In many ways, she was
like most girls who play the cello when they are little, in her
case so little that she had to drag the instrument behind her while
making the long walks to her lessons. (Eventually, she wore off
the lip on that side of the cello, which she had borrowed from school;
her teacher was very unhappy.)
Only the odd little
songs she made up as a child gave any indication of the direction
Melora Creager would take. "I remember a 'Ballad of Lizzie Borden,'
where I hit the piano with my hands, like I was chopping," she recalls.
"That was my five-year-old taste."
That mixture of childlike
playfulness and dark humor is a hallmark of the music Creager makes
today with Rasputina, the world's greatest female cello Goth-rock
trio. Whether singing about burial rites for broken dolls and crushes
on boys at state fairs, wearing corsets and bloomers as stage costumes,
or collaborating with shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, Creager has shaped
her fanciful artistic vision into an ensemble that's unique in both
the worlds of rock and stringed music.
Growing up, like Dorothy,
in Kansas, Creager was entranced by the cello's size and expressiveness.
She began studying piano at age five and cello four years later,
and played in youth symphonies and competitions. After putting the
stringed instrument aside as a teenager–"there are so many
social connotations with orchestra, and I wanted to be the coolest
thing," she admits–Creager resumed playing cello while attending
the Parsons School of Design in New York City.
Creager began performing
with various rock bands, but found herself frustrated at being drowned
out by the other musicians. She formed Rasputina in 1991 to give
her instrument the prominence she felt it deserved, experimenting
with lineups as large as seven women before settling on a trio-plus-drummer
format. (The other members of the group have changed frequently.)
Except for percussion,
the cello remains the only instrument in most of Rasputina's songs.
In popular music the cello usually is limited to providing solemn
accompaniment on poignant ballads from the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby"
to Nirvana's "All Apologies," but in Creager's hands it encompasses
everything from delicate chamber music to corrosive rock and roll.
"This is what I know
best, playing the cello," she says, "so this is what I'm going to
do instead of learning a more common instrument to rock out on."
Despite her ambitions
with Rasputina, Creager continued playing in traditional rock bands
and accompanied Nirvana on its final tour in
1994. She could be heard on Nirvana's high-profile MTV Unplugged
concert and its best-selling soundtrack. The suicide of Nirvana
leader Kurt Cobain motivated Creager to work harder at her own music.
"He was an artist," she says, "and the world wanted to hear what
he had to say, and he shut it off. You can't do that."
Rasputina released two
CDs in the late '90s, Thanks for the Ether and How We
Quit the Forest, plus Transylvanian Regurgitations, a
four-song EP of recordings remixed by Marilyn Manson, with whom
the band toured at the peak of his Antichrist Superstar infamy.
"To play for these huge rough crowds was so hard," Creager says,
"but by the end of it we were able to get over with our fragile
instruments."
Then again, the cello
hardly sounds fragile on Rasputina's latest CD, Cabin Fever! (Instinct),
released this past spring. While the neoclassical string arrangement
of "A Quitter" would make Beatles producer George Martin envious,
Creager also uses distortion effects to create glam-rock staccato
riffs on "State Fair" and the hornet's-nest buzz of the industrial
rocker "Rats." Even if she can make her instrument snarl like a
hard-rock guitar, though, playing the cello keeps Creager and the
rest of Rasputina in the very un–rock-star position of sitting
while performing. Hence, the corsets. "It provides some visuals,"
Creager explains. "The corset is like armor and bloomers are like
supergirl pants."
Cabin Fever! marks Rasputina's
return after a break prompted by the birth of Creager's daughter
Hollis, now three years old. Juggling motherhood and a career as
a touring musician is always a challenge, and music presents its
own unique complications. Creager describes having to use a breast
pump while in the recording studio–"Am I the first person to
ever do this?" she wonders–and setting up an amplifier at a
gig with her daughter in a baby sling.
For all the complications
she faces being a woman and a cellist, Creager takes pride in having
succeeded in playing rock music on her chosen instrument and on
her own terms. "It's something I have to do, and I feel so fortunate
to get to do it," she says. "It's a great feeling to look around
me and realize that I have years of experience and knowledge that
you can't get any other way."
