SUZANNE IN STOCKHOLM

AJ: You seem to be the most powerful poet/singer since Bob Dylan. This song we just heard, In Liverpool, can you tell me about it. It's a sad song, isn't it?

SV: It's a little sad, but it's not as sad as it seems to be. It's actually a romantic fantasy, based on one Sunday that I had in Liverpool two years ago. Where I was lying on the bed in a hotel room listening to the bells ringing outside the hotel room, I was thinking about an old boyfriend that I had, that I knew about fifteen years ago. So I was remembering him. It's like a nostalgic song. It's a romantic song.

AJ: Suzanne, you seem to break new territories for every new album. The title for your latest album; 99.9F°. What's behind that title?

SV: The title stands for a slight fever. Cos the normal temperature in the Fahrenheit system is 98.6°. So it means a little sick. Enough to hear things in a strange way and enough to see things in a peculiar way. A little bit off the normal.

AJ: Somewhere you described your voice in a very funny way. As a pencil, what do you mean by that?

SV: I think I have the kind of voice that is very simple and you use it for many different things. You can use it to sing to your brothers and sisters or to sing to a large audience. It's simple, it's straightforward, not expensive, not fancy.

AJ: You grew up in a very rough neighborhood of New York. But still your songs are romantic and poetic. Where do you get your inspiration from?

SV: I get my inspiration mostly from everyday life. I think there's a lot of poetry in a big city. You see small things ina big city and if you write about them it gives them a feeling of being special. Tom's Diner, for example, is a real place in New York City. It's a very ordinary place and people go there to eat. So I like to write about these ordinary things because it brings out a special feeling to take these ordinary things and write about them.

AJ: Why did you give up your dance career?

SV: I gave up my dance career because I loved the music and it was really the music that made me feel like dancing. I still love to dance, but I felt that I'd probably do better in the music.

AJ: OK, I'm sure you do. Thank you Suzanne Vega.

SV: ...and then I spent several more months thinking about it before I sent him the Christmas card. [her father]

EK: Was he happy to see you?

SV: Yes, he was. He's very surprised to see the way I became. He had some idea that I would be married with two children and living in Florida. Some kind of housewife, and he was not expecting me. He wasn't expecting the kind of person that I became. But he was very happy that I'm a musician on the road. Although I think sometimes it can be very painful if you find your parents and they don't want to know you or they don't feel the connection. There's always that chance that I will be very painful. In my case I was shocked to find out about my grandmother and to find out that she had been a musician on the road fifty years before. That she had spent most of her life traveling and playing drums in an all-girl band. And I saw the pictures of her to prove, and there's this woman that looks very much like me with a very long thin face and dimples and even a similar kind of haircut. And she's sitting there behind her drumkit and this was something she decided to do.

EK: So you think it's possible to love two fathers?

SV: I think so. I still believe that you have one father. You can have many parents, but your father is still... There's one person that got together with your mother to make you this specific person that you are. And that's what I think, but I think that you can certainly have other parents. And in my case too. I wanted to find my father because my brothers and sisters, some of them look very much like my stepfather, who is Puerto Rican and very dark skinned. Very dark hair, different bone structure. So I always thought that I wasn't quite... People would pick me out of the group...."

[photograph]

[handwritten letter which was inset beside the interviews:]

Sunday April 29, 1990                         Liverpool, England

     the bells are clanging and clamouring from what appears to be a church
now they have stopped, rung twice - now the ceremony is over - it had gone
on for a good five or ten minutes.  two clocks look into my hotel room and
from the window I see a small river - is this the river Mersey that Andy
once told me about?  I thought of him today as the bus rolled into town -
how homesick he was for Liverpool, for the big clock that always told the
same time - where is it?  for the river Mersey which, if this is it, is much
smaller and browner than the Hudson which I am homesick for right now -
     the light is pale and this here like the inhabitants of this country -
a pale watery light not unpleasant but not substantial -
     Here the bells have started again - it begins at the top of the scale
and hurls itself down in a mad clamor on and over again in an uneven rhythm

[2nd page]
there must be some mad boy in the belfry hurling himself across the ropes
like a hunchback.  perhaps he loves someone who doesn't love him.  perhaps
he is remembering an old lost love.  now the scale is confused and it sounds
like a carnival of bells, a dull peculiar melody, with a lilt but no reason
to it.
     now it returns to the scale from the beginning over and over from the
top down to the bottom  the low notes hitting with a dark clanging resonance
the top bells more cheerful - besides this banging and clamouring there is
no other sound, no shouts, traffic, people, nothing except the stone, the
pale sunlight, the small brown river and the bells on Sunday afternoon.

     This morning I lay awake from four am to 730 am.  a long treacherous
stretch of time to think things over again.  Unfortunately lately I fall
into idle daydreams about  [name crossed out]  his brown skin, open
generosity, blunt