Battling Society’s Monsters

Amid the signature songs of tortured love on Melissa Etheridge’s new album, “Breakdown,” is “Scarecrow,” her scathing response to last year’s beating death in Wyoming of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student.

The dusky-voiced rocker makes Shepard’s death a modern-day equivalent to the crucifixion of Jesus, a parallel that’s bound to outrage religious conservatives.

Etheridge, who plays Friday in Long Beach and Tuesday and Wednesday at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, says she’d welcome the confrontation. So far, however, she reports little negative reaction to the song.

“I would be honored if any of those religious folks actually read my lyrics and got that deep into it,” Etheridge, 38, says. “But they usually only show up in my hometown, when I play in Kansas, and [anti-gay Baptist preacher] Fred Phelps comes out with those horrible posters, saying hideous things. They have no idea what I’m singing about.”

The song was written and recorded well before Aaron McKinney was sentenced last month to two consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole for Shepard’s murder. His accomplice, Russell Henderson, received a similar sentence in April.

Etheridge poses the question “Where can these monsters hide?” then answers it: “They are knocking on our front door / They’re rocking in our cradles / They’re preaching in our churches / And eating at our tables.”

For Etheridge, who has a 2 1/2-year-old daughter and a year-old son with her partner of 11 years, screenwriter and video director Julie Cypher, the issue of where “monsters” come from strikes especially close to her heart.

“What I’m trying to get across,” she says, “is that it’s the way we raise our children. . . . We’re all concerned about Littleton and these other tragedies, and ask, ‘How can a 13-year-old be a murderer?’ If you see what was put into them, you’ll see what comes out. . . . It’s not just a case of ‘This child is evil.’ ”

“Scarecrow” is the biggest departure on “Breakdown” for Etheridge, who has built her career on stormy tales of love’s rocky path, usually set to slashing riffs from her electric guitar and filtered through her shattered-glass vocals.

“Critics always say I’m singing about the same thing,” she says. “But I relate so much to that. . . . I’ve had a long-term relationship, but even in a long-term relationship there are still a lot of ups and downs, and when the downs are the worst, I’m really afraid I might lose everything--if I don’t overcome some of my own [shortcomings].”

Her Life Became Impetus for Songs

Less important was trying to repeat the commercial success of her breakthrough 1993 album, “Yes I Am,” which has sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S., according to SoundScan. Her follow-up, 1995’s “Your Little Secret,” sold a less eye-opening but still respectable 1.3 million, and after a year’s worth of touring to support it, Etheridge decided it was time to rest.

During that break, Cypher gave birth to their daughter, Baily, and then, last year, a son, Beckett. Etheridge’s challenge in resuming her life as a rock ‘n’ roller has been reconciling her desire to spend every moment with her children with the need to be on the road.

That said, she’s planning “something special” for Friday’s show, her first in Long Beach in 11 years. Her trip down memory lane won’t, however, take her as far as a drop-in at Que Sera Sera, the gay club on 7th Street she played regularly before her first album hit in 1988.

“Yikes, no!” she says. “It’s fine with me to leave that in the past.”

BE THERE

* Melissa Etheridge, Friday at the Long Beach Terrace Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd, Long Beach, 7:30 p.m. Sold out. (562) 436-3661. Also Tuesday and Wednesday at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1685 Main St., Santa Monica, $55 to $75. 7:30 p.m. (310) 458-8551.