south bank television show transcript, 1987
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The South Bank Show: Suzanne Vega
[Editor's note: The South Bank Show is a programme produced for Britian's Channel 4/ITV network. Each programme focuses on one area of popular art, entertainment or culture. The one on Suzanne Vega was produced around the time of Solitude Standing, circa 1987. The transcript has been edited a little to turn Suzanne's fluid speaking style into something readable. I have also tried to include some of the images and imagery on the screen in the text.]
South Bank Show Theme "... a good story. There is a girl from New York city. She started playing guitar when she was 16. She was completely against the trend and everyone told her to give it up. 10 years later suddenly I get a major record contract. It makes a good story." SV: The thing that attracted me about the acoustic guitar is the thing that still attracts me. It is very mobile. It is very independent. Its very minimialistic. You're on stage with your guitar and sometimes I am on stage with out my guitar -- -I am just on stage with my voice. And I think there is something very powerful in one person standing up and telling a story. That for me has its roots in the folk tradition. There are other people who take that tradition and push it a little farther. They combine it with technology and they combine it with other kinds of cultures. It becomes more than folk music. It becomes the root of the folk music combined with other influences to make it broader. To push the boundaries of it and the limits of it. I think that is what I wanted to do is to take some of the ideas of punk and rock and roll and minimalizm and apply them to the folk root and push the boundaries. Paul Gambaccini (Music Journalist): She is clearing coming from that New York group of artists that includes Lou Reid, Laurie Anderson and so forth. But she is being accepted in the same way that Saude is. That may seem a bizarre comparison, but it isn't. They're both cool artists who have something to offer but aren't threatening. They are appealing to the Compact Disc buying, album buying people. Melvyn Bragg: [over some early photos of SV]. The songs she wrote in her teens, which she still plays, are certainly very easy to listen to. " My tastes in music changed radically after my first rock and roll concert which was Lou Reed when I was 19. [Picture of Lou Reed.] It was a drastic turning point, though I didn't realise that until looking back on it. The first song that I wrote after I saw that concert was Cracking, which to me was the first song that actually felt like a mature style to me. I suddenly felt like I could write songs that had an edge to them. I could use the language in a way I hadn't thought of using before. I could use the words for how they sounded as well as what they meant. I started thinking about vowels and constantents in a whole different way. I started to use by voice as an instrument which I hadn't really done before. Suddenly it seemed more important to make the images clear and hard as opposed to sort of soft and flowing. SV: The narrator going for a walk in the park and through the details reflected in the landscape you can see this person is "cracking" --- not the ice on the sidewalk. It is the person that is cracking and that is the important thing. And so I guess what I tried to do with that song is to write and put the kind of details in that a person who was cracking would write. So from the very first line, which is "It's a one time thing -- it just happens a lot" you know you are talking to someone who is not making sense. [SV walking through a park, with Cracking playing.] Film of New York scenes -- streets, dustbins, traffic, brown stone apartment blocks, and Cracking] All her songs are influenced by the city of New York where she grew up. SV: [over more New York images] I spent the first five years on East 109th Street, which is the Spanish Harlem. I don't remember a lot about that area, except that it was mostly black, Puerto Ricoian and Irish. MB: She has continued to live in New York and was soon drawn to Greenwhich village with its striving folk music scene. Her successes there, notably at the legendary Folk City, finally persuaded her to move into the area. PG: I can't imagine SV coming from any city other than New York. Because her songs are informed by every day life in New York city, and also the cultural influences that people of her age and interests are exposed to. All of the galleries in New York, all of the cinemas that show the foreign films all over the city. I can't imagine someone outside of New York wanting to write about Marlene at this point, much less the enigma of Casper Hausen. I think that some how there is a bit of the beat of the city in her music. The fact that she would write about the fancy poultry butcher in a very New York way --- a very direct way. [She is standing outside a meat market or a warehouse...] In the meat market near where I lived there were all the signs of what people were selling -- usually parts of the body of what ever animal it is. So we have breasts and hearts and livers and smoke tripe and this kind of thing. It is really evocative there are all these sensual undertones to it because you are talking about parts of the body. In the mean time you are here in this deserted place with all this steel and cold metal with the remnants of warm living things that have been there. [Ironbound/Fancy Poultry (1986-87) under images of the animal parts on sale. The song stops just on "and wings are nearly..." the second time around.] back to SV: [singing "fancy poultry parts sold here..." ] The sound of 'poultry' and 'sold' they both complement each other. And then you have "breasts and thighs and hearts" ... so the whole thing works together neatly. It is not only about the parts it is obviously about the way the words sound when they are together and their other meaning. Their more human functions I was thinking of. "And wings are nearly free" Obviously I am not talking about poultry parts there. I am talking about a metaphor. [More Fancy poultry "And wings are nearly free", SV walking around an empty, industrial area...] [Walking through a street in a black leather jacket] A hard cold inflexible environment and the feeling of struggling things, struggling live things like plants, children and animals and people. That is one thing about a city that has always fascinated me. SV: One thing that fascinates me about being a single person in the city is that feeling of anonymousness that you always have no matter what city it is, whether it is Tokyo or New York. There is that feeling of being one of a crowd which is both very comforting to me and can also make you feel very lonely. One of my favourite things to do is to go into a diner, or some place like that, and eat by myself. [SV singing Tom's Diner in a dinner... she is looking out the window...] SV: Why do I like places like this? I think because it makes me feel included. Anyone can come here and eat and pay their money and sit at the counter and drink their coffee and you are included. You have a place to go. songs are about, it is the way they are constructed that has earned her most praise. SV: I like my lyrics to scan well. I like them to be concise. I hate repeating myself. I don't like there to be any fluff or extra stuff, any decorations, any cheap rhymes. I try not to go for that. I look at a song the way I would design something. This may be kind of an odd story, but when I was in sixth grade I remember I had a teacher who had built a pyramid out of straws. He put all of his weight on the top of the pyramid and it held up. He said it was because it was perfectly designed. For some reason that image made sense to me. I would first of all like to be that way, so that I could withstand any kind of stress. I would like to have my internal structure to be designed like that so I could take any kind of stress. But I try and write my songs the same way.
PG: I think here lyrics are actually quite subtle.
She doesn't spell it out. And I think this is a great irony, because
I am sure that a lot of people are buying her albums and putting it on
in the background because it sounds nice. When in fact to get full
value from it you have to study it. I am
[More of the acoustic Luka, starting with "Yeah I
think I am OK / I walked into the door again..."]
y some
chords that attract me more than others. You don't hear a lot of my
songs starting happily [major chord] with a very resolved chord that
sounds like everything is just cheerful and everything is going to
work out fine. I did more when I was 14 or 15 years old. The first
songs I had were very much Major E chord. But the ones that have
drawn my attention lately tend to be unresolved. They are not really
sad, not really happy, they are just unresolved. They tend to hang in
the air [chord]. That is the way I tend to think about them [chord].
To make that chord sad you would go [chord, going down]. That would
give it a very sad and melancholy feeling. As it is, it is just
unresolved.
[SV with guitar playing Small Blue Thing, standing on
a stage. Behind her are large images of New York, Folk City, a fire
escape, a Speak Easy.]
SV: I think the images in my songs have that
feeling of abstraction, colour and shape because in my mind what I am
trying to do with an audience is to make it clear as possible for them
to understand. I feel like what I am doing is becoming more specific.
Other people complain I am becoming too general and too abstract and
that it is not specific. If Small Blue Thing is a love
song, then I why don't I say I love you instead of 'today I am a small
blue thing'? What do I mean by this? And why don't I come straight
out and say what I mean? When actually what I mean is "today I am a
small blue thing" [laugh] --- that is what I mean to say! It
was more like I was really playing with that song. It was a playful
thing. It was "if this feeling had a shape, what shape would it be"?
It would be round and cool and smooth, and then I thought isn't that
funny that is something like a four-year old might say and I took it a
little further.
troduced Suzanne Vega to the British public,
and gave her her first hit single here [in Britain] is about Marlene
Detrich. [Not it is NOT --- Ed]
SV: Basically, Marlane -- the Marlene that is
referred to in the song -- is a picture of Marlene Detrch that was on
my wall at one time. It sort of if she were watching the comings and
goings in my room what would she think. There are all these private
references that for me make it not one of the best songs I have ever
written. So I was kind of surprised by the response to it.
MB: [Over the start of the montage] It the song
she has performed the most often, and in the most ways.
or the reasons for
her sudden international success.
SV: One thing that I think is a little strange is
I wonder whether one of the reasons I have become successful in
foreign countries is because I am perceived as being someone old
fashioned or quaint or traditional. When actually in New York I think
I was perceived as being much more progressive and even not rebellious
exactly --- you don't look at me and think 'she's a rebel'. I think I
was definitely perceived as being much more independent. I am sure
some of that must have to do with the way I look.
PG: The one problem I have with Suzanne Vega is
that I am not really moved by her in the end. Joni Mitchell --- to
mention the person with whom she is fallaciously compared --- could
move you over something that actually was not very tragic. She could
make turning 20 sound like a catastrophe. And she could deliver it in
such a style that you were touched.
Suzanne writes almost in an intellectual manner. She is almost
setting poems to music. And because her vocal style is also cool the
emotion is lacking. I think what personally what I like most about
popular music is to be moved emotionally and intellectually.
voice as being very cool and clear and yet the
things I sing about are very violent, fragmented and a lot of them are
ugly. To me that is a satisfying combination. If I was to sing about
these ugly brutal things in a very raspy falling apart voice I think
that would be very predictable. If I was to have my voice and to sing
about beautiful flowers or tranquillity and peace of mind, I think
that would also be very predictable. But instead you have a contrast
-- it works really well.
[Concert footage of Black Widow Station (1982)]
Graphics: Pat Gavin
Designer: Andrew Gardner
VTR Editor: Wink Hackman
Our thanks to: Bar Italia, Soho
Gaz Corham
Scope Features
The Vintage Magazine Shop
Make up Supervisor: Janis Gould
Floor Manager: Ken Hounsom
Location Manager: Peter Pearson
Production Manager: Brian Gladstone
Music Assoicate: John Middleton
Roustrum Camera: Ken Morse
Film Camera: Chirs O'Dell, Richard Melman, Colin Clarke, Peter Bartlett
Film Sound: Reg Mills, Trevor Carless, John Clifton, Derek Williams
Dubbing Mixer: Tony Ascombe
Film Researcher: Phil Crossley
Production Assistant: Shelia Wilson
Film Editor: Tony Webb
Researcher: Frances Dickinson
Produced and Directed by: Chris Hunt
Edited and Presented by: Melvyn Bragg
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