I think it would be a lot easier if I said, 'I feel like a dude,' but I was raised by a southern mom, so I know how to put on lipstick and walk in heels and rock that look. It's exactly that juxtaposition that confuses people.
I know I'm talented, but I wasn't put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family.
I know I'm talented, but I wasn't put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it's not where it begins and ends.
I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
Maybe you could put it out there that I don't have a built-in dislike of ballads. That was kind of the reputation I had back in the Seventies. But I've come around. Ballads have become something of an acquired taste.
Comfort is important. I wanna put jeans on and kind of forget about them unless someone is giving me a compliment on how they look. You don't want to be fussing all day, especially as a working woman or a mom running around with kids.
I love rock ballads, and I'm kind of in emotional turmoil, being ill and high, so I start to sing to the song, I turn it up and start to sing.
When I was 13, I kind of got into the punk scene. I realized it was easier to wear a pair of combat boots and jeans and a beat-up T-shirt. I think of it as a uniform: Ya know, if you're a Maytag man, you put on your bow tie. I still have T-shirts from when I was that age.
Everywhere that Americans spread off the Eastern seaboard, heading west across this country, they put up the schoolhouse first, hired a schoolteacher, and put all the kids in school.
I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing 'Maria' from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.
I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didnt get to when I was younger.
DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'
I put on the Hank Williams and the Patsy Cline and the Rosemary Clooney on vinyl - I'm not trying to be some cool indie-rock person, I just love the way it sounds - and throw on a T-shirt and jeans. In Texas, we practically come out of the womb in jeans.
I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn't get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn't interested in having to follow.