I m sick of the entire artistic myth that the artist has to be a dysfunctional asshole. I think you have to carry your weight as a human being as well as an artist.
The Slingbacks particular brand of anarcho-feministic punk trash and, in particular, lead singer Shireen Liane s bitch-from-hell-like demented vocals, wouldn t usually give the impression that they re champions of clean-living wholesomeness. Ms. Liane, however, has good reason for wanting to debunk the idea that great art or music comes from being fucked-up. She was a good friend of former Gin Blossom Doug Hopkins who, not so long ago, blew his brains out. That tragic act still has a profound effect on Shireen.
The song All Pop No Star is actually about the frustration of me watching my best friend have a top five single and then killing himself, she continues. He d had severe alcohol problems for years. Perhaps it was an inevitable outcome, but his run-in with the record industry didn t help.
While hanging out in Arizona pre-Gin Blossoms, Liane and Hopkins co-wrote together. Her anger at her friend s extinction still bubbles beneath the surface.
He was drinking so excessively he couldn t function, she exclaims, but instead of getting acrimoniously thrown out of his band and then financially sodomised, it would have been much easier to sit down and discuss it like adults and say Look, we cannot work with you in a band sense anymore but we want to support you and help you to get help, and all of that . He built the car and they drove off with it. They left him with his electricity turned off and no money. This was a guy that had two gold records. That s sinful actually.
The intrusion of that loaded term sinful alludes to the fact that Shireen was educated for a while at a Catholic school, which also happened to be attended mainly by Mexican-American kids. A strange choice, maybe, on the part of parents who grew up on the liberalism of the 60s but, according to Shireen herself, such an unusual schooling got her moving into a different strata.
From there, she mastered in Poetics at a liberal humanities university in San Francisco. She ended up with a publishing deal and moved to London,. She describes her time there as an isolating and over-priced experience. Unsurprisingly, though, the single biggest impact on her life was punk rock.
I think of punk rock as more of an outlook and a way of conducting yourself in the world than it is a particular series of noises that you make, Sharleen states. There was a glorious fearlessness about punk rock. It could be rage or fun. It didn t have to be so clever, it didn t have to be so huge and put this distance between performer and audience. Empathy as opposed to admiration or power was the aim. It was probably the only period where someone like Polly Styrene could be a rock star.
Shireen was fortunate in that there was a thriving punk scene in LA where, thanks to local radio, she was exposed early to such prime influences as The Ramones, Television and the Sex Pistols.
When I was a teenager I got snuck in to see X in a bass drum case, she recalls with obvious glee. I remember crawling out of the case and being in this sweaty bag place. The walls were heaving. Everybody looked scary. The whole thing was like a mixture of being terrified and exhilarated.
Shireen also has the good and bad fortune of having a mother who s heavily into rock n roll.
Before punk my mother and I would listen to the same records, she enthuses. But when punk rock happened it was very much mine. Then my mother started to like punk rock as well and I went oh no, I m trying to get an identity here mom, leave me alone .
My mother is now in her 40s. She s started to like Hootie & The Blowfish and Alanis. And I m wondering, Mom, what s happened to you? You used to have such good taste !
Issues of female lead singers and feminism go hand-in-hand these days. So what s Shireen s attitude to the big F ?
How can you have a movement which represents 50% of the population and expect it to have a united face? she asks. Feminism gets tarred with a very broad brush. I ve had great difficulty over here because when I say I m a feminist people expect someone who s 40lbs overweight, with hairy legs, wearing a plaid shirt, who hates men. That s not my brand of feminism at all. So I have to be very careful how I use the F word because people misconstrue it very easily. It upsets me to have to be quiet about one of the things that does make my heart beat a little faster.
When all is said and done, is Shireen conscious of being a woman when she s up on stage trashing it out?
Well, that s a bit of a male question really. I m just Shireen. I suppose if I m wearing a short dress I m aware that I m a female when I have to bend over to tweak my tuner. That s one of those female consciousness moments like Is someone looking up my dress? or Am I flashing at someone in the audience now? But aside from that, no, not at all. n
The Slingbacks single No Way Down is out now on Virgin Records.