They were Best Friends Forever when they sang together in Broken Social Scene, but Leslie Feist and Emily Haines grew apart. Feist relocated to Paris and became a solo star. Haines moved to New York and made it with her band Metric. Indie-rock’s leading ladies have hardly talked in recent years, never mind hung out. When we found out that Feist and Haines were both in London, we took them to a pub and listened to them chat about being B.F.F....
Emily Haines: We first met when I had no fucking money and was waiting tables and decided to quit because it was killing me.
Leslie Feist: I was living in the basement of my dad's house, working at a Levi's store, and in a similar position of having no fucking money. But I was putting on a cabaret night and shit…
Haines: Yah. It was the first time I ever saw Peaches, which is still one of my favourite memories of her…
Feist: We exchanged numbers because for me it was really, really, really, really, really rare to meet another girl in this insane boy-world-music-thing that I was doing. I remember we were both saying how we'd both never had the chance to play with other girls and we were both like "Yeah! You get it!"
Haines: I think that 90% of women who are successful in rock'n'roll are usually fucking bitches. And if girls insist on being the only girl in the room, they're never going to be legitimate musicians. Which is fucking lame because you've already cut out half of what's a good time. More girls equals more fun.
Feist: I wish I had girls in my band - especially now that I'm putting a new thing together for the new record and I need more people and shit. I looked fuckin' everywhere for a woman to play piano. But it has to be the right person.
Haines: It has to be a really good musician
Feist: It's got to be a heavyweight and it's got to be the right person who you can just hang with. There just aren't many around.
Feist: You wouldn't have a guy in your band just because he's a guy.
Haines: It would be WAY worse to have a girl in your band just because she's a girl.
Feist: Yah. They'd be like this flaky presence on stage and not pulling their weight.
Haines: But I know girls that do that.
Feist: Yah. They're playing pad chords and singing backup really badly and it just looks really awkward. I saw this band recently and if I were an A&R person I'd be like: "She's fuckin' out!" or "Put her in a shorter skirt!"
Feist: Ha. "Put her in hotpants!"
Haines: Yah. "Get some fuckin' hotpants on that chick and give her a cordless mic! Cmon!"
Feist: Once we weren't waiting tables anymore, I remember we made a pact. Remember we tried to call each other every Sunday for a while?
Haines: Oh yah.
Feist: You were in New York and I was maybe in Toronto or touring. But we would check in every Sunday. We were like each other's aunts.
Haines: Because there is no one else I can relate to.
Feist: We've never really fallen out.
Haines: I remember we had this misunderstanding once.
Feist: Yeah, some people were telling me: "Emily thinks this." And people were telling her: "Leslie thinks this."
Haines: Yah. But by phone call or by writing or whatever we came to the conclusion that our mandate as friends was... um...
Feist: "When in doubt..."
Haines: "...give the benefit of the doubt"
Feist: Yah. When in doubt, give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Haines: So if we hear that we've double-crossed each other or something like that, we give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Haines: But if we're being honest, we've had many reasons to fall out.
Feist: It's true actually, we should give ourselves some props for the fact that we haven't.
Haines: I just can't be bothered.
Feist: No. It's bullshit. The incremental movement of careers that could've made us fall out is not worth it.
Haines: None of that shit is worth it.
Feist: I always think of Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin as being like us at one point. They were all in the same scene, making music, collaborating with the same people. But it's kinda funny - Gonzales has recently produced a track where they sang together and the back-handed shit going on between the two of them was crazy! Forty years down the road from being peers and friends, it had turned so passive-aggressively resentful. I don't think we are like that.
Haines: For the most part we've already dealt with our shit pretty well.
Feist: I don't have a two-dimensional view about how our careers are going. Actually, what I prefer is just to listen to Dr Blind 18 thousand times in a row and wanna kill her because the fucking song is so genius and I can't get it out of my motherfuckin' head. Honestly, there hasn't been a day when I've resented Emily or any of my friends. It's really just musically - I'm always thrilled. It's not like I can compare myself with Emily. Musically, we're so different. We write different. I don't even know how she writes. We never talk about it. She does what she does. Actually what we talk about is other things.
Haines: I think the whole superstardom and pretending that no-one else exists thing, when there is so much music and so much happening in the world and it's so fractured, it's like suicide. You're way better off to actually see what's going on in the world that you're in and fit yourself into it instead of like being insane and thinking that you're the only person that exists. I don't like the gender topics usually but I do think that girls are encouraged to think that one girl gets to win.
Feist: Yah. It's not fuckin' like that.
Haines: Yah. There is no BITCH in AMBITION.
Feist: What? Oh. Hahahaha.
Haines: Yah. That attitude just keeps the girls down, man. The greatest fear in the high-school reality we live in is that you be the bitch.
Feist: Unless you were the one girl in school whose job it was to be the bitch. That was never me.
Haines: Or me.
Feist: Yah. I was too busy writing poetry in the football field.
Haines: Bitches are out. Gals are in.
* Feist's new album, The Reminder, comes out on April 27. Emily Haines releases Knives Don't Have Your Back in the UK on June 4.
DOM TUNON
whoop whoop first
Posted by: hairst | 13/03/2007 at 11:06
Feist has the most amazing voice in music. and nice boobies
Posted by: | 13/03/2007 at 11:37
quick props, cool!
Posted by: quick props | 13/03/2007 at 13:48
I love girls.
You gals should go see Joan Jett play Staten I. on March 24. Alas, I'm out of town.
Posted by: rich | 13/03/2007 at 14:19
ahhh fiest and miss haines -- the two hottest girls in music. god bless them both... they make us other girls proud.
also, i hope miss haines starts wearing thta black skirt on stage again... my guy friends find it highly erotic.
uh, i do too, but just a little...
Posted by: !! | 13/03/2007 at 16:19
Cool transcript. Waaayy better pics. ;)
Posted by: Paperslut | 13/03/2007 at 17:23
i once saw emily having dinner with snoop doggy dogg...not kidding. Snoop held his finished plate across the table and emily licked up the drippins.
Posted by: whiffleball face | 13/03/2007 at 18:09
i once saw emily having dinner with snoop doggy dogg...not kidding. Snoop held his finished plate across the table and emily licked up the drippins.
Posted by: whiffleball face | 13/03/2007 at 18:10
yep, girls are fun alright!
Posted by: vemrion | 13/03/2007 at 20:39
Ladies, I went into this thing thinking a polygamous three-way marriage of some sort might be the way to go, but you both cuss like sailors, and I can't abide by foul language. I'm sorry, I just don't think it's going to work.
Posted by: zab judah | 13/03/2007 at 21:27
I love these ladies in a big way....
Posted by: elTon bOng | 13/03/2007 at 21:54
How ironical are these comments after that little chat. C'mon, kids, are you ever for real?
Posted by: c'est la vie | 14/03/2007 at 03:19
People are real when they are getting what they want.
Posted by: Maybe | 14/03/2007 at 08:06
Barf on these chicks.
Posted by: microbarf | 14/03/2007 at 15:16
Who fucking cares?! The real question you should be wondering about is if they've had hot lesbian sex before.
Posted by: H.L.S. | 14/03/2007 at 19:49
props!
"used to be one of the right on ones and I liked you for that."
Posted by: passiveconsumer | 14/03/2007 at 20:16
Feist. Oh my god, FEIST.
Posted by: t. | 14/03/2007 at 20:32
"used to be one of the right on ones and I liked you for that."...
dude it's 'rotten' not 'righ on'
Posted by: | 15/03/2007 at 08:28
jenny lewis ftw.
Posted by: | 15/03/2007 at 16:23
there has never been a good female musician who hasn't been on drugs. the same with child actors...Dakota Fanning, comes close except she's not an actor.
Posted by: | 15/03/2007 at 17:35
that's pretty funny what haines was saying about bitches seeing as SHE IS RESIDENT BITCH! holy delusional.
Posted by: raymi | 15/03/2007 at 18:48
Ah! She's one to talk about putting energy to your music.
Posted by: asdf | 15/03/2007 at 18:56
"I always think of Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin as being like us at one point."
is that cause one has blonde hair and the other has brown hair
Posted by: | 15/03/2007 at 19:05
I have a friend named Chelsea, she plays piano, ukelela, guitar, accordion, organ, synthesizer, glockenspiel and she sings as well. She has her own local band right now. If you're interested then get back at me.
Posted by: Carly | 15/03/2007 at 19:14
this was retarded and pointless... who are these people?
Posted by: Dr. Fate | 16/03/2007 at 21:48