THE SUZANNE VEGA INTERVIEW

City of all cities, almost a European city like Paris or London, but on the other side New York looks like the connection between the United States and Europe. New York is remarkable and unforgettable!

I'll never forget the amazing skyline of Manhattan. Because of movies, books, television and photographs many people will have the feeling they already know that sight but feeling the atmosphere in and around Manhattan is still a difference. My wish to visit New York was realized so visiting the Empire State Building, after the twin towers of the World Trade Center the highest skyscraper, was like feeling on top of the world. A mysterious point of view on the city which looks on first instance a little bit unreal.

It took two hours to walk from the hotel in mid-Manhattan to a well-known place on earth for fans of Suzanne Vega: Tom's Restaurant. Eating pancakes was also necessary before walking back downtown. It's easy to find your way in this city of numbered streets and avenues. Walking downtown on Broadway on a normal Saturday afternoon is looking to people on the street, doing some shopping, having their dinner in one restaurant or going out around Times Square with all the theatres, cinemas, ...The yellow cabs rule over the street.

New York is alive for 24 hours and New York City's facilities for visitors are unmatched and expensive. But just walking around in all the different neighborhoods is rather simple and impressing.

On the day of the interview with Suzanne Ingrid and I are having our breakfast in a diner somewhere in Mid-Manhattan. It's freezing cold outside and we are making plans to enjoy ourselves again. Suddenly I see a man buying a coffee and some bread. I know that man, it's Marc Shulman of the band of Suzanne Vega so we make acquaintance with each other again. Marc talks about living and working in New York, about coming back after a huge world tour with Suzanne Vega and the problems of finding work for a musician. For us it's a good preparation for later that day when we have our job to do. Nice to meet you again Marc!

They really expect us at the office of AGF Management LTD on 30 West 21st Street. After the interview manager Ron Fierstein shows us the whole office including the studio where Steve Addabbo is working on something.

On the next pages you'll find a live report of the interview with Suzanne Vega!

The interview

Last summer I was very surprised to hear about the announcements of several concerts of you on different folk festivals all over the world. Two things were surprising. First the fact that it would be a solo-appearance and second the fact of playing on a folk festival. And the huge world tour of 1990 was really unexpected. What was the reason?

Well, it was because of the world tour of last year. Really! Because the world tour of last year was very expensive. It's expensive to have a band and to take a band on the road and especially with the show which we had last year; which has a set and a lot of crew to take care of. And also I felt I wanted to perform by myself again, because this was how I had begun. I spent ten years performing solo before I ever had a band. So I needed to just go out and perform again on my own, just to prove to myself I could do it in front of a large audience and also to try out some new songs, which are based on the acoustic guitar and not so much on the synthesizers as they had been. So, most of it is economic!

It's not because of a reason to start again?

Well, it was also that because I had new songs I wanted to try. It was a way of testing myself because I had never sung in festivals by myself. The first festival I did was with 20,000 people so it's hard to make an audience of that size stay with you. So I wanted to see if it would work and I thought that it did work.

At least in Belgium it worked very well and in Dranouter you had sung a new song called "Men will be men." Did you sing any other new songs except this one?

Not in these shows. But I did a gig in the Iron Horse in Northampton. And I sang three of four new songs there. In front of 20,000 people you can't really experiment too much. You can only experiment with the audience. I've written about eight songs. so when I start working on some demos at the end of this month we'll think about the fourth album which I hope will be out next spring.

Compared to the last albums the fourth album will be out fast. There was always a period of three years within two albums.

Well, I had a really good writing style because partly I did some writing when I was on the road and doing those festival shows. I spent a lot of time for myself in hotel rooms and it's just the good way of focusing myself and getting myself to write. And a lot of them came to me very fast which is not always so. We'll start seriously on the next album.

Can you tell us something about those new songs? What they are like and if you compare it to the first three albums what will it be? The other albums are very different from each other.

I think this next one will also be very different. I think it will be simpler than any of the other three. Hopefully it will be simple in the orchestration and instrumentation but also simple in the songs.

You mean simple in the way compared to the fist album?

Yeah, I think even more simple than the first one. On the first one we were experimenting, because none of us had produced an album before. At that time we were confused, experimenting and fighting a lot. But this time I think it will be very straightforward and the songs are more direct. Each song has a subject and they are less experimental and much more focused than the last album. I can't really say how it's going to sound because we haven't started looking at things. But so far every song has a focus and a point and it gets to the point and then it stops. So each song has its topic and its point of view.

Like on Solitude Standing? I think that on that album each song has its own point of view. It's a collection of songs as contrasted with Days of Open Hand, which is more an album as a whole.

With the big success of Solitude Standing I didn't want to follow it up with an album that was going to be predictable, that people would say, oh yes, there are the next ten songs of Suzanne Vega and they are all about child abuse or whatever. So I felt that I wanted to push against all the boundaries so I was experimenting with the instrumentations and with the subject matter by not putting chorus in some of the songs and not being specific. Pilgrimage for example is a song about how I went to find my father buy you don't know this from listening to the song. So I was experimenting with writing the songs of Days of Open Hand but this next album is much more basic and less experimental. It's more obvious what the songs are about. I mean there is one song called "Blood sings" which is about looking at photographs of an uncle that i never met. We look very much alike but I have never seen him in real life. And he had a very tragic life and a very short one so this is what the song is about; how it feels to see yourself in someone else. Another song which is called "If you were in my movie" which is a very straightforward song and it's a sort of flirting song with someone. If you were in my movie: these are the parts you would play and the parts are:

(Suzanne is thinking about the first part)

Well, I can't remember the first one (laughing).

The second one is a gangster; a detective, a gangster, a priest, and a doctor. It's easy to see what the songs are about. The are about real things. And they are all based on the acoustic guitar so that I can play them in front of an audience by myself.

Do you think that playing solo will happen more often in the future?

I'm not sure (emphatically) but I like to know that I have the option of doing that. Because I think the ones are the strongest are the ones I can play by myself. And I know that if times ever go bad, that's where my strength is, that's always been my backbone, the acoustic guitar. I felt a need to go back to it after two or three years experimenting.

What will happen with the band?

I am trying to figure that out myself (laughing again). I think they will be probably more like side-men than they had been in the past. By then there was a lot of collaboration which on one hand is fun; it's a profit when you are experimenting to collaborate with other people. But no experiments this year, I want to be direct. So they will be side-men like the way they began. We'll have to see how it all works when we start the process.

Will there be a world tour after bringing out the new album?

I think so, but I don't think it will be as big as the last one. With the last one we went to every single, small town in America and Europe. We seemed to go to England five times a year and never asked why. We'll definitely play. I like playing with the band because it gives it more variety and color. But it will probably be not as big as a world tour. Unless by some chance you'll have a hit or something like that and then everyone will be pretty excited and then you have to make as much money as anyone can make. I don't think it's going to happen because the economy is different now. The recession has hit everyone very hard and last year was really the beginning of it and it really hit hard, you could see it. Most cities of America were very depressed and there are about 150 bands on the road last year so the competition was enormous. So I just don't know that it's very fruitful to keep going out on the road to lose money. I would rather spend the time writing, living a life, writing articles...

But it all depends on the success of the new album?

No, I think, even when it's widely successful we'll probably keep it small. Because even last year when we had a hit with Tom's Diner it didn't necessarily help the tour. It doesn't always connect. It has to do with more than economics. But we'll still play major cities but it won't be a long eight or nine-month tour like it has been last year.

Do you think of inviting a special guest on the new album?

Yes, I thought about that. Last time we had Philip Glass. I have to see. Once we start working on orchestrating the songs. I haven't really been thinking in those terms but that might be a good idea. I have to listen to how the new songs sound on tape and then you figure out who to bring in that could make it interesting.

Two weeks ago I worked again with DNA. I met them in England and they are coming out with an album in January. The asked me to write a song with them, so I wrote a song with them.

Did you work with DNA before?

I had worked with them on doing the re-mix of Rusted Pipe. Not very much, just a little bit. But this is a whole new song. It was very funny and it all came together very fast. I don't think they will release it as a single, it's kind of a collection. The are afraid they are going to be dropped before the album comes out. They don't really know how to write songs (laughing). They just have some ideas and put them into something. They are very funny. I like them, I have to say.

What do you really think of the success of DNA?

I think it was very funny. I mean , they didn't benefit. They didn't get any money from the success. But it's given them some kind of career which is good. But I wouldn't have let them release it if I didn't think it had something. If I thought it was bad, I would have sued them. I would have stopped it in some way. But I thought it was funny and inventive and I never dreamed that it would be a big hit. And I was really happy when I realized that it was going to an audience that is normally not my kind of audience. Black and Puerto Rican kids in New York all heard it and I was grown up in this kind of neighborhood so it was kind of ironic to me that without knowing it my music has suddenly gotten into this other areas. So to me it was like translating the song in another language.

Luka was a small hit, but instead of all the other singles Tom's Diner went straight to Top 10 in Netherlands.

That's crazy. You know, it doesn't bother me as long as people don't expect me to get on stage and perform it like that. I haven't had any problems with singing it the way I have always sung it. But I make the audience clap. And they like it and that's fun. It's s not like it might have become a disco. It has crossed my mind that it would be funny to go on tour as DNA featuring Suzanne Vega but that would be a whole other kind of show. It crossed my mind once, but I don't know. I really have to be careful how I presented it, otherwise other people should say, "Oh, she is just confused. She doesn't know if she wants to be a disco queen or a folk singer. But my serious work, the work that I do on my own records is based on the acoustic guitar and that's what I always fall back on.

Do you feel that your own work is the opposite from DNA?

It is the opposite, but I still like to experiment and I won't deny myself that opportunity to experiment with other people and have a good time with them as long as it is fun.

I got letters from people. The hate DNA and they can't stand it. My feeling is, why not experiment? If you hate that, if you hate Tom's Diner by DNA then don't listen to it and go back to Solitude Standing. It still exists in the original form. There's no reason to get hysterical. People feel upset and write just about it but I don't feel that way. I think it's fun.

Oh yes, I know a huge Vega fan who really hates it. It's happening a lot.

A lot of people really hate it, but that's not my attitude. In fact many people probably hate this album (Tom's Album) with 12 different versions including REM, who have a really nasty version. But I thought I'd include it all because it's interesting to me that my song would spark people's imagination to interpret. It's not that they destroyed the original, the original version still exists and so to me it's interesting that other people interpret my song. Why would REM and Billy Bragg want to stand on stage and do what they did? It has some impact on me. And in some ways it's ok. They are having a joke and they are having a joke on my expense to some degree. I think I'm a big enough person that I can take all these jokes and put them together on this album. And then it's my joke. Some of these are really terrible and some are really great and some are very funny.

Which songs are great to your opinion?

I like Nikki D's version. Because I think she really took it and made it her own. ON a surface it looks we come from very different circumstances. She is a very black girl from Los Angeles and I am a very white girl from New York. And it's seen as we come from very different worlds but we don't . I think the way she uses my voice in that version is really good. You know it's true to herself and the way she is and it's very smart. And I also like Michigan & Smiley. It's very funny. It's like a live reggae version and it's so strange. And I like Peter Behrens because I like the lyrics. So those are my favorite ones. Peter Behrens wrote German lyrics. A very existential song. I think the Swedish one is very sweet. It's got a nice voice and he sings it very sweet.

I asked nobody to do this, someone just gave it to me.

Did you ever think of the idea to skip the song in your shows? Before DNA it was really quiet during Tom's Diner.

Sometimes the audience don't clap. The don't so I don't and that's fun too. I never started with tetete.... I always start by singing: I am sitting... and then I want to see if the audience claps. I don't push it. Like in Japan for example; I don't think they clapped. Some people started in the middle. At the Newport Folk Festival some people started in the middle but they didn't realize it. I was listening to them waiting for them to continue. So I take the gut of the audience. It was a folk festival. Nobody expected from me to sing DNA-songs. I think in time it will all blow over. If I'll have some new hit everybody's mind will be distracting.

A few years ago the Lemonheads covered Luka and didn't get famous. What did you think of that song and do people cover your songs a lot?

I thought that was really good. I met one of these guys recently in a coffee shop. They did it really well. With DNA I thought, well this is just another thing like the Lemonheads. More people cover my songs, but most of them are not well known. for some reason in Japan people cover my songs a lot. People have asked to use my songs for different things, mostly commercials and I said no. Some company asked over and over again to use Luka and I said no. I am selecting where I let people do covers and where I let the music work on it's own.

Another surprise this year was your contribution on Deadicated, a tribute to the Grateful Dead. Can you tell us something about that?

We recorded that last year in the middle of the tour. In the first day of the last leg of the tour we went to England a day earlier to record. We prepared both versions because we thought that we do one or the other and we liked China Doll as a band. But the producer had requested to do Cassidy. So we prepared both and he liked both versions. So it was a big surprise in kind of recording all day and night and get both versions down.

Before Deadicated you had several other projects, for example with the Smithereens, Philip Glass, Arthur Baker, etc. Any reason to do that?

Because I like to experiment musically and in some ways what I do with DNA of a continuation of that train of thought to work with Arthur Baker and Joe Jackson on Pretty in Pink was very different from working with Philip Glass. So every time I collaborate with an artist I learned some more and I am interested in the way my music fits with other people's music. And I just don't feel that I am writing by myself, for myself in some kind of room. I feel that when I interact with other people it still sounds like me. The writing is still mine, my voice is with other people it still sounds like me. The writing is still mine, my voice is still my voice and every time I collaborate with someone else I helped to exchange in a world of music. I attituded some kind of dialogue that everyone's had with each other.

I think you proved on the last album that your music fits real together with Philip Glass' ideas.

I was really happy with that. I knew he could do a good job because I knew that he wouldn't be sentimental about this. I always said to him, "I want something very, very simple," and he made something and it was great. He is wonderful to work with. He will never sound sentimental. He's very structured.

Will you work with him again?

Yes, I'd like to. His producer had suggested that maybe we should make a whole album together. I should think about that in terms of this next group of songs because some of them are very acoustic songs and won't need the usual rhythm section. But I'll work with Philip Glass any time he asks me to work with him. I think we have a good chemistry.

What about other projects?

I had an article come out recently in a magazine. They had asked me to write an article on state of masculinity today. They asked a group of women to write their views on masculinity. I was one of them. (Article in this magazine!) I was planning to do all these other things but suddenly I started writing again. But there is still writing for some film script on the Carson McCullers project. That's always there on the back of my mind. I keep finding ideas to find the approach to it because I want to do it in a small and independent way. People come asking me to read for parts in movies. Recently I read for a part that I didn't get. It's hard to crossover to another culture. People want a real actor. So that's why I would prefer to work on my own films in some kind of way, which means that you have to do a lot of work beforehand to set it up, so that it has the quality that you want to have. So it's not just you. You have to prove yourself in an unknown field.

What happened to the film that was made during the last tour? That was kind of finished. It was finished because the record company decided it was enough and they didn't give any more money. So there was a half an hour version of that film. But no one feels very satisfied with it. I've seen it again recently ad D.A Pennebakers house. We were looking to it and no one felt satisfied with it because it was filming a very specific point from time. And a lot of it was filming about the planning of the tour. By the end of the film the tour had changed a lot. By the beginning it was meant to be a big tour with a big set and a big crew and a big band and a big sound, but at the end of the tour it was a very small one. So to have all this documentation of this be tour that ended small is not really very satisfying. So when I was at his house we were discussing. What are the interesting things in the film? I think the interesting thing is when I"m performing by myself and the interviews. And Pennebaker doesn't feel the same way so we're just in this limbo now. He was thinking he might come and shoot more and try to finish it in the future, but to do that you have to finance it. I don't know if the record company likes that idea. The man who hired Pennebaker to do the film left A&M to go to another record company. At one point they were thinking of releasing it on video, but A&M changed their minds. The parts for me that were the most satisfying was for example when I did a benefit at the Speakeasy Club where I used to do shows when I was first starting. So I went back there and did a show. That part was to me representative. The film shows our first few gigs which weren't very good. We were still getting our show together. It was very slow and the audience wasn't very good. It took a lot of work to pull that tour into shape. So what you have is kind of a failed experiment. But one of these days we'll continue or finish it or something.

I've seen the film on a copy of German television. I liked the lessons you gave.

I thought that part worked well too because I like doing that kind of thing. I like to talk and I like to give interviews. That part was effective. Because I felt I was speaking my mind and there were kids who wanted to be musicians.

You already told about the world tour of last year. It changed a lot which I noticed last November when all the lights were gone. But was it a success?

Was it a success? It depends on how what your terms of success are. In terms of money it wasn't a success. In terms of going to new places where we have never been before i was wonderful because we had more standing ovations for example than we've ever had. IN terms of show and musicality it was really good. And we all knew that it was very strong. And we went to some of the places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Yugoslavia. Those shows were wild. I mean we had 8000 people in Hungary and they all knew all of the songs including the ones of the new album. The knew Tired of Sleeping and Book of Dreams. And that was amazing. Something we couldn't be prepared for at all. We went to Budapest and that was probably the best show of the whole tour because it was crazy. Frank, my drummer, has been on tour for years and years in 10, 15 years and he had never seen anything like that. And after the show we had a hundred people to get something signed. And we signed everything. It was very, very exciting and so there was a sense of breaking new ground and going to places we have never been before. And people say, oh well, that must have been because you are western and you're going to these countries for the first time. And I said, "Yes, that might have been part of it except that they knew the songs. It wasn't just like it could have been anyone. The knew the music which meant a lot to me. Because it was not well available to them. In America you can go to the store and buy it. And we go down to Mississippi and there were 75 people looking at you. so it was very strange here. You play in a tiny little club in your own homeland and then you go to Budapest where you have never been before and you play 8000 people who know every single word. It's amazing. A really strange year. You feel like and Alice in Wonderland. You can't tell if you're big or small or in between and you have to keep you r sense of identity.

In which country has the video of Tired of Sleeping been shot? Czechoslovakia. We didn't exactly go there to film that part, but my nephew was there and shot these pictures. REM saw the video of Tired of Sleeping and decided to use him for Losing my Religion. And they told me this and I said, oh that's great because Losing my Religion has won like seven of the MTV video awards, they swept every single video award. But my nephew was very pleased with Tired of Sleeping used by REM. Most directors catch a little bit of each video. But he liked that video himself so much that he used it for his own and sent it out to everyone to work with. I wished it was more widely played, but Tired of Sleeping wasn't releases as a proper single. Because I think that's the song on the last album that the audience was really pleased with. In Japan where I played on the WOMAD festival that's the one that people clap for. So, somehow I was spite it wasn't releases as a single. But Book of Dreams was the choice of the record company for a single. It wasn't my choice. I would have chosen Tired of Sleeping. Because if I was one of my own fans I would be more interested in Tired of Sleeping than I would be in Book of Dreams. Book of Dreams was an experiment and Tired of Sleeping was a song I needed to write.

I think you can hear the difference.

I think so too. When you're writing you think they are all very important and you try not to distinguish. Each one is very sincere. But after a year or two, after singing them each night, the ones you still need to sing after two years; that's because of a reason.

When we heard Days of Open Hand for the first time we liked all songs except Book of Dreams. Why did you write that song?

We were experimenting because we were listening to XTC. To me that's an example of great experimental pop and it was something we were trying. We were trying to push all the directions. And that was one direction.

Do you like traveling around the world?

There are parts that I really love and parts which are really tiring. mean I've been doing it now since 1984 and now it's 1991, so that's seven years of something. I think as I get older I'll get pain in my back and you sit on the bus all day, and I got all these pains in my back...

But there are parts that I really love. Like last year going to Eastern Europe, it was great. The thing that makes it worth it is when people want to see you. When people are excited that you are in town. But it makes it terrible when people come to the shows or they say, "Why are you back here?" which happens occasionally in England because we tour a lot there. You can't know in advance how well you're going to do so you set the tours up and you come to to a town twice sometimes. And people ask why and then you feel bad and then you say, "Yes, I should go home, what am I doing here?" But it makes it real worth it when the audience really loves it. And you can see town changing and you can see a sense of what's happening in the world. I mean being in Germany now is very different then it was five years ago. And that is thrilling, to get a sense of how countries change like that and feel that you are a part of history and that's what I really love.

Do you get a chance to see anything from the city where you are playing?

You can if you look. I mean if you look out the window it's something you can't avoid. You know in 1986 we played in Berlin which meant at that point that we had to go through a checkpoint. You can't avoid something like that. So you are aware of the political atmosphere even if you don't want that. There's a man standing with a machine gun looking at you in the face so even if you want to avoid it you can't. You have to deal with the facts you know. Or last year playing in Yugoslavia. Everyone could feel that there was a civil war coming. Everyone knew that there was one. We just went from the venue to the hotel back and feeling the atmosphere in the audience, standing on the stage and you could sense this feeling with the situation. And I try to know what's happening in the country before I go in because I want to know what's the situation because the other thing is that certain songs like Tired of Sleeping for example can be read in a political sense and sometimes they have more meaning in those countries then they would in a country like America for example. In America they should say, oh it's a song about waking up, you know. And in Czechoslovakia it has a different meaning. And some of these things are interesting to me because I'm involving these people that I'm singing to. It means you have to be very alert all the time. I made a mistake last year once because I went straight from Eastern Europe and we did a show I think in Spain right after that and suddenly they said, "Are you aware there's a coup in Argentina?" That happened like the day before and I've been so involved in what has been happening in Czechoslovakia, I had forgotten South America. So I said, "Oh!" You try and keep aware but you occasionally forget there's a whole entire part of the world having political problems. And you forgot that because you are in another part of the world.

Did it ever happen that you didn't perform a song for any reason?

No, I've always sung everything. I never had a song censured, but I think most people don't really know what I'm talking about so that's a sense of my music. Yeah, it's really poetic, but it doesn't really hit them. I see that if most people really understood what I was singing about they might try to censure it. Most of the songs are about sex or violence, you know, very sensible topics. But most people don't seem to understand exactly what it is I'm talking about. Perhaps they will on this next album because it's much more direct, but some of them are still ....... you know, I don't think I could ever write simple. To me a simple song is like Luka and it still has some of these strange angles.

What's your favorite song?

I don't know. I really like the songs I've just written. I feel that they are strong and that they are an interesting group of songs because they are not about the same topic. Each one is different and each one has a different strength. And the language is simple and I try to more to work with melody and some things. The last song I wrote was called "The Last Think I Do" which is about the point of view of David and Goliath. It's the point of view of David before he throws the rock and it is a very simple song and that song right now is my favorite one because it's just the way that I hoped it would be and sometimes you get a song that's like you feel you didn't do what you meant to do. That's always the thrill, that's the biggest thrill for me when you can do it the way you planned it.

Can you tell us something about the way you write your songs?

Usually I carry my guitar with me and some idea that's bothering me; I keep going back to it. This David-song was one I've been working on since February and you can't just approach the song. You have to kind of approach it sideways or it occurs to you when you are walking down the street or you sit around and you're playing some chords and suddenly, "Oh, this might work." And then you have to kind of push the song into being the right way. And sometimes it means you have to put it down and forget about it and come back and you can hope that it will respond. You have to kind of pull it out of its hiding place.

I'm trying to keep it all going because if I can finish 3 or 4 more songs the next album can be out early next year. I really like to get something out early next year because I think I could really feel last year that having three years in between albums mad a long time. I felt like I lost something and that bothered me because I like having an audience and I like playing for people and I like people to understand what I'm saying. So I felt bad, I felt bad that I lost some of the people. Now today I don't feel that every album has to be a Top 10 hit, but I like there's an audience there which understands me. I'm not writing for myself and I"m not writing to amuse myself. I'm writing to sing for people.

So it's just your job and nothing else?

It's my job. Why should I stay on a stage and sing it when no one's going to be there? I like to feel that I'm doing a service, that I'm doing something useful.

You talked very pleased about Eastern Europe. Was there another favorite place on earth to feel satisfied before you experience with the countries of Eastern Europe? When we spoke with Mike (Visceglia) last year he told us about the audience of Japan, which is very quiet.

Well, in Japan they react after the show and they are very passionate. Because I get a lot of letters from Japan. But they are very reserved so you have to break through and if you met a Japanese fan alone they are extremely fanatic and crazy. You know, they are not as reserved as they seem to b e, they are very passionate.

I like Japan too.

I have a love-hate relationship with England because sometimes I love it there, I just love it. I love the climate. And sometimes I really hate it because the press is bad and mean and they really don't care. It's just very arrogant. I like to go to England and just stay there. I like to hang out there. I did some more writing in England. I go and stay there in one hotel and sit in the room and just play. It gets my imagination working.

You went to London for writing songs for Days of Open Hand. So for the next album you did it again?

Yes, that's right. I went to the same hotel. I really like it there. It's a very old hotel of the 1700's and it has a certain Dickens-feeling. So it gets my imagination going. So I sit in that hotel and I think about New York.

What do you think of the fanzines? One in Holland, one in England, and even two in Italy, the second one in Italy is very small.

I appreciate it. I would never start one myself because that's a very stupid thing to do, but I appreciate it because I'm a fan of other people. I am a fan of Lou Reed for example and I collected every piece of paper.

What do you think of your fans in general?

Well, I'm aware that I'm writing for them in a sense. And I make a distinction between fans who follow what I'm doing and take it seriously and other people who hear what I play on the radio and don't quite understand it. Because I'm a fan of other people I appreciate the fan aspect. Because obviously that's why I wanted to make records. When I was a receptionist that was the main thing that kept me going. Going to the record shop at my lunchtime and standing in front of the R-section and looking for the Lou Reed and trying to figure out for which album I had enough money. And which one would be the one I would get the most satisfaction out because I couldn't buy all of them. These were my thoughts then.

Other heroes except Lou Reed?

Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen are kind of my very long period favorites. The ones I go back to. And I used to love the Police, Rickie Lee Jones and Laura Nyro.

What music do you like at the moment?

I've been listening to dance music. That's what I'm listening to at home because I love to dance. But when I want to listen to music to get myself writing it's the usual stuff: Velvet Underground, Elvis Costello, who is another long-time person I listen to. I do listen to a lot of music of the late seventies, early eighties because that was when I got really inspired by music and I still don't feel that my albums have an edge that I would like them to have and that's kind of what I had started writing in a certain way back in 1981. It was the music of Elvis Costello and Blondie and music that had a harder edge to it and the way it's kind of weird. My music has never really expressed that, that edge that I started with. You know songs like Cracking and Neighborhood Girls were meant to express what was happening at that time. It was never meant to be nostalgic. It was never meant to go back and revive the sixties. It was meant to have an edge to it. So I feel sometimes that I haven't expressed that in the music. That's what I'm listening to and I want to get myself going.

You think it will be an influence on the next album?

Well, it could be. There are some musicians I go back to and Kate Bush is one of them.

What's your place in the music world? It's always difficult to other people to explain your music. The best thing to say is singer-songwriter.

I see myself as a little bit left of center of mainstream. I see myself not as part of them. I think as the mainstream, it goes up and down depending on what year it is; some people say, "Oh, she's big, oh she's small." But I'm just playing on the sideway.

I think that's what most people like. That you are not that really big popstar!

I like that too. I don't think I could ever be a star like Madonna. Madonna is one because she is preoccupied being a popstar and that's not my role in music. My role is to have a life and to express things from a very street level point of view. This is what I really believe. I don't think it's my job to express a popstar's life. So this means that I have to lead a what I consider as a normal life, which means walking around, talking to people, experiencing things and struggling things. It's snot like riding around in limousines and that kind of thing. That's not interesting to me and that doesn't give me anything to write about, it doesn't help me, it doesn't inspire me to write the songs.

What are the best songs?

The best songs are the ones that I express, the ones that get me excited. I can tell you which ones of each album. On the first one: Cracking, that was the one I felt very satisfied with. On the second album I felt satisfied with Luka, although I did not see it as a big hit. On the third album Tired of Sleeping, it's the one I thought a song I felt I had to write. On the fourth album I guess the David-song is the one that I feel satisfied with right now. And there are others that I feel are pretty good. They're all the songs that have to do with struggling and expressing a point of view that's specific to me in some way. It's something I feel I have to do. It's like I was born to do that song. I don't feel anyone else could have written Luka. Other people have written songs about child abuse, but no one else could have written Luka and so there are some songs that I feel I have a specific reason. I am the only one who could uncover that specific point of view and so it's up to me to live the life that allows me to write those kinds of songs.

Let's end with New York, because we are here for the first time.

Oh really!

Yes, and we walked around a lot.

You did? Be careful please, it's very crazy.

Can you imagine yourself living somewhere else?

Sometimes I do, sometimes I can see myself living in London. I liked Amsterdam too when I was there. My friend Brian (the photographer) who I've been very good friends with and I wrote Tom's Diner the way he's doing his job. Well, his girlfriend is living in Amsterdam, so he thinks of moving there so we're talking about New York and Amsterdam just about three weeks ago. I think I always need to live in a big city because I like to have people around me. I just like to be involved in the way people live. I like to go in the country, but I think I go crazy, I need the big city.

But do you have special places in New York where you go to enjoy yourself?

Well, let's see. I like Soho and I live near there now. I just walk around and I like the buildings there. I like Battery Park. I like it downtown and walk around a lot. I used to live in the Upper West Side and I still go there. I visit the park where I used to go as a child. It's up to Riverside Drive & 102nd Street. My sister still lives there so I go up there and visit her and go to the park. But it is all very different now.

We went to Tom's Restaurant.

So that's where the cathedral is and there used to be the Hungarian pastry shop. Which I used to sit there and eat and read. Just you can sit there for hours and hours. Just across the street from the cathedral. And I went to school up there.

Well, we are finished with our questions now.

That's nice and it's kind of an exclusive one because it comes in a time when I am not doing any interviews and no one has heard of the new songs, Ron hasn't even heard anything.

I hope it will be out next spring!

Yeah, I'd like to do that because last year was a very strange and long year but I was writing a lot in my journal and some of it just carried over. I think it will be out soon. Will 'Men Will Be Men" still be funny? Yes, it will be very funny, but I'll leave out Johnny Uno's verses because in his private life he is having some problems and I shouldn't be standing on stage and talking about him. So I won't put Johnny Uno in the song on the record, but live I still can talk about him a little bit. And it depends on who's working for me next year. It's the kind of song you can keep adding verses to and taking away and it's very simple. Spider's verse will stay and Andy's verse will stay too. The verse about the horse in Czechoslovakia will stay. And the that still makes it a very long song because the chorus is very long and as a special, live I'll talk about Johnny Uno maybe, if it is a good audience and I like them. In Japan I had some very drunken English people in the front row and so I cut it very short.

What can we tell the people at home?

Hopefully I'll be back during the summer to do some festivals if it all comes together. We have to see how it goes. It depends on how quickly this album comes together and the economics of next year and how the album goes. I think this time the album will come out and then I come on tour. Usually I've been on tour already and then the album comes out which worked well in 1987 and was a disaster last year. So this time I think we'll be a little bit more careful. We'll see.

Thanks a lot Suzanne!

Karien Smeding