The musician who made Este Haim pick up a bass guitar: “She’s the reason”
When you look at the modern rock landscape, few bands come as close to reviving the electricity of old-school rock ‘n’ roll as Haim.
Since the release of their debut EP, Forever, Haim have carried themselves with such a self-assured confidence that it’s easy to imagine them slipping into any other legendary rock outfit of the 1970s.
After all, there’s a reason why Stevie Nicks once said they could have been in Fleetwood Mac, and it all links back to their in-built intuition about what makes a good, solid rock tune resonate in the modern age. As Alana Haim once said, “We put out music we like to listen to, so if we’re liking what we hear in the studio, it’ll be released; if not, it goes in the trash.”
That said, rising to the top as an all-female team was certainly no easy feat. Even in the current landscape, it’s no secret that women have to work twice as hard as their male counterparts for a fraction of the recognition and success, often finding themselves having to prove their worth in more ways than one while navigating the industry’s longstanding built-in culture of misogyny.
The band have incorporated many of these challenges into their work, with songs and lyrics that often address some of the worst sides of the industry. In recent years, there have been memes and online discourse about Este Haim’s supposed ‘Bass Face’ and her facial expressions while she’s performing live. Este has faced countless offensive remarks about said expressions in recent times, though the worst of which appear as poorly concealed insults about her not caring what she looks like on stage.
“That’s like a veiled way of saying you’re ugly or something,” she told NME. “They wouldn’t say it to a dude who’s feeling the music when he’s playing.”
On Women In Music Pt II, the song ‘Man From the Magazine’ addresses some of these industry nuisances, specifically an incident in which a journalist asked her if she “makes the same faces in bed”. Elsewhere, Este explained once again that how she appears on stage is a “reaction from feeling the music”, the same as what male bassists do on stage, but without the annoying criticisms that follow.
However, as annoying as it can be, none of this ever actually stops Este from performing to her heart’s content and getting lost in the music the same way many of her idols did. Growing up, her dad made her watch Talking Heads’ iconic live film Stop Making Sense, and the way Tina Weymouth made playing the guitar seem like the coolest and most fun thing ever made the Haim sister realise that there was nothing else that she wanted to do more.
“Tina makes playing the bass look like the most fun ever, which is why I was drawn to it in the first place,” Este prefaced in Interview just before interviewing Weymouth herself. On how Weymouth continues to inspire her and allow her to let go, despite industry parasites, she added, “She’s the reason I give myself permission to really put my whole body into my playing. I had never seen a female bass player until seeing Tina on the small screen when I was eight years old.”
The pair also bonded over what it’s like being a woman in music, with Este explaining the title behind their record Women in Music Pt. II, and Weymouth addressing a longstanding issue about how women are expected to show up in the industry – beautiful, and there to exist as a spectacle, without much consideration for their excellence as musicians.
Concluding the train of thought, Este then shared the one perspective that trumps all, saying, “We play music and don’t necessarily know if it has anything to do with our body parts. I love playing music. That’s the beginning and end of it.”
