This year, The Pretty Reckless celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut – an album that marked actor Taylor Momsen’s decision to devote her entire career to music. With their fourth album Death By Rock And Roll set for release in 2021, the star reflects on life on rock’s frontlines...
Death By Rock And Roll is the best album we’ve made…
“I say that every time we put out a record, but I really think it’s special. We went through a lot of tragedy in the past few years. We were opening for Soundgarden on their last tour; for me as a musician, fan and human being there was nothing greater than that and to have it end so tragically… I was there in Detroit [on the night Chris Cornell died by suicide]. I spoke to him, I gave him a hug, said goodbye and then got a phone call a couple of hours later and I was just… Devastated is an understatement. I wasn’t in a good place to be in the public eye so I retreated and had to focus inward. It took a while. We were finally talking about getting in the studio when I got a call that Kato [Khandwala] had passed in a motorcycle accident. He was much more than our producer, he was my best friend and, essentially, the fifth member of the band. That was the fucking nail in the coffin. I went down a rabbit hole of utter depression, darkness and substance abuse and all the things that come with that. I had no idea how I was going to crawl out of it or if I would; I didn’t even really have an intention to. I had given up but then I turned to music and eventually wrote this album. I know it sounds clichéd, but rock saved my life in all the ways you can possibly say that. It gave me hope and made me want to wake up in the morning.”
Creative control is everything to me…
“We own everything and we licence our records. Being in that position is something I have worked to put myself in so that I’m not at the mercy of a label or someone telling me what to do. As long as I can maintain control of the music, the visuals and anything creative, then however people want to put it out and release it? I’m on board and it’s a collaboration. And that’s worked very well. I’ve tried very hard to separate the business and the art because they’re not the same. They really have almost nothing to do with each other. It’s a constant struggle to find that fine line.”
I loved making our debut album Light Me Up…
“It was everything I wanted it to be. I remember I’d go to work on Gossip Girl at four or five in the morning, work my day and then go straight to the studio until like two or three in the morning, sleep for maybe an hour, go back to work. I lived off of Red Bull – that was my diet at the time, but it didn’t matter. I was 17 when the record came out, but the recording was actually from 15 to 16. Especially on the first album, there were a lot of misconceptions about me. I was feeling the weight of being judged from the standpoint of being an actress-turned-musician. I had doubt from the press and general public. I learned very quickly to just tune out the million voices that have an opinion... My internet persona was not exactly representative of who I was as a person. It was very outrageous. Not that I wasn’t a little outrageous [laughs], but I think I got a bit of a bad rep. Really, what I was trying to put out was, ‘Rock’s awesome!’”
For years, I’ve been asked about ‘being a woman in rock’...
“And I would go, ‘I’m in a band with a bunch of boys, we live on a tour bus, I don’t see a difference’. Because I really didn’t. I think part of that was because I was so in the grind of doing it that I didn’t have time to step away and see, ‘Oh, there actually is’. Now I look back on certain things and go, ‘Oh, they didn’t play me on that radio station, because they were already playing another female rock band and they couldn’t have two’. Now I look back and go, ‘Oh, maybe all the shit that people were telling me does exist,’ and I was just living in my own bubble.”
Having Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron and Kim Thayil play on a song on our new record means so much to me…
“I don’t know how to explain how full circle that was to go into a recording studio with them and create something new out of all that tragedy, all the loss. I think it’s just extraordinarily beautiful.”
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