The Gossip's Beth Ditto speaks out

Beth Ditto, current queen of indie, leans on a traffic island in a quiet residential street just off London's hectic Shepherds Bush Green. "It's cold," she grumbles, though a wry smile suggests The Gossip's singer sees the funny side. Even when a pair of teenage girls makes bitchy cat calls about her size, Ditto gamely poses for photos with them. Karma then intervenes as a gob-smacked fan stops stunned in the street. "Is that who I think it is..." he whispers, before she agrees to chat to a mate on his mobile.

Ditto has adapted again to an alien world, just as she did when the 19-year-old idealist pitched up in the liberal bolthole of Olympia, Washington State. At the time, she must have thought she could get no further from her small-town Arkansas childhood. After a tough upbringing in the southern Bible Belt, the loudest student in class had escaped to the west coast's haven for outsiders, sexual misfits and an underground, politicised rock scene.

Now things have got weirder still. In the past few weeks, Ditto has played games on a TV music show, sung Heaven 17's "Temptation" with Jarvis Cocker - and rarely a day has gone by without her appearing in the press, whether to apparently criticise Kate Moss or complain about fans of the Scissor Sisters.

As one of seven siblings, she remains the down-to-earth southern belle. Unaware a photographer would be on hand, Ditto quickly rips a bin bag from the roll in her luggage and transforms herself into the instantly recognisable frontwoman.

"I'm just a hippy punk and don't like the way [newspapers] pit people against each other. They want a feud so bad, though I've found none of them are real. One paper said I was furious Kate won [the NME sexiest female award] and I never once said anything like that.

"The thing about the Scissor Sisters was just put into a hateful context. It wasn't so much about the crowd, it was about how hard it was for me. I was playing to people who primarily listen to the top 40 and didn't know where I was coming from."

Such fire-fighting is not what Ditto envisaged when The Gossip formed in 1999. Even though she performed in high school groups, the teenager only took music seriously once she followed three punk mates to Olympia. There, she fell into the city's indie scene that forged the feminist riot grrrl movement.

"I didn't want to live in Arkansas anymore and my best friends had moved to the north west. The band just happened by chance. When I was a kid I knew I was going to be a singer, but then I thought I'd be a teacher, or a hairdresser."

Fighting for space in a large family, Ditto found singing the best means to get attention. Nowadays, she sounds a true descendant of the great soul belters, though it was a while before she realised having a loud voice was an asset.

"I've been loud and obnoxious my whole life and never really understood why I'd get into so much trouble for talking when the whole room was doing it. When grunge came along, I wanted to sing like Tori Amos, then Mama Cass. Later, when I listened to Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill and Hole, I realised my voice didn't have to sound beautiful."

An avowed feminist from an early age, her talent also deflected attention from her politics and taste in clothes, while guitarist Nathan Howdeswell was the butt of the meatheads' attention.

"Nathan and I weren't that close. He was too cool for me and knew more about everything. We used to say he took one for the team a lot, he used to get fag-bashed all the time. For me, it was different because I went to a smaller school and was related to half the kids there.

"It was harder being a feminist, because people could accept the weirdness, but not the empowerment. We didn't get Martin Luther King Day off and I would always skip school in protest. I remember being 11, hearing the word feminist and thinking that's exactly what I am."

When original Gossip drummer, Kathy Mendonca earned a college place in Olympia, Nathan was first to up sticks, he explains.

"I was a feminist as well, so it was even tougher for me being into riot grrrl. I lived on a farm so had to hunt animals and kill cows with my dad, which wasn't easy for a vegetarian. It was a really violent place with that redneck mentality."

Coming from the deep south, Ditto and her mates grew up on soul music, but only put that together with their punk aesthetic when they saw garage-gospel fusionists The Make-Up. "They changed everything," Ditto emphatically asserts.

Indeed, the band have put out an EP titled "Arkansas Heat", so they can't be too down on their home state.

"It's given me a sense of style, like I know how to make my own clothes. I didn't go into town until I was nine, and all we had was mail order and Wal Mart, where you could only buy chart albums and weird compilations."

Still, The Gossip enjoyed a warmer reception in Olympia where they signed to riot grrrl label Kill Rock Stars. Before current album Standing In The Way Of Control, the title track of which has soundtracked trailers for Channel 4's Skins, The Gossip released two sets of energised garage rock. Several events happened before the third record that changed the composition of the band, their outlook and ambition.

For Ditto there was eye surgery, caused by a rare disease with symptoms that suggested multiple sclerosis, alongside a mental breakdown that entailed another stay in hospital, while Howdeswell split up with his long-term girlfriend. For the singer, it was time to put her self first.

"I'd always been the stubborn kind of person that never let people do anything for me. My mom always said I had to do everything myself, like homework and tidying my room. It was a weird transition where I had to grow up and put myself first."

It hardly helped matters that now their Washington refuge was becoming claustrophobic, causing Ditto and Howdeswell to move south to Portland, Oregon, a larger city and also sunnier, as the guitarist explains.

"It was getting in Olympia that you couldn't walk down the street without people knowing who you were or what you were doing."

No wonder Standing... has a darker feel than previous, more throwaway efforts. Ditto found herself concentrating on melancholic periods of her life, both recent travails and from back in Arkansas.

"One song, 'Holy Water' is about an uncle who made childhood horrible for me and it was just improvised, sung into the microphone in two takes and then written down. Ten minutes after we'd finished I got a call saying he'd died. Many weird things happened like that."

The pair knew they wanted to progress musically, even though their drummer was not set upon music as a career, preferring midwifery. Ditto and Howdeswell took the hard step of asking their childhood friend to commit or go.

"It was really hard, especially because Nathan won't do that kind of stuff. I did all the talking and she had a hard time letting it go. But me and Nathan didn't want to end up in jobs."

It was a profitable decision, as the band had already used Seattle native Hannah Blilie as a stand-in. Her sharper style provided a more punchy rhythmic base for the extraordinary "Standing...", a song that has done for The Gossip what "Seven Nation Army" achieved for White Stripes.

For Blilie, the transition was more seamless. A fan of the band and friend of Ditto, she had stood in for Mendonca when the band toured with post-riot grrrl icons Le Tigre. There, the drummer had a chance to show the difference she could make to the group's new material.

"From the moment we started playing we knew we would have a future together," Blilie explains. "I'd heard them play 'Standing In The Way Of Control' and was blown away by it. I thought it was like a Dolly Parton punk anthem, so it was great I could add my own crazy beat, something I'd never done with my other bands. After the tour, Nathan and I had a long conversation and we talked about me joining up."

Released here last in July, the album gained a sizeable leftfield audience, with the craziness beginning once NME named Ditto as the year's coolest music figure. This set in motion the events that led to the band's appearance at the weekly's awards ceremony and supposed spats with Moss et al. At least Ditto has a platform from where she can proclaim her views, which the artist maintains are as important as the music.

"It is me - the music and the person making the music is one and the same thing. It's fun to write a song about getting it on, but for me there's always going to be some meaning to it. I'm feminist, fat and gay."

Speaking of which, are we entering an age where women are on a par with male performers? Ditto splutters into her tea.

"If it was getting easier for women, wouldn't CSS and Long Blondes have been playing the NME awards? Wouldn't they have been on the cover by now? We've been in this band for eight years and been coming over here for seven to get where we are. How many times has Nicole Richie been on the cover of a magazine?"

At The Astoria recently, The Gossip unveiled new songs that suggested a return to the lusty feel of earlier material, albeit with more advanced musicianship, a direction Ditto expects the band to pursue.

"I feel happy so things will probably go in that direction, which people may not like so much, but I don't care." Ditto may welcome any loss of attention, but her new fans may be less willing to let her go.

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