Feminist icon and pop provocateur Peaches is celebrating 20 years of her seminal debut album ‘The Teaches of Peaches’ with a string of global tour dates.
Having showcased across North America, she hit the UK this summer for the first in a series of live shows – featuring the album played in full – including a stop at Grace Jones’ Meltdown festival at London’s Southbank Centre.
Reflecting on the milestone, Peaches – who is currently working on a brand-new album – tells Retro Pop’s August 2022 issue how she came to record her iconic first LP, recalls the festival encounter that saw her strike up a friendship with Grace, and reveals how her current tour is influencing the sound of her next record.
How is it for you to be celebrating 20 years of ‘The Teaches of Peaches’?
It feels really, much more than I thought it would… It’s really an emotional, authentic, beautiful feeling. I feel proud that people are excited. I think it’s compounded with 20 years, obviously, but also the pandemic and reevaluating what’s important to you and what things are influential for you.
People are ready to express themselves again, be out and loud and proud. So they’re really giving this energy and not holding back their love for the album. They’re ready to celebrate.
What was your life like at the time of making the album?
Well, there was no career. I was working and I had just decided to make music my life, so I finished my job, I saved some money and I decided I was going to make this album. I had broken off a very long relationship, I had just gone through thyroid cancer; it didn’t affect me physically, but it made me realise, ‘Do what you really want – because anything can happen…’ So I was driven in that way.
I also was making a lot of music with friends, but they all had moved away, so I found this machine and it became this solace for the breakup and for empowerment and reminded me, ‘Don’t be a victim – how can you turn this around and make it something empowering?’. I just really wanted to do it, but it wasn’t really like, ‘I’m going to take over the world.’ I really didn’t have these grandiose visions of a career.
In terms of subject matter, ‘The Teaches of Peaches’ is very ahead of its time. What, in particular, were you responding to in your lyrics?
I was responding mostly to the patriarchal male gaze in music, where everything was said from that point of view. I love to sing along with those songs, but they don’t include me. So I wanted to create songs that included me and that include a lot of people that were taking this status quo and just thinking, ‘I guess I’ve just got to say this even though it doesn’t really relate to me.’
I don’t like to call it ‘alternative’, because I think it was just as important as whatever was said [in pop music] at the time.
While you’ve been revisiting the album for these shows, has anything about the songs stood out to you?
Just that they sound fresh. The first half of the live show is purely ‘The Teaches of Peaches’ songs and they sound fresh. Maybe I’m delusional – I don’t think so – but they don’t sound dated.
The way I wrote them was very much like eight sounds. I wasn’t interested in layering them, in terms of how house music works or anything like that. I saw them as punk; like bass, guitar, drums and voice, and then they all hold their quarter of the space.
So all the sounds that were used in ‘The Teaches of Peaches’… it’s so stripped down that every sound has its place. So, the power of the production really strikes me.
You also performed at Grace Jones’ Meltdown Festival. How do you two know each other?
We played at a festival together a long time ago [Lovebox Festival 2010]. I’d broken my ankle two days before and I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m not doing a show with Grace Jones’. So I stole a wheelchair from the London Airport and my friend spray painted it pink and put hair all over it and I added a bunch of people to make the show [visually exciting].
Grace was just like, ‘Whoa, I really didn’t know what your power was.’ She was really complimenting what I had done. And I remember Grace was just wheeling around in my wheelchair, laughing maniacally, like, ‘I want a wheelchair!’ That was a moment!
What’s next for Peaches?
I’ve got a lot of ideas that are already starting to happen and I’m looking forward to getting back to them. I’m also using this whole experience of the celebration to help influence the next move. I think the show really does draw from the past and present, and there are a lot of future elements in this show, performatively…
Read the full interview in the August 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store or use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist.
