(Rolling Stone, March 2009)
Does having a little girl now change your perspective?
It’s changed my perspective on pretty much everything. We used to live such a selfish life. We’d roll out of bed at three in the afternoon and just did whatever we wanted. That lifestyle is really conducive to writing and playing and being deep in music, but the other things that go along with it are really unattractive to me now. It makes you think, “What was I doing with my life?” Now I just realize how important time is, and I don’t want to waste it. I want to get the most out of it as I can, and give my daughter the best life that I can.
Has it changed the kind of music you want to do at all?
Not particularly. I would love to be in a Discharge-style band. It’s not exactly what I want to do right now. It has more to do with my voice. I have two vocal nodes on my voice. When I was in the Distillers, it’s what characterized my voice. But I’m getting a little bit older now, so I’ve got to be really careful. It doesn’t hold as well as it did when I was 23. I could scream for two hours a night, smoke a pack of cigarettes and drink a bottle of vodka, and my voice would be absolutely peachy the next day. And because I haven’t been touring or doing that every day, I have to work my voice into it. It’s kind of virgin right now.
(Faster Louder, March 2010)
Do you have loads of unreleased stuff that you could one day release?
I have a lot of music. I have tons that didn’t make it on the last record and I have years of years of stuff from before I got pregnant. And then all there’s all the stuff from now.
(Fazer Magazine, June 2009)
When you write songs do you write the lyrics first? Or like Tool, do you write the music and then do the lyrics to the music?
I write a riff, then I write a melody, and then write the lyrics. Sometimes lyrics come straight away and I’ll go off that. It’s rare that I go, “I’m going to write a song about this.” It’s kind of like prophesizing, afterwards you realize what you wrote about.
Obviously it’s well known that your last name comes from your favorite actress Beatrice Dalle, but your first name, I’m correct in saying it’s not your real name.
Uh huh.
What was the reasoning behind that decision?
I don’t like my real name…
And I’m correct in saying it’s Bree Joanna Alice Robinson?
Yeah, that’s my birth name, but I’ve had many different surnames and finally I had enough of having everyone else’s fucking name so I picked my own.
Is it legally Brody?
Yeah, in Australia. It took me fucking years.
Will you ever move back there? Or are you enjoying LA?
I want to move out of LA. I don’t know if I’ll go back. It’s hard to say really.