| Alanis In Wonderland By James Hannaham From Spin - November 1995 I shouldn't be here. From a vantage point not ten feet away, I'm watching Alanis Morissette grind her arms and legs through a vigorous workout on an obsolete stationary bicycle-the kind where the handlebars go back and forth. Minutes earlier, her tour manager had firmly instructed me to keep my distance. "She'll be in the gym," he said, "but we'll see you at dinner." "I could just go down to the gym..." I squeaked. "That's not what I said," he growled. But how could he expect me to obey orders knowing that, over in the hotel exercise room, the pop banshee of the moment was sweating her booty off? Fueled by 1995's anthem of the jilted, "You Oughta Know," the 21-year-old Morissette has successfully packaged female anger and sold it back to ex-boyfriends worldwide at an incredible markup. Her American debut, Jagged Little Pill, is racing up the Billboard album chart with all the fury of a ravenous she-wolf hunting her prey, and her blurry form dominates MTV much the same way her record label CEO, Madonna, once did. The sweathog grunting before me, though, doesn't at all resemble the royally pissed-off alterna-grrrl who refused Sinead O'Connor's abandoned Lollapalooza spot, the siren whose show Alicia Silverstone, the summer's slickest teen, clamored to see. As if. Clad in plaid shorts and a baggy white tee, her long brown hair pulled back, Morissette could be Typical Girl History Major at Liberal Arts College. In a space as cramped as this, hardly 20 feet square, she's forced to exchange a tentative "Hi." Her monosyllable provides few clues as to whether or not she'll bite my head off when my espionage becomes clear. But when she abandons the noisy bike and approaches the bench press machine, she smiles and turns to me. Noticing my confusion at a padded contraption attached to the weight-station, she comes around to help out. "It's for curling, I think," she offers after some tinkering. The vengeful video vixen, it turns out, isn't Tank Girl after all; she's friendly and sweet, almost flirtatious. And a samaritan of sorts. Lousy with guilt, I confess to staking her out. Her shoulders tense momentarily, but she quickly rules me out as a potential stalker. "Nobody ever recognizes me," she sighs, as if saying so will keep it true. "I was thinking about your song," I shyly begin. "Which one?" " 'Your House,' " I admit. "Uh-oh." Those shoulders stiffen once more. "Are you some kind of stalker?" "Your House," for those uninitiated, is the super-secret track at the very end of Jagged Little Pill. Search past track 13, the uncredited remix of "You Oughta Know," until you get to 5:12, and you'll hear an a cappella Morissette seeking absolution from a lover whose house she has broken into-she takes a bath, plays his Joni Mitchell albums, puts on his cologne-as she sings, "I shouldn't be here without permission / You might be home soon / Would you forgive me, love / If I laid in your bed?" Saturated with reverb, the track possesses a chantlike, religious quality that leads me to wonder if the one-time Catholic is actually singing to some deity. "That is the only song on the record that's not 100 percent true," she confides. "I was staying in this guy's house in Hollywood and he wasn't there for a week. I remember being overly curious and sleeping in his bed. It felt eerie and unnerving; I also had kind of a crush on him. I get burned at the end of the song because if I had really snooped around as much as I wanted to, it would have been wrong. I probably would have found something I didn't want to find. I deserved it." She laughs. "So do you." That evening, when Morissette appears for dinner, a mild transformation has occurred. Her hair, extending just about to her elbows, falls perfectly straight until it reaches her chest, where it freaks out into zig-zaggy tentacles. She's wearing a white oxford fastened together by a safety pin in only one place despite its fully functional buttons, baggy satin sweatpants, and no-name tennis sneakers-very Haight-Ashbury '90s love child. I can't help but notice her fingernails, decorated in a lovely shade of robin's-egg-blue nail polish. Not only do I notice it on Morissette, but on several members of her band, a Muppet Show of longhaired L.A. session dudes. "I've made everyone put it on," she smiles before glancing at my own fingertips with devious intent. "Would you like me to do yours?" I make some small talk with the Muppets, but I can't help watching Morissette sideways. Not because I fear an unauthorized manicure, but because she knows how to get your attention without demanding it. She's a hair twirler. If you've got it, twirl it, I suppose. She claps her hands in front of her mouth and squeals when she gets excited about things, particularly the temporary tattoo she plans to buy and affix to her guitarist's butt, a drawing of a hand with the inscription, "Grab My Love." When a cake arrives for the table next to us, she croaks "Happy Birthday" just as out of tune as everyone else. "Hey, you can't sing!" I exclaim. "You're right," she deadpans. "You'd better go home." The next time we meet, just before the evening's Pontiac, Michigan, show at 7th House, a tiny rock club just beyond the affluent edge of Detroit's suburbs, the metamorphosis is complete. Morissette is devastating. She's done little more than slap on some foundation and accentuate that big Carly Simon mouth with a smidgen of burgundy lipstick, but that proves plenty. She warms up her voice by outsinging the Motown on the radio. Now I recognize her. You only have to flick a switch to turn on a light. 7th House looks to be about two-thirds full, the twentyish pop music consumers almost evenly divided between guys and gals. Strangely enough, this miniature cult following includes a large number of couples, who nuzzle in the balcony or stand on each others' toes down front. All of them have long feathered hair, and, it seems, at least one item of cut-off clothing. |
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