Both Rufus and Martha are now singer-songwriters themselves. Rufus, Loudon and Martha appear as club singers in Martin Scorsese's new film, The Aviator, due out in December. Rufus begins his UK tour at Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on October 27. The tour ends on November 8 at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire.

RUFUS: "For years and years I was traumatised by the divorce of my parents. Growing up, I was very much under the impression that my sister and I were the main victims. Thinking about it, it was probably a case of my parents having loved each other so intensely that they struggled to get over their split for a long time. But after all the power battles and artistic feuds going on between them, I came to associate love with something quite negative. I grew up with this kind of survivor-fighter mentality. I found it difficult to trust people. The idea then of being close to anyone or, worse still, falling in love frightened me. It's really only now that I'm beginning to fathom out what a normal relationship is.

I've come to realise divorce is shattering for everyone involved, not just the kids. Looking back, I know now my parents were just struggling to survive the trauma of it all, so it's no surprise that mistakes were made along the way.

My sister and I were only small when they split, and then Mum moved us back from New York to Montreal. She'd grown up in Canada and was from a strict French-Irish Catholic background. I think the Catholic-upbringing experience had left her pretty mixed up. By the time we came along, she had a kind of love-hate relationship with the church. For instance, she sent us to a Catholic school and had us learn all the catechisms, but then she never had us baptised, so we couldn't take communion or go to confession. Whether it was the influence of the church or not, she continued to be quite traditional in many ways - like she didn't get married again or have any more kids.

As I got older, I often felt me and Mum were from different periods of history.

I like to think of us as the mother and daughter in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I was Tess, this picture of 19th-century Victorian beauty, while Mum was Tess's mother Ñ this Elizabethan figure hovering over me. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just different.

I remember the first time Mum suspected me of being gay. I was about 14. She found these magazines of mine and asked me straight out. But at that point I felt I had no choice but to lie - I knew she wasn't ready to deal with it. When I was about 18, I didn't want to keep it from her any longer, so I told her. It was still hard going, and it took her a couple of years to get used to it. But I felt she had some sort of awakening about gay people after that, and now she fits in brilliantly with my scene and my friends.

The truth is, I've drawn a lot of my creative inspiration from Mum and her background. She's a very earthy, very instinctual woman, and that comes out in her music. I knew very early on that, like her and Dad, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. The problem was, I got caught up in the whole demimonde, bohemian lifestyle thing and it spiralled out of control. By 30, I was totally miserable and confused. My self-esteem was so low that if I hadn't made it into the society pages of every magazine then I could only look upon myself as a complete loser, as a bad person.

I knew then that I was either going to become Peter Pan or face the fact that I needed help and rehab.I'd reached crisis point. Mum was very concerned about me, but I think she also knew that I had to sort things out myself. And it was at this stage that I realised the only way I was going to toughen myself up was to become less like Mum and more like Dad - much angrier and more selfish. This was hard, because for so many years I'd really abhorred Dad's harsher, more disciplinarian attitude to life. He also hated things about me - like the fact that I would walk into a room like Tallulah Bankhead and be the centre of attention. He said I was this massive egotist and was using it to mask what was really going on in my head.

He told me I should've gone into rehab years ago. Mum was great when all this happened. She was always there for me; always ready to catch my fall. At the back of my mind that meant everything to me.

Having a mum who's a singer-songwriter, though, brings its own set of dynamics to our relationship. I suppose that's more to do with our egos as songwriters than as individuals. We can be totally competitive when it comes to music. I love being on stage with her - when we're both up there, our mother-son dynamic disappears and it's more like every man for himself. It can make for an unpredictable but exciting show.

At the end of the day, things haven't always been great in our family. But, you know, Mum and I are both big romantics at heart and what we have, come rain or shine, is something that is ever-evolving and most definitely everlasting."