Jake Shears on Scissor Sisters’ breakup: ‘It was time’
With songs like “Take Your Mama,” “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” and “Let’s Have a Kiki,” Scissor Sisters were the ultimate downtown New York glam squad. But their fabulous frontman Jake Shears, 39, has cut loose from the group since moving to Los Angeles in 2013.
After making his Broadway debut in “Kinky Boots” and releasing his “Boys Keep Swinging” memoir earlier this year, he will drop his self-titled debut solo album on Friday. Here, the openly gay singer — born Jason Sellards in Arizona — dishes on the Scissors separation, the secret to the perfect mustache and how “New York’s always gonna feel like my home.”
What prompted the hiatus with Scissor Sisters?
I felt like we had kinda done what we set out to do. We did 10 solid years of recording and touring. And I just felt like it was time for everybody to go live their lives. The band was our lives for a long time. But there could be another Scissors record again someday. I’ll never rule that out.
And you also had a breakup that went down a few years ago.
I was with my partner [director Chris Moukarbel] for 11 years. We split up and I’ve been living between New Orleans and LA for the last three years. I’d always wanted to go to New Orleans, so it just really felt like a fresh start for me. I can’t imagine any musician or singer going down there and not being inspired.
There’s a song on your album called “Sad Song Backwards.” After a breakup of a long-term relationship like that, did you play a lot of sad songs?
Right when I got to New Orleans, Allen Toussaint died, and I got to attend his funeral, and it was just one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had. He is such a legend. So I associate that time with listening to a lot of his music.
Your new single is “Big Bushy Mustache,” and you’re rocking a pretty great mustache right now, so what’s your secret?
I finally learned to trim it on the bottom, and you let the top of your mustache grow over and down. It basically turns into kind of a broom. I would get compliments from other guys — straight guys — on my mustache all the time. They would always say that their girlfriends wouldn’t let them grow one.
What do you miss the most about New York City now that you no longer live here?
New York made me. I moved to New York when I was 20 years old in 1999. The city absolutely shaped who I became as a creator. As a young man, there was a ridiculous sense of abandon that I felt. Something about the city helped me be fearless about what I was doing. I was just sucking it all in. Scissor Sisters is absolutely a New York band through and through, and I feel very proud to be part of a canon of a lot of other artists who started downtown. We’re part of that lineage.
You were back in New York for “Kinky Boots.” How’d it all go?
It was the most daunting, challenging thing I’ve ever done. And I just had the absolute time of my life. And I miss it: I miss the cast, I miss the stage, I miss doing those shows. I never went into “the white room.” That’s a theater term for when you’re onstage and suddenly you have no idea what you’re doing, you do not know what the next line is, you do not know what the scene is. You are completely and utterly lost onstage. But thankfully that never happened to me.
How are you feeling about turning 40 in October?
I’m super excited, and I feel like in the last few years I’ve worked so hard to get to this moment, to get to this year. I’m very proud of the work I’ve done on myself, and I’m proud of the [career] work that I’ve accomplished. I feel great about going into 40. But as I get older, I live a little quieter these days.
