Alison Mosshart

[the_future_modernes]

you know her as VV from "The Kills". Or as "Baby Ruthless" from the supergroup "The Dead Weather". Or dueting with "Placebo" on their single Meds. If you don't know her at all, then lets go back to the beginning with her first band, a punk band. "Discount".

Discount- Rooftop Empathy

Alison Mosshart

BLASBERG: When did you start playing music?

MOSSHART: When I was 13. I just sang at first—I didn’t ever play guitar before The Kills.

BLASBERG: What was life like before The Kills?

MOSSHART: I was in another band in Florida, touring and going to school. I started that band when I was in junior high school—

BLASBERG: Wait, junior high? Like sixth grade? I was still passing notes in sixth grade. Hell, I was still dating girls in sixth grade.

MOSSHART: It was, like, an indie-punk band. It was called Discount. I didn’t make up the name.

BLASBERG: Still, that’s good for a bunch of sixth-graders. If I were in a band in sixth grade I would have called it The Banana Republic Club.

MOSSHART: That might have been better. But I’m thankful for that experience. I was touring at 14. That’s when we toured England and I met Jamie [Hince].


this is my fav. so far:)
Discount- My Milieu

MORE

Then she got into The Kills and learned to play rhythm guitar


The Kills - U R A Fever (the film The Losers made very good use of this song.)

The Kills 'Cheap and Cheerful'

The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother - Live at The Roxy

Interview: Alison Mosshart of The Dead Weather — "I really like Raging Bull…and I can't live without Jay-Z"

Do you feel like Sea of Cowards is a "darker" record?

I think it's definitely a heavier record, so maybe it is a darker record. I think we're quite a dark band. When I listen to it, it blows my face off a little bit [Laughs]. I don't know where it came from, again. It's one of those mysterious things. I couldn't tell you where the songs are from. The difference in recording Sea of Cowards is that we wrote a lot of this material when we were on the road—during soundchecks and such. We were put in that live mode. You're playing like there are 2,000 people watching even when you're at soundcheck. Maybe that was a factor…

How would you describe your lyrical evolution this time around? Were you encouraged to experiment more?

I wish I could remember [Laughs]. All of this stuff seemed to happen so fast. I think it's a natural progression. We did one record, and we never expected to do that record. We never expected to write all of those songs in such a short space of time, suddenly be a band, tour and for all of it to be so real. It was an extremely strange situation where none of us had any time to do this band and, all of a sudden, that was all that we were doing. It's fantastic, and nobody wants to stop! The second record felt like it came as naturally as the first. The boys are playing music. We're in a room together, and everything's moving at such a fast speed. They're coming up with parts, and a song develops. I'm standing there in front of a mic and I've got to catch up or keep up. The words just come from that. I'm inspired by the music. The music's heavier so maybe the words are too. I've written everything by looking around the room at the three of them—kind of being blown away and trying to do their music justice.MORE

The Dead Weather - "Die By The Drop" (Live from Third Man Records)