By nature of having been born in LA, raised in New York, and now living primarily in LA, singer/songwriter/guitarist/imminent rock star Hannah Hughes was inevitably going to be a bit of a walking contradiction. The byproduct of two coasts and two cultures, it only makes sense that Hughes’ diverse musical influences range from Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Lady Gaga to Devo, Stone Temple Pilots, and Jack White, who she credits with unleashing her inner guitarist at 13. Or that Hughes is equally at home rocking out on guitar at the Viper Room and in dive bars or hosting LA pool parties for the Hollywood type at upper echelon hotels.
Of living in multiple worlds, Hughes says, “I do really enjoy that aspect of my life. And I really appreciate that. And having fun is so important. But mainly, everything I do, I try to utilize it in my favor with music in mind and sharing that with other people in mind always. To be a great writer, you’ve got to live life. What the hell are you going to write about if you’re not living and meeting people and having fun and experiencing your life? But I definitely think sometimes going out with a lot of people can make you feel more alone, and I think that can inspire other parts of you. Maybe in a world of people at a party with so many grand, beautifully dressed, gorgeous people, I feel like my own being, and I want to write something about this. But I think also sometimes it’s the best thing. And sometimes you meet amazing people, and you feed off that energy. It really just depends.”
But if there’s one thing that best explains the fascinating dichotomy that is Hughes, you can, as is so often the case, blame the parents (joking, of course). But as Hughes talks about “The End” being her favorite Doors song, she recounts a story from her childhood.
“It’s definitely one of my favorite songs of all time. When I was little, my dad would put on Apocalypse Now. And I would hear it when I was little,” she says. “I think it gave me a lasting imprint, it’s just so dark and so beautiful. And I think the dichotomy of it being dark but sounding so beautiful. I just love it. I love that Robbie Krieger is the lead guitarist in the beginning. I learned it. I probably should play it live.”
When your childhood is memories of Apocalypse Now and The Doors as opposed to say Pixar, you might as well get dark and beautiful tattooed on your forehead as a motto. Sure, Apocalypse Now and “The End” might be unconventional childhood memories, but they are very happy ones for Hughes. And time with her dad listening to The Doors is hugely influential for Hughes.
Speaking of her earliest musical memory in honor of her superb new bluesy, torchy single, “Memory,” she says, “I think it’s riding around in the car with my dad and he would play The Doors and he would play ‘L.A. Woman’ and ‘Light My Fire.’ I must have been like three or four at that point.”
It was her dad and his impact that brought her, well technically back to LA, she points out she only lived here a year as a child, so she doesn’t consider it a return.
“My dad’s from here, and all of my dad’s family is from LA and Orange County. And it’s just always something that was in my life. I think that had an influence. My dad had an influence on me on that. And the music scene here is something I grew up hearing about. So, I was like, ‘Let me come to California.’”
Every artist, like superheroes, has their own origin story. Although, funny enough, I interviewed Scott Weiland for a Doors book, who Hughes calls one of her absolute biggest inspirations, who had almost the exact same tale about listening to The Doors with his dad. Random coincidence or cosmic artistic connection?
Whatever you believe, there is no doubt that Hughes shares one very common trait with her artistic brethren over the decades. Music is her language to communicate with people. Like every artist, it stems from youth. Look at Hughes, you see the total package – a cool rock star invited to host pool parties for obvious reasons. But, as Chris Cornell, the prototype for the modern rock star – a guy who looked and sang like a Greek god – once pointed out, the best front people, the actual rock stars, always came from the outcasts, never the cool kids.
Soon to be rock goddess Hughes definitely identifies, which is why she relates so strongly to music.
“I always like to think of [Almost Famous], ‘If you don’t have any friends, you can come home to your records, and you have all these friends I.’ I always related to that because it felt like music is your only friend. In ‘The End,’ Jim Morrison said that, best, it’s true, and I think the way that music makes you feel understood, I think that’s really why I’m inspired to bring that to the world and to people. I just want to pay it forward, do what music did for me,” she says.
At the end of the day, she finds that as the message throughout her songs, especially her upcoming album. “It really dives into the many complexities of the human consciousness and being a person and coming to terms with yourself, and it’s my way of doing that, songwriting, making music to understand myself better and hopefully allow people to be united and feel like they can understand themselves better,” she says. “I think the steady message is I love to make people feel understood; I believe my music brings people together.”
