Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

Did you like the band before you joined?


I still don’t have any records from before I joined them. They were very indie at the time. They all had really cool haircuts and they were very cute. The song titles were really twee, like Sunny Sundae Smile and Paint a Rainbow. It sounds very innocent but the lyrics were very dirty. Paint a Rainbow is about necrophilia and there’s some really disturbing images in that song. So obviously, that was the first song I learned how to play on the guitar.


Had you ever been in a band before?


I had a band with some girlfriends for fun. We did covers of Marc Bolan and classics like Louie, Louie. I sang and played the tambourine. When I was little I played classical guitar for years, but at that stage I hadn’t touched a guitar for a long, long time. So at my first My Bloody Valentine gig two weeks later, I was playing the tambourine and was carrying Toby. We played in a squat and I didn’t dare put him down on the floor. I tried to learn the guitar the best I could, but above all I was always on time for rehearsals. There was actually a guy who joined the band at the same time as me, but he was never on time and when he eventually arrived, he was always stoned so he got the sack.

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How did you write your lyrics?


A lot of the lyrics are plain nonsense. I don’t know, I didn’t have a plan and I never thought about lyrics until it was time to write them. I just used whatever was in my head for the moment. Kevin didn’t touch them, though he once made me change one thing that he didn’t like. He gave me the melodies in quite some detail. He never sang any words on the cassettes I got but I tried to make his sounds into words. It always became my own thing in the end though. And that was the only power I had in the band.

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How many guitars did you have?
Live, I think we had seven or eight each, sometimes more.

Kevin is known for playing on a red Fender Jaguar. Did you have a preference?



I also had a Fender Jaguar that I used most of the time, in white. But my favourite was a really beautiful green Charvel that I still keep in my bedroom.MORE