Happy 30th Anniversary to The Afghan Whigs’ fourth studio album Gentlemen, originally released October 5, 1993.
Nan Goldin’s famous 1983 photo “Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC” so perfectly captures, in golden yet anemic light, the friction in a dysfunctional relationship that a decade later, in 1993, Greg Dulli knew he had to find a way to recreate it. Dulli’s band the Afghan Whigs had just finished their fourth album and major-label debut Gentlemen, which chronicled Dulli’s bitter breakup with his girlfriend and first love Kris. All the details aren’t available, but what is known is that he slept with a bunch of strange women on tour, only to come back and discover that she had carried on an affair with one man in their apartment. Seems like an open-and-shut case, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t—it was complicated—and it left Dulli full of guilt, anger, bereavement, and brooding obsession.
If it had made any sense, though, it wouldn’t have been dysfunctional; fucked up relationships operate by their own odd rules and skewed logic. And no one knew this better than Nan Goldin, whose “Nan and Brian in Bed” was part of an entire series, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, that documented her codependent relationship with the titular Brian amid the squalor of their heroin addiction and the Lower East Side. So, with the help of photographer Billy Phelps, Dulli went about creating his own interpretation of the photo for the cover of Gentlemen, replacing Nan and Brian with two young children, a girl and a boy. The resulting image is almost equally as powerful and elicits an ache in whichever chamber of the heart cradles the inner child.
There’s nothing weird or creepy or exploitative about the album cover. When I first saw it in 1993 after sliding Gentlemen off my friend Shana’s CD shelf, it didn’t give me an icky feeling—and it still doesn’t. Its vibe is that of two siblings hiding away from their parents’ arguing (been there, done that), rather than two children inappropriately styled to appear as lovers. It was shot with the permission of the kids’ parents, and Elektra publicist Sherry Ring’s daughter is the little girl in the photo. But when the Afghan Whigs’ labelmate Linda Ronstadt saw the photo, she decided it was scandalous and admonished Ring for her poor decision making. It pissed Dulli off. “I’m like, ‘Linda Ronstadt: You’re dressed like a whore on the cover of Living in the USA with roller skates, curls in your hair, and shorts up to your twat. Fuck you,’” he told journalist Bob Gedron. “That was my attitude toward Linda Ronstadt, who was a great singer. Now she’s kind of a bore.”
If there’s a shred of misogyny in Dulli’s anger towards Ronstadt, that’s sort of the point of Gentlemen, which was intended as a (somewhat) ironic album title. “Ladies let me tell you about myself / I got a dick for a brain,” Dulli declares as a quasi-thesis statement on the track “Be Sweet,” while for the remainder of the song cycle he works himself into a froth of questionable guilt, horniness, manipulation, self-righteous anger, indulgent sadness, and raw, sometimes unhinged obsession. What saves the album from becoming a masculine rage-and-sex fest—and instead puts it into masterpiece territory—is Dulli’s self-awareness.
Gentlemen’s listener is consistently guided to the understanding that Dulli is playing a character while at the same time seeking genuine catharsis, even exorcism. If Gentlemen comes across as cinematic, that’s because it is. Dulli, a former film student, told the Los Angeles Times in 1994 that he was inspired by Frances Ford Coppola’s 1982 film One From The Heart. “I really, really identified with the Frederic Forrest character in One From the Heart, and that was sort of the beginning of the thematic process,” Dulli said. “He was just a real kind of heel, but you could tell he didn’t want to be one, that he wasn’t really one.” (Further proof that Dulli doesn’t want to be a heel on Gentlemen: towards album’s end, he cedes the vocals to guest Marcy Mays, who represents the role of ex-girlfriend Kris on the track “My Curse,” allowing her a much-needed voice.) So, while the term “gentlemen” must be taken with a grain of salt, it also rings true at the album’s pivotal point.
In contrast with Gentlemen’s murky irony, there was ample visual evidence of gentlemanliness in the Afghan Whigs’ stage presence. With a uniform GQ look consisting of button-down shirts, turtlenecks, suit jackets and a general penchant for smart, all-black attire, the band cut a dapper silhouette and stood apart from the sea of flannel, thrift-store duds, and Doc Martens worn by other ’90s “alternative” acts. And although the Whigs had been represented by Sub Pop prior to their major-label shift to Elektra, their sound was markedly different as well.
Dulli grew up in Cincinnati and moved to Los Angeles in 1984 after dropping out of film school. He worked at Tower Records, and immersed himself in the music scene, with the trippy ’60s-inspired Paisley Underground—particularly the band Dream Syndicate—inspiring him to become a dedicated musician (though he had played in bands as early as 15). He returned to Ohio, forming a quartet with bassist John Curley, guitarist Rick McCollum, and drummer Steve Earle. They self-released one album, then recorded two more for Sub Pop, finishing up with the EP Uptown Avondale, a collection of Motown songs.
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With their roots deep in Cincinnati, the Afghan Whigs were just as, if not more, influenced by soul, R&B, funk and all the many iterations of Black music as they were by any kind of alternative rock. The city is at the crossroads of North and South; it was an abolitionist city, a stop on the Underground Railroad, and its close proximity to Kentucky puts it in intimate conversation with that state’s rich musical history as well. To that end, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, stretching between Cincinnati and Covington, KY, represents both the division and the coming together of racial and political boundaries. So, the Afghan Whigs captured the sound of a car going over that bridge on Gentlemen’s opening track. They were keenly aware of paying tribute to their city and acknowledging its many sonic influences on their ears.
The Whigs’ confluence of genres is the main reason critics never knew exactly how to describe them—“soul grunge” was one label that particularly embarrassed the band—and possibly why Gentlemen didn’t get the recognition that it deserves alongside the other major albums of the era (Elektra also didn’t quite know how to market it). The Afghan Whigs refused to conform to the musical climate of the early ’90s, despite—or maybe in spite of—their initial Sub Pop affiliation. Because the Whigs were often shoehorned into the alternative rock category, their genius was overlooked due to confusion over exactly what they were doing, and what scene or movement they were a part of (answer: they weren’t).
In truth, the band were free agents—goddamn independents—subscribing to a wildly creative collage of influences. In that vein, just as Dulli had been moved by Nan Goldin’s famous photograph and Coppola’s One From The Heart, he also became obsessed with one song from 1970 as an encapsulation of his feelings post-Kris. It was the B-side on an old 45 by soul singer Tyrone Davis—“I Keep Coming Back”—that paired the gritty with the smooth and captured the heady, addictive nature of a certain type of relationship. What’s more, Davis had the look of a suave, put-together ladies’ man who normally wouldn’t be caught dead crawling on his knees. “It was a song that I listened to almost ritually, every night before I went to bed. I would listen to it over and over, it was very comforting to me,” Dulli recalled to SPIN. “It was sweet, it was honest, it was vulnerable.”
Not long after Dulli’s awful breakup, the Afghan Whigs went back on tour in support of their third album Congregation (1992). Most of Gentlemen was written on the road, with the band testing and honing new songs onstage each night. At first, Dulli wasn’t sure his bandmates would be willing to follow him into the dark psychological nooks and crannies Gentlemen’s subject matter called for, but they were fine with it, if not wholly enthusiastic. Then, the album really began to gel during a break in Cincinnati at a studio called Ultrasuede, where the Whigs tracked the demos. The band went back on tour for a brief European stint, and then they went straight on to Memphis to record Gentlemen at Ardent Studios, with Dulli producing.
Gentlemen begins with the sound of that aforementioned car driving across the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge’s metal grates (bassist John Curley stuck a microphone out of his car while Dulli drove) as mellow drumbeats build in the background. It offers a sense of scene—a feeling of wind, texture, concrete, and dark suspense. The first track “If I Were Going” is moody and blustery, with Dulli half-whispering about dread—“What should I tell her? She’s going to ask / If I ignore it, it gets uncomfortable / She’ll want to argue about the past.” Soon, over mournful guitar, he begins to describe the discomfort as an entity, an insatiable lock-jawed creature that’s swallowing every inch of the couple’s lives—“It’s in our hearts / It’s in our heads / It’s in our love, baby / It’s in our bed.”
The sound of the rubber tires on the bridge’s metal grating returns as the drums—this time more insistent—start and stop as though searching for just the right rhythm. Then the album suddenly takes a swaggering, sexually aggressive turn on “Gentlemen” as Dulli demands “Your attention, please,” moaning and wailing as he compares sex, or sexual desire, to an infection. He sounds like anything but a gentleman as he insists, with a wink and oozing lasciviousness, that he is one—“Come and get it.” (Right now, I’m understanding why two teenage girls—namely, my bestie Shana and I—might have gone crazy for this album back in ’93.) Truly, this song is pure dirty, spanking, hair-pulling sex—and every perfect thing about rock ‘n’ roll. The guitar is ferocious, the groove grabs you and won’t let go, and Dulli wails like a motherfucker.
The bluesy “Be Sweet” offers a much-needed cooldown as Dulli opts for dejected introspection over white-hot heat—“Ladies, let me tell you about myself / I got a dick for a brain.” But then there’s a soul-piercing guitar solo, and Dulli is now slurring with self-pity and woozy with guilt— “Ladies, let me tell you about my love / She kept giving me more / But it wasn’t enough.” The song morphs into the kind of anthem you’d weep and sing to at the high-school dance, your dress rumpled and your shoes off in a corner under a wayward balloon…as you watch your crush walk out. (The repeated chorus of “Be Sweet,” it turns out, is something Kris said to Dulli when they broke up.)
Next up is “Debonair” and I probably don’t need to even say this but, holy fuck, is this song good. With its slithery bass line, handclaps, and slinky guitar groove, Gentlemen’s fourth track seems to be everyone’s danceable favorite. Dulli is pissed off, screaming again about that grotesque creature that’s swallowed his dreams and taken over his life. But now, he’s admitting that the monster just might be him—“Tonight I go to hell / For what I’ve done to you / This ain’t about regret / It’s when I tell the truth.”
“When We Two Parted” is a moody ballad that’s tantamount to weeping, then sobbing, and here we viscerally feel the private pain Dulli must have nursed alone in his apartment. “Fountain and Fairfax,” named for an AA meeting at the intersection of two avenues in Los Angeles, is packed full of zigzagging rhythm, an organized-chaos cacophony of piano, slide guitar, cello, and Dulli’s enraged, throbbing pain (in fact, he’d gone on a cocaine binge prior to laying down the ragged vocals for this song.) Meanwhile, “What Jail Is Like” combines a bit of twang with a storm of influences and instrumentation—as its title suggests, it evokes an antsy claustrophobia, an airtight atmosphere.
An opener reminiscent of Clapton’s “Layla” introduces the bluesy, breathy, world-weary vocal stylings of the fabulous Marcy Mays on “My Curse.” A fellow Ohioan and frontwoman for the Columbus band Scrawl, Mays was a friend of Dulli’s who he brought in to sing the track because he couldn’t bear to do it himself. “I tried to sing it, but it was kinda really impossible for me to do,” he said in 2005. “It was too close to the bone. Basically I chickened out.”
Of course, if Dulli hadn’t asked Mays to step in, Gentlemen would be a drastically different album considering how the shift to the female perspective serves as the album’s turning point, and Dulli’s redemption from sexism. (Pitchfork notes, “Chickening out may be the boldest thing he ever did.”) The raw, frayed emotion Mays captures is truly extraordinary, and we experience the pain—and the pleasure—that’s ripping both of these people apart: “Zip me down / Kiss me there / I can smile now / You won’t find out ever.”
“Now You Know” is the storm after the storm, a wild-ride catharsis after all the tension and tumult. (In fact, all the lyrics on the track were freestyled and the vocals were cut in one take.) Meanwhile, the organ-infused “I Keep Coming Back” is a respectable cover of the Tyrone Davis song Dulli listened to over and over right before bed, an ode to where it all began. The album then ends with the dark, instrumental “Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer,” bookending the cinematic suspense we got at the album’s beginning as the wheels rolled over the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
Its cinematic elements didn’t stop some listeners, however, from hearing Gentlemen and interpreting it as a documentary rather than a drama. “I think people get kinda disappointed when I say the album isn’t all autobiographical,” Dulli said, “and I’m like, God, that’s kind of mean, to think something like that. Why would you want poor little me to go through all that?” One saving grace is that the “scandal” of the cover photo, as staked out by Linda Ronstadt, never actually gained traction. In fact, Gentlemen’s cover was eventually parodied in 2014 by Lil’ Bub and Grumpy Cat—and you can’t get any more innocent than that.
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