‘There was a reason she wore boots. She wanted to have a presence.’

A free excerpt (and cassette playlist curated by Kristen) from part two of 'I Know How To Live: The Life of Kristen Pfaff' (released in full for monthly subscribers on the 10th)

Part two will take us from Kristen’s transformation post her marriage, into her activism years how that fed into her going to university. At university Kristen Pfaff become a highly influential protestor whose legacy is still apparently today and we finally get to focus on that. It also take us into Kristen joining various art-rock projects and learning about the power of performance, as we see in this short excerpt where Kristen ‘performs’ in a pristine art gallery…

Pfaff had an uncanny ability to push herself to the fore of projects, once she’d created or ingratiated herself within them. She’d make it look like it had just happened that way but the savvier ones in her midst tended to note it would often play out that way and that it must have been her intention.

The impression is that her natural charisma found her take centre stage, but there was a strategy and will behind this tendency too. One night her band with boyfriend Mike Huber, Sunny In Chernobyl, visited a local industrial garbage dump and pulled up bed springs, circular saws and long, heavy threads of chain. At their next gig- in an art gallery- an experimental, even performance art side to Pfaff would come to the fore. ‘She liked being the centre of attention,’ says Huber. ‘It was the first show she did with us and she was the one coming out first. I think she wanted to be…I don’t know if ‘star’ is the right word. She had this charisma.’

It’s a sentiment her previous boyfriend Robert Slammon can relate to, when he ‘heard a story of her grabbing a tambourine and getting up on stage,’ with him thinking, ‘Oh Kristen, you’re seeking attention [again].’

‘That night the oily, clanking machinery they had salvaged was brought into the pristine white cube of the gallery space. Saw blades were attached to the ceiling, gas tanks worked into the drums. Huber recalls Pfaff, in a baby doll dress, seeming to skip rope on top of bubble wrap that she had laid out under the audience. But on closer inspection, the seeming soft femininity of the girls skipping rope was in fact something much harder, and tougher- steel chains. It soon became apparent, too, that the clanging that was filling the air was due to the fact that Pfaff was bouncing on a sheet of pure metal that had been laid on the ground. ‘There was a reason she wore boots,’ Huber says. ‘She wanted to have a presence.’

Huber’s bandmates in the fledgling band Hekula- who he drove into New York to do shows with- all struggled with heroin. Pfaff and Huber would visit members of the band Drool in the New York scene. Pfaff, he notes, was disturbed by how many musicians there were using heroin, with ‘two guitarists, a bassist and singer in one band either leaving abruptly to score or nodding off.’ Her words, to Huber were ‘Ew- get me away from this.’ She not only considered heavy drug use as anathema, but presented to Huber that it was something which repelled her.

He also recalls knowing someone in Boston who was an addict and making a comment about it taking their soul, hollowing them out, or words to that effect. Heroin use was of a major concern to the couple given that Huber’s brother Thomas was in recovery. Pfaff and Huber had stayed with Thomas whilst his addiction was at its worst, so Pfaff saw up close the horrors that heroin inflicted not just on addicts but on those close to them as well. ‘I remember her saying how awful heroin was,’ Huber recalls. The experience of Huber’s brother seemed to offer a lesson Pfaff did not heed. Other aspects of herself would prove more powerful. But, it turned out Pfaff’s cautious wary instincts- not for the last time- were correct. Huber would later play with future musicians of the band Mercury Rev (in an early incarnation named Shady Crady) a band which would be devastated by heroin prior to their huge success with their about-turn album ‘Deserters Songs’.

Pfaff’s friend Bryan Nelson too recalls Pfaff sharing a wariness about a certain band and her ‘not wanting to invite them over’ because they were getting caught up in ‘bad drugs, and it felt like she was sheltering me from that situation.’

As Pfaff and Huber wondered where to go to be part of the most vibrant music scene it was Pfaff who was convinced New York was not the place- with the reason given that it was far too dope heavy. Perhaps Milwaukee, or somewhere Midwest? They debated where to go- was Minneapolis the place? Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum were from there, after all.

A friend had told Pfaff about a Woman’s Studies course at The University of Minnesota. Pfaff seemed intrigued…

A key interviewee revealed in part two was kind enough to share with us a cassette playlist Kristen made her during her time as an activist, that we’re about to explore. You can listen to the playlist here.

Photo credit- Tracy White Wendland