In the song “Rock Child,” gritty, soulful rock chanteuse Pearl belts,
“I’ve been a little girl living center stage/ I’ve been sleeping in a
guitar case.” It’s not just a metaphor for feeling rock n’ roll 24-7.
As the daughter of rock legend Meat Loaf, Pearl was exposed to the
genre and all it entails almost from the time she was born.
“When I was a baby, my mom, [Leslie Aday], would take me to the studio
and I would actually nap in an open guitar case with pillows and a
blanket,” Pearl says. “When I grew up, there was music everywhere,
whether it was at a party in the house or in some place where my dad
was performing in front of thousands of people. I really kind of grew
up in recording studios. They’re relaxing to me. Even to this day,
they can be blasting music and I can fall asleep on the couch because
it feels like home.”
With such a solid musical foundation, it’s no surprise that Pearl –
who backed-up Meat Loaf from 1994 to 2003, and also sang with Motley
Crue – sounds confident and commanding throughout her musically
diverse debut Little Immaculate White Fox. Drawing inspiration from
classic rock, hard rock, southern rock, soul, and R&B, Pearl expresses
her love for and knowledge of music, with songs that range from tender
and vulnerable to brassy and solid as granite.
“Some of my favorite bands are The Stones, AC/DC and The Allman
Brothers,” she says. “As a vocalist, I just love really powerful
singers like Otis Redding, Bonnie Raitt, Steven Tyler, Pat Benatar, my
dad and, of course, Janis Joplin. My biological father played drums in
her Full Tilt Boogie Band, and I’m actually named after her because
Pearl was her nickname. She was an incredible vocalist and definitely
a huge influence.”
While the songs on Little Immaculate White Fox are informed by past
and present legends, they’re as original as they are familiar, and the
way they’re put together is both clever and surprising. “Rock Child”
opens with strident guitar stabs and rolling drums reminiscent of most
transcendent The Who, then blasts into a riff that’s part Led
Zeppelin, part AC/DC and all brute sincerity. “Broken White” segues
from textural guitars and a mystically bobbing bassline into a
fist-flinging verse and a scalding, infectious chorus. By contrast,
“Mama” is worn and weary, like a Stones ballad wrapped around a
southern rock lighter-raiser. And “Anything,” the softest and most
lovelorn song, is beautifully colored by sparse instrumentation and
Pearl’s broken voice and features a guest appearance by Alice in
Chains’ guitarist Jerry Cantrell.
“I love expressing every emotion in my songs,” Pearl says. “I don’t
feel angry and screamy 24 hours a day. Everybody’s got their soft,
gentle times, and then they’ve got their hard, angry times when
they’ve gotta let it out. Finding a balance between the two is what
life is all about.”
Uplifting and inspiring even in her darkest lyrics, Pearl’s sonorous
voice resonates with an empowering, almost spiritual vibe. Even the
title of her album came from a spiritual experience. “When my mom was
pregnant with me, she was convinced I was a boy,” Pearl explains. "And
then one night late in her pregnancy, her best friend called her up
and said, 'I just had a dream about your baby. She has blond hair and
blue eyes and she was laying in the forest at the base of a tree
wrapped in white fox fur, and her name is Little Immaculate White
Fox.' And my mom said, ‘Oh, that's beautiful, but I'm having a boy.' A
few hours later she went into labor and had a blond haired, blue-eyed
girl."
Pearl first caught the music bug in 1981 when she was six years old
and Meat Loaf was playing Wembley Arena in London, England. At the
time, her dad would hold a different colored scarf for every song, and
between songs Pearl would run onstage dressed in a gold lame jumpsuit
and give her father a new scarf. She had done this in countless
cities, but in London the crowd was larger and the experience was
different.
“I got on the stage and then turned to the audience, and stopped and
stared like a deer in headlights,” she recalls. “There were thousands
of people looking at me and the lights were on me and it was bright. I
got really, really scared, and my dad came and scooped me up and the
whole audience went, ‘Awwwwww.’ But even though I was scared and was
taken by surprise, I remember loving the feeling, too.”
Through her childhood, Pearl sang in her living room with girlfriends
in mock girl groups, and in high school she was part of a select
choir, which traveled through Europe and sang in cathedrals. She also
performed in school musicals. Then in 1994, when she was 19, Meat Loaf
invited her to be one his back-up singers on tour.
“One day he just said, ‘Do you want to try singing along with me?’”
Pearl says. “He said, ‘Learn the back up parts as best as you can, and
we’ll give you a live mike backstage so you can join in. You don’t
have to be onstage, and you can see how that feels and we’ll see how
it sounds.’ I guess I passed the test. Not too long after that I was
on the stage and I was part of the band.”
She toured with her dad for years, then in 2000 she hit the road with
Motley Crue as one of their back-up singers and dancers. After the
tour, she sang on and contributed lyrics to “Man of Steel,” which was
co-written by Crue bassist Nikki Sixx and James Michael. While the
track eventually wound up on her dad’s album Couldn’t Have Said It
Better, it triggered the beginning of her career as a solo artist. She
performed with various other artists, then at her 29th birthday party,
she met two musicians that would change the path of her life and her
career. That night, her future husband, Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian,
introduced her to the guys in Mother Superior, who backed Henry
Rollins, Daniel Lanois and others.
“We were just talking about stuff, and I said, ‘How would you feel
about a chick playing with you guys?’” she says. “At first, they just
looked at each other, and I was like, ‘Oh, God, what did I just do?’
Then they turned around and they were like, “Sure. Why not?’”
In 2004, Pearl started going over to Mother Superior guitarist Jim
Wilson and bassist Marcus Blake’s house, and working on songs with
them. They jammed out ideas, and she recorded them on a handheld tape
recorder. Then, she went home to work on vocal melodies and lyrics
that matched the music. “From the first time we tried it, it just
clicked,” Pearl says. “And they’ve been my go-to guys ever since.
Musically, we’re all on the same plane.”
Pearl recorded a demo CD at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles. Then,
while Mother Superior were on the road in Europe, she formed a
nine-piece band with various members including, horn players, and a B3
organist and played a bunch of LA-area shows. When Wilson and Blake
returned to the U.S., they entered the studio with Pearl and producer
Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Bad Religion) and recorded
most of Little Immaculate White Fox.
“Recording with Joe was really easy,” Pearl says. “He knows exactly
what he’s doing and how he wants it to sound. He’s got great ideas,
and sonically he’s right on. We just worked really hard in the three
weeks we had with him.”
While Pearl was happy with the album, she felt it needed a little more
diversity and impact. So she re-entered the studio and recorded two
more songs, the Tina Turner cover “Nutbush City Limits” with producer
Warren Riker and “Broken White,” with Jay Ruston. The latter features
some of her most evocative and haunting lyrics.
“I took the name from a Marlene Dumas painting,” Pearl says. “I was
reading an article about her one day in the New Yorker. She paints
really dark images of photographs of torture victims, corpses and
prostitutes. And she has done one called ‘Broken White,’ which looks
like a women laying on her back. It’s a close-up of her face and she’s
got an expression on her face that could be either ecstasy or pain. I
don’t know why that photo struck me, but I wrote a song about it
because it looks like she’s getting raped to me. So I wrote a song
about the experience of what I thought that would be like. And as it’s
happening, I imagine she’s rising from the floor and haunting her
attacker.”
With a ragged, yet accessible sound and a deeply personal aesthetic,
Pearl is a refreshing alternative to the predictable, cookie-cutter
rockers who play it safe to build their audience. Pearl prefers to
develop her following through sincerity, conviction and energetic live
shows.
“For me, every show is an adventure,” she says. “I just let the music
take me wherever feels right. I’ve fallen down, I’ve even peed my
pants. I don’t care. As long as I can connect with the audience, have
them feel me, and get my point across, then I’ve done what I came to
do and I’ll break myself open to get there.”
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Website URL:
http://www.cheersloverock.com
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Contact
MySpace URL:
http://www.myspace.com/pearl
Band Contact:
pearlinfo@me.com
Booking:
jennymcphee@tkoco.com
Management:
Mark Adelman Career Artist Management
pearlinfo@me.com
Label:
White Fox Music / Megaforce USA / MRI USA / RED USA/Powerage UK Europe/JVC Japan/Riot Australia