Leave’s Eyes – Liv Kristine:
Greg: In reading your bio on the “Liv Kristine” website, it speaks of you as a ten year old girl who loved Madonna (mutual laughter), and then sort of jumps to you forming THEATRE OF TRAGEDY. I’m curious, what happened between singing “Material Girl” in front of your mirror and forming a Doom/Death/Goth band? That seems like quite a leap. Could you fill in that space in time?
Liv: (laughter) Well, you’re absolutely right. It’s a very interesting question, though. The filling in answer is actually BLACK SABBATH. My parents were very young when they became parents, eighteen and nineteen respectively, and they’ve always been fans of BLACK SABBATH and Ozzy Osbourne, so I was fed with BLACK SABBATH. From even when I was in the womb of my mother, I already “knew” Ozzy’s voice and Heavy Metal. When I turned six or seven I discovered my love for Madonna.
On the other side, my parents also played a lot of classical music, Edvard Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner. This was also a part of the music we listened to in our daily lives. So, we had Metal, we had Pop music, we had Classical music on the radio or on the player. Generally, I grew up with a lot of music.
Nobody else in my family except my little sister are musicians. So it was… I think it was quite funny for my parents to see that I was more interested in standing in front of a mirror with a hairbrush in my hand, singing and dancing and composing music even, at a very young age, than going, you know, to the playground or spending time with my friends. I spent a lot of time on dealing with music, singing and composing. It’s always been a part of me, a part of my life.
It was first when I turned eighteen that I decided that I want to have a band. My ex-boyfriend, the singer of, who would become the singer of THEATRE OF TRAGEDY, he actually… Funny thing, we were at a party and we met some friends. They were guitar players, there was a drum guy. We just got together and started practicing. A couple of months later we actually had a record deal. Then we recorded a whole album and we went on tour as support for ATROCITY, my husband[‘s band]. Everything happened really, really fast.
The concept of THEATRE OF TRAGEDY and why this band was founded was because I was that lucky… to grow up with different kinds of musical influences. There you go!
Greg: THEATRE OF TRAGEDY really exploded in popularity. Were you surprised by how popular the band became? It’s such a unique form of music and you guys were the first to do it. Everyone, I suspect, fantasizes about becoming that popular. Did you expect it?
Liv: No. Not at all. We just got together and we recorded a couple of songs. We got a deal and then everything happened really fast.
I remember the first time we got a royalty statement. We had sold, like, 800 albums and we were like. “YAY! Let’s go to a restaurant… let’s do something very special.”
Then, the next royalty statement was for like 8,000 and then 80,000 and then 150,000! Everything happened really fast.
My first real gig was actually in front of 800 people! You can imagine how I felt like up there. Thank god, I think I’m resistant to feeling nervous in front of a gig. I’m just not nervous at all. I feel comfortable on stage, really. But my co-musicians in THEATRE OF TRAGEDY, they were all drunk because they couldn’t take the pressure. (mutual laughter).
Those were very exciting times. Some of us could stand the pressure and some of us couldn’t. After some times we realized that we had a coming in and leaving of band members, like people in and out of a bus. In the end I was kicked out myself. I never left THEATRE OF TRAGEDY, I was kicked out. The band thought that it wasn’t so successful anymore; the money’s not what they used to be. The guys were living in Norway and I had moved to Germany and they thought they needed to make some serious news for the band. Some slamming stories. So they decided to just kick Liv out. That’s the greatest news of all times. At the same time, I think it was the death of the band. It was their decision.
Greg: You spent a lot of time with them, had a lot of success, did a lot of traveling with them and then they turn around and kicked you out. Many people speculate that they did so because they were jealous of the attention you received. Do you look back at period in your life as a positive one, or are you bitter about the way it all ended?
Liv: Well, I was bitter then. When I read on the homepage that I was forced to leave the band.
Greg: Is that how they told you?
Liv: Yeah. I was never told to leave the band in a personal way; face to face or by a letter or anything. It was just on the homepage. There was a letter but that was like two weeks later.
So yeah, I was bitter back then. But now, that’s… Everything I experienced with THEATRE OF TRAGEDY took me to where I am today. It’s all experience, and experiences makes you what you are; especially when you’re an artist. Experience is everything. I see it as a positive experience. I’ve already forgotten about those things, you know, that weren’t nice. Luckily!
Greg: THEATRE OF TRAGEDY built the “Beauty and the Beast” genre. There are so many bands, and so many women who have followed you into the scene. Are there any bands that took that idea and built on it in an admirable way?
