SMH Home
Home   >   Entertainment   >   Music   >   Article  

Top gear

November 15 2002

Killing Heidi's Ella Hooper and Warren Jenkin. Photo: Quentin Jones
Where The Domain, city
When Saturday, December 7, 11am-11pm
How much $60 plus booking fee
Bookings 9266 4800

Armed with a new album and a Motley Crue-inspired wardrobe, Killing Heidi are set to rock Homebake, writes Matthew Thompson.

Ella Hooper's red fish-net top shimmers like op art, making crazy patterns that draw the eye where it is impolite to go.

She offers her hand while Killing Heidi bassist Warren "just call me Wozza" Jenkin bounds in behind her on this early Chippendale morning, his matching fish-nets bright blue.

They are a laughing, hyperkinetic pair of hair-rockers loose in the Sony offices, under mops of dreadlocks, resplendent in Motley Crue-style, raggedy-glam leather wrist-twists and skin-tight strides.

Life is good for 19-year-old Hooper, who's blessed with talent, charisma and a successful rock 'n' roll band. Her voice is husky from a show in Albury the night before, where she let rip on songs such as Ammyl, the lead track from Present, Killing Heidi's follow-up album to last year's debut, Reflector.

Ammyl? As in amyl nitrite, the frequently abused medical inhalant that produces an explosive rush to the head not dissimilar to power-rock?

"No, it's an abstract song title," says Hooper. "Really, it's just the sound of it. Anyway, amyl's not known as amyl in our circles."

"We generally call amyl 'rush'," says Jenkin, 28, leaning back and stretching his lanky bass-player arms.

"We often have very dirty names for very innocent things," smiles Hooper. "Like the song Animal Style [renamed Damage Control]. That was actually the name of a burger in LA that we are in love with. That's why we were saying this song is so 'animal style'. Everyone's like, 'That's disgusting'."

Beautiful LA burgers aside, Killing Heidi's American adventures left a bad taste in their mouths, mainly because of the clothes they were pressured into wearing.

"So many stylists just go, 'This is in, this is going to suit you'," says Hooper, her accent suddenly PR-Californian. "They choose what you wear, they want to push their projection onto the artist ... and the artist is never going to look comfortable. That would be so horrible, being put into something you weren't into," she says, her eyes wide with concern.

Finding clothes they are into has always been a issue for the flamboyant rockers of Killing Heidi, but life on the road steals valuable shopping time.

Concerned about having the right threads to go with their dreads, the band recently called in the services of master stylist Brett Chamberlain, of the management agency Look.

"The best thing is that he flew from Sydney down to live with us [in Melbourne] for about three days and basically just hung out with us," says Jenkin. "He got to know us - looked in our wardrobes; went to the places we like to go and hang out; listened to our sorta music - and then just went away and got stuff for us. And when he came back it was like, 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes'."

Hooper leans in: "That's right, that's right, that's right. Dress-ups is so much fun ... it's very KISS."

Killing Heidi have been listening to a lot of KISS lately, and Iron Maiden, and although their Homebake performance will be acoustic (they are performing in the festival's new acoustic pavilion, alongside acts such as Darren Hanlon and Something For Kate's Paul Dempsey), they are over the moon about big, ballsy rock being back in the charts.

"Rock's going nuts at the moment," says Hooper. "I think it's so cool that you don't have to feel like you have to be into techno to be on the cutting edge. People are going less for the fluff and the imagery of, say, Bryan Adams and more for Ryan Adams or the Vines or the Strokes - who are my favourite band.

All the hype and hoopla surrounding the Vines is a trifle misplaced, says Jenkin. "A lot of people have been doing that style of music for a long time."

Killing Heidi obviously take their rock seriously and can relate to the genre's long history of motel misdemeanours. "It just happens," says Hooper, smiling to the nodding Jenkin. "I think it's a boredom thing. It's like, you've been in a bus or you've been stuck somewhere and then you just want to go nuts, and it's the hotel room that cops it. Generally it's the drummer in someone else's room."

One tradition of popular music that Hooper won't cop is the blatant sexualisation of the frontwoman. Earlier this year she made a few sharp remarks about American pop star Mandy Moore, whose image Hooper sees as the product of manipulative image-makers.

"At least Holly Valance is a little older than Mandy Moore was when she was simulating blow jobs [in her video clips], with her wet lips ...

"I've been on the other side of the camera. I know what they ask you to do and how they ask you to move and how they edit it," says Hooper, demonstrating the raw power of an over-the-shoulder "come hither" glance.

Instead this teenage phenomenon is determined to chart her own course as a "strong, normal, empowered person".




Also in Entertainment

I made a terrible mistake: Jackson

Geoffrey Rush finds the pirate within

Heiress leaves $180m to struggling magazine

Queen gives Beckham security tips

Death threat

Sweeney slays them in Chicago

Changing Lanes