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LADYHAWKE: Pip Brown learned to play the drums at school, and wanted to be a musician ever since. " .
The band split after a couple of years, and Brown moved to Melbourne. . At the age of 12, she started to teach herself the guitar from a chord sheet given to her by her mother and Bain, who had by then become her stepfather.
"As I got older, I started to play along to Jimi Hendrix.
"I had a little dabble, but it was more punky.
"I went over in 2007 and that's when I met Pascal. There was no going back now.
Playing on stage at Rockquest in Wellington was her first "proper" gig, she says. Afterwards a guy came up to me with a pamphlet and said, 'You should really think about going to music school'. I remember thinking, 'Wow, that guy thinks I'm good enough to go to music school!' So it definitely left an impression on me.
Here at 18, she chose design school over music, majoring in photography. It just made it a chore and it took all the innocent naivety I had about photography away and replaced it with this thinking that I'm not good at all this technical stuff, and I overthink everything. I had a genuine passion for it. It sounds really grim to say, but I feel like school killed that. [Photography] was always really an awesome hobby. It sucked the joy out of it for me.
"I know it's not like that for everyone, because a large amount of my classmates went on to do awesome things. It still has charm for me because I haven't delved too deeply into the technical side of it. It was pointless. So we agreed that it would be best if I took some time off.
She recorded the album in bursts, with her producer, Pascal Gabriel, in a studio near Avignon in France. I had a lot of interest and support and ended up getting signed, and that was it. I had to live [in London] then. I wrote and recorded the first album in maybe six or seven months. I just couldn't believe it.
Of the demos she took to London, only Back of the Van made it on to Ladyhawke, which was released in 2008.
He asked, "Have you had lessons?"
Pip answered no, apart from some "boring" piano lessons a couple of years earlier, that is.
"Well, you're a natural," he said.
Pip beamed with pride.
More than 20 years later, Brown, these days known more widely by her stage name Ladyhawke, sits in her London flat. The whole thing was a little overwhelming - she had to sit at a table with people she didn't know.
She admits she's feeling a little hungover that morning, she's been barely out of her pyjamas all day, but she comes alive as she tells the story of her first brush with drums.
"I started playing drums, which just completely opened up my whole world.
One topic that upsets her is Asperger's syndrome.
"It kind of annoys me, because it's all anyone wants to talk about.
That schoolgirl bash on the drums was the first of many musical incarnations Brown would take before becoming Ladyhawke. I know I've got a great deal of love and awesome fans in New Zealand.
Ladyhawke's new album, Anxiety, will be available in May. New Zealand is like an older brother I want to impress. When I was a lot younger, in Two Lane Blacktop, we just basically toured around New Zealand in a van, playing gigs. There were interviews and photo shoots and tours for two years.
"It was too much to even process. When I came back to New Zealand [in early 2010], I finally didn't have to do any photo shoots. When I wasn't doing gigs, I was doing interviews and photo shoots. Nobody was calling my phone every five seconds. I just wanted to be a musician from that point on pretty much.
So far it's working out well. The album, with hits like Paris is Burning, My Delirium and Dusk Till Dawn, resurrected a style of pop that critics compared to Kim Wilde, Fleetwood Mac and Cyndi Lauper. It's not that I'm chomping at the bit. It's just when a date is set, I get really funny about it being changed.
It's ironic that Island is waiting to release the album, when it gave Brown only two weeks off between touring and starting work on Anxiety.
"Everyone was eager to see what I would come up with. It's a silly thing. I really felt part of the music scene, and since I've gone and come back, I just feel like a bit of an outsider.
New Zealand will always be home, Brown says, and she envisages herself living here permanently one day.
Her first serious band was Ramones- inspired Two Lane Blacktop, in which she played the guitar and sang backing vocals.
A clip of them playing on the television music show Space shows Brown in a black T-shirt and jeans, her hair in a ponytail, belting out vocals.
"I never had any confidence singing.
"We would always jam Smashing Pumpkins' songs, or just rock, but for Rockquest we had to make up our own songs. |
Monday 12 March 2012
Little Drummer Girl
