Bikini Kill on the music industry sexism they battled as they tour Australia for first time in 25 years

Bikini Kill was forced to play in the dark at a Nirvana show in the 90s because of industry sexism but now their feminist punk rock is in the spotlight for a new generation.

Punk pioneers Bikini Kill will tour Australia for the first time in 25 years next month. Picture: Angela Riccardi / Supplied.

When Kathleen Hanna looks at the front row of her Bikini Kill shows, it is almost as if time has frozen and it’s 1996.

The fans are in their teens and 20s – their mums and dads who were part of the ‘90s alt-rock revolution are up the back – just as they were when these pioneers of the Riot Grrrl movement burst onto the scene with their punk feminist anthems.

As the band, with bassist Kathi Wilcox and drummer Tobi Vail, returns to Australia for their first tour since 1997, their songs of cultural resistance, demanding women’s rights and agency, have as much potency and relevancy in 2023 as they did almost three decades ago.

Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. Picture: Supplied.

“It’s so weird because I’m having a different experience with the songs now that abortion is becoming illegal and the right-wing agenda in the United States is going so far in ending the rights of people of colour, trans people, anyone who can get pregnant,” Hanna says.

“Singing the songs is actually, you know, really therapeutic.”

But some things are different now.

Bikini Kill began in 1991 with the band among the underground acts who published fanzines and encouraged women to the front of their gigs with Hanna often jumping into the crowd to personally deal with male hecklers.

They were peers and friends of Nirvana, with Hanna inspiring the title of Smells Like Teen Spirit having scrawled the phrase on the wall of Kurt Cobain’s apartment.

She wrote it as a joke as Vail, who was dating the Nirvana frontman at the time, liked the Teen Spirit deodorant.

Bikini Kill ushered in the riot grrrl movement in the early 90s. Picture: Bikini Kill

Back then, they not only stared down the discrimination of male rock fans who paid money just to go to their gigs to abuse them but sabotage from men who controlled the rock industry.

When they opened for Nirvana at the legendary Paramount Theatre show in 1991, Bikini Kill performed in darkness as the crew wouldn’t give them any lighting.

“That’s actually kind of a funny memory because we were so excited. We were playing the Paramount! And then we get out there and I was like ‘I can’t see anything. Oh, and no one can see us’. So that happened. Hopefully we’ll get to play there again at some point and it’ll be like the first time,” she says.

Hanna has fond, and hilarious, memories of touring Australia, featuring with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Beck, Foo Fighters and Pavement at the Summersault festival in 1995, which promoter Stephen “Pav” Pavlovic had devised to rival the nascent Big Day Out.

Polaroids taken by Bikini Kill when they were crashing at the promoter’s home during the festival tour feature in the Unpopular exhibition documenting the ’90s alternative music scene at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.

“In the polaroids, we’re all wearing this Speedo. And it was Pav’s. He left us alone in his apartment for three days and he’s like ‘Just don’t go through my clothes, don’t wear any of my clothes!’,” she recalls, laughing.

“And so the first thing we did was got his Speedos and we all wore it and took those pictures of us doing exactly what he said don’t do.

“Then we left them like on his bed and we totally forgot about it. And then he calls and says ‘Hey, I have these photos of you. Can I put them in this show?’”

Bikini Kill reunited in 2019 and while their tour plans were interrupted by the pandemic, they are going full steam in 2023.

While those who had a problem with an all-female punk band in the 1990s sought to diminish their incendiary songs and performances as the art of “angry women”, the new fans they have drawn in the 2020s appreciate both the music’s energy and message.

Bikini Kill Kathleen Hanna stills calls for “girls to the front”. Picture: Dean Liem / Supplied.

“Like, would they rather we sing about bad boyfriends until I die? More than even singing the lyrics, dancing while singing those lyrics is like shaking the evil out of me and it feels awesome to be with like-minded people who are not throwing stuff at us and threatening us. Instead, they’re like right there with what we’re saying,” she says.

“And back then a lot of people didn’t get the humour. I wasn’t really allowed to be that funny on stage because people were screaming the whole time for me to shut up. And now that I’m able to get my jokes and my punchlines out, people are starting to appreciate the comedy of it all.”

As Bikini Kill return to Australia, so do many of the heroes of the ’90s alt-rock scene with Mudhoney and Pavement among those touring in March and April.

It’s also perhaps a sign of the times that Bikini Kill, who inhabited our darkest beer barns and clubs back in the ’90s, return to play illustrious events and venues including Mona Foma, Golden Plains, the Forum in Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House.

“I know the Sydney Opera House from postcards … it just always seemed very fancy and like I would never play there because I’m in a punk band,” Hanna says.

“You’re going to have a punk band at the Opera House? That sounds weird … and great.”

For all Bikini Kill tickets, bikinikill.com/tour

Originally published as Bikini Kill on the music industry sexism they battled as they tour Australia for first time in 25 years