La Roux (2009)
Interview Background
It’s always interesting to speak with an artist on the crux of something big, then conversing again after their million-selling breakthrough. These two interviews below were constructed from a half hour chat with La Roux’s Elly Jackson just before Christmas 2009 – around six months after the self-titled debut had hit number two in the UK charts behind another Jackson – the freshly deceased Michael. The first time we spoke, Jackson was lying in bed at her parents’ house (her mum, actress Trudie Goodwin, had relatively recently left The Bill). She was enjoying early musical opportunities such as “fucking about” with Lily Allen, but sounded level-headed about the possibilities fame offered. Six months later exhaustion had reared its head (she canned some Aussie shows during a Parklife run in October), yet her self-effacing wit remained strong… And she was still in bed!
Due to the fact this interview was spread over an Onion cover story and a Rip It Up tour story, there isn’t a lot of additional material left unpublished (although here I’ve included an additional snippet for Rip It Up's online site where La Roux apologised for leaving the Parklife tour early). Now that she’s finally got around to releasing a third La Roux album, maybe I’ll be inspired to post my original La Roux interview on this site at some stage too.
The following stories are edited version of interviews first published in Rip It Up and Onion magazines, March 2010.
La Roux - The Quick And The Dead
by Scott McLennan
“I think a lot of people saw Bulletproof’s video and thought I was a massive, miserable cunt because I look quite moody in it,” La Roux’s Elly Jackson tells Onion from the warmth of her London bed. “La Roux’s just a character I get into – I’m not angry and moody all the time.”
In the space of a year, 22-year-old Jackson has moved from hotly tipped electro-pop unknown to chart-topping fashion pin-up. Hit singles such as Bulletproof and In For The Kill have assisted the self-titled La Roux debut album notch up more than 350,000 sales globally, but the success has left Jackson defending her fashionably aloof image.
“La Roux is certainly not a media creation,” she states implicitly. “If you look at the things the media has created, they’re fucking boring. I think it would be very unlikely that the media would come up with something like La Roux because they’d think it was too risky anyway.”
Although her impressive ginger quiff and Mondrian-inspired jackets have set her out from the pop factory’s general assortment of chart slags, Jackson admits she avoids adopting her La Roux persona around the clock.
“I don’t live my life as La Roux every day. I don’t have massive eye make-up on when I’m at home and usually don’t wear eye make-up at all. It’s a character I get into when I go on stage to help me. It’s the character of the album.”
With La Roux partner Ben Langmaid maintaining a silent studio partner role, Jackson has acted as the duet’s spokesperson since their first single Quicksand was released in the UK in late 2008. Jackson’s dark wit and frank quotes have often been taken out of context by those who fail to recognise her sense of humour.
“People take things sooo seriously,” Jackson agrees. “I didn’t realise how careful I had to be until they printed a piece in The Guardian – the paper that I read, a very left-wing paper that’s not tabloid at all. On the website blog The Quietus I’d been interviewed and I’d said that a lot of girls unfortunately think that to be successful in this industry you have to have your tits hanging out. I’d said that pop girls should think more about it when they dress like this because it can influence the country – it can influence young girls and they can start to dress like that. I’d said that I hate that whole thing of women being scantily clad but then wondering why some arsehole guy runs into them and goes, ‘Alright love?’. Then they’re wondering why they can’t get a decent fella, but they’re kind of asking for that kind of man to approach them because they’re dressed in a certain way.
“The Guardian took quotes from The Quietus – which I think were perfectly valid comments - and then said I was saying that women who got hit and raped by their husbands deserve it. That’s how fucked up it is, that’s how much my words were twisted and that’s how seriously these things are taken. Of course I didn’t think you could possibly take that from the words I said, but that’s what it was turned into. It’s so fucked up it’s ridiculous, but it’s not even a tabloid – it’s a respectable paper.”
Jackson’s induction into the spotlight in the last year has been somewhat cushioned by the fact she still lives at home with her parents, who are also in the entertainment industry. Jackson’s actor father Kit makes a camp appearance on La Roux’s album track Tigerlily, while her mum Trudie Goodwin spent more than 20 years playing Sergeant June Ackland on The Bill. After some prodding, Jackson admits she once appeared as an extra in the BBC police drama.
“I did it once because they happened to be filming literally at the end of our road and Mum said, ‘Why don’t you do it? You’ll get 50 quid a day!’ I think it might have been more than 50 quid actually, otherwise I might not have done it – it’s probably one of the shittiest jobs ever. If you like standing around in the cold all day then go for it! I didn’t even have a role – I was just dancer #57 or something.”
La Roux is now at home on the live stage, with her debut Adelaide performance following a cancelled Parklife appearance set to see her up the ante in terms of stage production.
“We’ve just been planning a massive stage show for our UK tour and we’ll bring as much of that to Australia as we can, but it’s difficult because it suddenly ends up costing a shitload more. Whatever happens, there will be a lot of lights.”
La Roux - Tour Edition (UMA)
La Roux - Electric Dreams
by Scott McLennan
Elly Jackson is currently the coolest pop star in the UK, yet it wasn’t always that way. The La Roux frontwoman’s trademark quiff and eye for smart retro fashion have given her hit songs Bulletproof and Quicksand a strong visual dynamic, but her pale face and red hair have previously caused her trouble.
“I once made a seven-year-old cry just by looking at him a bit funny,” the 22-year-old laughs. “I used to babysit a lot and I was blowdrying his hair after he’d got out of the bath. I looked at him a bit funny while I was using the hairdryer and he told me he thought I was a demon! I don’t know whether that’s just me and kids or what…”
Now as likely to be seen in the pages of Vogue as NME, Jackson, the public face of La Roux, is a confident, intriguing star. Her parents, actors Kit Jackson and Trudie Goodwin, sent their daughter to a public school despite Goodwin’s high profile role as Sgt June Ackland in The Bill.
“I went to a state school and had friends from a lot harder background than I did, so I was the one that held parties and I suppose that also worked in my favour. When I was a kid and up until about the age of 17 I never felt cool at school, but I was never unpopular and I always had a lot of friends. Even when I wasn’t the coolest looking, I always had my wits to get me by. I wouldn’t say I was a cool kid though, no.”
Jackson’s father Kit provides the camp horror monologue on the La Roux song Tigerlily, which Jackson quickly wrote as a Thriller pastiche with her studio partner Ben Langmaid.
“We came up with the idea kind of as a joke. Well, I thought Ben was joking - but it ended up on the record! Me and Ben wrote it close to Vincent Price’s section in Thriller. While I was literally still writing the song Ben called up my dad and asked him to do it. Dad said okay and came in that afternoon. Since he’s an actor he did it in one or two takes. That’s the take that’s on the record, so it’s pretty funny.”
When Rip It Up last spoke to Jackson prior to the release of hit debut album La Roux and the chart-topping Bulletproof, the singer had humble dreams of buying an ‘80s 3 Series BMW with her first record company pay cheque.
“Funny you should raise that – I changed my mind in the end because I was talking to a lot of different people about getting a BMW and anyone who knew anything about cars was basically telling me not to. I think it was because they are hard to find and if you do find one it’s probably in shit condition.
“I had another look around and literally in the next few days I’ll be buying a Mercedes SL 500 from 1987,” Jackson adds. “It’s even more beautiful.”
La Roux - Tour Edition (UMA)
La Roux Says Sorry To Adelaide
La Roux has apologised to Adelaide for dropping out of the local Parklife event in October after she succumbed to illness. Elly Jackson, the bequiffed ginger electro goddess at the helm of the breakthrough UK act, spoke exclusively to Rip It Up Digital last night in preparation for her Australian tour next March and voiced her regret at the festival blow out.
“I’m so sorry,” Jackson stated from her London home. “I’m so sorry Adelaide. I still don’t feel 100 percent.”
The 22-year-old Londoner, who has risen to fame this year on the back of an acclaimed self-titled debut and a host of hit singles including Quicksand and Bulletproof, blamed her sickness on the heavy workload that comes with being one of 2009’s hottest tipped music acts.
“I think it was just tiredness building up from the year and then flying to Japan and Australia and doing seven flights in the space of two weeks really just did me in. I still feel like I need a rest, but I’m definitely much better now. I flew straight home after I cancelled Adelaide. Not only had we been playing Parklife, we’d also performed two shows in Sydney and Melbourne when most other people at the festival had two days off in Perth. It just sort of tired me out a bit too much, but I’m fine now.”
It’s always interesting to speak with an artist on the crux of something big, then conversing again after their million-selling breakthrough. These two interviews below were constructed from a half hour chat with La Roux’s Elly Jackson just before Christmas 2009 – around six months after the self-titled debut had hit number two in the UK charts behind another Jackson – the freshly deceased Michael. The first time we spoke, Jackson was lying in bed at her parents’ house (her mum, actress Trudie Goodwin, had relatively recently left The Bill). She was enjoying early musical opportunities such as “fucking about” with Lily Allen, but sounded level-headed about the possibilities fame offered. Six months later exhaustion had reared its head (she canned some Aussie shows during a Parklife run in October), yet her self-effacing wit remained strong… And she was still in bed!
Due to the fact this interview was spread over an Onion cover story and a Rip It Up tour story, there isn’t a lot of additional material left unpublished (although here I’ve included an additional snippet for Rip It Up's online site where La Roux apologised for leaving the Parklife tour early). Now that she’s finally got around to releasing a third La Roux album, maybe I’ll be inspired to post my original La Roux interview on this site at some stage too.
The following stories are edited version of interviews first published in Rip It Up and Onion magazines, March 2010.
La Roux - The Quick And The Dead
by Scott McLennan
“I think a lot of people saw Bulletproof’s video and thought I was a massive, miserable cunt because I look quite moody in it,” La Roux’s Elly Jackson tells Onion from the warmth of her London bed. “La Roux’s just a character I get into – I’m not angry and moody all the time.”
In the space of a year, 22-year-old Jackson has moved from hotly tipped electro-pop unknown to chart-topping fashion pin-up. Hit singles such as Bulletproof and In For The Kill have assisted the self-titled La Roux debut album notch up more than 350,000 sales globally, but the success has left Jackson defending her fashionably aloof image.
“La Roux is certainly not a media creation,” she states implicitly. “If you look at the things the media has created, they’re fucking boring. I think it would be very unlikely that the media would come up with something like La Roux because they’d think it was too risky anyway.”
Although her impressive ginger quiff and Mondrian-inspired jackets have set her out from the pop factory’s general assortment of chart slags, Jackson admits she avoids adopting her La Roux persona around the clock.
“I don’t live my life as La Roux every day. I don’t have massive eye make-up on when I’m at home and usually don’t wear eye make-up at all. It’s a character I get into when I go on stage to help me. It’s the character of the album.”
With La Roux partner Ben Langmaid maintaining a silent studio partner role, Jackson has acted as the duet’s spokesperson since their first single Quicksand was released in the UK in late 2008. Jackson’s dark wit and frank quotes have often been taken out of context by those who fail to recognise her sense of humour.
“People take things sooo seriously,” Jackson agrees. “I didn’t realise how careful I had to be until they printed a piece in The Guardian – the paper that I read, a very left-wing paper that’s not tabloid at all. On the website blog The Quietus I’d been interviewed and I’d said that a lot of girls unfortunately think that to be successful in this industry you have to have your tits hanging out. I’d said that pop girls should think more about it when they dress like this because it can influence the country – it can influence young girls and they can start to dress like that. I’d said that I hate that whole thing of women being scantily clad but then wondering why some arsehole guy runs into them and goes, ‘Alright love?’. Then they’re wondering why they can’t get a decent fella, but they’re kind of asking for that kind of man to approach them because they’re dressed in a certain way.
“The Guardian took quotes from The Quietus – which I think were perfectly valid comments - and then said I was saying that women who got hit and raped by their husbands deserve it. That’s how fucked up it is, that’s how much my words were twisted and that’s how seriously these things are taken. Of course I didn’t think you could possibly take that from the words I said, but that’s what it was turned into. It’s so fucked up it’s ridiculous, but it’s not even a tabloid – it’s a respectable paper.”
Jackson’s induction into the spotlight in the last year has been somewhat cushioned by the fact she still lives at home with her parents, who are also in the entertainment industry. Jackson’s actor father Kit makes a camp appearance on La Roux’s album track Tigerlily, while her mum Trudie Goodwin spent more than 20 years playing Sergeant June Ackland on The Bill. After some prodding, Jackson admits she once appeared as an extra in the BBC police drama.
“I did it once because they happened to be filming literally at the end of our road and Mum said, ‘Why don’t you do it? You’ll get 50 quid a day!’ I think it might have been more than 50 quid actually, otherwise I might not have done it – it’s probably one of the shittiest jobs ever. If you like standing around in the cold all day then go for it! I didn’t even have a role – I was just dancer #57 or something.”
La Roux is now at home on the live stage, with her debut Adelaide performance following a cancelled Parklife appearance set to see her up the ante in terms of stage production.
“We’ve just been planning a massive stage show for our UK tour and we’ll bring as much of that to Australia as we can, but it’s difficult because it suddenly ends up costing a shitload more. Whatever happens, there will be a lot of lights.”
La Roux - Tour Edition (UMA)
La Roux - Electric Dreams
by Scott McLennan
Elly Jackson is currently the coolest pop star in the UK, yet it wasn’t always that way. The La Roux frontwoman’s trademark quiff and eye for smart retro fashion have given her hit songs Bulletproof and Quicksand a strong visual dynamic, but her pale face and red hair have previously caused her trouble.
“I once made a seven-year-old cry just by looking at him a bit funny,” the 22-year-old laughs. “I used to babysit a lot and I was blowdrying his hair after he’d got out of the bath. I looked at him a bit funny while I was using the hairdryer and he told me he thought I was a demon! I don’t know whether that’s just me and kids or what…”
Now as likely to be seen in the pages of Vogue as NME, Jackson, the public face of La Roux, is a confident, intriguing star. Her parents, actors Kit Jackson and Trudie Goodwin, sent their daughter to a public school despite Goodwin’s high profile role as Sgt June Ackland in The Bill.
“I went to a state school and had friends from a lot harder background than I did, so I was the one that held parties and I suppose that also worked in my favour. When I was a kid and up until about the age of 17 I never felt cool at school, but I was never unpopular and I always had a lot of friends. Even when I wasn’t the coolest looking, I always had my wits to get me by. I wouldn’t say I was a cool kid though, no.”
Jackson’s father Kit provides the camp horror monologue on the La Roux song Tigerlily, which Jackson quickly wrote as a Thriller pastiche with her studio partner Ben Langmaid.
“We came up with the idea kind of as a joke. Well, I thought Ben was joking - but it ended up on the record! Me and Ben wrote it close to Vincent Price’s section in Thriller. While I was literally still writing the song Ben called up my dad and asked him to do it. Dad said okay and came in that afternoon. Since he’s an actor he did it in one or two takes. That’s the take that’s on the record, so it’s pretty funny.”
When Rip It Up last spoke to Jackson prior to the release of hit debut album La Roux and the chart-topping Bulletproof, the singer had humble dreams of buying an ‘80s 3 Series BMW with her first record company pay cheque.
“Funny you should raise that – I changed my mind in the end because I was talking to a lot of different people about getting a BMW and anyone who knew anything about cars was basically telling me not to. I think it was because they are hard to find and if you do find one it’s probably in shit condition.
“I had another look around and literally in the next few days I’ll be buying a Mercedes SL 500 from 1987,” Jackson adds. “It’s even more beautiful.”
La Roux - Tour Edition (UMA)
La Roux Says Sorry To Adelaide
La Roux has apologised to Adelaide for dropping out of the local Parklife event in October after she succumbed to illness. Elly Jackson, the bequiffed ginger electro goddess at the helm of the breakthrough UK act, spoke exclusively to Rip It Up Digital last night in preparation for her Australian tour next March and voiced her regret at the festival blow out.
“I’m so sorry,” Jackson stated from her London home. “I’m so sorry Adelaide. I still don’t feel 100 percent.”
The 22-year-old Londoner, who has risen to fame this year on the back of an acclaimed self-titled debut and a host of hit singles including Quicksand and Bulletproof, blamed her sickness on the heavy workload that comes with being one of 2009’s hottest tipped music acts.
“I think it was just tiredness building up from the year and then flying to Japan and Australia and doing seven flights in the space of two weeks really just did me in. I still feel like I need a rest, but I’m definitely much better now. I flew straight home after I cancelled Adelaide. Not only had we been playing Parklife, we’d also performed two shows in Sydney and Melbourne when most other people at the festival had two days off in Perth. It just sort of tired me out a bit too much, but I’m fine now.”
Content copyright is retained by the author unless otherwise stated. Republishing content is prohibited unless permission specifically granted by the author.
