Breeders member Kelly Deal says that The Last Hard Men, a group consisting of Deal, Skid Row's Sebastian Bach, the Frog's Jimmy Flemion, and ex-Smashing Pumkin's drummer Chamberlin, are in fact more than just a weird rock 'n' roll rumor.

"If you've read any of my interviews lately, I talk about Sebastian a lot," Deal said, adding that she's not sure herself why that is. That's all well and good, but just how the hell did you four get together we wondered? I mean, here they were making fun of these bands, but what were the interviewers wearing? Grunge flannel? Baggy pants? I was bothered that Spin made fun of style because everything is style, and it was done in a really mean way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge metal fan either. I mean I like Sabbath, but glam metal was so pussy. It just didn't seem fair." So, basically, incensed, Deal, who'd always heard Bach had a great voice and was the realest of the hair band squealers (her words, not ours), called up a friend and tried to get set up with the singer. Her friend laughed at her, but a few weeks later Bach called and Deal said he was really cool, seemingly open to anything, with a real "punk rock attitude."

Bach came backstage at a Kelly Deal 6000 show in New York a short time later, and the pair met and decided to do a cover of Alice Cooper's "School's Out" for the new Wes Craven movie, Scream. "We knew they wanted someone to do that song for the movie, so I thought 'who else could I get to do this?' See, my idea was always to have a band with two heavy metal guys and two others. I wanted Jimmy (Flemion), and Sebastian was supposed to bring Tommy Lee, but that didn't happen. Sebastian said it was too bad we couldn't get Jimmy (Chamberlin), because he probably wouldn't do it, but I did my thing and called him up and asked him to do it. He said sure."

So last month, the unlikely quartet holed up in Pachyderm studios in Minneapolis and laid down 12 tracks in four days with Bach singing and playing theremin and percussion, Deal and Flemion singing and playing bass and guitar, and Chamberlin handling drums, percussion, and some vocals. "We were only supposed to do the cover, but once everybody got there, I extended the studio time and we knew we wanted to record some more material," according to Deal. She knew she wanted to do some Jimmy Flemion songs, including "If You Want Rock, Go To the Quarry," one of her favorite Frog tunes, and before they knew it they'd covered the Scorpions' "Leave Me" and the Rogers and Hammerstein nugget, "I Enjoy Being a Girl," done in a "Peggy Lee style" according to Deal. Deal produced the album, whose other songs were penned by her and Flemion, and the ebullient sometimes Breeders said she expects it to come out on her Nice Records label, with distribution via a bigger label. "I don't know if it's a one-off, and I don't know if we'll tour, although Sebastian is already drawing up pyro plans for the shows," said Deal about future plans. "But I don't think it's odd at all, I think this is normal, it's the thing everybody should be doing."

As for Deal's other plans, she just returned from Seattle where she recorded a duet ("Hung Over Again") with the Supersuckers' Eddie Spaghetti in a "George Jones/Tammy Wynette style" for that band's final Sub Pop album. And her band, the Kelly Deal 6000, whose debut was the first release on Nice, just filmed a video for "How About Hero," in which Deal plays a "Xena the Warrior Princess-type character," and are about to leave for a six-week European tour. As for the Breeders, Deal said succinctly, "I'll give you my stock answer to that stock question, 'that's Kim's band, so you'll have to ask Kim.'"