It’s around 5 p.m. on the Clarkston, Mich., stop of the tour, and the dude-heavy audience flocks to Kittie like moths to a pretty purple bug zapper. Tattooed Godsmack fans and longhaired Ozzy worshipers squeeze into the small area around the second stage as singer Morgan Lander greets them with a Kittie hello: “Ready, motherf—–s?!” She unleashes a primal roar while her sister, drummer Mercedes Lander, kicks in a gut-pummeling beat. Talena Atfield’s eyes roll back into her head as she hits the first bass notes, while thick reverb from guitarist Fallon Bowman riles the mainly male audience into a moshing frenzy. Fans fling themselves at the stage while, in back, casual listeners step over a passed-out female to get a closer look at Kittie. The band (the girls won’t disclose their ages but probably average out at around 17) plays the allotted 20 minutes, spits water all over the audience, then leaves them with a short, sweet “See ya, motherf—–s.” These are the only words of the set that are intelligible, but it doesn’t matter: fans know that Kittie sings about the confusing emotional stuff–major identity crises, battles with inner ugliness–that most other Ozzfest bands can’t even begin to express with such gusto.
‘Kittie, I Love You!’ The band head for the bus, looking like Japanese cartoon characters in their chunky moonboots, baby T’s, spiky hair and black nail polish. “Kittie, I love you!” yells a starry-eyed fan, and they acknowledge his adoration by flashing the horns of the Devil (make a fist, then raise your forefinger and pinkie in the air). That gets a big cheer–Satan’s always a crowd pleaser. On the bus, they relive the show, bragging about how they kicked two girls off the stage for baring their breasts to the crowd. “I told her to get offstage and take her STDs with her,” sneers Talena through black lipstick. “You rock,” says Morgan, high-fiving her bandmate, their silver rings and leather-studded bracelets slapping together in metal solidarity. Kittie have enough moxie to stomp on the shirt-lifting metal tradition and still rock the house, but they shun any notion that they’re on a mission to empower. “We are people,” Morgan insists, “not girls in a band.” It’s a mind-set that gets them through, for now.
It’s 30 minutes until a meet-and-greet session with the fans. Talena sits back with some Pokemon cereal, eating it out of the box, Pikachu by Pikachu. Fallon watches “American Beauty” on the TV mounted above the bus’s lounge area. She zeros in on Mena Suvari’s character, a blond high-school babe. “She reminds me of those stuck-up girls at school–you know, the ones who said, ‘Don’t lean on my locker or you’ll get grease stains on it’.” The girls feel their outcast status united them back in 1996, when they were “the only nonconservatives in town,” liked bands like Silverchair and decided to play Slayer songs in their parents’ basements.
At the autograph-signing session, Kittie are clearly the most popular gals around. Manager Dave Lander (a.k.a. Morgan and Mercedes’s dad) watches proudly as the girls sign CDs, fliers, stomachs, packets of condoms, whatever. “I feel good about being here with them,” says the middle-aged dad in his unhip, cop-style sunglasses. “At least I know my daughters aren’t out with some creep.” As a boy with bleached dreads, a plastic marijuana-leaf necklace and multiple face piercings asks Morgan for a hug, the second half of the Kittie management team, Dee Lander (a.k.a. Mom), chats with Talena’s mother and younger brother in a thick Canadian accent. Talena’s mom: “So I hear Morgan misses her cat?” Lander’s mom: “Oh, yeah, she sure does.” The Kittie shows are family affairs, even if the girls are onstage shouting lines like “Do you think I’m a whore?” “I remember when my parents were there and I would think, Oh God, I can’t swear,” says Fallon. “Then it would just come out, and it would be like, oh no! Now I don’t care. I cuss like a sailor.”
Mayhem in the Mud As they ship out for the next Ozzfest date, in Virginia, Morgan complains on the bus that her throat hurts from yesterday’s “hotel air conditioning.” (Bellowing louder than Satan a few hours ago doesn’t count?) Bus banter will include everything from their respective eyebrow shapes–“I pluck mine till there’s nothing left”–to discussions of drummer Mercedes’s muscle strength: “She could crush some small boy’s head with her arm, like it was a nut or something.” There will also be belching contests, a favorite pastime in the Kittie camp, and talk of just which band was likely “doing” the Jgermeister promotional girls on the last tour stop. Then they’ll sleep until 3 p.m., and it’ll be time to rock again.
By 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon, it’s pouring rain and muddy at the Nissan Pavilion in Manassas, Va. “Everyone, take your shoes off before you get in this bus,” orders Mom Lander, and the girls oblige by piling their boots and Adidas on the carpeted steps. A roadie in a Hustler T shirt almost drags muck across the shag carpet before receiving the Mom warning: “Out!”
A Fender guitar representative at least waits outside while he asks Fallon, through the bus door, if she’d want a guitar in exchange for sponsorship. Dee stops the conversation short, informing the girls that they have to check with management (a.k.a. Dad) first. Morgan, commander of mosh pits, revolts, knowing her friend and bandmate could use yet another guitar. “Mother, why make it so hard to get a free guitar!” Morgan heads for the bathroom in an eye-rolling huff. Fallon hightails it for the back of the bus. Two doors slam in unison. Kittie’s pissed. But the tension will be stored for a greater purpose–in a half hour the band will lock arms in the back of the bus and perform their secret preshow ritual (“You know, like Madonna does”). The bus rocks; there are muffled screams. While Madonna actually prays, Kittie’s ceremony sounds like an animal mauling its prey.
Love Is Like a Kick in the Head A short tromp through mud, a few high-fives with fans, and here we go again: “Are you ready, motherf—–s?” Morgan screams to a soaked crowd. Dee grimaces ever so slightly at the back of the stage. The band launches into “Raven,” and the mayhem begins. Clothing gets tossed about, then bodies. A guy stands, smitten, at the front of the stage, gazing lovingly at Fallon as she chants backing vocals like “Stay the f— away from me!” Intoxicated, he hardly notices he’s being kicked in the head every 10 seconds by the next incoming body. There are very few female fans here, about one to every 10 men. They look to Kittie as the one band at Ozzfest they can crowd-surf to and not get their shirts ripped off. It’s a little progress in a wash of backward movement.
A different kind of adoration will be displayed an hour later in the Ozzfest mess hall–a place where bands gather to eat slabs of rare roast beef and drink diet sodas to their hearts’ content. Big, burly men give Kittie sisterly hugs and pats on the head as they wait in line for their chunks of meat. But when asked just which bands all these “dudes” belong to, Fallon shrugs. “It’s hard to tell them apart,” she says. “I mean, they all look alike. They all know our names, though, which makes me feel bad. But we’re the most easily recognizable people on this tour, which makes it hard for us to go around and do what we want to do, like shopping at booths and stuff.”
But there’s no time for browsing through booths of tie-dyed shirts, nose rings and press-on tattoos. It’s time to hit the road for the next Ozzfest stop, in Pennsylvania. There are videos to watch, PlayStation games to play, belches to top and cereal to crunch straight out of the box. Oh yeah, and then there’s that thing called sleep. A Kittie’s work is never done.
