1992–1998: Formation and mainstream success Named after
Veruca Salt, the spoiled rotten rich girl from the 1964 children's book
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by
Roald Dahl, Veruca Salt was formed in Chicago in 1992 by
Louise Post (guitar and vocals) and
Nina Gordon (guitar and vocals). Post and Gordon were introduced through mutual friend
Lili Taylor, and began playing music together. They wrote songs for a year and a half before placing an ad in the
Chicago Sun-Times for an all-female rhythm section. Instead the band was joined by Gordon's brother
Jim Shapiro on drums and Steve Lack on bass. The band's first release was the single "
Seether"/"All Hail Me" on Minty Fresh Records, in 1994. A stop-gap EP which was recorded by
Steve Albini, ''
Blow It Out Your Ass It's Veruca Salt'', was released in 1996. Shapiro left the band soon after the release of
Eight Arms, due to unease with having to learn how to play drums – an instrument he had only started playing when asked to join the band – while under public scrutiny. Shapiro was replaced by
Stacy Jones (of
Letters to Cleo and
American Hi-Fi). In 1997, Veruca Salt opened for the band
Bush in a North American tour.
1998–2012: Gordon's departure and reformation Gordon and Post started working together on Veruca Salt's third album. However, after an argument between the two, Gordon left the band to pursue a solo career in 1998. (Gordon's first album,
Tonight and the Rest of My Life, was released in 2000 and featured drumming by Stacy Jones, who had also left Veruca Salt and was in a relationship with Gordon). The dispute between Gordon and Post has been described as "one of the greatest rock soap operas since
Fleetwood Mac or
Hüsker Dü." Lack also left the band in 1998, leaving Post as the only remaining band member. Post contributed the song "
Somebody" to the
Depeche Mode tribute album
For the Masses before recruiting a new lineup. Guitarist Stephen Fitzpatrick joined and went on to become one of Post's principal songwriting partners during the next decade. Jimmy Madla and Suzanne Sokol joined on drums and bass guitar, respectively. Most of the band's record label support had been fired during the
Universal/
PolyGram merger, so Post left
Geffen Records, formed her own Velveteen Records label, and signed a distribution deal with
Beyond Music. The reformed band released the album
Resolver, which spawned both a single and video for "
Born Entertainer" in May 2000. Sokol left the band at the end of 2000 and was replaced by Post's friend Gina Crosley. The band continued to tour through the summer of 2001 in the UK. Post and Crosley also attempted to form a supergroup with
Courtney Love of
Hole and others but the project soon imploded. This allowed the pair to focus on new material for Veruca Salt which eventually yielded the
Officially Dead EP that was primarily distributed during the band's 2003 tour of Australia. That tour was precipitated by the title track (which had been released on the Resolver LP three years prior) charting on the Triple J Top 100, peaking at number 13. By 2005, Madla left to enter the restaurant business and Crosley was also dismissed. They were replaced in the studio by Solomon Snyder and Michael Miley, respectively. Veruca Salt began 2005 by touring Australia, undertaking both headline festival appearances and club shows. This session resulted in the
Lords of Sounds and Lesser Things (LOSALT). The band went on tour with Post, Fitzpatrick, drummer Kellii Scott, and bassist
Nicole Fiorentino.
LOSALT was released independently by the band and included six new songs. The EP's title is an extract from
Zora Neale Hurston's
Their Eyes Were Watching God. This lineup then recorded a full-length album,
IV, and released it in September 2006 (like
Resolver before it, this album was released a month apart from a Nina Gordon solo album). The band then went on what would prove to be the last tour of Louise Post's solo incarnation of the band. A single, "So Weird", was released to radio at the end of October 2006, but despite being critically well-received, neither the song nor the album did well commercially. In 2007, the band recorded a cover of
Neil Young's song "Burned" for a 2007 breast cancer benefit album and then went almost entirely dormant. Post took time to have a child while Fiorentino went on to play bass with the
Smashing Pumpkins and The Cold and Lovely. Kellii Scott returned to his original band,
Failure. On March 14, 2012, the band announced on their official website that they were on an indefinite hiatus.
2013–present: Original lineup reunion On March 15, 2013, Veruca Salt announced the reunion of its original line-up (
Nina Gordon,
Louise Post,
Jim Shapiro, and Steve Lack) with a message on the band's official Facebook page which read, "for now let's just say this: hatchets buried, axes exhumed." The band also mentioned that they might be open to adding material from their time apart into their sets at some point. The reunion marked the first time Shapiro would play drums since leaving the band in 1997. It had also been years since Lack played bass, with his time out of the band spent on overcoming drug and alcohol abuse and pursuing surfing. Post and Gordon appeared on
Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor Podcast on August 7, 2015, and revealed that Veruca Salt were approached to host a Fox comedy variety show in the 1990s. The band returned to Australia in February 2018 for a series of headline shows, as well as being part of the mini-festival
A Day on the Green alongside
The Fauves,
Tumbleweed,
The Lemonheads,
Spiderbait and
The Living End. Veruca Salt teamed up with
Rock the Vote for the 2018 American election, releasing a track titled "Low Grade Fever" from the
Ghost Notes recording sessions. In June 2022, Louise Post released
But I Love You Without Mascara (Demos ’97–’98) which featured several unreleased demos from the transitional period between
Eight Arms to Hold You and
Resolver. She also released a solo album in June 2023 called
Sleepwalker. ==Band members==