Go-Go fan Tobi Vail wanted to rock with women. Bikini Kill was the result. – Daily News
Before Tobi Vail co-founded Bikini Kill in Olympia, Washington, in 1990, and before that band and their Jigsaw fanzine helped launch the Riot Grrrl movement, she was a young go-go fan who just wanted to know where all the other rock ‘n’ roll girls were.
“Before I was into punk or hardcore or independent music, the Go-Go’s were my favorite band and I was part of the fan club,” Vail said recently in a phone call from her home in Olympia. “I was pretty young then. I think I first saw them right after my 13th birthday.”
“I was completely obsessed with the Go-Go’s,” she says. “Even though they were commercially successful, I didn’t really understand why people were constantly making fun of them or badmouthing them, at least teenagers. And I don’t think serious critics took them seriously either.”
“So I developed a kind of early feminist critique of the world or something,” Vail continues. “I remember visiting my father when he lived in Oakland. I went to Berkeley, went to the record stores and asked, ‘Are there any bands that are all women? Or all girls?’
“They said, ‘Oh yeah, there’s the Go-Go’s, and there’s the Bangles, and here’s the Pandora’s.’ I asked, ‘Are there only three?’ and they said, ‘Oh, that’s a good question.’ And they had tried to find more, but they couldn’t find any.”
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In 1983, at the age of 14, Vail discovered the punk and hardcore scene in what was then Olympia and threw herself into it. She went to every show she could get and always – always – looked for girls like her in the bands on stage.
“We had Bon (Von Wheelie) from Girl Trouble,” she says. “Heather (Lewis) from Beat Happening. Donna Dresch was in a lot of bands; she was a teenager. Patty Schemel (later of Hole) was there. There were just people here and there.”
“You stood in the audience and thought, ‘Okay, I’ve been here for four hours and I’ve seen a girl on stage. But there are other girls in the audience.’
“Then I asked myself the question,” says Vail. “What would the world be like if there were as many girls on stage as there were in the audience? I still think about that.”
Bikini Kill, which Vail formed in 1990 with singer Kathleen Hanna, bassist Kathi Wilcox and guitarist Billy Karren, quickly stormed to the forefront of the riot grrrl scene that also gave birth to Olympia. Their genuine feminist anger shocked the punk world and made the group’s three women heroes to many, even as some angrily dismissed them with misogynistic insults and sometimes threats of violence.
The band split up in the late ’90s but reunited in 2019 without a cart and has been touring regularly since then. They’ll be coming to the Wiltern in Los Angeles for two shows on Wednesday and Thursday, August 14-15.
In an interview condensed for length and clarity, Vail talked about her beginnings in the Olympia music scene, co-founding Bikini Kill, why the band eventually broke up, and what it’s like to tour today as a woman in her mid-fifties.
Q: What’s it like getting back together as adults to tour and play together again?
A: When we started, I was only 21. I think Kathi was 20 and Kathleen was 21, turning 22. Now Kathleen and I are 55, so it’s a lot different. I remember when I was 25 and we played a show at ABC No Rio in New York City. And I thought, “Man, I’m too old for this,” like, “What am I doing with my life?”, you know?
Then Mike Watt (of Minutemen and Firehose) showed up at the show and I was like, “Oh man, he’s super old and he’s still doing it. Maybe I can keep going a little longer.” He was probably 35. It’s all relative. As you get older, you realize that all these self-imposed things just aren’t real.
But playing shows now is great because we’ve always been an all-ages band and the shows we’ve been able to play have been big enough to appeal to all ages. A lot of different generations from all over the world have shown up and that’s been very cool and weird.
Q: It must be interesting to look out and see people who were there when you were 20 or 21, and also people who are the same age or younger now.
A: Then there are our older counterparts. I don’t know if you heard, but we just added Frightwig to our show in San Francisco, and they’re a little bit older than us, so we’re not even the oldest people in the room. It’s kind of overwhelming (to see the different age groups). And then people bring their little kids, like really little kids.
Q: Going back to the time before Bikini Kill, what were your connections to the Northwest music scene back then?
A: Oh, I’m very involved. I got into the Olympia music scene at 14 during the first hardcore punk era, at the end of the first era in 1983. I wasn’t just involved in some way, it was my whole life. I went to every show, I knew everybody. That’s how I ended up getting a radio show (on the community station KOAS at Evergreen State University).
I probably started playing in bands when I was 14, maybe a little earlier, so I was in the scene for about seven years before Bikini Kill started.
Q: What attracted you to the local scene, the bands and the music?
A: It was a mix because Olympia is small. So any kind of live music that was original songs, not cover bands, fell into the realm of shows I went to. My parents are young and they were into music. My dad played in a band in the ’60s. Then he played in a Northwest garage band in the same style as the Sonics.
In the late ’70s, he started playing in a power pop new wave band and recorded these great original songs in our living room. It wasn’t much different than the music I wanted to hear. And there was a drum kit and everything.
Q: Now let’s get to the formation of Bikini Kill. How did you, Kathi and Kathleen find each other and realize that you could form a band together?
A: The three of us were all in college at the same time, but we didn’t meet at Evergreen. I met Kathi downtown, just working at a sandwich shop. I met Kathleen when she was doing spoken word and organizing shows. I can’t remember exactly how it all came about. I think it was when I was trying to start a new band and Kathleen was too. And then we talked about working together and I thought, “Hey, maybe Kathi would be good.”
Q: And when the band got going and Bikini Kill started touring more extensively, what was that like? I read that while you had a lot of female fans who liked you, there was also a lot of misogyny in the clubs.
A: Well, people responded to us very strongly very quickly. I kind of knew it was going to happen. I knew we were good, or I believed we were good. I think we just had a real attitude, and that’s what drives people, you know? We really had to fight for our right to exist, because not only were we young women in a male-dominated world, but we were also very open about our feminism.
Kathleen was very open and spoke directly about sexual abuse and rape and things that people just didn’t talk about, especially before the #MeToo era. We were like, “What? What? That’s punk! That’s part of being a punk.”
But for some people, it wasn’t their definition. And depending on the show, sometimes there were fights, real violence, threats. Sometimes it was just funny. So it was and is a mix.
Q: Why did the band break up in 1997?
A: I think we all really respect each other, but it’s hard to get along and be in a collective like we were for seven years. There was a lot of conflict and we didn’t really know how to deal with it yet. We were under a lot of pressure. Still, we survived a lot. We survived our friends dying of drug overdoses or suicide. We didn’t have a lot of money and we all survived winters in the Northwest, which are very rainy. So everything felt like a struggle.
We had a list of things we wanted to do. Touring Japan was the last thing on my list and we toured Japan and I was like, “Hey, we’ve done everything on this list. So, I don’t know, we could do it all again.” But I don’t know. I was just burned out.
Q: You said that sometimes people say, “Oh, the music world is much better for women today,” but that’s not necessarily true, is it? What’s better? What’s not?
A: I think the music scene, especially the underground scene in Olympia, is super queer, super trans-inclusive and really freaky. And completely different from the 80s, although it was great back then too, albeit in a different way.
Sure, things have changed in some ways, but we still live in the same society. As a feminist, your goal is to end sexual assault and change society so that everyone has a place to live and is free from economic hardship and racism.
We definitely don’t live in that society. I think we’re all still working in the feminist space to change the whole society, not just the music scene.
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