“We were out of our collective tree back then and I mean, it’s great we got a couple great records out of that experience, but I can’t imagine reentering that dragon so to speak,” adds Kato. It’s taken many many years and some positive outside forces, but they feel they’re the wiser for that. “I can’t imagine having pulled this one off without their input on what is Urge and what’s not.” And ironically, Kato says it’s new members Quast and Hodgkiss who reminded them of their sound. Roeser says what resulted is true to their origins. It once again took another friend to get Urge Overkill to finally release the album Rock & Roll Submarine. But 7 years passed, and they had yet to put out any new material. They recorded more than 30 songs and toured. “Like Nash will have a part, I’ll have a part and we think they’re completely different songs, but we put them together and something else happens that’s more interesting than one person’s idea of the song would have been.” “Sometimes we experiment with putting different parts together and sometimes the most unlikely combinations end up being the most interesting songs,” adds Roeser. But the band says they soon found their old chemistry. With a new lineup that includes Bonn Quast and Hadji Hodgkiss, Urge Overkill played a handful of dates in 2004. But in 2003, a friend urged them to reunite. And the once close friends didn’t speak for 6 years. “ Dragon was recorded in two separate studios, under one roof, you know that’s how, that’s how ugly the divorce had gotten.” “Towards the end we could not literally, literally we could not be in the same room,” explains Kato. But the group was suffering from ego and drug issues and by then the band’s relationship was beyond repair. Still, the guys say Geffen offered to put out one more record. And it’s a sort of disjointed dark record.” “And by the time we were recording our next record we were not getting a long very well and that’s reflected in the grooves. “ Saturation was sort of consciously and almost kind of tongue and cheek was a commercial sound, it was kind of slick and sunny,” says Roeser. But by industry standards, the album bombed. With the added name recognition, their next album Exit the Dragon, should have been a hit. He’s quite sure he wants your, you know, $5 version.’” “I think our reaction at the time, wasn’t it, ‘Are you sure that he wants our version? He must mean Neil’s version?’ ‘No, no. Kato says it was a surprise because it’s a song from their first EP. Legend has it Tarantino found it in a cut-out bin while in Amsterdam. Their song, “Sister Havana,” made the radio waves, and their cover of the Neil Diamond song “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” became a classic off the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. It wasn’t really a realistic aim.”īut they took off. “That was our joke, that we were gonna make it big. “God knows when we picked up guitars the idea of us doing it as careers was a ridiculous dream and it was, we sort of made a joke of it,” explains Roeser. Their tongue-in-cheek rock star pomp, penchant for wearing flamboyant suits, and medallions irked some people. Shortly beforehand, Urge Overkill was opening for Nirvana. That album, along with breakout albums by Liz Phair and Smashing Pumpkins, put Chicago on the burgeoning alternative rock map. In 1993 they released their major label debut, Saturation. What the band unwittingly signed up for in the early-‘90s was the crest of a Chicago music wave. Really, it’s in the job description – you just don’t read that fine print when you sign up,” says Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato. “To have every rock cliché in the book befall the band, you know I mean it’s always money, ego, drugs, what have you, they’re all clichés. So how did it happen, and what’s different the second time round? For WBEZ, Althea Legaspi has the story of their return. But just when they were about to hit serious music heights the Chicago band imploded. Urge Overkill was in overdrive in the mid-nineties. To stay up to date on the stories that matter. WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information.
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