Kurt Andersen: I love having my mind changed about what I think I like and don't like. For instance, I spent most of my life believing that I didn't really get the musical theatre form. But then came the last 18 months. I saw the movie Moulin Rouge and loved it. I saw Urinetown and Hairspray and the new production of La Boheme on Broadway and loved all of them. And now I've just seen a little off-Broadway musical called Betty Rules which, you guessed it, I really liked a lot.

Betty Rules was written by and stars the members of a real three-woman rock band called Betty: Alyson Palmer and the sisters Elizabeth and Amy Ziff, who have played together for more than 17 years. In other words, the musical comedy Betty Rules is the real story of their lives, starring them as themselves.

It's real rock n' roll, not show tunes. The three women are charming and talented musicians and comedians. And one of them is partly naked for a few seconds during the show. Anyhow, I was smitten, so I invited them into the studio, where I asked the Bettys how they formed the band in the first place. Both of the Ziff sisters answered at once.

Amy and Elizabeth Ziff: Betty was formed pretty organically.

EZ: We had always been singing our whole life, just we grew up singing.

AZ: We advertised on the radio for a bass player.

Alyson Palmer: Cut to…me. This is Alyson. I answered the ad and met Amy and Elizabeth, and the very first day that I went over we…I stayed there until 2 o'clock in the morning, and all we did was laugh, and talk and harmonize. It was amazing.

KA: How did you get the idea of hey, you know, let's do a show about ourselves, starring ourselves?

AP: Interestingly enough, we never had the idea to do a show about us starring us.

EZ: A musical!

AP: Our dear friend, Michael Greif, who's the director of Rent, said, why don't you guys come out here and write something, do something artistic? And we were like, fabulous! We wrote a script that all of us were thrilled about, it was sort of like an Austin Powers meets James Bond, Honey West kind of thing…

EZ: Of course, we save the world, yeah…

AP: About a girl band that saves the world, anyways, so we brought out it to Michael and he said, No. What people want to know is your real, honest story. We thought, who's gonna want to hear or care about that?

EZ: Who cares, basically?

AP: But we just started writing it and it was literally, as Elizabeth says, it was literally the easiest thing the three of us have ever done.

EZ: Creatively

AP: These stories just flew out of us.

EZ: And all these stories are true, that's the beauty of it and people just can't believe it. Like, they come up after the show, and they'll say, you really were cast really well…

AP: Right! And where did you come up with the idea, that the very first show they were booed off stage? Things like that, and it's all based on the truth.

EZ: One of things that is very true in the show is the fact that the three of us had to go to therapy in order to stay together. I think that saved us. And that's in the show.

AP: Yeah, we went four times!

AZ: The relationship of a band is so intense and so all-consuming it's more I think it's more intense than even a marriage.

AP: Absolutely!

AZ: Because your egos are really scratched all the time.

EZ: And you don't get the benefit of sex, so it's….it's not even fun

KA: Well in some bands you do.

AP: And in some marriages you don't!

EZ: Usually, the three of us come together, definitely in a performance way, whether we agree on how we're performing or not, when we're out there performing we hit the right chord, and when we're singing a cappella we're playing a big song with all our instruments, we look at each other and you know, oh my God, this is great, this feels really good.

EZ: And the thing about us harmonizing, is even though it's a rock musical, a lot of older people who normally say, well I don't really like rock n' roll but I love this show and I love your music and I think it's because the three of us are harmonizing on every single song, so it's reminiscent of other kinds of music like you know Frank Zappa meets the B-52's meets the Andrews sisters

KA: The show, if it's about something other than you three people, is about a kind of cheerful survivorship, isn't it?

AZ: I think you're a survivor if you're constantly following your dream. For some crazy reason we didn't stop.

EZ: I think it's because when two of us or one of use felt like the stopping the other two didn't, so we've always had one person who didn't feel like stopping who gathered the strength together to keep going on.

KA: I realized what pleases me most about Betty and Betty Rules is being reminded that the culture is full of terrific artists and performers like them who never make it big but who persevere with good cheer, doing well wherever they can, the thing they love doing most.

KA: The show is still running in New York, and there are plans afoot to take it on the road for a tour around America.

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