Suzanne Vega

~ Fall Music ~

The Singer-Songwriter Explores Maternal, Married And Forbidden Love On Her Latest Release

By Ann Powers

US Magazine, September 1996

IN A PHOTOGRAPH HER MOTHER PULLS OUT of her purse, Ruby sparkles. She is a 2-year-old girl in a sandbox with a sunbonnet on her head. She has mink-colored hair and the open smile of a child who knows you're going to love her. "I sensed her before she became real," says Suzanne Vega, the mother in question, as she rifles through snapshots in her favorite New York cafe. "I really wanted to have a baby, but I had sort of made a deal with Mitchell that we were not going to try until later on. Then things happened. I really wanted her in my life, so it was the right thing."

At 37, singer-songwriter Vega has found a new focus for her meticulous mind -- Ruby and the realities of a semisettled life. Vega and her husband, the record producer Mitchell Froom, can no longer easily jump coasts and continents in pursuit of musical inspiration. "Having a family requires all the nuts-and-bolts things that nobody who's creative likes to deal with," Vega says. "You fall in love and you think, no problem-we'll just go everywhere together like nomads. And then you do, and you realize, who's gonna book the plane tickets, and who's gonna pay for all this? And how are you gonna find a school for Ruby? And when she gets the virus in Paris, how do we find the doctor? That's where the strain comes in."

Yet with these common difficulties, says Vega, came something more profound - a way of viewing the world more directly. "After you give birth, you're really down to basics: eating, sleeping, clothing yourself and your child," she says."Your language becomes very sirnple." Nine Objects of Desire, Vega's fifth album, doesn't really qualify as simple; puns and elaborate metaphors still contour its songs. But where her earlier slice-of-life hits "Luka" and "Tom's Diner" allowed Vega to maintain a cool and distant stance, on Nine Objects she uncovers her own fears and appetites.

Nine Objects takes as its subject the many weird shapes of longing: attraction between two friends, maternal love, the ups and downs of marriage, even the hunger for death.

It can take years for Vega to gain perspective on these heady matters. Consider "Caramel," which is also featured on the soundtrack for The Truth About Cats and Dogs. She penned its bossa-nova melody as a teenager, then found new words for it when an unexpected crush hit her not too long ago. "I would prefer not to talk about when it was;" Vega says with a grin and a blush. "Suffice it to say that it didn't lead anywhere and didn't cause any trouble." In fact, the song's lyrics argue for emotional restraint; even when revealing herself, Vega still seems to trust the step backward most of all.

Cautiousness is not surprising in someone who learned to cope with chaos from the beginning. Vega was uprooted at age three when her bohemian parents moved the family from Los Angeles to East Harlem, N.Y. There, she grew up as the palest Puerto Rican she knew.

"My stepfather's Puerto Rican,' says Vega, whose natural father is of European descent. "My mother's German-Swedish, from the Midwest. In 1960, it was kind of unusual. My brothers and sister have darker skin than I do and thick, straight, black hair. I was not like any other family that I knew. And my parents were college educated and politically active. I don't know what you'd call them. Different."

Vega remembers playing at adulthood early on: "When I was 11, I would dress in short skirts and had really long hair and was curious about sex." But in her teens, she says,"some bad things happened in my life, and I changed." Vega casts her eyes downward, as if to signal Don't ask what. "I started wearing military jackets and cut my hair short. I was really into feminism." She wrote Nine Objects' "Lolita" as a warning to the young girls in her life -- Ruby, Vega's niece and Froom's 11-year-old daughter -- and as a loving nod to her mother. "She had four children before age 24," Vega says, "so she really kicked me in the butt to make sure I stayed in college. She didn't want me to be like a lot of girls are. It's not necessary to identify yourself through sex or even by trying to please a man."

Taking her mother's advice, Vega submerged herself in art, devoting herself to dance at New York's High School of Performing Arts and, at 14, starting to write music. "I had a very animated inner life," says Vega. "I still do. That's where I get a lot of my strength from." Vega worries that the new songs, especially those flavored with the Latin rhythms she loved in her youth, might be too direct --corny is the word she apologetically employs. It's taking her a while to get used to a looser self. "In the past, I wouldn't have allowed myself to feel and write that [way]," she admits. Luckily, she found someone who convinced her to take the chance.

THE MAGIC SHOP RECORDING STUDIO IS hidden behind an unmarked door less than a mile from the cafe. Inside, Vega sits at the soundboard, ready to preview a selection from Nine Objects. Froom and engineer Tchad Blake slump on a couch near the room's entrance and bolt out the door the minute Vega starts to discuss the album.

"Mitchell always turns red when I play this one," Vega says with a laugh as "Honeymoon Suite" -- a song that playfully views the impassable gap between -two people even when they're married -- starts to roll. Froom, whom Vega met when he signed on to produce 1992's 99.9F, was the catalyst for her musical growth spurt. An eminent knob twister who has guided many artists, including Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, the Pretenders and Soul Coughing (the group even named its debut, Ruby Vroom, after its favorite infant), Froom persuaded Vega to fully pursue the offbeat path she'd happened down in 1990 when the English club duo DNA remixed "Tom's Diner" into an international smash.

Instead of guitar-based story songs, Vega and Froom began to stir a weird cocktail of synthesized beats and obsolete instruments, dance rhythms and clangy light-industrial effects. "Mitchell said he was going to reveal me to be the mutant that I really am," Vega recalls. Their working relationship has been like a long game of chicken, with each daring the other to inch closer to the cliff 's edge. "I think she was probably open her whole life," says Froom, speaking by phone from the couple's summer retreat on Long Island. "I didn't ever see fear from her.'

"I was frustrated in my career and my life, and he was frustrated in his life and career, so we challenged each other," says Vega. "There was this defiant attitude -- we were going to make it extreme, and the hell with it if they don't like it. It was like finding a partner in crime."

But not like falling in love -- at least not at first. "We didn't go anywhere near each other until months after 99.9 F was done," she insists."We were very professional." Vega had helmed a project with a lover before, co-producing 1990's Days of Open Hand with her live-in boyfriend Anton Sanko, and it wasn't the happiest experience. Froom has been married before and has two kids from that relationship. Prudence kept Vega and Froom apart -- but not for long. The couple wed in March 1995.

Vega and Froom's collaboration demonstrates how love's give-and-take can translate into art. Vega establishes the groundwork of her songs, then comes to Froom, who fleshes out the instrumentation in pre-production. "I'll say,'Here's what I have,"' she says. "And he'll say, 'What the hell am I gonna do with this?’ He’ll think about it for a few days and figure out how to approach it." The couple is resolute about keeping work and private life distinct; for the writing of Nine Objects, Vega rented an apartment one floor down from their Manhattan digs as a work space. " I like us to be away from the house, in a room where we can sit and look at each other," Vega says. "And it’s no holds barred. No judgment. "

With Froom and through Ruby, this cautious girl has unearthed another way of being. "I wrote about small things because that's what I knew," Vega says of her earlier work. "But now I feel like I've been through the world, and in a physical way, I've been very large. When I was pregnant, I was just gigantic." Vega ponders the experience, glances at the picture of her confident daughter and decides, "It's not a bad feeling to be big."

Please send your comments, suggestions, submissions to: VegaNet

Up to The Suzanne Vega Home Page

Submitted by Unique212aol.com

VegaNet@aol.com