Alison Mosshart
I hate sunshine so much. I can only cope with it when it's bitterly, bitterly cold.
It's fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it's an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.
Lollapalooza, that was one of my worst shows. We just played at, like, 3 in the afternoon; it was like the hottest, most miserable thing. My shoes were melting. I just thought I was going to die. It was the most horrible experience. I lasted, what, four songs? In front of quite a lot of people. That was one of my least favorites.
I love being on stage more than anything, and I think that's what comes across. I think the most honest representation of any music is to play it right there in front of people. It's a moment - it's all one of a kind, every little part of it. There's no repeat.
I have so many ideas while I'm driving.
Over the years, my art box has gotten bigger and bigger.
Painting is almost like a sport. It's like this action thing. When I do it, I'm really not thinking. The paintings are like a diary that I might not want to read again.
I write music visually.
Being on the road, I think, is the most organised part of my life. You know where you have to be every day; you know what your job is every day. I crave that tiny bit of stability, which anyone else would think is the most unstable way of living, ever.
If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.
I just sang at first - I didn't ever play guitar before The Kills.
When you do music, your friends are writers, actors, painters. It's all under the same roof. So anything creative is interesting to me.
I get along great with my family. My parents are really proud of me and my brother, who's a chef here in New York. I don't see my parents often, but they're very supportive, especially as I get older.
If I'm at a party, and there are lots of people running around, you'll most likely find me on the floor, painting... I want to be at the party, but I want to do something. I'm just not very idle at all.
I do always want to be creating something; I can't help it. I don't know why that is, but I'm certainly not gonna knock it now, at the age of 36. It seems to be working.
When I was really young, my mum used to make my clothes - I hated that. I liked the way boys dressed - I still do. I wanted to wear what they wore.
Record covers still inspire me in terms of clothes, some bands just look sharp. But I still wear stuff I owned when I was 16.
Touring can be repetitive at times.
You have a physical human reaction to something that another human being made. When you remove the human from it, and you chop it up, make it all perfect, you have a different reaction. Something is not there. You can feel it when it's there.
When you're recording in the midst of touring, you get a different sense about you. Things are more rocking, darker, heavier and louder. You're thinking about the audience that you're seeing every night.
In the studio, you can always stop, rewind and do it again, but on stage, you can never do that - it's a different energy. It separates good bands from bad bands, being able to play, perform and really capture an audience. I think that's the hardest part.
Everybody wants you to do this thing that you've always been doing forever. That's what they want: they want Martin Scorsese to make the same film two hundred times rather than trying to be something different.
I used to go to a lot of Pam Hogg shows. The thing about London Fashion Week is that, generally, we're on tour and traveling around, so it's very rare that I actually catch it. I like to go to Burberry because I know a few girls who work there. I kind of follow friends.
Every day, it's a different country, different time zone. If you asked me where home was, I've never felt like I've had that. My idea of comfort is to leave a place. Two weeks is sort of my max.
The crazy colors tend to wash out so quick. Basically, it ensures that you never wash your hair, so it starts to do some cool stuff.
I love Tokyo, I've been several times. The first trip was just weird; it was a weird time. It was in the '90s, and it was different then.
I think we choose gear by the way that it looks. We choose lots of things by the way that it looks. I don't like bands that look like roadies. I don't like when I can't tell who's the guitar tech and who's the guitar player.
I love touring. I can't wait. Everything is just normal when you're finally on tour. I think, for me, it's my happiest thing; I love moving around, and I have friends and family all over the place. It's kind of my time. It's almost like home. It's when I get to see everybody.
People can be quite cynical. 'The Kills are too cool.' There's been an on-and-off relationship with the music press that loves us and then hates us then loves us again. I don't think any kind of press is reliable.
I don't own a pair of sweatpants.
I'm inspired by being in a different town every day - all the people I meet, all the things I see. There's no way of compartmentalizing everything in my head; whatever I'm taking in is coming out in some way. I think I love painting so much because, for me, it's so fast. There's not too much thought in these paintings.
I actually got into music because of art and because of skateboarding: All those graphics and punk bands and fanzines - they were glued together in my brain.
I had a bunch of paintings around at my house, and someone said to me, 'Why don't you just put them on Instagram? Why don't you show people these?' And I didn't want to - it was just something else I would have to do. But eventually, I was like, 'What's the harm?' And the response was so insane!
All of my art is suitcase-sized. I always paint in mediums that dry pretty quickly because I've got to throw them in my suitcase and go. And I have so much because of that, because it's what I've always done to pass the time, and I like it.
I can't talk on the radio at all. When the red light comes on, my hands go up in the air: I think they're trying to get to my face, to shut me up. I don't talk on stage for the same reason.
Every time I do a project, it always comes with a level of discomfort and not knowing how to do it.
You want to put out a record that you feel is exactly as you want it. Nobody wants to tour for two years on a record they don't like.
I've spent my whole life in airports. I don't come home but every two and a half months, which is pretty crazy.
I'm not saying I'll never go solo - never is a long time - but I've always been onstage with someone else. That way, you're in it together, and you can feel, together, when the songs are right.
Totally. I think things are beautiful when you don’t plan them, and you don’t have any expectations, and you’re not trying to get somewhere in particular. You’re just enjoying it, and making something because you love it, and love the people that you’re playing with. I guess everything happens as a reason.Collection: Beautiful
The more nervous I am, and the more insane a situation is, the more I love it and get addicted to it. That's why I love playing on stage. And I kind of freak out if I don't get to do it, because it's a big part of my sanity, I think.Collection: Thinking
If I'm working on one thing, then that's all that there is going on, and there's no such thing as a side project to me. It's 100 percent.Collection: Sides
Performing to me is the most vital, most important. It's my favorite part of all of it. I just want to be on stage.Collection: Important
A lot of people don't like touring because it's monotonous and you're waiting around a lot but for me it's great. I'm inspired by being in a different town every day - all the people I meet, all the things I see.Collection: People
I never really planned on playing music. But it was a thing I'd always done, since I was young. So it just carried me away; I never really had to make a plan for it or make any decisions. It just sort of decided on me. And I don't know what the hell I would have done otherwise.Collection: Decision
Playing a song changes a song. Every night a song becomes something else on stage.Collection: Song
It was an honor to work with Samantha Morton on this Casablanca-esque, silent-film-esque, Americana photobooth Woolworth's hay day period piece of surrealism/ realism/ story time tell-tale-ism, black and white 35 mm film, washed in strange light, over this love hate tune, heartbreak song, life-goes-on lullaby, The Last Goodbye. It's a doorway into the future of the fatal past-tense. Get it?Collection: Goodbye
All of my art is suitcase-sized. I always paint in mediums that dry pretty quickly because I've got to throw them in my suitcase and go. And I have so much because of that, because it's what I've always done to pass the time and I like it.Collection: Art
When you do music, your friends are writers, actors, painters. It's all under the sameroof. So anything creative is interesting to me.Collection: Interesting
Performing is one thing, and day-to-day stuff - like the way you talk to people - is totally different. If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.Collection: Hate