AM I A BAD MUM?
Skunk Anansie’s Skin talks to ALEX GREEN about writing her memoir, her childhood and racism in the music industry
THE title of this podcast is a question I ask myself far more often than I expected I would, before I became a parent of two lovely but demanding children. So it’s a relief to hear other mums confess to feeling the same guilt that unfortunately seems to have become an inseparable part of modern parenting.
There are plenty of mum podcasts around, many of them excellent, but I especially like this one for two reasons – at around 10 minutes long each episode is to the point, and they don’t look for easy answers. Since 2018, Australian presenters Katie and Rach have covered more than 200 topics including when to get your kids’ ears pierced, how to deal with nightmares and whether it’s okay to drink alcohol in front of your children.
Wait until the kids are finally in bed, pour yourself a large glass of Malbec and press play.
Where to start: Literally anywhere. Just pick a subject that appeals and you’ll find you’ve mainlined six back-to-back episodes without noticing.
Where to find it: All podcast apps as well as on Instagram as @iamabadmum
‘I’ VE had to learn to blow my own trumpet because – as a black female singer – no-one was going do it for me,” explains Skin down the phone from her home in Ibiza.
As the frontwoman of Skunk Anansie, Deborah Dyer – AKA Skin – offered an alternative voice to the machismo of Brit rockers such as Oasis and Blur during the 90s.
“If I am modest I disappear,” she says.
“I don’t like to sit here and say, ‘I was the first black woman to headline Glastonbury’. That’s not my personality. But one of the ways that racism works is that it erases what black people do... It erases our successes.”
Black, British and queer, Skin, now 53, was a rarity in the fairly homogeneous landscape of 90s pop and rock. Her autobiography, It Takes Blood and Guts, charts a difficult but warm childhood in Brixton, south London, through to her years in Skunk Anansie.
The book also touches on Skin’s activist work, campaigning against apartheid and for LGBT rights, as well as glitzier turns like her stint as a judge on the Italian version of The X Factor. Then there is her latest reinvention as a globe-trotting DJ and close relationship with the fashion world.
“I have three brothers so I was raised in a house of boys,” she recalls. “There was a lot of man energy around. In Jamaican families, in Jamaican culture, if someone is hungry you feed them.” Skin’s memories of Brixton in the 70s and 80s are mixed, she says. The riots of 1981 and 1985 left an impact – spurring her on to activism.
“The negative things that were happening to people were literally happening outside my front door. “You see a lot of things growing up that you just don’t think are very fair, so you want to change things.” Today, the gentrification of the area is something that concerns her.
“The wonderful thing about Brixton is Brixton Market. But it has been under attack for years now. Eventually we are going to see it disappear because the new people moving in don’t really get it. Skunk Anansie’s musical peak originally stretched from 1995’s Paranoid & Sunburnt to 1999’s Post Orgasmic Chill, before the band split for a decade.
Aided by journalist and friend Lucy O’Brien, Skin began her book before the pandemic, but it was finished during the first months of lockdown.
In September, she announced her engagement to her partner, performer and events organiser Rayne Baron.
“I spent the first four months of serious lockdown in New York with my wifey and we didn’t go anywhere.”
Skin finally made it to London, before arriving in Ibiza about a fortnight before we speak. It’s a jet-set lifestyle, and much of the book explores Skin’s struggle to maintain connection with her family, friends and partners as she tours the world. Has she got the balance right now?
“Yeah, totally,” she says without hesitation. WhatsApp groups change everything.”
The book offers a fascinating look back at her years in the spotlight. The first act of Skunk Anansie’s career peaked with that slot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1999.
“Headlining Glastonbury for us was a double-edged sword because we were one of the biggest bands in the UK at the time, and in Europe,” says Skin. “Our second album was triple platinum. We absolutely deserved to headline Glastonbury in terms of statistics, in terms of record sales, in terms of the size of the band.
“And yet, we had so many journalists that were anti-Skunk Anansie headlining Glastonbury.” Their detractors dressed up their criticism, she says.
“But what they really meant was there is a black female lead singer and she shouldn’t be singing rock music anyway.”
Skin points out a catalogue of black artists or predominantly black groups who could have headlined.
“Goldie could have done it at one point, Dizzee
Rascal could have done it at one point. It’s not that we aren’t there.
It’s that we don’t get the dibs and we don’t get seen as someone who can fill a field.”
It Takes Blood and Guts by Skin and Lucy O’Brien is available now.
Looking back: Skin today