Only the Lonely

Rip It Up, Issue 122, 1 September 1987, Page 10

Only the Lonely

Suzanne Vega: Walk on the Mild Side

New York, New York, the name alone sounds like music, and it’s been the inspiration of a thousand songs. For the Beastie Boys, there’s no rest till Brooklyn, Run DMC walk their way, while Lou Reed always walked on the wild side. But over in the Village, where Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith ordered room service from the Chelsea Hotel, Suzanne Vega keeps alive another Big Apple tradition: the urban singer/songwriter.

Her aloof, introspective songs have brought a stark intelligence to the pop charts. Who would have thought someone with roots in the Greenwich Village folk scene would get past the ears of commercial radio programming automatons? Would knock faceless pop metal like Bon Jovi off our No 1 album spot? But the woman whois credited with bringing folk-tinged pop back into favour comes from the area celebrated by Ben E King: “To me the sound of New York was always a very Latin sound, because I grew up in Spanish Harlem and in neighbourhoods where people would play drums on street corners,” says Vega, on the phone from Manhattan while taking a rare week’s break from touring. “When I first started going on tour people were astounded that there were still people singing folk music in New York —where actually there’s been a very active scene, all the way since the 60s. It’s never really gone away, just underground. It

was a very productive scene, though I'm less connected with it now, becaue I’m on the road 95 percent of the year. But I’d gotten a lot of pleasure with that group." Exotic ': However it wasn't New York where .Vega’s music first took off, but Britain, where her debut. album went gold and her latest, Solitude Standing, entered the . charts at No 2. \ “I think some people in England respond to [Suzanne Vega] partly because it’s such a New York album,” says Vega. “So it seems slightly exotic to'-? some people. The other thing is the market in England and Europe is really different from that in America. The thing in America is to be like someone else who’s already made it, whereas in England everyone seems to be trying to be different. To be noticed, you -. have to be different. . When Vega first came to notice she was burdened with. comparisons to 60s’ singer-songwriters, probably as a marketing move to attract the over-30s audience. Two years on, her own identity is still developing: “Some people seem to see me as an extension of Joni Mitchell, others see me as a combination of different styles. , In some ways I think I’m , re-defining myself as I go along. I love the acoustic guitar, it’s my main instrument and the one I. ■ • feel most comfortable with . So in a way I share something with other acoustic singers such as , Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell.. We’re all attempting to achieve ■ something with a song that’s more than a Top 40 pop song, we’re attempting to give it some sort of personal meaning and poetic feeling. “But I think I do have a style that will keep being more and

more different. I keep wanting to mix in rougher things and . harder things, not exactly go in a rock and roll direction, but I keep wanting to harden it up a little.” Vitality For her second album, Vega formed a permanent band, and indeed her sound has a more mainstream flavour than that achieved on the debut. She explains why: “When I’d finished the first album I remember listening to it and feeling a certain amount of r . satisfaction, but feeling that we could of gone further. It was missing a certain vitality I had hoped it would get. “I was complaining to Lenny' Kaye, one of the producers, that it didn’t sound like a live band, and he said the reason for that is you don’t have a live band. I said, well I guess I better go about forming one. It will be the Solitude ' . Standing band that accompanies Vega when she plays Auckland later this month, after touring Japan and ... ; v Australia. Since Suzanne Vega she’s been touring almost constantly, including sell-out shows at London’s Albert Hall, . but she still finds writing easier and more satisfying than performing: “Somehow I always feel really happy after I've finished a song. After I’ve finished a perfomance there’s a little bit of a feeling of frustration. I’m still learning how to be a really good performer. I always leave the stage feeling a little... weird. 'Cause there seems to be so much still in there.” It’s been a rapid shift from the Village cafe performer to the concert hall stage: “ I still have a tendency to want to talk to the audience and explain to them how I came to write a song, or to make them

laugh, which is more of a coffee house style. But I can’t see why it shouldn’t work in a big place as well as a small one. I tend not • to go for the theatrics of a bigger place. Small theatres I like best." What were your early musical performances like? “It’s funnywhen I was 161 had a much deeper voice, and I was so afraid of not being heard that I almost shouted my songs. I have a couple of tapes from 76 when I started where I’m practically bellowing the whole set. I was really nervous, and would laugh a lot, and attempt to talk a lot in between songs. It’s very similar to now!” Risky Singing'Tom's Diner’ acapella seems a risky thing to do live. “Yes, but I must say it’s always worked for me; in almost every circumstance — even when I played for the Prince’s trust in England. It was in front of 8000 people, the most I’d ever played for, and I was deciding whether to open with 'Tom’s Diner’ or something more familiar, like'Marlene'. I decided to go for 'Tom’s Diner,’ because it's a true gauge of what your audience is like. If they’re going to ignore you and be rude, then they’re certainly going to do it with ‘Tom’s Diner'.” It works well on the new album, in both versions, the . acapella song, and the instrumental reprise. < T“When I first wrote the song, I thought it’d be terrific to have an out-of-tune piano playing in the background, but I don’t play piano, and neither does anyone in the band, so I thought rather than wait for someone to ’’ t. arrange it, I’ll sing it acapella. “But I really like the band’s musical arrangement too. The. guys came up with that

FROM PAGE 10 themselves, fiddling around. They decided that it should be a tango. We’d been watching Last Tango on video when working on the second album, so it became a tango!" The problem with having a successful debut LP is coming up with material for the followup:

you’re too busy raising your touring profile to do write songs “After the first LP people had certain expectations, but no one felt we had accomplished so much that we could really sit back. At the same time I needed time to write. So we ended up taking two years in between records, and I think

we'll take another two years. By April we should be finished with all the touring, and I’ll have next year to take off and write. ” Mixture Vega’s latest album is a mixture of older songs, written as far back as 1978, and new

material written with her band. How did you find writing with other people? “I like it —the thing about working with a band is you have to act as director and editor, ’cause it’s still my name that goes on the album. But they were really inventive and could come up with wonderful things.

So I could pick and choose what I wanted and I learned a lot about the structure of the music.”

since I read a lot, it’s more that I get excited by an idea or something I’ve seen or read. I think it's possible to enjoy the songs without knowing what they’re about.” You’ve done an English deg ree—what was your field? “Actually my English degree was kinda like a weird thing. I was mostly going to school because I just wanted to finish it. But my these was a one-act play I wrote around the life and work of Carson McCullers, and I acted as her and her characters in this play.” Vega first found her creative voice not in music or writing, however, but in dance. She studied dancing for several years at the NY High School of Performing Arts, the Fame school. Your music seems so personal, yet dance seems the most extroverted of art forms: “I found that also,” says Vega. “I was doing the Martha Graham technique, which is also somewhat introspective, her philosophy of dancing. But most of the time I found I didn't really have the temperament to really get out there and compete with other dancers. If I couldn’t be the best, I'd be the worst. And that’s not exactly the right attitude to have. If I couldn’t get noticed one way, I’d get noticed another.” Weary You’ve been on the road several months now. How do you deal with the machinery that takes over? “It's really hard, you have to struggle with it. You start feeling a certain weariness. You have to keep it new, keep listening to tapes and make sure you’re performing the best way you can. I try to take time for myself everyday, do my morning and evening prayers, because I'm a Buddhist and I've been practising for 12 years. You have to make time forthose things, otherwise you just go bananas. Sometimes you have to get angry with people and say no, I’m not going to do this extra thing, I don't care how successful we’re being.” What do you do now to kick your heels up? “I've been wondering about that myself lately, ’cause it’s been a while. A few years ago I’d say, well I go out to the Kettle of Fish and have a few drinks and stay up till four o’clock in the morning, carrying on and talking. But now, I don't go out nearly as much. I’m tired, I just go home and got to bed. For amusement, I just take baths, which sounds very boring. Or I go shopping. I buy makeup and ... experiment with it. I don’t wear a lot of makeup, but I buy a lot of it and fiddle with it!” Well, Suzanne's tired: it’s 9.30 am in New York, and 1,30 am the next morning here. So let’s both get some sleep! “Allrighty!” she says.

Vega avoids the confessional style of Joni Mitchell, preferring to her songs to have characters, or an observational tone. “I never write about things that are purely abstract, all the songs are partly the truth and fiction mixed together. But people who think I’m talking about myself are mistaken. That’s not to say I don’t share the feelings of the characters, I pick them because I have a certain sympathy with them, an emotional parallel. I’m not just writing about people that I’m spying on.” While many of her songs have been labelled introspective, Vega’s pop skills are evident on ‘Marlene’ and “Luka,’ the latter being a rarity: a Top 5 song about child abuse. Who was Luka?

“There was a boy I used to know in one of my old neighbourhoods, whose name was Luka. He was about nine or 10 years old, and I used to see him playing outside the building. The thing is I never knew if he was an abused child, and I suspect that he wasn’t, but I was taken with his name and his character and his face, and he seemed set apart from other kids when I saw him playing. So I guess I kind of took his name and used it for the point of view in the song.”

Language “A lot of people figure that because it’s a woman’s voice singing, it must be a woman. But I was thinking more of the language of a nine-year-old rather than an adult woman. An adult woman would have handled it differently." Luka’s almost down-playing the situation, like a child would to avoid flak. “That in a way is the point of the song. He’ll never tell you what’s going on. But you can definitely read between the lines. And that’s the way I think a real child would have done it. “Also, some people ask, Why is it a cheery song? But I hadn’t meant to make it cheery, only matter-of-fact. That’s why I used major chords. I didn’t want it to be a sad melancholy song about the boy sitting on a stoop feeling sorry for himself. I wanted there to be some spirit to it, I felt the real kid was very tough and would have survived.” Legend On the latest album some songs seem to require a particularly literate audience. ‘Wooden Horse,' for example, is based on the German legend of Kaspar Hauser, the boy who spent his first 17 years locked in a cellar. ‘Calypso’ is a character in the Odyssey. “I've never thought of it that way, I guess I write about those things that interest me, and

Chris Bourke