rock world article, october 1992
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Hot Stuff Suzanne Vega's new album is called '99.9F' and it's a bit of a scorcher, with songs about hunchbacks and transvestites - a far cry from her folkie roots. But then there's been a few changes in her life recently as she tells COLIN IRWIN. Thin as a pencil and pale as pastry, Suzanne is sporting a curious white smock thingy with unflattering matching tights, talking about sex and Madonna. "I have mixed feelings about Madonna," ponders our fragile wee thing. "I think it's good that she's taken charge of her own image and it's forced other women to do the same. I don't think there's any woman on earth now who could get away with being manipulated by her manager. So that's good, but as for what she does... well, it's not my style." She flicks an unruly strand of ginger hair from her eyes, shrugs, waves at the smock, and suddenly, bursts into unexpected, surprinsingly warming peels of laughter. "Obviously it's not my style..." Well no, Suzanne, you don't remind me too much of Madonna. "It's positive what she does but I don't see why she has to do it that way. I prefer to do it another way. Why do you have to be sexy by showing your breasts?" Er yeah, why *indeed*. "Why can't you be sexy with your eyes, or your face? I find her view of sexuality to be somewhat artificial. It's not any kind of sex that *I'm* familiar with!" On reflection it's hard to imagine two women artists more diametrically opposed than Madonna and Suzanne Vega - one's outrageously stomping through our consciousness and trampling our moral sensibilities at every conceivable opportunity; the other poetically flits among us shyly offering lilting postcards of everyday life. But the divide is narrowing. Suzanne isn't quite the shrinking violet who wafted over from New York being all blushing and folkie on us in the mid-Eighties. She was thought of as being distinctly odd at the time. There was every other soul in Chistendom getting their rocks off to - what was it then, Bon Jovi? Michael Jackson? Duran? Suddenly up pops this demure singer/song-writer straight out of a pad with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. No, while Suzanne Vega's style isn't exactly your seminal rock chick, her brand spanking new LP '99.9F' is a startling change in direction. Produced by Elvis Costello/Crowded House knob-twiddler Mitchell Froom, it features all manner of strangeness and loud noises. Who rattled your cage then, Suzanne? "I think of it just as a natural progression from the last album really; We didn't go in to record it with any particular plans to be wild or different, we just went in wanting to have a good time and have fun and make it interesting and vivid. But in the event we took some turns we weren't even expecting - with 'Blood Makes Noise' and 'Fatman And The Dancing Girl' we started looking at each other, we weren't *sure*. But ultimately I think it all hangs together." You can't help wondering if a couple of young blokes in Bristol might have had some effect on this startling transformation. House producers DNA picked up on Suzanne's whimsical acapella cut 'Tom's Diner' (based on a real greasy caff that Suzanne used to frequent before she became famous), hit upon the crazy idea of sticking a hip hop backing track behind it, and whacked it out as a limited-issue single. The story was always that Suzanne loathed what they'd done to her song, but was sweet-talked round by A&M, who saw the comercial and image potential of giving the track their blessing and putting it out as a single. According to Suzanne it wasn't like that at all. She reckons that A&M were all for suing DNA and it was *she* who said she thought it was great and they should get right behind it. "I liked it. It didn't shock me, it made me laugh. In any case I'd got used to people doing strange covers of my songs. I was more shocked by The Lemonheads doing a thrash-metal version of 'Luka', but that also made me laugh. So after that, DNA sounded very normal. After all, they were quite respectful to the song, they didn't *mutilate* or anything so I had no reason to be upset by it." Certainly not when the record hit Number Three in the charts and perhaps changed a lot of people's attitudes towards Suzanne Vega... perhaps even her own. She's since worked again - more officially - with DNA on their own album ("they and I have the same sense of humour") but firmly refutes rumours that she's now working on a hip-hop album of her own. "There's all these black Puerto Rican kids in New York who think DNA is my own production company. I like DNA, though. It cost them about £50 to do and took about a day, but when I do it I still do the song unaccompanied. I always used it at the start of the show. I'd just come out and start singing it. It always grabbed the attention. Always worked." We talked some more about the new album, the first single from it, 'In Liverpool' (based on a childhood curiosity about the place due to the Beatles interspersed with memories of an old Scouse boyfriend and a weird and wonderful fantasy about the Hunchback Of Notre Dame), the peculiar techno-grunge of Blood Makes Noise and my favourite track, 'As Girls Go'. Very Lou Reed, very odd, very *good*... and inspired by a good-looking girl Suzanne used to know in New York. She had style and mystery and charisma and all the boys were after her and Suzanne envied her a bit... then one day somebody told her that the girl was actually a bloke. Several years later Suzanne's shaking her head, still not quite believing it... We also talk about 'Fatman And The Dancing Girl' and suddenly Suzanne's headlong into a full-blown confessional. The song itself was inspired by snapshots of her paternal grandmother who, it transpires, travelled the lenght and breadth of America as the drummer in an all-women vaudeville band and wore striped stockings and lace-up boots. She only recently discovered this. Which leads us into another story... Suzanne never knew her father. He left home when she was a babe in arms, her mother remarried, and information about her real father wasn't too forthcoming. As she grew older she became more and more curious about him until she finally hired a detective to track him down. So at the ripe old age of 28 she met her real father. "I sent him a Christmas card and I said 'Hi, I'm your daughter, and if you'd like to contact me this is my number, but if you don't want to I understand'. It was a little formal but I figured I should give myself a way out just in case. Then I got this phone call from him and we talked on the phone for a couple of months before we met. "When we did meet it felt very natural. It wasn't dramatic. Anybody seeing us at the airport wouldn't have thought it was anything special. He just took my bag and put his arm around me, but I could tell by the way he held me that it meant a lot to him. There wasn't a lot of screaming and yelling or tears flowing. He's like me, he's very reserved, yet there was this intensive feeling. We spent the whole weekend talking. He's fairly young - I was born when he was 19 years old. "He was pleased to know that I was a musician. He was dimly aware of my work. He said 'You did 'Luka'? He'd heard it but hadn't been aware it was his daughter. But it was weird when he brought out these pictures of his mother - my grandmother - being in a band all these years ago and me picking up the same lifestyle thinking I was being original and creative. Then I discovered this woman had done it 50 years before I had. Astonishing." And how did your mother react to you hiring a detective to find this bloke who'd left her with a baby 28 year ago? "She wasn't *thrilled*. It's not something she asks about so we don't really talk about it. I think she was a bit puzzled as to why I went to all the trouble of finding him, but I'm very glad I did." Half Puerto Rican, she was brought up in the Hispanic neighbourhood of New York and early on set her sights on being a successful artist of some kind, though she didn't know wether this would be through music, acting, dancing, painting or writing. She went to the New York Art School Of Performing Arts - on which the 'Fame' movie and TV series was based. "It was great fun", she says, "pretty much like you saw in the movie." Fired up on pop music originally by the Four Tops' 'Bernadette', she got heavily into the wordsmith brigade of Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and kept plugging away on the New York folk circuit without really thinking it would lead anywhere. "I was turned down by every record company in America. A&M turned me down twice before they did eventually sign me. I thought I'd do well to end up on one of the small folk labels, but my manager stuck out for one of the big labels and in the end he was right. I certainly never expected to end up getting hit records." 'Marlene On The Wall' in 1986 was the one that did it for her - and there have been a succession of oddball hits ever since - 'Left Of Center', 'Luka', 'Solitude Standing' and, of course, 'Tom's Diner' - all fascinating cameos of everyday life, which she describes "camera angles", without revealing much about herself. "I do write about myself actually - it's just that I camouflage it well." And what of the future, Suzanne? What would you want to be doing in ten years? "Oh, raising three kids, doing some painting and making brilliant records!" Submitted by David Algranti |
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