Belly - The Birth & The Bees

Oct 1

22 min read

An Aquidneck Island Odyssey, in the band's own words

1991: Tanya Donnelly, having left Throwing Muses and also moving on from The Breeders, decides to form Belly with three friends from Aquickneck Island in Newport.

1996: After two albums, Star and King, Belly implode.

2016: 20 years later, Belly reunite, and release a third album, Dove, in 2018.

2021: Belly’s plan to headline/organise a festival - music and literary – is a victim of Covid-19 but while live (and potential recording) plans are on hold, to celebrate the band’s 30^th anniversary, 4AD release the vinyl compilation Bees, a band-picked 18-track résumé of B-sides making their 12” debut, all from their 4AD tenure except ‘Hushabye Mountain’ from 2018’s self-released EP Feel - “to tie everything up, and pull things into the present,” explains Tanya.

2025, Belly have another 30^th anniversary, namely King, which they celebrate with more live shows.

Time, then, to celebrate the birth and ongoing life of Belly. For reasons relating to Covid and timing, this feature was meant to appear on 4AD's website - in the retrospective 'Foreword' section - in 2021, timed with the Bees compilation, but the moment passed. Now, with Belly again active, I am publishing it here.

Over the years, Tanya has told her side of the story (summarised in my ‘Foreword’ feature on 4AD’s website, which spanned Throwing Muses, Belly, The Breeders and her solo years, pre-Belly reunion), but her Belly cohorts – co-founders Tom Gorman (guitar), Fred Abong (bass) and Chris Gorman (drums), plus Fred’s successor Gail Greenwood - have never had the opportunity to tell their side, which forms the narrative here, with occasional injections from Tanya for context…. before Tanya takes me through a track-by-track exploration of Bees: a very sweet ride indeed…

Belly: The Birth

Chris Gorman: “[brother] Tom and I are only a year apart in age, so things happened to us simultaneously. Our parents’ Beatles collection became our childhood nursery rhymes, plus Dylan and other revolutionary folk.”

Tom Gorman: “Dad loved classical music and mom played the piano. We were forced to learn piano, which I despised but now I wish I’d paid more attention. Later on, college radio exposed us to really interesting stuff.”

Fred Abong: “I grew up with older siblings from my dad’s first marriage. My brother was a classically-trained guitarist, and my sister was a folk singer. But my first ‘holy shit!’ moment was The Clash’s London Calling album.”

Chris: “Skateboarding was big for us. [Rhode Island coastal hub] Newport was riddled with punk bands, forming in their basements. [State capital] Providence was 30 minutes away by bus, where they’d put on all-ages shows on Saturday afternoons.”

Fred: “I started a band when I was 14. A friend at the local skateboard shop played guitar, so I chose drums and vocals. Word got around. I didn’t own a proper drum kit, but a friend did, so he joined, and then we got a singer, so I moved to bass, though I never felt bass was my identity. We became Vicious Circle.”

Chris: “Tom joined Verbal Assault, despite never having played bass before. That’s where piano skills and an understanding of music paid off. I’d watch them practise. Their drummer wanted to get sell his kit, so I bought it for $50. We now had a bassist and drummer in our own basement, so we could start our own band. We’d watch Fred’s band rehearse too.”

Fred: “Vicious Circle didn’t even survive high school. I knew I wanted to play music but I couldn’t see a path, so I studied engineering at college, then business studies, just killing time.”

Chris: “Tanya, Kristin [Hersh, Throwing Muses] and Dave [Narcizo, Throwing Muses] attended a different high school to Tom and me. I’d drilled down to one thing - hardcore punk - so I didn’t get Throwing Muses until I saw them play. They were doing something unique, something that we’d never think to do ourselves.”

Tom: “We shared mutual friends with Throwing Muses, and a practice space behind the hardware store. But we didn’t all hang out until after high school. I was good friends with Fred, who was an amazing bassist. When Leslie left the Muses, I told them to try Fred out.”

Fred: “Out of the blue, I ran into Dave at a local video store. Throwing Muses’ first album had blown me away – it was real. Dave told me Leslie was leaving, and I said, ‘I play bass, if you’re auditioning…’ Dave said my name had already come up. I never did audition. I just went to Kris’ apartment, and hung out, and I was in. I was petrified, because I still had a hard time seeing myself as a bassist. And they had a maturity because of their experience, which I lacked.”

“As we made [Muses fourth album] The Real Ramona, I didn’t openly see tenson, but it was there, with Tanya wanting to step out on her own. After a band meeting, that incarnation of the Muses was over, though it lasted another year, to finish an album and the following tour.

“I started to see myself as a potential songwriter too. Kris was self-standing, so she didn’t need anybody. When Tanya heard me play some guitar, she asked if was going to use it, and then asked me to play guitar and maybe contribute songs. I wrote the parts for ‘White Belly’, which Tanya turned it into a song - so that was a better place for me than staying with the Muses.

Tom: “When Tanya left the Muses, our sister – who was going out with Tanya’s brother - told Chris and I that we should get in touch with Tanya. By then, I’d evolved out of punk and hardcore – not to diminish its importance, but for me it was a means to an end.”

Chris: “At college, not far from Boston, I got away from the punk scene, and became a huge Muses fan. By The Real Ramona, I differentiated between Tanya and Kristin songs: I was so much of a pop sucker that Tanya’s songs were the showstoppers for me. The way Dave drummed was also inspiring.”

Fred: “I found playing guitar more interesting than bass. Then I thought maybe I’d play drums in Belly instead. Whilst I went back and forth, one of the Gormans reached out to Tanya, saying, ‘We’re a package deal, guitar and drums: do you want us?’”

Chris: “In our little world, the Muses were rock stars. far beyond the basement or touring punk scene that we knew. I’d never have thought, ‘Hey, can I be in band with you?’ if we hadn’t had a link to Tanya through our sister. Tanya, Fred, Tom and I rehearsed in a music store basement, and I was stunned that it worked - I assumed that we’d be shown the door. I think Tanya allowed herself to see where it would evolve; she wasn’t quite ready to be someone who had to lead session players. I think she wanted people who’d have her back, and invest in the music.”

Tanya Donelly: “Chris and Tom together appealed to me. I’d not been in a band that didn’t include siblings, so I liked the continuum of the family dynamic. And I loved the way they played.”

Chris: “Fred was a good guitarist and drummer, but he was such a unique and solid bassist, I assumed it was his go-to instrument. It was never discussed.”

Fred: “[The Gormans joining] put me back on bass. I realised I needed to break away. During rehearsals, I said I was leaving. I’d also seen enough of the music business with the Muses. But I wouldn’t leave them hanging, so I said I’d record Star, and then leave.”

Belly: Star

Chris: “I loved Star. It was a reaction to different colliding musical tastes. Especially now that music has become so homogenised because everyone has the same access to everything. Back then, it more about the room, the mixing board, the engineer, the producer.”

Tom: “Making Star was exciting, new and fun. I’d never recorded in a proper studio before, and it gelled quickly. The bulk of the recording was with producer] Tracy Chisholm in Nashville and then [former Muses and Pixies producer] Gil Norton in Liverpool. Gil aligned more with my detailed-orientated approach, to figure out how each part of the music would have the most impact. For the first time, I grasped what a producer does.”

Chris: “I was unaware Fred was leaving until we were in the thick of making Star. I assumed he’ change his mind. I thought: what beats doing this?”

Gail Greenwood: “I grew up in Rhode Island. I saw Throwing Muses when I was 24. I’d been in an all-girl band, The Dames, so there was lots of animosity [laughs]. They were so unique and innovative, like, what the fuck is going on here?”

Tanya: “With Gail, I thought, let’s do the opposite of what people expect, let’s rub up against the preciousness.”

Gail: “I didn’t meet Tanya until my Belly audition. Me and my boyfriend Chil had a band called Boneyard, and we owned a house with a practice room in the basement. I was also surfing a lot, and Chris was a surfer too, and he mentioned to one of his surfer bros that Belly were looking for a female bassist, someone Tanya could harmonise with. Boneyard were hard rock meets punk, so I thought Belly might be too esoteric and Muses-y for me, but their demos were so beautiful and melodic with some freaky-heavy rock songs and strange crossing harmonies. Tom’s guitar and Chris’ drumming was like nothing I’d heard before.

“Before I joined, Belly needed a rehearsal space as they’d already booked a tour before Fred left, and Leslie Langston had stepped in. They asked if they could use my basement, so when they rehearsed, I could watch Leslie’s fingers to help me learn the songs. My first Belly tour was February 1992. I’d never been abroad before, and the flight to London clogged my ears for two weeks! That first tour was eye-opening, seeing the music-industry machine for the first time, all the press and TV, and having to change up to play increasingly bigger venues. We toured Star for a year, all over the world.”

Tom: “Gail was really good for Belly. Having another woman in the band created a more cohesive dynamic - it was less the ‘female front person and three guys’ set-up, and she put on a great show! Initially, as a ‘details’ person, I felt Belly wasn’t as tight as we should have been but letting go of that for the sake of a more interesting stage show was a compromise I came around to.”

Chris: “Initially, it felt like a jarring shift, particularly as 4AD wasn’t known for “wild and crazy’, more as shoegaze-y. Early on, a part of me thought, ‘She’s stealing the spotlight’ - we were such a bunch of stiffs! But not too long into it, it was obvious what a benefit Gail was. She ushered in a new evolutionary stage - the strength of her presence and her cavalier spirit meant everyone could contribute more aggressively with songwriting, or to anything in the process, which tore things open, rather than us getting trapped in boxes.”

Tom: “Touring was just as much fun, exciting and new. Everything blew up much bigger than we ever imagined and we kept on touring – back to the UK a couple of times, over to Australia and Japan. We started playing some of the material for King on stage and then went into pre-production.”

Belly: King

Gail: “We rented a rehearsal space in a hanger-like building by a local airport, where we wrote for a few months and made demos for whichever producer we chose. If I’d had my way, we’d have worked with Alice In Chains’ producer.”

Chris: “There was one producer I personally wanted, because he’d worked with Midnight Oil and got such a tight and powerful drum sound.”

Tom: “Glyn was more our manager and record company’s decision. But he’d had worked with The Beatles, and we were all huge Beatles fans, so that was cool. And Glynn was really keen. He was the complete opposite to Gil in terms of pre-production. At rehearsals, we played the songs once or twice, and then he basically said, ‘OK, see you in the Bahamas’.”

Gail: “I think Glyn chose the Bahamas because of a visa situation. I was amazed that we each had an apartment by the beach! But it was an intense making King, living on top of each other, and on an island.”

Tom: “Glyn wanted to make King like a live record, with as few overdubs as possible, the old-school approach, which was valid but not the kind I was inclined toward.”

Chris: “None of us felt we had enough time to pull off that kind of live approach, keeping as much from a single take as possible. Glyn was a tough personality who asserted his authority pretty aggressively, which caught us off-guard.”

Tanya: “Glyn and I immediately fell into this comfortable familial relationship, but initially he and Gail didn’t get each other, and I was very protective of Gail, so there was friction. The guys and Gail were also having issues too. Glyn walked into that, took some of the heat and turned some of it back on certain members.”

Gail: “It was hard to have your own opinion, and I’m not great with authority. But Glyn got the best out of me, taught me stuff, and he was lovely in his way.”

Tanya: “If we’d been older and more cemented, it would have worked better. But we still had fun, and King was made exactly as we should have made it. And it was a more collaborative record than Star.”

Tom: “Glyn and I were at odds for different reasons, but I really liked him, and he knew how to get good sounds. The songs are great too. I just wish we’d explored more interesting arrangements. At the time, there was an alt-rock orthodoxy that considered cello pretentious, or trying too hard - at least in America. Even harmony vocals were out of favour. But King was a solid record - a rock album - and it sounds pretty good today.”

Gail: “I think King is an amazing record. It sounds unusually timeless to me.”

Chris: After King was released, we toured in the US with R.E.M. Tom was talking with one of them, saying he was disappointed with the album, and the guy from R.E.M. said, ‘Once you’ve made four or five albums, King will make perfect sense. You need to look at the big picture. And I think King does make sense now. I rate it as highly as Star.”

Tom: “The perceived failure of King was down to record company expectations. It was a more male-orientated time, of heavier, grungier guitars. If Belly had focussed more outside America, I think it would have done better. But we were told the US was the only market that mattered. It’s partly what made the promotion and touring of King so gruelling. America’s a big country, but it feels the same wherever you go, whilst Europe is so varied, and more interesting. It felt like we didn’t have a plan besides ‘Let’s squeeze this as hard as possible, see what we can get out of it.’ We didn’t know you could say no to record companies or management. It was relentless.”

Gail: “King isn’t considered a great seller, and that’s why people think we broke up. But it was more than we toured relentlessly, 18 months straight, travelling up and down the highway in a tin can. If anyone had a dissenting opinion, it could boil over.”

Chris: “It’s the same old shit. You don’t take enough time to assess what you’re doing or spend enough time apart when you need it. It becomes a job rather than the creative part. You get caught up in everything but the good stuff. We didn’t have anyone giving us guidance. We just needed a break.”

Belly: The Death

Gail: “The last few months, I didn’t talk to Chris and Tom and they didn’t talk to me - not even ‘Good morning’. To this day, I don’t know what that was about. I think our expectations were different. I’m six or seven years older than them, and to me Belly was like winning the lottery. But they’d been Belly long before I joined. Maybe they knew more about the stuff like why the record company had stopped pushing us. I was slightly resentful, like: Why aren’t you having fun, there are people to see us and rice cakes on the rider!”

Chris: “There was a rift between everyone; we just didn’t know what we were doing or why. There was no consensus, no time nor space to develop new songs because we were touring so aggressively. But touring was diminishing returns too. We’d done the big theatre tour when King came out, then the R.E.M tour, and then headlined smaller venues once King had fallen off the charts. We hadn’t the time to be friends outside of being bandmates - four weeks after meeting Gail, we were playing huge shows in the UK and Europe. There was a social difference too. Gail was straight edge, whilst I liked to go out and do whatever with whoever, so there was less opportunity to become friends.”

Tom: “For me, touring is something you have to do in order to have the chance to write songs and make records.”

Gail: “We had another European tour booked, but there was so much animosity and tension, I said I didn’t know if I could live like that anymore, and I love touring and performing.”

Tanya: “The years after Fred left were brutal. It was 18 months straight of ‘I dare you to say no’ vibes, with one two-week break. We all did it to each other. Taking time off felt like laziness, which wasn’t the best way to view it. It made us say yes to lot of exhausting stuff. We made King in that time frame as well. we were always leaving something or somewhere.”

Tom: “It felt like we were in a car speeding toward a cliff and nobody could do anything about it. Some of that’s just being in your mid-twenties. Your communication skills aren’t fully developed and people don’t know what they want. There was also the element of our manager [Gary Smith, who produced early Throwing Muses and Pixies demos, and the Muses’ second album House Tornado] wanting Tanya to go solo.”

Chris: “Gary was probably saying to Tanya, ‘Momentum is on your side, ditch these guys, move on to the next thing. You’ve bounced through the Muses to The Breeders to Belly: why not be Tanya Donnelly now?’ I also felt Tanya was tired of being the leader, which isn’t easy or fun. Taking responsibility for what didn’t work, you take a beating from all sides. Tanya had already had a long career, and I don’t know how much bullshit she had to put up with by that point.”

Gail: “Tanya put too much pressure on herself, to take responsibility for running the band - that’s what management is supposed to do. She had to do the interviews and photos too. She should have concentrated on being an incredible songwriter, performer and guitarist.”

Tanya: “I was a horrible bandleader, I didn’t take the helm, and so the rudder was unmanned.”

Tom: “I wanted a clear idea of what we were doing, and because Tanya was the known entity, and how the contracts were structured, it had to come from her. She wasn’t comfortable with that, which I understand. People wanting answers and direction can be hard and a lot of work. A couple of weeks after we’d played what became our last show, Gary said our individual contracts had expired, and that’s it.”

Chris: “I thought it would be a few months and then we’d meet up and work it out. But that call never came. We didn’t have a disaster or death or addiction or any meaningful way a band splits up; we just went our separate ways. A rookie mistake.”

Gail: “Tanya has an incredible work ethic, and she’s a prolific writer, so she went on to make a solo record, and kept touring, I joined L7 almost immediately, and stayed on the road for another three and a half years.”

Tanya: “I had a backlog of songs, and just at that point, disappointed and heartbroken over the band breaking up, I thought, screw it, I’m doing this alone from now on – but that ended up just not being something I enjoyed, so I tried to make the solo records feel like it was a band too.”

Chris: “I did call Tanya for a while, and Gary a couple of times a year, like ’Where is my royalty check and, oh, when are we getting back together?’ The reply was usually, ‘Knock it off, stop being a moron!’”

Belly: The Rebirth

Tom: “Every couple of years, Chris would suggest a reunion, trying to keep the flame alive. It always seemed unseemly to me.”

Chris: “Around 2015, Tanya said, ‘Maybe we should talk on the phone.’”

Tom: “When Tanya recorded her Swan Song EPs [in 2016], Chris sent her some stuff that I’d recorded. She also did a couple of tracks with Gail, which opened the door, which Chris pushed right open, like, ‘If we don’t do it now, it’ll never happen’.”

Fred: “In 2000, there was a Muses reunion, called Gut Pageant, and they invited me to play. When Tanya recorded her Swan Song series, she reached out to people for co-writes. I had a backlog of undeveloped songs, so I shared a couple, and she turned one of them into ‘Snow Goose And Me’. I also played ‘White Belly’ with Tanya at one show.”

Gail: “When Belly reformed, Tom said, ‘Let’s draw a line in the sand and not look back’, and that’s what we did. Everyone came back with different life experiences - tragedies, loves, losses. It was awesome! Being back in a room on day one, giggling about how exciting it was, everyone politically aligned and the same sense of humour, with the same stories. It instantly erased those months of bad feeling. It’s a blip in time compared to the life that the four of us had had. And [Belly’s reunion album] Dove was an amazing record too. It was a great way to heal a rift in the family. That doesn’t happen much in life, for four of us to get another chance.”

Tom: “It did feel like unfinished business, and we resolved whatever issues we had between us.”

Chris: “I love Gail and our friendship is closer now. When we reformed, we had to take on the same jobs you have when you’re starting a band, and you have to rely on each other and cooperate.”

Tom: “How to sum up Belly? Equal parts exciting, inspiring, frustrating and heartbreaking. Which is the fundamental nature of human relationships anyway.”

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Tanya on Belly and The Bees

Dancing Gold: from the Slow Dust EP, 1992

Recorded and mixed at Normandy Sound, Warren, RI

Produced by Belly and Tracy Chisholm

“Something as spidery and quiet and sweet as ‘Dancing Gold’ is the perfect way to open a record like this, because we don’t have the same concerns around ‘What are we putting out there?’ The lyric was inspired by Rilke’s poem #15 Sonnets To Orpheus, specifically ‘dance the orange’, which is such a beautiful and moving image, to turn a piece of fruit into something miraculous. Also, my grandparents lived in Florida, so I have memories of walking through lush orange groves. We didn’t put ‘Dancing Gold’ on Star because it was a bit too long and slow, and we had a plan to tighten it up and turn it into a rock song, but we decided that it had found its place, so we left it alone.”

Star (full band version): from the Feed The Tree EP, 1993