PETAL TO THE METTLE Laurie Lindeen
Dec 08, 2008
The Zuzu's Petals frontwoman tells her story anew.
BY BRIAN BAKER
In 1988, Laurie Lindeen, Coleen Elwood and Linda Pitmon made the fateful decision to start a band. Relocating from Madison, Wisconsin to scene friendly Minneapolis, Minnesota, the ladies made a holy racket as Zuzu's Petals, the name taken from pivotal scenes in It's a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey's existence is both denied and reaffirmed by the remnants of his daughter's wilting flower.
Zuzu's Petals birthed a few singles, two albums (1992's When No One's Looking and 1994's The Music of Your Life) and toured relentlessly. What wasn't known, beyond the band's family circle, was that Lindeen, at 24, had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis months before Zuzu's Petals' launch. After losing sight in one eye, sensation in one side of her body and a long period of intense physical and steroid therapy, Lindeen strapped on the guitar she was still learning to play, stepped on stage with crippling stage fright and tremulously began her rock adventure.
A dozen years after Zuzu's Petals' unheralded dissolution, Lindeen completed Petal Pusher, her incisively candid 2007 memoir. The book's rave reviews led to this year's Petals' anthology, Kicking Our Own Asses, issued by Rhino Handmade. With Atria Books' paperback edition of Petal Pusher hitting shelves in September, Lindeen prepares for another road stand-doing book signings with a fresh perspective on her accomplishments. "For the first time ever," says Lindeen, "for something I've done creatively, I want to tell everybody because I think it's pretty good."
Clearly one unique aspect of Lindeen's life has been her long relationship with Paul Westerberg. They dated during her Zuzu's Petals tenure, married shortly after the band's break-up and welcomed their son Johnny in 1998. Westerberg's slavish fan base was often problematic for Lindeen, who didn't want to exploit her paramour's notoriety to advance her band then-or her book now.
"My agent and everybody were like, ‘You've got to use whatever you have,'" says Lindeen. "I was like, ‘You don't understand. This is going to draw negativity to me.' I'm trying to establish myself as an artist in a different realm because I couldn't do it in the same realm as him. People are so weird and culty about him."
At Petal Pusher's end, Lindeen recounts Westerberg's disinterest in a publisher's request for a rock life essay and his suggestion that she take the assignment. It totally altered her perception of what she should be doing. "I finally found my niche," she laughs. "That was so much more satisfying than the songs I wasn't writing. That was the beginning of me figuring out that maybe I should sit in a room by myself and write."
Although Zuzu's Petals did reunite briefly to promote Petal Pusher's initial hardcover release, Elwood has otherwise dropped out of music entirely, Pitmon now drums behind Steve Wynn in the Miracle 3, and Lindeen scuttles the idea of a more permanent reunion. She does, however, admit that she still picks up the guitar on occasion and enjoys it more these days. "Paul bought me a Strat for Christmas," she says. "Last summer I did a little playing when the book launched and Steve Wynn threw me a Stratocaster and all these dudes said, ‘You don't suck. You just had the wrong guitar.'"
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