Born Snippy

“I’m exhausted!” declares saucer-eyed Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears with a dramatically heavy sigh. “You’re looking at an exhausted man!”

Actually, nursing a coffee in the salubrious environs of London’s exclusive Corinthia Hotel, the ever-so-slightly camp, boyishly handsome 33-year-old looks a picture of fresh-faced health (at least compared to your ever-so-slightly hungover Hot Press correspondent).
In fairness, he has good reason to be tired. Last night, to mark the release of their fourth studio album, Magic Hour, the Scissor Sisters played the first of two sold-out shows in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. The second gig is tonight, but this afternoon Shears and his wonderfully monikered bandmates – Ana Matronic, Babydaddy, Del Marquis and Randy Real – are scattered at various locations around the Corinthia meeting the European press.
“Last night was our first UK show in quite a while,” he explains. “We played the Bowery Ballroom in New York last week, so it was only the second time we played a lot of those songs. So a lot of them are super-new to play for an audience.”
Do you get nervous before those kinds of shows?
“Yeah. I get a little bit quiet before we go out. It’s not necessarily a nervousness, though, it’s more like an excitement. I really love playing all these new songs. You don’t really know how they’re gonna land. You could write and produce an amazing song that sounds great on a record, but sometimes they don’t translate live. But these songs feel really natural to play. Even ones like ‘Shady Love’ – the one I’m rapping on – I had no idea if it was gonna work live. And it turned out to be really epic and fun and I had a blast playing it, so in that way I’m thankful.”
The Empire gig was a high-energy blast from start to finish, made all the more memorable by an onstage marriage proposal by one of their more committed fans. When his girlfriend accepted the engagement ring, her delighted husband-to-be stripped off his shirt to reveal massive tattoos of Shears and Ana Matronic on his back.
What was all that about?
“Ask Ana!” Shears laughs. “It was pretty funny. What was the story with those tattoos?”
Had you ever seen them before?
“I’d seen a picture of them. They’re quite something aren’t they?”
Actually, I thought they were kind of freaky...
“Oh, it’s sweet,” he says, waving his hand. “Freaky and sweet. Kind of sums up this band.”
Do you get many obsessive fans?
“Yeah, we do. Maybe a couple. I think we lend ourselves to it. There’s a lot in this band for people to obsess over if they choose to.”
In some ways, it was surprising that the marriage proposal was a hetero one. First formed in 2001, the Scissor Sisters – a glittery hybrid of Elton John, Queen, Gloria Gaynor and Duran Duran – were spawned by New York’s flamboyantly OTT gay nightlife scene (they’re even named after a Sapphic sexual position known as ‘tribadism’). However, although Shears is openly gay, he dislikes the band being defined as a gay one.
“Oh God, I hope we’re not thought of that way at this stage!” he exclaims. “I think for any band or any artist, you sort of have to transcend your everyday life – who you are, who we all are – in order to rise above it. If the whole thing is defined by something as boring as, like, who you fuck, then the train’s not gonna roll very far.”
Although not legally married, Shears refers to his long-term boyfriend as his ‘husband’. “I’m not officially married. But we’re going on our ninth year so we’re more than boyfriends at this point. I don’t use the word ‘partner’ so for lack of a better word...”
While they’ve undoubtedly got a strong gay following, their fanbase still seems decidedly mixed. I’d expected the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to be a colourful riot of glamour pusses, drag-queens and fag-hags, but last night’s audience definitely wasn’t a stereotypical gay crowd.
“Our audience is all sorts,” he observes. “The funny thing about coming out last night, and it was really apparent to me last night, is that everybody’s gotten ten years older. Everyone’s jumped up a decade. The kids that were 20 when they first started coming to see us are now 30. I walked out, took a look, and went, ‘Wow! We’ve all gotten older’.”
Although it clocks in at 57 minutes, Magic Hour doesn’t fall short in any other way. “It’s a sweet joyful melange of beat-driven future pop,” he says. “It style-hops all over the place unabashedly.”
Very much a collaborative effort, the album sees them teaming up with a host of big-name artists, writers and producers. Its lengthy sleeve credit-lists such heavy hitters as Azealia Banks, Calvin Harris, Stuart Price, Pharrell Williams and Diplo.
“One of the most important players on this album was Alex Rihda from Boys Noize, who helmed a lot of it,” Shears explains. “I’m a huge fan of his. I’m a total techno head so to me he’s like one of the best. It was exciting working with him because he was definitely out of his comfort zone. Like, what happens when someone like that has to co-produce a song like ‘Baby Come Back’? He doesn’t know what he’s doing in that way, which is good. I’d rather produce a song like that with him than with someone like Rick Rubin. It’s more interesting to me.”
He’s also effusive in his praise for Magic Hour’s executive producer Amanda Ghost. “Scott [Hoffman, aka Babydaddy] met her over a year ago and said, ‘I’ve met this lady that I think you’re really gonna be into, and I think that she could really be a major asset to us making this album’. The first time I met her, I was like, ‘Ah, she seems really busy, she’s got her fingers in so many different pies. But fuck, if she didn’t come through in the biggest way on this record.
“This record became her obsession. She’s a connector, just plugged into everybody. Willing to try anything. Totally open, extremely opinionated, doesn’t fuck around, doesn’t blow smoke up anybody’s ass. She just wants it to be good. This record would not have happened without her. It wouldn’t have happened in the time period that it did.
“[Last album] Night Work took so long because we were just sitting out there on our own – there wasn’t an Amanda Ghost,” he continues. “There wasn’t somebody really helping us to figure out how to put it together. Truthfully, that’s why it took so long for that record to get made. We were literally in a row-boat with no oars. We had no guidance. We had nobody to play music for. We had nobody to listen to it. We really took a big hit because of that. It really damaged us for a while. Our confidence level just fucking plummeted.”
No such problems on this latest outing. By any standard, Magic Hour was written and recorded extremely quickly.
“We started writing in September and finished in November. It was all real quick. [First single] ‘Only The Horses’ had been written in June, and then in September we really got back in the studio.”
Although they finished the record more than six months ago, last night was only the second time they performed the new material live. Would they not have road-tested the songs in some small New York club first?
“That’s what we’ve always done in the past, but it costs so much money now,” he says, pulling a face. “It costs a lot of money for us to road-test stuff. We used to do stuff in the Mercury Lounge or the Bowery, but now the amount of money it costs to get all the crew and everybody together and the sound... it’s a big ol’ chunk of change. You can’t always spend crazy amounts of money to just play for your friends.”
While the Scissor Sisters have sold millions of records since the 2004 release of their disco cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’, they’re painfully aware that the golden age of album sales is basically over.
“Oh, it’s so annoying,” he sighs, wistfully shaking his head. “Just so annoying. The industry is actually collapsing before our very eyes. I saw a few weeks ago over here in England the No. 1 was Adele and it sold something like 12,000 copies. Which is abysmal. Those were the album sales in the UK. Every year it’s like there’s one or two releases that are holding the entire industry up. And that’s it. It’s a house of cards, but its time is up. I don’t really know what’s gonna happen, but it’s happening as we speak.”
Declining album sales have forced many acts out on the road but, according to Shears, even touring isn’t anywhere near as lucrative as it once was.
“I do like touring, but even the touring business is in a lot of trouble as well. There aren’t a lot of bands out on the road at the moment. The economics of it now are crazy. That’s why there’s lots of pop stars. That’s why someone like Robyn has it good. She can go out with a band or she can go out with a track. If you can occupy a few different worlds, it’s your best option. It’s actually crazy to have a band nowadays. It doesn’t make any sense.”
It might not make any sense, but at least he’s having a good time. “I’m a hard-partying man,” he admits, with an evil grin. “I definitely misbehave worse now – more than I ever did.”
The gay party scene tends to be a lot more hardcore...
“Yeah, but it’s also a lot more fun!” he laughs. “I’m good at striking a balance. Am I a yoga type? No, I’m a weightlifter. We travel with our trainer and I lift weights every day.”
Do you feel under pressure to look good and keep in shape?
“Absolutely! Not pressure, but it just makes me happy. When I go out onstage I wanna be confident. I’m a very sexual person. I wanna feel sexy. I also wanna be in shape enough to do what I wanna do onstage. I wanna be able to move the way I wanna move. In ten years time, it isn’t gonna be as easy as it is now. Five years after that... It’s only downhill from here. But I’d like to be as limber and as active as possible for as long as I possibly can.”
Outside of his musical ambitions, he’s hoping to eventually become something of a renaissance man – a Jake of all trades. “My dad was 50 years old when I was born. In his lifetime he did everything from flying planes and becoming a fire-fighter and racing cars and breeding horses and building fishing boats. He’s always had this very kind of amazing, entrepreneurial, passionate life with lots of different lives inside of it. By the time I’m his age, which is now 83, I wanna be able to look back and have done something similar.”
One successful extracurricular project Shears has on the go at the moment is his musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City novels.
“It just went into its first production last year in San Francisco. It ran all last summer. A big fucking production. I’m hoping to bring it over here eventually.”
Staging musicals is a notoriously risky business. You haven’t had any Spiderman-style disasters like Bono and The Edge?
“No, thankfully,” he says, shaking his head. “The New York Times said I was a much better musical-writer than Bono and The Edge, which made me really happy. But no, it’s taken six years so far and it’ll be at least four more before we bring it over here. It’s a fucking mammoth of a show. The budget is in the millions. We’ve got a cast of 25 people, a small orchestra, 3,000 pieces of costumes, and a set that’s moving all over the place. It’s not a lucrative business, but I’m not doing it to make money. It’d be gravy if I did, but it’s just for the sheer pleasure of doing it.”
Shears laughs uproariously when asked if he appears in the musical himself. “Oh god, no! I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag. Ha! I’d be terrible!”
Back to the band. Now that they’re four albums in, the singer admits that he’s not entirely sure where to next for the Scissor Sisters. They’ll be touring for the rest of this year, but he’s looking forward to a decent break at some stage.
“The masterplan kind of went up to here,” he explains. “There’s gonna be some point where I know I’m gonna need a couple of years out. We’ve all been on the hook with this band for ten solid years. We haven’t taken any breaks from thinking about it, working on it. It really has been a full-on straight shot.
“But, you know, we’ve all got different stuff going on. Ana makes comic books and is part of an amazing psychedelic lighting show. Babydaddy is working on a television series and producing tons of music with great people. I’ve been working on the musical for six years and I also taught myself how to DJ last year. I’ve been having a blast doing that.”
Whatever happens, the Scissor Sisters are unlikely to ever dissolve in bitter acrimony. After more than a decade together, the individuals in the band get along better than ever.
“We get along better than we even did ten years ago. We know each other so well now. We were just kids when we started out. There comes a point, too, where you realise that we’re all adults and all very set in our ways. There’s nothing we could do to change each other. Ana Matronic is who she is – and that’s that. Whatever I like or don’t like about Scott or Ana or whoever, that’s who we are. So eventually when you figure that out about each other, it makes it easier to be in a band together. In any relationship, when you’re trying to change people, it’s just not gonna work.”
A record company handler approaches our table to ask me to wrap it up. There’s an Italian journalist waiting in the wings, and Jake has a few magic hours of talking ahead. Before I go, though, I ask is he aware that there are two notorious Irish murderers nicknamed after his band.
“Yeah, I actually have the book,” he smiles. “I found it in an airport once and I was laughing so hard. Whenever anyone asks me, ‘When was the moment that you knew that you’d made it in music?’, I always say, ‘When they named two murderers after us! That’s when I knew’.”

Magic Hour is out now on Polydor. Scissor Sisters play the Olympia, Dublin, on October 1.