Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution With Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna

When you get pissed off enough about something, you take action. In the 90s Kathleen Hanna looked around and got pissed off. Pissed off at the everyday misogyny she and her friends experienced. Pissed off at politicians, rapists, sexists, patriarchs and the phonies whose actions were in direct conflict with their lofty words. She was pissed off. She took action.

“We’re Bikini Kill and we want revolution! Girl style!” is how the vocalist kicks off Double Dare Ya, the very first song on their 1991 self-titled debut EP. To make their manifesto absolutely clear she then shouts, “Now!”, dragging out the vowel with the same sneering cartoonishness Johnny Rotten did in the Sex Pistols’ equally defining 1976 anti-establishment classic Anarchy in the UK. Behind her, piercing guitar feedback squeals like an angry harpy, a punky bass groove swings in and Kathleen launches a movement with her lyrics.

“You’re a big girl now / You’ve got no reason not to fight / You’ve got to know what they are / ‘Fore you can stand up for your rights / Rights, rights? You do have rights / Double dare ya”

That opening rallying cry, “revolution, girl style, now!”, is the best summation and mission statement you’ll find to explain Riot Grrl, the underground movement of the 90s that sprung out of Washington DC and blended DIY ideology, raucous punk music and uncompromising feminist ideals, concerns and politics.

While the chart-topping grunge movement was cynical, ironic and miserable-ist, riot grrrl was urgent, aggressive, confrontational and pissed off. And Bikini Kill were at the forefront, leading the charge.

“It felt like we were in the trenches together. We didn’t have that much fun,” Kathleen tells Viva. “We did have some fun, but when you’re playing $5 shows it’s not too hard for some old crusty punk and his friends to show up and throw stuff at you.”

The band are rightly celebrated today, but to say Bikini Kill initially elicited a hostile reaction would be an understatement.

The band were constantly dodging projectiles like bottles and chains thrown at them by a predominantly male audience threatened by their politics and challenge to punk’s patriarchal establishment.

“People were really vicious to us, it could get quite hairy being in that particular band,” she says. “Whether it was men or even just, like, women telling us we weren’t doing feminism right. Different stuff like that.

“For the most part, a lot of it was really hard work that was never really thanked. So to come back now when we’re older and don’t give a s*** — we also didn’t give a s*** then, to be truthful, but we still had to contend with it. We have much more of a buffer now so we don’t have to deal with jerks treating us badly. But it’s like anything, I look back on certain times with total fondness. There were shows that I played where miracles were happening all around me and it was absolutely beautiful.”

It sucks to hear how rough they had it. As a teenager into the guitar scene back in the 90s, the Riot Grrrl movement and bands like Bikini Kill, Babes in Toyland, Huggy Bear and Bratmobile, to name just a few, always seemed so cool. Their music was visceral and raw in all the best ways, just brutally credible, and they came across as totally badass. I can only imagine how empowering and inspirational bands like Bikini Kill must have been to their legion of female fans.

And, honestly, what’s more punk than spitting in the eye of the establishment and kicking down the door?

“Yes! Hello!” she laughs. “That’s exactly how I felt.”

Crusty old punks aside, the band did find their fans, becoming popular enough thanks to songs like Rebel Girl (recently named the 10th best song of the 90s by Pitchfork), New Radio and Strawberry Julius to filter down to far-flung places like Aotearoa in those pre-internet times. And now, fans will finally be able to see this vital, freshly reunited group when they play Auckland’s Powerstation in March.

“I’m really excited,” Kathleen enthuses. “The energy at the shows has been amazing. The songs feel very alive to me. I don’t know if they felt this alive when we first performed them. They feel really exciting and fresh to me. I’m glad I’ve had that 25 years to not sing those songs or else I’d be sooooo bored of Rebel Girl by now.”

Befitting the frontwoman of a vitally important band, the person who stole Sonic Youth’s music video for their hit Bull in the Heather when she cameoed in it, dancing goofily around the band, and who changed the course of popular music forever when, drunk on Canadian Club whisky, she grabbed a marker and scrawled on the bedroom wall of her passed-out friend, “Kurt smells like teen spirit”, giving him the inspiration for a new song, Kathleen is incredible to talk to.

“The hidden underbelly of the indie music world was a huge disappointment. It’s really painful when you’re like, ‘Look I’m not going to be a part of these corporations that are pushing this stupid, shitty, sexist music down everyone’s throats’. We were kids and thought, ‘We’re going to create culture.’ We didn’t live in L.A. or New York but we were still going to create culture. It was idealistic with an exciting sense of, ‘We’re going to make this thing happen’.”

Kathleen says it was “very, very depressing” to find their idealistic world being tainted by the same sexism, the same racism, the same classism, the same everything that they were rebelling against. Punk fanzines would ask them the same sexist questions as international mags like Rolling Stone and Spin, and opening bands would yell anti-women statements during their sets.

“A big question in the 90s between me and a lot of my friends was, ‘What are you alternative to?’ You’re a bunch of douchebags who act like my dad. You’re not a punk. You’re acting like a cop or a dad or some punishing teacher. Some punitive jerk. What is this alternative to? It feels like the exact same thing as the mainstream. It’s just wearing dirty jeans.”

After disbanding in 1997, Kathleen never thought Bikini Kill would play together again. But, she says, “the time felt right” for them to once again take to the trenches. Bikini Kill are certainly a band we need right now. Depressingly little has changed since the 90s and, in the States, certainly, things are demonstrably worse, with the conservative GOP majority on the Supreme Court passing an abortion ban and other red states attacking the right to contraception.

How does she keep sane among such backwards insanity?

“I don’t! I’m a mess,” she laughs. Then she goes quiet and says, “I’m having a hard time if I’m perfectly honest. I’m not having the easiest time. One of the only times when I feel sane and joyous is when I’m on stage. I can’t wait. Because then I feel like I’m having some kind of fellowship and communion with like-minded people. I’m not having the easiest time.”

If that sounds like performing with Bikini Kill is a form of therapy for her, well, you’re absolutely right.

“It feels like I’m shaking a lot of bad s*** out of my body when I’m playing. It’s very therapeutic.”

She’s reclaimed the word that has typically been used against her and the band. “That phrase has typically always been a way to put down women who make art. ‘It’s not real, it’s just therapy’.” she says, before her venomous cool surfaces and she says, “You know what? If your art isn’t therapeutic for you, then why are you doing it? So that people are going to want to make out with you? Is that your point?”

It’s a killer point and one where you can feel her disdain towards those whose artistic endeavours are, essentially, meaningless.

“If your art isn’t a vase that can actually hold something and have some sort of function then what’s it there for? Why are you bothering?

“I’m happy to admit that playing shows with Bikini Kill is totally therapeutic for me. It makes me feel great. All I want to do is be on stage and all I think about when I’m on tour is how I can make this show the best show I can make it. I’m not gonna just walk out there like I don’t care. I’m going to give it every single thing I have. It feels so good to be in that process with these other people that I really care about.”

Then she smiles and says, “It’s one of the best moments you can possibly have as a human.”

Bikini Kill play Auckland’s Powerstation on Wednesday, March 15.