The Roar of Le Tigre:

An Interview With Kathleen Hanna, Sadie Benning, and Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre

By Amy Schroeder

Le Tigre has more to say on their debut self-titled album than many of today's current pop stars have said in their entire careers. Although the trio has released only one CD so far, Le Tigre already has a signature sound: a combination of punk, unpolished pop rock, garage and old-school electronic. The messages that go along with this sound are what make their signature stand out. They're one of only a handful of popular bands who aren't afraid to say, "We're strong, independent and very opinionated woman and, no, we're not afraid to say that we're feminists."

The songs get right to the point, and although the band's three members, Kathleen Hanna, Sadie Benning and Johanna Fateman, deal sometimes with complicated subjects such as sexism or New York politics, Le Tigre is able to simplify their topics. For instance, on the song "What's Yr Take On Cassavetes?", Le Tigre sings a chorus that's the same as the title because they want to know what the consensus is of the late American filmmaker John Cassavetes, who's known for a slew of films, including A Woman Under the Influence, Husbands and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. After asking the question "What's Yr Take?" several times, Benning and Fateman reply: "Misogynist?" "Genius?" "Alcoholic?" "Messiah?" The song inspires the listener to find out more about this guy's work, especially since the majority of Le Tigre's listeners are under 30 and Cassavetes produced the majority of his work in the '60s and '70s.

The fact that Le Tigre's songs encourage their listeners to do some work -- instead of just accepting them for their rockable, danceable face value -- is what makes this band so important. Le Tigre are movers and shakers in both the literal and actionary sense of the tattered phrase.

I've only been able to find a handful of Le Tigre reviews, and they all praise "Hot Topic," a song that lists almost 60 names. All the names, with the exception of David Wojnarowicz, are women who've made a name for themselves as the movers and shakers of the latter half of the 2oth century. The songs starts with Kathleen Hanna singing, "Carol Rama and Eleanor Antin, Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneeman. You're getting old, that's what they'll say, but don't give a damn. I'm listening anyway." It then transitions into a chorus: "Stop, don't you stop; I can't live if you stop" before continuing the list, which includes Angela Davis, Gertrude Stein, Joan Jett and Aretha Franklin.

Although they might not realize it, the Tigrettes deserve to be on this list as well: Each member is an accomplished thinker, artist and punk/riot grrl activist. Besides being known in her own right, Hanna is known as the former leader of Bikini Kill as well as for her experimental solo music project, Julie Ruin.

Benning is a respected filmmaker. Although she's only 26, she's been making short films about her life and her identity as a lesbian since her early teens. You may have seen The Judy Spots, her five short films starring a papier-mache teenager named Judy that were shown on MTV in 1998. One of her other coolest films is 1998's Flat Is Beautiful. The not-quite-an-hour-long film was shot partly in Pixelvision and partly in Super 8. The story traces the life of a latchkey kid, a 12-year-old girl living with her mother and a gay roommate.

Johanna Fateman is a well-known fanzine maker and musician.

It doesn't say in the CD cover who plays which instruments. Could you fill me in?

We all sing and play guitar on different songs. Kathleen does most of the singing. Sadie and Johanna do the programming (beats and sample-sequencing). Johanna plays keyboards, and Sadie punches in some samples live. Sadie did the turntable stuff on the record. Since we use recording processes and programming to experiment with ideas, sounds, and structures, the way we play the music live doesn't necessarily reflect who made up which part, etc. We all collect samples, make tapes, write down ideas to talk about when we get together. The process is also sort of strange because Sadie lives in Chicago while Kathleen and Johanna are in New York City.

How did you meet each other?

We met at some point in the earl '90s when there were a lot of incredible things happening in the world of underground and punk feminism. There were a lot of really incredible girl bands forming and touring, new fanzines starting, intense penpal alliances were forged. Kathleen was touring with Bikini Kill, Sadie was touring with her videos, and Johanna was writing fanzines. Our paths inevitably crossed.

Why did you decide to form Le Tigre?

We started working together after Kathleen's Julie Ruin record came out. Since it was made as a recording project, the idea was to rework the songs so that we could play them live and go on tour. Johanna would help with performing the music, and Sadie would make visuals -- slides or video projections. But when we started working together, we realized we really wanted to write new material and have a collaborative relationship with more fluid roles. We ended up as Le Tigre (although we plan to play a couple of Julie Ruin songs in our set too).

Johanna, I've heard quite a bit about your zines, ArtaudMania! and My Need to Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock. Unfortunately, I haven't seen either of them. I'm wondering if you could tell me about both these publications -- what they're about, when they were published, etc. Also, do you still publish zines?

I did a fanzine with my closest friend from high school for three or four years called Snarla. I think we did about six issues. It circulated mainly through girls in the West Coast punk scene. In terms of content, it would probably be grouped into a confessional genre associated with Riot Grrrl Press in the early to mid-'90s, although we tended to deal with stuff in a slightly more aloof and abstract way. When I moved to New York to go to art school, the terms of my work shifted away from the identity-politic issues of a punk scene to more theory-driven projects. I was fascinated by the sexual politics of conceptual art's recent history and the social structure of art school and the gallery system. The Opposite, Part I, was my first attempt to deal with disparate areas of culture, for example, modernist painting and feminist underground punk music with the same language. ArtaudMania!!! the Diary of a Fan was along the same lines but a more specific project. I chose a figure (Antonin Artaud) that punks and academics shared an interest in so that a collision of their discourses made sense. My Need to Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock is actually the transcript, in zine form, of a semi-facetious lecture I gave to accompany two paintings I made. It was my final semester of art school, and in a lot of ways, the lecture was a final "fuck you." It was intended to ridicule the retrogressive values of a couple of the teachers in the painting program I was in and continued valorization of Abstract Expressionist art and ideology among fellow students. I am working on a new fanzine that will hopefully be done before Le Tigre starts touring extensively.

Sadie, after reading about your films, I am very impressed with your work on identity construction and the experience of growing up lesbian in a homophobic world. What's it like to be both a filmmaker and a musician? What are the non-obvious differences between film and music -- in terms of expression and communicating political/social/personal messages?

As an artist, I have been concerned with how sound and picture create meaning. For me, Le Tigre is an opportunity to experiment with combining these elements while working with friends and learning about technology. When I make videos, I do everything alone; the editing process is very solitaire. With Le Tigre, we can work independently, but ultimately we are collaborating; the process is completely different. Technology can be so frustrating and expensive. It's really amazing to be able to call Jo and ask her how to do something and not have to figure it out alone.

Kathleen, you seem like a bottomless pit of ideas (this is definitely a good thing). What inspires your music? What has inspired you to take risks in your music-making -- to try things that other people never would be gutsy enough to do?

One of my favorite movies is Poison by Todd Haynes. I guess it's because everything these days looks like a strip mall or an episode of Matlock, and this movie is gorgeous. I saw it at a time when everyone around me was criticizing everyone else and making out like art was just a luxury for the rich and powerful. Poison was so visually imiginative; it reminded me how important art is and how freeing it can be if only for an instant. The next Todd Haynes movie I saw was Safe. At the time I was really depressed because I couldn't really write or create about the stuff I was going through because it was too painful, but I couldn't think or create about anything else. Safe reminded me what a great story is about; you can be telling a story about one thing but really you are just using the story to talk about something else. Also, Safe was so different from Poison, but still really incredible which inspired me to do what I want as well, as opposed to keep doing the same thing as I'd done before. What I am trying to say is that Todd Haynes' films and his career in general are hugely inspiring to me and affects how I express myself musically.

What projects are you all working on at the moment?

JOHANNA: Besides my zine, I'm working on my solo techno project, Swim With the Dolphins. We are also working on a remix for Hanin Elias' new record, In Flames.

KATHLEEN: I'm trying to book a three-week Le Tigre tour for April 2000. I'm also trying to finish an essay I've been working on about the intersection where personal psychology and political activism meet.

SADIE BENNING: I'm working on a video for The Need and a solo DJ project under the name GHOSTY JR, which will include a picture book and slide show.

In the song "Hot Topic," you list a great bunch of influential female thinkers and artists. How did you construct this list?

We wanted to make a song that was about community and history. Notions like community can seem so totalizing and problematic that we retreat to irony or oppositional self-definitions, and we wanted to say fuck that. Instead, let's be sincere and take risks and just talk about who we are and who gives us strength as feminists and as artists. The idea of making a list song with the names of artists and thinkers that are really important to us was daunting because we knew it would be impossible to include everyone, and of course, not all of us would agree on each name. The song is partial, unfinished, a snapshot of recurring conversations, books on our nightstands, records on our turntables. We didn't want to be elitist or obscure; we wanted to get the word out about stuff that not everyone knows about -- i.e. "I fucking love Yoko Ono and Angela Davis; maybe I should look up Carolee Schneeman and Mab Segrest next time I'm at the library." And even though "Hot Topic" is recorded now and exists in a finished form, we hoped that it would be understood as having an open structure for other voices to shout out their own list of names.

Will there be more Le Tigre albums?

Kathleen Hanna: I hope so.

Me too.

Amy Schroeder is the editor of Venus, a newish print zine about women in muic. You can e-mail her at Venusmag@aol.com. Venus soon will have a site at shemadethis.com.

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