VEGA'S ODDS: Folk/Rock Stardom?
Not since Joni Mitchell appeared on the folk/rock scene has a female singer/songwriter emerged with the same mass-market potential as Suzanne Vega. The New York native's first album, 1985's *Suzanne Vega*, unveiled her strengths - compelling, poetic lyrics and rhythmic arrangements - to an international audience. But that audience was finding out something Vega's rabid and loyal cult following has known for years: This waif-like, intriguing 27-year-old with straw-blonde hair and *meaning* in her eyes is on her way to becoming a major force on the music scene - after 10 years of paying dues.
A&M Records understandably is banking on Vega to achieve a healthy measure of commercial success. And the odds are in her favor - even though Vega herself tries "not to think about it too much, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm more successful than I ever thought I would be at this age."
And she's not so matter-of-fact about it: "I'm astounded," she says in an almost surprised tone. "Compared to what I had, I have so much more now. It's staggering to me.
"I don't have that kind of ambition to be 'dominator of the world,'" she says with a laugh. "I was struck by the language lately - like if you watch MTV, you'll see 'The Acts That *Dominated* 1986.' It's not interesting to me. I have no wish to dominate even New York. I'm not into dominating anything. I'm really happy with what's happened so far; what I'd like to do is sustain it.
"When I was growing up, I suppose I wanted to be more like Leonard Cohen or Laura Nyro - much more than Joni Mitchell. I prefered Laura Nyro because she retained more of her individuality and was more risky and experimental, although Joni Mitchell was, too, in her way. But when I became aware of her she was already a big superstar, and that was not what I had in mind."
Vega is frequently compared not only to Mitchell but also to Bob Dylan. "They're *not* my favorite artists," she insists, "although I was very impressed with Dylan. Obviously, he was a huge influence just by his character, not even so much by his music. The *idea* of Dylan was very compelling, even if I didn't exactly sit around listening to his records all day.
"He was influential to me because of the idea that one person with a guitar could get up, very simply, and say something. I like his lyrics, and I like his imagery."
She also admires the work - and the "attitude" - of the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde. "I think she's terrific," Vega says. "If I was going to pick a role model today, I'd say I would like to be like her."
VEGA'S LATEST
You can compare Vega to Mitchell, Cohen, Nyro, Dylan, Hynde, or anyone else, but she still stands to fill a niche that's basically unoccupied. She's pioneering. She's not Joni Mitchell's little sister, but she's not Stevie Nicks either: "I couldn't see myself dancing around on stage like that."
The only tradition Suzanne Vega falls into comfortably is the tradition of individual talent - Dylan and Mitchell, sure, but it's not so bizarre to imagine Emily Dickinson singing "Small Blue Thing" either.
A read through Vega's lyrics yields a blend of imagistic ideas in an innovative style; a listen to her songs reveals that she's no slouch with melodies either. And the sparse, acoustic arrangements on her first album keep her compositions easily accessible.
The Compact Disc version makes it all the more striking, as the artist herself points out: "The CD has a lot more presence," Vega says. "My album [LP] is a funny thing - I haven't listened to it in a long time.
"One thing that struck me," she adds, "is that it's a quiet album, but I wanted it to be strong; I didn't want it to be easily overlooked. So I was happy when I heard it on CD that the range of stuff we were doing was expressed - even though it wasn't like a powerhouse production."
Her follow-up to *Suzanne Vega* - completed and due for an April 23 release on CD, LP, and cassette and titled *Tom's Diner* - reveals a slight change in style. Vega's late-1986 tour gave the first hint that she was adding fire to her music; she rocked harder at those shows than she ever has.
On *Tom's Diner*, Vega uses almost the same band that she used on her 1986 tour (bassist Michaael Visceglia, who formerly played with the Turtles, guitarist Marc Shulman, keyboardist Anton Sanko, and new drummer Stephen Ferrera, who replaces Sue Evans). The lineup will back Vega on her aptly titled "Tom's Diner World Tour 1987," which will be traveling across the United States, Canada, all over the U.K. and Europe, and Australia this year. According to her manager, Ron Fierstein, Vega also will be playing a solo acoustic date in Tokyo.
*Tom's Diner*, an analog recording that was mixed on digital equipment, reflects Vega's new preference for a more "band-oriented" sound. "The extra musical accompaniment on *Suzanne Vega* had a soft edge," Fierstein comments. "Now she's becoming more comfortable with a band."
That much is obvious on one of the highlights from *Tom's Diner*: "Solitude Standing," which is as close to a rocker as Vega has written. It's similar in tempo to "Left of Center," which Vega recorded for the soundtrack to *Pretty in Pink*.
KEEPING THE FOLK IN HER ROCK
Even in a rock'n'roll setting, fortunately, Vega's intimate poetry never gets lost, nor do her intricate melodies. Her demure vulnerability still is a constant, whether she's on stage or in the recording studio. That's because her music is so personal. And that's why her recordings and her concerts (even her new sharper-edged shows, and especially her solo performance of "Tom's Diner") give you the impression of a small, shy, quiet woman singing her sad song.
She'd surprise you if you met her, however. Vega is small indeed and as pretty as her picture - she's let her straw-blonde hair grow - but she's not kidding when she calls herself a "chatterbox." "I'm really very confident and full of stories, and people are always surprised and say, 'Why, you're not shy at all.' See, I've been doing this for 10 years - I'll always present myself on stage this way [shy and somewhat vulnerable]. It's effective for me, and I enjoy it."
And she *has* been working at it for 10 years. Vega's emergence onto the national scene hasn't come without her share of work - performing in tiny restaurants, clubs, and bars. In fact, it wasn't until 1983 that Vega, together with one of her current producers, Steve Addabbo, began making demo tapes. At the time, she was working as a receptionist - "and trying desperately to quit my job."
When A&M rescued her by signing her to record a first album, the label brought in Lenny Kaye to coproduce with Addabbo. Kaye would "balance what we had already done," Vega explains, "and maybe throw in a little bit extra - like a wild card."
Vega's own experience in the studio was limited, but she became quickly oriented.
"When I made the album, it was the first time I'd ever done anything like that," she says. "I had to learn how to think in a certain way, and I've begun thinking more in that way as the year went by and as I worked with the band more.
"I was basically a solo acoustic artist before that. I didn't think about production. I just thought about my song and my words, and I'd sit on the stage and sing by myself. I never thought about, 'Well, you can use these different sounds.' So that's been relatively new."
The recording process, Vega says, "is like a whole different world for me: from sitting in my room saying, 'Gee, this chord is nice' to going into a studio with people looking at me and saying 'What do you think about strings?' And I'm like, 'Strings? What do you want me to do with strings?'
"The past couple of years have been such expansive ones for me in terms of just thinking about sounds, let alone recording them," she adds. "I'm not what you'd call a technically minded person, but I'm fascinated by certain opportunities. I see now that if I had a recording studio, I could work out things for myself because I *have* ideas - I just never knew how to express them before."
Does she have notions of a self-produced album in the future? "I could see playing with it and seeing what I came up with. I listen to Kate Bush with a new ear because the sounds she gets are amazing - they're strange and they're different and they're imaginative, and the way she puts them all together is really inspirational."
Vega also is impressed with labelmate Joe Jackson, with whom she recorded her biggest hit so far, "Left of Center."
"I had heard he was eccentric, and he is, but he's great to work with," Vega says, "because there's no BS about it - very straight ahead and no garbage. And he's a great player. He has a wonderful touch. I was amazed because he's lyrical and tender, but he's also very strong. He's very sure of what he's playing. And he was inspirational as a musician because he can come up with anything."
"I'M NOT MADONNA"
Before the recording part of Vega's music comes a rash of ideas, images, and notebooks full of words. The stories in her songs indicate that she likes being someone else - acting a part or speaking in another voice. "We play that we're actors on a movie screen / I could be Dietrich and you could be Dean," she sings on "Freeze Tag," from *Suzanne Vega*.
"I like T.S. Eliot," she says. "His way of writing in a character was very inspirational to me."
Vega plays all the parts in her songs: the queen, the soldier, Lucas the battered child downstairs, the "neighborhood girl" ... And more than telling a story, she *acts* it.
"One side of me loves being on the stage - loves the whole thing about being a part of the theater and playing other characters," she admits. "I feel I've gotten myself into a funny corner because when I'm on stage I'm very much pretending to be myself. I'm not Cyndi Lauper and I'm not Madonna. But in my writing I do tend to throw my voice in different ways.
"But what I do on stage is still a show. I'm being a person and I guess I'm being sort of vulnerable - but I'm also aware of what I'm doing. Some people seem to think that I'm just coming out and bleeding all over the stage, but that's not my idea of a good time. So it's like, 'Hi, I'm vulnerable. Now let's see what you're gonna do with it.'"
That's more her *old* show. In case you didn't see it: Suzanne Vega, nervous, not so much as a guitar between her and her audience, singing a jittery, a cappella "Tom's Restaurant." She was every woman - every man - chosen from the many in the crowd on upper Broadway, and sent out alone to the stage to sing about her loneliness in an empty world.
Because of that style, Vega says, "People ask me if I write poetry or short stories or novels. I've tried doing those, but there's always a dimension or element that's missing for me. The music for me has the feeling. I tend to be cool and reserved, so if I were to write a story, all you'd get would be the words, the technique. You wouldn't get the feeling underneath it.
"For me, the music is always the 'other part.' It's the coloring-in, it's the mood, it's the rhythm, it's the framework for me to put the words over. It's like a stretcher with a canvas over it: The words are the canvas and the music is the framework."
Vega's mind is active with metaphors like that one, as ideas for songs, music and images come to her. She occasionally carries a video camera with her because "there's something satisfying about taking images and putting them together in a context. I don't know why - it just thrills me," she says. "You take this image and that image and put them together and suddenly you have something bigger than both of them. That's a fascinating idea."
CREATING A SONG
Vega, as you might guess, is always working on a song. "Ususally I start with an idea; then, if I find the right chord and rhythm, everything will come out at once. But usually words and music come hand in hand," she explains.
"Some songs come tumbling out and you feel like they must have been writing themselves for a long time. Others take a while because I have the idea but don't know what angle to come at it from. Like "Cracking" - I wrote it seven years ago, but I kept going back and trying to find the right angle. I have notebooks full of lines like, "It just happens all the time,' and 'It always happens.' It's all confused and then one day it just settles in and you know, yes, this is the right choice of words and no other words will do."
Angles. Vega approaches music, poetry, and probably her life from "angles." She writes about "Straight Lines" and cutting through circles, and asks with almost mathematical precision, "Do you love 20, do you love none, do you love me?" She's logical. She calls herself "geometrical."
Ask her about Joni Mitchell: "I approach things much more geometrically than she does. Joni's a hard one for me because I'm compared to her so often that I start feeling like a younger sibling that will never get out of the shadow of an older one. 'Oh, isn't she just like Joni!' It's partly because we *look* similar, which is weird, because our styles are so different."
Vega's style, she'll tell you, is more akin to the new wave of the Velvet Underground and the Smiths. Those are the artists she'd like to cover at some point in the future, although she wonders: "Could I really be convincing about it?, I ask myself. And that's a problem, because the kind of things I'd want to cover are the songs I wouldn't have written myself." Obviously.
LOGICALLY LOGICAL LOGIC
Vega is one of those rare people who can talk - and probably think - in syllogisms. You'd hate to get into an argument with Suzanne Vega: She's too damned logical. She makes you sorry you ever asked about her frequent comparisons to Mitchell when she politely explains, "Joni was a pioneer in ways that I can't be, because she was there before I was." Why didn't you think of that?
And about learning the production aspects of recording an album: "I had never thought of it because it had never occurred to me." Of course. The woman makes sense.
So does the notion that Vega's star will rise in '87. It helps that A&M has big plans for her, but the reason to put money on this unique singer/songwriter is her rare blend of insight with innocence, and logic with creativity. Vega already has made an impact in Europe, and she's an odds-on favorite to find similar fame in the United States.
Submitted by Rob Walters
VegaNet@aol.com
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