We Would Die 4 U
By Tom Lanham
photo by
Andrew Lipovsky
B
atman had his recessed Batcave.
Superman had his Arctic Fortress of
Solitude. And rocker/actress/artist
Taylor Momsen has her own off-the-map
hideout, an idyllic place in an unspecified
part of New England where she regularly
goes to collect her thoughts, create new
paintings and sculptures, and generally
recharges her creative batteries. And going
off the grid, she’s found, is the only way to
survive the hectic music business she
entered when she first formed her metal
outfit The Pretty Reckless in 2009, at the
height of her five-season, TV-role popularity as Jenny Humphrey on the CW’s hit
show Gossip Girl.
The singer maintains an apartment in
New York City – “A tiny little shithole on
the lower East side,” she sneers. But it’s the
serene existence of her country retreat that
truly grounds her, and it’s where she found
the clarity to dig philosophically deep on
her group’s new third outing, Who You
Selling For. “I like to go there after we’ve
been on a long tour,” she reveals. “Just
because you’re so surrounded by people
on tour that it’s nice to get away. And then
when I feel like I’ve been there for too long
and I get the itch for urban life, I go back to
the city. And they’re not too far away from
each other, so it’s not that bad – I can go
back and forth pretty easily.”
What’s so special about said retreat?
Momsen sighs. “It’s very isolated, and it’s
very far away from people,” she says,
likening its location to something out of an
early Stephen King horror novel -- Salem’s
Lot, or The Shining, perhaps. “It’s very
small, very arty – I have an art desk, a
couch, a bed, a TV, a piano, and a billion
guitars lying around, in the kitchen and in
the bathroom. There’s lots of trees, and I’m
not too far from water – I don’t have a boat,
but a friend of mine does. And I’ll go out
and just sit there. But just sitting in the
middle of the ocean? That would be the
most awesome, because it absolutely, literally would be the middle of nowhere.” She
pauses, quickly shifting into gallows
humor mode. “Until a shark comes. And
then it’s all over.”
On her own, Momsen putters around
with only her dog – a dinky Maltese
named Petal – for company. Not much
wildlife on her property to distract her,
either, although if you drive around a
while, you’ll see chickens, ducks, roosters
here and there, owned by her nearest
neighbors. Who, in fact, aren’t really that
near at all. Which suits her fine. Thanks to
her thespian pursuits, she never had many
friends growing up, and she wholeheartedly believes in the modern truism that
Everyone has an agenda, and it rarely
includes you, so get used to it. “People are
not to be trusted, but animals will love you
until the day they die – they have no agenda,” she says.
There are many watercolors, charcoal
sketches, and sculptures sitting around
this Renaissance woman’s pad, too. But
she refuses to have a gallery show, or to
even let anyone else see them. “It’s the one
artistic thing that is just mine, not for the
world,” she explains. “I do quite a bit of it,
and I would say my art is abstract expressionism, kind of dark, I guess. I don’t want
to describe anything in detail, because,
again, that’s the one thing I have that’s personal. But I wouldn’t say that they have
22 illinoisentertainer.com december 2016
any light tones to them.” She chuckles
wickedly. “Uhh, kind of like our music.
And I’ll start something, and not be sure
about it, and then come back to it later,
And it is kind of like songwriting – it’s just
something that’s therapeutic and keeps my
mind open. And it helps with songwriting
for me, just because it keeps your mind creative, even though it’s just a hobby of
mine.” And no, she adds, she did not do
the charcoal rendering of herself that
adorns the cover of Selling. It’s by a friend
who wishes to remain anonymous, someone w