When Scissor Sisters first burst forth with their debut self-titled filthy gorgeous album in 2004 their brand of hedonistic dance was too hot for mainstream America to handle (the CD was even pulled from Wal-Mart's shelves). It was a different story across the Atlantic in the U.K. however, where the band were welcomed with open arms - and notable record sales. There the release spawned a total of five Top 20 singles, and became the country's top-selling album that year (and the 9th biggest seller of the decade). The band's follow up full-length, Ta-Dah, released in 2006, also fared much better outside of the U.S. It went straight to the top of the U.K. album charts, and the first single, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"(a collaboration with Elton John), also hit the number one spot - and stayed there for four consecutive weeks.
The wide chasm in reception and record sales between the two continents - the Scissor Sisters' first two albums each sold in excess of 3 million units across Europe - can easily be explained when looked at in the context of cultural attitudes. The more liberal Europeans have been dancing continuously since the '70s and dance-based music is ingrained in the fabric of European life. In America however, seizing on the opportunity afforded by AIDS, the disproportionately influential Christian right whipped up a frenzy of anti-dance "disco sucks" hysteria, stopping the party in its tracks and creating a deep-seated prejudice against the genre as a whole that remains prevalent to this day in significant pockets of society.
However mainstream America has started to loosen up, shake its collective booty and dance again. The success of European-produced tracks from the likes of Madonna (who enlisted William Orbit for Ray of Light and Stuart Price for Confessions on a Dance Floor) and Britney Spears (who prominently featured Bloodshy & Avant's production talents on her past two albums) has brought the dance aesthetic back to the mainstream, and paved the way for 100% domestic-raised spawn of disco to return to the fore.
So as Scissor Sisters prepare to step back on the dance floor with their much-anticipated third album, Night Work, the mirrored ball is at least proverbially spinning above middle-American heads. Though this bodes well in many respects, it does pose a new set of dilemmas for the band. Previously, against a background of overbearing earnestness as practiced by a generation of shoe-gazing indie bands, their tongue-in-cheek flamboyance seemed refreshing. Now, their once unique style has become de rigueur in pop culture thanks to the Scissor Sisters-influenced and much-imitated House of Gaga. Hence, to stay ahead of the pack, they’ve been forced to switch things up visually and musically.
SuicideGirls caught up with Scissor Sisters' frontman, founder and driving force, Jake Shears, to talk about Night Work, what inspired it, where his party is headed, and what he'll be wearing to it.
Nicole Powers: This album was quite a long time in the making. I know that you recorded a third album which you then shelved. It's actually something I really admire - that level of self-editing.
Jake Shears: It's true. It was about a year ago and it just felt like we'd been working on songs for about fourteen, eighteen months. We played some of them live and the shows were really fun. We'd play some tiny shows for friends, but I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't feel like the songs themselves were reason enough to come back out again. It was really important that we had something to say when we came back out, and had a record that was about something and meant something. It was a tough decision to make. I mean, I just wanted to go on tour and be out there again. It was going to be a lot longer if we were going to make a whole other album, but I knew in my heart that I wasn't going to regret it. In fact, now I'm happier than I've been in a long time. This whole last year, it's been amazing. From exactly about a year ago when we started making this record, it's just been a blast. It's been really fun and I feel super confident.
NP: At what point when you were recording this record, which I understand you started doing in June 2009, did you know that it was going to work? What track were you working on when you started feeling it again?
JS: This song called "Fire With Fire," which is our first official single. That's sort of what the song’s about. It's a very different song from the [rest of the] album, and it's a very different kind of song for us. It's very sincere and sweet and earnest. It meant a lot to me. It was really one of those moments where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I realized we'd done something amazing, and that it was all going to be OK - that we could go forward with our heads high.
NP: Once you'd nailed "Fire With Fire" did other tracks start tumbling out?
JS: That was one of the last things we wrote. That really felt like the culmination of everything. Everything had sort of been tumbling out anyway. These songs really came quick, and it felt really inspired.
NP: This is the first time you’ve worked with an outside producer. What made you decide to do that?
JS: Well, we produced our first two albums ourselves. I'm so proud of our first two records and I'm really proud of how we made them. They're very kind of homemade and really have all our fingerprints all over the songs. But I knew that we had to have another set of hands working on this record with us. It was what we wanted. We really wanted a third person to make the music with us, to produce the music with us, but we just had no idea who that was going to be...
So it was Neil Tennant's idea, I was hanging out with Neil in Berlin. He's got a house there. It was his idea actually to call up Stuart [Price]. He was an old friend of the band. His band Zoot Woman was the first band we'd ever toured with in 2003 before our first record came out. So we'd known Stuart for a long time, and just his enthusiasm right away...We started working on the record three weeks later.
Working with Stuart, it's funny, because we'd always thought about it before, but it always just seemed too obvious. It sort of seemed like he'd be the most obvious person, and I sort of realized it was obvious because it was a really good match. It just made a world of difference for us. Just having somebody that could help us step outside the music a little bit and gain some perspective. His energy is so positive and infectious.
NP: Was he involved in the songwriting process, or were the songs already written by the time he came on board?
JS: No, we co-wrote tons of stuff together. Two thirds of this album we co-wrote with Stuart, and so he really became another member of the band and kind of feels like a member of the band now. He really became one of us. We have a huge amount of love and respect for each other so it was a blast. I can't wait to get started on the next one as soon as we possibly can. I can't imagine making a record now without him.
NP: You talk about wanting to come out with a record that means something. What does this record mean to you?
JS: When we shelved that last record I felt really fed up and lost, and so I left for Berlin for a couple of months by myself. I got an apartment there and just kind of reset my wiring a bit. I really just found a freedom again - and my youth. I had started feeling old. I'm 31 now, and it's just too young to be feeling old.
So the ideas for the record really started up in Berlin. I was doing a lot of clubbing and going out a lot and meeting a bunch of new friends and gay people and being out at some incredible gay parties. It got me thinking about New York in the late '70s / early '80s and the gay scene. How liberating that moment must have been, and the excitement, and how great the music was that everybody was so hedonistic. The dancing and the drugs and the sex, and how much fun that must have all been. But unfortunately, of course, AIDS came along and wiped a lot of people out - and a lot of creative people died.
I sort of asked myself the question, where was the party headed? Where was that whole world going? What would have happened if Sylvester hadn't of died? Or Patrick Cowley? Or just tons and tons of people. A whole world just kind of stopped - ended - and I think that we still feel those repercussions from that today. So this record as a whole is really dedicated to those people. I really want this album to carry the torch for all those who really didn't die in vain. And to pose a hypothesis of where that party was headed. Even though that's kind of a heavy sentiment, the record is infused with an insane joy.
NP: I think it's necessary to remember. I mean you look at the music industry in general today, and the club scene, and it's so sanitized and there's a lack of any real excitement or danger - it's all just been safely prepackaged for the masses. You have that combined with how the Christian Right in America was able to frame AIDS as some kind of retribution from god for a whole style of music, which also helped suppress it.
JS: Yes, of course. And just to think about how far back it set the gay movement - what a wrench into our future, our plans. Imagine how much further we would be today without the terror of what happened then.
NP: Well I know that you've spent a lot of time in Europe, and in most of the continent the whole gay marriage thing is such a non-issue. They've passed that and moved on. The fact that it's still a big discussion in America...
JS: Yeah, it's quite absurd I think, and in fifteen or twenty years we're going to look back at this moment. I find it really shocking. [But] look back fifty, sixty years ago - when was interracial marriage legalized? That wasn't that long ago. So it's slow going, but I have faith that it's going to happen here.
NP: It's a little terrifying living in California; It seems like such a cool and open society, but then with issues like Prop 8 you realize that there's a lot of hate bubbling under the surface.
JS: It feels like there's an impulse we have as humans - in probably all of us - that we feel this desire to control what everyone else is doing.
NP: And to judge, because by judging we make ourselves feel superior.
JS: Exactly. I believe in people's personal responsibility and the right to police themselves. That's what I really loved about being in Berlin, this amazing attitude of sort of be and let be.
NP: Well there is something about sitting in judgment that's really big in popular culture now. Judge Judy has taken over from Oprah as the queen of afternoon TV and in primetime we have
American Idol and all these other similar shows that allow us all to be sofa judges.
JS: Well it's a humiliation culture. We love to humiliate one another, and that's become a real form of entertainment. That's what I think about red carpets. Red carpets are my least favorite thing in the world. I find them heinous. I would rather roll over in a pile of thumb tacks then walk down a red carpet 'cause it's pure humiliation.
NP: Right. The moment you set foot on a red carpet you're offering yourself up to be judged.
JS: Totally. It's like you're there for people to throw tomatoes at you. I think the red carpet is a real symbol for a blood bath. I don't even know how to end that statement but it's really a symbol to me of that kind of mentality.
NP: Talking of symbolism, you're known for your strong sense of style and your live shows, which are always pretty spectacular. What sort of imagery are you going to incorporate into your artwork and performances this time around?
JS: I think at this point in time it's interesting, because we've been gone for a few years and a lot's happened in pop culture. Gaga's come out and turned everything upside down. It's really made us rethink where we are and where we're going, and that's an exciting thing to have to sort of reconfigure. I don't want to keep doing the same things over and over again. I think overall stylistically, artistically, restraint means more to me now than anything. Restraint is more important now. I think it almost says more than coming out with a live lobster on your head.
NP: Well Lady Gaga has made what you were doing completely mainstream, so you have to react to that.
JS: Of course. And I think it's amazing. I think it's a really beautiful moment in pop culture right now. But once you've got everyone following that mould, it just seems like everything starts to become noise.
NP: So we're going to see a reserved Jake Shears?
JS: It's just going to be more sexy I think. I don't know if you've seen our press photo, but we're all in front of these blinds and it looks very formal. I've got a tie on but I'm pulling my coat back and you can see I'm wearing little panties. I think that says it all, where we're at at the moment.
NP: "Invisible Light" is such an epic track. How did the Ian McKellen vocal come about?
JS: We'd been working on the song for quite a while, and there's a two and a half minute build. We went over and over that with a fine toothcomb. The production on that moment I'm so proud of. If you turn it up real loud on a good set of speakers it'll make your face melt. We were talking about Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Trevor Horn and how great the whole "Pleasuredome" 12-inch was, and Michael Jackson had passed away and "Thriller" was on everybody's minds, and somebody said we need a really deep British man's voice right here.
Ian was the first thing that popped into my head. I've been acquainted with him for years. He's come to our shows. He's such a kind, amazing man. So we contacted him and two days later we took a bunch of recording equipment into his dressing room. He was doing
Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart in the West End. It was pretty amazing, I'll never forget it. There was just dead silence in the room. We had all these mics hooked up and him reading this monologue that we wrote. Once you started hearing it come out of his mouth, it was just really cool. We were trying not to burst out laughing, it was so amazing.
NP: So who wrote the monologue?
JS: Babydaddy and myself. We wrote it the night before. The song is very kind of abstract. Somebody asked me if it was Shakespeare and I was really flattered.
NP: It does sound as if it could be, and Ian says it with such a level of conviction and theatricality so you feel like it must be some great speech of the theater.
JS: Totally.
NP: But you said Ian McKellen was performing with Patrick Stewart - I can't believe you didn't get some Patrick Stewart on tape too. Scissor Sisters and
Star Trek would be my wet dream.
JS: Patrick Stewart intimidates me a lot more than Ian McKellen. He's poses a very formidable figure - I'd be scared to talk to him.
NP: Well I know you don't do requests, but that would be mine.
JS: [laughs] Alright, if I ever come across him in a sleazy nightclub I'll have to tell him.
NP: Well I'm sure Ian McKellen can introduce you. You've got connections.
JS: Oh, I'm sure. You always wonder though, if they even get along, you know, personalities that big. I'm always curious. Who knows how people feel about each other.
NP: Right, two big personalities together - is the stage big enough? I should ask about your tour. You've announced a bunch of European dates but nothing in America yet.
JS: No. We're going to be all over Europe, Japan and Australia 'til August. It looks like end of August / early September when it's going to shape up [that we’ll] be touring America. I'm sure we'll end up touring America multiple times in the next year and a half.
NP: You're just teasing us and making us wait.
JS: Yeah. But what's so great is we're going to be so practiced, and by the time August rolls around the show is going to sound amazing.
NP: Well I'm looking forward to seeing you again live. It's been way, way too long.
JS: I'm excited too. I love performing, so I'm very excited as well.
The Scissor Sisters' new album, Night Work, is released on June 29 via Downtown Records. The single "Invisible Light" is available now from iTunes. For more info go to ScissorSisters.com/ . 
