Liz Phair Explains an Iconic Guyville Photo to Rolling Stone

You are literally looking at me singing "Divorce Song" to those faces. That’s the world in which I stood up in.

That wasn’t just one night; that was every single day and every single night. That’s how isolated I was to be the female creator [...] There were other women I was not the only woman on stage by any means, but I had not been assigned a chaperone; I had not been assigned a manager; I had not been assigned a Svengali. I was unbound by male ownership which was strange, that was unusual

There’s Guyville! like if you didn’t get it there it is. That was the wind, those are the faces I saw every day and every time I wanted to say something in some kind of recording studio since. Those are the faces I’m seeing. Every time i want to do something different with my career those are the faces I’m seeing.

Any time I want to do anything or say anything, those are the faces I see. it didn’t stop with Guyville, it wasn’t over once that record was finished it was really just beginning. I’ve lived a whole career in those faces.

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Liz Phair to the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums Podcast on the environment that bred her immortal debut record Exile in Guyville and never seemed to go away. Listen here.

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Check out our Shrine to Guyville here.

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