No-one quite has the back story around being in a band that Kelley Deal has when discussing the early days before and during joining The Breeders. As a kid, the guitarist wrote songs with her twin sister Kim, some of which Kim would retool for use on The Breeders’ debut album Pod. Kelley didn’t play on that record because of the un-rock’n’roll reason that she couldn’t get time off work. Before that, she’d also turned down joining her sister in the Pixies as drummer because she didn’t think her chops behind the kit were up for it and because she didn’t want to be in a band playing Black Francis’s songs, she wanted to play Kim’s songs. And besides, she had a job, a very good job, working as a Defence Contractor at a US Air Force base, top-secret clearance and all.
But the music kept on calling and she did eventually join her sister in The Breeders after the departure of original guitarist Tanya Donelly, hopping on board just in time to record their classic second record Last Splash. But then things went a little bit awry for Kelley, her heroin addiction derailing everything. Speaking to this writer a few years ago, she looked back on the tumultuous period.
“So having joined The Breeders, because finally I said yes on the Safari EP, I asked for time off and I went and we opened for Nirvana,” Kelley recalled. “That was my first set of shows and we carried on until ’94 on the lost tour of Lollapalooza where I get a nasty heroin addiction which, by the way, is not to say I wasn’t drinking myself under the table. I’m using all kinds, all manner of other drugs, it’s not like it ruined me. I’m lucky that I started using heroin otherwise I’d be so depressingly alcoholic. Heroin stopped everything.”
It was at this point, Deal recalled, that she was cast off to rehab to try and get clean, after which she went to a halfway house. “You’ve gotta stay there for three months,” she said, “and whilst there you have to get a job, you have to be of use, so I’m trying to apply at a music store, which is super embarrassing cos the next time I was in there was to buy a Willie Nelson record because I was gonna join Kris Kristofferson in Los Angeles to record a cover of that song Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground, so I went in there to Cheapo CDs and whilst at the counter paying for it, they’d put my resume up there with the cover of Spin magazine article right above it and it said, the headline was “Kim Deal gets pissed” and somebody had done a talk balloon that said “because Cheapo won’t hire her sister.” I looked at the guy and said, “dude, that’s not cool’, he said, ‘I didn’t do it.” I said, “can you take that down now?”, he said, “yeah, I’ll take it down.” I just turned around and left. It was so embarrassing, it was so sad! So I had to do these spot jobs, one of my jobs was I had to go out and clear a field of tyres and bathtubs, it was muck work, it was really hard. I remember feeling sorry for myself and it was hot and in Minnesota and there were mosquitos everywhere and I was angry.”
Kelley might not have got the job at Cheapo Records but it all eventually worked out. The Breeders are having a heck of a time at the minute, having recently introduced themselves to a new generation of fans as the main support on pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo’s last tour.
