Whatever happened to Meredith Brooks, best known for the song Bit** and sometimes labeled as a one hit wonder.
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Best known for 90’s anthem ‘Bitch’, Meredith Brooks popularity came during a time in rock when female artists were all the rage - Alanis Morisette, Tracy Bonham Liz Phair, Fionna Apple to name a few and of course you had female fronted bands too like, Garbage and Hole. While Brooks frequently drew comparisons to Alanis Morisette, she claimed she wasn’t an influence on her. Her career would see her take two decades to get her big break. It was in her career she’d cross paths with a legendary punk rock producer who changed her life, her hit song got rejected by her label and she’d open for the Rolling Stones only to quit the tour after a series of disastrous show. Today let’s talk about what appended to Meredith Brooks.
Today’s topic has been requested by several people. If you guys have suggestions for topics you’d like to see us cover, hit the link in the description box below. Born in 1958 and Growing up in Corvallis (Core-vallis), Oregon, Brooks would pickup her older sisters guitar at age 11 and never let go. Her sister pushed Meredith to learn lead guitar and she did. She soon start edplaying in bands in her teen years being influenced the likes of Eric Clapton, Lindsey Buckingham and James Honeymoon Scott. She would admit in an interview with Guitar Player Magazine just how rare female guitar players were with lead guitar players being even rarer. She would tell an interviewer “in the 70’s we didn’t have MTV, we didn’t really have anything visible. Sure, we had magazines, but rarely did you see a band like the Runaways or the Go-Go’s.
I was up in the northwest, so we had Heart. You could read the song credits, but you couldn’t literally look at Nancy Wilson as a guitar player until you actually saw her. She would add to the hartford courant “There was Chrissie Hynde, but she didn’t play lead. Bonnie Raitt, but she played slide.”
It was by the mid 70’s Brooks was playing in bands along the pacific northwest. One of her first bands would be the all girl group Sapphire which hailed from Eugene Oregon. They would tour and did some recording being signed to label CMS Records and even partied with Kiss. The band soon relocated to Seattle thinking they’d find greater success, but by 1982 the band broke up, albeit amicably. It was after the breakup Brooks fronted two more Seattle bands Meredith and the Suspects and another group called Lips. She would then record some music on a European label as Meredith and the Movers before moving to Portland. It was by 1986 she headed south to LA.
Her main focus now, was to develop a solo career and it was in LA she connected with her old Sapphire bandmate Pam Johnson who let her crash on her couch. She would release her self titled debut record in 1986, but it was a commercial failure. It was following the album’s release she befriended former Go Go members Charlotte Caffey and Gia Ciambotti (Chamboati) They would form the female trio The Graces. Caffey’s link to the Go Go’s helped the group nab a major recording deal with A&M records. What’s funny is Caffey vowed never to work with another all female group following the breakup of the Go Go’s in the 80’s, but going solo didn’t feel right, so she formed the Graces after seeing Ciambotti (Chamboati) and Brooks play in other bands around LA. I want to note that the LA Times wrote an article in 1989 about the band, describing just how rare all girl groups were writing and i quote. It’s noteworthy that the Graces even have a contract, considering that record companies usually avoid signing all-women bands. The excuses haven’t changed. They range from “females can’t rock as well as men” to “female fans would rather see male groups.” It’s funny how things would change in just a few short years.
The LA Times article would go on to describe Brooks as playing most of the lead guitar parts on the album and singing some of the lead vocals as well.
They would release their sole album in 1989 and they would have a minor hit with the song ‘Lay Down Your Arms “, which would peak at number 56 on the US charts. Then the song got a subsequent boost in 1993 when former member of the Go Gos Belinda. Carlisle covered it. Despite one modestly successfully single, the album didn’t perform w