Suzanne Vega, 33, was born in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. Her parents separated when Suzanne was six months old, and her mother fell in love with the Puerto Rican writer Ed Vega. The couple moved to New York with Suzanne and had three children - Alyson, now 30, Matthew, 29 and Tim, 27. Suzanne was only told about the first marriage, and that Ed was her stepfather, when she was nine. Since 1985 she has made four albums, the latest of which, 99.9Fo, was released last September. She is currently on an eight-month tour of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Her brother Tim has been travelling with her for the first time, designing and selling the promotional T-shirts. He usually lives in New York.

Suzanne: My clearest memory of Timmy coming home from the hospital. He was a fat, red, big baby with this full head of black hair that stood straight up on his head and he had a firm, commanding presence even then. My mother was 24 years old, and I think it had been a difficult birth. She came home exhausted and more or less gave Tim over to me to watch, while she took care of the other two. So we developed this bond.

I always thought he was very interesting. When he first started to talk, he said this really long sentence at the dinner table. Something like: "Uncle Jay's house... big big motorcycle.. long long time ago." We all turned around, because we hadn't known he was capable of speaking, and everyone said "What?" And he repeated it: "Uncle Jay's house... big big motorcycle.. long long time ago." We'd been to see my Uncle Jay six months before! Everyone started laughing hysterically and laughed so much that he didn't say anything else for a long time.

Once in a while, usually if we had company, he would suddenly blurt out: "Well Suzi has another father, doesn't she?" Everyone would tell him to shut up, but it did make me feel the odd one out. I couldn't relax into being a child. I felt old, but I also felt peculiar.

When Timmy hit puberty he became a beast, and for some reason I really rubbed him the wrong way. I had a problem with eating at that point and would just sit down in front of the refrigerator with the door open, as though it were a TV set. It used to drive him crazy. So we went through this period of not being close.

We became friends again a few years later over the Smiths. He was really into them and lent me a tape. It took a couple of listenings, but finally I heard that song about: "I went looking for a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now..." And I thought it was really funny. Then we started to talk about music and art, to hang out together again.

Tim's way of creating is different from mine. I tend to reduce things to their simplest, most condensed form, whereas he loves to expand, doing these psychedelic graffiti. I've always had a much more austere approach. But on the last album my style became more colorful, so it seemed fimally to make sense to have the two of us work together.

Tim joined me on the tour. There's food available all the time, and money coming in, but it's still very structured. I don't really think it's his calling, to sit and sell the T-shirts, but it has given him a chance to see more of the world and think about things.

Tim: Suzanne's always kind of taken care of me. As a child, her room was the place I went for comfort. I could look at her books and her things, and she was always doing something interesting like writing or playing the guitar.

We were the furthest apart in age, yet we could have conversations which I didn't have with anybody else - and she never judged me, so there wasn't the fear of disapproval. We were both interested in dragons and fantasy, but we'd also discuss time and how we perceived it, as a line or something that went round in a circle. I thought it was great that I could talk about things like that to someone older than me, because with my brother and other sister there was a bit more tension. I was the youngest, and they were the middle ones, so I was kind of alienated from them.

When I was five or six I remember seeing Suzanne as an adult already. She was just as responsible and just as together and I thought: that's what I want to be like when I'm 12. The odd thing about becoming 12 and realizing that there was still a big difference between us.

There was a period when I despised her. I was going through my male changes and she was becoming a woman, and I couldn't deal with that. It was too strange for me. But then we came back to common ground.

These last few months have been quite grueling. I've been on the road with bands before, but only when I was pretty much anaesthesized. It was always like some kind of summer camp for boys who get into drinking and traveling together. But Suzi's entourage is far more disciplined than that.

I've always respected Suzanne a lot, but one thing this tour has made me aware of is how hard she works. Seeing her get up on stage night after night with such energy shows me how strong she is, too. It's difficult for a woman, because this is a very macho industry where everybody pushes their way through. Yet she's survived, and with a minimum amount of that prima donna attitude you usually get.

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Submitted by Eric Szczerbinski

VegaNet@aol.com