Seattle-born band Tad, which was founded by Thomas Andrew Doyle, is known as one of the first important groups in the sludgy genre.
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Formed in 1988, Tad was one of the first to sign to the now-infamous record label Sub Pop. The group also recorded often with The Grungefather, Jack Endino, who is famous for producing the first Nirvana album, Bleach.
Tad released its own debut LP in 1989, God’s Balls, and its third album, which was released in 1991, called 8-Way Santa.
Amazingly, that album created not one, but two lawsuits for the band, because of the record’s salacious cover.
Let’s explore.
The Cover
With a record name that is rich with innuendo like 8-Way Santa, the album cover is bound to be a bit unseemly. (In actuality, 8-Way Santa is apparently a type of blotter acid.)
To wit, Tad chose to use a “found photo,” meaning one that the band came across, not one they commissioned or shot themselves, and slapped it on the cover.
The cover, though, features a man cupping a woman’s breast. And as (bad) luck would have it, the woman later divorced the man, became a born-again Christian, remarried, got angry at her photo used on the cover without her consent, and sued. Sub Pop had to scramble and change the cover to a photo of the band to satisfy the woman.
Pepsi
The second lawsuit for the band came not as a result of the main album cover but as a result of the artwork for one of the singles on the record, “Jack Pepsi.”
Produced by Butch Vig, who would later go on to produce Nirvana’s Nevermind and produce the rock band Garbage, 8-Way Santa yielded two singles. “Jinx” was used in the 1992 film Singles. The other, “Jack Pepsi,” garnered Tad the second lawsuit, this time from the soft drink company, since Tad used the soda brand logo in the single artwork.
For the art, on a song about drinking and driving on ice, Tad just replaced “Pepsi” in the middle with “Tad.” According to Vice, “Rumor has it someone had recently been fired from Sub-Pop, and the jilted ex-employee called Pepsi to tip them off, resulting in the lawsuit.”
Bill Clinton
The band didn’t incur any more headlining-grabbing legal controversy after that. But it wasn’t without pitfalls.
Tad released its major label debut, Inhaler, in 1993. A few more records followed and the group broke up in 1999. In between, the band was dropped from its major label, in part, because it used a promo poster for a tour with Soundgarden that featured Bill Clinton smoking a joint, along with the headline: “TAD: IT’S HEAVY SHIT.”
Nearly 15 years later, the band reunited in 2013 for the Sub Pop 25th anniversary party in Seattle, and continues to play here and there these days.
Photo by Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images
