Within the first 30 seconds of this interview, legendary Motels frontwoman Martha Davis casually drops a reference to Steve Martin’s The Jerk, which is a sure sign that this will be a great conversation. It’s also just one example of the skewed humor of a woman who vows she’ll only write an autobiography if it’s “hilarious” —  and it probably would be, despite her having experienced tragic, traumatic lows along with the highs that came with her new wave stardom.

It’s understandable why Davis was able to infuse the Motels’ emotive heartbreak ballads like “Only the Lonely,” “Take the L,” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” and the original, rawer recording of Top Gun’s “Take My Breath Away,” with such passion, pain, and pathos. She was already 28 — practically ancient by MTV pop standards — when her band signed their record deal, and over 30 when their singles cracked the Billboard Hot 100. And she’d already lived an entire, other fraught life — becoming a military wife at 15, a mother of two by age 17, and an orphan by 21. It was her frustrated-artist mother’s death by suicide that inspired Davis to relocate to punk-era Hollywood and pursue her deferred dream of a music career. But ironically and sadly, that bold decision had a negative and lasting effect on Davis’s relationships with her own daughters.

As Davis chats via Zoom from her 72-acre Oregon farm — ostensibly to promote the Motels’ upcoming June 22 appearance at Britain’s post-punk Forever Now Festival, although we end up discussing many, many other topics — she declares that she’s “happier” and “healthier” than she’s ever been in her 74 years. “And I think my sense of humor is way better,” she adds with a wry grin. But she freely admits that she has “some regrets” about her ‘70s/‘80s era, saying, “I just was a mess, and it’s taken me years and years and years and years and years. … I just wish that somehow I hadn’t been such an idiot.”

In the video above and Q&A below, Davis opens up about her dysfunctional ‘50s childhood; her crushing shyness; her dangerous days in ungentrified L.A.; her alcoholism battle; the mistakes she made as a mom and how she has tried to right them; the death of her firstborn child, Maria, and her years-long estrangement from other daughter, Patricia; her uneasiness with fame and decision to retreat from the spotlight; and how the loss of a beloved pet helped her finally learn how to grieve. We also share a lot of laughs, as seen in the extended video above, about daytime Zoom makeup and ringlights, sci-fi rock musicals, David Bowie, Cal Worthington, X-rated Henry Miller quotes, and of course, The Jerk quotes.

LYNDSANITY: I’ve been a fan of the Motels for a long time, but you had quite a life of ups and downs before the Motels even formed. Have you considered writing a memoir? I really think you should.

MARTHA DAVIS: Everybody says I should. I started scribbling a couple years ago, just scribbling, but you know, everybody’s got an interesting life. Everybody’s got the pains and the losses, Remember the movie The Jerk, when Steve Martin goes, “My story?” That’s how I feel about it. … It’s got to be hilarious and unique. I just don’t want to talk about me. I hate talking about me — which is a bad place for me, to be in this job that I have.

Yes, spoiler alert: I’m going to ask you to talk about yourself during this interview.

I know. Happens all the time.

What’s interesting about your life is I did not know that by the time the Motels made it big, you were already a teen mother of two. Unlike most of your peers, you came into the business as a mom, and you were also a bit older than some of your peers.

I was 28 when I got signed to Capitol Records. [Editor’s note: Curiously, the Motels inked their deal on Mother’s Day, 1979.] I started playing guitar when I was 8 years old in my room to myself, by myself, for myself — no inclination or desire to be anything more than just noodling and figuring out stuff. There was never a motivation to be in the limelight, it was just to create… So, basically, I got married at 15 and was an Air Force wife. That was really scary. I came back to Berkeley when my husband got sent to Vietnam and I didn’t know what to do. I had two kids. My dad, who was still alive at the time, was saying, “You have to go back to school and become a secretary!” But at the same time, music had really started coming to the fore, and there was  this guy named David Bowie that I had heard, and I sort of went apeshit. And I said, “Well, I want to do that.” He combined all my favorite things from everything, from outer space to musicals to lots of R&B, all the things I loved. I was really getting excited about doing that, and then I realized I really couldn’t do anything else. I had no qualification for anything else.

I tried to go back to school. It was rough at that point. By the time I was about 21, both my parents were dead. So, now there wasn’t my dad telling me, “Be a secretary!” And my mom had committed suicide. So, when we were cleaning out her apartment, I found a diary that I didn’t know she had kept. And in that diary, basically she alluded to the fact that she had wanted to be a writer, an artist herself, but she was a housewife of the ‘50s when that was completely [unheard-of]. But she was a brilliant English major at Cal Berkeley, and her go-to people were Virginia Wolfe and Henry Miller. She would read us bedtime stories of Henry Miller: “Oh, Tania, the warmth of your cunt!” And I’d nudge my sister and go, “What’s a cunt?” And she’d go, “Shut up, Mom’s reading!” That’s how we came up. And in this diary, this was literally when I didn’t know what to do with my life. I had kids, of course. I’d taken odd, crazy jobs. I was on welfare for a while, which I hated. But then I read this diary right when I was loving music more than ever, and it was basically like she died and gave me this gift of saying, “Look, I didn’t do it, but this is what happened to me when I didn’t do it.” And so, I sat my kids down — they were too little to understand — and said, “This may suck. It may not work. But I have to try it, because I prefer to do that than resent you or kill myself.” It was this beautiful, double-edged sword of a gift. But she left me that and it was pretty profound. That’s when I went, “I’m just going to do music. I’m going to go for it.”

And then you moved to Hollywood, where you were hanging out in the iconic first-wave L.A. punk scene with the Masque club and the Germs and the Go-Go’s…

[The Go-Go’s and the Motels] shared a [rehearsal] room, and I would come in every day, and I’m not anymore but I used to be about five-foot-eight and I’d come in and all the mic stands would be down low, and they’d all have lipstick on ‘em. It was very cute. I love the Go-Go’s. They were great gals and still are. But it was a crazy time. I mean, my poor kids…

It sounds like you might’ve been kind of living two lives: mom by day, punk-rocker by night?

But you can’t really separate it. And they did suffer for it. I was such a mess. I’d just lost both my parents. I was as insecure as you can imagine, and basically terrified. So, I was basically drunk most of the time, to try to not be terrified. It was not easy. I mean, I don’t have kids anymore. I lost my oldest daughter. She died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016.

I’m so sorry.

And my youngest daughter does not speak to me.

Because of the stuff you’re talking about?

Yes, how they were raised. Not because I didn’t love them, because I did, and I still do every day. But I think that there’s so much damage that comes from [the rock-star lifestyle]. First of all, you can’t do that job without being a narcissist. You have to be a narcissist. You have to shove yourself before all else to try to break through any barriers, whether you’re a woman or a man or whatever. If you’re trying to break into that business, you’re going to have to really put yourself forward. And it was not a place I was comfortable being. So, there was a weird dichotomy going on, and I was literally probably just drinking to get through it because I had to be that, and I’m not that person. I was a terrified, terrified person. And the kids, for the longest time I thought we were the three amigos. We were so close in age; we’re basically 15 and 17 years apart. We were kind of alike, and I did love them with all my heart. But I just was a mess, and it’s taken me years and years and years and years and years. I’m probably still somewhat of a mess, but all I can do is love them as I always have, as much as I possibly can, from afar.

I brought [my eldest daughter] Maria, when she started showing signs of addiction to OxyContin and stuff like that, from L.A. and I brought her back up to the farm thinking, “I’m going to be able to save her, because she won’t be able to access anything on my farm. She’s going to be so far away from everything.” But I had no idea that you can go on the dark web and just order up whatever the fuck you want. So, that’s what she did. But for five years she got to hang out. I got to know her as a grown woman, and she knew me. And she looked at me one day — she was so beautiful and so funny and so remarkable — and she goes, “Mom, we’re basically working on our own Grey Gardens here!” [laughs]

I love that even when you’re talking about obviously extremely heavy things, you still have such a sense of humor.

I have to. It’s part of life. And the worst part about goddamn life being the bitch that she is, is she does this thing where she gives you the most important information of your life in these horrible, horrible things. And they’re called “blessings in disguise.” I wrote a song about it, “Blessings in Disguise,” and at one point in the song it just says, “Why can’t a blessing just walk in its own skin? Why doesn’t it have to do with the tragedies and the godawful shit that happens?” Like, it’d be nice to just have just a blessing! But on days when I wake up and it’s beautiful and all the animals are behaving and the sun is out, I am very grateful for those just small moments. What you have to realize in life is those are the things that are precious, because the stuff that hurts a lot is where you’re going to learn the most. I have a saying I made up, which I’m pretty proud of, which is: “There is absolutely no free lunch, but there’s always dessert.”

This is why you need to write a book! You are very good with words.

It’s probably all that Henry Miller I got.

There you go. There’s an interesting contrast here: You were called to music because of your mother’s story and what she had missed out on, but doing that compromised your own ability to be a present mother. I don’t know if you could have made a right or wrong decision. You would’ve been obviously sad if you hadn’t pursued music, but…

Well, not only that. There were so many things. I mean, when I was starting this crazy journey, we were living in Echo Park, which was at that time not trendy at all. It was a very dangerous place. We lived in this crazy house where this guy ended up dying in the basement — snorting paint and had brain hemorrhage in a plastic bag. It was gritty. So, when I say my kids suffered, this is part of what they suffered from: no money, living in places that were dangerous. The anxiety for all of us was pretty profound. And that damages your DNA; it will leave lasting [effects]. And because we were so close, while a lot of parents try to protect their children from information, sadly, I shared everything — partly because I was too young to know any better, and partly because my parents came from an era where they faked everything. They made facades of everything and everything was a lie and nothing was true. And I was just like, “No, no, you guys are not fine. You guys are fucked-up. Mom, you’re an alcoholic, depressed person. Dad, you’re have anger issues. But sure, go to the tea parties and the cocktail parties with your little white gloves on, and it’ll all be fine.”

All generations have a reaction to the generation before them; we swing back and forth and back and forth. I had a brilliant epiphany about this the other day: We’re not supposed to get along. When teenagers start hating their parents, that is a divide to push us away, because we’re not genetically supposed to be hanging out altogether. We’re supposed to spread out, spread our genes. We are not supposed to be falling in love with each other. … I mean, in the end, Maria and I were best friends, while Trish and I have grown further apart. We just haven’t talked in so long. I have grandkids. I have, apparently, a great-grandchild. And yeah, it’s heartbreaking. It breaks my heart and it makes me very, very, very sad. But if me not being in her life makes her happier, that’s all I can give her. And so, that’s what I can do.

I would logically assume that once your ship came in, and the Motels were on MTV and selling records and in the top 40, that your kids, who were a bit older by then, would be like, “Oh, it was all worth it! You knew what you were doing, Mom! All the struggle was worth it!”

That’s what I thought too. I felt like I’d won. We moved to the Valley. We had a house with a swimming pool. I bought my kids squirrel monkeys because I thought that was a good idea. They were absolutely adorable. But I was trying to overdo it, basically buy [their love] back — which doesn’t work either, by the way.

They didn’t understand that, yes, maybe it sucked for a while, but now they were OK?

No. I didn’t realize this until later, because while you’re doing whatever you’re doing, you never realize what the fuck you’re doing. But when I got to that point and everything felt OK, I never got to be a kid, so now it was time for me to be a kid. So, I turned into an asshole.

What do you mean by that? Like you were partying a lot?

Just more like now everybody was giving me props and buying me champagne. Inherently fame is a deadly evil thing, and I am so grateful that my career stopped. And I helped end it and went away from it, because I probably would be dead if I had stayed in it. … The fame stuff, all the stuff that goes along with it, was never easy for me. But when it happens, you become immersed in this bubble that they create around you. You are given whatever you need. And oftentimes what think you need is not what you need at all. And then you become completely atrophied to real life. You have an accountant, so you don’t pay bills. You don’t see any of the reality of life. You become a strange human, a person that doesn’t know how to exist in the real world. Child stars go through this like crazy because those poor babies who are so adorable when they’re 5, 6, 7, 8, 9… I mean, I had a friend who was [a child star], and he said he got to be 12 or 13 and he went into his agent’s office and they told him, “You’re just not cute anymore.” It’s like, “OK, fine. I’m doomed now. Where’s the heroin?”

I’ve read a theory, regarding child stars, that whatever age you get famous is the age where your development is arrested, because that’s when you stop having a normal life. So, according to that theory, I’d think that because you came to fame later, hypothetically you would’ve handled it better, because you had a lot of life experience.

Well, I think what was happening with me is I was sort of on a strange autopilot for a lot of those years, especially after the death of my parents. That stuff is traumatic enough. There’s been plenty of death in my life, and for the longest time, I just sort of motored through it. It wasn’t until my little dog [died]. … I had a little pug named Biggie Smalls, the Notorious P.U.G. She was living the pug life. And she was about 18 when she died. … She had Addison’s disease, so I had to give her medication, but it got to the end of her life, and I knew it was time. I said, “I’m just going to take you off the meds and we’ll just watch this.” I imagined she was going to be dead in two days, but she lasted eight days. She went without eating or drinking, which I didn’t even think was humanly or dog-ly possible. Every day I would wake up and check on her and expect to find her little dead body, and she’d just look up with those little teeth and that one eye. And it went on for so long. I mean, I’d literally dug her grave already. Every day, I would mourn for her. And I went, “That little bitch is teaching me how to mourn!” Because all my life, I’d just sort of gone through it. And she was like, “Not until I get shaken out of you!” By the time she died, I’d cried for days.

How old were you when this happened?

That was probably 15 years ago, something like that. It’s taken me a long time to feel OK with my life.

Well, I’m glad you do. I mentioned how you were a bit older when the Motels hit it big, and looking back, I realize now there was something about you that seemed more womanly or sophisticated that a lot of other pop stars on MTV. That came through in the way you sang and presented yourself. Do you think all this life experience, the good and the bad, informed the music?

Well, music has always been, since I was 8 years old and playing in my bedroom, the sanctuary for when Mom and Dad were being a little wacky. It’s weird. They died right about the age when I would start talking to them as real people as opposed to “Mom and Dad.” My sister and I talk about the fact we’ll never really know who they were, because it was right at that age that they sort of disappeared. I think they really loved each other, but they were one of those couples that were impossible. They had that chemistry, and yet it drove them [crazy]. My mom was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister from Ohio, and my dad came from a very conservative family down in Long Beach, but [when they moved] to Berkeley, she started turning into a crazy bohemian, and the more bohemian she got, the more uptight he got. They were bad for each other, and there was a lot of tension and darkness in the house. I would go into my room and I would just play guitar, and it would take me away from it. I’ve always used music as a means to find solace and to explore what I was feeling, and that’s what it’s always meant to me. It hasn’t been about having a pop hit or anything.

I’ve heard your original version of “Take My Breath Away” that you recorded with Giorgio Moroder, but obviously it’s not the version that ended up on the Top Gun soundtrack. I don’t know if that bothered you at the time, since that was such a massive hit for Berlin.

I love [Berlin frontwoman] Terri [Nunn], and I’m so grateful it was her and not me. Because, like I said, that’s one of those things that would’ve all of a sudden cemented fame. I mean, I was skirting fame; we never had a single that went above No. 9. … That was my favorite spot! And thank God for that, because literally I would’ve not made it, I don’t think, had I been a superstar at that point.

But were you upset at the time that you didn’t get this opportunity to release an Oscar-winning movie theme?

No, no, no, no. I wasn’t. I liked the song. That was one of the two songs that I’ve heard that I went, “That’s a hit.” Giorgio called me, and because we were recording at his studio with Richie Zito, and so I’d see Giorgio all the time. Lovely, lovely man. And he was like, “Hey, Martha, we got this song.” They sent it over, a demo with another gal singing it, and I just basically sang what I heard. And then Terri got involved because she and Giorgio had worked together before, and it was fine. I mean, I knew it. It was a great song. But, yeah.

So, eventually you took a self-imposed hiatus from fame.

Actually, it wasn’t that long. I took a year off. I asked my lawyer to get me off Capitol. I was completely disillusioned with where the music was. I had never wanted to be a pop star. I wanted to be an art band. I was listening to Brian Eno and David Bowie. I wanted to be a cutting-edge weirdo, and that was not happening. It was getting further and further from that, and I was letting it. I just didn’t have the wherewithal. I don’t have a streak of that Prince vibe in me where I want to control everything. Now it’s much better; I can at least speak up and say what’s on my mind. Before, I could hardly do that.

I find that so hard to believe that you ever had trouble speaking your mind! I mean, from the minute this interview started, there was no filter.

It’s taken years. That is the upside of the professional persona: that I’ve been thrown into so many circumstances, meeting so many people and having to interact. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t even call a department store to see how late they were open, because I was afraid of interaction with another. That’s how freaked out I was.

How did you ever manage to get on a stage?

The first gig I ever played was at a place called Project R to in San Francisco, an artist commune, in 1971 with the original Motels, which were called the Warfield Foxes. It was Halloween night in San Francisco. There were a whole bunch of different bands, sort of like a free-for-all, and you’d just go up there and try to play. I was terrified. I was like, “I can’t do this! I gotta leave!” Then somebody handed me some Southern Comfort and I took a swig… and all of a sudden, something snapped in me, literally. I charged onstage, and as long as I was singing, I was in this other persona and I was staring people in the eyes. I was dropping to my knees. I was doing all this crazy shit. And then in between songs, I’d kind of revert. It was very schizophrenic, very bizarre behavior. But I was hooked, because it was the thing that allowed me to come out and play.

But as I said, eventually you proactively pulled back from the mainstream machine. You could have probably gone more down that route, had you wanted to.

I needed to get away from it. I literally asked my lawyer: “Get me off Capitol!” I stayed away for about a year, and then it started creeping back and I started all over. I started from the very beginning. I was living in Ventura at the time, and I went out and I found this gang of boys that had never ever seen a concert. They were all young kids. We called ourselves “Martha Davis Jr.” for a while. I was writing really weird, crazy shit, and it was basically starting over, because I think I was on such autopilot the first time around. It was like I wanted to go through and live it the second time and really feel it. I was much more there than I was before.

That’s amazing. So, we’ve talked about heavy stuff. You’ve had a fascinating life with some really great moments and some really not-great moments. And you said you’re just figuring it out now. What have you figured out, exactly? Do you have regrets, or are you one of those no-regrets people who’s like, “Everything happens for a reason”?

I used to be, “Everything happens for a reason, I have no regrets.” Now, I have some regrets. I do. I regret [what happened with] my kids. This is my biggest regret. I just wish that somehow I hadn’t been such an idiot. But I don’t know that I couldn’t have been. I literally don’t know. But I miss them so much. So, that hurts. But in terms of where I am now, literally, I swear, I feel like I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel almost healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. And I think my sense of humor is way better.

It’s pretty damn good, Martha.

And I do feel comfortable in my own skin. Maybe I’ll bitch about having to put on makeup in the middle of the day for an interview, but there’s worse things that can happen. I’ll go out to feed the animals now, and they’ll be like, “What’s up with her? What is she wearing?”

Well, you look fabulous, and I appreciate that you put on your afternoon makeup for me. What else do you have coming up, besides your Forever Now appearance? And a memoir, I hope.

Well, we’re going to get a new album out this year, Escape From Planet Earth. This is a brand-new album. I’ve written a story for it. It’s a sci-fi musical, basically. Yeah.

Wow, you buried the lead here! A sci-fi musical? Sign me up!

I mean, it’s not really a musical yet. I’m waiting for somebody to take it to Broadway. But it’s a story about Planet Earth being in a disastrous situation, which we’re close to. And this one gal who is a young astrophysicist who designs solar sailing ships, and this one other guy that she doesn’t know, manage to escape before everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The first side of the album is all terrestrial about this crazy world, and then the second side of the album is all celestial about them in space, looking for a new place to live. Lots of drama, lots of tragedy, lots of laughs, but a happy ending. Whoa. That never happens with me!

When will Escape From Planet Earth be out?

We’ve been working on this damn thing for five years now. So, it’s coming out this year, or I die.