Whiggin' Out

Afghan Whigs lead singer Greg Dulli was standing, pissing into an empty Jim Beam bottle in the men's room of a club in the band's Cincinnati hometown and made some mention of how he was going to get somebody to drink it. He must not have gotten any takers because, by the end of the night, the container hadn't moved from its place on top of a video game in the back of the building. No deposit. Only a refill.

These kinds of rock and roll exploits have made the Whigs front man revered and hated, depending on whose opinion you hear. Since the band's beginning over a decade ago, Dulli has grown into its centerpiece a la Jim Morrison. Prone to taking cigarette breaks on stage and taunting audiences, Dulli can be alternately amusing and acerbic. This element of his personality, according to bassist John Curley, was not to blame for an altercation with Austin's Liberty Lunch after the band's performance there in December 1998. Published reports from Austin suggest that Dulli attacked a bouncer with a two-by-four before falling and hitting his head on a cement staircase. Whatever the cause, Dulli spent three days in intensive care with a head injury. Dulli isn't talking about the circumstances, and the band has filed a suit against the club while a grand jury investigates.

"When you have a reputation, for whatever reason, like that, and something does happen to you, people are a lot less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt," says Curley. "Nobody was asking for that. An ass-whipping that you deserve is one thing; getting whacked in the back of the head with a piece of wood or something, that's just fucked up. And if those guys had wanted any kind of fair confrontation, they could have had one."

Like its front man, Afghan Whigs itself also gets hot-and-cold reception. Always a critical favorite and a stunning live band, the group (with Rick McCollum on guitar and Michael Horrigan on drums) has never been able to generate large sales. While the Whigs's popularity has been increasing, circumstances and missteps are forcing it now to either put out or get out.

Expectations were that the band's October 1998 release, 1965, on Columbia, its third label, would be its largest-selling album to date. It was not. It merely carried on the great-but-won't-sell tradition. A self-released album called Big Top Halloween (Ultrasuede), which is now a collector's item, made the Whigs in 1988 the first non-Seattle band signed to the marquee grunge label Sub Pop. A minor achievement, but notable still. And for that imprint the band released a pair of albums, Up In It and Congregation, as well as the first hint that the Whigs had reverence for old-school R&B, a record called Uptown Avondale, an EP of soul covers. The promise of the brass ring brought the band to Elektra, and its first release, 1993's Gentlemen, was widely hailed by critics. But Top 10 lists don't guarantee sales. Still, the band was in a place to capitalize on its critical success and possibly break through to a larger audience in 1996 with Black Love. Unfortunately, the addition of strings and grandiose songs neither caught record buyers' eyes nor improved the relationship between the band and its label. Elektra and the band consequently parted, leaving Dulli to finance the recording of 1965 before the move to Columbia.

For the Whigs's part, the band has toned down the theatrics and has tried to deliver an album that is less flamboyant and easier for mainstream fans to swallow -- 1965 is the least conceptual of its recent records.

"At a certain point," says Dulli, "you get to a point to what is known in the industry as 'preaching to the converted.' We've developed ourselves; this is as far as we've been able to take it. Hopefully Columbia, with their infinite muscle, can push the door open a little bit further; maybe we can take it a little bit further this time. The bottom line is, the state of radio these days is the worst I've ever heard it. If we don't end up getting played on the radio, we don't get played on MTV. And if you don't get played on either of those, you don't go gold -- unless you're Korn."