Scissor Sisters have misplaced a key part of their story. Chatting on a video call, there is discussion about where their last performance actually was – a club PA in Milan? A TV show taping in Los Angeles? Jake Shears, Babydaddy and Del Marquis can’t quite agree. It was 2012 though. Or perhaps 2013?
It makes sense that a band who had been going at breakneck speed for a decade, releasing one of the biggest-selling albums of all time in the UK, can’t remember the specifics. They say they never really intended it to be the end back then, just a moment to “hit pause”. Once a five-piece, they’re now returning minus co-frontperson Ana Matronic (drummer Paddy Boom left in 2008), to play shows celebrating 20 years since their debut self-titled album.
The decision to book the shows grew out of a lockdown live stream with fans, a watch-along of a mid-00s performance. “We’re talking to fans and watching ourselves back in a way we’ve never really done,” Del Marquis says, “and feeling the same connection that the fans are feeling – which I don’t know if we allowed ourselves to feel at the time.”
“There were songs that we’d forgotten existed,” Shears adds. “It gave us all a very warm, fuzzy feeling inside.”
Although everyone is connecting to the video call from different locations, it still gives a good idea of the group’s dynamics. Del Marquis and Babydaddy sit at desks, sensibly neutral backgrounds behind them; the former quiet but opinionated, the latter seemingly used to fielding the more serious questions. By contrast, frontman Shears is fidgety in front of a citrus orange background, slinging his arm over his head or hiking his leg up on to the sofa while he talks. Occasionally, he’ll get up and potter around, his webcam following his moves. About 30 minutes in, Marquis can’t take it any more: “Your camera is making me seasick!”
“His assistant is actually directing this,” Babydaddy deadpans. Shears himself is puckish and quick-witted, and when I venture a thought about how Scissor Sisters had been unusually anti-Bush during their earliest days, he cocks his head and quips: “In more ways than one.”
It’s easy to forget just how successful Scissor Sisters became – their first two albums went a combined 14-times platinum in the UK – though glitzy awards show performances and Graham Norton’s sofa were a far cry from the underground New York scene where they started out. As a two-piece during the 2000s electroclash boom, Jason “Jake” Shears and Scott “Babydaddy” Hoffman were newly minted friends who had met in Kentucky in 2000. In New York, they began recording music and appearing at dive bars and gay clubs under the tongue-twister of a name Dead Lesbian and the Fibrillating Scissor Sisters, performing against a backing track in the wee hours. Shears, who had been stripping to pay the bills, dressed for some shows as a back-alley abortion, Babydaddy as the morning-after pill.
Their provocative stage presence caught the attention of Ana “Matronic” Lynch, and, like the lost final show, the story of how they met is hazy: possibly at Disneyland, maybe at a Halloween party, perhaps just out in the East Village. The duo found a kindred spirit in Lynch, and they first performed together at a cabaret night she hosted on the Lower East Side; they rounded out the group with Derek “Del Marquis” Gruen (guitar) and Patrick “Paddy Boom” Seacor (drums) and became Scissor Sisters, peddling a gleeful mix of electroclash and salacious performance art.
When they released a radical disco cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb in 2002, they broke out of the New York club scene, earning a major label deal and shifting their focus from North America to Europe – particularly the UK, where they became an antidote to an era of Westlife ballads, stomping indie and Pop Idol stars. In 2004, their self-titled debut album shot them into the mainstream in a dazzling blaze of colour, rife with double entendres, bare-chested overalls and unabashed Americana. The singles Take Your Mama, Laura, Mary and Filthy/Gorgeous hit the Top 20 and the album went straight to No 1.
“Pop was in the air,” Babydaddy says of the time when their most frequent comparison was the Village People. “But we didn’t really see ourselves as pop – our peers were the other bands that were coming up around that time.”
“Yeah, it felt very band-y,” Shears says, deeming Franz Ferdinand to be “very sweet guys”, and Gossip and Le Tigre to be the best tour mates: “All of us on one tour – can you imagine?”
“The UK just felt very, very open to whatever weird thing came your way,” says Babydaddy. But the band’s native US was lukewarm. “There was a feeling that maybe you have to fit into certain radio formats,” he says, and in post-9/11 America, cultural conservatism reigned. “I remember going on Saturday Night Live, and Jake wore something a little more flamboyant – I think we were all maybe a little more flamboyant – and we saw some crazy pushback. That’s just in the DNA of America.”
“You look back now and it’s like, I had my shoulders exposed,” Shears says, slapping his hand to his forehead in mock outrage. “Yeah, like a onesie-pantsuit,” Babydaddy says. The negative reaction shook the group. “I was so angry,” Babydaddy adds.
In old Scissor Sisters interviews, the group often bristled when faced with questions about their sexuality being interwoven with their music. Shears once said: “The fact that some of us are gay affects our music the same amount as it does that some of the members of Blondie are straight.”
Shears is very visible in the LGBTQ+ community now – his podcast, Queer the Music, delves into “anthems that have dominated dancefloors and shaped queer lives”. I wonder if, in those less progressive times, they were pressured to distance their music from their sexuality. “It was the catch-22 of being out – of being put in the box of being ‘a gay band’,” says Shears. “We were fighting against that.” He recently interviewed Neil Tennant, who publicly came out in the 90s having kept his sexuality private to avoid Pet Shop Boys being similarly boxed in. It hit home. “There’s a chip on my shoulder about it. I wanted to be considered a legit songwriter; we wanted to be a real thing.”
“There was never anyone at the label or management saying to be anything other than yourself – we were really lucky for that,” Babydaddy says. But, he adds, “we were careful about it, because it was a different understanding of what being gay was, or what a gay band might signify to people at the time – that it wasn’t for everyone, and we were making music for everyone.”
Shears remembers thinking: “Someday, this is not going to be as big of a thing as it feels like now – in a good way.” Today, LGBTQIA+ artists such as Chappell Roan are major chart fixtures and superstars. “And it’s been so sweet to see that happen.”
If Scissor Sisters felt ground down at the time, it didn’t show. The band’s performances were creative and exciting – they were backed by a set of dancing barns at the 2005 Brit awards (watched on by a grinning Brian May), and they often used puppetry and light shows. A huge source of their energy on stage was Ana Matronic, who isn’t joining the reunion as she focuses on a history podcast and other research and writing. (“I will be there in spirit to kiki with you!” she posted of the reunion.)
The band insist there is no bad blood, just a matter of timing, and they’re not worried. “We’ve performed in so many different iterations,” Marquis says. “There were two, three, four, five, four again, seven. There’s no conventional approach to this band. And there’s nothing new with reimagining what our show will be.” Shears has spent much of the band’s break working in theatre – he starred in Kinky Boots on Broadway, in Cabaret in London with Self Esteem (AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor), and developed a musical, Tammy Faye, with Elton John. “It’s made me really excited about putting a different hat on when looking at these shows,” he says, “and figuring out how to make it fresh and different.”
The group first met Elton after he heard their debut album. “He was a huge influence,” says Shears. “I remember when the record came out, I was thinking, he’s gonna hear this, and he’s either gonna really love it or he’s gonna hate it. Because he is very opinionated.” Luckily, it was the former. “I think flattery won over because he heard himself in it.” Elton turned up to meet them at an Attitude magazine awards show, with George Michael and Emma Bunton in tow. They all got on and he took Scissor Sisters under his wing, including as the support on a stadium tour, and co-wrote with them on their second record, 2006’s Ta Dah (including I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, a UK No 1 which spent nearly a year in the charts).
Two more albums followed, 2010’s Night Work and 2012’s Magic Hour, but the band were burned out. “Everybody had been strapped to this thing for like a decade and no one knew that this was gonna happen,” Shears says. “I mean, I kind of did, but I don’t know if everybody knew that this was going to be their destiny – to be in this machine of a babbling circus.” It was a kind of relief to step away knowing each member was ready to “live their lives”, as Shears puts it, and do their own thing.
Shears released two solo albums in addition to his theatre and podcasting; Babydaddy wrote and produced music for artists including Kylie Minogue, Tinashe and Ladyhawke; Marquis recorded and toured with a new band, Slow Knights. They stayed in each other’s lives, though often at a further remove than the previous decade – but they don’t need to relearn each other’s rhythms. “We all kind of have our particular styles of relationship with each other,” Babydaddy says. “Jake and I talk probably more than we should! I mean, we’ve probably known each other the longest of any relationship in our lives.”
“When we re-enter each other’s space, if it’s six weeks or six months … it’s all just very familiar,” Marquis says. “I mean, if you clock the hours of time spent together, it’s more than family.” The trio don’t currently have firm plans to record new music but it’s not out of the question. “A lot of this is about how we feel in the moment,” Babydaddy says.
Twenty years ago, traditional media allowed Scissor Sisters to be simultaneously very famous and exist relatively under the radar in everyday life – and they’re still in that mindset now. “It’s almost like if you’re old enough to have had a childhood before the cellular phone,” Marquis says. “It felt like the wild west, probably, compared to how strategised it is now.” He pauses. “You can’t strategise with a band like us. We arrive as is.”
