Is Suzanne Vega the start of a new folk boom? Was she really influenced by punk rock? And what does she think of our very own Morrissey?
Have you heard the one about the kid from "Fame" who turned out all right? Or the folk singer who'd rather be a member of the Velvet Underground and admits to sharing the same black humour as Morrissey of the Smiths?
Meet Suzanne Vega - the singer/songwriter who's leading the New York folk movement belatedly into this decade with singles like "Small Blue Thing" and the currently re-released "Marlene On The Wall".
Already her ethereal, introspective, almost neurotic style of music - owing nods of acknowledgement to such diverse people as Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed - has secured her self-titled debut album a modest run in both the British and American LP charts.
Born in Santa Monica, California, 26 years ago to a Puerto Rican father and an American mother, she's lived in New York since the age of two. Her first love was dancing, which she studied at the infamous High School of Performing Arts - the real-life home of the film and TV series "Fame".
"I was there before the film. After the movie it had a new glamour and probably changed the attitude of a lot of the kids there. A lot of the kids I knew were fairly arrogant and, I must admit, I was too. Everyone who goes there feels misunderstood in some way and it's heightened because everyone has a special talent and wants to be noticed. It was worse for me because I had the sort of competitive nature that If I couldn't be the best, then I'd be the worst - I'd get noticed somehow. It becomes fairly unhealthy after a while."
Her interest in music grew when she realised the joy of dance classes was dependent on who played piano. While majoring in English at college, she was auditioning at the many Bohemian folk clubs in Greenwich Village.
"I was always being told that I was too shy, too quiet - a nice folkie girl. "If you'd been born 10 years before you'd be a big star, but now... come back when you're more professional". There was one side to me which said I had the talent and another which kept pulling me off stage. I'd get up and be overwhelmingly shy and hostile to audiences - sort of "what are you looking at?"."
After years of writing songs and being influenced by Woody Guthrie, two events changed her direction. The first was seeing Lou Reed and the second was experiencing the British punk scene.
"I went to Lou Reed almost by mistake. To me rock'n'roll was noise and who needs more noise in New York City? But his songs really stuck out. They weren't safe - they really went out on a ledge. It made me feel horribly uncomfortable and that was something I couldn't forget. At his best he doesn't write about run of the mill things. He writes with complete unpretension about things he knows in a way that's so direct it's uncomfortable."
"When I came to Britain I saw punk in a different way to what I'd seen in America. In New York punk was rich middle class kids ripping their shirts and making a lot of noise about nothing. In Britain I saw it as a means of personal expression."
"Before that, the only kind of anger I'd seen expressed was black or Puerto Rican. White people in America don't express anger so directly - it's masked, subtle and ironic. It was the first time I'd seen anger expressed by white people and it made an impression on me. As soon as I came back to New York I started to write in a different way."
Now she's at the forefront of a whole new generation of Greenwich Village inhabitants all poised to slide into her slipstream.
"I was in a quandary about how to define myself. We all consider ourselves to be folk writers - but that's not to say that it's folk music. There are a whole lot of people who won't listen to folk and say "it's so gauche, so overly sincere and so naive". But it is possible to write music that's simple and unaffected but can still be in vogue. It's now a lot more contemporary than people think."
Her album was co-produced by Lenny Kaye, the ex-rock critic and guitarist with Patti Smith's band.
"Since my own experience had been very conservative, I thought it'd be good to have Lenny in as a random element. I ended up having to defend electric guitars and drums to him which is not something you'd expect from someone who played with Patti Smith. He wanted strings. I thought - "how disgusting, what sort of girl do you thing I am?". In the long run he made me keep an open mind."
"There are two sides that fight against each other in me. One wants to be in control, very proper and restrained. The other wants to be John Cale - completely unpredictable and challenging."
"I may look like I come from Connecticut and sound like I come from California but I have a New York sensibility. There's a definite humour that comes from New York. It's a form of the black humour you find in most cities."
"I sense it in Morrissey of the Smith's writing. To me Morrissey is very funny, but most people think he's depressing. He's actually brilliant in the way he puts two lines together and is completely absurd, but it works well."
Submitted by Sharon Jennings
VegaNet@aol.com
Up to Suzanne Vega Home Page