It's safe to assume that if the Pixies hadn't gotten back together last year, the re-forming of the original Dinosaur lineup (which was forced to add the Jr. after the release of its second album) would be the most unexpected band reunion in the history of underground rock. Though the group—singer-guitarist J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow, and drummer Murph—recorded a handful of influential albums in the second half of the '80s, and played ear-shattering shows that were burned into the memory of devoted listeners, the initial trio was just as well known for the way Barlow was kicked out of the band (Mascis and Murph told him the band was breaking up, even though they'd already replaced him and booked an Australian tour) and his subsequent public anger. In addition to suing Mascis for back royalties and keeping the acrimony alive in interviews, Barlow wrote some pointed songs about his ex-bandmate, recording them with his side-project-turned-main-project Sebadoh.
But time reportedly heals all wounds, and after Merge agreed to reissue the band's first three records—1985's Dinosaur Jr., 1987's You're Living All Over Me, and 1988's Bug—Mascis' management jumped at the chance to get the original trio back on the road. That became easier after some recent pleasant encounters between Mascis and Barlow, including a one-song reunion of their pre-Dinosaur band Deep Wound at a benefit show last year. Nearly 16 years after Barlow was given the boot—and more than a decade after Murph left Mascis following Lollapalooza '93—the '80s version of Dinosaur Jr. is playing its back catalog for intrigued audiences all over the world. The A.V. Club spoke separately with all three members between the band's first 10 shows and its current North American jaunt, which includes an appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend.
The Onion: Are you surprised that the original trio is back together?
J Mascis: Yeah. I guess it was just up to me. I know the other guys wanted to do it. Yeah, it's pretty surprising.
Murph: Yeah, I'm really surprised. Not that we're back together—that's not too surprising. It's how everyone's changed. I didn't think people would change as much as they have. And mellowed out. I'm kind of the cynic, I just always think, "Oh, people must just stay the same," and I'm amazed how much change has gone on.
Lou Barlow: Yeah, I guess. But the actual decision to really make this happen came after I had hung out with J a few times at shows he was playing or shows that we both played. We kind of have a fair amount of people in common that we either know quite well or work with mutually, so the ground had been considerably softened. I saw J play for the first time since I was kicked out of the band maybe about a year ago—we had both seen the Mission Of Burma reunion, and it was kind of like, "God, it was pretty good, they pretty much sounded the same as they used to." When I saw that, I was like, "Huh, I bet Dinosaur probably could just step onstage and sound approximately like what we used to sound like." If you told me four years ago that Dinosaur were going to get back together, yes, I would be insanely surprised. To actually be back, for me—you know, I was kicked out. And it was very personal: It was like, "I don't like you. You talk too much. You're out of the band." I wasn't kicked out for musical reasons.
O: When did the reunion process begin?
JM: A couple years ago, I played with the Asheton brothers and Mike Watt—we were in London playing Stooges songs, and Lou was there, and I asked Lou if he wanted to sing a song. And he was apologizing then for some of his past behaviors—that was the first time he seemed to have mellowed out a bit.
LB: I couldn't hear anything. Actually, that experience made me feel like I would never want to play with J. [Laughs.] 'Cause when I went up and did it, all you could hear was J. It was ridiculous. You couldn't hear Ron Asheton playing at all. It was just like Mike Watt playing a hundred million notes on the bass and J playing a bazillion notes on the guitar, and these two older guys, the two legends of the group—not that they all weren't legends—but the "1969" guys are completely drowned out by these two guys that just cannot stop playing. [Laughs.] And I couldn't hear a word that I was singing. And although I knew the song really well, I found that the extreme volume actually blew every single memory of the song out of my head. The singing with him onstage was pretty goofy, but the part that was cool was just hanging out backstage with him, and just kind of getting to know J again, and talking to his wife. His wife is really friendly. I would just ask him, "Can you hear anything when you're playing, J?" [Laughs.] "Are you wearing earplugs?" It was funny, 'cause ever since I was in Dinosaur and playing that loud, I went through a lot of different phases of playing bass really differently, or playing acoustic or playing guitar in Folk Implosion and Sebadoh. I kind of went through a whole lot of different changes. It was weird to get back up onstage all of the sudden and go, "Oh yeah, there's people that just play loud—that's what they do." [Laughs.] "Wow, this is tough." But I think just being near him was really important for me, just to begin to let him become a person again to me, because I had a really hard time after, with how much ambivalence I held about him. Like kind of worshipping him and really adoring him on a personal level, but then just hating what he had done to me. And that's where I apologized for yelling at him a few years before that.
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