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Chelsea Girls Interview – 10/9/2009
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Interview with Chelsea Girls, a Los Angeles super group made up of amazing female stars.
We are joined by singer Tuesdae, guitarist Allison Robertson (of The Donnas), bassist Corey Parks (of Nashville Pu$$y), and drummer Samantha Maloney (of Motley Crue, Hole, Peaches, The Crystal Method).
Interview by Sean Arenas. Interview photos by Danny Fitzgerald. Concert photos by Sean Arenas.
Sean Arenas interviewing Chelsea Girls
1. Whose idea was it to create the band in the first place?
Tuesdae shouts out, “Corey Parks!”
Samantha adds, “Actually, it was God’s idea.”
Corey nods reflectively, “God was speaking through me, the sunlight of the spirit was shining upon me and told me to pick up the phone, and I called Samantha, and Chelsea Girls was formed.
Tuesdae, “It was actually Morgan Freeman, playing God, that told her to start the band.”
Samantha, “This is a Christian Coalition interview, right?”
Allison Robertson and Tuesdae of Chelsea Girls
Sean, “I can guarantee you, this is not.”
Samantha, “Oh, then let’s start again.”
Sean, “OK, then…”
2. How did you decide whom to bring in to the band?
Corey, “There’s a lot of girls that play out there, but there aren’t a lot of girls who have made a mark on music, and really are stars in their own right, no matter what instrument they’re playing, they’re the stand-out person in the band.
.jpg "Chelsea Girls play at Club Nokia on October 9, 2009")
Tuesdae on Stage (photo by Sean Arenas)
“I’d been wanting to play with Sam forever, so when I called her and said, ‘I want to do this all-girl cover band and it would be so much fun and we can get in to it,’ and she said, ‘It’s so weird, I was talking about this with my manager, and I can’t believe you’re saying this.’
“I didn’t think she was going to do it, I had already convinced myself she wasn’t going to say yes, and then she was totally in to it. Then I said, “What do you think about Allison Robertson, she’s the best female guitar player, besides the fact that she’s ridiculously hot, she shreds!’
“She knew Allison, we went and talked to her and pitched it to her.”
Allison, “You spoke to me…and you guys were probably thinking ‘she’s kind of short.’”
Chelsea Girls interview at Club Nokia
Corey, “We were standing on the balcony at Universal Citywalk, and I was talking about how I had seen her play when she was eighteen or nineteen, and I stood there watching her play at Universal and she was no longer this eighteen year old girl.
“She’s still amazing, but now she’s a woman who’s come into her own and I remember standing on the balcony watching her and thinking, ‘Oh my God, she’s a fu(king star.’ And I thought we need to get her, and we started talking, and we got her! And then we started talking about a singer…”
Allison, “We talked about some singers, but I thought that nothing that came up in the conversation sounded great. Then we went to see Tuesdae sing.”
Corey, Samantha, Allison of Chelsea Girls
Corey, “We gotta do the Pat Benetar, and Heart, and big, big songs.”
Allison, “You have to be able to sing believably without sounding like a Star Search contestant.”
Corey, “We went and saw her and she had her old band learn Barracuda, and it was sort of like an audition, and Sam and I were sitting there watching them play Barracuda. They were halfway through their first verse, and Sam and I were looking at each other with huge smiles on our faces, like, ‘Oh my God,’ we found our singer, search is over.”
Tuesdae, “And it’s all because of God.”
Sean, “Morgan Freeman.”
Tuesdae, “Morgan Freeman.”
Samantha, Allison, and Tuesdae of Chelsea Girls
3. How do you decide which songs to play?
Allison, “We just throw things out there. Usually when we’re listening to stuff, we’ll know what would sound good through our unit. Some stuff we’ll hear and think, ‘There’s no way we can do that.’ Some stuff we’ll say, ‘Maybe,’ and some stuff you just know immediately we can do. But we also don’t want to do something completely out of her range,” gestures to Tuesdae, “and is going to sound wrong.”
Tuesdae, “I’m limitless with my range.”
Corey and Samantha of Chelsea Girls
Sean, “I was going to say, how can you get out of her range?”
Tuesdae, “What she means, for example, I can’t do soulful. There’s no black lady inside this skinny white bitch. And we have tried.”
Samantha, “We have tried, we’ve searched high and low.”
Allison, “But there’s stuff that doesn’t sound like it has the right vocal sound or it maybe it has too many keyboardy and piano parts, but even stuff like that we’re willing to try.”
Corey, “We’ve got maybe thirty-plus songs in the repertoire that we try and run through, some of which we play.”
Chelsea Girls interview with Sean Arenas
Allison, “We tried Madonna’s ‘Burning Up’ and it’s a keyboardy dance song and it didn’t sound good at all. You don’t know until you try, it could become a really good rock song depending on the elements of the song.”
Tuesdae, “We like to please the crowd, but we really like to showcase all of our talents.”
Corey, “We like to showcase all of our breasts, really, is what she’s trying to say,”
Allison, “If there’s something weak then we probably won’t do it, because it’s not worth putting out something that’s not everybody sounds good on.”
Sean, “So any one of you might bring a song to the band, and then you decide on it together.”
Sean Arenas interviews Chelsea Girls
Band together, “Yeah.”
Allison, “And sometimes someone really hates it but they’ll be willing to try it. And sometimes nobody likes it except the person who suggested it.”
Sean, “But … it’s the best song in the world!”
Allison, laughing, “Yeah, that happens a lot.”
4. How long has the band been together?
Tuesdae, “Less than a year, what, nine months?”
Allison, “Yeah, I think you guys talked to me last Fall, and we sort of discussed this part and didn’t have a singer yet.”
Corey, “We started rehearsing in January, we played our first show Grammy weekend.”
Samantha, “We’ve been going steady ever since.”
Sean, “And two residency gigs, right?”
Corey, Samantha, and Allison of Chelsea Girls
Band, “Yes.”
Allison, “More to come. We’re signing contracts right now.”
Corey, “We also signed contracts that we all have to stay blonde.”
Sean, “Yeah?”
Corey, “I’m not kidding. We can do variations on blonde, but we all have to be blonde. This is blonde metal.”
5. Where was the band’s first performance?
Band, “The Roxy, we have a residency there once a month.”
Jack Black and Chelsea Girls
Sean, “That was the first time you performed together?”
Band, “Yeah.”
Sean, “What was the crowd like?”
Allison, “Of course the crowd is fired up, when they come in and they know all the songs. They want to be entertained and we do it, we give them what they want.”
Samantha, “I think this crowd tonight didn’t know that we’re a cover band, so they didn’t know, during the first couple of songs, what the hell we were doing, singing other people’s songs. Then they realized and were like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’
Chelsea Girls with Brutal Legend
Corey, “In all the Roxy promos, especially when we were just starting to come out, they featured all our photos and billed us as the first all-female super cover group, and that was how it was really promoted. There’s a whole league of people that only come out and see Motorhead. There’s only two bands that you go and ninety percent of the audience is wearing the band t-shirt, because that’s usually a no-no at a show, but Slayer and Motorhead? Forget about it, you know?”
6. Was the name Chelsea Girls based on the 1960s Andy Warhol film?
Band, “Yes.”
Corey, “And Chelsea Hotel, and Chelsea of London, and it sounds like a chick gang.”
Jack Black and Chelsea Girls backstage
Allison, “It’s actually from the London clothing company, Chelsea Boy. Are you familiar with it?”
Corey, “And you know the band Chelsea, which was Gene October, who was the original singer of Generation X, before they booted him out and got Billy Idol.
7. If you were locked in a steel cage with another super group, and you had to fight them, which super group would it be?
Samantha, “It would actually be Super Group from VH1.”
Corey, “Savage Animal! Savage Animal!”
Samantha, “Damnocracy! Scott Ian, Ted Nugent, Jason Bonham, and Evan Seinfeld. That is a supergroup that we hope to one day be like.”
Brutal Legend and Chelsea Girls backstage
8. If you were trapped on a desert island and could only have three albums with you, which three albums would you have?
Samantha, “The three Steel Panther album.”
Tuesdae, “We all agree.”
Allison, “And the Japanese Beatles. Everybody likes them!”
Jack Black enters the dressing room and the interview ends.
Interview in dressing room at Club Nokia.
Chelsea Girls on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/chelseagirlsrock
Interview by Sean Arenas. Interview photos by Danny Fitzgerald. Concert photos by Sean Arenas.
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