FROM TOP: KOURY ANGELO; COURTESY OF THE O’CONNELL FAMILY, 2
August 2019 | Rolling Stone | 55
about Billie Eilish at 14, they think of all the good
things that happened. But all I can think is how mis-
erable I was. How completely distraught and upset
and confused. Thirteen to 16 was pretty rough.”
Eventually, she got better. “I haven’t been de-
pressed in a minute, which is great,” she says. “Sev-
enteen has probably been the best year of my life.
I’ve liked 17.” But the sadness is still with her. “Some-
times I see girls at my shows with scars on their arms,
and it breaks my heart,” she says. “I don’t have scars
anymore because it was so long ago. But I’ve said to
a couple of them, ‘Just be nice to yourself.’ Because I
know. I was there.”A
ND THEN, JUST LIKE THAT, Eilish is on
the road.
She starts in San Francisco, makes her
way through the Pacific Northwest, and
eventually arrives in Utah, where I catch up with
her at a venue called the Great Saltair, on the banks
of the Great Salt Lake. She’s running around the salt“You look good as fuck!” As each girl leaves, Eilish
says she loves them and to take care of themselves.
Eilish’s dirty little secret is that, for all her boasts
about villainy and dad-seducing, she’s actually... a
pretty good kid? She doesn’t drink, she’s never even
tried drugs, and her song “xanny” is about how she
thinks pills are dumb. True, she curses like she’s
auditioning for Vee p, but improbably, her album
doesn’t have a single curse word. Finneas says it’s by
design. She’s an antihero who’s still safe to listen to
with Mom and Dad in the car.
Eilish’s tour manager, Brian Marquis, is a vet of
the hardcore scene who used to work production at
Warped Tour. Eilish’s music reminds him of some of
the bands he loved in the Nineties: Portishead, Nine
Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson. For him, touring with
her is especially cool because so many Gen X icons
have kids who are just the right age to be huge Billie
Eilish fans, and they’ve come backstage to say hi and
be hero dads for a night. Dave Grohl. Billie Joe Arm-
strong. Thom Yorke. “Yorke was a little tough,” Mar-
quis says. “He was just as you’d expect: curmudgeon-
ly, perturbed.” Marquis says Yorke came up to Eilish
and mumbled, almost grumpily, “You’re the only one
doing anything fucking interesting nowadays.” Eil-
ish’s response: “... thank you?” (Said Finneas later,
“That’s the coolest thing anyone’s ever said to you.”)
Eilish is familiar with all these guys, but she’s not
exactly star-struck. Her dad says that when Eddie
Vedder came backstage at the Seattle show, “Billie
was nice to him and nice to his daughter. And then
got out of there as fast as she could.”
It’s a far cry from Eilish’s first tour, two years ago,
which was six of them in a van, with Patrick doing
the lights and he and Marquis taking turns driving.
Their hotel budget was $100 a night. Eilish, her par-
ents, and Finneas usually shared one room, and fre-
quently one bed. “It was fun, sort of,” says Patrick. “It
was miserable,” says Eilish.
But even now that they have four buses and a
crew of 37, it’s still a family affair. Patrick — who be-
tween acting jobs used to work in the wood shop
at Mattel — is a kind of utility man, using carpen-
try know-how to do whatever needs doing. And
Maggie is a cross between tour den mom and Eil-
ish’s actual mother, passing out dried mangoes to
the crew and generally being a warm, maternal pres-
ence. Most important, she’s Eilish’s psychological
gatekeeper, running interference on everything peo-
ple want to bring her. “I just understand how things
will fit into her mood better,” Maggie says, “and not
fuck up her day.” Both Patrick and Maggie get a sala-
ry on the road. It’s not a lot — just enough that they
don’t go broke not doing their other gigs for months
at a time. But neither earns a commission or profits
off Eilish’s success in any other way.
They worry about her sometimes. Of course they
do. “When it first started, my biggest fear was that
they would exploit her fast and be done with her,”
says Maggie. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but Pat-
rick says they’re always vigilant. “Her teenage years
were wrested from her,” he says. “She was being
shuttled all over the country at 14 — that’s really
young. So although this has all been pretty wonder-
ful and extraordinary, we try to put a buffer between
Billie and the ravenous industry.”
At one point, Eilish and I sit down in her dressing
room to talk. She says that when weflats in head-to-toe neon green: neon-green T-shirt,
neon-green shorts, neon-green sneakers, and a ne-
on-green Spring Breakers-style balaclava. She comes
in for soundcheck, then recruits her dad and Finneas
and a few crew guys for some Frisbee on the grass,
which quickly devolves into a hip-hop dance party.
She heads inside to cool off and down a gluten-free
vegan burrito (a lifelong vegetarian, Eilish has never
eaten meat, although she did once accidentally swal-
low an ant in a glass of soy milk). She washes it down
with sparkling water, because her mom doesn’t like
her drinking soda. The Stones in ’72 it is not.
A couple of hours later, a few dozen fans are ush-
ered backstage for a meet-and-greet. Almost all are
teen or preteen girls, plus their parents. Several are
dressed like mini-Billies in high-viz neon and multi-
colored hair. There’s lots of nervous giggling and tug-
ging at sleeves; several of them cry. When they get to
the front of the line, they hand Maggie their phones,
and she films them as Eilish gives each a big hug and
a compliment: “You’re so pretty!” “Your hair is fire!” [Cont. on 95]SIBLING CONNECTION
Left: Billie and Finneas in- The siblings recorded
all of Billie’s debut album
in Finneas’ bedroom.
THE FAMILY O’CONNELL
Above: Eilish with her dad,
mom, and brother. The
parents home-schooled the
kids with no curriculum.LIVE WIRE
Left: Eilish at
Coachella in
April. Gen X rock
stars like Dave
Grohl, Eddie
Vedder, Billie Joe
Armstrong, and
Thom Yorke have
been taking their
kids to see Eilish
perform and
stopping by to
say hello to the
pop star. “Yorke
was a little
tough,” says her
tour manager,
Brian Marquis.
“He was just as
you’d expect:
curmudgeonly,
perturbed.”
Marquis says
Yorke told Eilish,
“You’re the
only one doing
anything fucking
interesting
nowadays.”