As Sagal sings, Peg Bundy lingers
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"Peg Bundy sings!"
Katey Sagal, who became famous playing the high-heeled housewife from hell on "Married ... With Children," has heard that before.
Sagal, a singer for 30 years, releases her second album, "Room," a collection of pop originals and classics, June 1.
She also took over as the star of ABC's sitcom "8 Simple Rules" last year after the sudden death of John Ritter.
But no matter what she does, her most famous TV character always hovers over her like a poofed-up hairdo.
"When I made my first record, in '94, it was harder for people to see me in a different way because I was ensconced in Peg's red wig," says Sagal, 50, who played shoe salesman Al Bundy's wife for more than a decade on the sitcom.
"I loved that wig, and that show, but when I would go to radio stations, DJs would say, 'Maybe you could sing as Peg,' and I'd say, 'Hmm, no.' But I understood that. I got it. Peg was tough," Sagal says admiringly. "She was a real broad."
For Sagal, there's been a lot of triumph and tragedy since she started in show business as a backup singer for people like Bette Midler, Bob Dylan and Olivia Newton-John.
"I have one of those lives with very high highs and very low lows. That's how it's always been."
She says becoming a TV personality was an accident. "Things didn't work out the way I thought — I would be a rock star right now if it had been my plan."
Sagal was born in Los Angeles, where her mother was a singer and writer and her father a film director. "I didn't go to my high-school prom — I was in the band on grad night. Music was my social in-card."
For more than five years in the mid-1970s, Sagal sang backup for Midler as one of "The Harlettes." In 1978, she sang backup for Dylan — until he fired half the band and the singers, including Sagal, a week before the tour.
In her personal life, things were just as stormy.
Her father, Boris — who had directed, among other things, Elvis Presley's "Girl Happy" (1965) and the Charlton Heston sci-fi flick "The Omega Man" (1971) — was killed directing a TV movie in 1981, when he was struck by a helicopter blade.
About that time, music wasn't working out for Sagal, so she decided to try acting. Her first TV role was a character on Mary Tyler Moore's short-lived "Mary." Two years later, she auditioned for the role of Peg Bundy on "Married ... With Children."
While conservatives hated the show's raunchy tone, audiences loved it. It ran on Fox from 1987 to 1997.
Sagal, who had two previous marriages, is engaged to Kurt Sutter, a writer-producer for "The Shield." "It's like I've had two different lives, because I didn't start to act until I was 30. All through my 20s, it was music. I spent about a decade on the road performing. It's so hard, I can't imagine doing it at my age now. I'm so glad I'm on television!"