We’ve Got A File On You: Kathleen Hanna
Jason Frank Rothenberg
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.
When Kathleen Hanna heard that we wanted to ask her about “extracurricular activities,” she panicked a little. “I was like, ‘Oh God, am I going to have to pretend like I knit?'”
You really can’t blame her for skimming a “File” interview’s description; the Bikini Kill/Le Tigre/Julie Ruin singer has spent the last year being extraordinarily busy. For one, she just got back from Bikini Kill’s North American tour. In April, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk, which also came with a set of tour dates. Now, after all that, Hanna and her husband, Beastie Boys’ Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, are moving (temporarily) to a loft while their house undergoes renovation.
“What are my hobbies?” she thinks out loud. “Doing puzzles. It’s the most boring hobby ever.”
Hanna’s present-day leisure activities might pair well with Sleepytime Tea and sensible bedtimes (actually, that all sounds amazing), but think about it: If you spent your life protesting society’s patriarchal structures and misogyny in punk-rock scenes, you’d probably enjoy a few benign diversions, too. Like “watching stuff about Vikings,” which Hanna says helps her fall asleep.
Since the late ’80s, ever since her college days in Olympia, WA, Hanna has organized for equality through art, poetry, meetings, fanzines, and music. Her efforts crystalized under the name “riot grrrl,” a ’90s feminist punk movement that met with as much zealous enthusiasm as it did outrage, which at times turned violent. Drawing inspiration from punk progenitors like the Slits, Babes In Toyland, and the Raincoats, Hanna and her friends Kathi Wilcox, Tobi Vail, and Billy Karren formed Bikini Kill, who actively encouraged the girls at punk shows make their way to the front so they could get a better view of women playing instruments. (That, and Hanna noticed how the straight, cis men in attendance tended to crowd the stage area, while the girls and women generally hung back.)
After Bikini Kill disbanded in 1997 (they reunited in 2019), Hanna began working on a DIY solo project called Julie Ruin (later rebirthed as the Julie Ruin in 2010); the following year, she and Johanna Fateman began to conceptualize what would become the more electronic-driven Le Tigre. Across each of these projects, music and otherwise, Hanna never stopped learning, evolving, and challenging herself. And for god’s sake, please don’t call her “brave.”
“It’s not like I saved a bunch of kittens who were on fire, you know what I mean? I was living my life and experiencing this extreme harassment on the job, harassment in my regular life, sexism, dealing with sexual assault, dealing with my own privilege,” she says. “And what did that do to my personality? How did that change, and how did that change who I am? I was just trying to be anybody doing the thing that I want to do the most in the world — make music and make art — and then stuff would thwart me, and I would have to navigate that.”
Below, Hanna talks about the surprising reactions to her book Rebel Girl, friendships with Shirley Manson and Amy Poehler, and why Chappell Roan talking about boundaries is “awesome.”
Publishing A Memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk (2024)
Now that your memoir has been out for a few months, and you’ve completed a book tour, what did you make of the feedback? Did anything surprise you?
KATHLEEN HANNA: I was surprised that people were very cool for the most part and didn’t ask me Kurt [Cobain] and Courtney [Love] questions. I thought that was great and respectful. I think the things I talked about in the book made it clear that that would be weird if people just focused on that. I don’t mind talking about it briefly because it’s in the book, but I was nervous that [would be] all anybody cared about, and that hasn’t been the case at all. People have been super respectful.
I was very surprised at one of the comments I’ve gotten the most, and it was something I didn’t even think of — people were very shocked that I didn’t have money until I got together with Adam [Horovitz]. And I still [don’t]… It’s his money, not my money. I just don’t have to pay rent anymore.
But people were like, “I thought you were super famous, and that meant you had all this money.” And I was still living in punk houses. It wasn’t something that I was [doing] by choice, trying to stay pure, [while having] an IRA or a 401k. I didn’t have any of that stuff. I didn’t even have a credit card until I was in my 30s. People were like, “Whoa, you weren’t rolling in it.” And I was like, “How would I have been?”
Yeah, I can see why there would be that cognitive dissonance. Similarly, I was not surprised but more disappointed to experience in real time the level of bullying and harassment you went through with Bikini Kill in the ’90s. Today, culture reveres Bikini Kill; universities teach history lessons around how you brought feminism into punk rock. But you were not met with such universal respect as you were living it and building that legacy.
HANNA: Yeah, Sara Marcus, who wrote the book Girls To The Front, she was shocked, and she had been studying riot grrrl to write the book. When she interviewed me, I was telling her some of the stuff that I experienced, and she was like… [makes a shocked expression].
I think that history collapses on itself sometimes. People look back on the ’90s now who weren’t living in the ’90s and they’re like, “Oh, that was such a great time for music [with] Nirvana and all this community and these bands.” They think, “Oh, everybody knows ‘Rebel Girl’ now and Bikini Kill must have been… People must have been so psyched.” That’s how I felt it should have been. I thought people were going to be fucking psyched. I thought people were going to be like, “Yeah, the punk scene’s gotten stale and now it’s being ejected with a bunch of feminist theory. This is exciting.”
But people were actually very anti, and I was shocked. I just thought we were doing something interesting and experimental, and I also thought we were funny, and nobody ever thought we were funny. I was like, “‘White Boy’ is a funny song to me.” People didn’t seem to get the humor, and now they do, and that’s been great.
Also back then, part of the reason for the media blackout was [to protect our] mental health. Because everyone [the media] sent was usually a man. Or it was a woman who was told to try to pit us against other women in order to keep her job, because there were so few women journalists out there. Now when I’m being interviewed — almost exclusively by women or non-binary people — it’s awesome. I can just be myself and talk like a normal person. If I get asked a question that I just don’t feel comfortable with, because maybe today that’s a sticky issue, I can just say, “I don’t want to talk about that today.” And the person’s like, “Okay.”
I think it’s also growing up and realizing that I have that power, and I could have exercised it way back then. But when you’re 23 years old and a man is shoving a microphone in your face and asking you if you’ve been raped… And that was constantly the questioning: stripping, rape. “Why do you think you’re allowed to even exist?” The subtext for every time we were interviewed, besides in fanzines, and then it started being in fanzines as well, was, “Why do you think you’re even allowed to sing a song or talk gross?”
Yeah, a lot gets said about my generation of journalists — and younger — missing the boat on the salad days of journalism, blah blah, now there’s no money, outlets are closing everywhere, the entire future of music journalism is in question… All of which is still true. But the upside is, there is a lot more inherent empathy in our coverage.
HANNA: Younger people are a thousand times better at this. [Older] dudes suck. I mean, not all of them. But a lot of them, when I would be interviewed for the book, would be like, “You’re so brave.” And I’m like, ” You shouldn’t have to be brave to be a woman just trying to make art.”
The book isn’t about being brave… It’s supposed to be navigating a weird oppressive landscape, and that’s not bravery. A lot of older men who would interview me about the book would be like, “You’re so brave and there’s so much trauma.” And a lot of the women and non-binary people are just like, “I think it’s really funny.” They would talk about trauma in terms of like, “How do you feel about the fact that you can get something out of trauma that’s positive, but still wish it didn’t happen?” And we would have these nuanced conversations about that.
So, I’m super excited. It’s fun doing interviews now. Before, I was like, “I’ll never do them,” because they were completely traumatizing. I still occasionally will have the trauma interview where it’s just like, “Tell me more bad things that happened. That’s why I wrote the book too. You want to read bad things? It’s all in there.
Bikini Kill Making Their Late-Night TV Debut On Colbert (2024)
You’ve been on the late-night circuit before with the Julie Ruin and Le Tigre. Did it strike you as funny or interesting that Bikini Kill had not been on a late-night show prior to this year?
HANNA: I don’t have very much to say about it. It was just something I did for work. I know that sounds terrible. That was kind of a part of tour. We were on tour and then I was on vacation, and I had to leave my vacation to do that, and I was grouchy about it. But I wanted to do it because it was actually live. All those Colbert shows, a lot of times they’re taped. And the one we did was live. They shoved the equipment out and we jumped up there.
The special thing was just our friend Carlos [Cañedo] came and brought his daughter to the soundcheck. He sent me videos of her sitting at a piano imitating me sound checking, and I was like, “She’s doing soundcheck practice,” which is more important than band practice — knowing how to run a good sound check. That was the memory of that night that really stuck with me, that Carlos’s daughter came and got to see us do that. Carlos was our roadie in the ’90s and he was 16 or something, and he was in the Peechees, which is one of my all-time favorite bands.
But other than that, TV is really weird. I just did the best that I could, and I was very surprised that there seemed to be a good reaction to it for the most part. But I don’t go on the internet and look up stuff about myself, so I don’t know after that what happened. My mom was happy to get a Colbert mug. They were very nice to us. Even though I had to go off my vacation, anytime I get to see Kathi, Tobi and Sarah [Landeau], it’s just always fun.
Tour ended for you pretty recently, right?
HANNA: I just got back a week ago, or 10 days ago.
Are you settling back in OK?
HANNA: It was fucking rough this time, because also it’s the end of our reunion tour, so we don’t know what the future holds. I’m going to have a lot of processing to do, because I just love playing with [Bikini Kill] so much. The audiences were amazing. Every leg of the tour there’s a different theme, and some of them have been very heavy emotionally.
There was one leg of the tour where my vocal coach [Barbara Gustern] had been murdered. I listened to her voice before I go on stage. I listened to my voice tape in my headphones, and I was very terrified when Bikini Kill first started playing, because that had just happened when we got back together after COVID. I was going to have to listen to the tape of Barbara’s voice.
Oh no. I remember reading about that when it happened. Your vocal coach in New York, right? She had been on the sidewalk? Some girl just…
HANNA: Yeah, pushed her down and called her a bitch. She lived long enough to make it back to the lobby of her co-op building, and her best friends were there. Before she went unconscious, the last word she heard was not “bitch,” it was her best friend holding her as she was bleeding to death. And there was a guy on a bike who found her, who picked her up and carried her — I would love to find out who that person is, because I’m very thankful.
Hearing about that just broke my heart. And I’m very sorry for your loss.
HANNA: She was a wonderful, wonderful person. Really funny, dancing on the top of the bar in cowboy boots. When Bikini Kill first reunited, she came for our first shows in Brooklyn. I was so nervous. The whole night was about performing for Barbara, but I also used everything that she taught me to do my best. I have a picture of the two of us together, and you can tell I’m crying because it was such a full-circle moment for her to come to a performance like that. She really is the reason I got back into singing and I’m so thankful that I had the moments that I had with her and fun times that we had.
But then the tour, after she died, it was during this three, four-year period [after] she was killed. When I listened to [the tape of] her voice, I was happy to hear her. It feels like she’s alive when I’m listening to it. Then I would go on stage and use all the stuff that she taught me. Some nights I have to lean heavily on technique because it’s power singing, very musical theater punk… Almost every time that I sang on that tour, she was with me and came back to life. This last tour was really… The audiences were so great, and I reveled in the fact that I could close my eyes and embody the songs, because I wasn’t scanning the audience for violence.
Right, I imagine your relationship to the audience has changed a lot with Bikini Kill.
HANNA: I still am checking on people in the crowd, but I’m not totally focused on: “Is somebody going to throw something at me?” The love that we were getting was allowing me to close my eyes and escape into the music and enjoy the songs for what they are.
Olympia Declaring Bikini Kill Day (2024)
HANNA: [When] we played in Olympia, it was this full-circle hometown hero welcome that we’d never gotten before. It was very touching, and I saw some old friends. From then on, every night I felt like I was back in Olympia in Tobi’s parents’ garage, with me, Tobi, and Kathi when we first started.
The songs, “This Is Not A Test,” “Double Dare Ya,” “Feels Blind,” and “Carnival” were some of the first songs the three of us wrote. Whenever we would do those songs, I viscerally felt like I was back in that garage while simultaneously standing in front of 2,000 people who were giving us nothing but love. It was super healing. All the violence we experienced the first time around, there wasn’t a lot of being able to enjoy [performing], because the reaction was so strong. It was also very strong in terms of support. It was either people totally supported us and were so into us that they were crying at every show, or it was like, “We’re going to kill you. You don’t deserve to exist.”
I like performing in just this new landscape, and it’s interesting that things have politically gotten worse. But then the shows have gotten less violent, the interviews have gotten better. All this stuff surrounding being in a band for me is so much more enjoyable, because I experienced the unenjoyable part in the ’90s, [and I] feel very fortunate to have a good interview like this, where we’re really talking versus, “Explain yourself to me. Explain why you think that you are allowed to even be in a band to me.”
Also, having 15, 16-year-olds coming and seeing us for the first time and getting all dressed up and coming with their friends. I’m 55. That’s not something that I had [on] my bingo cards. That’s remarkable — that the younger generation doesn’t have the same issues around ageism. They’re just psyched, and they care about the music.
Starring In Alice Bag’s “77” Video With Garbage’s Shirley Manson (2018)
I had the opportunity to ask Shirley Manson about meeting you on the set of Alice Bag’s “77” video, and her response was characteristically unassuming. She spoke about being nervous to meet because she saw the indie scene as so much cooler than the more pop-radio arena where she came up in Garbage. What were your impressions of Shirley when you met?
HANNA: I thought she was fucking great. I think because of Instagram and stuff, I’m able to follow her and just be supportive. I love a lot of the stuff she posts about. We do have similar viewpoints on a lot of issues, and I think it just goes to show that we can be doing work in different [ecosystems]. She can be on a major label, I can be in the indie sphere, but we still have stuff in common. I think the coolness stuff, it’s weird because it could go either way. It could be like… I always saw her as this stunning fashion model singer. [Garbage’s] music is very cool and very runway-esque.
I feel like we were all being goofy on the set. Alice is so great and connected all of us together, which was a beautiful thing. And Alice is just… I’m happy for her that she moved to Mexico City, but one of the big draws of LA was meeting Alice and getting to go in the studio with her and being like, “She’s the fucking real deal.” She has done so much for music and for the LA punk scene.
I was watching that We Are The World documentary and there’s a part at the end where Diana Ross is like, “I don’t want this to ever end. This is so much fun.” I kept thinking how so many musicians, we don’t meet other musicians. In Olympia, it was like, “Oh, we’re a part of this scene and we all hang out.” One of my best friends was Mikey Dees who was in a band, Fitz Of Depression, which was much more hard rock, and they played bars and it was a different scene, but we were really close. It wasn’t like we were just hanging out with Bratmobile all the time.
That’s part of the thing for the future — trying to find ways where people from different areas of the music world can meet and hang out.
Moxie! & Friendship With Amy Poehler (2021)
When I saw your LA book tour stop, Amy Poehler moderated the discussion. Do you remember how you met?
HANNA: I can’t remember how we first met. I do know that she came over and had dinner once in New York and it was really fun. And I went to a small party at her apartment with like 10 other people and had a great time. Oh, I know how I met her. I was on tour with Le Tigre in Europe. I don’t do interviews when I’m on tour, because I go on vocal rest. When I’m not singing, I’m pretty much not talking. When I get home, I’m a total blabbermouth like this.
She was just starting Saturday Night Live, or had been on a couple of seasons. Interview Magazine wanted to do a piece on her and she asked for me to interview her, and I said yes, which I never do.
So, I was in Europe, and we had to time it. It was on the phone in the hotel, and I was like, “Joe [Fateman], go take a shower.” We shared hotel rooms. I did this hour-long interview with her, and we got to know each other through that interview. She was really touched, I think, that I took an hour out of my time when I was in the middle of a tour to do that. Then it was like, “Will you do my book talk?” And she’s like, “Well, I kind of owe you.”
We used to have this New Year’s party at our place in New York every year, and she came. Me and her and Kathi from Bikini Kill hung out. It was so much fun. You know when you meet somebody, and you feel like they’re your best friend forever? I don’t know, she might be the kind of person where every single person she meets thinks that. So yeah, we just clicked. She’s just super busy, way more busy than me. I don’t want to pursue a friendship with somebody who has so much going on, because it’s almost just mean to do that. I love what we have and that when I can see her, I see her and hopefully at some point I’ll get to hang out with her. She’s fucking great. A lot of SNL actors and writers would come to Le Tigre shows in New York, so that was how I got introduced to that scene.
Recording “Rebel Girl” With Joan Jett (1993)
I loved the way you describe your relationship with Joan Jett in your book. And it’s clear your relationship has stood the test of time.
HANNA: Collaborating with Joan was a total dream come true. She taught me that— It was the beginning of being like, “Why the fuck are you hung up on this selling out thing?” I still was able to keep my own ethics, but I was broke.
When Bikini Kill was breaking up and I left with 400 bucks, she got me gigs writing for her. She got me a gig singing backups on a record. She showed me, “Hey, there’s other jobs you can do when Bikini Kill ends that you can piece together rent money.” She taught me tons of shit about production and just how much I could do with it. It changed my relationship to music.
Recording that single with her in Bikini Kill is what opened the door to Le Tigre ever existing. Because I got so excited about production and learned so much from her that I got an 8-track and started recording stuff on my own. That led into the Le Tigre project, which we were producing ourselves.
She just felt like an older sister. I mean, we’re not that far away in age, and I was really struggling to find community at the time. I had felt very kicked out of the riot grrrl scene or the feminist punk scene. At that time, I remember feeling like I couldn’t even go to a Gossip show. I would get on the VIP and find a place to be where nobody could see me, I would have to try to wear a baseball cap or look different.
I don’t get recognized in the grocery store. I didn’t, at least back then, but at a Gossip show, you get recognized. People could be very vicious to me. It was really hard that it was coming from other feminists who were just mad about this or mad about that and wanted to yell at me at a show. I was like, “Wow. I was one of the people who helped create this air pocket in the sinking ship, and now I’m not even welcome here.” That was when I would reach out to Joan and she was just always there for me.
Getting Covered By Miley Cyrus At Super Bowl Pregame Show (2021)
So, did you ever successfully get in touch with Miley Cyrus?
HANNA: No, I don’t have a— well, I’m not going to say I don’t have a manager, because I do. I have a business manager now. But at the time I didn’t have a manager, so I was just emailing with her manager. [Miley and I have] never spoken or anything like that.
My kid did meet Olivia Rodrigo, who got us tickets to her concert. I was on tour, so I couldn’t go. [Olivia] said something really nice about me to my kid. But he said, “Mom, you’re still not cool.”
I was like, “Okay, I just want to ask you this. I got you and your friend backstage at the Olivia Rodrigo concert, and she said I was one of her heroes.” And he’s like, “She also said she loved my hair.” And I was like, “Okay, can we just not talk about how she loved your hair right now and just talk about I’m one of Olivia Rodrigo’s heroes? Could you please just let that sink in? Am I cool now?” And he’s like, “Not really.” And I’m like, “What do I have to do?”
Praising Demi Lovato’s Power Vocal (2024)
Today’s pop singers are so roundly praised for their authenticity, their candor, their push for a greater conversation about fandom and celebrity. I’m thinking of Chappell Roan in particular. When you assess today’s pop landscape, what comes to mind?
HANNA: I don’t know how much any of us put stock in authenticity anymore, because obviously gender’s a construction… I feel like Chappell Roan’s so interesting because she plays with a lot of that. I think she’s great. I love the theatricalness, but I also like the music. A lot of times I don’t like circusy stuff, but I don’t really find her circus; she realizes what you can do with a live show and what you can do on a TV show, and then she does the most.
I think she’s a great singer and a great songwriter. I think talking about boundaries is so awesome. I think for a ton of people to be like, “Hey, you know what?” Whether it’s entertainment, whether you’re doing data entry somewhere, the job has to stop whenever the time is up for your job. We can’t be living these 24/7 jobs. That’s also something people from your generation brought to the fore. Partially because I’m a pre-internet, pre-phone person, and I got to live that life. I have to say I am nostalgic for it.
We walked everywhere. We went to Taco Bell to call the promoter to get directions. It just was a different thing. Once [cell] phones were available, everybody’s boss then thought, “Okay, great. They work for me 24 hours a day.” It was your generation who said, “No, I’m turning my fucking phone off at this time,” or “I do not accept work calls.” You don’t disrupt people’s weekends with fucking annoying emails… No one’s on their deathbed being like, “I wish I would’ve worked more.”
It’s not just in the entertainment industry. It’s also your boss. Your clients [and] your boss are not allowed to demand that when you’re out at coffee with your friends, you have to be at work. That’s part of it —being approached and [being asked], “Will you sing happy birthday to my cousin into my phone?” Whether you’re being touched or not, it can be intrusive.
For me, because it’s so few and far between, I’m always flattered [to be approached]. But if I was Chappell Roan, I would probably be totally freaked out by it. I think she did a great service to everybody by saying something.
Singing The 1990s-Style Wandavision Theme (2021)
Speaking of side gigs, how did you wind up singing the ’90s TV show theme on Wandavision?
HANNA: I also did not have a manager at the time. COVID was still raging, and I just got some random email: “Do you want to do this thing?” I saw it was [songwriting duo Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez]. I love things where you go in the studio, and you do something with other people and then you learn a new way to work. I was like, “Oh God, what a gift.” I mean, I got paid for it too. I don’t want anybody to know this, but I would’ve done it for free just to learn from them, because they’re a really serious songwriting team and they have a whole different way of working than I work. I learned a lot from that project because I actually fucked up. They sent me a demo track of the song that was sung by… I don’t remember who sang the demo right now.
At first, I tried imitating it, and then I was like, “Wait, but they don’t want me to imitate it, because they’re asking me to do it, so I should practice doing it as me in my voice, in my range.” They work with professionally trained Broadway singers, and that’s not me. Although I do training, it’s not the same kind of training. They wanted me to do some takes that sounded just like the demo. I could have prepped for that, but I didn’t. I went back to that moment in my head when we were in the studio and I was like, “Oh, shit. That’s what I should have.” I started prepping for that and then I changed directions. I was singing it in their ears wrong.
But they still went with your version!
HANNA: Yeah, but that version ended up being a combination of my version and me trying to imitate this trained singer. I could have done it had I rehearsed, but I hadn’t rehearsed that way. So, I had to figure it out in real time with [the Lopezes] sitting there, which was really stressful.
They were lovely to work with. I don’t think they’d ever work with me again, but I would definitely work [with them]. I went home, and I was like, “God damn it, I should have gone with my gut reaction and just prepped the demo and then done an alt take at the end,” which was my first inclination, but I didn’t. I did it the other way around.
I’ve started to work in a different way in my life when I do side projects. I’ll be like, “Am I really the suitable person to do this?” “Am I the suitable person to be on this panel?” Or, “Am I the suitable person to sing this song or to introduce this film or to interview this person or whatever?”
Then I’m like, “Well, they asked me because they want me.” Typically, that strategy has worked for me, as opposed to me trying to put on an outfit that isn’t my outfit and act like what I think they want. Stop trying to be what they think and just show up as what I am and give them that. Because that’s what they asked for. They could have asked Shirley Manson if they wanted Shirley Manson. They don’t want me to show up in a Shirley Manson outfit trying to cosplay Shirley Manson.
It usually works, but I think in a situation where they want a certain technical performance that I was unable to give, it was kind of frustrating.
I understand. It happens. Now you know, but it still turned out great.
HANNA: Yeah, I mean, I never saw it or listened to it. That’s the thing. I do this stuff. I never see it. I never listen to it. I haven’t watched the Stephen Colbert thing. I don’t look at any of it. I know that sounds bad, but…
“DemiRep” Opening Pen15 (2019-2021)
So if I were to ask if you’ve watched any of Pen15, that’s probably a no, right?
HANNA: Oh, I watched the whole thing. I love Pen15. I didn’t even notice that that was me [singing] until three episodes in.
Wait, really?
HANNA: Yeah, because it would be like, “I’m going to get water while the intro is playing, and then I would come back and watch. I loved it so much. Those actors are so good. Then it was maybe the third or fourth episode, we were watching in bed, and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s me.” Then I remembered signing the paperwork. I was like, “Oh, that’s so cool.”
I was so happy. I was like, “Oh my God, I love this show.” We’ve had our songs used in the best fucking shows, and we didn’t know they were going to be good. It was just like, we were asked, and we get the premise and a little bit of information and it’s like, “Yeah, yeah.” That’s how people make money nowadays.
Voicing A Lonely Alien In Myrna The Monster (2015)
Outside of voicing an alien, have you ever auditioned much for anything else with film or television? Have you ever had the acting bug?
HANNA: Yeah, so when I first came to New York, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Le Tigre was an idea, but it didn’t have a name. And I was like, “Okay, I’m in New York. What can I do in New York?” I was like, “well, I’ve always wanted to sing on Broadway.”
So, I looked up auditions. They were making Less Than Zero into a musical. It was like an off, off, off Broadway production. I went to audition for it. The internet was just starting, so it wasn’t like you could look up sheet music and download it and print it or anything. I went to a sheet music store over by Joe’s Pub, and that Starbucks at Astor Place in the cube.
I looked for any recognizable song that was a rock song or something. And I found Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart.” You had to bring sheet music and then the piano player would play it. So, I went to the audition, and I was so terrible. I was dancing this weird cowboy dance. I don’t know what happened. I was so nervous that I started doing a solo square dance while singing “Pardon My Heart” by Quarterflash. The whole time I was doing it, I knew it was weird, but I couldn’t stop. And it became funny that I was doing it, and then I was almost laughing while I was singing, which made my voice sound not very good.
And I can’t act. I can’t act at all. I think I’m just not an actor. I think I read some lines or whatever. Then, as I was leaving, I was wearing a tank top, and they saw a tattoo peeking out. They’re like, “Wait a minute. You have tattoos? Why don’t you come back tomorrow and read for this role called Drug Girl?”
Then I realized how labor-intensive plays are, and it was going to be two shows a day. And weekend matinees and rehearsal every day. I was working on this project with Johanna Fateman, and I was like, “Okay, am I going to do this musical project, which turned out to be Le Tigre, or am I going to be in this musical?” So, I chose to work with Johanna instead. A few weeks or a month later, I was walking to rehearsal and I walked by the theater that [Less Than Zero] was playing at, and I saw the sandwich board said that it closes tomorrow night. It was only up for two nights. I was like, “You made the right decision.”
That reminds me of your dancing in Sonic Youth’s video. And you said in an interview that you were “high on cookies.”
HANNA: Yeah, I ate a lot of cookies. [At my Less Than Zero audition] I was just freaking out, but I wasn’t putting my thumbs underneath my armpits. I was doing the Quarterflash thing. It was like, suddenly I pictured that I was wearing a cowgirl vest and cowboy boots and a skirt.
Launching T-Shirt Company Tees4Togo (2018)
What’s the latest with Tees4Togo? To be honest, I sort of moved my Joan Jett tee out of rotation because some people—
HANNA: They thought it was you?
Yes. They thought I was wearing a T-shirt of myself.
HANNA: I’m looking at you now, and I’m like, the drawing…! Well, we have a new Joan Jett one coming out. I have one here in the basement, or on the second floor. We’re doing a new line called Tiny Tornadoes that [has a] different Poly Styrene one. We’re doing Jennifer Finch from L7. We’re doing a Linda Lindas [shirt] — a bunch of different cool people from music who I love. But yeah, it’s been hard to keep up with while I’ve been traveling so much and on tour, so I’m trying to get back into it and revamp it and getting more help with the business side, because I’m terrible at that. I want to raise more money for Peace Sisters, because it’s such a great organization, and they genuinely care about making women’s lives materially better in a concrete way.
It’s one of the concrete things that I do that I see real change. I get to see, “It started with 40 young women and now it’s 600,” or “Now we’re providing health insurance for 600 girls and women.” I think over a hundred women have now graduated from college. That’s where the T-shirt money goes — to provide women the money to get educations when they want it [or] to get mentorships and ID cards so they can go to college if they want, so they can get a driver’s license.
The organization is great at being like, “Well, we can’t just give people money for tuition, because if they don’t have ID cards, they can’t fill out the application.” Most people don’t have ID cards, and those cost $200, which is more than the whole full year of tuition. There’s all these hoops you have to jump through. It’s almost like you’re not really a full-fledged citizen without one of these cards. Every time I sell a T-shirt, I feel like [I’m] doing something concrete and legitimate that is helpful.
Covering “Dancing In The Dark” With Tommy Buck (2016)
This is one of very few songs released under the name Kathleen Hanna. What are your thoughts on releasing more music under your own name? What has been so compelling to you about making music in a group?
HANNA: If I wanted to do a solo record, I’d be fine putting out under Kathleen Hanna. I mean, I’m not in love with my name. I always wished I had some way cooler name, but I feel like everybody thinks that. I was almost named Maude. And I’m like, “Mom, why didn’t you name me fucking Maude? That would’ve been so cool.” I don’t really have any qualms about it or doing projects and putting my name on it, but I prefer being collaborative. I’m in a band right now with my friend Frank and some other people, and it’s like… I just prefer it. I prefer bouncing ideas with other people, not being the only person who’s invested in it. A lot of the stuff I do is very by myself. Music is the one place that I get to actually hang out and collaborate. It’s fun when you get to the place where everybody is doing the thing that they like to do the best that they can do it, and not having to do shit that they hate and aren’t good at.
But also, I like to be the boss.
