Belly got started in Boston in 1991 when Tanya Donelly left Throwing Muses. I was working at Sire Records at the time and they were one of my favorite bands on the label-- musically and as people. Sire's fate was attached to Warner Bros which decided what songs would be prioritized fro radio play. One day the company was criticized for not breaking enough new bands and the boss asked a bunch of us if we had a song by a new and unknown band that was a plausible radio hit. I made the case for "Feed the Tree," the first single from Belly's debut album, Star, It had already been a hit in the U.K. and Warner's got behind it and the next thing I knew it was all over the radio and Tanya's lovely face was on the cover of the Rolling Stone. The album went gold.
