On Dec. 31, 1984 — almost two years before Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. teamed up for their historic rap/rock remake of “Walk This Way” — Sex Pistols/Public Image Ltd. punk legend John Lydon and hip-hop/electrofunk pioneer Afrika Bambaataa released the ferocious Cold War cult hit “World Destruction” as part of Bambaataa’s rotating all-star project, Time Zone.

Perhaps Lydon’s more recently espoused conservative-leaning political views — and definitely allegations of child sexual abuse against Bambaataa in his later years — have tarnished Time Zone’s legacy. But “World Destruction,” as a work of art and social commentary, still holds up. Sadly, it is just as relevant now — or maybe even more so, since Lydon once told me that the bonkers electro-jam was “completely not liked when it first came out.”

Bambaataa died from complications of cancer on April 9, 2026, at age 68. In light of this news, I am revisiting my 2015 Lydon interview — conducted in his backyard on a day when he seemed to be in a particularly chatty and affable mood, and excerpted above — about why he signed on for such a seemingly bizarre project, which was his first single outside of the Pistols or PiL.

“I liked the way Afrika Bambaataa used to DJ. He’d mix a great selection of records. It was just really good fun, and he was in the right place and frame of mind in that that he could quite happily play Parliament next to anything — like heavy metal, or Kraftwerk,” Lydon said of his admiration for Bambaataa, who had groud-breakingly sampled Kraftwerk in 1982’s “Planet Rock,” one of electro’s earliest and most iconic hits. “He’d juxtaposition all these things and keep the beat. I loved that.”

Bambaataa first reached out to Lydon — who had long since moved on from the Pistols to form the experimental, Krautrock/dub-influenced PiL — upon producer Bill Laswell’s suggestion, after Bambaataa explained that he needed someone “really crazy” to contribute to the track. Bambaataa had seen Copkiller, a 1983 Harvey Keitel crime thriller co-starring Lydon in the titular role, so he figured Lydon would be perfect for this role as well.

“We met and we talked and he asked me, would I work on a record he had as an idea for? And Bill Laswell was to be the engineer,” Lydon told me. “So, I went to the studio… and it took off from there. It was really, really raucous fun putting it together.”

Lydon convened with Bambaataa, Laswell (who also played bass on the single), along with distinguished session musicians Bernie Worrell, Nicky Skopelitis, and Aiyb Dieng (all of whom would later work with PiL), at Brooklyn’s BC Studio in October 1984. The session came together speedily, taking only four and a half hours, as Bambaataa and Lydon laid down their mostly spontaneously created vocals over a crude drum-machine beat.

Time Zone’s John Lydon and Afrika Bambaataa in1984 (photo: Celluloid Records)

“It worked really well. I loved making the record with him,” said Lydon. “And that’s how I formed a connection with Bill Laswell therein after. It was fantastic. It was a really good rap song, but he didn’t have a hookline, a chorus, so I came up with the ‘time zone’ refrain. It was great juxtaposition of voices between [Bambaataa’s] heavy [vocal delivery], which we now find out is the rap ideology of presentation, and my squeaking up there like an angry young man. And you put the two together, and it made a beautiful record.”

The confrontational and rarely aired music video — which interspersed footage of atomic bomb tests and then-president Ronald Reagan quoting Biblical references to Armageddon with a bloody-faced, bug-eyed, straitjacketed Lydon squawking, “Kaboom, kaboom, kaboooom!” — was a similarly punk-rock affair.

“I think we spent $22 on the video. We bought a lot of ketchup,” Lydon chuckled. “That was the dietary budget of the day! It was McDonald’s Heinz ketchup for the blood-smears. And it did work.”

While “World Destruction” was not a mainstream hit at the time, and it is still relatively obscure, many music critics and historians now credit the track with inventing the rapcore genre.

“The story of my life is whenever I’ve done anything musically, it’s never been on any playlist or played any radio stations anywhere. It takes years and years and years for them to catch up and then play it. And the bubble’s gone by then,” Lydon griped. “I’ve got to say — I’m not being self-aggrandizing here — a lot of what I do is copied blatantly. … And that drives me nuts. It is annoying, because the purse strings have always been that firmly held tight on me, and I see money spent and invested on others. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m looking at the bright side of this. It’s like, maybe I’m supposed to endure. It certainly keeps me alive.”

Read the full “World Destruction” lyrics below:

This is a world destruction, your life ain’t nothing

The human race is becoming a disgrace

Countries are fighting with chemical warfare

Not giving a damn about the people who live there

Nostradamus predicts the coming of the Antichrist

Hey, look out, the third world nations are on the rise

The Democratic-Communist relationship

Won’t stand in the way of the Islamic force

The CIA is looking for other tactics

The KGB is smarter than you think

Brainwash mentalities to control the system

Using TV and movies, religions of course

Yes, the world is headed for destruction

Is it a nuclear war?

What are you asking for?

This is a world destruction

Your life ain’t nothing

The human race is becoming a disgrace

The rich get richer

The poor are getting poorer

Fascist, chauvinistic government fools

People, Muslims, Christians, and Hindus

Are in a time zone just searching for the truth

Who are you to think you’re a superior race?

Facing forth your everlasting doom

We are Time Zone

We’ve come to drop a bomb on you

World destruction, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom!

I’m going out of my mind – that makes two of us

This is the world destruction, your life ain’t nothing

The human race is becoming a disgrace

Nationalities are fighting with each other

Why is this? Because the system tells you

Putting people in racist categories

Knowledge isn’t what it used to be

Military tactics to control a nation

Who wants to be a president or a king? (Me!)

Mother Nature is gonna work against you

Nothing in your power that you can do

Yes, the world is headed for destruction

You and I know it, the Bible tells you

If we don’t start to look for a better life

The world will be destroyed in a time zone!

In a time zone

In a time zone

In a time zone

Speak about destruction

When Los Angeles indie-pop trio Cannons returned from their grueling Heartbeat Highway tour in late 2024, just as their career was really exploding, frontwoman Michelle Joy knew something wasn’t quite right.

“We were in survival mode. We didn’t want to say no to anything — and that’s the quickest way to burn out,” she recalls, sitting with LPTV and her longtime bandmates, guitarist Ryan Clapham and bassist/keyboardist Paul Davis, at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records after an autograph-signing event for Cannons’ eagerly anticipated fifth album, Everything Glows.

The burnout and subsequent impostor syndrome actually inspired one of the new LP’s singles, “These Nights,” in which Joy wonders if she’ll be able to maintain this pace and still perform at the high level expected from the group. “I came back from tour and I was just in this low state,” she confesses. “Like, ‘Can I even perform again? Can I even write a good song? Can I show up the way that I want to show up?’”

Thankfully, Joy eventually got her joy back, as indicated by the new album’s optimistic title, shimmering and euphoric tracks like “Light As a Feather,” and overall summer-soundtrack disco vibes. But it frustratingly took three months for her to be diagnosed with severe anemia, because many doctors refused to take her seriously — instead blaming her persistent, crippling fatigue on her rock n’ roll lifestyle or even on clinical depression.

“It took me so long to figure out what was wrong with me… because of dismissive treatment, telling me that it was something smaller than it was and not doing thorough checkups on everything,” Joy sighs. “Later, I found out low iron causes very depressive [behavior] … It shows itself as severe depression.”

Joy is in a much better place now, physically and emotionally, after receiving proper treatment and undergoing stomach surgery. But her health crisis obviously posed a huge challenge as Cannons commenced work on Everything Glows, and they had to radically alter their collaborative process.

“I had six weeks [while recovering from surgery] where I couldn’t meet up, and I told the guys, ‘Don’t let me stop you! Keep going to the studio and keep writing!’” Joy says.

“We were in the studio for a little bit and we were trying to think of, like, ‘Well, what would Michelle write about?’… Or, ‘What’s Michelle feeling?’” Davis explains.

Joy stresses, “The reason I even wanted to make songs or join a band is because I love writing.” So, any lyrics she sang on Everything Glows had to ring true, as if she had penned them herself. “[Clapham and Davis] did an amazing job at that, because once I had the brain space to listen and pay attention to what was going on, like deeply listen… I was just like, ‘How did you guys know? Exactly, this is how I feel!’ These are words and things and images that I would’ve wanted to put in a song.”

There clearly was a sense of camaraderie and trust, almost even osmosis, between the three band members by this point; they likely wouldn’t have been able to make an album this way if this setback had happened 13 years ago when they were first starting out.

“I feel like there’s not that weird, ego-based thing in the room that might’ve been the first year, where I’m like, ‘But I need to contribute this!’” Joy chuckles. “We’re all in the same space where we’re just like, ‘What’s going to be the best thing we can do to bring out the best in each other’s talents?’”

“Also, at the end of the day, the three of us collectively form our sound. So, there’s no egos in it,” says Clapham.

“There’s so little ego, we have to force Ryan to write solos!” Davis jokes.

While Davis and Clapham’s friendship goes back to childhood, their bond with Joy formed when they answered the then-recent Florida transplant’s “vocalist seeks band” ad on, of all things, Craigslist.

“I liked writing poetry… and I would like to try writing songs, but I’d never been in a band,” Joy explains. “I didn’t want to go into this solo-artist type of world because that scared me, and I wanted to grow with people, because if you’re a female that’s trying to make some songs, it seems scary to just hop from producer to producer. So, I was like, ‘I want to meet people I feel safe with, and I can learn from them.’”

Campbell was intrigued by the ad’s mentions of darkwave influences like TR/ST, but since Craigslist can often a skeevy forum, Joy ended up barely checking her messages. “Honestly, after the first couple of replies, I was like, ‘I’m just not even going to open these emails,’” she shrugs. So, Campbell tracked her down on social media instead (which sounds skeevy, but it wasn’t in this case), and after they finally connected, they began trading audio files.

“I vividly remember hearing Michelle — her voice on a demo,” Campbell says. My wife was with me at the time; it was like Thanksgiving or something. We were driving home and I’m like, ‘Listen to her voice. This is absolutely amazing. I think we have something here…’”

“And then we met up at a coffee shop in Studio City, and it felt like you were already my friend,” Joy says, grinning at Campbell. “It felt like I already knew you. And then when we all worked on music together, it felt like this was what we were supposed to be doing. Nothing felt out of place. It just felt like one of those things in life where you’re just like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to be doing.’ And we just kept doing it.”

(courtesy of Columbia Records)

When Cannons eventually played their first gig — which was, incredibly, Joy’s first time singing live in public anywhere — at a dive bar called the Rendezvous in Clapham and Davis’s L.A.-adjacent hometown of Santa Clarita, they somehow managed to fill the venue. And that’s when they really knew they were onto something.

“We did expected a couple people, maybe just three people,” Joy laughs.

“Friends and family,” says Davis.

“I’m not even sure how it was so packed! How did they even find our music?” says Clapham.

“That was a really cool thing in the beginning, though. We always had fans coming to our shows just by finding us on SoundCloud and through blogs,” Davis recalls.

“It definitely felt like we had something,” says Clapham. “And if just people would just listen to it, it would catch on eventually.”

Cannons have long since graduated to major stages, and as they return to the road for their Everything Glows tour, they’re making sure to pace themselves this time around.

“We really want to be a band that has longevity, so there’s a specific way I feel like you have to work so you don’t burn out,” Joy asserts. “We’ve reached a point where we make good music, we’re proud of what we do, we have more confidence, and taking care of ourselves, mentally and physically, is No. 1 — showing up fully to each thing we do, instead of having 15 percent [strength that day] because we’re exhausted.”

The band enlisted a supportive new management team to make sure their limits aren’t overextended (“‘Boundaries’ wasn’t even in my vocabulary when we first started, but I can’t tell you how important it is to say no to things and really take care of yourself. Boundaries!” says Clapham), and Joy even recently took her first-ever vocal lessons to increase her stamina.

“I had horrible breath support for half of this album because I had a stomach surgery and it was hard to breathe, so it took me some time to get my breath support back. But now I’m in great shape and ready to tour,” Joy says. “[I’ve learned to] just pay attention and trust my body, and take care of myself a little bit better. And that’s going to make a huge difference with the longevity thing.”

Listening back to Everything Glows now, after the band has survived so much and emerged all the more stronger, closer, and more inspired for it, Joy muses, “It’s kind of cool to see the progression of my confidence throughout the album, because the beginning was a very unconfident kind of fearful place, where it started out. But the music is so beautiful and juxtaposes the feelings that I had, and it makes it feel safe to be in that space.

“My dad is no longer here, but he came to me in a dream and told me that this album is something that people really need right now,” she continues, getting a bit choked-up. “I definitely feel the message on the album is the idea that we all come here with a spark and a light inside of us, and many things happen throughout your life that maybe by a certain point dampens it. And you can’t really see it sometimes, when life gets really heady… but there’s a lesson in it that can bring you back to this knowing of inner joy. I feel like I’ve done that personally through being in this band. It has brought me so much joy, so much purpose, and all of the trials and stuff that we’ve been through over the past four years have taught me so many lessons. … There is so much light that comes from making it through a tough situation and finding out how to move forward in a new way.”

Michelle Joy hugs a supportive Cannons fan at Licorice Pizza Records on Everything Glow‘s release day, March 27, 2026. (photo: Max Scott)

As Black Label Society release their 12th studio album, Engines of Demolition, that means that frontman Zakk Wylde — also known for his work with Pantera and, of course, as the long-running guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne — is heading back on the road. But his wife, Barbaranne Wylde, is used to that life. In fact, after more than 33 years of marriage (and more than 40 years as a couple!), she actually knows no other life.

“I would not know what to do with a husband that came home every night at 6 o’clock!” she admits, sitting with fellow rock wife Daniella Clarke during a live taping of their Honest AF podcast at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records. “That would be really hard for me.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Barbaranne Wylde (@barbarannewylde)

The Wyldes’ odds-defying rock ‘n’ roll love story actually has surprisingly simple and suburban origins, when two “grew up together as kids” in Bayonne, New Jersey. “We were babies when we got together,” Barbaranne says. “We did really meet when I was 12. Zakk’s a year older than me. Sixth grade! And then later on in eighth grade, Zakk had asked me out on a date, and he took me to see the Urban Cowboy movie. He tried to go up my shirt and I wouldn’t let him, so he broke up with me the following Monday! I always thought he was an asshole for that.”

By the time they got to high school, however, 17-year-old Zakk had matured a bit, and he and 16-year-old Barbaranne had become platonic pals. “I don’t remember exactly how we worked our way back to each other, but we became total best friends, and he was dating my sister and I was dating the bass player in his band,” Barbaranne reveals.

But Zakk didn’t want to stay in the friendzone forever.

“Zakk told the bass player, ‘You’re not going to be with Barbaranne anymore, because I’m going to marry her.’ And then he came over to the house and he’s like, ‘Do you like Donnie a lot?’ And I go, ‘Well, he’s all right. Why?’ And he’s like, ‘Because I just broke up with him for you. Because if you guys started to further your relationship, then I couldn’t marry you. And I’m planning on marrying you.’

“And I’m like, ‘Marrying you? I don’t even like you! And… could you stop kissing my sister first?’” Barbaranne recalls, laughing.

HAPPY B-DAY To My SUPAH AWESOME GIRLFRIEND!My Parents were worried why I spent so much time in the bathroom & why we were constantly running out of Kleenex Tissue!!! THANKS to YOU There’s plenty of Kleenex!!!HAPPY SUPAH B-DAY! I SUPAH LOVE YOU BARBARANNE!!! pic.twitter.com/J45HwhxOeX

— Zakk Wylde (@ZakkWyldeBLS) November 9, 2018

Zakk and Barbaranne were a couple from that point on, and on Dec. 14. 1992, right after Ozzy’s two-year No More Tears tour ended, the two tied the knot in Bora Bora. It was during their honeymoon that Barbaranne amusingly realized that as the official Mrs. Wylde, she’d never escape the rock life, not even in the remote South Pacific.

“We’re thinking that we’re going to be by ourselves… but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I kid you not, we’re on a boat doing our thing, and I’m hearing, ‘Zakk, dude, Zakk!’ And I’m like, ‘No way is this happening…’” she laughs.

And then, right in the middle of the newlyweds’ private, skinny-dipping honeymoon moment in a Bora Bora lagoon, up cruised a party boat with Ugly Kid Joe singer Whitfield Crane on board.

“Zakk’s naked with just a T-shirt over him, and I am completely topless. I have nothing on but a bikini bottom,” Barbaranne chuckles. “Thank God I had sunglasses on — I pretended to be sleeping. And [Crane] is like, ‘Dude! Come hang out with us! Come jump in our boat!’ And Zakk’s like, “Um, I’m on my honeymoon. I’m good.’”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Barbaranne Wylde (@barbarannewylde)

While Barbaranne still enjoys the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle after all these years, the Wyldes’ home life actually isn’t very wild at all.

“I definitely think my husband is a completely different person at home than when he’s in front of an audience,” Barbaranne reveals. “When he’s home, people are shocked when they’re at the house. He’s super-quiet! He retreats into his own little area. He’s writing; he’s in his own head. When he’s in front of a camera and people, he is on; when he’s home, he is not at all. And that’s surprising to people. … When he’s home and he just wants to hang out with the kids and the dogs and do those regular things, it’s really pleasant, because we don’t get to do it all the time.”

However, Barbaranne, who sometimes joins her husband on the road, believes that the unpredictability of touring life, along with a bit of naughty bedroom cosplay (“I have a lot of different wigs. I have lots of different outfits. I can be Business Barbie, Secretary Barbie, Porn Star Barbie…”), helps keep their marriage spicy.

“A change of environment… being in hotels and different locales and places, it completely changes the dynamic sometimes,” she says. “And I like the fact that my life is never boring and never routine.”

Below, watch Barbaranne Wylde and Daniella Clarke’s full ‘Honest AF’ podcast taping at Licorice Pizza Records, during which they share more rock ‘n’ roll marriage tips and secrets:

A decade ago, James Graham was on a high. After almost breaking up Scottish post-punk band, the Twilight Sad, a few frustrated years earlier, he and core member Andy MacFarlane had formed an unlikely bond with one of their idols, Robert Smith of the Cure, who turned out to be a Twilight Sad superfan. (Smith paid them the ultimate compliment by covering one of their songs, “There’s a Girl in the Corner.”) Thanks to the unwavering encouragement from the alt-rock legend that Graham now jokingly calls their “publicist, booking agent, all of the above,” the Twilight Sad suddenly had a new lease on life, touring America for the first time in 2016 when Smith personally invited them to be the Cure’s opener. In 2023, they even got to play three nights at the hallowed Hollywood Bowl as the Cure’s support.

But these professional triumphs also served as unfortunate bookends for a tumultuous time in Graham’s personal life. In 2016, his mother and “best friend” was diagnosed with early-onset frontotemporal dementia, and in the middle of the 2023 Cure tour, as his mother’s physical health deteriorated, so did Graham’s mental health, forcing him to quit and return home.

“We were supporting the Cure in South America, and I just woke up one day and I basically couldn’t move. My body just told me, ‘Well, you’re not doing this anymore,’” Graham recalls. “Luckily enough, I was surrounded by some good people. Robert was very much one of those people who told me, ‘You need to get better. This for you doesn’t matter right now. The most important thing is you need to go and get well and be ready for these opportunities again someday.’” Graham’s mother passed away two months later, right when Graham, who was nearing his 40th birthday, was also adjusting to becoming a new parent himself.

The Twilight Sad’s brilliant and gripping sixth album, It’s the Long Goodbye, was actually 80 percent complete by 2023. But considering everything that has transpired since 2019’s It Won’t Be Like This All the Time (the Twilight Sad’s lineup has also now been slimmed down to just Graham and McFarlane, with Arab Strap’s David Jeans currently on drums and Mogwai’s Alex Mackay on bass, plus of course some of this record was remotely written during COVID-19 lockdown), it is, understandably, only coming out now — fatefully, just three days after Graham’s mother’s birthday.

This seven-year gap is the biggest in the Twilight Sad’s discography, but it has been well worth the wait, as It’s the Long Goodbye is the sort of deeply personal, vulnerable, and fearless mid-life work than could only be borne from years of life, love, and loss. “It was a conscious decision to go, ‘If I’m doing this, then it has to be as honest as possible. There’s no hiding behind anything this time,’” Graham explains. “Not that I was hiding before, but I enjoyed the play with metaphors. It was like a bit of a shield, just so that it wasn’t giving away too much. But with this one, it was like, ‘If you’re going to do this, it has to be all on the table, warts and all.’ Because that’s what this is. This experience has been truly horrific and also enlightening and real-life, no bullshit.”

And in some ways, It’s the Long Goodbye (which features Smith on “Dead Flowers,” “Back to Fourteen,” and the especially gut-punching single “Waiting for the Phone Call”) even serves an unintentional companion piece to the Cure’s own recent grief-driven comeback album, Songs of a Lost World, which “holds a really special place” in Graham’s heart because he got to hear many of its songs previewed on the 2023 Cure/Twilight Sad tour.

In the extended video above and edited Q&A below, Graham opens up about his struggles with anxiety and depression, fatherhood, the influence that strong women like his mom had on his life and art, Smith’s contributions to the new Twilight Sad album, the pursuit of happiness, and why men tend to bottle up their emotions. “Men don’t talk about their feelings as much. I’m going to talk about my feelings whether you fucking like it or not,” he quips. And in this compelling interview, he does just that.

LYNDSANITY: There is a lot to unpack with this album, so I’ll be asking some tough questions. I hope that’s OK.

JAMES GRAHAM: Yeah, that’s totally fine. Feel free to ask whatever. I’m here to be as open and as honest as I possibly can be. The record means a lot, and there’s a lot that’s went into it. So, maybe I need some Kleenex…

Well, I don’t want to make you cry!

No, crying’s a good thing! We need to go over that stigma!

Well, maybe some people who listen to It’s the Long Goodbye will cry too, because even though it’s about some very personal things that happened to you, I think it will be relatable for a lot of people.

I hope so. I hope so.

I know that this album was partially inspired by your mother’s health issues, and then her passing and the grief you were processing at the time. And that all began over a decade ago, and then you started making the record started seven years ago, and then COVID also happened. So, this is the longest gap between Twilight Sad records, and a lot has happened since 2019.

Yeah, I think it would’ve been a long time anyway, but COVID as well added its own pressures and things for everybody. Whatever situation you were in, we all had to deal with it. So yeah, I lost my mother two years ago to early-onset dementia. … She was in her sixties when it kind of came on. It was the part in life where I was just about to become a father myself, and there was so much excitement and things on the horizon that we were all really looking forward to as a family. But she got diagnosed in 2016/2017, shortly after we’d finished our first tour with the Cure in America, and for seven years she deteriorated. It’s an absolutely horrible disease that basically strips a person of everything they are. And I was watching my sons grow and her fade at the same time, and at one point it felt like they met in the middle, if you know what I mean. And I found that it was too much. I got really [mentally] ill trying to cope with all the things like fatherhood, losing the person that brought me into the world, the pandemic. I’m an anxious person anyway, and I’ve dealt with depression in my life as well, and have managed to keep a lid on it. And music was a way of getting my feelings out. It was a cathartic thing for me. I was so lucky that I found a friend in Andy that was giving me the platform to be able to release my emotions and feelings, instead of bottling them up inside.

I think a lot of the things that led to my illness was I was bottling things up. I was doing the “just get on with it” thing, and that was against everything that I’d told everybody to do and people that liked our music. I was always saying, “Talk about these things,” and I didn’t even listen to myself. And yeah, I got really ill. And then my mom passed on. We were supporting the Cure in South America, and I just woke up one day and I basically couldn’t move. My body just told me, “Well, you’re not doing this anymore.” It told me that I needed to stop.

The Twilight Sad today (photo: Abbey Raymonde)

It’s so interesting that you can think you’re fine, but the body will tell you you’re not. Your emotional state will manifest in physical ways.

Yeah. It’d never happened to me before. I’ve dealt with all those kind of things before: anxiety, depression. It’s just part of my makeup, and I understand that now more than ever. But yeah, my body told me, “No, this isn’t happening anymore.” And luckily enough, I was surrounded by some good people. Robert was very much one of those people who told me, “You need to get better. This for you doesn’t matter right now. The most important thing is you need to go and get well and be ready for these opportunities again someday.” I mean, for him to do that was … he’s not just the person that I look up to as a musician, a songwriter, everything, but on a truly human level, that was a really important thing to be told.

The Cure recently released Songs of Lost World, and that album was informed by what Robert was going through, like deaths in his own family. I don’t know if you two bonded over that or talked about it, or if he gave you any advice, or if even the fact that he was working on a grief album of sorts inspired what you were doing with your own music.

Well, we’d started the album already. Obviously, it took seven years. I had to make sure that when I wrote the songs, when Andy gave me the music, that I only wrote when I was able to find a space in my life and my head to be able to get out what I needed to. But especially on the Cure tours that we did, the most recent ones before the new Cure record, I got to watch those songs being performed live for the first time, practiced onstage for the first time, soundchecked for the first time. And I made sure that I was there watching, because I am a massive fan, and I thought it would be really disingenuous to any other fans out there to have been given the opportunity to be there and [not] really experience that. So, I made a real promise to myself that this isn’t just about going along for have a fun time. We did have a fun time, but it’s a learning experience. I wanted to take away so much from that tour. But just to be able to see Robert up there on the stage pouring his heart out as a person, not “Robert Smith of the Cure” … that was kind of stripped away at points during those songs. I felt there was a real human connection, and the fact that he was being so honest through his music was truly inspiring. I was in the middle of having to deal with my mom’s disease whilst we were on that tour, and [Twilight Sad] songs like “Waiting for the Phone Call” were kind of in my head when I was away, every day waking up going, “Am I going to get that phone call to come back home?” And it wasn’t the coming back home that was the problem — it was just knowing what I would have to go home to. But to see Robert up on that stage was inspiring to me.

Sort of tied into why I was asking about Songs of a Lost World is some of the Cure’s lyrics are very obtuse or full of imagery, but Songs of a Lost World has some of the most direct, literal lyrics Robert has ever written. And I feel that is the case with It’s the Long Goodbye, too. Was that a conscious decision on your part, or did the songs just kind of come out that way?

It was a conscious decision, because it was a case of, if I was going to do this again, I needed to prove to myself to be able to do it. And “Waiting for the Phone Call” is a pretty universal thing now, I’m finding. We all at some point in our life are in that situation. … So, I’d say that yeah, it was a conscious decision to go, “If I’m doing this, then it has to be as honest as possible. There’s no hiding behind anything this time.” Not that I was hiding before, but I enjoyed the play with metaphors. It was like a bit of a shield, just so that it wasn’t giving away too much. But with this one, it was like, “If you’re going to do this, it has to be all on the table, warts and all.” Because that’s what this is. This experience has been truly horrific and also enlightening and real-life, no bullshit.

When you’re hit with things like that in your life and you step away from all the band and things like that, when you come to a point where you’re losing somebody that you really love, nothing else matters. So, it was like, this is how this has to happen. It can’t be shrouded in mystery. This is what it is, because ultimately I’m reaching out in a way to see if anybody feels the same way as me. And I’m finding that people are connecting with this record. Death is a thing that we don’t talk about a lot. I feel the Mexican culture does talk about it and embraces their loved ones that they’ve lost, and I think that’s such a beautiful thing. I think in our culture, people are scared to upset people or talk about something that might hurt, but getting to the other side of that hurt is a relief and a weight off your shoulders. I was always conscious of that, but a lot of the times when writing songs, I wasn’t in a good place and things were hazy, so what came out, came out. Looking back now, I can genuinely start to understand why I was feeling the way I was. At the time, life didn’t have any reasons for me or didn’t make sense. Life just didn’t make sense to me. But I was a father as well, and I had to get up every morning and be there for my family, and that was more important than this record or anything else that I do. That was what pulled me through it, really: Andy’s music and my family. And I have this body of work now that shows that it was a real thing.

Which tracks on It’s the Long Goodbye embody that newfound clarity most for you?

There were certain songs like “Dead Flowers.” I have been listening to the record a lot, to [prepare to] talk to people about it and perform it at some point, and every so often a light bulb kind of goes on, like, “Yeah, I knew you were feeling this way, but you’ve managed to subconsciously talk to yourself, in a way that your future self can look back and go, ‘I understand why you felt completely lost at the same time.’” It’s quite weird on reflection, looking at the record now. There’s a lot of strange coincidences. This record was, first of all, meant to come out possibly in the start of [2026], but it got pushed back a few times and then it just happened to land on [March 27], and the 30th is my mom’s birthday — which wasn’t planned. I only literally realized it maybe about three weeks ago. I hadn’t orchestrated that. The universe seemed to have decided that that’s when it should happen, and so many other things like that have been happening to me. I don’t know what I believe in, but something weird is happening as far as coincidences. When we booked the studio to go to the studio to record, we booked it in London and [Andy] booked a studio [Battery Studios] that he thought was really good. And we were talking to Robert one night and he was like, “Oh yeah, that’s where we recorded [the Cure’s] first two or three records” … And we were with [producer] Mike Hedges, who’d recorded those records as well with them, and it was just like, “Whoa. This is just a lot of universe stuff happening.”

They say don’t meet your heroes, but you met Robert, and suffice to say, it went extremely well. I can’t even imagine how thrilling it would be to have one of your favorite artists from your youth, one of your main influences, not only like your band, and not only eventually cover one of your songs and bring you on tour, but also appear on your own records and become a real friend. That’s the most ringing endorsement I can imagine. Is there still some fanboyish part of you that’s pinching yourself over all this?

The surrealness is fading a bit. It has a lot more since we’ve got even working together. I mean, watching him every night play three hours of just some of the best songs of all time, and just afterwards talking about the gig with him like a couple of friends in a bar around the corner, I feel extremely lucky. And I’ve wrestled with this in my head as well. It’s just like, “Why us? Why?” As a band, we’ve never been pushed in front of the global media or whatever. We’ve kind of existed in our own world, and you don’t know who’s looking or if anybody will notice you. You certainly don’t expect Robert Smith to notice you, because you’re constantly working, trying to make it work. And for that to happen, it was … yeah, I honestly feel, why us? I see so many other bands that also deserve to be championed, but he saw something in us. He saw through the music as well. He could see the way that we care about our artwork. We care about everything to do with it. And he saw that we didn’t want to become rock stars or anything like that. He could see that we were doing it because it was something we loved doing. And to have been given the opportunity to share our music around the world and introduce our music to different people, it’s still pretty magical and pretty unbelievable in many ways. When we’re with each other and hanging out and playing, it doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like friends playing a gig. But when you step back and actually have to look at the big picture — speechless.

Have you ever outright asked Robert what was it about your band that captivated him? He really has gone out on a limb for you guys. He’s practically a Twilight Sad publicist at this point.

Publicist, booking agent, all of the above! Yeah, he tells us. There was an interview [that Smith did] recently … and all the things that I would hope to find in a band that I loved, he said about our band, which is just amazing. That is the dream. There’s nobody that’s given me enough confidence to be myself other than Robert, besides Andy and the band. Andy and Robert have such a great relationship as well. Robert says that Andy and I combined are like him. We are quite ying and yang in some ways, Andy and I, but because Robert sees music from Andy’s point of view, and he sees it from my point of view as well, he gets both of us. Having the connection with Robert has given us the confidence to push ourselves musically as well. This album was always going to be what it is, but I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to show him that all his hard work and belief was merited, all the opportunities that he’d given us, everything. I wanted to show him that it’s through hard work and doing what we believe in, that’s the gratitude. He’s been a big part of why we’re still doing this, and I’ve realized I need it in some way, and I think he can see that within me as well. So yeah, there’s lots of things he has told us, and that’s enough. He’s done so much. I am constantly just like, “Are you not fed up with us yet?”

I assume Robert is proud of this new album. And I assume he was one of the first people outside of the band to hear It’s the Long Goodbye in its entirety.

He had the demos. When we started, we gave him all the demos. We met up in London with Robert and Mike Hedges one night, just for fun, really. … We played some acoustic songs for them, which was nerve-wracking, and then Robert said, “Get the demos on, let’s start listening to them,” and pulled out a massive notepad and had notes on everything! It was absolutely one of the most nerve-wracking things you can imagine, sitting in front of two of your idols with brand-new songs, going, “What do you think?” But Robert had so many suggestions. And it was always suggestions. It was never, “Do this, do that, do this.” He was like, “Try this, try that, see if that works. I like this, I like that.” And that put us to work. Instead of being told what to do, it made us go away with that idea and do the work. And he does that quite a lot with us. He plants little seeds with us. It’s our own thing, it’s us that’s doing it, but I can see that he’s gently nudging us in the right direction.

Was there any one really awesome thing he suggested that was really important to this record?

Two things spring to mind right away when you ask that question. The first one is on “Back to the Fourteen,” he introduced a melody. The song was good and I was happy with it, but he just put this really simple, beautiful melody in, and it was like the cherry on top. It was like, “Oh, that’s perfect. Beautiful.” Something that you didn’t know you needed that now you can’t live without, that kind of thing. And then on the last song on the album [“TV People Still Throwing TVs at People”], he added so much. He just told us to let it breathe, because it wasn’t as long as it was and it was more direct, whereas now it gradually builds and introduces some of the melodies that are going to come later in the song. He really helped that song breathe. And now that I listen to it, that song wouldn’t be what it is without his advice.

This is a question I would ask of Robert as well: There’s a cliché that artists make their best music when they’re in a dark place and struggling, and if they’re in a good place in personal life, their art becomes boring. Is that all true for you, or do you believe that in general?

It’s a good question, because when you’re younger and starting a band, you make the first record and you’re like, “I made it for a reason. There was something to write about.” And then you’re like, “What’s next?” And that thought sometimes popped into my head. I’d be like, “Maybe something bad needs to happen to me, so that I can write another record.” But I got really fed up with that quite quickly. As I started to write more records and genuinely be in an OK place, obviously there’s darkness and light in everybody’s life, but I didn’t have to go searching for it. Life really does bring it to you. I’ve got so many things that I’m so grateful for in my life. I’ve got a beautiful family. I’ve got a wife, my partner, who’s just been there for me, and our lives are fantastic together. But life just slaps you around the face sometimes. I always thought you might have to go searching for that stuff. Somebody once said to me, “Oh, people really like to come and watch you suffer,” and I was like, “Yeah, I suppose so.” But to feel like something bad needs to happen for you to make a record, I don’t believe that anymore.

Obviously, It’s the Long Goodbye is an extremely personal record, inspired by some very specific things that happened in your life. How do you make an album like that relatable and universal, so it’s not just like fans are listening to your audio diaries or therapy sessions?

I just think the themes that I’m talking about this time, everybody does go through it at some point in life. A lot of [journalists] have told me about their situations, and that’s why they’ve connected to this record. That’s why they’ve asked to speak to me. That’s amazing for them to be brave enough to want to put themselves into a situation to talk to me about that kind of thing. It’s given me a bit more faith and humanity, because it’s pretty hard to find that right now. Those little moments of connection with people and conversation is more important than ever. I don’t know, I think we need to listen to each other more instead of talking at each other.

It’s also only been somewhat recent that celebrities and artists have been open discussing their mental health.

Well, the conversation has to be open somehow. And music is the thing that connects so many people, so if it can be the starting point for a conversation in any walk of life, then it’s a good thing. I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts with artists that I know that have been through something similar, as far as the mental health side of my story. Matt Berringer from the National and Alan [Sparhawk] from Low did a really good conversation. Matt Berringer and David Letterman did a YouTube thing. And as they were speaking, I was like, “Oh, thank God” —  or thank somebody whoever’s up there — “I’m not alone.” I could hear people that do the same job as me, and they were talking about the exact same feelings and how they’ve managed to get out of it. So, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration, as far as my own health, from people that have opened up about it. And I know the effects of speaking out, from being the person that’s been listening instead of talking about it.

Have you ever had a feeling of almost like guilt, though? A lot of people would see a musician who’s supposedly living the dream, making music and touring the world, and might be like, “Shut up, suck it up. Your life is great. I work at McDonald’s. I have a much tougher life. What are you whining about?” Have you experienced any of that?

Well, where I grew up, men don’t talk about their feelings as much. I always felt that I was different from that and never really felt part of that. I was in many workplaces — I worked on building sites, kitchens, catering, offices, I’ve done everything — and the attitude was the same in those industries, and it was just it felt unhealthy. I think it’s just very much a man thing as well: that it’s a sign of weakness, perhaps, to show your emotions. I want to be the antithesis of that, because that’s not the way to live your life. It actually puts you in a darker place than actually talking about it. I think that was my worry of putting my feelings and emotions out in the world. That’s why I’m quite apprehensive about putting the record out, because I am a worrier. I’m very anxious. But I just think this is what I do. … I don’t want to bother anybody or hurt anybody or annoy anybody, but at the same time, I’m going to talk about my feelings whether you fucking like it or not.

I feel that men like Robert Smith and some of his post-punk peers, like Morrissey and Ian Curtis or Tears for Fears, might have given young boys, maybe even yourself, the permission to be more emotionally expressive. Like, they made it cool to be sad, or to cry, or admit to being insecure.

A hundred percent, without a doubt. And I think that’s something that we touched on earlier about: why does Robert connect with [the Twilight Sad]? There’s those reasons as well, a connection in being that type of person that’s not afraid to do that. I’m afraid to do loads of things, honestly. I’m so afraid of life in general. But I’m not afraid to do this. I don’t know where that comes from. It’s just amalgamation of all my experiences and the people that have come out in and out of my life. I’ve had very strong female characters, leaders, in my life. My grandmother was such an important person in my life. My mother was my best friend. And I was the only boy in my class in school; I was with five other girls in my class. I think within that, there was learning the lessons of sensitivity and strength in ways not through the male gaze, if that makes sense. And that’s been a big part of my makeup as well. I don’t enjoy lads, lads, lads and all that. It’s not how I work. My best friends, apart from Andy, have been women — like, my wife as well is my best friend. So, I think I had that in my makeup and my DNA, because of the people that were around me. But then when I heard these [male artists] being truthful and honest and the heartfelt and talking about those things, it was completely transformational and inspirational. Without those records and those inspirational people, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing here, talking to you.

I’m so glad you are talking with me! I have two last questions — one serious, and one not-so-serious. The serious one is: How your mental health these days, after emerging from all this darkness?

Better. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this if I didn’t feel that I was on a forward trajectory. I’m feeling a lot more hopeful. I can see things that I’m excited and happy about. My kids give me a life and just make me so happy and test me so much. It’s been the biggest test of my life. I go for walks early in the morning and listen to my favorite records on those walks, because I realize if I sit in the house and let things stew, those [negative] feelings will come back and it’ll be history repeating itself. I want to be a happy person. I want to enjoy my life. I’m so fed up with being so worried about everything and scared of everything. I want to be very present every day, instead of thinking two steps ahead of myself. So, it’s a learning process. With the tools that I’ve got now, if those feelings start to come again, I know how to fight them. I know the things that are bad for me and good for me, and I feel like I’m doing the right things. These conversations have been great for me. I’ve been coming off interviews, and I’ll come off this interview as well, feeling lighter and better about things. And the fact that you’ve so kindly asked me these questions and you’re interested in what we’ve done is a positive thing, and I need to remind myself of that — not [remind myself of] when I was not feeling great, which is putting it pretty mildly, but I think I’ve been testing myself, because of all the buildup to the album and the thought of it being out there. And I’ve known how to deal with it this time, compared to when I was in the middle of just the unknown of my mum, the unknown of my own health. I really feel like I’m beginning to move forward with my life now. I know there’s going to be a few bumps in the road, but I think I’m more equipped to deal with them than I was. I’m stronger than I thought I was.

I’m so happy to hear that! And I’m so happy that you enjoyed this interview, because I did too. OK, and my not-serious question is, from one Cure fan to another: What’s your favorite Cure album? I just want to know from my own curiosity, no pun intended.

I think it’s Disintegration. I know that that’s the easy one to say, but it is a fucking great record. I mean, any album with “Plainsong” and “Pictures of You” … but I was listening to Faith the other day, and I love the coldness of that. The Head on the Door is also beautiful.

There’s no wrong answer, I guess!

Yeah, there isn’t, but I just know it’s quite the obvious answer when somebody says Disintegration. To be honest though, the last one [Songs of a Lost World] has a place with me for many reasons, apart from just the music. That was an overall experience for me. I probably will say that that’s the record that’s affected me the most, because I was quite present and watching it happen, in a way. That holds a really special place in my heart.

photo: Skylar Watkins

For FLOOD‘s March 2026 digital cover story, I had the thrill of interviewing Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert and super-producer Butch Vig about SSPUs’ excellent new album, Tenterhooks.

This is the third Silversun Pickups album that Vig has produced (now making them the band that he’s worked with the most aside from his own group, Garbage), and his bond with Aubert and the rest of the Pickups was wonderful to witness.

This feature stems from a live Q&A event that I moderated at Pasadena’s Sid the Cat Auditorium in February, which was a benefit for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. You can tune into FLOOD FM all this week (March 24-27) at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 5 p.m., and 10 p.m. PT to hear audio of the full conversation. 

READ THE INTERVIEW HERE!

Alt-rock singer-songwriter Whitney Tai may have just released an unexpected cover of the theme song to That Thing You Do!, but her most recent full work, the epic concept album American Wasteland, is a movie unto itself. Created with producer Tom “Tommy Hatz” Hatziemanouel between 2021 and 2024 — obviously a tumultuous time in the world, but also in Tai’s personal life, as she dealt with the death of her addict father and the end of a toxic long-term relationship — it’s her most personal and defining artistic statement yet.

“I would say this album is the most me,” says Tai tells LPTV, sitting at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records before performing American Wasteland live in its entirety, with a full band, for the first time. “It’s the most organic and rustic and folky. I’m very inspired by ’70s folk music, but I’m also a ’90s kid, so I love grunge and alternative metal. At the end of the day, you wash a pop sensibility over that from my ‘90s experience, and this is the amalgamation of this album has become. It’s all my influences, all the things I want to sing and perform, wrapped into one. And I don’t feel like there’s any compromises on myself in this record.”

In the edited Q&A below and extended video above, the renaissance woman opens up about the family that has shaped her (the death of her mother from cancer when Tai was 10, her fraught and complex relationship with her dad, the vaudeville in her blood, being parentified, and how her grandfather encouraged her to pursue her dreams); her return to music after giving it all up for a 9-to-5 life; how her past architecture career and her love of nature influence her aesthetics; and how making American Wasteland saved her life and became her “peace.”

LPTV: American Wasteland has been described as a concept album. Is that accurate? And if so, what’s the concept?

WHITNEY TAI: American Wasteland began sort of like this subconscious journey into my own personal trials and tribulations, dealing with abuse and narcissism and just people and situations that were causing me mental health issues. For a while I was writing this record and I didn’t even realize that while I was writing it — that I was working through circumstantial triggers and problems around me. My body could feel that there were issues going on, but it didn’t really know, on the outer cortex, how to process those yet. And as things started to come into fuller focus, the concepts I was dealing with interpersonally started to connect to those outer worlds. So, it’s like looking at things around us — like, people around us could treat us like trash, they can manipulate us, they can abuse us, but it’s also happening at a larger scale from corporations, from big tech and healthcare organizations. It’s just everywhere we look; we are being reduced to a piece of waste. And so ,this album is really just to reclaim that sense of purity. … The title track was written at the end of the process of writing this album. I sort of tied it all together because it was like our anthem song. It was like: “Fuck you. Yeah, we’re waste, but we’re also not waste.” Like, you can bury as deep down as you want, but we’re still going to climb the fuck out. It felt good to reclaim and tie the record together from it not just being a microcosm, but a macrocosm at the same time.

This record was written between 2021 and 2024, which was a really tumultuous time in the world and this country. But your father also passed away during this time.

Yes, at the end of the record being done. It was almost like this chapter closed on everything. My dad was one of my earliest musical pushers or inspirations to go into music, but he was also one of the most complicated people in my life, because of how his struggles with alcohol abuse and drugs impacted me as a child and caused me to go through a lot of suffering. And so, there’s a song on the record called “King of Wands,” and at the beginning of the song, there’s an old voicemail he left me where you can hear him kind of guilt-tripping me yet again I put it in there because there’s a sadness — like, my dad loved me so much, but he was a victim of his own problems and he could never escape himself. He never worked on himself. I feel like our generation is the generation of working on themselves, cycle-breaking. And our parents, the Boomer generation, they’re kind of stuck in their ways and don’t know how to take mental health seriously or even see that they’re contributing to a problem at large. And so, that affected our relationship for many years. But it also empowered me to never be like that and make sure that if I do anything in the world, that it’s with love and passion and tenderness, and that I’m not going to fall back into habits. Because he was an amazing guitar player, an amazing musician, and he never saw those things through because he was stuck in his issues. Him passing away, it was almost like the initial aggravator of my childhood trauma was gone. I was really sad, but I was also in a way free, because I didn’t have to keep being tormented by someone.

Were you and your father close at the end, if you don’t mind me asking? Was there any closure him with about all of this?

There was never closure, but I think there was an unspoken understanding that my dad knew that he effed up and he just really never got a chance to reclaim our relationship. But I loved him anyway, and I showed up to accept him as he was in those last years, because I think he was also realizing the mortality and the finality of life. I’m fortunate that we were amicable, but I had to keep my distance just to protect myself, because as everybody in the scene knows, dealing with substance abusers is really difficult, because their behaviors are extremely manipulative and narcissistic. It’s hard to reason with that when there’s constant lying. I feel like I’ve built up such a hard shell around myself, like armor, throughout my life because I’ve always had to be the parent. I’ve had to be the mature one. My sister is special-needs, so I had to take care of her when I was a kid, and I’m taking care of her again now that he’s passed. So, it’s like my life has been dedicated to just being the strong eldest daughter.

And I know you were a caretaker to your grandfather as well. You said your dad was one of your early musical inspirations – I’ve read that the first music thing you ever did was singing 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” at age 7 with your dad accompanying you on guitar — but then it was your grandfather, much later in life, that encouraged you to re-pursue your musical dream, right?

Yep. He was very father-like to me. There was this love and this nurturing there that I never really got, so that nurture just reminded me of who I was. Because I’ve had to be so hard for most of my childhood, having that softness and nurture really reminded me that I can lay back into my feminine and be myself, and I don’t have to be so guarded and running away from what it is that I desire. And that takes time. I went to art school, I did architecture, and I was practicing that for many years. But that also led me back to music. All of those things colliding reminded me that music is my true path and that I needed to be surrounded by people who loved me in a way that was gentle and unconditional, to be able to make those [career] choices again.

Was there a specific conversation with your grandfather when said, “Don’t wait, go for it now, go to back to L.A. and do music again”? I don’t think you were living in Los Angeles at that time.

He would say that very often. He was like, “My dream is to see you perform in Madison Square Garden one day.” He just loved when I would sing around the house. He never got to see me perform live; I was hoping that would happen before he passed. But he’s the one who gave me the ability to chase my dreams, because I was in survival mode when I lived in my house. I did not have any way of accessing or having time to do something like that. And so, having the time to be an artist and to dig back into music, I was able to rediscover my purpose. I think it was just his everyday slow love that allowed me to really know what was right for me.

Are there any songs on American Wasteland that are about your grandpa?

I would say that the closest song that reminds me of my grandfather would be “Sequoias,” because my grandfather was very gentle. He was kind of like that gentle voice of reason, that soft listener, that funny little banter that you need to be shaken up. And there’s a lyric in “Sequoias” that’s like, “Do you see the skyway, or are you distracted by the billboards far above the sun?” It’s kind of just a reminder of like, you have this beautiful world in front of you. Why are you looking at the materialism? Focus on love, focus on nature, focus on what matters, because all that shit’s going to fade. And my grandfather was that. He really cared about things. He cared about his family. He cared about us. My grandparents, both of them, were just all about love, and they’ve lost all their children. So, for them to even still be walking around like statues of love, after everything’s been taken away from them, inspired me when I was young. I was like, “If they can go through this shit and still choose to love and show up correctly, then that’s a choice we all can make, and I’m not going to be a victim of my circumstances.”

You say your grandparents lost their children… I know you lost your mother at a young age. Was that something that contributed to you being hard so hardened?

Yes, that definitely contributed to it. My mom was a tough chick and a businesswoman, entrepreneur, artist, and for her to go at such a young age, while I was at a young age and my sister was a young age, definitely changed the way I see the world and approach the world. I promised myself when I lost her that I was never going to do anything without the utmost purpose, intensity, and passion. Even if I have to die for the thing that I love, I would do it, because I don’t know when my last day is, just like she didn’t know hers. And my mom was very healthy. She was athletic. She was positive-minded. And she got swept away too soon. That’s why music for me is everything, and it’s the one thing that’s saving me right now after all that shit.

You have music and art in your blood, right? Your dad was a musician, albeit not professionally, but don’t you come from a long line vaudevillians, tap-dancers, et cetera?

Yes. My mom’s grandfather was a vaudeville performer and he was a part of the Borden’s Milk Quartet, who used to go around the whole country singing. My grandmother was a tap-dancer who used to dance with the Marx Brothers. Show business is in my family, and everyone’s very musical. My grandfather used to sing lots of weird songs around the house when I was a kid. I was like, “Where the fuck are you getting these songs?” They were made-up. He was a songwriter in his own right. He just loved making up little ditties and I was like, “Wow, these are really, really catchy.” It was nice to be around that.

Why did you delay your own musical career, then? You mentioned that you had responsibilities that made things difficult, but were there any other reasons why you were a relatively late-in-life professional musician?

It was a couple of things. I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood like that; there was no community around me encouraging that. It was Yonkers, New York, and there’s not a big music community there. When I was young, I wanted to be a dancer and a figure-skater. I had many passions, but I’ve always sang. I think it was when I was working for an architecture firm, a friend of mine kind of poked me and reminded me to go back into music. I started working with a producer in Europe and then my voice, hearing my songs produced and understanding what I could do and being shown the capacity of where my music could go, really made me switch something on and go, “Oh, so I can do this!” I didn’t know what was possible at the time, because I didn’t have a fruitful community around me showing me what I could do. So, it’s really just having access. That’s why schools I think should have access to music from a young age. … I think I could have benefited from having a more music-driven community.

But since you initially went into architecture, how does that inform what you’re doing now? Obviously you’re very visual, so that had to have fed into how you present yourself now onstage, in videos, in photographs, et cetera.

I think architecture and music are identical as concepts. They are applied differently, but they take the same amount of process. You need to understand harmony and composition and scale and density and empty space. There are so many concepts you use when you’re planning a space that you would use in a song. All the parts and pieces have to be harmonious. They need to make sure that they’re not fighting each other, so that each thing can shine on its own. And so, when I’m making songs, I see them like little spaces, little buildings that I have to configure to make everything work. From the melody to the chord structure to everything, it all has to flow. I think at the end of the day, most mediums, whether it’s art, painting, music, architecture, requires the same process to arrive at a beautiful, harmonious piece of work.

Whitney Tai performing at Licorice Pizza Records (photo: Facebook)

If you put your architecture skills to use, the sky was the limit and if you were playing Madison Square Garden on a Lady Gaga-scale tour, what sort of amazing stage set would you build?

If I was doing my own set, because I’m like a nature buff, I would probably recreate an Icelandic landscape and just have maybe low-lying fog at blue hour, and then maybe lots of stars and cosmos and beautiful moss strewn upon the stage, and then bioluminescent objects. I’d really love it to feel magical and ethereal. The lighting would be almost as if it’s in a winter kind of wonderland. I could go a million ways with it, but I’d want to keep it more organic.

Yes, I know you’re a big nature buff. Maybe people would look at you and not think you’re a granola girl or hippie or bohemian attire, but nature is also a theme on this record. That’s evident in the photography and the videos you’ve done with Joseph Cultice for American Wasteland.

Yeah, that was really fun. I had this vision in the beginning that I wanted to be this modern-day wasteland, an Ophelia that’s like drowning in this disgusting moat. I just really wanted to portray the glamor in the decay. That was really was the concept of the main album covers, the glamour and the decay… that things aren’t what they seem. We’re suffering out here. We’re going through a lot of shit. And you slap some latex on it, you put some nice lighting and you put some chains and it’s like, “Oh, things may be OK,” but it’s not. Because deep beneath that latex is a body that’s been soaking in dirty water from the L.A. River for some time.

What ended up happening as we evolved the imagery was that I wanted the closing of the record, which is “Sequoias” — the bookend song where she’s restored, she’s back in the ivy, she’s pure, and she doesn’t have to identify with that part of her past anymore. She’s evolved and metamorphosized into something that even she herself could not see, because she was so tarred by the gross shit beneath her and flowing in from all places. And I think Joey did a really good job at understanding that evolution, even just musically, because we never really discussed how that was going to take hold. I think he just absorbed these songs for so long and knew where it was going: that this is us at our lowest point where we don’t know who we are, and this is us reminded again of who we are and how we’re never lost. We wander down a path that we shouldn’t for some time, and that’s OK. Because the return is what’s beautiful.

How does American Wasteland differ from your previous two records?

I would say that the first two records are a little bit more electronically driven. I’ve always been more of an alternative/grunge sort of artist, and it’s taken me a long time to find my sound. I know what I love to listen to what I’ve been influenced by, but it takes making records to get closer and closer to who you are and what you have to say, because you’re also growing as these albums are happening. You’re going through phases of your own evolution. And so, I would say this album is the most me. It’s the most organic and rustic and folky. I’m very inspired by ’70s folk music, but I’m also a ’90s kid, so I love grunge and alternative metal. At the end of the day, you wash a pop sensibility over that from my ‘90s experience, and this is the amalgamation of this album has become. It’s all my influences, all the things I want to sing and perform, wrapped into one. And I don’t feel like there’s any compromises on myself in this record. I was able to have 100 percent creative control alongside Tom [Hatziemanouel]. We were able to do this with our hearts fully in it, and there was no ego and no fighting at all. The entire album process was so harmonious that it was amazing.

Since you mentioned ’90s and grunge, I must ask about the Alice in Chains cover you did, “Brother,” because I believe there’s a direct Alice in Chains connection there.

Yes, my good friend, Michael Rozon is a pedal steel player for Jerry Cantrell, and he and I have worked in other capacities. He’s produced me in the Beauty in Chaos project, which is the president [Michael Ciravolo] of Schechter Guitars’ project. I found out that he plays pedal steel and I was like, “Oh my God, dude, you’ve got to get on this record!” We did a session one day and it came out insane and I just loved the outcome. I felt it was the organic thread that the record needed to bring you back to some sense of the Wild West.

You mentioned Tommy Hatz, your producer, and it’s my understanding that when you first started working together, you didn’t necessarily plan on making a whole album.

No, we didn’t! I met Tommy through Schechter Guitars as well. He started showing me some demos back in 2020, and then he wanted to do something like my song “Starfish. He sent me “Perfect Storm,” and that became a whole soul/pop song and it didn’t even go in that direction. I was like, “I want a choir; I want everything,” and it became what it is today. It’s funny that from there I was like, “Well, let’s just keep writing and see where it goes,” and at some point we’re like, “Um, think this is an album. I think we’re writing an album right now.” And we just kept going.

There are a couple of other songs I want to ask you about. I feel like the single “Rhea” is an especially important centerpiece of the album.

It is. When I was writing it, Tom goes to me, “Is this song about your mom?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I’m not really sure.” Because I thought it was about my breakup really, because there’s a parallel to being lonely — it’s like, there are some people that make you feel more lonely when you’re with them than when you’re alone. And that reminded me of when my mom passed away, because there is a strange loneliness that overtakes you when you lose a parent at a young age, and it never really goes away. It’s like a hole that’s driven into the center of your chest, and you can’t ever fill that hole, so what you do is just try to live as deeply and passionately as possible. And over time, that hole closes. You’ll be reminded of what that feeling was, but then there’s people that really make you feel more fucking lonely than you actually should feel. It was a reminder to me that I need to surround myself with people who never make me feel alone. And so, “Rhea” is a broader question of “Do we belong together? Are we forced to be alone out here forever? Am I alone by my own design, or do I get to choose whether I’m whole already?” Rhea is one of Saturn’s moons, and poetically, all the moons are tidily locked around a planet, so their back is always to the darkness and one is always to the light. So, it’s like you’re finally getting to see your moon from both sides. I guess that’s a funny way to see it. It’s like having a full, 360 understanding of how I don’t have to have my back anymore to the sun, or I don’t have to have my back to the darkness anymore. I can turn around. I don’t have to be locked into this position. It’s my choice. I’m a quantum object in this field, and I can make the decision to feel whole again.

I also want to discuss “Slumber Party,” because you’ve said before that that song “saved your life.”

“Slumber Party” is literally just a song about waking up for manipulation. A lot of people don’t really know a lot about manipulative people and how they move through the world and understanding the nuance of how cognitive dissonance works. And “Slumber Party” really attacks about how our body is smart enough to tell us when something is wrong. So, it’s like, what if we never leave the state of slumber we once believe was our reality? It’s like, you don’t really understand how much control you have over your own mind until you’re pushed to the point of no return, where you’re at like the ledge of the cliff and you’re like, “Oh shit, I’m alive. I’m here. I’m breathing. I can fight back!” It’s being pushed to the edge of a cliff and then realizing at that final moment: “I can wake up and say no and ‘fuck you.’ I can leave this place.” I think we’re in a state of cognitive dissonance in many situations in our lives where we comply with things that harm us because it’s a familiar feeling. We’ve been abused in the past and we conflate love with abuse and think that they can be one thing. But they’re not, and they should never be in one sentence together. So, “Slumber Party” is telling you to love yourself more and just show up and just say no. You don’t have to RSVP. You can just bounce.

Well, obviously there was a lot to unpack with this record, and it was over the course of several years and going back into things of your childhood. I imagine it was a very healing process to make this record. What was the biggest thing you learned about yourself during the making of American Wasteland?

I would say that I should have been kinder to myself. I should have loved myself more. I should have realized my power and not have it usurped by certain people around me who maybe were opportunistic. I try to implement a sense of care to the people around me, but sometimes it’s at my own expense. And I think that I’ve learned over the years that I’m never going to sacrifice my peace ever again. And so, American Wasteland is my peace. It is the one thing that saved me, because it reminded me that I already have all the power I need within me and I don’t have to look elsewhere to create or build that reality. It exists in my heart and my soul already.

In 2022, I had the honor of interviewing the Kinks’ Dave Davies when he was promoting his second autobiography, Life on a Thin Line. Inevitably our conversation turned to the band’s 1970 comeback hit, “Lola,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard chart, becoming the first-wave British Invaders’ most successful single on this side of the pond.

With “Lola” now back in the news due to Moby’s ill-informed (Kinks-shaming?) comments about the song, cluelessly calling it “gross,” transphobic,” and “unevolved” — and Dave’s own epic clapback, along with trans punk icons Jayne County and Ginger Coyote coming to the Kinks’ defense — I am revisiting the legendary Kinks guitarist’s interview. He opened up about his own fluid sexuality, and he explained how “Lola,” a song he’s always been proud of, was created in very different society 55 years ago.

to @thelittleidiot Moby’s criticism of our song LOLA these are the words sent to me and Ray from our dear friend trans icon @jaynecounty27 #JayneCounty. I am highly insulted that MOBY would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way. https://t.co/hBFmLPdMKH pic.twitter.com/qYcxoMc03d

— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) March 22, 2026

“When [the song’s meaning] came to light, people were quite, quite shocked. But actually nowadays, it’s really quite a very common subject: gender, talking about ‘girls will be boys and boys will be girls,’” Dave told me. “We’re going through a big change in attitude and feeling and ‘what are we’ and ‘why are we.’ So, it’s very topical now.”

“Lola” — which Dave said was inspired by his brother/bandmate Ray Davies’s dinner date with Warhol muse Candy Darling, although Ray has denied that claim — detailed a romantic encounter between a befuddled straight, cis man and the titular trans woman that he meets in a Soho nightclub. The topic was controversial in 1970, with some radio stations fading out the track before its twist ending or even refusing the play the single at all, but perhaps “Lola” would generate outrage today for different reasons and be deemed politically incorrect (hence Moby’s kneejerk misinterpretation of the song’s intention).

However, “Lola” was considered downright groundbreaking and progressive more than a half-century ago, with the man in the classic story-song ultimately accepting (or even remaining smitten with) Lola, despite discovering her gender identity.

“Obviously there were a lot of people we knew who were transgender at the time, and we knew were a lot of gay people, but when the Kinks first started [in the 1960s], homosexuality was illegal in England,” Dave pointed out. “So, there were a lot of people that were having problems with their demonstration of their sexuality or how they wanted to appear, and we were at the beginning of all that.”

In Life on a Thin Line and his previous memoir, 1996’s Kink, Dave wrote about his romantic relationships with musician/actor Long John Baldry and music producer Michael Aldred, along with a few other same-sex trysts and a missed opportunity to engage in a threesome with the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, whom Dave had “always fancied.” Dave, who has been married twice to women and has been in a serious relationship with writer/photographer Rebecca G. Wilson since 2012, explained to me, “After a lot of soul-searching in those early years, it seemed quite apparent that I was not bisexual or homosexual.” (Maybe “fluid” or “pansexual,” terms that did not exist in the mainstream in the ‘60s or ‘70s, would better describe his sexuality.) But he spoke fondly and frankly of that “really fantastic period” of shame-free sexual awakening in his youth.

“Obviously I experimented with my sexuality, being an inquisitive young man,” he said matter-of-factly. “I wanted to know what was going on when I was young, and I still do; I’m still very curious about world events and new things. And sometimes we have to find out about these things, and sometimes we don’t even know at first. That time in the ‘60s was a big opportunity for finding out things, experimenting with sound, with painting, with movies — with sex! It’s like all these opportunities suddenly reared their head. You have to remember that there had been some really rigid concepts in place at the time, and that was a bit of a worry. There were a lot of people that didn’t like ‘camp,’ a flamboyant way of experimenting with your sexuality or however you want to be. But in my case, I experimented. I had male friends — that I stayed friends with — that I had male-to male adventures with.”

Dave and his older brother were always “distinctly different from each other,” he told me. (“Ray was like a documenter of information, and I was so wild, experimental with life and music and sexuality.”) As the youngest of eight children, with six older sisters, Dave was “very heavily influenced by women,” which helped him get in touch with his feminine side — a side that was unfortunately suppressed in so many boys, including Ray, during an era of slow-to-change gender norms.

“I count myself very lucky to grow up in that environment,” said the self-declared “baby” of the Davies family, fondly recalling singing show tunes with his sisters in the family living room and playing dress-up. “I liked to dress up when I was a boy, like wear my sister’s clothes and stuff, just to have fun. But on the outside, there were very strict constraints about behavior. A lot of my friends at school growing up, they decided a long time before they left school what they were going to be accountants. And we need to get accountants, of course! But it was a more rigid mindset. I was always encouraged to dance and sing and have a good time. … At a very young age, I realized that life is art.”

I don’t wanna show the guy up, but Moby should be careful what he says. the cockettes
And their friends used to follow us around on tour. We appreciated them. Why is Moby being so rude about this simple song? We’re not trans phobic. Why does he have to have a go at us?

— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) March 23, 2026

The Eldest Daughter, the debut album by Florida-born indie-folk artist Gatlin, might have been ever-so-slightly overshadowed by Taylor Swift’s The Life of Showgirl, which coincidentally featured a song called “Eldest Daughter” and was released on the same day. But rest assured, this fearless (no pun intended) singer-songwriter, who just released her follow-up EP Pipe Dream, very much has her own unique voice.

Inspired by her conservative Christian upbringing in Florida (as, you guessed it, the oldest of three children), and how she has processed and made peace with her childhood trauma since coming out eight years ago (she even re-read her teenage diaries during the recording process), Gatlin Thornton’s album is heavy at times. “I think that Christianity and my relationship with God was so tied into my identity, and growing up, I was very much taught that I was born bad. I was born evil, and God is the only thing that is good. That’s a really damaging way to grow up,” she explains, sitting with Licorice Pizza Records’ LPTV in Studio City right before her in-store performance. “I had to learn how to trust myself and believe that I was good.”

But The Eldest Daughter is also laced with wry humor, whether it’s the clever play on words in “Florida Man” (the comma is silent); the diaristic, nostalgic memories of Gatlin’s first girl-crush in “If She Was a Boy”; the rebellious declaration in “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs” when she sings, “I’m going to hell because girls are fun”; or that moment in “Man of the House” when she proclaims, “My cats can be gay if they want to!”

And that humor definitely comes through in Gatlin’s charming and candid LPTV interview (as seen in the video above and Q&A below), in which she opens up about undergoing ketamine therapy; dissociating during interviews (thankfully she didn’t during this one!); the whole “Florida Man” viral phenomenon; going (temporarily) no-contact with her family; donning empowering male drag in her music video; her ever-shifting relationship with spirituality; and, yes, gay cats.

LPTV: I’d love to start by asking about the significance of the title The Eldest Daughter, because I know you grew up in a conservative, religious family.

GATLIN: I think I was in this process of really doing a lot of healing with my family dynamic, and really a lot of things were coming to light. And so, naturally, I’m going to write about it.. And everything I was writing about was pointing towards being an eldest daughter and all of the pressures that come along with that.

What was your family’s dynamic, in terms the pressures you felt as the oldest of three kids?

I felt like in a lot of ways the truth-teller, the protector, another parent.

Did you feel you had more expectations placed on you, because you were the leader of the pack? When you’re the eldest, you’re the kid that does everything first.

Or you’re the guinea pig!

Yes! And also, parents are usually much harder and stricter with the oldest child. By the time the later kids come around, they’re much more chill.

It is crazy, the difference. I think also because when [the oldest is] female and the baby [of the family] is male, the gender of it all… yeah, there was a big difference. I wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers, or what I was consuming in media was just very strict, versus with the baby it was free reign.

I do want to get into specific songs on the record that address your childhood, but in general, what were you revisiting or maybe even reinterpreting when you were making this album?

I think it really started with my queerness and figuring that out. And then it was not only an issue with my family, my queerness, but then to talk about it publicly. It was almost more of a big deal when I decided I wanted to start talking about it and letting other people know! Because I think that’s a Southern culture thing: having this presentation of being perfect and everything is all put together, and not wanting the judgment from other people. So, it felt like I had to just full send it and go all the way there, of being honest and being open publicly in my art and my songs.

When did you come out?

When I was 19. Now I’m 27.

(photo: Dualtone Music Group)

So, it was relatively later in life for you.

Yeah. And it was bisexual. I came out as, “Oh, I have a crush on this girl.” But even at the time, I was like, “But I’m not going to do anything about it,” because I was still in the church. And so, it was very interesting, the way that I even presented it to my family and my community. It was like, “Everyone start praying for me! I have feelings for a girl!” It took me a really long time to process it and be OK with it myself. And then I was still dating men, so I think maybe my family would view it as I only came out two years ago, because that was when I was really [started] dating women.

Did they think it was a phase?

Yes. And obviously it wasn’t a phase!

Where do they stand with all this now?

It’s a process. I think they’ve come a long way from when it started. The song on my album “Love Me” is a song to my mom, kind of about right when I came out and she was saying extremely hurtful things. It has come a long way since then, but I still am struggling with it, because I do think that there is a difference between tolerating something and celebrating something about someone. I want this part of me to be celebrated.

How did your mother react to “Love Me”? I assume she’s heard it and knows it’s about her?

Yeah, I did show [my family] all of the music before it came out. It’s a hard thing that we’ve been having to navigate, because for me, this is my story and I’m just trying to be honest and it’s my way to process. I was like, “I’m not trying to hurt you through this!” But I think she did take it as hard to hear.

You mentioned this crush that you had on a girl, which was sort of your sexual awakening. The song “If She Was a Boy” is about that. Tell me about that real-life experience.

I wrote that [two years] ago, but from the perspective of 19-year-old me, when I was in that place of “I have feelings for a girl, everyone start praying.”

Did you really want to “pray the gay way”?

Oh, man. Yeah. I truly believed that if I acted on that [crush], I would go to hell. And so, it was a product of the environment I grew up in, and was in. I was living in Nashville [at that point]. I was at a Christian school and surrounded by other Christian kids and deep in the church. I grew up Baptist, and then we went to an evangelical Presbyterian church. It was very much: “Go spread the word of God, go convert everyone.” It was fear-based. I didn’t want anyone to go to hell.

This seems like it was traumatic, and yet you seem very untraumatized. You’re sort of laughing and joking as you talk about it.

I think maybe that’s just my way of coping with it. I’ve done a lot of work about all of this. I’m currently doing ketamine therapy. It’s really rocking my world.

I don’t know if you ever acted upon that crush at age 19, or if that woman knows about it. But I do believe I’ve read that you wrote about her in your diaries, and it was finding and re-reading those diaries — and in the process rediscovering your 19-year-old self — that spurred much of this album.

Yeah, because that was kind of the first moment when I began to really question. Maybe it was because I wasn’t living in Florida anymore; I was in Nashville. I felt in the space to start questioning. Before I was like, “Well, I’m as religious as it comes,” but I finally had the space to start questioning these feelings, and then that just stirred up kind of an entire deconstruction of faith, of politics, of what my family dynamic was, of gender. That was the catalyst.

Is it weird when you visit home? Is it one of those cliché situations of awkwardly being at the dinner table with people who don’t share the same beliefs you have now?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people are having a hard time because of the political climate right now. [I didn’t go] home for the holidays [last] year. It’s my first time not going home for the holidays, but the beautiful thing about it is I have this chosen family and a beautiful community of friends and the queer community. I had a wonderful Friendsgiving and there was just so much love and acceptance.

I do think the whole notion of chosen family is very important. I assume you’re not religious anymore, at least not the religion you were raised in, but are you still spiritual, or do you still have some kind of faith in your own way? How do you define your faith, or are you just completely agnostic or atheist now?

Thank you for asking that! I love talking about it! I’m definitely very spiritual. I’m kind of like, re-finding God. For a while I had to separate from it, because there was a lot of pain attached to God. But it wasn’t God — it was people and humans that would corrupt it. I’m kind of in my journey of finding out what [faith] looks like. I’ve been in a lot of discovery, looking into different religions, reading the Bible again and seeing what I feel about this, now that things have kind of calmed. I think I’m just searching right now.

Is ketamine helping with that? I don’t know much about ketamine therapy.

I’ve been seeing this therapist for like eight months. I went to this place, got prescribed the medicine. We refer to it as “medicine.” It’s been very helpful for me. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but she had suggested it. I think it’s just been a way for me to reprocess things or create new neural pathways, because I can logically know something so well, but my body would still react. Even this process of doing interviews for the record and talking about the way that I grew up and family things… I was doing a podcast [recently] and I fully dissociated mid-podcast. And so, it’s just like, “Oh, there’s still work to do.”

I hope you don’t dissociate during this interview! Actually, you’re welcome to dissociate if that’s what you want to do, but hopefully you’re OK with how this interview is going so far. Do you mind me asking what the podcast question was that triggered that response?

I think it was just something about my parents and what they thought about me. And I just was like, “Annnnnd… I’m now no longer in my body.” It’s a body-keeps-score thing. The body remembers.

Well, if anything I ask bothers you to the point that it would make you disassociate, please let me know.

It would have a few months ago, but I have done a lot of work and I’m much better.

I’m glad to hear that, because as I get into asking about specific track, we’re obviously going to get deeper into this. I did want to ask about “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs,” because I love the line :“I’m going to hell because girls are fun.” That’s a great line.

I think that song is more me being a little bit angry. Growing up, I wasn’t really allowed to feel anger, or I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be angry. It felt good to get some of that out. It’s about hypocritical Christianity, like MAGA Christianity, and how the Jesus I knew wouldn’t be acting like this. It was really therapeutic for me to write that and to feel angry about it.

Which song on the record is the most therapeutic for you to perform live?

That one’s really fun. I feel like at shows, that’s the one that people really respond to and get excited about. “Love Me” is one that I have not been able to sing live without crying. I’m very deeply uncomfortable, but I think that is a good thing. It also has allowed for people who are there at the show to make me feel safe and make me feel seen. And I think it makes the space feel very safe.

Another track, “The Hill,” is about religion as well. There’s a line in it about how walking away from Christianity was the greatest loss of your life and the hardest thing you ever had to do. I imagine that’s another cathartic and/or difficult song to perform live.

Yeah. I think that Christianity and my relationship with God was so tied into my identity, and growing up, I was very much taught that I was born bad. I was born evil, and God is the only thing that is good. That’s a really damaging way to grow up. And so, leaving that, I had to relearn… not relearn, but I had to learn how to trust myself and believe that I was good. All of these things that were very difficult to do. It felt like I was completely losing myself. And I think for a lot of people who grew up in Christianity, that’s why it’s so hard to question it or to walk away from it, because you have grown up thinking that’s how life is. And then, also, my whole family is in it. And church is also such a wonderful place for community; I had so many friends and I felt so loved. So, it was a really hard thing to walk away from. And yeah, that was a painful song to write, but I think a good one. It phrases it almost in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way.

https://youtu.be/O_Mpp3qR6hw?si=yqep6nBamGo2ST8M

When you talk about the community, did you lose a lot of friends or family members when you came out and changed the way you were living? Did you lose a lot of support? Did you have to make new friends?

It was a process, like a year’s process. I was living in Nashville at the time and a lot of my friends were all kind of coming out of it at the same time, which was really nice and felt less isolating. Family relationships changed, definitely. And that’s sad and heartbreaking, but also OK.

You do approach all this with a bit of humor, like I said before. You have a song called “Florida Man,” which I love because if you ever read The Onion or even the real news, there’s always a headline along the lines of, “Florida Man Does Some Crazy Shit.”

Have you done the thing where you put your birthday and then “Florida Man”? Google your birthday and “Florida Man,” and there’s always going to be something!

Ha! So yes, Florida has a bit of a reputation that’s probably somewhat deserved. But there’s a comma, at least an implied comma, in your song title, because you basically say, “I’m never going back to Florida, man!” It’s a fun play on words. So, tell me about this song, because there’s a lot of humor, but also a lot of anger in this too. It’s kind of like an F-U Florida, or at least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

I think now, retrospectively, I view “Florida Man” as this metaphor of almost who I was when I was living there, playing my role in my family dynamic and not being who I was and not questioning and being in the closet and all of these things, I kind of view it as, “OK, I’m never going back to that.” Through honestly writing this album, I kind of got to reclaim Florida as mine.

I hope anyone reading or watching this interview who’s unfamiliar with your music doesn’t think The Eldest Daughter is an entirely a sad, mopey, angry record! So, I’ll cite another example of your lyrical humor, in “Man of the House.” My favorite line in the album is from that song: “My cats can be gay if they want to.” I’m all for gay cats. I’m all for cats living their truth.

Let the cats be gay!

Yes! But what is “Man of the House” really about? Because that’s a loaded term — patriarchy, gender roles, all that.

Yeah, I was kind of claiming that for myself. In the visualizer I did, I was in male drag. I had a beard and the camo and I felt awesome; I feel like it unlocked something in me. When I wrote it, I was living in an apartment by my own, by myself, and paying the bills from my music, which was wild. And at the time I wasn’t talking to my parents, because you go through breaks, or at least I do with them.

Are you talking to them now?

No, not right now.

Oh, I’m sorry.

It’s OK. So yeah, I think it was the first time that I was like, “OK, I’m a little bit on my own. Let me figure this out.” I just felt powerful. It was a time of my life when I was like, “I’m a strong person!” So, I wrote “Man of the House” and I was like, “I get to live by my rules. My cats, if they want to be gay, can be gay!”

Are your cats gay?

One of them definitely is gay. For sure, gay. My partner says that I project a little bit. Like, I’m almost forcing them to be gay, when they might not be.

You’ve just got to let your kids, even your furry kids, be who they want to be, whether they’re gay or not. That’s one thing we’ve learned one thing from this interview! I also want to ask about “Soho House Valet,” because your press release called it the “north star” of The Eldest Daughter. It’s about a very specific conversation you had with a family member, I assume at Soho House…

I wrote that a week after I had this f fight with my dad walking into Soho House Warehouse in Downtown L.A., and I wrote it to process that. I was very honest in a way that I hadn’t in my writing before. I viewed the song as, “Well, this is for me. No one else is going to hear it. So, who cares? I’ll just say everything.” And then I sat with it for a while and I was like, “You know what? I think I do want to put this out. And I want to make an entire album that is this honest and is for myself.” I guess why it’s the north star. It was like the catalyst of, “OK, I want to start making music in this way.”

Do you mind me asking why you’re not speaking with your parents right now?

I think it’s a rollercoaster. Relationships change. And right now for me, as this album’s coming out and I’m talking about it, and there’s been fights, and the political climate… it’s just a lot. And I’m kind of like, one thing at a time. Sometimes space is good for healing as well. When things are really emotionally charged, sometimes it’s OK to say, “Everyone needs to take a break. Take a break and breathe for a second.”

But even though you have differences of opinion, different political beliefs, different religious beliefs, I understand that your parents always been very supportive of you of being an artist from very young age. And that’s interesting. Maybe some people would assume they’d be like, “Be a housewife! Don’t pursue a career!”  But they always encouraged you to be musician.

Yes, and I feel like that’s such a gift, because I’ve had so many friends who parents were like, “OK, be practical.” And doing music is not practical. It’s a hard thing to go out and pursue. And especially my parents are not creatives and not in this world, so they didn’t really understand it, but they were willing to learn with me and figure it out. So, I’m like, “OK, see? If you can do that with music, then you can do that with me being gay, too!”

Did you always want to play music?

Yeah, when I was young, it was always, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I’d say: “A singer! I want to be a singer. I want to write my songs.” Maybe in middle school I thought I would do something practical, but then in high school I got diagnosed with an anxiety and depressive disorder and I was like, “Music is the only thing that makes me happy.” And I was really supported in that.

So, your parents supported you in your mental health journey and got you help, et cetera?

Yes, they did. So, you see, they’re not… there’s so many redeeming qualities. I had a lot of great things in my childhood.

I’m glad to hear that. So, let’s end things on that positive note. You were obviously unpacking a lot of stuff from your adolescence when making this record that was painful or dark, but there’s nostalgia on The Eldest Daughter too. What did you revisit that was nice to remember?

I think the last track, “Kissimmee,” which is where I was born. I had gone back to Florida and was able to go out with some queer people and discover so many beautiful people in Florida and be with family in a really positive way. And I was like, “Oh, I have this nostalgia for childhood again!” Coming back and being able to be who I am and really love who I am in Florida, I think was really good for me — because I’d kind of had this view of loving a place so much, but not really being loved by it. Maybe that’s a generalization, but you can find pockets and find people anywhere.

My last question is, what advice do you have for people who are going through something similar — whether it’s coming out, or just in some way breaking away from their upbringing — about they can be as grounded as you seem to be now?

Oh, wow, thank you! … I think being honest with yourself and learning how to love yourself is such an important thing. And I think I was able to do that by spending a lot of time by myself and doing a lot of work, but also finding community and finding people who celebrate you for exactly who you are. And it doesn’t need to be a lot. I think that has made all the difference with me — just having my few friends who are like, “I see you. I love you. And I’m here for you no matter what.”

Gilby and Daniella Clarke in the ’80s; their daughter Frankie, right, remaking “Whatever Happened to Fun” four decades later with Kevin Preston. (photos: Instagram/YouTube)

When rocker Frankie Clarke (Frankie and the Studs, the Gourmandizers, Los Frankies) and her friend Kevin Preston (Prima Donna, Green Day) recently covered Candy’s “Whatever Happened to Fun,” they weren’t just unearthing a criminally underappreciated ‘80s L.A. powerpop gem. They weren’t even merely tipping their rakish hats to Frankie’s famous dad, Gilby, who played in Candy years before he got his big break with Guns N’ Roses.

Frankie’s remake was in fact a true full-circle, cross-generational moment… because if it weren’t for “Whatever Happened to Fun,” Frankie would literally not exist.

Gilby and Frankie’s mother, future fashion mogul Daniella Clarke, actually met on the set of the “Whatever Happened to Fun” music video, and what transpired was a storybook rock romance that has defied all odds and lasted more than four decades. It just might be the cutest rock ‘n’ roll cute-meet tale of all time. And it all started in front of that Hollywood Blvd. mural, right next to the infamous Playmates lingerie emporium.

Daniella and her two younger siblings were visiting from South Africa, spending the summer with their Los Angeles-based father, and were doing some Hollywood sight-seeing when they stumbled upon Candy’s video shoot on July 19, 1985. “I saw a crowd of people standing around and I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘Oh, this is a band filming their video for MTV,’” Daniella recalls. “Then I saw the guitar player standing on top of a convertible. He had ripped jeans with fishnet stockings underneath, tons of black eyeliner, and hair sticking up in every direction. And for some reason, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s my guy.’ Everybody else just kind of melted away, and I only saw him. And I stared at him. I think I stared at him so hard, with like, like piercing eyes, that he stared back.”

Gilby did indeed notice Daniella. “She was on my side of the stage, and I kept seeing this pretty girl smiling. She just caught my attention,” he says.

“We locked eyes. I saw him, and he saw me,” says Daniella. “And then my dad said, ‘OK, that’s enough. We’re going to go get ice cream.’ So, we left.”

It was then that Gilby sprang into action and dispatched Candy’s makeup artist to chase after the mysterious accidental video extra who’d caught his eye. “I said, ‘Go get that girl. Go find that girl. I want to say hi to her.’”

“The makeup artist from the set came up to me at the ice cream shop, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Excuse me, but you were just at the video shoot, and the guitar player there wants to talk to you.’ Well, I ran as fast as my legs would take me! I left my dad and my brother and my sister and ran right back to the set,” Daniella laughs.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniella Clarke (@daniellaclarkestyle)

The pair’s first meeting that fateful afternoon was actually a tad awkward, because not only was that makeup artist Gilby’s ex-girlfriend, but Gilby had invited several love interests, past or present, to the shoot. (“Oh, there were so many girls there that were all saying they were his girlfriends,” Daniella chuckles.)

“Back then when you got to do your MTV video, it was a big deal, and you called all your friends. I called all my girlfriends — and they were all there!” Gilby chuckles. “Because it was a big event for us, there were a lot of other girls there. So, I was kind of hiding from those other girls, while meeting this new girl.”

And that wasn’t the only awkward aspect of Gilby and Daniella’s first encounter. There was also the matter of Daniella’s age. “The first thing Gilby said to me was, ‘What’s your name?’ And I said, ‘Daniella.’ And he goes, ‘Daniella, you’re very pretty. How old are you?’ And of course, I lied,” Daniella giggles. “I knew if I [answered honestly], he would never talk to me. The lie just flew out.”

“She right away said she was 18. But she was not 18,” says Gilby. “She was 16!”

It would take several years before Gilby would learn the truth (“We started dating, and the lie just kept perpetuating itself,” says Daniella), but regardless, the two were instantly smitten and inseparable. And this would not be the only time that the infatuated Daniella’s impulsiveness and determination would keep the couple together.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniella Clarke (@daniellaclarkestyle)

“When it was time for me to go back to South Africa [at the end of the summer] and my dad dropped us off at the airport, I was already dating Gilby and I was in love, head over heels. I didn’t want to go back. But my mom was expecting us to come back,” Daniella recalls. “My dad dropped us off at the airport. I looked at my brother and my sister and was just like, ‘I’m not going with you. You guys are going to get on the plane without me. I’m going to stay here with Gilby.’ My brother and my sister were like, ‘Mom’s going to kill you!’ And I was like, “Well, yeah, she probably will. But I’m not going home.’ And I took off. Oh my God, my poor mom went to the airport to pick up three kids — and only got two! I swear I could hear my mom screaming all the way from South Africa. She was so mad.”

Daniella’s father wasn’t too thrilled either. “I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’m still in America.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean, you’re still in America?’ And I go, ‘I’m still in California.’ And he goes, “What do you mean, you’re still in California?’” Daniella laughingly recalls. “And I said, ‘I didn’t leave. I’m staying with Gilby.’ And he said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’”

Eventually Daniella’s “furious” parents realized that their defiant daughter was never getting on that plane. “I told them, “Gilby and I are going to be together. If you make me go back, I’m going to run away. You’re not going to be able to keep me away from him. I will always run away, and I’ll always be with him. So, either you know where I am and I’m with him and I’ll enroll in school and I’ll get a job and I’ll take care of myself, or if you force me to go home, you’ll never see me again,’” Daniella recalls. “And they had no choice.”

And so, Daniella remained in L.A., but even though Gilby “would take [her] to school and pick [her] up,” he still hadn’t figured out her real age. “Meanwhile, I thought he was Elvis and I was Priscilla,” Daniella chuckles.

“I didn’t even find that out until we got married, when we went to do the marriage certificate. All those years, I had no idea,” Gilby insists.

“We went to the courthouse to go get our marriage license, and I figured, ‘Now is the time I better come clean. I better tell him.’ At this point, I was 21. We’d been together a long time already. He thought I was 23,” Daniella explains. “At first I said, ‘I have something to tell you…’ And oh, the poor guy’s face! I mean, he went white. He probably thought I was pregnant or who knows what. Then I said, ‘I’m not 23. I’m actually two years younger. I’ve been lying to you the whole time.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I had a feeling, because you always had some stupid story about why you didn’t have your I.D.’ But at that time, he was already a pretty well-established musician around town, and we never walked in through the front door [of clubs and bars]. We always went in through the back. So, I never had to show I.D.!”

The Clarkes’ young marriage faced another challenge very early on, when — right after their 1991 rock ‘n’ roll wedding took place at Madame Wong’s West, on the legendary punk club’s last day of operation — Gilby received a job offer that had the potential to take his career to a stratospheric new level, but might also tear the newlyweds apart.

“After our honeymoon, we got back and went into our apartment, checked our answering machine, and there was a message. It was Slash, asking Gilby to audition for Guns N’ Roses, saying that they needed a new guitar player,” says Daniella. “At the time I thought it was a joke! Next thing I knew, two weeks after I married him, Gilby was getting ready to go on this huge tour.”

The opportunity was obviously one that Gilby could not refuse. Candy had never really taken off. “We were trying to do something that nobody else was doing at the time, and it was really hard. I think we had three record deals before we put out a record — we were signed to an independent, we were signed to MCA, and then Polygram — and by the time we got a record deal, the whole scene had changed,” Gilby explains. His next band, Kill for Thrills, amassed a sizable local following and released one album on MCA… but Guns N’ Roses were literally one of the biggest bands in the world at the time.

“I was like, ‘Oh, shit. What does this mean for me? Am I going to get left behind here? Is he going to run off with some supermodel?’ Because that’s what happens. I was pretty horrified,” Daniella admits, recalling her reaction to her groom’s new GNR gig. She also remembers wondering if her disapproving mom and dad, who’d always thought her relationship with Gilby was doomed, would be proven right. “My parents were like, ‘He’s a musician! He’s got a girl in every port! Are you crazy? You’re just one of a thousand girls. This is never going to work. He’s going to cheat on you!’ But luckily for me, Gilby is a meat-and-potatoes guy, a good ol’ boy from Ohio, and he was like, ‘The only way this works is if you come with me the whole time.’ And I was young enough, didn’t have that much going on at the time, that I was able to do that. That was a blessing.”

When Daniella joined her Gilby and GNR on the road, she learned to deal with the insecurities that any rock wife would understandably have. “There’s constantly chicks around, like a plethora of women. And that was tricky, especially at my young age. But as I got older and settled into who I was, and what our relationship was, and the trust that we have in each other, it didn’t bother me anymore,” she shrugs.

A decade later, the Clarkes’ lives drastically changed again, this time when Daniella’s career took off with her multi-million-dollar denim brand Frankie B., which set the trend for super-stretch, super-low-rise, super-sexy jeans in the Y2K era. “That was a very tricky time in our marriage, because I had spent most of my years together with Gilby on the side of the stage, watching him and cheering him on, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t able to go out on the road as much, because now we had a daughter and I had a career,” Daniella says of that new power imbalance. “But in a partnership, you’re there for each other when you need each other. So, when he was out on the road, I was there for him. And then when I was doing my work, he was at home helping me. And we worked it out somehow, some way, by hook or by crook. My career was going in one direction, his career was going in another direction, we met super-young, both high school dropouts, et cetera, et cetera. It shouldn’t have worked. But we always figured it out.”

Embed from Getty Images
As for how they’ve stayed together in an industry where most rock marriages barely last as long as one album’s promotional cycle, Gilby says matter-of-factly, “Honestly, there is no secret. It’s just things change. Things that were important when we were first together aren’t important now. You just have to adapt, and I think more than anything, you need to put that person first. It’s about making her a priority. I mean, a gig’s a gig, but we just had to make our marriage a priority. And then we kept that throughout my whole career — and her career.”

“The ‘secret’ is we just love each other and want to be together, period. That’s it,” Daniella adds. “We just wanted to be together, and we knew that the most important thing was that we stayed together throughout it all and prioritized each other. I describe our relationships sometimes as a seesaw: We always balance each other out, because the ultimate goal is making sure our family works. So, he was always my strength and my supporter, and I was always his.”

“I mean, look, it hasn’t always been roses,” says Gilby (no pun intended). “There have been hard times. But we made it through somehow, and now this is the good stuff.” And as the Clarkes’ marital fun continues, he looks back on Candy’s memorable “Whatever Happened to Fun” video shoot and says, “It was a beautiful day. We’ve got a daughter, and we’ve had a life together. It’s been pretty good.”

Above, watch Frankie Clarke and Kevin Preston’s “Whatever Happened to Fun” remake — which includes video scenes shot in front of that iconic Hollywood Blvd. mural and at the San Fernando Valley’s equally iconic record store Licorice Pizza, as well as cameos by Gilby and his original Candy bandmates. Below, watch Daniella and fellow rock wife Barbaranne Wylde’s live “Honest AF” podcast taping at Licorice Pizza Records, during which Daniella shares more adorable details about her and Gilby’s Walk-of-Fame star-crossed first meeting.

“Every time with this band, every time we get hit with this almost career-stopping thing, something amazing happens,” the Struts’ frontman Luke Spiller marvels, sitting onstage at Los Angeles’s Grammy Museum with his bandmates Adam Slack, Jed Elliott, and Gethin Davies to discuss and celebrate the 10th anniversary of their landmark debut album, Everybody Wants.

“It should have been called Nobody Wants the Struts, at that time,” jokes Davies.

“I think that’s why we called it Everybody Wants. We just wanted to be ironic,” quips Spiller.

Spiller and Davies are self-deprecatingly referring to a period of limbo between the first edition of Everybody Wants, which was released overseas in 2014 on Virgin/EMI with “zero promotion,” and the retooled U.S. version that came out on Interscope exactly 10 years ago. The latter edition eventually spawned a platinum-certified, top five Billboard rock/alternative hit, when the British rock ‘n’ roll brigade’s fist-pumping empowerment anthem, “Could Have Been Me,” was released for a third time.

“Well, one was finished, and one wasn’t,” Spiller says drily, when asked to explain the difference between the two Everybody Wants releases.

“[Virgin/EMI] essentially said, ‘There’s no more money being spent on [the first version of] the album, so it’s got to come out as-is.’ And then I guess they paid for the CDs to be made, and we just knew it was inevitable we were going to get dropped,” Slack shrugs.

It was a setback that might have discouraged many other young, fledging rock groups, particularly in a pre-Måneskin, pre-Greta Van Fleet, pre-Yungblud era when almost no new rock music — in any country — was cracking the charts. But the Struts (formed in 2009 by lead singer Spiller and guitarist Slack in Derby, with bassist Elliott and drummer Davies solidifying their enduring lineup in 2012) were never a typical rock group. So, they were determined to keep calm and carry on. And they had a plan.

“Radio stations weren’t going to play our music. No one was going to write any reviews about us. So, we just knew that we just had to impress people the good old-fashioned way,” explains Spiller. “We knew that we had to hit the ground running and take every single show that we could, and learn how to become a really exciting live band.”

The Struts clearly fulfilled that mission. Fronted by dandy Englishman Spiller (whose showman influences include Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Robert Plant, Bon Scott, the Darkness’s Justin Hawkins, and the icon to which he’s most often compared, Freddie Mercury), they went on to become one of today’s most flamboyant, electric live bands — so much so that Dave Grohl once famously declared them the best support act the Foo Fighters ever had. But if the Struts’ story of resilience was ever turned into a biopic or an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, it was one fateful gig, one fateful phone call — involving opening for an even more massive rock ‘n’ roll group — that would inspire that film’s big, triumphant, turning-point scene.

The Struts were getting ready to play a “glorified pub” called the Lincoln IMP in the industrial Lincolnshire town Scunthorpe (“the only town name in the world that has the consecutive letters C-U-N-T,” Elliott chuckling points out). And as Spiller recalls, they were having “a real coming-to-Jesus moment where we were like, ‘What the fuck are we doing with our lives?’ We were running through all these different scenarios and things that we could do or whatever, and we sort of felt like we were at what could have been potentially an end.”

“We were all sat on the mattress on the floor,” Gethin recalls.

“Yeah, which was probably flea-ridden. Oh, if that mattress could talk!” Spiller laughs.

“Have you seen the movie Trainspotting? It was like that,” Elliott adds.

“And then we got the phone call from our American manager at the time,” Spiller continues. “We’re all lying on this mattress, and he’s like, ‘Get ready, because in 10 days’ time, you’re opening up for the Rolling Stones!’” As a last-minute replacement after Primal Scream pulled out, the Struts had been booked to open for the Stones in Paris, for an audience of 88,000 — certainly a major step up from the 300-capacity Lincoln IMP basement. And suddenly, the Struts had renewed purpose.

“Believe me, we went downstairs and played that show in Scunthorpe like it was fucking 88,000 people,” Spiller grins. “Yeah, it was pretty good.”

The Struts’ reputation as a killer live act soon swiftly spread. Spiller reveals that, unlike the Stones or Foos, some headliners (“I’m not going to name names!”) came to feel intimidated by the Struts, understandably worried that they’d be too easily upstaged, so the Struts didn’t get every A-list tour they applied for. “It’s such a fucking wild thing to say, because how big does your ego have to be to be threatened by four British guys?” he laughs incredulously. But the international buzz still helped the band’s cause (France was the first country where the Struts received significant radio airplay), and by the time they made it to this side of the pond, “Could Have Been Me” clicked quickly with U.S. radio listeners.

“That [song’s] message really seemed to resonate,” Elliott reflects. “We would slug it out on tour for 11 months of the year, obviously very fortunate to do so, but a lot of sacrifices come with that. That’s where the message of ‘Could Have Been Me’ [came from]: trying to break as a rock band, and sustain a career in music doing this thing.”

“I don’t think we actually realized when we came to the U.S. how big it was,” says Davies. “I remember the first time we heard [“Could Have Been Me”] on the radio, I think we were in an Uber somewhere. And we said to the Uber guy, ‘Oh, just keep charging us. Just drive us around the block so we can hear it.’ That was a cool moment.”

Eventually the entire band relocated to the States — to Hollywood, specifically, just a couple of hours north of San Diego, where Elliott amusingly once dreamed of living after he saw a Blink-182 music video as a young boy — a joint decision made during an “emergency band meeting” at the Sunset Strip’s world-infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill. (That would be another great scene for the biopic.) Spiller reveals that the move was partially inspired by his late friend, Taylor Hawkins, after he celebrated Thanksgiving with the Foo Fighters drummer in Los Angeles. “He just sort of said, ‘Man, why don’t you just move out here? Everybody loves you here. No one gives a fuck about you in the U.K.!’ And I looked around at this beautiful house, surrounded by his beautiful family and friends, and I thought, ‘Yeah, he’s got a point, actually.’”

Spiller confesses that if the Struts “had really cracked the U.K. first, then Europe, we’d have been like, ‘Why the fuck do we want to go to America?’” But while “breaking America” is usually a near-impossible goal for most British bands to achieve, the Struts had more of a U.S.-centric career trajectory, much like ‘90s English rockers Bush.

Adam Slack, Jed Elliott, moderator Lyndsey Parker, Luke Spiller, and Gethin Davies at the Grammy Museum. (photo: Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images)

“We’ve got friends in the U.K. that are huge in the U.K., huge in Europe, and it’s just such a mammoth task to tour the USA that they’re like, ‘We can pay our mortgages and see our families all the time if we stay in home,’” Elliott explains. “Whereas for us, we were like, “Well, this is the only place that we’ll have us!’”

“We had no choice,” Davies chuckles.

“And we were young enough to not have mortgages and families,” adds Slack. “So, we were like, ‘Fucking finally, something to do! We’re going to go on tour.’”

“It’s more about a sense of belonging. Like, I’m sorry, England, but we feel way more welcome here. We’ve done some of the biggest festivals in this country, charted on the biggest charts in the USA, and we just haven’t had that same experience in our home country,” Elliott says of the Struts’ loyal American fanbase. However, Elliott and his bandmates haven’t given on their British dream. “In the grand scheme of a rock band’s career, we’re still young. You look at the ambitions we have and a sustainable rock music career, and we’ve still got a long way to go. So, we’ll get our homecoming.”

Going back to the signature anthem that first broke the Struts in the States, Spiller understands now why “Could Have Been Me” connected so deeply with U.S. audiences, and why it continues to do so a decade later. (To celebrate Everybody Wants’ anniversary, a new version was recently released, featuring their Queen idol Brian May, who actually declared it one of the greatest rock songs of all time.) “It’s far too of a positive message for a normal British band!” Spiller quips, while Slack snarks, ‘It’s very ‘American dream,’ isn’t it? ‘Let’s go! You can achieve anything!’”

However, Spiller admits that he “didn’t even particularly like it that much” at the time, and that he thought other, more ostentatious Everybody Wants cuts, like the mini-rock-opera overture “Roll Up,” better represented the over-the-top aesthetic of a band whose backstage warm-up playlist regularly features the Spice Girls, Robbie Williams, Donna Summer, and other “gay bar-meets-12-year-old school disco” classics.

“Anything in that sort of bizarre, musical theater kind of caliber, something that was really sort of left-to-center, I was like, ‘Yeah! That’s what it’s all about!’” Spiller laughs. “‘Could Have Been Me’ and ‘Kiss This,’ just like many other sort of singles that appear, they were written very late. Earlier on, you sort of scratch all these itches of being as pretentious and outrageous as you want. Then you do stuff which is a little more simple. But at the end of the day, time can only tell what your band becomes known for.”

The Struts actually haven’t always been known for one thing — or they’ve at least tried to be break away from typical expectations and preconceptions. They’ve in fact ruffled a few stodgy rockists’ feathers by collaborating with pop stars like Kesha, the above-mentioned Robbie Williams, and Paris Jackson, and Spiller’s acclaimed debut solo album, Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes and Wine, swapped the band’s crunchy, glittery guitar riffs for orchestral, Scott Walker/Bryan Ferry-inspired Bond balladry.

“Personally, I hate whenever I get that feeling that people think that they know what to expect and how we sound and how I look or what we’re saying. That’s when I have to change it. And what could be more hilarious and cocky than getting Michael Jackson’s daughter on a cheeky little rock song or something? It makes people ask questions,” says Spiller. “If the songs were bad, I would agree with people [who object to the Struts’ pop experimentation]. I’d be like, ‘Yeah, we shouldn’t have done that.’ But they’re all great tracks.”

And so, as the Struts prepare to record their fifth studio album, which Spiller says will be “probably be the most cohesive and thoroughly thought-out record that we’ve ever done up to this point,” expect the unexpected — and maybe even a sound that will resonate more in the band’s native England, the birthplace of glam rock, than in the States.

“It’s going to be somewhat of a visual concept record,” Spiller teases. “It’s going to be extremely camp. … It’s not going to be like an album that’s made of tracks that are narrative as such, but it will all make sense. There’s going to be this really unique world around the record that people will be like, ‘Oh, really? OK, this is interesting. I can’t stop watching. I can’t stop listening.’ That kind of thing.”

And whatever happens next for the Struts — who’ve bounced from Virgin to Interscope to the Big Machine Label Group, and are currently on their own again after being dropped by Big Machine almost exactly a year ago — they’re just going to keep calm, carrying on, and rocking out. “To be honest, looking back on [our career], everything happened for a reason, exactly how it was meant to play out,” Spiller says with a smile, surprisingly revealingly that the Struts’ recent experience recording the new full-circle version of “Could Have Been Me” with Brian May made him newly grateful for everything he and his bandmates have endured together.

“There was a really beautiful moment, when [May] has a Dolby Atmos kind of suite, and they had recently just remastered and remixed the debut Queen album. And he was like, ‘You boys wanna come listen to it?’ It was kind of like a DVD as well, so it had all these unseen pictures,” Spiller reflects. “And I could kind of see on [May’s] face when he was, I guess, reliving a lot of these memories. There was something beautifully somber about it, and the energy in the room changed. I remember saying, ‘Brian, these pictures are amazing. I’ve never seen that picture of Freddie.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, good ol’ Fred. One of the best. Didn’t fucking know it at the time…’

“I think when you just spend so much time with each other [in a band], more time than with your closest friends and family, it’s very easy to forget the unique bond that you have,” Spiller elaborates. “So, I kind of walked away from that with a new gained appreciation for my fellow bandmates, thanks to Brian.”

“Wow, that’s the first we heard of that!” jokes Elliott, as the Grammy Museum attendees burst into laughter — to which Spiller grinningly confesses, in true frontman style, “I can only do it in front of an audience.”