"I'd rather fight a lot now so that my daughter and my friends' daughters won't have to fight so hard next time"

Alannah Currie (The Thompson Twins) in Stephanie Bennet's video Women In Rock

In the summer of 1987, Suzanne Vega's single "Luka" hit the Top 10, peaking at number 3. It was an event that surprised everyone, including Vega's record label, A&M, and Vega herself, for Vega was considered a "folk" musician and folk was no longer considered a commercial musical style. Because the folk era of the '60s (when albums by artists like Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary had been consistent sellers) had long since passed, Vega had found it hard to attract the interest of a label in the early '80s because of her perceived "folkie" roots. But despite her use of an acoustic guitar and her aprrenticeship in the traditional folk spawning ground of Greenwich Village clubs, Vega's introspective lyrics were actually closer to the work of early '70s singer-songwriters than '60s folkies. Even so, A&M had been reluctant to sign her, but were eventually won over by the persistance of Vega and her manager, Ron Fierstein. "We went after A&M specifically because we had heard that they were interested in artists for the long run," Vega explained in Musician. Nancy Jeffries, then an A&R rep for A&M, related the label's concerns in the same article. "We all had some doubts because you're scared of signing a folk singer in 1985," she said. "But then I go down to see her, and before she's through with three lines, I'm in love. Everyone (at A&M) went through the same cycle with me: 'Oh my God, it's a folk singer - what are you doing?" Then they'd see her and instantly it was, 'Okay, let's make this work."

The Musician article on Vega appeared in their June 1988 issue, with a cover that featured a picture of Sinead O'Conner and the headline: WHY THE BEST NEW ARTISTS OF 1988 ARE WOMEN: THE MAJOR LABELS CHANGE THEIR TUNE. The approach itself was not unique; women performers had routinely been asked about the female perspective of working in a male-dominated field, with the equally obligatory questions about feminism tagged on in the '70s. The number of articles and books that focused on female performers ws increasing, but unlike the Musician piece, they profiled the women as individual performers, not as a specific development within the industry. But the Musician cover story, which featured profiles of O'Conner, Tracy Chapman, Michelle Schocked, and Toni Childs, also discussed why these women had emerged at approximately the same time. The new question asked of female performers was how they felt about being part of an apparently new genre of "women-in-rock," not the sole woman performer in a group of men, but part of their own musical "movement."

Many - though not all - of the women lumped into the women-in-rock "trend" were, like Vega, singer-songwriters: solo performers who played acoustic guitars who had been overlooked during the first half of the '80s as the rise of MTV and other video outlets played up the importance of a performer's appearance. Annie Lennox, Cyndi Lauper, and especially Madonna had been able to exploit the necessity of an extravagant look to their advantage, but women who were not interested in or willing to play that game found it harder to compete in the marketplace. Vega's success changed that attitude when she proved that a "serious" female performer could make money. Thirty years earlier, George Goldner had questioned whether the Chantels were "saleable" because he doubted anyone would be interested in listening to a group of teenage girls; in the early '80s it was obvious this type of reasoning was still being applied to performers who fell outside the boundaries of what was believed to be commercial music. "Since when did the industry that insisted its strongest women play cartoon characters such as rock's Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper and Annie Lennox allow a serious, powerful, flesh-and-blood female to stand firm on a concert stage?" wrote Susn Wilson in an article about the women-in-rock "trend" in the Boston Sunday Globe. "Since when did the folks who brought us Tiffany and Pebbles care about female singing or songwriting talent? Since when did the corporations that gave us Sheila E. and Madonna allow a female performer to sell social conscience instead of sex?" Finally, because of Suzanne Vega's success, a number of female performers were able to stretch those "commercial" boundaries with a vengeance, introducing a wealth of fresh, new musical talent into the music scene.

Born and raised in New York City, Vega had grown up thinking she was half-Puerto Rican until her father, writer Ed Vega, told her he was really her stepfather and that her biological father lived in California and was white, a revelation that set off something of an identity crisis for Vega. "I was really confused because I had this really strong identity as a half-Puerto Rican girl, " she told Musician. "I had all these really weird ideas about white people. So to realize that I was in fact white was obviously a big shock. It was hard for me to accept that I had this other thing that seemed to mark me as being different from my family." When vega finally met her "other" father, after her success with "Luka", she learned that both of her parents had musical backgrounds; not only was her mother a jazz guitarist, her biological father's mother had been a drummer who played with the Merry Makers Ladies Orchestra in the '20s and '30s.

Vega's own interest in the arts had been encouraged as a child: "Both of my parents thought that being an artist was the only reasonable thing in this society that a person could do," she said. Vega initially pursued dancing, which she studied while attending New York's High School for the Performing Arts, but she also wrote songs, sang, and played guitar; she later recalled one of her first singing experiences ws in a show sponsored by the Alliance of Latin Arts ("I was the only white girl"). By the time she attended her first rock concert, a Lou Reed show, at age nineteen, she had given up her dream of being a dancer, was attending Barnard College, and was trying to get booked in Greenwich Village clubs. When her efforts to find work in the Village proved unsuccessful, she sought out gigs on the college coffeehouse circuit and began building a following, keeping a notebook diary evaluating every show. By the early '80s, she managed to move into the Greenwich Village scene, at last finding a welcoming atmosphere for her work from people who didn't consider her to be a '60s throwback. "That five years I spent there was like finding my own tribe of people," she said in Musician in 1990. "I felt accepted. I was popular. I'd stay out and drink all night, and I had a lot of fun."

After being turned down by A&M twice, Vega's manager submitted a demo to A&M's then-president Gil Friesen, who then gave the tape to Nancy Jeffries; Vega was signed to the label in the mid-'80s. Her self-titled debut LP, released in 1985, kept the focus on Bega and her acoustic guitar despite the use of elcetric instruments. Co-produced by former Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye and Steve Addabbo, the album's songs, all written by Vega, combined poetic imagery with a cool delivery to create a subdued, but intense atmosphere. Although the album had little impact on the charts, it generated good reviews in the press, and her subsequent tours met with a positive response from audiences, particularly in Britain, where Vega played the Royal Albert Hall and was one of the few Americans on the bill at the annual Prince's Trust charity concert in 1987 (her "Marlene On The Wall" wa included on the album of highlights from the show). Back in the States, the song "Left Of Center," included on the soundtrack of the John Hughes film Pretty In Pink, became an alternative radio hit. By 1987, the stage was set for the release of Vega's second album, Solitude Standing, which, if all went according to plan, would build upon Vega's previous success and expose her to a larger audience. What was not expected was that the album would be a Top 20 hit (reaching number 11 and selling over one million copies) or that "Luka" would be a breakthrough smash.

Produced by the Kaye-Addabbo team, Solitude Standing had lusher instumentation than its predecessor, though Vega's concise delivery still took center stage. But there was no obvious single on the album, which made "Luka" a surprise hit. Songs about child abuse were not unheard of in rock music (Pat Benetar's "Hell Is For Children" being an obvious example), but the issue was rarely adressed, even in the realm of political songs, and no song on the subject had ever made it into the Top 40 before. But "Luka's" story, narrated in a calm, near-expressionless voice by the abused victim, struck a responsive chord in the public, and Vega received awards from child abuse organizations for the recognition her single had brought to the issue. Many of the album's other songs had equally disquieting themes: the narrator in the a capella "Tom's Diner" is cast as an eternal observer even when reflecting on a failed love affair, "In The Eye" depicts a potentially violent confrontation that could be either an argument or an assault, and the title track depicts "solitude" as an eternally present, enigmatic visitor.

Vega's next album, Days of Open Hand (which she co-produced), was released in 1990. In contrast to the personalized focus of her previous work, the majority of the songs on Days of Open Hand were observations of the outside world, with Vega, the omnipresent narrator, maintaining a detached perspective, even in situations where she is a participant, such as "Institution Green," where Vega waits to cast her vote in an anonymous bureaucratic building. "Fifty-Fifty Chance," the story of a suicide attempt, features a taut undercurrent of strings, arranged by Philip Glass, "Men in a War" contemplates physical and emotional loss, and the opening track, "Tired of Sleeping," has Vega trapped in a dream-like haze. In comparison to the success of Solitude Standing, Days of Open Hand did poorly, only selling around 350,000 copies. Vega admitted in Rolling Stone she was disappointed in A&M's handling of the album: "They (A&M) had forgotten what I represented, what I stood for... I never started making songs in order to get played on the radio - that was just a nice bonus." Her penchant for experimentation continued the following year when the British duo DNA released a bootleg record called "Oh Suzanne" that reworked "Tom's Diner" into a dance-rock track. A&M apprehended the duo for their unauthorized use of Vega's vocal track (which had been extensively sampled for DNA's record), but Vega suggested releasing DNA's imaginative "cover" as a legitimate record. The song became a number 2 hit in the British dance charts, and in 1991 Vega produced the compilation Tom's Album, a collection of widely varying cover versions of "Tom's Diner."

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Submitted by Paul Murphy

VegaNet@aol.com