“Be as punk as possible and do things for free because it makes you happy”: In the studio with Rose McGowan and Kid Bookie

On the south side of the River Thames, not far from The O2, there’s a studio tucked away from the rest of the world. Small and unassuming, it's practically the opposite to Kid Bookie who welcomes us inside, where we find woman of the hour Rose McGowan perched on a cream leather sofa, her dog Perlita yapping by way of a greeting.

A vocal booth about the size of a festival toilet at the top of the stairs leads into a small studio lit by purple LEDs, barely wide enough for two people to stand next to each other. And it's in here we spend the afternoon, witnessing Bookie's songwriting process unfold with Rose McGowan, ahead of the former's new album, Cheaper Than Therapy Vol. 2.

Despite the intense workload, it's a relaxed, almost-casual atmosphere inside the studio, with laughs ringing out every minute or two. Watching the pair work, their connection is palpable, with every decision being met with enthusiasm from the other party, and the quiet comfort between the two, like that of decade-old friends, is only matched by the cheekiness in each other’s grins as they reel off another pun.

Spending as much time together as apart, Rose’s understated grace shines through as she sits deep in thought writing lyrics, while Bookie’s rock roots are on full display as he workshops guitar parts. And as Rose rattles through vocal takes with more ideas coming thick and fast, the duo's individual experiences and unique perspectives on this game really come to the fore.

As they finish up Rose’s lyrics, we sit down with the pair to find out how all this happened...

How has writing and recording a song named Rose McGowan, with Rose McGowan, been for you?
Kid Bookie: “She’s a major antagonist - an antithesis, a rebellion. I'm glad she actually accepted to come down to record, because you ain't gonna find her speaking in many other places. You know, her story is so important, and to be able to have a part of her story on an mp3 that will last forever... I don't even know what the moment is, but, creating a moment of this magnitude, it's cool. She's walking around like she knows this studio already, because that's what you'll get here, and that's the beauty of these types of collaborations.”

Was it always the plan to name the song after you?
Rose McGowan: “I had no idea what the track was called. It wasn't until last week, actually, that I knew the track was my name, so that was a bit of a shock! But I mean, you could either work through a bizarre life and a bizarre kind of war and through years of therapy, or you could just do a kickass song!”

How did today’s collaboration come to be?
Bookie: “Sometimes I don’t even know how this has happened. I reached out to Rose one day, just messaged her, and suddenly we’re speaking? And she don’t respond to messages! But she said, ‘There’s something about you’.
Rose: “It's interesting, because I have been very incommunicado with the world for quite a few years now. I took myself to a remote jungle area and just didn't want to talk anymore. I just wanted to listen to the trees and absorb a different reality, a real reality I suppose. And he caught my attention. I get a lot of messages from a lot of people, and I do appreciate them. But for some reason, it just clicked. It's like he's lured me out of my turtle shell, so to speak.”

Why did you feel that doing this was necessary for you?
Bookie: “I think it's important to make moments in music history, because we might not be able to get another chance to do shit. I'm an artist that, if I were another artist that was bigger, I would have made a song with Chester. I would have made a song with Chris Cornell. I would have made a song with everyone I could, because music needs moments, and history needs to be made.”
Rose: “Honestly, I went through a major health crisis about three years ago, where I had to learn how to speak again, I had to learn how to walk again, and I lost half my body weight. I did it privately, it was very, very hard, and I wasn’t sure if I'd be able to write lyrics anymore. I wasn’t sure, kind of until today. I couldn't even do it the past few days, the past few weeks, nothing was coming to me, and I was getting stressed by that. But, you know, it worked out. When you have to put yourself back together again after breaking apart, you don't know how you're gonna come back together. It's pretty cool.”

What have you learned from this experience of working together?
Bookie: “I learned that it feels good to know that, no matter what people think of me and where I stand in my music industry, that I can pull weapons out the bag, nukes, where all you fuckers doubt me but you know that you cannot fuck with me in any capacity, because we aren’t the same. And this isn't about ego, and this isn't about thinking I'm better than anyone. But I know that you can all see what I do in this little realm here, and I'm gonna keep doing it. That's what I've learned.”
Rose: “I’ve found that the most radical form of fighting is, after a long and hard fight to get out of what I call the Hollywood cult, that it was really incredibly important for me, for everybody, to get rid of any resentment that we have, to get rid of that poison that we've onboarded, and to transmute it into a – this sounds super hippy for Kerrang!, I'm sorry – a heart-based loving energy. It’s the ultimate fuck you, to not be bitter, to not be cold, to not be a stone, to literally just say, ‘I'm gonna shine that fucking light, whether you like it or not.’”

Have you found something that connects you both, whilst you’ve been engaging as artists?
Kid Bookie: “When we talk, we agree with everything, and a lot of the thoughts we said already are things we both already share. I think a lot of people I spend my time with have similar traits, and I choose who I spend my time with. It's not about like, ‘Oh, you're not like me, so I don't want to be around you’, but at this point in your life, you need to sharpen your steel with steel, you can't sharpen it against a jagged rock that's breaking everything – you're breaking your knife, you know. So, it's just nice, like, from the minute we met each other that’s what it was like.”
Rose McGowan: “Hell yeah, and it's just that kind of essence of, you know, get your foot off our necks and we're gonna sing, we're not gonna kiss the boot, we're not licking anything. We're not made for that. Some people do it pretty well, and they seem to get rewarded for it. But that kind of reward has never been my value system, or what feels good and what feels like comfort and reward and safety and an idea of what power is.”

Is this a deliberately punk, political track, or just a product of the state of the world?
Kid Bookie: “It’s kind of both. I've never put myself forward as a political artist. I might make political statements, and sometimes the way I act and move carries a sense of punk and political nature. But I guess I've never tried to pander to a community for them to accept me, I more just do what I think the earth needs to do to kind of raise awareness for certain things.”
Rose McGowan: “Yeah, like the world's gone through a fuck ton of trauma, pretty consistently for the past few years. And I think right now, the power move is to stitch together the little joys and be as punk as possible, and do things for free because it makes you fucking happy, you know? Make that your job, instead of what's paying you!”

Stay tuned to Kerrang! for all the latest on Cheaper Than Therapy Vol. 2 and when new track Rose McGowan drops.

Read this next:

• Kid Bookie: The 10 songs that changed my life
• Kid Bookie: “I’m challenging the status quo by prodding and making people think. This is the place to practise rebellion and influence change”
  
• Kid Bookie: “I don’t care if you buy it because I never came to sell anything”