The Donnas have battled this clichéd bullshit on their road to fame, with people finding it difficult to reconcile their raw party-rock with their disarmingly warm and, well, non-male personas. It seems that Angus Young can drink milk and paint watercolours and rock, but women are backed into the pink corner labeled ‘stereotype’; it’s either Sandra Dee or Rizzo for the ladies of rock, but never that mysterious middle area that real women exist in. In 1972, eerily prescient rock critic Lester Bangs imagined “an all-woman rock’n’roll band that [would] create the kind of loud, savage, mesmerizing music that challenges men on their own grounds”. Bangs could have been thinking about The Donnas. What he didn’t predict was just how confronting the combination of ‘woman’ and ‘rock’ would actually be.

When The Donnas first hit the scene, both record companies and press found a selling point in the band’s all-female line up, and they were quick to bandy about phrases like ‘the-all-girl-Ramones!’ with breathless hyperbole. However, after the initial excitement wore off, the band found themselves labelled as a ‘girl band’, relegated to novelty and curiosity factor – despite their obvious talents and the fact that they rocked just as hard as many of the tired cock rock outfits that were gobbling the limelight. Has it been hard to fight categorisation whilst simultaneously trying to hang on to what makes The Donnas special? Drummer Torry Castellano is aware of the difficulties. “We’re happy to be girls in a band, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way. And I do think that it makes you stand out, people give you more attention because of it. But I think that a lot of the time, it can be a negative attention that guy bands might not really have to deal with – ever”. But at the same time, you don’t want to deny who you are as a female. “Totally”, Castellano says categorically, before deadpanning, “Yeah, you don’t have to dress up like a man.”

Rock’s double standard becomes glaringly apparent when The Donnas are criticized for their lyric content, arguments that usually take the form of ‘The Donnas are singing about drinking/shagging/breaking curfew [etc] again’ – when it’s the very subject matter that has formed the basis of male-created rock music for over fifty years. ‘Rock Around The Clock’, anyone? Does this become monotonous to deal with day in day out? “Totally! Totally, and when we have to do photo-shoots for example, we get asked to do things that you just know a guy band is never going to get asked to do. Put on lip-gloss, be in our bras… you don’t want to get all angry, all of the time, but after a while it’s just… come on! You can think of something better to do in the picture, you know?”

Castellano has found that interviews are no safe-haven, either, and that journalists will overlook asking about her sticks brand or drum set-up [she uses a custom-made Timbali cowbell, F.Y.I, and her hair metal idol is “definitely Tommy Lee”] in favour of inane chatter about which mascara doesn’t run under stage-lights. “I mean, obviously we do like products, and we love shopping at drugstores and whatever – we’re into that stuff”, she laughs, exasperated, “but at the same time when that’s all you’re talking about and it’s not balanced at all, it kinda feels like ‘why are you putting so much emphasis on that over the music?’ – because that’s really the most important thing to us”.

Whilst being an all-female band has certainly opened doors for The Donnas, they have found just as many slammed in their faces. There have been times where their very uniqueness has been their downfall. “We have been pretty lucky and they [listeners] have been pretty receptive, but we have definitely had problems”, she says. “I think it sort of goes up and down in waves, where females in bands are more accepted, and then you’ll go through a couple of years where there won’t even be girls on rock radio at all. When we were about to put our record out, we were definitely told [adopts deep, male big-business voice] you know, they don’t really play girls on rock radio - at least in The States – and we’re going to do our best to get you on there, but it’s gonna be an uphill battle.”
Like, whatever, dude.

And in an age of quick-fix pop groups and turbo rock burnout, it’s to their credit that The Donnas have made it to the ten-year mark, let alone speeding across the line with flying colours. Did they ever dream that this would be how their lives would turn out? “No! I don’t think we’ve ever been a band that really looks too far into the future – so even when I say ‘it’s been ten years’, it doesn’t feel like it!” Castellano namechecks the band’s first ‘real’ tour as her personal ‘rock dreams’ epiphany. “I think being in a band was always something that was one of the funnest things I’d ever done, and when we dropped out of college to go on tour, I kinda knew. When we were playing cities that were really far away from where we lived and people knew who we were and were excited… I kinda thought, ‘maybe we’re gonna do this for a while!’”

So what’s The Donnas’ secret to a happy band? “Personally, I know that there are bands out there that just found each other through want ads, and that it’s just the music and they don’t really hang out. And I know that works for them, but for me personally, I really don’t see how you could do it any other way [than with friends]. Because there’s so much downtime, if you don’t have your friends there to make you laugh and make it fun, I don’t really see how you can enjoy it”. It’s obvious in their delighted abandon onstage, or in their casual intimacy with each other, that The Donnas are the bestest of friends, a glorious illustration of the sisterhood at it’s strongest.

“I definitely think that that’s why we’ve stayed together for this long, because we just love each other, you know?”

We know.