Looking back on the off-the-wall gene-riding journey that was Dinosaur Jr.’s 1985 debut, Dinosaur, bandleader and guitarist J Mascis, in his usual monotone shrug, says, “I was just learning guitar. I picked it up to write songs and start a band, so whatever I was writing… that’s all I could play, pretty much.”
Dinosaur, despite its seeming lack of structure and virtuosity, wasn’t without a guiding light – even if Mascis essentially stumbled upon it.
“I didn’t know much about guitar tone,” he says. “I remember I had this Yamaha [G-100] solid-state amp because I saw that Bob Mould [Hüsker Dü] had one. I thought, ‘How bad could it be if Bob Mould has one?’
“Then the hotshot guitar player at our gig said, ‘Your guitar sounds terrible.’ I had the deluxe [Electro-Harmonix] Big Muff, and he’s like, ‘You should leave that thing on’ because I had it clean. So I turned on the Big Muff and was like, ‘Yeah… okay.’”
With that, the quintessential Dinosaur Jr. guitar tone was born, although Mascis – who wasn’t even sure what he wanted his band to sound like – was still experimenting with genres and approaches while recording Dinosaur.
A lot of the chords had two fingers because I couldn’t do Barre chords; they hurt my hands. I’d just make up chords with the least amount of fingers possible
“I don’t know that the record had a direction,” he says. “We were kind of just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what stuck. We didn’t have a ‘sound’ yet – every song seemed different. There was a country song, a Joy Division song.
“Plus, I hadn’t been playing guitar for that long. A lot of the chords had two fingers because I couldn’t do Barre chords; they hurt my hands. I’d just make up chords with the least amount of fingers possible.” [Laughs]
Still, the band seemed to have found its footing on one Dinosaur track in particular, Repulsion. “That was the first song we recorded where I thought we found out our sound. It was the first song I was kind of excited about.”
After completing Dinosaur, Mascis, who was just 20, bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Emmett Jefferson Murphy III, aka “Murph,” were happy enough with the results, but they knew they could do better. “We thought it was alright,” Mascis says. “You know… not the greatest album, but I thought it was okay.”
In the 40 years since its release, Dinosaur Jr.’s “okay” debut album – which was recorded in a cabin in the woods for about $500 – has become a fan favorite. Initially, however, it only sold 1,500 copies.
In fact, if Sonic Youth hadn’t come across the album, Dinosaur Jr. might’ve simply gone extinct. But they hooked up with Sonic Youth as tour openers in ’86, leading to a wider audience grabbing copies of Dinosaur, followed by 1987’s You’re Living All Over Me, followed by one hell of a career.
“That was our first tour,” Mascis says. “And it was probably our best tour. We weren’t sick of each other then.” [Laughs]
In the end, Dinosaur served its purpose, big time. It gave Mascis experience on guitar, allowed the young band to find its footing and eventually gave them a whole neighborhood’s worth of street cred within the indie and alt-rock scenes.
“It’s an interesting artifact,” Mascis says. “We were trying to form a band, trying to find out the sound and going in all these different directions. We play a lot of the songs live now, and people seem to like them more, I guess, even though they sound a lot heavier now.”
If he had the chance, would Mascis do Dinosaur over again? “I don’t know! That’s hard,” he says. “I have no idea. I might change everything – on everything – if I could. But we just kind of let it go and hoped for the best.”
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
