Laurie Lindeen Issue #34

After marriage to Paul Westerberg, the former frontwoman of Zuzu’s Petals finds there’s more to life than ‘happily ever after’

By Michele Koury
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 3:12pm

In her youth, Laurie Lindeen, former frontwoman of all-girl rock band Zuzu’s Petals and wife of singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, has played at the legendary punk haven CBGB, driven through a fire, and traveled through the entire U.S. and U.K., bravely facing every kind of eccentricity imaginable along the way. Fortunately for us, we can live vicariously through her, because she’s been gracious enough to detail every exploit in her funny-sad, all-around poignant memoir, Petal Pusher: A Rock And Roll Cinderella Story.

Lindeen describes her masterwork as a fable about “sort of saving my life through rock and roll … forming a band and getting as far as we could.” Lindeen’s version of self-rescue was to escape from Madison, Wisconsin, where she’d enjoyed a wholesome adolescence of cheerleading and keg parties. “I knew I had to get out, especially growing up in a town where some people never get out.” Get out she did, moving in 1985 to the music-centric city of Minneapolis, home to Prince, Soul Asylum, and the Replacements. She was ready to start a band and begin a new life.

Converging with fellow hopeful ingénues, fierce Linda Pitmon and graceful Colleen Elwood, Zuzu’s Petals, inspired by a line from It’s a Wonderful Life, was created from scratch. Though she played a covetable, top-of-the-line vintage guitar, Lindeen didn’t, to quote the memoir, “understand any of it or appreciate its value.” She slowly learned how to play an instrument that was once a distant fantasy for her. Lindeen and her comrades soon understood how difficult forming a band would be when suddenly faced with creative pressure, seeking a label, and, worst of all, fear of being onstage. “I had bad stage fright, which I realized was a good thing, because it meant I really cared about what I was doing,” she says. “I’d just get out-of-body, white-hot scared, and go up there anyway.” Laughing, she adds, “I think it made some people uncomfortable.”

Still, the band’s success grew thanks to a welcoming music climate. “We started about the same time as Babes in Toyland, L7, and Hole — and you know how artistic movements work,” she says. “Population areas all think at once.” Local tours turned regional, and regional tours turned national, and finally, they went international by taking on England. Zuzu’s Petals’ presence in rock was gaining attention.

It was on these enduring, extreme tours that Lindeen encountered true enlightenment, amid mouse-infested hotel rooms and nasty industry people. It was also during the touring, as Lindeen’s band was reaching its pinnacle in accomplishment, that she met Paul Westerberg. Lindeen risked crossing some delicate boundaries when recounting her rocknroll romance, especially because her book was released around the same time as Pamela Des Barres’ Let’s Spend the Night Together, which is an ode to the groupie lifestyle.

Lindeen was never a sexually liberated flower child like Des Barres, who believes that groupies can function as muses for the rockers they serve. Lindeen believes women can be their own muses, and men can find other kinds of inspiration. “I was never really a groupie,” she says. “That wasn’t my goal. I read her [first memoir] I’m With the Band, and I thought it was kind of sad. The negativity about my book is from people whose rocknroll fantasies have been dashed by me painting my husband as a normal human being. I’m an artist too, and I didn’t write about him. I wrote about where he enters my story.” In the book, Lindeen wistfully describes charming dates of bike rides around Minnesota lakes and movie nights with her famous boyfriend yet also stresses that she maintained self-sufficiency throughout their entire courtship.

Lindeen and Westerberg’s romance makes for a sweet “How I met your father” anecdote for her pre-teen son. The transition of going from a touring rocker to a suburban housewife isn’t discussed in Petal Pusher but was “awful” nonetheless. “It was a horrible transition,” Lindeen says. “I didn’t adjust well.” Some parts of motherhood, of course, were easy. “People would say ‘Oh, I haven’t slept in months,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m used to it.’” After all, the woman was living like a nocturnal gypsy for most of her 20s, touring and partying like there was no tomorrow. “I’m going to write my next book about that period of life, and I’m going to put it to fiction so people don’t get so bent out of shape.”