Arrow de Wide

Wilde by name, not nature. But when the Starcrawler singer gets on stage, look out!

Anyone who thinks they don’t make rock stars like they used to has never witnessed Arrow De Wilde in full flight. On stage the singer with rising LA four-piece Starcrawler is a pipe-cleaner-thin lunatic in a hospital gown, spitting fake blood like Iggy, Alice, Ozzy and Patti Smith reincarnated all at once in the body of an 18-year-old teenager from Los Angeles.

Offstage it’s a different matter. De Wilde is sweetly shy and weirdly unsure of herself; her sentences often finish with “I dunno. I can’t really answer that properly” or trail off completely.

She spoke to Classic Rock during a break from recording their debut album, with Ryan Adams in the production chair.

What did you set out to achieve with Starcrawler when the band formed a couple of years ago?

I just wanted to make rock cool again. It used to be what the majority of people were into, and I wanted to make it what people were into again. I had another band before, with my friends, trying to start something, but it didn’t really work out. I was so frustrated with that. I really wanted to do music properly, not just as a hobby. It was really hard at first to find people, but it finally ended up falling into place and started rolling. Why was it hard to find people? Are LA teenagers just not into rock these days? Yeah, pretty much. I think now there are more people who are into it, but a couple of years ago no one wanted to make the music I wanted to make.

You said Ozzy Osbourne is a big hero of yours. Why?

I respect him as a musician and as a person. I discovered him when I was really young. He seemed cool then and he’s still is.

You’ve talked about being a shy person, but you’re definitely not shy when you play live. What happens when you step on stage?

I dunno. I’m still a shy person, but I guess there’s already enough people just standing on stage doing nothing that I forced myself to do the extreme opposite. The more and more I do it, the more and more exciting and natural it feels. It’s weird, but once I get up there I don’t have to think about anything else.

It’s an in-your-face performance – hospital gowns, straitjackets, blood pouring out of your mouth. Are you up there to shock people or provoke a reaction, or are you getting your emotions out?

It’s kind of both. I like shocking people. That’s the majority of why I do it. Cos it’s fun. But it’s also that I just want people to

take in the music properly, and I feel like if I was just standing there not doing much, people wouldn’t pay attention.

Have you ever taken it too far?

Not really. But one time we played a show in Joshua Tree [California] and I spit water at this table of people. It was kind of dark, so I couldn’t see who it was, and I wasn’t really aiming for them. But they were very macho, tough chicks, and one of them got really upset and started to come at me. Our guitarist, Henry, was playing guitar with a knife, so she backed off and walked outside. Afterwards he was like: “Don’t go out the door. They’re waiting for you.” I ended up running out of the club and telling the security guards. They were super-nice and they handled the situation.

You’ve talked about not wanting Starcrawler to be seen as a ‘female-fronted band’. Why not?

I find it misogynistic when people are like: “They’re a woman-powered band” or “a female-powered band” or whatever. I just feel like why does it have to be labelled differently? Why do I have to labelled a woman frontperson? Why can’t I just be a frontperson, like any other. Why can’t we just be a band?