Robert Pollard-Mania! #39: I AM A TREE

Guided by Voices
I Am a Tree
1997, Matador Records

Robert Pollard writes tons of anthems on his own so it was a major endorsement of GBV’s new lead guitarist Doug Gillard when Pollard not only recorded Gillard’s “I Am a Tree” for Guided by Voices, but also consented to it as the second and final single from Mag Earwhig!. Until Tobin Sprout scored a few A-sides about fifteen years later when the old line-up reunited, “I Am a Tree” was the only GBV single not written by King Shit himself.

Pollard still sings it like it’s his own, though. He thinks it’s a great song. You can tell. Meanwhile, Cobra Verde summon thunder and the song itself is powerful and yet unpretentious. It’s total pop with Godzilla guitars. In 1975, it might have been a hit. In 1997, it was the sound of a band known for lo-fi brevity taking its boldest step yet in shedding its old skin.

“I Am a Tree” is almost five minutes long and recorded to fill a stadium.

The song originally came out as a Scat Records 12″ by Gillard’s other other band Gem, who also put out the righteous Hexed. This new version sticks to the original arrangement.

Meanwhile, you can read Gillard’s lyrics in a few different ways. Maybe it’s an environmentalist statement. Maybe it’s a corny message of long-lasting love. Go ahead and think that if you want. I have no interest in stopping you, but us dirty old men know what it’s really about. The “tree” in this song is a hard, erect penis. There’s no polite way to put it. This song is about fuckin’. “Come get the sap out of me“? Please. Gillard’s song is a beautiful kaleidoscope of guitar riff and melody with a pornographic center, bless him.

To this day, the song is a GBV setlist staple, but only when Doug is in the band. Nobody else touches that busy lead guitar.

As for the B-sides, Pollard hits hard, as if in competition with “I Am a Tree”, with one of my favorite GBV sleeper songs ever.

I’m talkin “(I’ll Name You) The Flame That Cries”.

I want to raise a fist just saying the title.

It might be the band’s most Genesis moment of ’97. The single doesn’t have the detailed credits of the album, but this MUST be Cobra Verde playing here. I’d be surprised if it isn’t because this song is HUGE. It builds quietly–menacingly, even–until it sprouts dragon wings in its rocking second half. It’s a compact epic (not even four minutes long). It’s prog GBV at its most majestic. It’s one of those “How in living fuck did this get left off the album?” songs.

It’s GBV’s “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight” (the opening track of the Selling England By the Pound album by Genesis). The melodies are different, but their structure and effect are close–and that’s my probably wrong fan jerk-off theory about why it didn’t make the album. As good as it is, it might have been a little too “on the nose”. So, it was banished to B-Side Land.

Lucky for me, that’s one of my favorites places to hang out.

Next, “The Ascended Master’s Grog Shop” is a short and sweet collaboration between Pollard and Tobin Sprout. Over a pretty piano part, Pollard sings the most condensed medieval ballad ever (a whole fifty-four seconds long). Hey, sometimes demons don’t care to join you in a toast and there’s nothing else to say about it. I can buy that.

Lastly, as with the “Bulldog Skin” single, there is another B-side that only made the CD. 7″ buyers did not get “Do They Teach You The Chase?”, a song that sounds to me like one of the tracks that Pollard recorded with John Shough from this period, but don’t quote me on that. It’s a nice quiet one that I mostly remember for the line “I can’t stand the thought of not being involved with your current disgrace”.

Summer of 1997 was all about the tour. With this new band, there was something to prove. Pollard’s model for a rock show is always and forever The Who in their prime and Cobra Verde brought GBV closer to it. They were tight and gave extra muscle to the old songs, such as their lava-thick take on “Hot Freaks” and their transformation of “Stabbing a Star” from the lo-fi scuzz-punk of the original record into something that sounded like a bag of anvils.

While this new band was shaking things up, Pollard also felt free to add several songs from his Not in My Airforce solo album to the set. They fit right in with the rest, but Pollard was also blurring the lines between his solo work and the band. To him, they’re all on the same shelf. Every song he writes counts as Guided by Voices. There is no wall between them.

However, there WAS a wall between him and Cobra Verde (how’d you like that segue?).

This new Guided by Voices didn’t last long. The tour started in April 1997 and fell apart by October.

Cobra Verde’s John Petkovic didn’t care for Pollard’s drinking on stage. Also, some members of the band joked about his stage act (the high kicks and mic twirls) so much that Pollard saw it turn from good-natured humor into not-so-disguised contempt.

Meanwhile, Pollard forbade Cobra Verde from selling their wares on the merch table at shows.

Until this line-up, Pollard had always worked with old friends. Guys he’d known since they were kids. To him, a band is a gang–and he’s the leader. Pollard (clearly) isn’t a tyrant about perfection, but he does demand a band who are on his side, go with his vision and are happy to be there. Pollard wants soldiers backing him up.

What he got with Cobra Verde though were irreverant guys who already had their own thing going. I think that Pollard felt like an outsider among them and that won’t do.

The tension that simmered over the summer climaxed in October after Pollard opened up to a writer, Matt Melucci, that this line-up of GBV wasn’t working out and that he wanted to work with other people for the next record.

What followed is a little fable about the early days of the internet.

In 1997, the internet was not the extreme part of peoples’ lives that it is now. It was big and getting bigger, but you didn’t yet have the internet in your pocket. There was no social media. The internet was still evolving. Pollard didn’t understand it, but not merely because he was almost 40. This interwebs shit was new to EVERYBODY.

So, Pollard claims that he thought that his comments to Melucci were off the record. Or, worst case scenario, they might get reported in a few weeks or even months because Pollard had print media-era expectations in a world that had gone digital overnight. Pollard didn’t realize that Melucci worked for the internet’s hub for indie rock news and reviews at the time, Addicted to Noise, and that they would publish his comments online mere days later, when the band still had tour dates ahead.

Uh… awkward.

So, THAT was the end of this line-up of Guided by Voices, folks, though Doug Gillard would stick around.

The other members of Cobra Verde would move on and Pollard would move on. He had another solo record cooking and an even bigger vision for the next Guided by Voices album.

That’s how Pollard responds to his band falling apart: with dozens of new songs ready to go. He doesn’t take a few years off to recover and regain his mojo. He has too many ideas. They won’t let him relax.