THE INTERVIEW
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BY PHOEBE REILLY
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN KLEIN
It’s perverted!” cries Beth Ditto. The lead singer of the bluesy punk
trio the Gossip is at home in Portland, Oregon, flipping through the
Fingerhut catalog, a mail-order retailer of such household necessities
as bath towels, crucifixes, and gun cabinets. She’s feeling nostalgic (the
company’s nonsensical name was a joke among friends back in her tiny
hometown of Searcy, Arkansas), but also appalled. “People who sell rifles
are dirty homos who won’t come out of the closet,” she ventures. This is
just one opinion, and the 26-year-old Ditto has many, many more. In the

S TEVEN KLEIN/ICON PHOTO

eight years since the Gossip formed, the famously full-figured, outspoken
frontwoman has become a sensation in the U.K., where the group’s most recent
album, 2006’s Standing in the Way of Control, went Top 10, while attracting
only a cult following in the States. This status might change in the spring, when
Columbia releases an album of live material produced by new label co-chief
Rick Rubin. Naturally, Beth Ditto already has something to say about that.

Now that Rick Rubin has taken an interest in the band, how involved do you think he’ll be in your next studio album?

I’m not really sure, but I don’t care who is involved. You know when you meet someone but you don’t want to presume that you’re friends and you’re afraid to say hi to them in public, ’cause they may not remember you? That’s how I feel about Rick Rubin. He’s been really sweet and supportive, but we’re small in the grand scheme. I mean, Jay-Z or the Gossip? Jesus, let me think about it. But I think he will work with us in the future.

Do you find it at all marginalizing to be on
Music With a Twist, a Columbia subsidiary for
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender artists?
No, I love being on a queer label. You’re sitting in
a room with a group of people who have all the