Altered and Proud

Two chicks gab about love, life, art and music: One of them just happens to be Lesley Rankine of Ruby

By Candice Mack | December 19, 2001 Short on staff, but long on talent, Ruby's Leslie Rankine rocks the mic at The Roxy in Los Angeles Buy Ruby's music Visit Ruby's Web site Visit Ruby's Label Thirsty Ear Records It had been a tough evening. The Scottish band, Ruby, was running three hours late because the airline they had used to fly into Los Angeles had lost an essential piece of their luggage: the suitcase with all of their pedals, effects, and electric socket converters. No stores were open, so at last minute, they were still scrambling around desperately trying to find one or two electric socket converters for their instruments. Fortunately, humorous, friendly, lead singer Lesley Rankine still found time to talk to the staff here at Choler last August before their concert at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Candice Mack: Okay, I'm going to ask you the silly questions first. Lesley Rankine: Okay, thank you. If you could be any type of fruit or vegetable, what would you be and why? I'd be a potato because they're kind of the national vegetable of Scotland. And they taste really great and you can do all sorts of things with them and I really love them and I love Scotland. Did you move back there? Because I know you lived in the States for a while. Aye, I was living in Seattle, and I just moved back there just over a year ago. And since then so much has been happening and it's all really great. What's been happening that's been so wonderful? I met the love of my life and I'm going to get married in a couple of months. Really? Yeah. So it's just great, huge, you know? Like absolute soul mate. When? 19th of October. Are you doing it over there? Mmm-hmmm. Aye. Is it going to be a big shindig? I think a pretty big shindig. It's probably the only wedding that's going to happen in my family and his, so all the parents and grandparents and that are just running a mile with it, you know? Is he Scottish, too? Yeah. That's cool! I think I'd just gotten to a stage where I thought I was never going to find somebody and I was resigned to being alone. Other boyfriends that I had had I just thought were idiots. Then he came along, and before I knew it, I had completely changed my way of thinking. Had you known him for a long time? No, no, that's the thing! He asked me to marry him a year to the day from when I first met him. When I first met him, he actually had a relationship going with somebody else and he went off to Australia for six months. And then he came back and then it was like [makes an explody gesture with hands]. It was like madness, you know? And three months after we started dating, we knew it was the big one! Well, the other reason why I asked is because this album seemed calmer and happier than your last one. Well, I think it may have been a natural transition. I still had elements of the aggressive, Silverfish thing going on more in the last album, but my life, when I was making this album, was in much greater turmoil than when I made the last one. There was lots of infighting going on between me and the record company and management and people I was working with and stuff, so I kind of think that maybe the record was the only kind of outlet I had for something more peaceful or with some element of beauty in my life because there was so much bullshit going on in the rest of it. " When I was a kid and I first asked what a feminist was, somebody told me, "It's the opposite of a sexist." And I've always seen it as that. " I heard that part of the reason that this album took so long to come out is because of the problems with your record company. Was it also a case of you trying to find the right record label that you could stick with? No, I mean, that wasn't really the problem. The main problem was the people I was with on the last record and being signed to Sony. When Creation closed its doors, I was kind of absorbed into these big Sony machine and that's not where I wanted to be. So it took like over a year to get out of that deal and then we just went around and around and around. Were they trying to move you to a different label on Sony? No, they weren't, they didn't know what to do with me. And there were a lot of bands on Creation that were in the same kind of position and Sony said, you just got lost in the machine. So I had to sit and wait until they were in breach of contract and then I could walk away from the deal. But it's a pain in the ass. And it's always the same, though. The business side of it is just a blight on the creative side of it. Do you think it was also harder because you're a woman? I don't know. I think there certainly is an element of control there -- that people want to have more control over you when you're a woman, and I think that it is probably more of a protective thing or something, but it translates into control issues. Do you consider yourself a feminist? I know a lot of women like your music because you have a really strong personality that shines through your music. When I was a kid and I first asked what a feminist was, somebody told me, "It's the opposite of a sexist." And I've always seen it as that. I've never seen it as a female supremacy thing or a man-hating thing. I'm also not a group thinker, I'm not someone who needs to belong to a group or carry a banner along with other people. But I definitely do consider myself a feminist. I think that women are great! You know what I mean? [Laughs] And I think that we are entitled to and capable of everything. What are you influences in your music and in your painting, because you did the painting on the cover, right? I think they're probably all the same thing and I think they're little bits of everything. I watch huge amounts of TV and I read magazines. I don't read music magazines, I read magazines on homes and gardens and stuff like that and if I see a picture of a room that is laid out really well and I see the designs are made really well, I find it immensely inspiring. I think all of the creative side of me feeds off the same things. I like things that are made up of different and opposing elements and things that normally shouldn't go together, that's what I find inspiring, it doesn't matter if it's two flowers that don't go like a thistle and a pansy or different textures that don't go together… all sorts of things. Things that people see and even things on the news, or if somebody talks a certain way, somebody's interesting or a car or anything. I think it's just a case of feeding your head. One thing doesn't go to inspire one specific thing, you know, you've got to feed your head for something to come out of it. Do you feel differently when you sing or when you're writing your songs or when you're painting? I think it's the same thing. I think it's like the most honest way that I can communicate or express myself. And it's the safest way. Because I think that when you express yourself, you expose yourself to all sorts of shit. You expose yourself to misunderstandings. Whereas if you do it in an esoteric way, in a painting, nobody fucking understands you anyway! They make their own thing out of it anyway, so you don't run the risk of being so misunderstood. Have you always painted, or was it something that you picked up recently? Originally when we were kids, [my brother Scott] was the musical one and I was the visual arts one. My granddad was very musical and painted and stuff as well, so he used to teach me to paint and used to give us both music lessons so I think the painting thing started before the music thing did definitely. What was the first album you bought with your own money? I don't know. I suppose it was Kate Bush or something, I think. I think, yeah, I'm sure it was. How old were you? I don't know, 11 or something. 10, maybe? A long time ago. Are you still planning on releasing only three Ruby albums? Aye, I remember that, I said that like years ago, didn't I? Probably, actually, I don't know. I always feel it's time for a change every now and then and it always seems to come in five-year bits. It was five years between this album and the last album and all the changes with the record label and the changes with the people I was working with and stuff. I'm definitely going to get another album out before five years, so aye, probably. Have you started working on it? I've got lots of bits of songs and a couple of completed songs which will inevitably be reworked because they've been completed for some time now. I was doing that before this record came out, in the time between finishing the last one and promoting this one. And I'm going away after we get married, we're going away to Australia for like three months, so that's going to be my three months of making a new record, sitting on my laptop, doing these little squiggly noises. Is he Australian? Well, I suppose he's got both passports, but he's originally Scottish. He worked in Australia for 8 years and he's going back to work in the same place for three months just so I can have a taste of Australia because I've never been there. And we can miss out the Scottish winter because it's summer in Australia that time of the year. Is he a musician also? No, he's a doctor. But he's really into music and stuff and makes his own music and does a bit of djing and stuff like that. He's not a stuffy Mr. Stethoscope type of doctor. Is there an overarching theme or message to your work? I suppose the theme is just self or relationships or how you communicate with other people, or how other people communicate with other people again. Especially on a sexual level or sexuality or sensuality. I suppose that's it. But there's no kind of message. It's just a big ball of confusion for me. Read Choler's review of Ruby's Short-staffed at the Gene Pool. What songs did you and your brother cover in your cover band? Oh God! We did disco songs. The only thing I remember was like "He's the greatest dancer," or something, by Rose Royce or something. I can't remember. Some disco thing that's really terrible. I've never been able to sing other people's lyrics. I've just always felt, oh God, I feel like a complete tit doing that. It was the same when I did the "Kung Fu Fighting" thing with Tom Jones. I was just thinking, "That's terrible! How could anybody sing a song with such crap lyrics?" And you know they always end up being the biggest hits. Did you have the disco moves to go along with the disco covers? No, not quite. Nah, you don't want to see me doing disco music. It's just really ugly. And finally, what do you like to cook? Everything. I especially like to make gather-ups. What my mother calls gather-ups. Where you go into the cupboard and the fridge and you see what's there and you make some kind of interesting and tasty thing out of it. And it always ends up being really tasty, much more tasty than if you tried to make a proper recipe or something. I think, anyways. What's the secret to that? It's a very interesting concept. I suppose just keeping tasty things in your fridge. I don't know. Maybe it's just adding different elements that you wouldn't normally put together and just chucking it all in and shoving a lot of tomato ketchup on top, it's great. I try to experiment and my boyfriend gives me the look, like, "Oh God." Sorry. My fiancée's really good, he likes proper, total, kind of student food. Anything in a sandwich. Like beans -- in a sandwich. Like eggs, bacon - in a sandwich. With tomato ketchup. And it's really great. He gets up on Sunday morning and makes big fried things in a sandwich and huge cups of coffee.