The Two Of Us: Sibling Rock Rivalry

Interview by Faye Lewis

Photo by Zen Inoya

DATING A BEST FRIEND IN SECRET, TAKING DRUGS AND SWAPPING POSITIONS IN THE WOMB, ROCK SOUND FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT THE USUALLY-QUIET TWINS...

TEGAN

YOU'RE TWINS, SO WHO IS THE ELDEST AND BY HOW LONG?

“Me, by eight minutes. It was a switcheroo at the end of my mum's pregnancy because Sara was supposed to be born first. Then, at the last second, we switched positions and I actually came out first.”

WHAT'S ONE OF THE EARLIEST MEMORIES YOU HAVE OF SARA?

“Sara and I agree that it's actually quite late on that we have shared memories of one another. We hypothesised that because we were so familiar with one another, maybe because we shared the womb in a weird way together, that we see ourselves as each other. Not that we're confused about who we are! I remember being six and playing this game called water slide. We had water beds in separate rooms, but our beds were against the same wall and we would yell, ‘Left!’ and we would both move in that direction so we were experiencing the sensations of the water bed in the same way.”

DID SARA EVER STEAL YOUR CLOTHES AND MAKE-UP IN TYPICAL TWIN SISTER FASHION?

“That was one thing we did fight about a lot growing up! We went through a phase of borrowing clothing from our step-dad who had really cool rock T-shirts, and we would fight over my mum's Doc Martens. We always had our own rooms with locks on the door, though. We would seriously fight as teenagers over the phone! That was quite extreme! Even when we graduated we rented an apartment together and would still fight over the phone.”

WHO STARTED LISTENING TO GOOD MUSIC FIRST?

“It was about the same time. We both loved Smashing Pumpkins, but Sara was obsessed! I was a bit more of a Nirvana/Hole freak, so we both started striking out about the same time. Even now, we have the same 'likes' category but also opposite extremes.”

WHAT WAS SARA LIKE AT SCHOOL? WAS SHE OUTGOING OR THE MORE SHY OF YOU BOTH?

“It depends on the year, from being kids and up until high school Sara was the one that was more confident. I was the nervous baby who would cry more. I needed her to be there and relied on her a lot. We're both shy and introverted and people's perspective of the image we've projected is that we're really confident and extroverted. We're not. We can come out of our shells when engaged, but as kids we were awkward. In high school, slamming the punk and rave culture together with my Nirvana T-shirt and colourful chain, I grew in confidence and became more extroverted.”

IF YOU HADN'T BOTH BECOME MUSICIANS WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE INSTEAD?

“We never applied ourselves to music until we found out that each of us had been independently writing songs. Then we began making demos and we would go to parties, drink and take drugs and jam with friends and their bands. I mean, everyone was in a band, it was the 90s! Our parents were supportive and saw the potential and would let us play gigs in our garage. Only after graduation when neither one of us applied to university were our parents disappointed, but we said to give us a year to play gigs and if we still didn't know what to do then we could go back to school. My mum said, ‘Okay great’, but in that year we got a record deal and an agent and we paid back the $10,000 we had taken out as a loan to fund the record. We were always on this path, I guess, but we had no allusions of being superstars, we were always set in reality. We're leading a different kind of movement, one where we were never going to sell millions of records!”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE PLAYING THOSE EARLY GARAGE GIGS? ROCK SOUND DISTINCTLY REMEMBERS SOMEONE VOMITING ON THEIR DRUM KIT AT A GARAGE GIG...

Sara: “Ha! There was this one party where we played at 2am and we were so drunk and invited everyone we knew, so there were a trillion people at the show. Picking up our guitars the next day I found them hugely, unbearably out of tune. I was like, ‘What did we sound like last night? What the hell did we even do?’ Everyone was so fucked they probably can't remember.”

Tegan: “I had a friend who was amazed that some guy didn't know we were musicians, because in Canada we're more well known than here in the UK. I was like, ‘Seriously, there's a good chance that anybody who was at that party never EVER checked us out again!’ So it isn't surprising they're unaware. They probably stopped listening to music altogether!”

Sara: “Yeah, we sucked back then.”

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT SARA?

“Sara is so inappropriate! She's quiet and keeps to herself, but when she does come out of her shell, especially around our band and crew who are all men, she holds power. She isn't afraid to use the word blood clot in front of men, which is pretty awesome.”

SARA

WHAT WAS IT LIKE GROWING UP IN CALGARY, CANADA? DID IT HAVE A THRIVING MUSIC SCENE?

“Calgary was close in proximity to Seattle, so in the early 90s grunge blew up and there was a great bootleg scene. I specifically had loads of Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs from the United States that were shipped up to Canada. When I was a teen Smashing Pumpkins were arguably the first alternative band that made an impact on the suburban city where we lived.”

WHAT WERE YOUR PARENTS LIKE WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER? WHAT SORT OF MUSIC DID THEY EXPOSE YOU TO?

“Our parents were really young when they had us, they were 21, which is shocking because I am 29 and can't imagine having children that'd be eight! It's terrifying! They were young, poor adults having kids and my mum went to university in her late 20s and was much cooler than most mums. She wasn't as traditional as other mums, there was no breakfast in the morning. it was more. ‘Get your homework done, I'm writing my thesis. Piss off!’ She was really stylish and would correct some of our natural instincts to follow trends, like listening to New Kids On The Block and shit like that! My mum liked Led Zeppelin, Springsteen and The Pretenders, so while supportive she would gently nudge us towards being a bit cooler than we naturally were. Obviously we aggressively resisted this, which is a shame really.”

WHO WAS THE FIRST ONE TO START BRINGING GIRLFRIENDS BACK TO THE HOUSE?

“I was secretly dating my best friend in high school, and by secretly I mean my parents didn't really know what was happening, but everyone else sort of guessed. That was strange on so many levels because being queer and being a teenager is so hard, and yet when no one knows, you get away with so much more. If I had been straight, and in some ways I was because I did have boyfriends, there was absolutely no way that I could have them sleep over, and yet my best friend could. Even though we weren't 'out' I was the first one to start seeing this girl because we were friends and we would hook up, so I was the first one to start dating and bringing girls home.”

DID TEGAN EVER GET INTO FIGHTS AT SCHOOL? IF SO, WHAT WERE THEY ABOUT?

“We went to a tough school and we both used to fight a lot, but you had to fight. Always in honour though, we never picked fights. In our school you fought, be that verbal or physical. We could hold our own for sure! We were always unified in fighting against the evil forces at work in school!”

WHAT WAS THE MOST HURTFUL THING THAT TEGAN SAID OR DID TO YOU GROWING UP?

“Oh Jesus! We've been pretty brutal, especially verbally. I would have to say it's tough to narrow that one down; there have been choice words over the years! The biggest time of estrangement from both Tegan and my mum was after high school. I was having a difficult time trying to figure out if I wanted to be in a band, and also I was ‘coming out’ to my family and I didn't feel very supported by them. I had never really fought with Tegan but that was the only substantial fight I've ever really had with anybody, and it was a feeling of disconnectedness.”

WHAT WAS THE MOST REBELLIOUS THING THAT EITHER OF YOU DID GROWING UP?

“Because of the music we listened to growing up we went to raves. The raves weren't rebellious, we would drink and do drugs because it was expected, but we lied a lot in that phase. My parents were easygoing but adamant that we couldn't go to raves, so we would lie and, of course, one time we got busted. My mum called my dad over and that was a big deal because he was like our friend who we would see once a week and hang out with. Throughout the conversation we were coming down off drugs and they sat and talked to us for hours about being disappointed and we were grounded for a month. Drink, drugs, sneaking around and lying are probably the most rebellious things we did.”

DID EITHER OF YOU HAVE EMBARRASSING NICKNAMES GROWING UP?

“Oh, too many! The only one I will reveal is ‘Brother’. We really wanted to be boys when little and when we played games we were always boys. Super gay really.”

WHAT DO YOU ADMIRE MOST IN TEGAN?

“I could never stomach the business and money side of things, so that's a strong focus and she really holds her own precedence with record labels.”

The single ‘Hell’ is out on December 07 and the album ‘Sainthood’ is out now, both on Sire.

www.teganandsara.com