...we were still playing a lot of punk rock shows and it wasn't until after the long tour with Black Flag where we were like, "We are definitely going to go our own way with this thing." By that time we were already working on the Up on the Sun album, so you're going to see a confluence there of the old styles and the new. It's transitional and it comes together really ridiculously serendipitously well when you consider how many diverse things are actually put to bear on it.
Live Highlights Of 1985, DerrickBostrom.net, 2015
The MEAT PUPPETS completed recording their third LP - Up on the Sun - on this day in 1985. The album was released that March through SST.
Recording took place at Total Access Studios, Redondo Beach, California; engineered by Spot (BLACK FLAG, MINUTEMEN, HUSKER DU, SAINT VITUS and many others).
On the title track the opening line ("You are my daughter") is based on an experience when the band opened for SUICIDAL TENDENCIES.
That was the Ritz in New York City. They had a big curtain, and as soon as they pulled the curtain up, that's what we kicked into. And people were being rowdy - they immediately didn't like us. So I started making fun of them. That song was an instrumental at first, and then I sang some stuff. And once again, it came from just sort of poking fun.
Curt Kirkwood / Meat Puppets, Song Facts, 2013
I was just trying to sing stuff that I thought would really piss them off. I wasn't saying anything about them, really. I was just trying to be kind of "mock tender." And that's what came out. So then I finished that up later. I didn't have it all, but that's where the germ of that came from.
Later that night, I met Joey Ramone. After everybody was gone, the club was empty, we were waiting for the van to come around from wherever it had got parked, and I was alone on the steps of the Ritz. And Joey Ramone got out of a cab and came up. He was totally wasted. "When does the Meat Puppets start?" It was like 1:00 in the morning! It was really awesome. And then he sort of passed out sitting on the steps there, and I went and got in the van, and we drove off. He was just sitting there.
Once the weird sloppy energy of our first album was behind us, the Meat Puppets worked hard to polish our studio chops. The warm response to "Up On the Sun" rewarded our efforts. The album exposed us to a wider audience and cemented our place in the echelon of American indie bands. But if we thought we'd spend 1985 basking in the glory of our breakthrough release, we were in for a rude surprise.
Live Highlights Of 1985, DerrickBostrom.net, 2015