Maria McKee: 'Show Me Heaven'? I don't think it's missed

If you remember Maria McKee, it's probably for all the wrong reasons. Garry Mulholland sets the record straight

'I'm not one of those artists who've gone indie and have nothing but horror stories about majors." Maria McKee resolutely refuses to take the bitterness bait. But, boy, she could. Despite being just 38 years old, the LA born-and-bred virtuoso vocalist and supremely eclectic songwriter has spent 18 years trying to live up to her early hype, and live down her teenage image. The result, in 2003, is High Dive, her first album on her own Viewfinder label. No marketing budget. No major label machinery. An acknowledgement of reduced circumstances. And a great, emotional, self-mocking, orchestral guitar-pop record. Is going it alone the best decision she's ever made? Or the worst? "Both simultaneously," she says. "I don't really deal in lukewarm."

The half-sister of Bryan Maclean of Sixties psych-pop legends Love, McKee seemed the perfect pop-rock product when her Lone Justice band emerged in 1985, showcasing a melodramatic take on country-rock, trading on her bruised princess looks and octave-destroying voice, drawing raves from Dylan and U2. But Maria couldn't play the proto-Shania Twain role that had been written for her. Beneath the radio rock tunes and pouting poses, she was a troubled Lou Reed/ Bowie fan from a bohemian family, who prized art above stardom, and constantly struggled to balance personal expression with commercial expectation. In fact, McKee has said that achieving the predicted stardom with Lone Justice would've killed her. "It's probably true. I have the perfect combination of elements that spell disaster. A fragile mental composition, a volatile temperament, all those elements you have when you're an artist searching for approval. And alcoholic genes..."

Her subsequent career is a testament to her confusion. She sacked her band for the second Lone Justice album; went solo in 1989 and dallied with the country-pop diva role, and then wrote a big empty power ballad, "Show Me Heaven", for the Days of Thunder soundtrack, which hit number one here in 1990.

In Europe "Show Me Heaven" has overshadowed everything else she's done. In America it bombed. "When I don't perform it live I don't think it's gravely missed," she remarks drily. The adventure continued. Maria made a dance track in 1992 and followed up the next year with a gospel-drenched, blue-eyed soul album, You Gotta Sin To Get Saved. Having bewildered everyone, including her record company Geffen, she played her last wilfully eccentric card. She made a screaming, bloody, Bowie-esque, art-rock exorcism album in 1996 called Life is Sweet, after the Mike Leigh movie. Predictably, it got rid of the last of the Lone Justice loyalists. Sadly, the Anglophile alt-rock kids who might have loved the record were not going near anything by that "Show Me Heaven" woman.

It became the Great Lost Album of the 1990s. And Maria McKee was finally cast out from the major label world she'd been part of before being old enough to buy a beer. Surely committing career suicide by making her best record must be a source of unending frustration? "It is. But it's kind of accomplished what I wanted, which would be to show people who were kind of on the fence about Maria McKee what I'm really made of. It let them know that I have the goods to be one of those artists that artists tell other artists about. When they write about rock'n'roll they'll remember that album. But it did alienate a lot of fans and press in America. They're still waiting for me to put Lone Justice back together. Or get together with Bob Dylan and make an album of covers."

In the ensuing seven years, McKee has enjoyed and endured profound life-changes. Firstly, her brother, mentor and best friend Bryan Maclean died of a heart attack in 1998 at the age of just 51. "He was the most important person in my life until I met my husband ... I'm still in shock over it." Then she married musician Jim Akin. And, just as the money was drying up, The Dixie Chicks recorded one of her songs on an album that sold 11m copies. She and Jim used the money to make High Dive.

McKee knows everyone in rock'n'roll Hollywood – the couple still live in LA – but reacts with horror when asked if she still does the whole LA rock party circuit. "Oh God! I'd rather have dental surgery every day of my life. Yeuuch! I hate all that. I don't even really listen to rock'n'roll any more. I listen to classical music. I'm going through a Vaughan Williams phase." Don't you feel you have any peers? "No I don't." Is that good or bad? "Lonely. But I like working with blinkers on. You get a purer expression that way. That's what I feel I've done with High Dive. I've accomplished something here that I've only dreamed of in the past."

'High Dive' is out now on Viewfinder. Maria McKee plays Glee Club, Birmingham (0870 241 5093), Tue; Shepherd's Bush Empire, London W12 (0870 771 2000), Wed; Manchester Uni (0161 832 1111), Thur; Liverpool Academy 2 (0151 256 5555), Sat; tour continues