Kim Gordon: ‘Women aren’t allowed to be kick-ass. I refused to play the game’“The first practi
Kim Gordon: ‘Women aren’t allowed to be kick-ass. I refused to play the game’“The first practices were us sitting in a loose circle playing with no drummer at all. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call “playing”, to be honest. We strummed and made droning sounds on our guitars. That’s when Thurston came up with the idea of playing his guitar with a drumstick. There was no other way to keep a beat. I went for a vocal approach that was rhythmic and spoken. When you listen to old R&B records, the women on them sang in a fierce, kick-ass way. In general, though, women aren’t really allowed to be kick-ass. We had no idea what we were doing, but we lined up a couple of gigs.In Britain, journalists took to asking me a single question over and over: “What’s it like to be a girl in a band?” I’d never really thought about that. The mostly male music press in the UK was cowardly and nonconfrontational in person. They would then go home and write cruel, ageist, sexist things. I assumed it was because they were terrified of women; the whole country had a queen complex, after all. I refused to play the game. I didn’t want to dress like Siouxsie Sioux, or act out the role of an imaginary female, someone who had more to do with them than with me. There was a popular look at the time – the vintage dress, the makeup – that just wasn’t me.”Read the book excerpt hereKIM GORDON, YOU ARE KOOL“I mean, are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?”FEAR OF A FEMALE PLANET -- source link
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