Skin rushes into John Henry’s rehearsal complex in North London, frazzled. She’s late but effortlessly stylish, clad head to toe in black; an andro-rock-chick chic personified. ‘I haven’t eaten all day,’ she pleads breathlessly in her softly girlish voice. Upstairs in the lard-scented cafe she orders a dodgy sausage sarnie, while portraits of rock royalty stare down at us from the grease-soaked walls.

The former front woman for Skunk Anansie pulls off her beanie. And – she’s perfectly bald again. Gone is the sharp quiff she sported for her 2003 solo debut album, Fleshwounds. Old look, new album: she’s here rehearsing Fake Chemical State, her second solo venture, to be released in March. And she’s just wound up a teaser three-week mini-tour, playing small clubs around the UK.

‘It’s nice playing little gigs,’ she grins. ‘It reminds me of what I love about music, and why I’m doing it. It’s like filling yourself up with good feeling. Intimate gigs fill up your soul – because you can see people; they’re right there.’

Quite a change from Skunk Anansie days – the band that sold four million albums worldwide and clocked up eight hit singles. ‘Yeah, I’m used to doing gigs where people are four metres away, with a line of security in between – festivals, my own gigs in Europe. But with smaller gigs, you can be quite moved. People can see my face, which is very animated. Things come across; I can crack jokes and pull a face, and people will get it because they can see it.’
This recent mini-tour was a truckload of fun, especially for someone who has such performance hunger. ‘I’m very emotive and passionate onstage. I’m a crazy bitch. I just get into it. I didn’t make music to sit in my bedroom and listen back to it – I made music because I wanted to be out there. Every artist wants to be loved and worshipped,’ she muses. ‘And I know how to make people go crazy. That feeling, where that love comes out of you and it goes across the whole audience – and then I get them to laugh.’



And yet the music that Skin has made could never be described as a feel-good lovefest. Blistering, yes, but loved-up?
She furrows her peroxided eyebrows. ‘But people identify with anger. People live in the city; just trying to get around – getting to this interview on time – it’s stressful, man. And we’re not in a soppy time – the 21st century. The 60s were a soppy time; after that, soppiness kinda died.’

There’s an intense restlessness to Skin – she sits on the edge of her seat, constantly shifting. She has a barely contained physical frenzy, as if she’s ready to leap up into a stage dive at any moment. ‘I don’t identify with loving music,’ she says, eyes burning. ‘I identify with music that makes me want to get up and do something, that has passion, positive anger, energy. Silly pop songs which go, “love, love, love” – they’re boring. It’s unrealistic and insincere. I’m sure people have “love” moments, but it’s not a very loving time, is it? Just look at the world and how we’re dealing with each other.’

But hers isn’t all ‘music to smash your bedroom up by’. Lyrically, the sweeping political jingoism of Skunk Anansie days seems to have been replaced by personal concerns, and the bruised, introspective howl of Fleshwounds has given way to joyful defiance in Fake Chemical State.

‘When I was writing Fleshwounds,’ she explains, ‘I shut myself away. It was the fallout from the Skunk Anansie split, and there was someone I was really in love with, and that ended. Doing Fleshwounds really healed me.’
‘This album couldn’t be more opposite. Whereas Fleshwounds was a massive internal haemorrhage, this album’s more like a naughty disco child!’

Skin’s been a good-time girl over the last couple of years while writing Fake Chemical State, and it shows. She spent a lot of time in her homes in Monaco and Ibiza, and there’re definite sun-soaked, hedonistic parts to this album.
‘When I was writing it, I was out all the time, partying, going to gigs, hanging out with friends, having a laugh and shagging. Having fun – which I hadn’t done for a while. I’d recovered from all that was happening when I was making Fleshwounds.

‘The album title reflects my general high when I wrote the songs – the atmosphere around me,’ she grins. ‘I was talking to someone and saying, “It’s like a chemical state – everyone’s off their tits all the time”, and I thought, “That’s actually a good album title”.’

These days, Skin seems assured and confident in her work, ready to claim what she’s reaped from years of hard graft.

‘This is the first album on which I’ve put my name down as producer. I’ve had a lot of control. I did so much work off my own bat,’ she asserts, ‘I just thought, “Great – I’m going to put my name on it”. I’d never done that before because it was worth a lot to other people to get their names credited, and not that important to me. Skunk Anansie had big-time producers, so you weren’t going to get a co-production credit. But I’ve always made sure that I had artistic control.’
There have been a few industry struggles over the years, though. ‘You have to train the people you work with not to just go ahead and do stuff without asking you. It’s hard work – and that’s a positive thing. It’s important to battle for things creatively, to not let things go, especially for someone like me, who’s very different from a lot of other artists out there. People don’t get me, so I’ve had to fight a lot more.’

Occupying a unique position as a black, queer female singer in an electro-metal group, Skin broke new ground, blasting down the walls between musical marketing categories. Industry and press sometimes didn’t quite know what to make of her. She felt this particularly strongly when Skunk Anansie were in America.

‘An executive of one record company went on for ten minutes about how the head of A&R of the R&B and Urban section was the most amazing guy, and how wonderful it would be for us to work with him. And I couldn’t get a word in to say, “We don’t play black urban music; we play rock – which is black music; it’s just not the black music you’re talking about”.’

Skin has an axe to grind with the British black press. ‘I get a lot of coverage in the gay press, the female press – that’s great – but the black press? Not so much, really. I think black people can be our own worst enemies. There’s a lot of internalised racism. A lot of people are so strong about black issues, but if you’re not in the hip-hop scene, you’re seen as a bit of a coconut. I’ve had that before. But it’s not my fucking problem, you know?’ She shrugs and laughs. ‘Get with the programme, guys. Embrace all types of blackness, not just blackness that’s easy to be embraced.’

And yet her credentials should mean she’d be celebrated. She was Brixton-born and raised and fed on a steady diet of reggae, but along the line she branched out and found her own musical path, combining an vast range of influences: ‘My album goes from Zeppelin to White Stripes, from Whitney Houston to the fucking Stooges.’

She’s currently back home at her mum’s in Brixton while she looks for a new house to buy in London. ‘It’s fantastic. Nothing’s changed in my mum’s house. It’s like walking into a time warp. My mum’s even started calling me Deborah again,’ giggles Skin, aka Deborah Ann Dyer. ‘She’s always called me Skin, until this fucking week! I think she still thinks I’m 14. But mum’s great – she’s allowed to call me Deborah.’ She rolls her eyes affectionately. ‘I don’t care what she calls me, as long as it’s something nice.’

Fourteen years old she ain’t – it’s been a fair few years since Skin first blasted her way onto our stages. I ask her age; she’s cagey at first, then tells me she’s 43, lets me look suitably shocked for a couple of beats, breaks into peals of laughter and says, ‘Ha! Had you there. ’Course I’m not 43.’ She sighs, tells me her real age, and gets me to swear it won’t be published.

‘You can say 30-something. Women get judged for their age so much. It’ll be in the front of every article. You say it, and then everybody says it. It’s like, I know how old Madonna is. I don’t know how old David Bowie is, or Mick Jagger. I don’t know how old any of the men artists that I really like are. But I know Kylie’s age.

‘Once women get to a certain age, we’re not supposed to be doing music. I’ve heard people say about the Madonna video, Hung Up: “She’s got two kids, she shouldn’t be in a leotard”, and I say, “Why the fuck not? She looks better than you do”. Why should women’s behaviour be restricted?

‘So, now I have a political stance about not telling people my age. I’m actually very proud of it. I feel great, and I look good for my age – but no, I’m not telling everybody. Women should stop giving away their age. People get obsessed about it.’

Ok, change tack. Does she have a sense of ‘arriving’, after 11 years in the business? ‘It’s interesting, because now,’ she says, a peaceful and more co-operative look smoothing her face, ‘I do feel like I’m standing on solid concrete for the first time in my career. I’ve been standing on a lot of quicksand until now – I never sank, though – but now I understand myself as an artist. I really understood what my role was in Skunk Anansie, but since the band split up five years ago, it wasn’t until the end of 2005 that I felt I had a strong sense of who I was musically – individually. I have my own sound now, and it’s this album.’

The dodgy sausage sarnie has been reduced to a curling crust; Skin is replenished and ready to rehearse. Several bars of one of the album’s catchy riffs ring out from the studio. ‘Gotta go,’ she says, springing up to greet her band. She turns to me and smiles. ‘You know what? I have a really strong feeling that I’ve come to a point where I’ve made the album that I’ve always wanted to make.’