Music: Peaches

Jeff Hemmings asks Peaches why Peaches Does Herself…

“You’re already in trouble, Jeff,” says Peaches, rather ominously, as I haven’t had the chance to watch the whole of the film at such short notice. Peaches Does Herself is a semi-autobiographical film released last year, that features Peaches in the main role, with her songs, a cast of characters, and the Sweet Machine backing band. Still, what I had seen was very interesting: beginning with a sombre lecture in German it soon morphs into a scene of a young Peaches bashing away with a friend in a proto White Stripe-esque band before Peaches, legs akimbo and wearing those trademark pink hot pants, discovers the delights of making her own electronic music. From there, it is a series of dream-like scenes, with sexual innuendo, sci-fi costumes and love interest, held together by the semi-autobiographical narrative of her music.

“We filmed it every night for the five nights we had the run in Berlin,” she says, “and we looked at the footage and realised we could do a movie… we then filmed a few close-ups, but apart from that and the ending – which you haven’t seen yet – the film of the show was performed live.”

After hooking up with the likes of Feist and MIA for various collaborations she moved to Berlin and won a deal with the Kitty-Yo label, who released her debut album The Teaches Of Peaches in 2000, a harbinger of the highly sexual electronic dance-rock style she’s known for. Peaches Does Herself was an opportunity initially suggested by the theatre. “I was happy that I could make it a narrative of sorts; I wanted to use my songs and recontextualise them so that it could become a narrative which worked out.

“I didn’t like the way ‘jukebox musicals’ presented people’s music. For instance, you take the songs of Queen and you make a whole new story – like ‘We Will Rock You’, I don’t know if you saw that, but it was horrible – they make this story where the world is all grey and there are no guitars left and you have to find the secret guitar to save the world, and my name is Galileo, and my name is Figaro, and they use the music in a way that has nothing to do with Freddie Mercury. I wanted to make an anti-jukebox musical which deals with the artist and the music of the artist. And then I wanted to make it in a rock opera style, so there was no dialogue. I created the narrative and tried to fit the songs and make it chronological.”

Pre-Peaches she was Merrill Beth Nisker, a drama teacher with designs on directing. “My life obsession, even when I was 12, was Phantom Of Paradise [the cult Brian de Palma musical film]. Rocky Horror Picture Show and Cry Baby also influenced me, and characters like The Acid Queen in Tommy. Parts are autobiographical, but more of it is around the mythologising of my music and what has been said. Looking back, I’m thinking this is a great tool to re-introduce who I am – some people know my music, some people know the idea of me, some people think I’m Peaches Geldof, whatever! I think it encapsulates a lot of what I’ve done in the the last 13 years, and I’m glad I have this movie.

Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, Sat 14 Dec, 7pm, £10 (ticket includes film screening, Q&A with Peaches and a live Peaches show)

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