“Also, getting the alcohol and drugs out of the system, I think my
mind was able to breathe and be better. It took years, but my mind
was like, ‘OK, that’s how thought happens. OK, now I’m going to
have another thought.’ That sort of thing. There are lots of good
things about it. There really are.”
Funnily enough, getting clean led her back home to Dayton. “I went
straight from rehab and moved right to my mum and dad’s house,”
Kim laughs. “I swear to god, I did. Why not? What the fuck? I’d kind
of ruined my life. NowI’ll move into their house and ruintheir life,
too!” The parental stay lasted well over a decade, till Kim shifted
last year to her own place nearby – complete withrecording studio
and rehearsal space. In that time, caring roles have reversed: her
mum developed Alzheimer’s, and her dad has now declared himself
too old to go on their yearly holiday together. Against a backdrop of
music and touring, it’s an oddly domestic affair. Breeders bassist
Josephine stays in Kim’s attic when they’re rehearsing, and
drummer Jimcycles over when he has time off fromhis day job.
Kim’s earliest musical collaborator, Kelley,lives close by, too –
their first paying gigs were playing country covers at local truck
stops and biker bars. They were even in a high school band called
The Breeders, a laughing precursor to theiradult music careers.
Twinned in genetics, geography, musical collaboration, addiction
- is their relationship competitive or supportive or both? “It’s
pretty much both,” Kim admits. “I don’t feel competitive with her,
but I probably am and just don’t want to look at that too hard...
Sometimes my sister tickles me so much in something she says;
I think it’s so funny, and she’s got such a great way of looking at
something. And then other times, I just want to take a knife and
gouge her eyes out, because she’s fucking on my last nerve, and
what she just said was so stupid,” Kim laughs. “So it’s right there
and anywhere in between.”
Kelley is also famously into knitting – something Kim never
quite got the hang of. Instead, Kim occasionally channels her
non-musical creative energy into obsessively tiny embroidery.
“I’m so OCD. I have to watch it, because I can get so obsessed with
it that I start doing that and not playing guitar, and my stitches are
crazy. They’re really small. It’s weird, and I get too weird with it.
SoI haven’t picked it up in a while.”
Staying in her hometown; dabbling in embroidery; caring for
elderly parents – there’s a lot about Kim Deal that doesn’t fit a
strict definition of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. She’s gotten through
decades in the public eye with messy hair, banged-up jeans and
comfy kicks. No make-up, unless you count the occasional nod
to glamour with “some weird glitter or something dumb”. Kim
says she’s rarely felt pressure to conform, though remembers a
moment early in the Pixies’ career when a bandmate’s mum and
wife tried to convince her to chuck on some “big, chunky silver
earrings and a jewel-encrusted bustier... whatever Madonna
was wearing at the time”. The wife was especially scathing,
Kimrecalls, complaining: “She’s not even trying.”
But she was. And she is. Not trying, especially, to look pretty. Butto
sound good and to do good work. To find her moments of rock and
treat her loved ones well. And – just quietly – to not give a fuck what
other people think of her. “I just have to put my head down and
work,” she says, “and keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve got to keep
working. I’m going to keep working.”i’d kind
of ruined
my life.
now i’ll
ruin their
ife, too!
r
music talks