Jellyfish (band)
Jellyfish was an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1989. Led by songwriters Andy Sturmer (drums, vocals) and Roger Manning (keyboards, vocals), the group was known for their blend of 1960s classic rock and XTC-style power pop.[4] They released two albums, Bellybutton (1990) and Spilt Milk (1993), that proved influential to many subsequent acts in a similar vein.[1]
Jellyfish
1989–1994
- Andy Sturmer
- Roger Manning
- Jason Falkner
- Chris Manning
- Tim Smith
- Eric Dover
Sturmer and Manning met in high school and shared an admiration for jazz, post-punk, and British pop music. Following a stint as members of Beatnik Beatch, they quit the group to continue songwriting with one another and formed Jellyfish. They were initially supported by Jason Falkner (guitar) and Roger's brother Chris (bass). After the tour for Bellybutton, those musicians were replaced by Tim Smith (bass) and Eric Dover (guitar). The group viewed Spilt Milk as their "masterpiece" and the fulfillment of their original grandiose vision for the band, emphasizing bombasticity, vocal harmonies, orchestration, and studio experimentation.
During their five-year existence, Jellyfish attracted critical acclaim and a devoted cult following, but struggled against prevailing rock trends (hair metal and grunge). Their only charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Baby's Coming Back". Three other songs were top-twenty hits on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart: "The King Is Half-Undressed", "That Is Why", and "The Ghost at Number One". Elsewhere, they had six songs appear on the UK Singles Chart, although none reached higher than the top thirty.
Jellyfish broke up in 1994 due to poor record sales, Sturmer's discomfort with his role as frontman, and artistic conflicts between the two songwriters. Manning subsequently formed Imperial Drag with Dover, and pursued careers as a solo artist and session musician. Sturmer worked with the Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi and continues to compose music for animated television programs. From 2017 to 2022, the trio of Manning, Dover, and Smith recorded together as the Lickerish Quartet.
Formation[edit]
While attending Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California in the early 1980s, Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning met and bonded over their love for jazz.[5][6] Later in the decade, they joined Beatnik Beatch,[7] a group fronted by Chris Ketner.[8] Sturmer was the group's drummer, singer, and songwriter, while Manning was keyboardist. The duo soon began collaborating with one another, writing compositions that were stylistically different from the songs the band was producing at the time.[8] As a side gig, the two also briefly wrote commercial jingles for companies such as Montana Hawk Shooting Range and Shutterbug Camera Store.[9] In August 1989, a year after Atlantic Records released Beatnik Beatch's eponymous debut album,[8] Manning and Sturmer left the group to continue songwriting with one another.[7] At this juncture, they were still signed with Atlantic Records, but grew dissatisfied with the label's lack of interest for the new project. Virtually their only advocate at the label was A&R man John S. Carter, who became their manager after he was soon dismissed from the company.[10]
Sturmer was the group's de facto leader and frontman.[11] Although Sturmer and Manning were each credited for 50% of their writing collaborations, typically Sturmer's contributions were musical and lyrical, while Manning's were only musical.[12] Manning commented: "Andy was perfectly capable of writing completed, finished great songs on his own. I could write lyrics, but it was a painstaking process."[13] In Sturmer's summation: "It's not collaborative on every level. I write all the lyrics, but we write the music together. The way Roger and I write is that we embellish each other's ideas, like painting a picture. We grew up together and had a lot of the same records in our collection, so we don't have to explain our offbeat ideas to each other."[14]
Jason Falkner was the lead guitarist for the Three O'Clock, a Los Angeles-based Paisley Underground band. He originally put a newspaper advertisement looking for "like-minded musicians" influenced by XTC, David Bowie, and the Blue Nile. Manning responded to Falkner's ad and the two met to collaborate. Nothing initially came out of the meeting. However, once Manning and Sturmer left Beatnik Beatch, Manning reconnected with Falkner to see if he was interested in joining the new group. Falkner was persuaded by the prospect of a major-label deal.[7] He joined with the understanding – promised by Manning without consulting Sturmer – that he would be a contributing songwriter. Tensions arose immediately, as Sturmer was not ready to accommodate this arrangement, while Falkner struggled to connect with Sturmer on a personal level.[15] Manning later called Falkner "the perfect part of the Jellyfish triangle during that period of our evolution".[3]
The name "Jellyfish" came at the suggestion of an Atlantic executive, but was initially ignored by the group. Once they finished recording for their first album and had to pick a name for themselves, Sturmer decided to go with Jellyfish, for lack of any better alternative.[16] According to journalist Paul Rees, the name was chosen to evoke the feeling of something graceful, yet amorphous and ephemeral.[7]
Breakup[edit]
During the tour for Spilt Milk, Sturmer and Manning grew increasingly distant as friends.[44] On their return home, the two songwriters independently wrote material for a third album, provisionally titled Nausea Trois.[45] By then, they were drifting apart musically.[7] Manning remembered that, prior, they would bond over albums such as Paul McCartney's Ram or the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle; however, "it was clear that none of that was happening anymore."[46] He said that he was "rediscovering my love of [...] high-energy, fun melodic pop with attitude. And Andy was Leonard Cohen. That was it."[3] When Sturmer presented him a country ballad song, he accordingly "left in tears because I had zero interest in recording it."[7] Sturmer felt that Manning had outgrown the partnership, and for his part, was fearful that Manning's new songs would likely inspire journalists to persistently compare the band to Alice Cooper.[47]
Another reason the band broke up, in Manning's words, was Sturmer's discomfort with being "in the spotlight".[24][33] Sturmer resented his role as leader and frontman, especially when it came to business matters, and his wish for Manning to take more initiative in the band's leadership had become a source of rancor.[44] However, Sturmer rejected the idea of Tim Smith contributing as a third songwriter, as Smith recalled, "I think that was enough for Roger, partially, among other things, to shut it all down at that point anyway. [...] I felt like I was the one that kind of tried to at least keep the band together in some way, and after that response, it was like, 'Whatever, if it happens it happens, I've done all that I can do here.'"[48] Financial pressures also loomed over the band.[33]
On April 4,[10] Manning phoned Sturmer and said "I think we're done", to which Sturmer responded: "I've been thinking the same thing."[49] One month later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the group had disintegrated due to "creative differences".[50] In a June Denver Post article, Falkner responded to the news: "It's ironic. Let's just say that I didn't have a moment of silence when I heard about it."[51]
Aftermath[edit]
1994–2000s[edit]
Soon after Jellyfish broke up, Manning formed the Moog Cookbook and Imperial Drag, the latter group with Eric Dover. He has also released a few solo records and worked as a session musician.[7] Some of his songs proposed for the potential third Jellyfish album were reworked for his solo records, but none made it into Imperial Drag.[46] Tim Smith formed Umajets and recorded the album Demolotion with help from Manning and Dover. It was released in late 1995 to little critical notice.[52]
Sturmer retreated from the public eye, but continued working as a songwriter for cartoons such as Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Teen Titans, and Ben 10. In 2004, Falkner unexpectedly reconnected with Sturmer at a Los Angeles studio: "He said he'd had a premonition that he was going to see me that day. Then he told me he was sorry for never having given me a chance. I was floored. We exchanged phone numbers, but neither of us has ever used them."[7]
Fan Club, a four-CD box set, was released in 2002 by power pop label Not Lame Recordings. The set consists of demos, rarities, interview excerpts, and live performances. By the end of the year, the label had sold out three pressings of the set (8,000 copies).[53] The set went out of print within months due to the expiration of the label's rights to the Jellyfish catalog, making it a collector's item.[54]
In 2004 or 2005, Coachella organizers invited Manning to reunite Jellyfish for a one-off performance at the festival. Manning advised the organizers to consult Sturmer first. Sturmer, through his lawyer, responded he would not accept the offer regardless of any amount of money involved.[55] In a 2008 interview, Manning stated: "Except for Andy, we all speak to one another. [...] nobody is interested in working with Andy in a personal or creative capacity. It would serve no purpose, but I don’t say that with any animosity or sadness."[33]
Manning and Falkner reteamed for the albums Logan's Sanctuary (2000) and TV Eyes (2006), but neither were commercially successful.[56] On July 25, 2008, Falkner joined Manning onstage for a performance of "That Is Why" at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. In January 2010, they performed a few shows as the opening act for Cheap Trick, playing solo and Jellyfish songs, and as members of Cheap Trick's supporting band.[57]
2010s–present[edit]
In 2011, Manning reached out to Sturmer via e-mail. Manning later commented: "[I] felt it was long overdue. In doing some personal growth, I felt I had some amends to make with him that were going to be healing for myself and for both of us, ideally. I'm very happy I did that, and I think Andy was happy as well. He didn’t talk much about it afterwards. Just said, 'Thank you very much for this.'"[13]
In January 2012, Omnivore Recordings reissued Bellybutton and Spilt Milk on limited-edition colored vinyl; the pressings sold out within days. In June, they followed with Live At Bogart's, a complete 1991 performance that originally aired on Westwood One, then the Record Store Day release Stack-a-Tracks, containing the backing tracks of Bellybutton and Spilt Milk. In 2013, Omnivore issued Radio Jellyfish, a collection of 1993 radio performances in which the band played acoustically.[58] In 2015, the label reissued expanded editions of Bellybutton and Spilt Milk that included many of the tracks previously released on Fan Club.[59][60]
In 2016, Not Lame Media published the band's first biography, Brighter Day: A Jellyfish Story, written by Craig Dorfman. Reviewing the book for PopMatters, Eric Rovie wrote that it was a "balanced" and "well-researched" work that presents the principal members "in conflicting but complementary lights: brilliant, driven, and talented on the one hand, but also selfish, overly-introspective, and obnoxiously perfectionist in others. The music speaks for itself."[61]
According to a journalist in 2015, Sturmer refuses interviews about his past or current work.[3] However, Sturmer participated in interviews for Brighter Day.[62] In a 2014 interview, Manning said that he had not talked to Sturmer in two decades, and ruled out the idea that he would ever write songs with him again.[7] In 2015, he said that they did communicate, but only regarding business matters. Asked about the prospect of a reunion, he said he was uncertain of the possibility and explained: "In general, I think it is lack of enough interest on Andy’s part. I know many people that work with him in film and TV always tell me how happy and successful he is. Last I heard he had four or five shows on Disney that he was scoring."[13]
In 2017, Manning, Smith, and Dover reunited for a new band called the Lickerish Quartet.[63] The musicians had not played together since 1994[64] and are scheduled to release three EPs from early 2020 to mid 2021.[63] Sturmer was not offered to participate in the project. In a 2020 interview, Manning commented that Sturmer remains uninterested "in any kind of post-Jellyfish activity, and that’s fine."[65]
Timeline
Jellyfish discography
2
4
3
10
2
Bibliography