Nina Gordon

From Spin; February 1999

Most Likely To Be Featured In A Behind The Music Special:
Nina Gordon

Last year was Nina Gordon’s personal annus horribilis. Not only did she break up with her long-term boyfriend, she also ended a six-year creative partnership with onetime best friend Louise Post, her co-frontwoman in Veruca Salt. Needless to say, the experience provided much grist for the songwriting mill. “I was shaving down my roster of friends for a while, so my songs literally became my friends,” Gordon says by phone from Maui, where she is two weeks into recording her debut solo album with Metallica producer Bob Rock, who also honchoed Veruca’s final effort, Eight Arms to Hold You. With a mix of pop smarts and crunching ’70s metal riffs, Veruca Salt’s update of cock rock detailed the inner lives of what appeared to be two very complicated women. So it wasn’t that surprising the band imploded in late ’97, amid rumors that suggested an episode of Alt-Rock Melrose Place. “We’re not Fleetwood Mac,” Gordon says. “We just stopped getting along.” Doesn’t she want to set the record straight? “Nah. You have save the gory details for Behind the Music.” As the album is still embryonic, Gordon isn’t quite sure what path her sound will ultimately take. “I’m making a record with only myself to please,” she says. “There won’t be any concessions or creative compromises. And that is really gratifying.”