The beauty of Starcrawlers dark side

In the beginning, I wanted this piece to focus on Arrow De Wilde, and her band Starcrawler, as a raucous young artist who basically moved through adolescence and into adulthood via rock and roll (and a lot of fake blood). The beauty of interviewing her was that all those preconceived ideas and notions of who she was flew out the door as we started our hour long chat. She’s 21, she’s 6’2,  LA kid from a family of artists, started in bands young, and has received accolades from major rock revolutionaries like Shirley Manson, Dave Grohl, even Elton John. She’s a badass with a heart of gold, making her the modern incarnation of a classic rock star. Come pull back the curtain and see for yourself….

How would you define beauty in one word? 

Beauty is fake because everyone has their own definition of what beautiful is. It doesn’t really exist. If half of the people think I’m hot because I’m skinny, the other half think I’m disgusting looking because I’m skinny, you know. It just doesn’t exist, everyone has their own perception of what beauty is so therefore it’s not a real thing.

It seems like you strive to challenge the typical standard of conventional beauty through your videos and live shows. When and why did that become important to you as an individual and an artist?

Half of me wants to say I never really thought about challenging any standard, which is true since I’ve always just done what I wanted . I’ve always dressed or made myself look exactly how I wanted to look, but, at the same time, I did think about those things when thinking about show looks and videos. I know I’m not Seventeen Magazine pretty or whatever, and that’s fine, that’s boring. I definitely have thought about different ways that I wanted to challenge people. For a while I’ve been really into freaking people out. In the ‘Bet My Brains’ video, I wear a codpiece. I was thinking about what could be shocking in an atypical way and I’d never seen a chick wear a dick onstage before. That was one of the first things that came into my head when I was trying to think of stage costumes. 

Would you say you’re trying to redefine stereotypes of femininity?

Yeah and kind of stereotypes of feminists too. I feel like a lot of people have this really messed up idea of what it is… I want to skew the idea of the typical stereotypes found in feminism. It’s not about whether or not you shave, that’s not the point, and you can still be a feminist and have fake tits and lip injections. 

You make Starcrawler shows not just a great rock show, but also performance art……I’ve seen these amazing moments when you’re rolling on the ground and there’s blood dripping from your mouth and you give the audience this amazing demonic grin and your eyes kind of roll back in your head…when that happens, where do you go? 

When I first started performing my whole consciousness would just go out the window and I wouldn’t remember a lot of the shit I did onstage for so long. Once we were touring all the time, I got used to performing and I learned to be at least half present half on stage so I at least kind of know what I’m doing. There were a couple instances where I went a little too crazy so I feel that I have to be able to be present enough to see what I’m doing in the moment. 

What’s too crazy?

People in the audience were getting mad because I would throw stuff. Someone would set their beer on the stage and I’d take it and douse them with it and most of the time they would cheer but sometimes they would get pissed. Some people will get mad because they don’t know who we are, but then there are fans in the audience who are excited to get fucked with. I want to be present enough to be able to pinpoint who those people are so if I am going to go up to an audience member, I can tell who is a fan and who won’t get upset. I don’t want it to ever seem like I’m angry at the people in the audience.