Lotus was like earth mother, friend to Mama Cass, and Lenny Bruce’s last lover. She was somebody who really took me under her wing as a big sister. She cooked for me, we’d hang out at her place, and she’d play music and we’d sing together, so it was very nourishing. She was in the Brotherhood at one point—you know, where they wrap their heads in a turban, kind of a Sikh thing. She had done it all and she was a real seer and a real earth mother, so it was just great to be in L.A. and have that kind of grounding and love and madcap antics at the same time ‘cause she was really funny and brilliant.

Lotus was fueled by love, and Mooney was fueled by anger, so they both, in their own way and together, nourished me as a young person, as a young artist, and as a friend. They brought out the best in each other, and they brought out the best in me. So it was kind of a wonderful triangle.

MS: When combing through interviews and articles back to 1984, I noticed that throughout your career, journalists have described you as a performer who instills fear in your audience, saying that your performance “makes you queasy,” “makes skin crawl,” or [makes you want to] “run for your life.” [Sandra laughs.] Is or was instilling a certain unease among your audience part of the experience you intended and/or still intend to provide?

SB: I think it was a byproduct of being a young woman performing in the feminist age in the mid-seventies when women were still doing self-deprecating material, and comics in general were doing jokes and setups, and I’d been approaching it from a much different angle. I was doing something that was a hybrid of all the things that I loved and that were inspiring to me—from my musical influences, to my comedic influences, to my artistic and acting influences. So I was bringing all these worlds together, and without really knowing it or being conscious of it, I was doing my little postmodern musical performances.