SSHH Hash Out Their ISSUES

Zak Starkey and Sshh Liguz are the perfect couple. And I don’t mean that in a creepy, jealous, Emily Blunt-in-Girl On the Train sort of way. What makes Liguz and Starkey so appealing is how they lovingly pat each other on the knee or give the other a back rub a split second after bickering about something silly. Or the way Starkey, who is the son of Ringo Starr and has played percussion for major acts like Oasis and The Who, keeps touching Liguz’s shoulder, which is sore from a round of shots. (She’s still recovering from a case of whiplash when we meet in New York on a chilly day in October.) Or how Starkey tends to impulsively jump in while Liguz is mid-thought, which finds them literally finishing each other’s sentences.
It makes sense that they’d have an old married-couple rapport—Starkey and Liguz (who are actually engaged) have been together, romantically and musically, for 10 years. After meeting at an MC5 concert in London, the pair traded contact information and eventually playlists, bonding over songs like Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache.” After a few name changes, they were performing together under the name Pengu!ns. “When we’d do a live show, we’d get these quite terrifying, actually, plastic penguin heads,” Liguz describes. “I’d put it on and become this evil character and try and kill Zak. It was quite rough and chaotic. We would literally have a fight onstage. We’d do a tune and there’d be a storyline to it and I’d put a penguin head on and become the devil, basically.”
Eventually, though, they changed their name to SSHH. “I always wanted to be called that,” says Starkey. “I always thought it was a great name. I wanted it to be about her.”
“…Which is really not like me at all,” argues Liguz. “Because I’m called ‘Sshh’ [pronounced “Shush”], I didn’t want people to assume it was a solo project.”
Though they have minimal original music released under the glam-punk moniker (Starkey and Liguz have recorded at least three albums’ worth of material but are currently sorting out some label difficulties), the duo are about to release an all-covers charity album with the proceeds going to Roger Daltrey’s Teen Cancer Trust. Titled ISSUES (“Because everyone’s got ‘em,” according to Liguz), the record arrives on November 11 and features 10 tracks by bands who’ve influenced Starkey and his partner: Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” The Sex Pistols’ “Problems,” The Big Pink’s “Dominos,” and Bob Marley’s iconic call to action “Get Up, Stand Up,” among others.
Even more authentic, SSHH rallied a number of members from the bands themselves to play on ISSUES: Blondie drummer Clem Burke, The Sex Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock, Primal Scream’s drummer Darrin Mooney and bassist Simone Butler, Marilyn Manson’s drummer Gil Sharone and bassist Twiggy Ramirez, The Big Pink frontman Robbie Furze, drummer Santa Davis of Bob Marley & The Wailers and even Pearl Jam leader Eddie Vedder. When they perform material from the record on Friday, November 4 in Los Angeles, they’ll have Davis, bassist Fully Fullwood and guitarist Tony Chin with them onstage.