Smack my ass up

A million Americans can’t be wrong. Can they?

Well, in a world where Creed sell out arenas while Mark Lanegan plays the clubs, massive outbreaks of bad taste are not only possible, but predominant.

Case in point: Puddle Of Mudd’s debut album Come Clean has gone platinum in the states, selling 140,000 copies in its first week of release last September, and they look set to abduct the livestock on this side of the pond too – if you believe Kerrang! and Metal Hammer anyway. The quartet, neither nu-metal nor old punk, but more a sort of grunge afterbirth with classic ’70s FM rock tendencies, have hit paydirt with their single ‘Control’, a dysfunctional ditty whose breakdown verse (“I love the way you look at me/I love the way you smack my ass/I love the dirty things you do”) led to the tune being nicknamed The Smack My Ass Song by folk ringing up to request it on the radio. Meanwhile, singer Wes Scantlin, with his blonde locks and red-raw voice, has been compared to Kurt Cobain.

In his dreams. Any resemblances to Nirvana are as cosmetic as the aforementioned Creed’s to Pearl Jam. Scantlin’s pipes are impressive enough in a James Hetfield kinda way, but it’s the tone of his performances that rankles. Cobain’s angst was based in self-loathing, whereas Scantlin is prone to the kind of casual wimmen-hatin’ baby-done-me-wrong bullshit redolent of bare-chested cocksmen like Bad Company or Whitesnake. It’s there in songs like ‘She Hates Me’ (“She hates me/La-la-la-la/She fuckin’ hates me”). It’s in the frequency with which the singer spits “bitch” as an ad-libbed aside throughout the band’s London show. And it’s in the ‘Control’ video, directed by POM patron Fred Durst, a cheap and nasty promo whose storyboard might go like this: Wes fights with his girlfriend/She throws him out of her truck/He hitchhikes down the road/She relents and picks him up/He fakes a reconciliation in order to snatch her car keys and throw them into the brush/He walks off looking smug to meet up with his band and play a half-empty club show.

This is not the PC-piss-taking or so-dumb-it’s-funny wordplay of AC/DC or Steven Tyler. This is just kinda… unpleasant.

Here in London, Scantlin is not on call to answer these charges: he’s presiding over auditions for tonight’s support act, a sort of Pop Idol-with-Marshall-stacks A&R experiment. But when I tell drummer Greg Upchurch – an immensely likable character by the way, and a huge Flaming Lips fan – that ‘Control’ reminds me of the bronze age of Me-Tarzan-You-Jane metal, he looks aghast and says this:

“I know what you’re talkin’ about: ‘She’s my cherry pie’, that kinda shit. Well, that’s depressing. We didn’t have any input in that first video. The second one we had more input, and the third one, we’re collaborating with Fred on it. That was my first video experience and I don’t like ’em. I felt silly. They’re important, but I don’t want them to misrepresent what we’re doing. But long as we don’t turn into the Smack My Ass band (that’s alright), ’cos if you listen to the whole record there’s nothing else about smackin’ ass or anything like that.

“Hopefully by the time this single goes away and the second one comes out people will kinda…’cos they have in the states, it used to be The Smack My Ass Song, now it’s just turned into Puddle Of Mudd. You haven’t seen us live have you? It’s a lot different than the record.”

Unfortunately, as I find out that night at the Mean Fiddler, it’s not. It’s the same, only louder, and with a higher “bitch” count. Earlier, Greg told me this:

“If you listen to our songs it’s all about girls pissin’ us off, or pissin’ Wes off, he just has a knack for getting into bad relationships. So we try to keep him in bad relationships, keep him bummed out. Shit, that’s been the blues, that’s been in every song forever: ‘Bitch did me wrong’.”

But Puddle Of Mudd are not old, impoverished black blues musicians surviving a society that oppressed and emasculated them. They’re a tight, professional but average rock band whose debut album often sounds like it was designed by committee. It’s worth noting that the band were assembled rather than fell together: Fred Durst signed Wes to his Flawless label after the latter blagged his way backstage on the Family Values tour and handed a demo to Fred’s security guard. The two then handpicked the rest of the group, including guitarist Paul Phillip and bassist Doug John Ardito.

“Fred’s a smart businessman,” says Greg, who served time with Chris Cornell before his current gig. “He listens to every single CD and tape that comes his way. He wants to find those bands that he thinks are gonna do well. To tell you the truth, I’ve never bought a Limp Bizkit record in my life, but somehow I like ’em now! I think everybody that actually sits down and meets him for the first time gains a respect for him because he doesn’t say anything he doesn’t feel, he doesn’t bullshit.”

If you trust Fred Durst’s taste, are young enough to have missed out on the likes of Alice In Chains and have issues with the opposite sex, Puddle Of Mudd might just sound like the music of the spheres, the dog’s bollocks.

But me, I wouldn’t touch ’em with yours.