When I go to interview Kim Deal in London back in February, I’m told that the other journalists she’s met that day have been having their pictures taken with her. But this is a woman who weathered the Pixies through two life spans and has nurtured the Breeders through countless incarnations and bust-ups. She’s Kim Deal. It makes sense that even the most cynical are impressed.

Despite the old adage that you should never meet your idols, Kim is friendly and warm, funny and open. She talks about the Pixies (oddly, she never mentions Frank Black by name, only ever referring to him as “he”), about how she hates having to work hard in the Breeders, about being perceived as stupid, about the internet as a “monster”, about bedroom musicians, about moving back to her parents, about being a twin and, most importantly, about how good non-alcoholic beer tastes.

In fact, she talks about so much that we’re splitting this interview in half. Come back on Thursday for part two. Until then, here's Kim Deal, in her own words...

“I never wanted to sing in the Pixies”

”I didn’t know if this was because I was a chick or if it was because people liked my voice, but it seemed like people were constantly trying to say, in the Pixies, “Come on, let Kim sing one…” Like he’s the big bad guy who won’t let me sing. It’s so mind-bogglingly weird. We have an act. We rehearse it down to the details. I wouldn’t sing that way! First of all, it’s in the wrong key for me. Second of all, the song is made from him, so it makes sense for him to sing it. For me to sing “Here comes your man…”, not only do I not want to sing it, but I’m not gonna sing it good. We rehearse for a long time, and we practise a lot and we all know what we’re doing.”

“Female-fronted rock bands suck”

”I didn’t want to be in a female-fronted rock band. They suck. Come on, they do! Chrissie Hynde is good, because she’s a player. Debbie Harry – good, but she wasn’t a player. There are a lot of good girl pop people, but they’re not players. And I like playing. I prefer playing over being frontperson, any time of day. I’d rather play drums than have to sing.

”I know I sing in the Breeders, but everything’s going to be different about it. I’m not more passionate about it because I was passionate about the Pixies too. But I’m actually kind of put out that I have to sing on this one. I’m so put out by it. It is harder, it is. The bass isn’t an instrument that you have to change up, but I play an acoustic and an electric in the Breeders, so there’s just more to do.

”That’s why the Pixies is so great. When we got back together it was like, ahh, I don’t have to sing. It’s more fun. It takes a lot of work to sing live. He did a really good job. He watered up his voice every night and his voice sounded really good, and he didn’t do that before. But he did it last time and I thought it really helped. I thought it sounded even better than the Pixies days. I really liked that. “

“If I’d drunk half as much when I was younger, I’d still have been drunk all the time”

”If I were to go back and give my younger self advice, I’d say, don’t drink so much. Like, OK, I can drink, but maybe have a couple of beers, and then stop. I don’t have to be drunk all day. I quit for a year when I was 28. I noticed that my voice was giving out and I wasn’t smoking, and I thought, this isn’t going to help. And then I quit for good five years ago.

”It’s not difficult to stay sober in a rock band. I thought it would be, but lawyers have lawyer lunches and dinners and drink all the time, and also, publicists and stuff – pretty much every day can be charted into a drinking activity. Even mothers will say that they have this ritual so it’s hard for them to stop.

”I really had a problem with injuries. I have a shoulder one that I did drunk, and it’s really weak. It doesn’t hurt right now but sometimes it does. And then my ankle, one of those things where you land on it bad because you’re drunk. I’m going through one of those phases where I really, really hate that I did that.

”You know, it’s easy to go out sober but it’s hard to be entertained. I start to expect a little more conversation out of people. Christ. I can totally go with somebody to a bar. I love non-alcohol beer. It tastes good. My sister served me an alcoholic beer accidentally, and I hadn’t had one for five years. I had a little and it tasted exactly the same. But at the very end, it tasted just like rubbing alcohol. And that’s when I said, “Oh, this is real!” The alcohol tasted nasty to me.

”So anyway, I’ll go to a bar with a non-alcoholic beer, sit down, talk to my friends and it all happens slowly but around an hour and 15 minutes into it – it always happens at the same time – they start to get louder, and laugh easier over something they wouldn’t think was funny normally, then they say the same story over, and they say it louder. And I just think, I don’t want to see this. I’m outtie!”

”I’m more relaxed than I used to be”

”Our new album [Mountain Battles] is more relaxed than Title TK, but anything is more relaxed than Title TK. Haaa. It nearly killed me. I did three tracks with Steve Albini in 99, but after that I had such a hard time finding players… digital recording spread through New York City like a bad crack problem. Nobody would actually record analogue. Drummers wouldn’t practise because they were in their bedroom on computers with their own band. Like they’re Sims and they’ve finally got this Sims band and they can create virtual posters for their fake band… there were no players any more.

”And then I found the backing band for this old hardcore band called Fear. These guys followed me back to the studio I was at and we played all night long, and I said, where do you guys live? And they said, east LA, so I said, OK, I’ll move there. And I did, I swear to God. That was in 2001. And then in 2003 I moved back to Dayton, Ohio, because my mother has Alzheimer’s. So I live with my mom and dad! You should come over and listen to records, it’s really cool…

”It’s fine, it’s nice. My mom’s doing OK. She still knows who I am, though she really repeats the stories nowadays. It’s just me and my dad, no nurse yet. I have my bedroom! But it’s not the same bedroom I had in high school. They have a different house now. Thank God! That would be so weird.“