What Emilie said next...

Teaser:  If you’ve seen our latest issue then you’ll already know that Dominion’s James White caught up with Emilie Autumn at the start of her UK tour to talk about a whole bunch of things...

What Emilie said next...

If you’ve seen our latest issue then you’ll already know that Dominion’s James White caught up with Emilie Autumn at the start of her UK tour to talk about a whole bunch of things – including Victorian medicine, the reissue of the 'Opheliac' album and the launch of her new book.

Here are some more tasty snippets from the interview...

Emilie on... classical music

“I think it has everything to offer people. The sad thing is that it’s entirely the classical industry’s fault that so few people care about it, relative to other kinds of music, it is. Classical record sales are lower than jazz, which is pretty fucking low.”

“Basically, there’s only so much that a three and half minute pop, rock, whatever song can really do. We can have good, classic songs – we can have the Beatles, whatever, and it’s great. There are so many great rock songs. But it’s no comparison to what you can express in a Beethoven concerto or any of that shit. It’s simply better music. There’s just no contest - that shit cannot be beat by any little song that I write, or that anybody writes."

Emilie on... training as a classical violinist

“My whole philosophy - where my heart was - was just, ‘I love this music,’ to represent it in as true and unique a way as possible – wearing what I want, behaving how I want, whatever, as long as it's always world-class quality – and then I don’t see what the problem is.”

“But you’re forbidden to study any other kind of music, to really listen to any other kind of music. It’s incredibly restrictive and any other influence – it’s considered that it’ll taint you, especially if you’re being groomed to be a world-class soloist, which was the whole idea for me.”

“By the time I left conservatory when I was 16, I had become so incredibly criticised for what I looked like that when I said, ‘But is there any criticism of my playing?’ and they said absolutely not, I thought, ‘Okay, well, your whole problem is that you feel that the audience will be distracted by anything other than the artist being a vessel for the music of dead people.’”

“I wasn’t content with wearing a paper bag and looking like I had no gender. It was just a very sad thing to do to this music that I felt was sexy, sensual, gorgeous, sad, angry and all of those things. You’re simply not allowed to be interesting - you’re not allowed to have a personality of your own.”

“And you know, I have complete faith in audiences - they’re a bit smarter than that and they have the ability to focus on more than one thing at a time.”

“It sounds insane when you say it, especially knowing that’s not what the composer would have wanted - Mozart isn’t sitting there going “you must be a vessel”. They probably wanted some bitch to come along and really tart this shit up - that people can’t is a shame and a travesty. I don’t think that they’re up there saying ‘yes, calm it down, don’t wear that’ – but that’s what happened and that made me go in another direction.”

“I still want to use what I learned onstage. I still want to make classical records - and I do, that’s the beauty of it. I don’t care what label it gets filed under in a record shop.”

“I’m grateful that I did have that training, as brutal as it was - it gave me the work ethic. When you spend your life practising for nine hours a day, every day, in a room by yourself, hours and hours of scales and arpeggios - when you play until your fingers are bleeding, you have no social life whatsoever, no friends and sacrificing all of that… and not even minding - because you know that this is what you want more than anything – that is what you have to do to get that good at one of these instruments…”

“That’s something that I now happily get to utilise in every aspect of what we do. It’s also nice because I get to play fifty layers of strings and orchestral parts in my own records - which would be pretty expensive if I had to pay an orchestra. So it works out on a lot of levels…”

Emilie on... working with Courtney Love on the 'America’s Sweetheart' album:

“How the hell did that happen? The truth is that I still don’t know. All I know is that my manager got a call from her manager - he just said that Courtney loves this girl and virtually demands that she come to France, record an album and go on tour. Initially I had no desire whatsoever to do that, mainly because I need – it’s just genetically ingrained – I need to be the one in the middle, writing the music and in the spotlight.

Eventually I did agree, after quite some time and her writing me crazy love letters and things - it was a very, very interesting experience – and I finally agreed because I just thought ‘when you’re 85, you will regret not having crazy adventures… and what’s the worst that could happen?’.

Little did I know that a lot can happen. But I’m still glad I did it, mainly because after that I firmly believe that I can cope with anything. I went from being completely naïve in the ways of a lot of things – from drugs to the rest of it - to learning pretty much everything I need to know in order to keep me safe for the rest of my life. Fun times.”

Emilie on... ‘Dead Is The New Alive:

“I love it that so many people like that song so much because it’s actually a joke - not just on goth kids, on myself. It’s taking a humorous look at the goth culture. On one side I think it’s about balance, looking at the dark side of things - and I think we do need that. I don’t think it’s unhealthy. But it is a bit funny - it’s like, what reason do you have to be that way? You know, what is your life experience? Really, has everybody been through such shit? And the answer is no.”

“Most goth kids have no reason other than it’s attractive, a thing to be a part of – and fun if you’re into the theatricality, the pageantry, the whole pomp and circumstance thing. But what it stands for, the whole idea behind it, is this morbid, death-obsessed thing.”

“And so the joke is, yeah, dead is the new alive. White is the new black. Black is the new pink. And pink is the new black, actually – that’s the truth of it for me.”

“The joke was even more so on me, saying my life is basically death-obsessed. I’d never dare to make fun of anybody without making fun of myself - that’s the way it goes. And, really, who’s more death-obsessed than the literally suicidal girl who has built a whole career out of that?”

“It’s about saying, ‘Look guys, if we can’t laugh at ourselves a little bit, this is fucking sad. So, let’s do exactly what we’re doing, let’s not change – but realise this is ridiculous’. And that’s a good thing, because we’re all ridiculous - realise it and let’s have a party, a tiny bit of fun.”

“And the thing is, it’s worked. We have a huge goth audience at these shows - and I’ve never seen so many smiling kids in black in my life.”

Emilie on... covering Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’:

“The idea was, ‘Let me just do something silly, because I can,’ and, ‘Let’s take the most non-gothic songs that I can think of,’ because I’m not a goth band - I love that that audience, but we even have a ‘no black fabric onstage’ rule – it’s all white and pink and red and glitter and sparkly - to make up for the fact that the lyrics are intensely dark and gruesome.”

“So, you need to have that contrast - it needs to be a bit silly. You can’t take this too seriously – I mean, I’m wearing a unicorn hat and I paint a heart on my face every day. I really can’t take myself that seriously. So it was, ‘Let’s go against what everybody expects,’ and do things that are completely uncharacteristic of that crowd. Which is good, because you’re exposing them to a bit of silliness that they might not think that they’re even into.”

“But the real thing about Bohemian was the challenge - it’s this massive piece and it’s extremely difficult, even just figuring out the harmonies. It was the fun of knowing that if I did it anything less than perfect, I would just get my ass kicked - the challenge of people being, ‘Prove it bitch, you can do that? really?’ – so it has to be that good and it was that personal challenge, wanting to do it - and also, if I recorded it then I would get to perform it… and I do it as an encore every night.”

“And that’s a beautiful thing because I know that almost nobody does this because it’s hard - and most people couldn’t do it, to be a complete arrogant ass – but my deal is that I’m not especially brilliant at anything, it’s just a matter of determination. I will get it right - because I won’t stop until I do. “

“Knowing that you give people a chance to sing along with this, where, most likely, in their lifetime they wouldn’t be able to do that live, it’s kind of a thrill for all of us. And you get the metal guys head banging at the end - and the goth kids singing along, hugging each other and dancing. That stuff, that’s sweet.”

Dominion #3 is onsale now, included with Terrorizer #195.