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EXCLUSIVE Music Power Network interview with Suzanne Vega!
[courtesy Music Power Network and Mr. Bonzai]
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The Music Power Network, the professional musician's gateway to the Internet, is an extraordinary source of information, resources and services for musicians and music lovers. We're pleased to link up here with the webcenter for Suzanne Vega on the Internet, vega.net. For the MPN launch we chose Suzanne as our feature artist - a musician who exemplifies courage, integrity and artfulness.
NINE OBJECTS OF DESIRE A song-by-song conversation with Mr. Bonzai, Webjockey / The Music Power Network [www.musicpowernetwork.com] [password="preview"] Mr.B: The songs stand on their own, but sometimes it's nice to hear a few words, a comment. Could we go down the list? Suzanne: Sure...
Mr.B: "Birth-day." Suzanne: Do you want to know what it's about? It's about the day that my daughter was born. Mr.B: There's a line about "this pain." Suzanne: That's the first line and I wasn't sure about whether to open the song with that, because sometimes you don't want to open with the pain. But on the other hand, the song was about having faith that the thing that you really desire will come, will be there, will come forth. How else do you put it? Mr.B: In a surgical sense... Suzanne: Right. It's about having faith, but it wasn't only about my daughter. It was about the album, in a sense, because I had to go into it with faith that it would come forth and that it would be there at the end, and that it wouldn't fall apart in the middle. And so it was all worth it, and that's what that song is about. It's about the process of birthing, in the literal and metaphoric sense. Mr.B: I bet not many women have written songs about having a child... Suzanne: I was looking for another song - I can see why, because you really have to be careful about what information you put in. You don't want to put in really gory details - I don't anyway. I think Sinead O'Connor has one or two songs where she mentions pregnancy, but you don't want to start using words like 'trimester' or you know... [laughs] So I found it really difficult to figure out what you put in and what you don't put in, and how do you show the intensity of the feeling without grossing people out. Actually, if you didn't know what the song was about, you might think it was about drugs, sex... Mr.B: It's kind of an aggressive song... Suzanne: Well, let me tell you - It's an aggressive act, it's really hard and if you want an edgy experience - People think about having a baby and you think of the lullabies, and the teddy bears, and that's fine. That comes afterwards. But in the middle of it, it's a deep struggle. And it's as edgy as anything you'll ever experience or one will ever experience - not you personally [laughs]. It's amazing that everyone has experienced it, that people are born that way. It's astonishing.
Mr.B: "Headshots." Suzanne: To me, that's a song about walking through Soho, which is near where I live. For a while, there was a poster that was all over Manhattan. It just said Headshots and there was the number, and there was the face of a boy. It was just evocative, almost as a piece of art in itself. It was a photographer trying to get work, but I found that that face reminded me of someone that I used to live with, and that provoked a lot of memories and guilt, and so on and so forth. That's how that song ended up being written. It's a reflective song.
Mr.B: "Caramel." Suzanne: Well, "Caramel" was intended to be one of those old fashioned songs, like "Girl From Ipanema," or what Astrud Gilberto would sing. I used to really love that kind of music when I was a teenager, and so it's a song about longing for something and wishing for something you know you really shouldn't have. Caramel is the metaphor for the thing you long for, but you shouldn't really touch.
Mr.B: "Stockings." There's a provocative little number... Suzanne: Right, that is provocative. Everyone is curious about that one. "So, does your husband wonder what you're writing about?" Mr.B: I thought you possibly could have been writing it for a man to sing, and you decided to sing it. Suzanne: That was part of what I was doing. I was intentionally - although it's based on a true infatuation from a while back, from years ago, that never went anywhere. But when I wrote the song I also wanted to write it from a perspective that if a man wanted to cover it, it would still read. It would still make sense. Say, if Evan Dando, who covered "Luka," wanted to sing this one, it would still read from his perspective.
Mr.B: "Casual Match." That's the kind of a match that you strike? Suzanne: It's the match that you strike. The metaphor is a field and if you throw a match into it casually, then everything goes up in flames. But it's also casual match as in a match that's sort of about a fling that doesn't turn out well.
Mr.B: "Thin Man." Who is the Thin Man? Suzanne: Well, "Thin Man" is one of the songs that I mentioned to you before, where the specter of death comes into it. I think there was a Jacques Brel song that said, and I'm paraphrasing, "My death is a young woman with her arm around my waist who accompanies me around the city." I loved that line, and I loved the song, and it's a French song, so I paraphrased it to be New York and to be the Thin Man who accompanies me around the city. So, he's the figure of death, as a suitor that you have to resist to the very end.
Mr.B: "No Cheap Thrill." "It'll cost you..." Suzanne: Yeah, and it did. That's like a challenge. You're looking at someone and it's a challenge to them. The metaphor there is poker, and it's sort of calling someone's bluff, and seeing if they're willing to go the full way - knowing that if they do go the full way, that it will cost.
Mr.B: "World Before Columbus." This struck me as just such a great love song. Suzanne: It is a love song, and maybe I shouldn't tell you who the object is there - but it was actually written for my daughter. The idea of the world before Columbus came because I have a cat at home, and this cat scratched my eye -just playing, and it became infected and I had to wear an eyepatch for about a week. The thing I noticed was that the world was really flat seeing the world that way. It struck me as funny and I was writing it down and I said the world was as flat as the world before Columbus. I took that idea and said, well if this love was taken away from me, that's how the world would feel to me. That was the metaphor that I was working with.
Mr.B: "Lolita." You identify with Lolita in the song? Suzanne: Yes, it's like a letter to myself as I was when I was young, and sort of a word of warning to young girls who are in there teens, who use sex as their only means of identity. It's so easy in this culture and this society to feel that if you're not sexy, then you don't count, or you don't exist. I think in certain parts of the country that is how you are judged. You're not judged on whether you're smart, whether you're useful, whether you're good. You're judged by "are you sexy" and I think its a problem. It's a letter to those girls and to the girl that I had been.
Mr.B: "Honeymoon Suite." There's a lovely song, and I wanted to ask if you believe in ghosts, but we already sort of covered that. Suzanne: I believe in ghosts and in angels, although those are not my words for them. I don't know what the words are for the things that I've seen and felt, but I suppose ghosts and angels come close. That's a song about intimacy, a song about how you can be very close to somebody and there are still those mysterious patches that you can't figure out. You can lay next to someone every night and still not quite have the last bit covered, you know? That's what that's about, trying to figure out how someone else's psyche works. Mr.B: I imagine it's just the kind of thing you have to live with, no matter how much you know somebody there's still going to be... Suzanne: All you have to do is look at someone's dreams and you can see there are huge areas of mystery that you'll never tap, and that's what keeps things alive and keeps a relationship fascinating.
Mr.B: "Tombstone." Suzanne: Yeah, well that's sort of a lighthearted [laughs] little ditty, a meditation on death. Boy, I'm afraid to tell you the story behind that one. [sighs] Mr.B: Don't be afraid. Lie. Suzanne: [laughs] Well, let me tell you. My parents, we had a cat - sorry to keep bringing up cats - but we had a cat for 17 years and it died. And my parents would be considered Bohemian in their own way. They decided to send Morris up the river. They decided to let him go with dignity and they wanted to give him a Viking funeral, so they put him in a shoebox and set him on fire and sent him up the East River. I remember hearing the story, and I'm sort of used to these types of things happening by now, so I didn't really pay much attention. My sister called me a week later and said, "Did you hear what they did to Morris?" I said, yeah, they put him in a shoebox, set it on fire and sent him up the river. Then I realized what it sounded like, and how odd it could be perceived. So, I was thinking to myself, when I die I would prefer a tombstone. I started thinking I like a tombstone because it weathers well, and it was sort of a lighthearted look at what might be. There you go. I don't know if my mother is going to appreciate this on the website, but there it was floating up the East River and everybody saw it.
Mr.B: I think they have a parental control program. Last, but certainly not least, "My Favorite Plum." You've seen the best... Suzanne: Well, it's a song that began as looking at a person and desiring that person and then it just became more abstract from there. The plum became this obscure object of desire. It started to mean everything I'd ever wanted, that you long for and hope for, and you don't quite get it. And the song - you're prepared to stand there under the tree and wait for it forever if you have to. The song is really about hoping and longing and just being so utterly convinced that this is really the one for you. It's kind of an odd song in a way. It's just very suspenseful. Mr.B: The whole album is such an adventure. Listening to it, I felt I was walking with someone through their dreams and their life. Also, I think that with good poetry, you don't figure it out the first time. I've listened to the album now a number of times and you've helped me, and I'll listen again and have a different idea. So, this has been great. Suzanne: Well, thank you. It's been helpful for me to do this, too.
Mr.Bonzai: You started performing at what, 16? Suzanne: 16, yes. Mr.Bonzai: Do you think that's a good for move an artist, to just get out there and start doing it at such a young age? Suzanne: In fact it felt late to me, because I'd started writing songs when I was about 14. I had been really interested in The Beatles and I was reading their biography and they were all massively famous by the time they were 18. So, I remember feeling that at 16 time was running out and I better get out there if I wanted to do anything with myself. I think 16 is a good time to start. Mr.Bonzai: Had you been warming up for a few years? Suzanne: Yes, by the time I was 16 I had about seventy-five, a hundred songs, so I was a very ambitious teenager. I decided to go out and see what I could do, and I was rejected in a lot of places because that was the 70s and folk music wasn't exactly in vogue at that time. But it's good to be rejected, too, because then you can figure out where it is that you fit in, where you belong - and you build character.
Suzanne continues her indepth interview with our webjockey Mr. Bonzai, and we welcome all of you to link up and enjoy. In the future, this feature will take up residence at Suzanne's site. When you get to our opening page, your personal vega.net password is "preview."
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