The Kills take the Marketplace Quiz
No matter who you are, you’ve probably had a rough day at the office that changed your perspective, or maybe you made an impulse purchase you really, really wish you could take back. This week, we sat down with Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince from The Kills and had them fill out our questionnaire inspired by experiences with money and work.
Their latest album, Ash & Ice, comes out June 3.
Fill in the blank: Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you ______.
Jamie Hince: Well, I mean, it can buy you a car to drive away from the misery. And, it can buy you a house to live somewhere else…
Alison Mosshart: [laughter] To hide from the misery.
Hince: Away from the misery. And surround yourself with things that make you forget the misery.
In a next life, what would your career be?
Mosshart: I would like to be a detective.
Hince: Yes! You’d be a fantastic detective.
Mosshart: Yeah! [laughter]
Hince: She’s so good, Agent Molehair we call her.
When did you realize music could be an actual career?
Hince: Well in some ways, I’m yet to realize it. You know, just because, I’m saying that in a way because I don’t like to think of it as a career. I don’t like to. I like to think of it as the thing I’m doing. I think if you start thinking of it as a career, you start doing some pretty silly things. I don’t know. I guess the first time was when, like the first record deal I gotten — we actually got a wage, it was in my first band and we were earning 150 quid a week. Each! What?!
What is your most prized possession?
Mosshart: Probably my car. My Dodge Challenger with a hemi in it is my favorite thing that I’ve got. I care for it very much, and you know, hand wax it and hand wash it and vacuum it all the time. And I talk to it, and it talks to me, and — no, I love my car. It’s nice, it’s a vehicle of freedom. It’s good.
What was your first job?
Hince: My first job, I worked in a hotel — washing tables, washing pots, washing up — in Hungerford. This is this little town that’s famous for nothing, except this guy called Michael Ryan, he went on a shooting spree and killed everybody. That’s what it’s famous for. I worked in a hotel there. And, I had nothing to do with that.
Mosshart: [laughter]
Hince: But I worked in a hotel there, and I was like a punk rock kid. And I was vegan. And I served all these older kids that were working there. And they locked me in the meat freezer. So I left after like four days.
What is something everyone should own no matter the cost?
Mosshart: Everyone should have a passport, I think everyone should have one of those.
Hince: I think so, too.
Mosshart: So you can go places, and you don’t have to stay home all the time. And learn things, see things, do things. Alright, sorry my answers are rather short, I wasn’t locked in a meat locker.
Hince: It’s alright.
Mosshart: Yeah, we’re a good team.
Hince: You’re my antidote, I talk too much, you don’t talk enough. [laughter]
What advice do you wish someone gave you before you started your career?
Hince: Wash your face.
Mosshart: Brush your teeth.
Hince: Drink more water.
Mosshart: Before I started what?
Hince: Before you started, you know, being in my band.
Mosshart: [laughter] Oh my god.
Hince: No, I don’t know … before you started music.
Mosshart: Oh.
Hince: I wish they told me not to be so worried. You know?
Mosshart: Worried … about what?
Hince: I was really worried in the early days, playing music. Just so worried about a lot of things, you know? Really worried about it. It stopped me doing things sometimes because I just worried, felt like, “Oh, I can’t do it. What if?” and all that. And I just, that seems so stupid now, to be worried.
Mosshart: Yeah, I mean I was rather worried when I first started playing on stage much before I met you. I wouldn’t look at the audience, I would stand behind things and I couldn’t…
Hince: When they rehearsed in her first band, she used to get a really long mic cable and like, be in a different room from the rest of the band. [laughter]
Mosshart: I’d drag it under the, like in the door of the house from the garage, to the bedroom, go in the bedroom and lock the door and sing from there. I couldn’t even hear what they were playing, but I tried. They kicked me out of the band, obviously.
Hince: Yeah, where are they now?
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