December 7th, 1998

New Radicals Move Away From Comments About Manson & Hole

New Radicals, the latest moniker adopted by musician Gregg Alexander, are burning up the alternative airwaves with "You Get What You Give," a song that manages to sound like the equally tuneful but derivative World party and Todd Rundgren, while slamming some of today's most popular acts. This week, the song is No. 11 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.

"Fashion mag shoots/ With the aid of eight Dust Brothers, Beck, Hanson/ Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson/ You're all fakes/ Run to your mansions/ Come around/ We'll kick your ass in," Alexander sings towards the cut's end.

It seems like a pretty cut-and-dried putdown to us, but when Alexander spoke to myLAUNCH, the artist seemed to back down from the attack, leaving us wondering if perhaps the powers-that-be at the Universal Music Group--which owns a stake in the labels that release titles by the New Radicals, Hole, Beck, and Manson--got upset that the new kid on the block was poking fun at their bread and butter.

"That lyric is not specifically about any of those artists," Alexander said. "It's more of a statement about where society is now. That's why there is a mention of health insurance rip-offs. There's a statement in there regarding the FDA. It's just a look at where society is now across the board. I think that lyric has been misinterpreted in the context of the more important part of it, which is the line preceding the Hanson line...That's the homerun of the lyric for me."

The line which Alexander referred to includes the lyrics, "Health insurance rip-off lying/ FDA big bankers buying," for what it's worth--but back to the rock star putdown: is Alexander running scared?

"I'm not backing away from anything," he said. "I've just got bigger fish to fry. There are a lot more relevant things going on in the world than that. There's people starving to death in Third War countries. I've got better things to do than get into philosophical arguments with people driving around in limousines."

When we informed Alexander that Marilyn Manson was heard in a radio interview saying he wants to "shoot [Alexander] in the head" (in a subsequent radio interview good ol' Marilyn revised it to "crack his skull"), Alexander laughed, but declined to comment on the record, other than saying, "I try to take the high road with things like that." Later, after a rambling off-the-record conversation, he stated, "There has to be something meaningful on the other end or quite frankly I have no interest in it. I'm interested in getting on a rollercoaster, but I'm not interested in the tail wagging the dog or going into performance art where it stops being fun...There's a part of me that has a bigger picture about what I want to do with my life and it's certainly not about throwing pebbles on the playground."

While New Radicals, whose debut album is titled 'Maybe you've been brainwashed too', is a new band name, this isn't Alexander's first attempt at rock stardom. Under his own name, the Grosse Pointe, Mich.-bred musician recorded as a solo artist in the late '80s and early '90s for A&M and Epic. His songs have also appeared on albums by former Go-Go Belinda Carlisle and Big Bad Mama II and All In The Family/ Archie Bunker's Place co-star Danielle Brisenois. The latter returns the favor on 'Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too' with backing vocals and piano.

Alexander's 1989 A&M album Michigan Rain was "dead on arrival," Alexander said. His second stab, 1992's 'Intoxifornication', came out on Epic "at the height of grunge when it was hip to kill your parents," so it was ignored. Alexander said he and Brisebois had a "kindred spirit type thing" going, which lead to their collaboration. Still, Alexander would like to think of 'Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too' as a new beginning. "This is really like my first record," he stated.

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