Rose McDowall interview
29 Jan 02
It seems strange you weren't on Postcard Records, given that you were around all the Postcard bands. Did you plan anything with them?
We may have done had things not happened quickly, and we gone the other way. We did talk about stuff, but Postcard were really starting to wind up by the time we were really starting to do things, because Alan was losing interest.
I suppose Aztec Camera and Orange Juice had both moved on by then.
Yeah, and also Paul Quinn, he was concentrating on him a bit, trying to make something of him. He had a nice voice, nice guy and everything and his version of Pale Blue Eyes was gorgeous, but I don't really know what happened after that. Then we moved to London and Postcard was still in Glasgow. Probably by the time we moved to London they weren't really doing anything any more anyway. Alan had spent all his money and done all the stuff he was going to do. I don't know. I really can't remember what happened there. That WAS the crowd that we hung about with, but it escapes me why we didn't do something with Postcard. Even The Poems were going to do something with Postcard. And we just decided to it ourselves.
It is an odd thing, cos the links were maintained with Roddy Frame playing on Trees & Flowers.
Exactly, yeah. And Orange Juice promoting us to everybody, saying look out for Strawberry Switchblade. But I think because we really quite quickly started getting interest from other places, and then we went on tour with Orange Juice which was really good fun and we started playing gigs outside Glasgow and Edinburgh and getting a lot more exposure and more interest from outside. Cherry Red and lots of labels like that were interested, and Rough Trade as soon as they heard the sessions they were interested in us.
I think they knew us all too well at Postcard, they knew we only had eight songs, nobody else did! [laughs] So at the time we weren't really ready to be releasing things. Everything kind of snowballed and just went the other way. We were quite interested in Cherry Red and then we got talked out of that one for Warner Brothers.
It was a great time for Rough Trade, they'd signed your friends The Pastels and Aztec Camera.
Felt were on Cherry Red at the time, I think. Cherry Red had done that compilation Pillows And Prayers, it's got a lot of really good stuff on it. It WAS a good time. I really liked a lot of stuff on Cherry Red. I always liked a lot of stuff on Rough Trade but Cherry Red seemed to be slightly... there was a much wider range of things on Rough Trade, Cherry Red just seemed a wee bit more exciting, and I liked the name, very me - any colour you like as long as it's red!
When you signed to Korova/WEA, how did that change expectations of what was going to happen next?
The press were really bizarre actually. We did do quite a few interviews before we actually signed. We did a really early THE FACE right at the beginning and we'd done the NME, we'd done a few things. We did start to get the more cynical side of the interviewers coming out, trying to prod more things out of you, wanting to go into detail about the lyrics. I was like, 'you'll get what you're given and that's all. You'll get as much as we want to say and if we don't want to say anything else about it then that's it. The lyrics speak for themselves'. I don't really feel like I want to explain through all the lyrics in the songs.
The press were up and down, really. It was good, we actually got loads and loads of exposure in loads of good magazines that were hip at the time. And then when we did Top Of The Pops it was Smash Hits and those kind of magazines. We did women's magazines and everything, Women's Own and stuff like that, covering lots of angles.
Most of the stuff I've seen from after Since Yesterday is either trivial stuff about clothes, or it's being patronising.
We got quite a lot of that from the serious press, titles like 'Strawberry Tarts' in Sounds. Not that the interview was bad, but they'd just put stupid things like that which was a bit irritating. But when you're doing all those teen magazines like Smash Hits that ask you the most mundane questions then, then it was much much better doing an interview for Rolling Stone or Sounds or something like that, something not quite so 'what's your favourite colour? Where do you buy your ribbons?', stupid things like that.
We'd get so bored with interviews like that that I started lying every time we did an interview. We did some women's magazine, Women's Own or something like that, and they said 'what do you do when you entertain guests?' I said 'usually we have something healthy to eat, we'll get some chips from the chip shop and some mineral water cos we're really into healthy living. And then we'll mudwrestle'. They said 'how do you do that at home', I said you just get a big plastic pool, fill it with mud and have mudwrestling parties. They were 'REALLY?' and we're 'YEAH!' 'and then what do you do?' 'Well, we shower off and have a glass of wine'. 'Do you shower off together?' I just said, 'well, some of us shower together, some don't, whatever's easiest'.
Did they print this stuff?
Yeah! They printed it, they PRINTED it! In another one I said I was so exhausted I had to be carried out on a stretcher. My mum phoned me up cos they printed that. I used to just think, it's time to have a laugh cos this is getting SO boring. People can be so gullible - I would never have believed that in a hundred years - but they printed it! I thought they might leave out some of it cos it's a bit risqué for Woman's Own.
Was there any opportunity to get taken seriously, if the proper music press is being patronising cos you're not blokes and the rest is Smash Hits and Beeb?
We did some interviews that were intelligent reading - I can't remember what the magazines were - where there were some feminist themes coming at it from the angle of women in music rather than girls in short skirts.
It's an interesting angle to look at Strawberry Switchblade cos while it's two intelligent articulate women writing their own songs, you're also all ribbons and frills, and feminist politics at the time still had a big streak of not dressing up cos its got overtones of doing it just to please men, being a bit dungarees and crewcuts.
Well exactly. I remember we did a gig with The Slits in Glasgow. They were out doing their soundcheck and I was in the dressing room putting my make-up on and their manager comes up to me and says, 'what are you doing putting that make-up on? Who are you putting it on for? Are you putting it on for men or are you putting it on for yourself? Have you asked yourself these questions?' I said to her, 'being a feminist is not being a man. I celebrate the feminine side of my personality, and who are you to tell me what to do? And anyway one of your band is wearing make-up! Just go away. I'm not going to dress down for men, I won't let what men do rule my life'.
To begin with, in The Poems when I was an anarchist I went through a wee phase where I thought I shouldn't wear make-up and stuff. Then I just thought 'NO'; that's not me being who I want to be. I'm doing this because I like being extravagant and I like to paint my face like a picture. I'd do lots of colours or draw flowers on my face and things like that. I just like it, it's an art form. Dressing up and doing this whole thing, it's great fun. Kids love dressing up and I just never grew out of it!
If you're a feminist it doesn't mean that you have to be like a man, it means the exact opposite. People just got it wrong and thought you have to be as macho as possible or whatever. I was brought up with lots of brothers, I was a real tomboy when I was a kid; anything a guy could do I could do anyway, and I used to prove that throughout my growing-up years. I was always a feminist. If I want to wear make up and false eyelashes and whatever, so be it, nobody will tell me what to do.
I think a lot of feminists got it wrong, and because they got it wrong they probably lost a wee bit of the fun out of their lives cos they were taking it too seriously.
The 80s was a time when individualism was coming through, and feminism was probably helped by that because feminism demands that people be judged as individuals rather than eulogised or dismissed on grounds of their sex.
We actually had quite a feminist following as well, and quite a sizeable lesbian following as well. We did a club in Edinburgh, a gay club, and there were all these women coming backstage trying to chat us up, 'are you two girlfriends? Are you seeing anybody?'. We did have a lot of a gay following male and female. A lot of gay men liked Strawberry Switchblade, cos we're not conventional women, we are flamboyant. The amount of gay guys who've said to me 'I'd turn for you!'
At this summer's gay Pride in London, the headmaster of Jill's daughter's school borrowed some of Jill's old polka dot outfits and went with his boyfriend as Strawberry Switchblade. Imagine your headmaster and his boyfriend dressing up as your mum!
Excellent!
At least sometimes when people know who you are it needn't be a stalker.
When I came out here [rural Oxfordshire] I came out here to get away from the Kelvins. I thought London's totally doing my head in, it's too chaotic, it's driving me insane. Which it actually was, literally. I moved out to the country and dropped out a lot, I didn't really keep in contact with a lot of people, like a hermit in the woods for a while. I just needed the tranquillity. The woods were my Valium, basically.
When was that?
I've been here for nine years. I lived in Canada for one and a half, and then came straight here, after going to Scotland to have a baby cos I wanted it to be Scottish. It sounds terrible doesn't it? I wanted to do that with my last daughter as well but nobody would let me, it would've been hitch-hiking up the road at nine months pregnant! So she was born in Oxford. I dunno, I just like it out here, I like the peace, I like the quiet.
We go to the pub one night, a little country pub. I walked in and asked for a Red Witch and they just looked at me. They don't even sell mineral water, never mind cocktails or whatever. I sat down and this guy said, 'I know you'. I thought I came out here to get away from everybody that knows me. He said 'I worked with you in the studio once', and he was an engineer on a Strawberry Switchblade session! His name's Pete Brown, he lives locally. His dad's Joe Brown and his sister's Sam Brown.
And then a girl moved a couple of cottages down from me with her boyfriend who was a photographer. She said to him one day, 'I know that girl' and he asked me. I said 'I know her as well, is she a make-up artist?' She did Strawberry Switchblade's make-up and she moved here! For two years she was a neighbour. I thought god, it's SUCH a small world, it's bizarre. You can't run away from yourself!
How did you write the songs? You were already writing with The Poems.
It was mostly vocal stuff I was writing with The Poems, I wasn't really playing any instruments except the drums. I taught myself to play twelve-string guitar. Basically either Jill would come up with a guitar line and I would put a vocal melody on it and the words, or I'd come up with both and occasionally she'd come up with both. The majority of the time it was... well, it's difficult because if you actually looked at the whole thing, the whole album, I probably tended to write most of it as a whole, but Jill wrote quite a lot of the music. She'd write one song, I'd write another song, but when I did it I tended to write the vocal melody and the lyrics as well, with a couple of exceptions. We used to write like that and then come together with an idea.
Working with Jill was great, it was really really good because our personalities together were perfect for writing songs. She'd do something that would really excite me and I'd do something that would really excite her. The enthusiasm that came off each other was completely electric, it was SO exciting and SO much fun. And all we ever did was laugh. We were just really happy and we worked together really really well. I haven't ever worked with anybody like that since then.
I kind of miss that, I miss our working relationship. It was really good for most of the time, it's just that there became stresses towards the end. It was actually really good fun when we were sitting down and one of us would come up with an idea. We were good for each other, I think. We were good for each other's confidence - we were learning guitar AS we wrote the songs, 'I've learnt this new chord' 'Oh that's really nice, let's see if we can fit it in with the other ones we know'. It was like everything drew out of the same pot. We worked well together, we worked really well together.