Alison Mosshart
Born on 23 November 1978 in Vero Beach, Florida, Alison Mosshart attended Vero Beach High School before pursuing a career that would span multiple roles in contemporary music.
A United States citizen, Mosshart works as a singer, singer-songwriter, guitarist, percussionist, and composer. Her work sits across the genres of alternative rock, garage rock, and indie rock, a range that reflects the breadth of her activity as a musician. The fact that she operates fluently across several instruments and compositional roles marks her professional output as unusually varied within those genre spaces.
Mosshart conducts her work in English, and her recorded and performed output draws on the sonic textures associated with garage rock alongside the broader stylistic territory of alternative and indie rock. As a composer, she contributes to the construction of material rather than functioning solely as an interpreter, a distinction that places her creative involvement at multiple stages of music production. Her work as a percussionist, in addition to her better-documented roles as vocalist and guitarist, further extends the range of her practical contributions to the music she makes.
The Library of Congress Name Authority File records her under the authorized label Mosshart, Alison, 1978-, a cataloguing designation that reflects her standing as a documented figure within the landscape of English-language music. That institutional recognition, combined with her active presence across alternative rock, garage rock, and indie rock, places her among the working musicians in those genres whose output has been deemed significant enough to warrant formal bibliographic identification.
Quotes by Alison Mosshart
I've spent my whole life in airports. I don't come home but every two and a half months, which is pretty crazy.
I think we choose gear by the way that it looks. We choose lots of things by the way that it looks. I don't like bands that look like roadies. I don't like when I can't tell who's the guitar tech and who's the guitar player.
Every day, it's a different country, different time zone. If you asked me where home was, I've never felt like I've had that. My idea of comfort is to leave a place. Two weeks is sort of my max.
I love being on stage more than anything, and I think that's what comes across. I think the most honest representation of any music is to play it right there in front of people. It's a moment - it's all one of a kind, every little part of it. There's no repeat.
It's fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it's an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.
Lollapalooza, that was one of my worst shows. We just played at, like, 3 in the afternoon; it was like the hottest, most miserable thing. My shoes were melting. I just thought I was going to die. It was the most horrible experience. I lasted, what, four songs? In front of quite a lot of people. That was one of my least favorites.
I get along great with my family. My parents are really proud of me and my brother, who's a chef here in New York. I don't see my parents often, but they're very supportive, especially as I get older.
I love Tokyo, I've been several times. The first trip was just weird; it was a weird time. It was in the '90s, and it was different then.
When you're recording in the midst of touring, you get a different sense about you. Things are more rocking, darker, heavier and louder. You're thinking about the audience that you're seeing every night.