Six years ago, Sean Nelson achieved something most struggling musicians dream of every day, mainstream success. He had a top-10 song on the radio, was adored by fans around the world and found himself fielding phone calls from MTV.
Chances are you don’t know Nelson by name. But once he takes off his skull cap to reveal his out-of-control wiry and frizzy mane and puts on his Harry Caray-style glasses, his look is unmistakable.
Back in 1998, when the musical landscape was filled with boy bands and aggressive nu-metal groups, Nelson, singer of local band Harvey Danger, took pop music by storm with the smash hit “Flagpole Sitta.” The song was featured in films, television shows and commercials, making Harvey Danger one of the most adored Seattle bands in the post-grunge era and an overnight success. Most recently “Flagpole Sitta” was featured on a one-hit wonders weekend on radio station KNDD (“The End”), a far cry from the band’s success less than a decade ago.
Three years after last touring and recording, six years after its breakthrough success and 10 years after forming as a band, Harvey Danger is attempting to climb its way out of the “where are they now?” file.
The band was formed in the early 1990s when Nelson met guitarist Jeff Lin, bassist Aaron Huffman and drummer Evan Sult while attending the University of Washington. The four friends worked together on the campus newspaper, The Daily. When they decided to form a band, they took the name from a comic strip that used to appear in the paper.
The breakthrough success of “Flagpole Sitta” vaulted the band into international stardom and in the process “Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?,” Harvey Danger’s debut album, sold more than 500,000 copies. The band found itself recording on a major label and sharing the stage with the likes of Green Day and Metallica.
“MTV was calling us asking for a video for the song,” said Nelson. “It normally doesn’t work that way. Normally bands are constantly calling MTV trying to get their video played. We were definitely in a unique situation.”
However, while the “Flagpole Sitta” was immensely popular with its fans, Harvey Danger began to despise the song. “It really poisoned everything,” said Nelson of the song’s popularity. “In 1998, when we were writing what would become ‘King James Version’ (Harvey Danger’s second record), our stated position was that we were never going to write another song like ‘Flagpole Sitta.’ ”
“We would write long seven-minute slow songs without a chorus just to prove we were more than this hit single. It tweaks your entire consciousness to be identified by only one song when you are so dead set on being recognized for all the other things you have to offer,” Nelson said.
He now has a different take.
“Years later, my perspective is we have this song a lot of people know and it’s great,” said Nelson. “People have a relationship with it that continues to blow my mind. That is something very few bands I know have in their arsenal.”
After the success of “Merrymakers,” the band’s status with its label was up in the air due to corporate mergers. It wasn’t until late 2000 that Harvey Danger released “King James Version.”
The album sold only 25,000 copies and didn’t produce a hit single.
” ‘King James Version’ didn’t do well and there was this sense within the band that it hadn’t really come out,” Nelson said. “Technically it was released, but it was released so poorly and haphazardly promoted that we just felt we had been robbed of an experience that was important to us.”
“It was maddening,” he said. “We inevitably started hating each other, because who else was there to hate? We broke up because we had nothing else to say to each other at that point.”
Nelson has been the most high-profile of the group since the split. He recorded and toured with local indie band The Long Winters and co-taught a course on songwriting at UW. He is currently associate editor of The Stranger.
As for the rest of the band, Lin re-enrolled at UW and is working on finishing his degree in computer science. Huffman continued to play music and became a member of various bands and drummer Sult moved to Chicago.
Last April, the band booked a date at the Crocodile Cafe to celebrate the occasion of its 10-year anniversary. Word of the show spread quickly and tickets to the sold-out gig became a hot commodity.
Since the anniversary show, the band has played high-profile gigs at this year’s Bumbershoot and Endfest. During the holidays, it played at a pair of shows at the Croc and sold copies of a five-song holiday EP that included a new song, “Wine Women and Song,” and will join the New Year’s Eve lineup at Consolidated Works’ Heaven and Hell Ball.
Nelson said he is both stunned and appreciative of the positive response the reunited Harvey Danger has received from fans. “I could have never imagined so many people would want to see us play again,” he said.
After the holidays, the band enters the studio to work on a new record.
But don’t expect Nelson to attempt to make another “Flagpole Sitta.” He has already lived his rock ‘n’ roll dream.
“To think, when we first started out our dream was to play a show at the Crocodile,” said Nelson. “Looking back at all we’ve accomplished is amazing.”
