Dinosaur Jr. Still Avoiding Celebrity

Dinosaur Jr.'s June 1991 tour was its most famous thanks to what's now seen as a historical anomaly: The opening act was Nirvana. But in those days, no one looked askance at the billing. Although Nirvana's early work (for a rising indie called Sub Pop) had inspired Geffen Records to sign Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic to a fat contract, Nevermind, the trio's groundbreaking major-label debut, didn't hit sales charts until the following November. In contrast, Dinosaur Jr. was already earning plaudits for Green Mind, its own bow for a major: Sire, a division of Warner Bros.

Green Mind featured a different Dinosaur Jr. roster than the one that recorded for the Homestead and SST imprints during the late '80s; bassist Lou Barlow had been jettisoned a couple of years earlier, leaving singer/guitarist J Mascis in charge of drummer Murph and himself. Still, the disc's quality proved that Mascis was a formidable talent in any configuration, and Sire began grooming him for stardom. Too bad he loathed the demands of celebrity, not the least of which was dealing with the press. He quickly became known as a dreadful conversationalist—an obtuse, frequently monosyllabic subject whose deadpan responses were potentially fatal—and he still lived up to this reputation in a chat I had with him back then. In subsequent years, whenever anyone asked me about my worst music-related interview, the answer was always the same. J Mascis stood atop the heap—and 16 years later, he showed that his ascendance was no fluke. Here's a typical exchange from a recent chat for this article:

If you'd known you'd be spending so much of your career doing interviews rather than making music, would you have considered another line of work?

No...

Music was the only option for you?

Yeah.

If Mascis' taciturnity hasn't changed, however, neither has something much more important: the worthiness of his music. Beyond, put out by Fat Possum, isn't just the first Dinosaur Jr. CD since 1997's Hand It Over; it also marks the return of Barlow—who contributed on 1988's Bug before launching his own project, Sebadoh—and Murph, gone since the early '90s. Such reunion platters usually represent sad codas for bands that peaked long ago, but Beyond is an exception to this seemingly inviolable rule. Tracks such as "Almost Ready," "Pick Me Up" and "Lightning Bulb" are memorably raucous, and more deliberate efforts like "We're Not Alone" and "I Got Lost" display intriguingly elliptical arrangements and a quiet confidence. Strange as it might seem, Beyond is worthy of comparison to the band's best work, with no grading on the curve required.

Mascis offers few clues as to how the original band members managed to turn this trick nearly two decades down the line. When he's asked if he was caught off guard by Beyond's quality, he replies, "I'm surprised whenever anybody puts out a good CD." Even so, he believes he's more forthcoming than he was during the act's nascent days—at least to his fellow musicians. "We're all a lot different than we were back then," he says. "Back then, we just didn't communicate much at all."

Does that mean the players discuss disagreements when they emerge, rather than letting them fester? "Yeah," Mascis replies before adding with trademark murkiness, "to varying degrees of success."

The Dinosaur Jr. story contains plenty of ups and downs too, not to mention some unusual twists. In 1983, when Massachusetts high-schooler Mascis formed Dinosaur, sans the "Jr.," with fellow student Barlow, he played drums, not guitar; he switched after local scenester Emmett "Murph" Murphy picked up the sticks from him. Nevertheless, Mascis took to his ax with a vengeance, using the instrument to express all of the passion he couldn't convey verbally. Guitar solos were virtually verboten in punk and post-punk music of the era, but such trendy concerns didn't matter to Mascis. "I don't really think about things like that," he says. "I guess I was just trying to amuse myself."

Dinosaur became Dinosaur Jr. in 1986 after being sued by members of Dinosaurs, an outfit featuring Country Joe and the Fish's Barry Melton and Jefferson Airplane's Spencer Dryden, who had a prior claim on the name. Not that there was any risk of listeners mistaking the two groups. On 1985's Dinosaur, Mascis eschewed '60s-style hippie-isms in favor of often deafening guitar squalls that found beauty in chaos. And if 1987's You're Living All Over Me and 1988's Bug were a bit less anarchic in comparison, they continued to revel in the sort of glorious messiness that cult-sized audiences find impossible to resist.

Unfortunately, Mascis and Barlow were getting along like Moqtada al-Sadr and Donald Rumsfeld, and shortly after Bug ran its course, they parted company. The most prominent account of their split appears in author Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life, but Mascis, whose typically spare remarks are overwhelmed in the Dinosaur chapter by commentary from the naturally loquacious Barlow, doesn't think much of it.