(Opens with "Tom's Diner")
S: So I'm Suzanne Vega. I'm actually curious to know who you are. Who are you? Why are you here? What are you hoping to gain from this evening, this kind of thing? How many of you are singer songwriters or musicians? Wow. So, how many of you are hoping to learn how to get a record deal? One lonely person, oh, come on. Most of you are artists I guess. No, I'm only kidding. You should really feel free to, if you have a question, bring it out. This is the kind of evening that I really look forward to because I like to talk and ...I'm interested in whatever questions you have.
Q: Are you also curious as to how many people are from New York City?
S: That's true. I was wondering how many of you grew up in New York City? Are you all the singer songwriters? Where are the rest of you from? Boston...Miami...Belgium, very cool, all right...New Jersey.
Q: You were not born in New York City, you were born on the West Coast?
S: I was born in California. On July 11, 1959.
Q: What was July that got the yes?
S: July 11...Oh, this woman here wanted to buy...So yes, there I was I was born July 11, 1959 in Los Angeles, California--Santa Monica to be exact--I was 2 months premature. I was 5 weeks in the incubator and was 2.5 pounds. Then I became 5 pounds and I got to go home. So this is how I began life. I arrived here in New York City at the age of 2 and a half with my mother and my stepfather whose name is Ed Vega who is a novelist and short story writer. From Santa Monica, we moved to East Harlem. I lived at...E. 109th St. between first and second avenues. I lived there for 5 years.
Q: Why the move? Why did you come to New York?
S: Why did I come to New York?
Q: Why did the family come?
S: Because my stepfather was from...Ed came to New York City when he was 12 years old from Puerto Rico. I have his name, Suzanne Vega. Vega comes from Ed Vega. People ask me often if I'm Puerto Rican. I was raised in a half Puerto Rican household in a Puerto Rican neighborhood but I'm as about as white as you can possibly be. Although I didn't know this until I much later. They came to New York City because my stepfather had fallen in love with my mother and wanted to bring her to his mother's house. My earliest memories are playing with the cracks in the sidewalk in front of 109th St. My mother quickly had 4 children. 3 younger brothers and sisters so there was a gang of us. She was 18 when I was born so by the time she was 24 she had all of the children. She had 4 children.
Q: Never got any sleep.
S: Never got any sleep. So that's the beginning.
Q: Was there music on that block?
S: Yea, there was always music and music in the house. I also remember the Beatles, I remember the radio, I remember the bosa nova my parents would listen to...I remember Pete Seeger and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", and I remember songs my father had written--some of them in Spanish. He would play guitar. But it was a very mixed...the kind of music we would listen to was very mixed. My favorite record was a...
Q: When you mention Pete Seeger. Recently there was this whole thing about Pete getting an award down in Washington and people started to dredge up the left wing/right wing communist kind of garbage. I wonder, was that a part of your up bringing?
S: The communist, left wing kind of garbage? It was actually. It was a very political time that I was growing up and it was a very political household that I lived in. We lived not far from where Malcolm X would give his speeches in Harlem and in East Harlem. I seem to remember the Kennedys coming through the neighborhood. I remember the War on Poverty. Because my parents were both involved in Kennedy work. So all the stationary that my father brought home had the word "Opportunity" stamped on the top. There were a lot of rallies and demonstrations. We would all go to them. We probably did that until I was about 15 years old. So that was part of the whole household that we had. And my father was also very involved in Puerto Rican politics. He was very much for Puerto Rico being an entirely independent country. So we grew up with posters of Pedro....on the wall. And we were raised to know about our heritage, our roots, our Puerto Rican heritage, we learned about the....and our African heritage which to me was kind of bizarre when I was 9 years old that I was not half Puerto Rican. But up until that point I was very interested in my African roots. There was a period there when I was taking African dance lessons, got involved, and getting my butt kicked.
Q: The realization did that come gradually or was there one moment?
S: No. Actually, I was taken in by my father's family. I lived in Puerto Rico for a year. I was very close to my grandmother. She lived in the Bronx and I would go see her. I could speak Spanish really fluently. Then one day when I was nine years old, my father sat me down and said, "Has it ever occurred to you why you don't look like me?" These are the kinds of questions that were frequently asked at my household. But it had not occurred to me because I assumed that I looked like my mother which I do. So I said probably truthfully, "No" And then he said that he felt it was time that I should know that "I'm not your father" I really thought he was kidding and I thought it was a psychological test. Maybe a) joke or b) a psychological test that you run on your children to see how smart they are.
Q: There was a trick involved here somewhere?
S: I was wondering. Let's see if she'll believe this. And he said no you have another father, he lives in California. California, I've never even been to California. And gradually it dawned on me that that meant also that I was not Puerto Rican. And in fact, I have another name on my birth certificate. But this took a few days of sorting out. Because then it wasn't referred to again. Once in a while at the dinner table if we had company. My brother would shout out, "Doesn't Suzy have another father?" We'd all turn around and go, "shhhh". So that was kind of the end of the discussion. But it was a very lively household and a very intellectual one because both of my parents were very well educated. We had no money at all--none whatsoever. The welfare mothers on the block used to leave cans of peanut butter on our doorstep because my mother had all these kids. But, we never went on welfare. But it was a very intellectual family that was very in to reading and into arts and into discussion and philosophy and politics.
Q: So do you think, Suzanne, that right from the earliest that this is what you were interested in pursuing? This intellectual life--this artistic, creative life.
S: Yea, definitely, from the time I was 5 years old. I said to myself--I started writing poems and this is something my father encouraged. I wrote short stories when I was 7...
Q: When did that translate into music?
S: When I was 11 I picked up the guitar and started to fool around and teach myself stuff. I got some chords from my father and I got some chords from my Uncles. Then, I guess, I wrote my first song when I was 14.
Q: Do you remember your first song?
S: Oh, yea, I remember it very clearly because it took me 3 years to write it. It was a country song. It was a country song written to my younger brother Matthew.
Q: Why did it take you three years to write it? You didn't think it was done ever or you couldn't get it right or you kept going back?
S: Yea, I would write things and I thought oh, that's just so stupid I can't believe it. Or I would take poems and try to put them to music and that was sort of interesting for a while. I three younger brothers and sisters who were a captive audience. I would take them off and sing things to them do puppet shows with them or drag them off and lock them in a room and make them listen to me. This first song, I'm not going to sing the whole thing--I can't bear to but it's like. It was very much like this (Suzanne plays). It was a complete fantasy song if you want to know the truth. By this point we had moved to 102nd St. and Broadway. That's my first song.
Q: Who would be the influence on a song like that?
S: I had found a batch of records in a thrift store that someone had thrown away. It was a Folkways record. I really liked the Cisco Houston song. So I taught myself the...and I taught myself "Little East Texas Red" and...
Q: Did the subject matter appeal to you or was it the music that appealed to you?
S: The music. The subject matter was inspired by a song that I had heard on a Judy Collins record called "Liverpool Lullaby" which I really liked because it seemed a very unsympathetic view of children. Are you familiar with this song: "Liverpool Lullaby"--(Suzanne sings). It's a beautiful song and it is very unsentimental and I was trying to write a similar song about my brother.
Q: What I meant was about the Cisco Houston song and the Woody Guthrie song. Those songs were about life in America in the 30's. Could you relate to what the lyrics were or was it music that enticed you first?
S: Part of it was pure escapist fantasy as far as I was concerned because I had grown up in New York--in the streets. I had never taken a train, I had never been outside of the city except once. We went on a trip to California when I was 11 on a Greyhound bus. That took 4 days. I was amazed. I had never seen Ohio. I had never seen little white houses and picket fences and all that stuff in New York. As far as I was concerned that was as much of a fairy tale as "Raggedy Ann and Andy" was. I thought it was going to be like New York City from one end of the country to the other. So these songs about the trains and traveling. It was also about a longing for freedom. These songs were all about freedom. About hopping on a train with your guitar and going on the road and being free.
Q: But you didn't do that. When you got into your High School years you stayed here in the city. You went to school for the Performing Arts.
S: Yea, I went to the High School of Performing Arts as a dancer. That's what I did.
Q: Were you a good dancer?
S: I was a good dancer. Yea, I was on scholarship. I would dance several hours a day at the High School of Performing Arts and then I would go after school to the New Dance Group Studio where I was on scholarship and dance some more. I danced almost 4 or 5 hours a day until I was about 18 years old when I gave it up.
Q: Why?
S: Because I was very frustrated. Because I really really wanted to stand out and I wanted to shine and I didn't want to be in the chorus. And I kind of had a really bad attitude. Because I wasn't willing to do anything. I wasn't willing to do what it took to be a good dancer. If I didn't like the teacher or if I didn't like the choreographer, I wouldn't give my best. I thought to much. I spent a lot of time thinking about things and I didn't really have the technique to really shine and stand out. I was really...and also very shy. I started to think that maybe songwriting was a really good way to go because I then I felt like I had a wide open field. I felt like I had some kind of instinct. I felt that at least I could stand on a stage by myself and if I failed then I had no one to answer to except myself. So, when I was 18 I stopped dancing.
Q: I'm curious about the dichotomy between being a very shy person and also standing on stage by yourself and performing songs that reveal lots of inner emotions and feelings. How do those 2 things jive?
S: They don't. They didn't back then and they still don't. It's always a struggle to get up on stage. I feel compelled to do it and it's something I love doing but it's partly because of it's thrill. It's like skydiving for me. For me, the idea of me getting up on stage and having a bunch of people stare at me is both horrifying, thrilling, nauseating, and there's nothing like it. It's more exciting to me than white water rafting. But it's not something that I can reconcile. It's never blended into...it's never blended into something that's come easy.
Q: How about the songwriting? Is that something easy or easier than the performing? The songwriting is a much more private affair.
S: Yea. Songwriting is something that I talent...I think I have an instinct for. It's not always easy to write it. But I think it's something I feel really compelled to do.
Q: That first song took you three years. You don't still take three years to write a song?
S: Oh yea, yea I do. There are some songs. Sometimes you have a song and it'll start itself. I had one song..."Tired of Sleeping", I think, took about 8 years. I had, "Oh, mom, the dreams are not so bad," was the chorus that I had. And I had no idea what the rest of it was going to be or what the rest of it was going to say. All I knew was that I had that line and that line had some kind of truthful feeling to me and thought that I needed to say that. So that's all I said and I wrote it down and waited for the rest of it to come in and it took 8 years. Once I got the title "Tired of Sleeping" and I thought, that's it. Sometimes you look at what you got and you go, I don't know if anyone would ask me what this means, I couldn't tell them a literal interpretation of what this means. You know that it feels right.
Q: So you keep a notebook?
S: Yea, I do
Q: Do you keep other books as well? Do you keep diaries, do you keep journals?
S: Yea, I keep diaries and journals. My gig books from the early 80's. I used to write down all the gigs that I did and all this stuff. You used to tell me it was compulsive so now I'm embarrassed and I'm not going to tell you anymore about it.
Q: Suzanne, share some of that stuff with us, Suzanne.
S: OK. It is compulsive. I started keeping a journal when I was 12. This one...let's see...this should be encouraging to some of you here who do gigs in New York City. Do you do gigs in New York City you singer songwriters? Where do you play? You play at...? The Back Fence. I remember The Back Fence. The Bitter End. Who plays there? Wow. See I have a story about the Bitter End which is that I tried for 2 years to get a gig there. When I was 17 I would go down on Monday nights and back when Stephen, this big guy who used to run...I would go down with my guitar--this was back in 1976 and 1977. And punk rock was the big thing. Patti Smith was the thing. There was a whole scene going on that I was completely oblivious of and not a part of in any way. So I'd go down with my guitar and sing my three songs to Stephen who would sit in front of the microphone and eat. He'd be eating pork chops and a glass of whatever and he'd sit there with great flourish. He would be the only one eating too. The rest of the people were auditioners who were sitting there dry mouthed. And he'd sit there and he'd eat and he'd wipe his mouth and have some more of this or that. And I'd sing my three songs. And I'd come off stage and he'd say, "Well, you've got a lot of guts to get up on that stage and sing that mellow stuff." I'd say, "Thank you" His one piece of advice that I did take was that I tried to do a cover version of "Easy Rider" and he told me to stick to the originals which I did from then on. But for 2 years I kept going down for Monday nights at the Bitter End because I had been told that there was a hierarchy to the club system in New York. I had been told that first you get a gig at the Bitter End and then if you're lucky you get a gig at Folk City. Then if you're really lucky and good then you can go onto the Bottom Line. And I thought, that's the way it's done. And for 2 years I went down to the Bitter End. And then finally it dawned on me just to go over to Folk City and see what's happening there. It took me a while. That's where Bob Dylan had started and I remember thinking there's no way I can even walk in. I mean Bob Dylan got started there, how am I going to even walk in. I can't even get a gig at the Bitter End. But I did walk in. Someone gave me some advice. They said don't come to the...nights. Make yourself a demo tape and leave it with the manager. I did that. And I got the gig opening for Michael Picasso on Wednesday...it's in here somewhere...so on Wednesday night...yea, so that's how I got my first gig at Folk City. In fact I remember making the $30. I remember because I went home and the guy called me up and said, "You left your money here." And I said, "My money, what do you mean I left my money there? I have my wallet with me." He said, "No, your money. You made $30. You went home without getting paid." and I said, "Oh, yea."
Q: You had done other things?
S: Yea, I did lots of things.
Q: Social events like schools and...
S: Yea, I would anywhere I could possibly get a gig because I was really interested in playing. I thought since I had the songs that I should sing them.
Q: At that point, were there more than those three songs?
S: Yea, yea, there were more than those 3 songs. There were like 30, maybe, 30 songs.
Q: And how many of those songs survived the cut when you finally made them...how many of the songs on the first album go back to earlier days for you?
S: Not many of those songs. But on the second album there was a couple of songs that ended up being..."Calypso" and "Gypsy", I think, were earlier songs and they ended up on it.
Q: Talk about "Gypsy"?
S: I don't want to do that. I want to tell you about...I'll tell you about Gypsy in a minute.
Q: How about playing at the Bitter End now?
S: Why do you work for the Bitter End...who said that?
Q: I said that.
S: Oh, you did? Do you work for the Bitter End?
Q: No, I just think it would be a really intimate place to see you.
S: Yea, I guess maybe it would. I mean, of course, I mean I'm 35 years old and I'm a professional and there's still some part of me that remembers 20 years ago.
Q: Ken...is a really nice guy.
S: Is he?
Q: Absolutely...
S: I guess Stephen moved away...Yea, it's possible. I mean, when I play in the City these days...I used to play Folk City but now it's closed. I used to play the Speakeasy and now that's closed. The Fast Folk Magazine has just started a cafe on north Moore St. It only holds about 74 people. I did a benefit for them a while back. It's just started, it's just opened.
Q: where?
S: On North Moore St. Right across the street from...There's a tiny little sign in the window that says, "Fast Folk" out there...It only seats 74 people. In fact at the opening when I went to play the opening it reminded me of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It just looked like. I found that gig, it was Folk City June 4, 1980 and I was wearing blue pants a leotard and...and I had been guaranteed $25 and I got $50. I was very happy about that. The weirdest gig I think I ever did was this White Plains shopping mall. Would you like to hear about that? April 8, 1981. White Planes Shopping Mall--weird. Got $50 for singing, "Playing" and "Just Friends"...(Suzanne sings). The voice mic was plugged into the shopping mall broadcasting system which was a drag. There was no mic for the guitar. Generally a...No publicity beforehand, not much audience, 3pm in the afternoon, plus they had a live wire hanging from a ceiling in the dressing room which I backed into and got some of my hair fried off. This is because I used to wear metal barrettes. They hadn't quite finished building the dressing room and so I backed into it and the metal barrette touched the wire and a big chunk of my hair came off. That was I think the weirdest scare.
Q: Did you have to compete with, "Attention Shoppers!"
S: No it was just...
Tape transcribed by Wendy Chapman
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