Gary Young’s eccentric behaviour

During the Slanted & Enchanted tour, Gary Young’s behaviour became more eccentric; he would hand out cabbage and mashed potatoes to fans at the door of the venue, perform handstands , drunkenly fall off his drum stool, and run around the venue while the band was playing. The band only understood how severe Young’s drinking problem was after Pavement’s first few tours. Malkmus later told Tape Op , “We knew that he was like a hippie and kinda flaky, but we didn’t know he had such a bad drinking problem. We found out on that tour, because he really got sick from being nervous… That’s why I let Bob be in the band…’Keep the beat going if Gary passes out.’” In 1993, Malkmus unsuccessfully attempted to record some songs at Young’s studio. He later said, “We kind of wanted to not record with him anymore, but we were too nice to fire people or even really talk about it… We tried to record there, but it wasn’t sounding good and he didn’t have his studio ready and he was also in a drinking funk.”