Eliza Cuts
Interview by
Jade Sperry
with
Eliza
on
05 March 2009
Eliza
Chicago. November 2008. Barak Obama is taking North America by storm, and I'm in the midst of positive energy and optimism. I'm here to work with Eliza Cuts for 3 days, and the timing could not be better. She has just launched her new band, The Trouble (www.myspace.com/thetrouble), has played a show in October, had a CD release party and is busy as a bee. And then I arrived on the scene. But, before I begin this interview, I'd like to start by saying that many people claim they know Eliza, or know about her. One thing that I know is that she was the target of some of the worst Internet bullying and gossiping I've personally ever witnessed, and so I would like you to join me as I find out who Eliza Cuts is in her own words.
Eliza was born and raised in the Quad cities in the Midwestern United States along with her older sister. She comes from a hard working, very morale, religious and active family. When Eliza and her sister were born, her mother made a conscious decision to stay at home with them during their super-formative years. When her sister was about 3, she became very ill with Spinal Meningitis which left her with Epilepsy. Her father was a student back then, studying in Seminary school, so Eliza's mother then took on some odd jobs to help the family financially. She house sat and baby sat other children, as well as home schooling all of them. She also did other odd jobs here and there. Her father was also doing a Christian radio show at this time. Eliza enjoyed being home schooled as it seemed to fit her personality better. The few times that she was in the “school system” were not memorable except that she was more drawn to the Arts. In the end, she and her sister asked to be home schooled. Eliza's parents are both very smart and well educated people who were very capable of home schooling their children. Her parents believed more in teaching by example and by going to different places which meant that the family ended up traveling a lot; going to castles, museums and on field trips. They also taught them to respect and appreciate different cultures, people and experiences.
Eliza has lived in many places and traveled quite extensively in her 27 years. She is also a very talented hair stylist. And her latest project is her band, The Trouble, which was also the name of a hardcore band from the 1990's. Her friends describe her as intense, obsessed with hair, talkative and emotional. One of her friends, Miss E, says that Eliza's theme song should be the Batman theme song. The reason is because the song is awesome just like Eliza. And interestingly, on the photo shoot we did, she is wearing a Batman pendant. Brian, who is in Eliza's current band, has described her esoterically, saying she is luminous, precocious and perspicacious. All of these words and phrases describe her well and are accurate. I found Eliza to have a lot of energy and personal drive with a healthy dose of confidence. And there is nothing wrong with that. Many famous actors and performers were, and are, “driven” to perform: to act, to sing, to dance, to write, to paint or to draw. She always tries hard to be a good friend and she has a very warm personality.
In coming to Chicago and meeting Eliza for the first time in person, I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only is Eliza a nice person, she has found people much like herself to hang with. Some are musicians, some are aspiring managers, others are rappers, some go to school, and a few are just ordinary people who work 9-5 jobs. Eliza can interact with a total stranger just as easily as with some of her closest friends. This is a rare quality that not many can claim to have, and I personally know only one other person who is like that. Over the course of 3 days we talked, went shopping, drank Americanos, talked some more, ate deep dish pizza, went to McDonald's, Angels and Kings, talked again, became ill and did 2 photo shoots – one with her band, The Trouble, and just her. She is an articulate woman who takes the time to think before answering every question put to her. In beginning this journey, I'm going to take you back in time before anyone knew who Eliza was.....
Los Angeles. 2000. Eliza is 19 at this time. In retrospect, she admits that she was very young, and that she wasn't fully comfortable in her own skin. Finances were also an issue at this point in time. She was still trying to figure her life out and didn't quite know how to relate to people very well. She says that she was having a lot of addiction problems, and that her addictions were more important than eating food. Eliza admits that she does have an addictive personality. She obsessively controlled her food intake and worked out compulsively every day. It started to be a ½ hour a day session, then to 1 hour a day, and then at the height of it, up to 2-3 hours a day. She didn't notice that she had an eating disorder until it became a serious problem. By then, she had conditioned herself so completely that it was hard for her to be pulled out of it. She remembers being a size 0 at 5' 8 1/2” tall. When I asked if this one episode in her life changed the person she is now, she responded that it did change her – both physically and mentally. In Eliza's case, losing weight became her addiction. When she was going through the healing process, it was a physical, mental and to some extent an emotional recovery.
It was shortly after this that she found her calling in life. When I asked about her hairstyling, Eliza lit up like a 5000 watt bulb. To see this excitement over hair cutting is quite enthralling. The beginning of her hair saga runs like a bad info-commercial: she was broke and walked in to a Cost Cutters. She stopped the hairstylist half way through a bad hair cut, didn't pay her, and said “I can do a better job if I finished it myself” and she left. She then headed to Walgreens, bought a cheap pair of shears, went home and finished the haircut with no knowledge of how to cut hair. It wasn't that bad and she liked the way it looked. Soon after that, she went to the library and took out a book about hair styling. She absorbed the entire book, learned how to cut and color hair, and when she went to Cosmetology school 2 years later, it was that very same book that was used in her class. And so she followed her true passion in life - cutting hair. She realized that she really liked it and that she was good at it. She learned how to cut hair her own way, thus developing her own style. By the age of 22, she had enrolled in Cosmetology School full time, was cutting hair for bands and was also leaving a very horrible relationship.
When I asked Eliza about the first bands she cut hair for, she remembers that she started doing hair for bands at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City. She always had crazy looking hair, makeup and clothes. The first bands that Eliza styled were her own bands, but the very first band was Hopes Fall. She remembers that it was under a street lamp, outside a tour bus at midnight with no comb and their hair was dry. And it was from there that when bands came through town they would come to her for cuts. They used to call her “Eliza from Iowa”, which is funny because she has never lived in Iowa. She would cut a deal with the bands that if they hooked her and her friends and sister up with merchandise and maybe to get them in the show, then she would cut their hair. So it was a trade off. To Eliza and her friends, it was saving them money because gas and eating food add up. Eliza would do hair for the kids at the show, too, and it was all very “gorilla style”. The kids liked the cuts, the bands loved them, everyone had a good time, and nothing sketchy ever happened. It was strictly hair cutting and that's it. The bands were not “big” and so they often shared a hotel room or stayed on the tour bus. And from there, the word spread about Eliza and her haircutting skills.
Eliza tells me that it was around this time that she felt some kind of calling that went beyond hair styling. She was 22, a full time student who was very sassy, had a chip on her shoulder, thought that she knew everything and had a bratty punk attitude. She didn't deal well with the authority at school. She was going to a lot of concerts and she had a lot of ideas of what she wanted to do. Her goals and dreams in relation to hair styling were so ludicrous that to get anyone to agree that it was a good idea was so hard. The authority at school just didn't get where she was coming from or her ideas at all. She was in her own world and flying solo. She remembers that she would leave to do really big jobs in the industry (Warped Tour, TRL, etc.) and it wasn't recognized by the school she was in. She never got credit for it and they did not support her in any way. She was so passionate about doing hair at this time that the other students in her class just didn't get it because they didn't have that kind of “drive”. They just wanted to work in a small salon and go out drinking with their friends on the weekends. They didn't have the same goals that Eliza envisioned for herself. All the same, at hair shows, Eliza always did really well. She connected with the top stylists and they always felt that she pushed it. Eliza questioned everything, and in the long run, she figured it out and found her way through it. I wanted to know that if she had the opportunity to go back in time and do it again, would she do anything differently. She paused, thought for a moment, and responded, “I would tell myself to sit down, shut up, take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth. (another pause) And quit bleaching your hair.”
The Trouble
While still in school in 2002, Eliza met someone who would dominate her life for the next 4-5 years. In her own words, “It started hard and it ended hard.” She met Gerard Way at one of My Chemical Romance's first shows. They began to met up at different shows and venues and eventually became friends. The very first time they met, Eliza was at the merchandise table, looking over the t-shirts, and Gerard came up to her and was talking about the designs on the shirts because she thought that he might have designed some of them. He was drinking back then, was pretty intoxicated and really needed some deodorant and a shower. At the time, Eliza says she didn't have much use for him – he was kind of funny and it was like if he wasn't a hot drunken sweaty mess he might have been almost okay. They usually saw each other because she was working and doing his hair, but Eliza did so many other bands' hair on different tours that its now a blur to remember it with absolute clarity. She was living in the Quad cities at this time, and even though it sounds easy, it was challenging because to get anywhere was hard. She was a full time student, didn't have a lot of money and wasn't making a lot of money. She found that the bands liked having her around. In her own words, “They could have gone to a salon or stylist and booked an appointment that suited them, but instead, they chose to have me stay with them to do their hair cuts and colors. I would make sure it was right, and that can take time.”
Eliza wrote a story called “Commit Me Already”, which she wrote for one reason only - she needed to get it out of herself so that she could move on with her life. She posted it to her My Space page in the first half of 2008. When I asked her about the negative side to the Internet in terms of gossip about her and Gerard, she doesn't know why people said and wrote such nasty things about her. Why people were so angry that they would write those vicious threads and posts about her she still doesn't know. She tells me that what people don't know is that in writing those things, it not only hurt her, it also took a toll on Gerard as well. Internet gossip goes a long way especially if its trashy and/or negative. Eliza does admit that in looking back there are some things that she could have done differently, but overall and given the circumstances, she feels confident that she did the best she could. She doesn't speak negatively about Gerard, and in fact, this is the first time she has spoken publicly about her former fiancée. Eliza says that for over a year his name never came up in any conversations she had with the people who were around her at the time. They would speak as if that period of her life didn't exist. It's only been recently that she and her friends can talk about that period of time.
Eliza says that their relationship was very tumultuous. She felt that there were 2 different people inside her, and that the girl Gerard knew in the beginning just became smaller and smaller until one day she just disappeared. Her own persona because less and less. She was there for him, but wasn't fully there. She had no hopes and no dreams of her own and didn't want to live. Eliza found that in trying to protect things that are now so insignificant, she lost herself completely to that situation. Ultimately, the end came hard and fast. Eliza says that she had just gotten out of the hospital in late June 2007, and Gerard was finishing a tour in the UK. She tells me that she never saw it coming, and that even today, she still has that shock factor when she looks back on it all. When all is said and done, she is grateful it did happen. It was both fortunate and unfortunate. Eliza did learn a lesson from this, and more importantly, she found herself again. When she reflects on it now, she isn't sure who Gerard did the bigger favor for. What she does know is that she wouldn't be alive today had he not cut ties because when Gerard made that decision, it was the only thing that kept her alive. And in many ways, they both knew that. There are so many things about this relationship that people just don't know. One thing that stood out for me was when she described herself as “living her life for another person”. It began to consume her totally. She was living another person's life, living their dreams, their hopes, their goals, their wants and helping them to get there. And when that was finally removed, all she had left was herself. One day, she woke up and realized that she was Eliza again.
When Gerard and her split up, she left LA and tried to find a place where she wasn't as likely to bump into any of people that she had known. She actively searched for an urban commune and did service work. She got herself up and out of the fog that had consumed her for years. She also wanted to stop making poor decisions. In working at this commune, she saw for the first time how gritty and grim life really can be on the streets. Eliza admits that she had never seen this side of life. No one in this commune knew who Gerard Way or My Chemical Romance was. They didn't care about the scene that she had come from. They were just trying to give people a warm place to sleep, food in their bellies and to help the elderly. She eventually got herself through this, and in the process, she realized how good she really does have it. She is very grateful and humble now because she is in a good place. One final note to this that I find interesting is that Eliza has had high profile relationships with men before and after Gerard, but it is that one relationship that people remember her by.
In moving on from this period of her life, I ask Eliza about her current projects. She mentions that her radio show has ended, but why that is so still remains a mystery. I had listened to Eliza on her show, and found that she has talent in talk show radio. In doing this interview, when she mentioned that her father had studied and been on the radio, I then knew where she got it from. Eliza says that she comes from a family of “talkers”, so its all in the genes.
Besides her now defunct radio show, we talk about an idea that Eliza formed called The White Flags. Eliza gets very excited about this. She could do this full time and just drop everything else. In some ways, she could be a spokeswoman for an entire scene of goth/punk kids because of her personal experience with Internet Bullying. We all know about sexual predators lurking on the Internet and how to avoid them, but bullying is not as well known because 96% of the victims are kids who DON'T talk about it. But in saying that, there are groups of White Flags who support each other, and I myself am a member. The most popular ones are on the major sites: MySpace, Buzznet and Facebook. They all have White Flag groups with hundreds and in some cases, thousands of members.
In thinking of this idea, Eliza related a time to me when she was a normal woman in her mid 20's and had never done anything wrong. She has never been arrested and she doesn't drink or take drugs. She is a hardworking hairdresser who toured with rock bands. Eliza kept her actions above reproach and her personal life was publicly slaughtered to such an extent that for her to just go online to search for a new pair of shoes or jeans became terrifying. The White Flags is her idea of “if you can't beat them, join them”. Eliza states that she was lucky to have come out of that alive. Once again, some of the things that Eliza told me she has never made public until now. She tells me that there were times it was very scary and spooky because she was being stalked for real and not just on the Internet. It became life-threatening at some point as well. She also talks about if she had had children, and in 10 years time, they went to Google and typed in her name, the kind of things they would find would be horrific, untrue and nasty. How do you explain that to your own kids? I think that is a very good point to make. The White Flag movement is so much at the forefront of Eliza's mind. She believes that it's the best idea she has ever had. When it catches on it will be the raddest thing ever. I agree with this because even though I have never been bullied on the Internet, many younger people have, and still are. A big part of the White Flag ethic is about living your life and that we are not perfect. No one is perfect. Eliza would like the movement to take on its own life, and to find its own persona. She would like to just be in the background; the woman who had the IDEA. The White Flag movement puts out a positive message because, as we all know, there are many negative things out there. Not much of it is positive. In time, maybe it will have people donating money so that it can do things for people that matter. Eliza states that there is a book in publication at this time, and that all the groups on networking sites make it real to and for her. One of the problems for Eliza personally is that its hard to put a muzzle on Freedom of Speech because it's a right. She really wishes that she could get an Internet Restraining Order because if you visit her My Space page for example, you are visiting her in her home so to speak. You are going to her, she isn't coming to you. Maybe at some distant point in time, this could become a reality. I personally find that in talking trash and typing it on the Internet is easy because you are anonymous to everyone but yourself. Ultimately, you have to live with your own conscious.
Her other passion besides hair cutting and the White Flags is her new band, The Trouble. Started late in the fall months of 2008, she met her band members through some people who know and work with her best friend, Jenna. Brian and Aaron are the men behind her. Each are unique in their own ways. Aaron is not a talker but more of an observer who is quiet, shy and a bit withdrawn, while Brian is more outgoing and can be quite funny. Each of them brings something different to the table as far as Eliza is concerned. The band's latest song is called “Option”, which is a haunting melody reminiscent of Cabaret styled music with strong vocals from Eliza. Another song, “Lock 'em Up”, which has a catchy guitar riff in the background, has stong and unusual vocals in the sense that Eliza's voice goes from major notes to minor ones. She has a good vocal range.
I was surprised to find that Eliza can sing and can sing well. I am also a musician and a singer so it was nice to hear her powerful voice on Wednesday night at Angels and Kings, which is the bar that Pete Wentz owns. They have Karaokee on Wednesdays with a live band to back you up. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that she is very comfortable being up front and center. I can only imagine what it would have been like to see her perform back in October 2008 at Reggie's Rock Club in Chicago. She gave a good rendition of Alanis Morissettes' “You Oughta Know”. This was cool because I am Canadian. I also got a good feel of her public life in Chicago, and met some of the people who are closest to her in that sense. Later in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, we went to a '50's style diner to reflect upon the evening.
In her band The Trouble, Brian generally does the guitars, and Aaron is the keyboardist, as well as helping Eliza with the lyrics. The mixing of the tunes is done mainly by Brian, but they all have a say in it. The lyrics are written mostly by Eliza, and they are good. They are filled with pain and sorrow as well as joy and happiness. She does have an extreme personality, and so I can see why there are extremes in her lyrics. At the time of this writing, they are searching for a drummer and a bass player to join the band. Having those additions would definitely give the band a “fuller” sound.
Chicago definitely left an impression on me in more ways than one. I had never been to Chicago before this and I enjoyed the trip. I will and am going back there one day soon. I met some really cool and interesting people who may end up being on tour soon because nothing is impossible in their world. I was also inspired by this trip to be creative in other areas here in Canada. Love her or hate her, I think it is possible that Eliza Cuts is someone to watch in the up coming year.
I'd like to say a big thanks to Jade Sperry at jadedphotography.com for contributing this story - ed.
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