I Live Inside: Memoirs of a Babe in Toyland

By Michelle Leon

Babes in Toyland burst onto the Minneapolis music scene in the late 1980s and quickly established itself at the forefront of punk/alternative rock. The all-female trio featured a shy, seventeen-year-old Jewish teen from the suburbs on bass guitar—an instrument she had never played before joining the band.

Over the next few years, Michelle Leon lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle—playing live concerts, recording in studios, touring across the United States and Europe, and spending endless hours in stuffy vans, staying in two-star motels, and sleeping on strangers' couches in town after town. The grind and drama of life in the band gradually wore on Leon, however, and a heartbreaking tragedy led her to rethink her commitment to the band and the music scene.

Leon's sensitive, sensory prose puts readers right on stage with Babes in Toyland while also conveying the uncertainty, vulnerability, and courage needed by a girl who never felt like she fit in to somehow find her place in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780873519991

Michelle Leon

Michelle Leon is a freelance writer, musician, and teacher. She was the bass player for the influential punk band Babes in Toyland from 1987 to 1992 and again in 1997. Leon lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Book preview

More than a rock bio, Michelle Leon has written a book about loss, the messiness of self-realization, and the provisional salvation of art, camaraderie, and love. It’s also about being in an important all-girl punk band at a remarkable time, documenting a scene that still resonates. It’s profound, poetic, badass, tender, and inspiring. You know someone who needs this, and they might just be you.

—WILL HERMES, AUTHOR OF LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS ON FIRE: FIVE YEARS IN NEW YORK CITY THAT CHANGED MUSIC FOREVER

Michelle Leon has provided us with a crucial and compelling account of what it was to be a woman making music in the nineties. Leon was the first woman on stage that I wanted to be. I have been waiting for this book for twenty years. Fantastic and ferocious.

—JESSICA HOPPER, MUSIC AND CULTURE CRITIC AND AUTHOR OF THE FIRST COLLECTION OF CRITICISM BY A LIVING FEMALE ROCK CRITIC AND THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO ROCKING

Babes in Toyland may have showed Riot Grrrl how to scream, but their dirty, aching noise called to hips and heart as much as fists. Likewise, former BiT bassist Michelle Leon’s haunting memoir is more than the story of a girl in a band. This visceral and thoughtful On the Road illustrates a continuing quandary of contemporary life: Is there a way to forge identity beyond what you choose to consume? And what happens when alternatives to the mainstream prove equally unwilling to acknowledge your tender peculiarities, your spidery contradictions, your griefs both ancient and newborn?

—TERRI SUTTON, FREELANCE WRITER AND FORMER CITY PAGES ARTS EDITOR

I’ve seldom heard anyone capture the surreality of fleeting rock and roll fame as well as Michelle Leon—I once heard her describe going in 24 hours from cheering English fans at Heathrow to mopping a floor in her south Minneapolis apartment. In her book she juggles the historically significant and the prosaic with equal aplomb and sensitivity. The sensory veil of Bonnie Bell lip gloss, velvet wallpaper, fingers sliding on a bass, syringes in wastebaskets envelops you. No punches are pulled, yet no band members are eviscerated—their humanity revealed. True to the humble Minneapolis narrative spirit, there is little or no name-dropping for its own sake. While Michelle tells the story with a wide-eyed wonder and naïveté of one first initiated to the vortex of Minneapolis music, you never lose track of the significance and place of her band in the big picture. She’d never say it but: Where would Pussy Riot be without Babes in Toyland?

—ADAM LEVY, SINGER-SONGWRITER (THE HONEYDOGS)

Maybe you know the words to every Babes in Toyland song; maybe you’ve never heard the band’s music at all. No matter: by the end of this lyrical, tough, and moving memoir, you’ll not only feel like you know Michelle Leon, you’ll also want to talk and dance and listen to music with her. Most of all, you’ll want to recommend this book to anyone who’s ever wondered what it’s like to be a woman in the strange, sometimes brutal world of contemporary American rock and roll.

—SCOTT HEIM, AUTHOR OF MYSTERIOUS SKIN AND WE DISAPPEAR

I Live Inside feels as real and personal as reading your own memories. Michelle tells the bittersweet story of Babes in Toyland’s nonstop touring/recording schedule and all the grime, laughs, jealousy, love, pain, horror, and glory that came with it. Parts read like a fairy tale while others are so haunting they will never leave you.

—KELLI MAYO, MUSICIAN (SKATING POLLY)

I wanted to buy a copy of this book for all my friends and family as soon as I finished reading it. Babes in Toyland’s work ethic is beyond inspiring, and Michelle’s fear of not being quite good enough is all too relatable. You’ll feel like a fly on the wall as Babes navigate through the underground rock scene.

—PEYTON BIGHORSE, MUSICIAN (SKATING POLLY)

Michelle Leon’s story of indie rock stardom is both raw and readable. I love this book for its close, intimate details. Leon draws you right into the Babes in Toyland van and shows you the after party tensions and what is in the mind of this particular girl in a band.

—DARCEY STEINKE, AUTHOR OF SISTER GOLDEN HAIR: A NOVEL AND OTHERS

Beautiful, sad and happy, poignant yet humble. The prose is lyrical and witty, and Michelle refreshingly nails the truth of the shit happens loop of life as a touring musician in a van, mixed with moving yet always unassuming explorations into love and loss and the human psyche. I never had too many chances to see Babes in Toyland—I too was living in a parallel yet not entirely different version of my own inside—but when I did, they scared the hell out of me, which I can only assume was the point.

—DANIEL D. MURPHY, MUSICIAN, SONGWRITER, AND GUITARIST (SOUL ASYLUM, GOLDEN SMOG)

I Live Inside is Michelle Leon’s thrilling, riveting, and sometimes heartrending account of her years as the bassist for the seminal indie rock band Babes in Toyland. Her prose is stunning, her eye is wry, and her heart enormous; the result is a compelling memoir filled with pop culture, travel, intrigue, and a young artist’s quest to find her voice. I Live Inside is loud and clear, and I could not put it down.

—LAURIE LINDEEN, MUSICIAN (ZUZU’S PETALS) AND AUTHOR OF PETAL PUSHER: A ROCK AND ROLL CINDERELLA STORY

If Orpheus played bass, Virgil wore lingerie, and Persephone ever told people how she really felt…. This masterful, gentle soul is the perfect guide through the sensual, destructive, rich, and violent times in the underground rock scene of the 1980s and ’90s. Unique and poetic, Michelle’s prose is a voice, rhythmic, resonant, and our conduit to a forbidden world. We knew her, were her, but we never did this.

—KEVIN KLING, AUTHOR, PLAYWRIGHT, AND STORYTELLER

Tough chicks tenderly portrayed, one girl’s view into the bubbling energy of the Minneapolis rock scene—filled with vivid, personal detail, evocative lists, and reflections on a time that still feels raw. The form is clipped and episodic, propelling the reader through the alternating kaleidoscopes of boredom and self-inflicted chaos that typify a life in music. Michelle feels and tells the story as one who was at the center of the swirling energy that characterized a unique moment in music.

—JOHN MUNSON, MUSICIAN AND BASS PLAYER (TRIP SHAKESPEARE, SEMISONIC, THE TWILIGHT HOURS, THE NEW STANDARDS)

Michelle Leon writes with rare insight and sensitivity not about a life in rock and roll but of the rock and roll in her life and how one nourished and informed the other. She describes as no other music memoir the struggles and transcendence that playing in a band brings: The love and impatience she feels for her bandmates and they for her; how to find her true identity within the band and completely outside of it; the forced intimacy and alienation of life on the road; the sacrifices and rewards that rock and roll demands and provides the perceptive introvert alone on a stage yet wholly engaged with the music and her audience. A singular, insightful, brave tale of an artist coming to terms with her art and herself.

—DAVID N. MEYER, AUTHOR OF Twenty THOUSAND ROADS: THE BALLAD OF GRAM PARSONS AND HIS COSMIC AMERICAN MUSIC

In finely drawn vignettes, Michelle Leon’s memoir I Live Inside captures not only the exhilaration of performing but also the quiet loneliness found offstage. A vivid tale of rock and roll’s thrills and secret heartbreaks awaits you on the pages of this haunting book.

—JACOB SLICHTER, MUSICIAN, DRUMMER (SEMISONIC), AND AUTHOR OF SO YOU WANNA BE A ROCK & ROLL STAR

It is always exciting to have another side to a story, and here is Michelle’s, touring through the time when she played—first with lent bass, in the desire to join, along with Lori, badass, a punk cave girl, tattooed and dressed in black, Kat’s notes going pink to red as the words travel from a place that is primal, formed to communicate some kind of pain. Complicated, consoling, and true in all the enchantments of dress, the candid colors, songs, and background in girl loving music and that lost Joe Cole.

—DOUGLAS A. MARTIN, AUTHOR OF ONCE YOU GO BACK

What’s it like to be a girl in a band? Ugh. Next question! Michelle Leon’s I Live Inside tells what it’s like to be a person in a band. And then—suddenly, painfully—a person who used to be in a band. A vivid, poetic memoir.

—MARK YARM, AUTHOR OF EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF GRUNGE

Michelle Leon’s intimate, heartfelt, and heart-aching portrait of an emerging Minneapolis female (punk) rocker. Real names’d be proof. This is Planet Leon.

—DAVID MARKEY, FILMMAKER, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN

I LIVE INSIDE

MEMOIRS OF A BABE IN TOYLAND

MICHELLE LEON

Text © 2016 by Michelle Leon. Other materials © 2016 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

Song lyrics credits and photo credits are included at the back of the book.

www.mnhspress.org

The Minnesota Historical Society Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Cover photo by Brian Garrity

ISBN: 978-0-87351-998-4 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-87351-999-1 (e-book)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Leon, Michelle, 1969– author.

Title: I live inside : memoirs of a babe in toyland / Michelle Leon.

Description: Saint Paul, MN : Minnesota Historical Society, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037028 | ISBN 9780873519984 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780873519991 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Leon, Michelle, 1969– | Babes in Toyland (Musical group) | Guitarists—United States—Biography. | Women rock musicians—United States—Biography.

Classification: LCC ML419.L427 L46 2016 | DDC 782.42166092/2—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037028

This and other Minnesota Historical Society Press books are available from popular e-book vendors.

To Joe

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

My son is squirming and wiggling, descending, almost ready to arrive. Today is his due date. I have a perfect reason to be sitting at Nina’s coffee shop in St. Paul finishing the manuscript I began writing in 2009, trying to wrap it up before he gets here.

This is the prologue I didn’t expect to write, the same way I never expected to be a first-time mother in my forties. When I take breaks and look at the Internet, it is filled with stories about Babes in Toyland’s reunion shows, the first since 2001.

I never pictured this reunion taking place. I feel a mixture of pride, wistfulness, and—as much as I hate to admit it—a little like the kid left out on the playground. I’m not the girl in the pictures with Lori and Kat. And I realize this is the perfect beginning and ending to this story, the way it continues, still surprising and affecting me, still meaningful and a trigger to a whole range of emotions.

I am so excited for my friends to be making music together again.

I miss those days so much.

I can’t believe that I will soon hold my son.

I am so happy that you are about to read my story.

This is how I remember it. Some names and places have been changed.

THINGS I’VE BEEN TOLD

You are not the prettiest girl in the room. You look really horny when you play. Your butt is too big to be a bass player. His blood stained the sidewalk. She stopped breathing, turned blue, then came back. I might have given you crabs. You’re always mumbling. When you were leaning over, I could see your boobs. You wouldn’t make a good mother. Someone broke into the van and stole your guitar.

WHAT MY MOTHER TOLD ME

I never was able to think of you as this little helpless baby because you never were. You wouldn’t sit in an infant seat; as soon as I’d put you in, you’d start squirming and yelling, trying to crawl out. It was obvious even before you were born—you were always kicking and moving around—you just had that kind of temperament, the need to see the world and experience things.