GITANE DEMONE

VM: Why did you decide to move back to LA from Holland?

GD: I was with a man for eight years. He was this Dutch guy. I moved from London to Amsterdam and he actually wanted to move to Los Angeles. He wanted to see what it was like and so I planned to move back last June, but then we broke up about a month after we lived here. I kind of went my own way and didn't move back there. I've gotten accustomed to Los Angeles again.

VM: Was Dream Home Heartache (in '94) your last album before Am I Wrong?

GD: Yeah, it was. Actually I worked on the recordings for the new album in '96 and I planned to release them or re-record them with a live band in '97, but I had the break-up and it really kind of destroyed my world because I was with the guy for eight years. It totally turned my whole world upsidedown and I got kind of paralyzed. It took me a while to decide what to do with the recordings.

VM: Is that why you ended up doing a lot more of the actual instrument work on this album than on past ones?

GD: I wanted to make the recordings and I didn't have anybody to work with at the time...they were made in Holland and partially in Belgium. I had the material, but I really didn't have a band at the time. I worked with pretty much the same people from '91 to Dream Home Heartache and they were on the album as well, except my drummer and they all kind of went their separate ways and I knew that I just wanted to get these recordings done, so I just went ahead and did them anyway.

VM: How did you hook up with Marc Ickx?

GD: Through a friend of mine who did lighting for Christian Death. He ended up doing some video work for Marc and he was Dutch. When I moved over to Amsterdam after leaving Christian Death he hooked us up. I went over to Belgium and I met him and went into the studio and just improvised. We hit it off really well. We knew we wanted to work together at some point.

VM: What was the main reason for doing an entire album related to fetish and sex related themes?

GD: It had been an interest of mine for a long time. It was something I really wanted to do, because of that interest. I wanted to do a complete work to celebrate it, to keep focus, and to kind of pay tribute to that interest.

VM: It doesn't seem to come up as much in your other albums....

GD: No. I did want to do an album that was just focused on that. I do use a lot of, or I have in the past anyway, all of my image, myself, is expressed in that fetish type of manner. That was something that was really important for me to do.

VM: How do you think the fetish scene is represented in the media? Is it accurate?

GD: Some of the magazines are. It's become quite mainstream, but then you've got the other side of it which is more hardcore. And that to me is much more interesting. That really isn't mainstream; that would frighten most people. The really hardcore S&M and a lot of the techniques: breathing control, feeding fluids through tubes, and complete body isolation. A lot of it is way too hardcore, but people are attracted to the sexual look of it and that's the mainstream side of it. Over in Europe in particular there are magazines that really don't hold anything back. If the mainstream were to get a hold of that, they would freak out or think it was totally weird or completely perverted. They really don't know where it's coming from...what they're wearing is coming from.

VM: So, are the views of everything quite different in Europe than here in America?

GD: No. You've got the more hardcore people that are really into S&M or really into strict fetishes and then you've also got with the parties and the balls, you've got a mixture of the hardcore and the people who just like to dress up to look sexy and have fun. I'd say the hardcore over here is much more specialized and out of the way. It's more underground.

VM: Would you say the trust that is involved in more of the hardcore stuff is what is missing from a lot more mainstream relationships? Trust seems to be the key issue....

GD: Yeah, it really really is. I agree with you there. I think that is a major factor in the dominance and submission thing, somebody completely giving themselves over and letting someone else take responsibility. It's more hardcore in a relationship like that than more everyday relationships. It's ideal. People think that when you get married or when you're with somebody there is trust, but maybe you know as well as I do that is one of the prime failures in relationships. I know it is.

VM: What do you think some of the biggest misconceptions people have about love and sex and how much are love and sex inter-related?

GD: I think that love is, that really pure love, unconditional. And unfortunately, with a lover a lot of times, there are a lot of battles with egos going on. And that is really a killer of love. There's competitiveness, possessiveness, jealousy...all of those things are really ego related. With sex, it can be purely about pleasure. Combining the two, sometimes, I think, that you can be in love with somebody, but actually you are in love with the sex. You are addicted to the sexual aspect. I'm talking from myself, I've had miserable relationships, but I've been so addicted sexually that I couldn't let go. And another thing is sometimes people tend to confuse sexual desire for love. For instance, if they don't feel desired, then they feel they are not loved.

VM: What kind of vocal training do you have?

GD: Not really any, just eighteen years of practicing to the singers I admired. I did take a little vocal training after I lost my voice. My first bands were heavy metal and I lost my voice doing that. I started singing softer stuff like Billie Holliday to try and get my voice back. I had a lot of problems. I burst my vocal chords and got nodules. I tried taking a vocal technique class. The teacher, her idle was Barbara Streisand and she thought everybody should sing like her. So, I sort of took some of the standards and ideas about singing and tried to work them into my way. I just figure that if your voice is hurting when you sing, then you've got to try to change it, but sometimes you've got to hurt it anyway to get what you're after emotionally. I really haven't had any training; I've just picked up certain things.

VM: What was the first band that you were in?

GD: Actual band...I guess I was about eighteen and it was just a bunch of us kids getting together and doing like AC/DC and Black Sabbath and then I was in another band. We never even came to giving the bands a name. Then Pompeii 99 and Christian Death.

VM: What was Pompeii 99 like?

GD: It's really weird. The album and single that we released were a mixture of punk, even a little bit of ska feeling...it's a mixture of really avant-garde and anarchist...there was even one song about computers. That record was very premature. The band did stay together for a few years and we evolved into a heavier, more serious, darker sound and we were doing gigs alongside Christian Death, 45 Grave and other bands that were happening in the early '80s here. We met Rozz.

VM: What was the early gothic scene like in LA?

GD: Oh, it was really good. It was very heavy and taken more seriously. I don't know how to explain it. There's a lot of passion involved in it now, but it was different. It was just very very serious and for real. It wasn't something that had been around for a long time. You had death rock -- the whole goth thing came out of death rock. Death rock was really hard. It was a mixture of punk and then this exotic sound mixed into it that the goth sound evolved from. I would say only theater of pain is truly which was really LA goth / deathrock. The softer kind of Catastrophe Ballet, Ashes within Christian Death itself was evolving into more of a goth sound. The music itself was just harder, kind of nastier...even with stuff like Bauhaus and some of the other bands, it was harder and nastier. It kind of grew softer. So was the scene then, it was "die for it," harder and heavier and it got a little more soft and ethereal. It sort of reflects in the music, the history of goth itself.

VM: Why did you end up leaving Christian Death?

GD: I left in '89. I had kind of been ready to leave for a while. I was involved with Valor. We had a family. It was hard for me to leave, but I had finally really had it. I really needed to go my own way. I didn't much care for the direction things were taking at the time. I just needed my independence and I was kind of just tired of it. The main reason I stayed in Christian Death was because I was involved with Valor and I had a child.

VM: Do you keep any mementos from those days?

GD: I do. I have some scrapbooks. I do have mementos. I'm going to be releasing, in fact, my compiled lead vocals that I did in my Christian Death years starting with Lament and I'm going to be releasing that on Triple X / Hollows Hill in the near future.

VM: What is a Gitane Demone live experience like? I've always wanted to see you live, but I think Seattle is as close as you've come....

GD: I'm going on tour probably in October / November. Big U.S. tour. What is it like? All I can say really is for myself when I'm playing live I lose myself. I'm not really aware of being a human being. At that point, I'm sort of a channel and everything comes out. Usually, when I play for people who haven't seen it, they become fans. It's a very rewarding experience all around. I think I've only had one bad experience live and that was in a festival over in Germany. I was supposed to play much earlier on and they ended up pushing me back to where I had to play just before this band Project Pitchfork. I was in a fetish phase then and I came out completely encased in rubber. I was sporting strap-on dildos at that time and these people were disgusted. Completely disgusted and to make them even more disgusted, I started brandishing the dildo right in front of their face. It was like "fuck you!" Then "Fuck you, too!" Usually, it's like a celebration and a real sharing experience. Right now I've got a rock band. I'm doing the songs that are on Am I Wrong?, but they are stripped down to guitar, bass and drums. We've got a real heavy rock sound going with a dark edge. I just did a small tour over in Europe and it really really turned people on. I've gone through different evolvements with the music. I'm back to rock with kind of a dark punky edge to it now. It's really fun; we're having a great time!

VM: Is there a particular song on Am I Wrong that stands out for you at all?

GD: I like the more personal-political ones like "My Classic Ego" and "Am I Wrong?." The other ones are more emotional, but not really my personal politics. I'm standing pretty strongly about my personal politics. Those are important to me.

VM: What do you look for in a song when you decide to cover it?

GD: That it's a song that is something that I would have said myself. In all ways it has got to be musically, lyrically and atmospherically something that I feel I would have done except it's already been done and it's so good.

VM: How would you describe your evolution as an artist over the past almost two decades?

GD: Just experimenting. Going with what I felt. Sometimes I was limited. In Holland, after I left Christian Death, I couldn't find a guitar player I wanted. It was really really hard. So, I went with piano and then I went into the dark-jazz warped thing. I tried to adapt to what I could find. When I got here I just knew that I had to do finally what I had wanted to do for a long time which was to get more of a rock band together. So, I just held out and did that. It was kind of easier to find here in LA. It's just been kind of a series, after I left Christian Death and within Christian Death, it was just kind of a series of experiments going from one thing to another simply to try it out. I simply just didn't want to stay and not do or not try anything new. As a musician and a songwriter there are so many different roots to take and experiment with, so that's what I have done. Right now I'm very happy with doing this and having a great time with the new thing.

VM: How did you hook up with producer Ken Thomas?

GD: I hooked up with him actually through this Dutch man that I was with. He was involved with a band called Von Magnet. A Spanish and French band that were doing really avant-garde stuff. He was doing sound for them and recording and he met Ken through them. Then I met Ken and spoke with him and we got along good and he came over to work with me. He's a great guy. Very talented.

VM: What aspect of music do you enjoy most? Singing, writing, recording?

GD: I don't know. It's all together. I guess if I had to choose...singing...why I chose to be a singer because it's kind of an out-of-body experience. It's kind of like a sexual experience in a way. It's orgasmic, kind of. I just go right out of my head. But at the same time, I couldn't just sing anything. I have to commit to get to that emotional level. It might be a combination of everything, but singing is really the tool for expression. It's kind of an all-in-one experience, but singing is certainly the most physical and extreme part of it. But I really enjoy it all. I would hate to miss out on any of it.

VM: Is there any point in time when you were growing up or in your childhood that you knew you wanted to perform?

GD: When I was real little, in fact, when I was six years old I was in a talent contest in my elementary school and I one first prize out of the whole school. But then I got really shy. I tried to do it again when I was about nine and I got on stage and just freaked out. I got cold feet or whatever you call it. Then I completely lived in music in my teenage years. That's where my head was at. It was in music, but I didn't realize that I could be a singer.

VM: How old are your children now?

GD: Savon, my son, is fourteen and he’s a total deathrocker. And Zara is eleven.

VM: Do they live with you?

GD: Yeah. Right now they do.

VM: What’s it like being a mom compared to being a performer?

GD: I had Savon on the very first Christian Death tour when we made Catastrophe Ballet. I continued with Zara. I was on tour when I was pregnant with her. So, it’s all that I’ve really known is the mixture of being a mother and being a performer and musician. I’m sure it’s a lot easier to not be, but I have two just really amazing children. It’s not easy and I don’t even recommend it to anybody. I don’t even know how the human race has survived. I don’t. It’s amazing, you would think that children and parents would kill each other off. I don’t know if that does happen in animal societies or not, but I’m amazed that the human race has survived. At the same time, it is an incredible experience. I think it would have been a hell of a lot easier to not have had them, but I’m glad I’ve done what I have. It’s made me very very strong. It’s made me so strong it feels like I could do anything.

VM: What art work are you working on right now if you don’t mind me asking?

GD: Actually, I’m doing the artwork for this Christian Death...it’s going to be called Life In Death. It’s that release that I was talking about of all my work from ‘85 to ‘89. My lead vocals. I’m creating a photo montage mixed with collage for the booklet. I do a lot of collage and try to make a poem with it to express certain things that I am feeling. My house is all filled with different collage and sculptures that I find. Kind of natural sculptures that I’ll modify a bit. Sometimes I will find...there was this big piece of wood that I found outside that has got a pointed end and I could just see in the woods that it wanted me to bring something out of it. So I did that and I tend to do that with natural things. So, that’s the kind of artwork that I have been busy with for almost two years now. Music definitely takes priority, but I do like doing this. You want to say things without words. I just put different things together. I like using collage for that.

Gitane and I continued talking for a little while about art and the importance of needing to do what you need to do and she left me this little thought that I thought I would share with you in closing: “If you’re an artist and you’ve got your artistic expression, if you are not doing it, or if you find it...there’s just nothing that quite does it, unless you’re able to have sex 24 hours a day. That’s about the only other thing could get close to getting that fulfilling really.”