it uses audio from the cartoon of the grasshopper and the ant with the grasshopper saying “the world owes us a living”. 

Bill's next record Forgotten Foundation was released in 1992 and the cover art is a chair reminiscent of Van Gogh’s chair art works. The song Filament is about how he is a dark person and when his friend leaves the light leaves. This really shows Lisa was right about Bill, he has a dark personality. He even recognises it himself. It comes up in many later songs too. High School Freak is about doctors telling him he should get out of bed. It is not clear what sort of doctors they are. It says he was in a “terrible fight” and he doesn’t want to go out into the daylight. This sounds like he had gotten beaten up as a teen perhaps. He sings about how he comes second to a high school freak, like he thinks he should have been able to beat a freak. Your Dress is a fictional song about a war widow wearing the dress she could buy because of the money her husband sent home from the war. This song is the title track kind of, with lines going “Standing proud among the trees By the side of the road Like some forgotten foundation For a never finished bridge”. Evil Tyrant is a pretty disturbing song we can only hope Bill didn't actually mean, about an evil tyrant who doesn’t rape a woman because it would not impress her. Bill was only young at the time and this was before rape culture was in the media so much. The tyrant then forces the woman to marry him instead, with Bill singing that she couldn’t turn down the opportunity. I am not sure that forced marriages are really that great. But Bill can be a controversial American artist, and in writing this blog I am not saying I agree with all his lyrics. Long Grey Hair is another troublesome song about women, with the narrator finding his mama and dragging her by her long grey hair home. Bad Ideas For Country Songs goes along in the same theme, about needing “a weak girl who won’t put up a fight”… “its so hard to find a decent girl”… “I need a weak girl who can’t put up a fight.” Bad Ideas For Country Songs II “its so hard to find a strong girl on a weak night I need a weak girl — I need a strong drink — who won’t put up a fight”. We can really see that Bill was having a lot of trouble with women even around 1992 when he was about 26. 97th Street is actually about a woman he feels positive towards, Jennifer Herrema from Royal Trux. I’m Smiling is about him being tired of prolonging a fake laugh, when the other person bores him. Bill also has a lot of social issues he sings about over time. But I'm sure we can all think of times when we have had to pretend to smile in a conversation that's just a bit boring. The final song is With A Green Complexion which means jealousy, and Bill does sometimes suffer from the green eyed monster in his work. 

Bill Callahan's Early Lyfe

Bill Callahan was born in 1966. 

Bill has talked about living in the USA and in the UK in his early life. His family lived in Knaresborough in the UK for part of his childhood and attending primary school there. 

Bill has said his parents worked for the NSA as language analysts. NSA language analysts commonly do cryptology, working with codes and doing code breaking.  The Language Educator says “NSA language analysts have the responsibility of providing the most complete and accurate signals intelligence picture to U.S. policymakers, military commanders, and intelligence community members.” The NSA maintains joint facilties with GCHQ in the UK. 

Not to sound ghoulish but it must have been fascinating working in the NSA in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s with the Cold War, the JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King assassinations, the 60s radical movements, the OPEC oil crisis, the Vietnam War, the start of third world terrorism. One can only wander at the stories Bill heard from his parents at home growing up. 

Bill also lived in Baltimore, Maryland. This is 13.66 miles from NSA Headquarters in Fort George. 

Bill spent a few semesters at the University of Maryland and has a song about trying to tell a girl he was going back to college, but from the looks of it he never finished a college course. He worked briefly as a disability carer, but otherwise his work from 18 to around 23 or 24 is unclear. He has talked about living with a friend briefly but the friend's partner was unhappy with the situation. 

Bill's first records as Smog were put out independently and he signed to Drag City for his third LP Julius Caesar (1993). Bill Callahan’s records describe that growing up in a family of spooks was pretty difficult with his father even being violent at times. He sings often about his troubled relationship with his sister who seems to have ran away from home and disliked their father. 

Bill was unlucky with the ladies as a youngster and describes himself as not losing his virginity until age 19.

He has long running themes of spying and surveillance in his art and unlike many grunge bands in the 1990s he dreamed of a type of fame that would put his town on the map. 

In his first of many relationships with women who were alternative music luminaries Bill Callahan dated Lisa Carver who made art and music and did the Roller Derby fanzine. However their relationship fell apart and he dated Lisa's best friend Cindy Dall who also was involved in the Roller Derby fanzine and was known for her sexually provocative photography. 

Lisa Carver seems like a David Lynch-esque upbeat cheerleader and  was a former sex worker and has been public about her father abusing her. On the cover of Bill's Forgotten Foundation you can see a photo of Bill sitting with her father. Lisa wrote a fantastic book called Drugs Are Nice where she says she and Bill used to pretend they might have poisoned each others food for kicks. She also says in the book that Bill Callahan is the kind of dark that is the dark that is under a rock. I heard Bill was doing heroin around the late 1990s-early 2000s and in 2006 he sings about taking methadone. 

Intro

This blog is about the musician Bill Callahan (Smog) and his life and work. Bill Callahan is releasing a new record this year YTILAER which is the word reality backwards. 

Many articles on Bill Callahan don't go into details about his life, and I wanted to do something different. He's had a very intriguing life, which he often sings about. Smog's music meant a lot to me when I was a teenager.