Excuse the mess and find a seat,” apologises Jake Shears, chief Scissor Sister. I perch precariously on the edge of his unmade bed. The sheets could benefit from a trip to the Laundromat, and the detritus of living out of a suitcase for the past six months is on display. Garish stripy Y-fronts litter the floor. Roxy Music and Russ Meyer posters glare down from the wall; Bette Midler is busting from the stereo. But there is still something uniquely titillating — a lost teenage Smash Hits moment, maybe — about being in a pop star’s bedroom. And make no mistake, Shears is a proper pop star. Outspoken, theatrical, instantly absorbing and with something to say for himself. Just like they used to make them.
We are in New York’s East Village to meet the band of the moment. Scissor Sisters are poised on the brink of Darkness-style delirium. Their records are a feelgood mix of vintage 1970s songwriting, dancefloor grooves and a towering falsetto any Bee Gee would be proud of. Their debut album has already been acclaimed a greatest-hits package, and they are the toast of every groovy bar in every metropolis. They have even been on Top of the Pops (“Just awesome,” says Shears. “It’s like being in a state of suspended animation”), with their irreverent glitter-ball cover of Pink Floyd’s downer-drugs ode Comfortably Numb. They are, in short, the name — and the soundtrack — to drop at every dinner party.
But this band is no manufactured teenage sensation. Safely into his mid-twenties, Shears cut his teeth in the entertainment world as a go-go dancer. Scissor Sisters came about two years ago, and they are all a bit stunned by their success.
“I really shouldn’t smoke pot before a shoot,” says Shears mischievously, rolling away regardless. (It’s 10am.) Meanwhile, he’s putting together an impressive collection of hand-me-down Dior and extravagant headgear for the Style photo shoot.
Over in the West Village, Shears is joined by his four bandmates, Babydaddy, Ana Matronic, Del Marquis and Paddy Boom. (As you may have noticed, the Scissor Sisters don’t do birth-certificate names.) There is a pantomime element to Scissor Sisters’ get-up, but, as they see it, this is all in the grand tradition of a glorious, long-forgotten pop history. Babydaddy, Shears’s cherubic, hirsute songwriting sidekick, muses: “The fact that we get so much attention over the way we look just goes to show how boring everything was. Pop was static. It needed a little sense of adventure.”
“It’s what you dream about as a teenager, isn’t it?” agrees Shears. “When you’re miming to records in front of the mirror, pretending to be a pop star, what’s the first thing you do? You dress up — go to your mom’s wardrobe and see what’s in there!”
“It’s a pop star’s duty to look good,” declares Ana Matronic, flitting around the changing room with poker-straight honey-blonde extensions (“Very Cher,” comments Shears), trying on a sheer, hand-sewn flapper gown. “And I don’t mean skinny or starving. I always say that I love clothes and detest fashion. Fashion gave me body neuroses as a teenager. It made me feel ugly. I had to look to porn history to feel comfortable in myself: women who looked like me, and were my size, being sexy and in control.”
Scissor Sisters are currently undergoing something of a Cyndi Lauper moment, and Shears is delighted with the comparison. “I love Cyndi. She’s So Unusual is one the greatest records ever. I don’t know how many times I’ve bought that record.”
“A song like She Bop was so subversive,” agrees Matronic. “I used to listen to that record when I was, like, eight or nine, and I really had no idea that it was about female masturbation.”
There is a further significance within this, but, before we get to it, we must dispel some of the other, crasser comparisons that they have drawn.
“We get the Village People,” says Paddy Boom, with a sigh. “Which is frankly insulting and offensive,” furthers Shears. “And Frankie Goes to Hollywood,” offers Del Marquis, “It’s like, hello? Haven’t you heard the record?” All of this is lazy journalistic shorthand for saying that some of the Scissor Sisters are gay — “Which is important, but not the whole story,” says Babydaddy.
Back to Cyndi. “What she did was get across an out-there message through really simple, direct pop songs,” says Shears. “That’s what we try to do.” And to electrifying ends. The forthcoming single Take Your Mama may sound as if it’s pitched musically somewhere between vintage Elton and Primal Scream’s louche, rave-era love-in, Loaded, but the song is an ode to coming out. Furthermore, it’s truthful, a quality not exactly revered in today’s pop climate. When Shears sings about taking his mama to a gay bar and getting her “jacked up on some cheap champagne” as her introduction to his lifestyle, well, he’s been there, done that and bought the feather boa. “My mom’s a bit conservative, but she loves coming out with me. Give her a drag queen and she’s happy.”
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff lately. The whole gay-marriage thing is splitting America,” he continues, on a roll. “And I told my mom I was going to talk about it. She said, ‘There’s a time and place for everything.’ But I think that if you have an opportunity to be heard, then you should take advantage of it.”
Infiltrating middle America with their neon pop campery is a noble ambition. Particularly on the gay-marriage issue, presently at the heart of the forthcoming presidential elections. “George Bush is using this as a smoke screen for everything, which is just sick,” says Shears. “When we release the record in America, it’s going to get political. The entertainment industry is so silent. You get the odd person — Elton and Rosie O’Donnell, for example — who says stuff, which is great and important, but mostly everybody keeps quiet about anything that’s going to rock their boat. Have you heard one word from anyone involved in Will & Grace?” There is a pause. “Exactly.” Shears doesn’t want to get married himself, just yet, but says: “The possibilities there are now for gay relationships are endless. For kids growing up with these kinds of possibilities, well, it changes the parameters. It could be really exciting — the thought that you meet someone in a bar and you might end up marrying them.”
He continues, touchingly: “If I were going to get married to anyone now, it would be Babydaddy: we’re as close as husband and wife.” As if to prove the point, they can bicker like avowed spouses, too. “There has to be some tension in all relationships,” explains Babydaddy.
The rest of the band are just as disdainful about President Bush. “If he gets in again, then I think I will emigrate to Europe,” says Ana Matronic. So it isn’t all disco commotion and sartorial wit in Scissor Sistersland. “There is a point to us,” affirms Shears.
There is something of the bruised whippet lurking beneath the wildly posturing front man, a man whose eyes have the intensity of glittering headlights on a jet-black freeway. “In a way, this whole thing is about standing up for something. I was picked on at high school, you know? This is for all those kids that called me ‘faggot’. The greatest pop music is always an act of revenge — it’s pivotal to fame, and anyone who says it isn’t is lying. It’s giving those kids the middle finger.” He pauses again to catch his breath. “And making their moms wig out. ”
Take Your Mama is released tomorrow on P Records/Polydor
