Ella Hooper said she sometimes takes steroids to sing during a long tour when she’s losing her voice. Afterward, she has to manage the medication’s effects while trying to sleep. Her routine starts as soon as she walks off stage: getting warm, using incense and lavender oil, travelling with a steamer and covering lamps with scarves. She aims to be asleep by 2am or 3am. “It’s so annoying,” she said of making herself put down her phone and read a book. “I want the phone, the phone is so delicious! But no.”
The work doesn’t end at the stage
Touring, Hooper said, means constant work to keep her voice and body ready to perform. Steroids feel “very activating,” she said, and make it tricky to wind down after a show. Her routine is a practical way to get rest while travelling and working through a long tour; the interview doesn’t describe a separate recovery team or other support.
Killing Heidi returned to performing in 2016 after the band had broken up or been on hiatus, with no plans to play again. Hooper said she felt nervous about returning, but the response was fantastic, with big sold-out shows. At one performance, a girl held a sign that read, “I’m Ella too, I was named after you.” Since then, Hooper said, she has met many “little Ellas” whose parents told her, “She’s an Ella because of you!” Asked whether she felt responsible toward them, she joked, “To lead them astray? Yes!”
Hooper was already thinking about what to do musically when she spoke with Stevie Nicks, a conversation that helped prompt her move toward a solo career. Her band the Verses supported Fleetwood Mac, so the members could watch the group night after night and talk with its members. Nicks moved between folk and rock and tried different things, Hooper said; seeing that helped her give herself permission to do the same. Nicks told her, “you can always go back to bands. It doesn’t have to be a closed door.”
A silver boot, gone into the crowd
At an outdoor festival in Darwin, Hooper once threw a silver boot into the crowd after getting “so into the moment.” “There was something crazy in the air – there’s always something crazy in the air in Darwin,” she said. She never saw the shoe again. She had to hobble home barefoot. Hooper said she might be “slightly less silly now.”
Hooper also recalled an awkward encounter with Billy Bragg about 10 years ago. She ran into him as he came out of the Rolling Stone offices and told him, “Oh my god, my mum loves you.” Bragg replied with something like, “If I had a dollar for every time that a young lady said that to me … ” Hooper answered, “Oh yeah, sorry. I love you too.” Now, she said, young people tell her “my mum loves you” all the time. “It’s just part of the journey!”
Songs, memory and the audience
Hooper described her new album, Overnight Success, as Americana. Asked which musician she’d like to hear make an Americana album, she named PJ Harvey, who, Hooper said, “dabbles in folk” and draws on “old English traditional and Celtic roots stuff.” She called that “only a hop, skip and a jump away from Americana.” The album is out now.
She has heard Killing Heidi lyrics misheard as “flying naked in the air” and “will you take it in the rear,” though she thought the person who said the latter “was just being funny.” During the interview, she said, she first heard “Throw a maggot in the air.”
For her funeral playlist, Hooper chose Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing,” which she described as “the right mix of ethereal and hopeful and emotional.” She might add the Kinks’ “Lola” so everyone wouldn’t be too emotional. Hooper said she’s a good friend, good in a crisis, a very good listener and extremely loyal. She has kept the same friendship group since high school, before her “rock’n’roll experience.” “I’m a shit secret keeper!” she said. “I’ll listen, but I’ll repeat it.” She’s also learned to give herself grace about songs she wrote when younger, focusing on what worked and what she and listeners liked at the time, “because they probably still do!”